RE: [Fis] Music, Leyton, Governance

Hi Ted,

Thanks for bringing us back to our sheep.

You commented;

<In the FIS context, "music" can be characterized as having
<illogical content that relates in an orderly way in the receiving
<mind. Therefore the mechanics of music in humans is more "natural,"
<and more apt to inform us about the types of communications among
<molecules, even though that statement carries Theosophical overtones.

I think that nicely summarises Frank Zappa's observation that

'a composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting
air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.'

This quote applies equally well to your societal analogy if you substitute
'politician' for 'composer' and 'citizens' for 'air molecules' -
and maybe 'scientists' for 'musicians :)

As a coda to your intermezzo I can't help wondering why informational
experiences at molecular social and personal levels often present as
incidental music rather than program pieces - messages carried
from Point A to Point B.

This explains why the question 'What is Information?' has hitherto not been
of central concern to science (compared to say less incidental
entities like matter, truth and justice).

<the FIS list often goes off on tangents from the programmed topic, usually productively.>

Could this be an informational power law underlying human communication - as elliptic and
tangential as an Anglo-Saxon conversation, a jam session with Charlie Bird Parker
or the 'dialog among molecules'?

Can we fully understand music without first exploring those nebulous entities
soul, spirit and psyche - which (if Heisenberg is to be believed) are
natural extensions of the physical world.

I enjoyed Juan's lucid paper very much - particularly where
he explored the borderline between language and music.
I was not so convinced by his attempt to 'force' a 'message-based',
processing theory of information on top of it.

>From my perspective 'information' is not just matter and form but
a (possibly elliptic) movement between a place of absence and a place of presence
(just as the cipher '2' is not just a fixed position but
implies a movement away from 'oneness' and towards 'threeness').

To ignore that may lead us to philosophical and political 'tokenism'.
Can we really have a theory of information without a 'deictic moment'?
To paraphrase theology - can we have the 'Truth and the Light' without
'The Way'?

The French philosopher Bruno Latour is worth a read on this:
http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/articles/article/064.html

'On voit que l'information n'est pas une "forme" au sens platonicien du terme,
mais un rapport tr�s pratique et tr�s mat�riel entre deux lieux dont le premier
n�gocie ce qu'il doit pr�lever dans le second afin de le tenir sous le regard
et d'agir � distance sur lui.'

['information is a very practical and material relationship between
two places the first of which negotiates what it needs to remove from the
second in order to keep it under its notice and at the same time act on it remotely']

For Latour this dialectic explains the vicarious power of artefacts (inscriptions)
- scientific or musical notation, literature - as well as that of libraries,
museums and laboratories.

Your post and Juan's intro have announced some interesting themes.

After the overture I'm looking forward to the concert.

Tangentially,

John H

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Goranson [mailto:tedg@sirius-beta.com]
Sent: Saturday, 10 May 2003 11:00
To: fis-listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] Music, Leyton, Governance (Longish)

Friends-

Forgive me as I try to integrate more than one FIS thread among those
pinging about in my brain.

I greatly appreciate that the topic has shifted to music. It seems
different enough that we may actually get some fresh perspectives,
especially with the entry of the new-to-FIS views of Michael Leyton.

First a disclaimer: I know Leyton's work and so admire it am
incorporating it into an agenda of my own somewhat alien to
Michael's. And as I have said on this list, those three foci:
Leyton's own imperative, my application need and the focus of the FIS
group may be useful complements but it would be a mistake (for me) to
conflate or confuse them.

As I understand the FIS agenda, it takes a fresh look at the nature
of the "message" in certain phenomenon and looks for new laws that
pertain to that "information" rather than the behavior usually
associated with it. In many cases, this will involve redefining or
even creating a new notion of that message: for instance in the
"dialog" among molecules.

Juan's approach to music starts with the phenomenon of the carrier,
an approach one would expect of a physicist. I, of course, agree with
most everything he says. Michael does the opposite: starting with how
the receiver is affected by and incorporates the message, developing
a notion of information in the context of history/memory/situation
and then projecting backwards into the nature of the message. This
also is understandable as from a cognitive scientist. As I say, I
find this latter approach extremely useful because (my speculation
here:) it fits ANY kind of message, allows a concise ALGEBRA over
history and information, and as I will conclude below can describe
memory of systems as well as individuals.

But Michael's success comes at the cost of the FIS agenda. He can
impute the token of information as an element of the history and stop
there. FISers can make something of that imputation and define
information tokens in the "pure" as Stonier and Conrad would have it,
or look at the grammar of that information as Matsuno and Marijuan
do. I'm up for that: enthused about it. But I have to keep in mind
that it may not be in Michael's program to do so, because everything
in his argument depends on the situating of the tokens.

But yet, let's try. And here I wish to bring in another thread: the
structure of science and government.

(Note to Michael: the FIS list often goes off on tangents from the
programmed topic, usually productively. As the scope of
self-organization investigated by FIS spans from molecules to
societies, many messages comment on how an advance in theory would
lead to "engineering" - forgive the word - techniques that would make
human society better. The more outrageous of these are calls to arms
to combat international conspiracies to murder children with
radioactive poison. But behind that noise is an honest attempt to
understand the dynamics at societal - and by this posters usually
mean political - levels.)

Political systems to my mind is a matter of defining behavior and
mechanisms in three areas. At the "top" level are things that are a
matter of natural law, or appear to be so for all practical
consideration. Below that is a domain of the "social compact,"
conventions that evolve in societies as a community bargain where
each member pays a cost and receives a valuable benefit. The third
tier are simpler matters of automatic negotiation, where laws of
economics make it desirable to collaborate outside the social compact.

An example of the first, at least in the US, is the notion that all
men should carry the same weight as agents in the system. Though this
is a modern idea that was clearly invented, it is treated by
Americans as though the "creator" made things this way. An example of
the second is proscription against theft; "ownership" of property is
a purely artificial concept and respect for it is an evolved matter
of the social compact. The third tier can be exemplified by a postal
service. Conservatives in the US are adamant that no one has a
"right" to postal service, and further that it is not something a
government SHOULD do. But they allow it because it makes economic
sense for the government to do it and serve everyone.

People with different philosophies will put different things in
different bins, for instance in the US there is great debate over
"rights" and priorities of rights, and therefore which of the rights
is more natural and therefore basic.

(Here, I digress to noet an outstanding FIS controversy about whether
"logic" is in the second or first category. Some adamantly hold that
the universe itself is logical in its fundamental nature, and others
- including myself - that logic is an evolved artifact of the social
compact in the evolution of science. But never mind.)

What goes in what bin is less interesting than the evolutionary
mechanics at each level. Clearly they are different: the economic one
being easily engineered by changing metrics (the vocabulary of
discourse).

Science has the same three tiers and they work in the same way. Since
FIS is both WITHIN science and ABOUT the structure of science, we
have to consider these dynamics - or whatever structure one uses
instead. So there is in my mind a complete congruence between FIS
examination of the evolution of science (with the science of
evolution) and the evolution of government political systems.

I suppose that the stuff of the top level is determined by our
hardwiring. We know a lot about messages in logical content with
respect to that hardwiring. We know much less about messages in
musical content and what "language instinct" comes into play. With
music, I suppose more is on the "natural" side and with logic, more
on the "social compact" side.

Whew - all that is by way of making a first stab at Juan's challenges
in the context of ongoing FIS dialog:

WHAT IS MUSIC?
WHY IS THERE MUSIC?
COULD THERE BE MUSIC ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE?

I suggest the grammar of music has as little to do with acoustics as
the meaning of written sentences has to do with the shapes of
letters. In the FIS context, "music" can be characterized as having
illogical content that relates in an orderly way in the receiving
mind. Therefore the mechanics of music in humans is more "natural,"
and more apt to inform us about the types of communications among
molecules, even though that statement carries Theosophical overtones.

"Music" of this type exists because self-organizing systems do. The
most fundamental operation in any cognitive apparatus (human to
molecular) is symmetry-based, which is why Leyton finds group theory
natural to describe the aggregative organizing effect of information.
Fiber groups lend themselves well to his interest (memory and
situation) and my FIS interest (derived abstractions). There are
bundles that are formed internal to agents and those collectively
among agents. Where Michael doesn't go but FIS must is in looking at
how those abstractions define evolutionary mechanics at "lower"
levels of governance. And so, here we are with Jerry Chandler's
arguments of the importance of categories and functors across
abstractions (as bundles).

Sorry for the length, Ted

-- 
Ted Goranson
Advanced Enterprise Research Office
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