[Fis] Informed Symbol Systems are not All the Same

Dear Pedro and Bob:

This email responds to Pedro's comments which are reproduced below and indirectly to Bob's work - which I both admire and question because he invokes the superiority of mathematical symbols across multiple symbol systems..

Let me attempt to explain this point of view.

Human communication of information, as I understand it, is grounded in the notion that messages can be encoded, transferred, decoded such that the exact message originating in the mind of one individual can be transferred to the mind of another individual. Thus, the symbols, 2+2 = 4 are understood by readers.

To that end, we have created and deployed several different symbol systems, each with its particular operating characteristics. What are the logical properties of these DIFFERENT symbol systems?

Each symbol system has its own particular set of logical relations that are intrinsic to its operations. Of these these symbol systems, the alphabetic system, the natural languages, may be the oldest. However, it is intimately intertwined with numbers and arithmetic operations in practice. So, natural language and mathematics are both ancient.

Yet, the classical logic is remote from the logic of mathematics, which can appear in a wide array of forms. Because mathematicians take the time to carefully define their words, they can be tolerant of a wide range of logical systems, even topoi!

The chemists have also developed a symbol system. neither the classical logic nor the logics of mathematicians is sufficient to describe chemical relations. In order to accommodate the unique character of each chemical elements, chemical logic developed very slowly and was, originally, closely related to smelting and the metals, ie the bronze age. Only in the 20 th Century did chemical logic establish itself as a derivative of the numbers, the atomic numbers and relations among them.

Of course, the musical notation system is another system of logic which developed slowly. Like the logic of chemistry, its ancient origins sustained a slow development over many centuries.
It differs from alphabetic, arithmetic, and chemical logic and notation.

Money is another symbol system.
Time may also be thought of as a symbol system.

Such symbol systems are part, a portion, a partition, of human communication capabilities - we also have sensory systems, don't we? Indeed, we can view synthetic symbol systems as mere augmentations to our animate sensory systems.

Now, with this information about a particular view of the history of human communication as background, I turn to Pedro's post.

Date: May 27, 2005 8:45:28 AM EDT

 Dear All,

snip
 Integration is not just the opposite of reduction, but it may be taken as another denomination for the untractable mutidisciplinary / consilience problem.

JLRC:
Agreed.
Integration for the individual human being must not be confused with mathematical symbols.
Typically, an individual must integrate over various symbols systems, each with a possibly different set of premisses and operations.

For example, the premisses of chemistry and the operations of chemical reactions use a logic that is remote from model theory of mathematical logic. Several years of effort are required to learn how to translate between the symbol system of mathematics and the symbol system of chemistry. ( I offer a simple problem that demonstrates what I mean. Why is it that chemical formula are excluded from chemical thermodynamics?)

Pedro:
Several parties in this list have advocated systemic views (Stan a number of times!, Jerry also produced a vast systemic scheme). However, arguing seriously about systems theory, after the pioneering views of von Bertalanffy in the 60's, very little has been produced under the guidance of that school, and I really contend that, concerning the integration problem, anything but triviality and self-delusion can be found around the 'level' stuff nowadays.

JLRC:
 On the contrary, I would say that systems theory is so successful that it has been widely adapted in many many disciplines. For example, the practice of medicine has covertly adopted system theory and a system's approach in 'outcome - based' practice. Systems terminology is intrinsic to genomics, engineering, etc etc etc. Is your real concern coherence within a symbol system or among symbol systems?

 The lack of appropriate metaphors to be handled in front of the apparent naturality of the mechanistic and also of the "systemic" or "holistic" complex of thought (composition and decomposition by manual operations upon objects and their parts) is part of the missing informational conceptualization too.

JLRC
Why metaphors?
Why not logical translations?
For example, the logic of clinical decision making is often based on excess or deficiency of chemical components of the body. Clinicians look for ways to either increase or decrease the amounts of particular chemicals so as to re-establish normalized values.
Why should we consider this to be informational metaphor when the logic is developed from a semiotic perspective?

Pedro:
So, discussing in depth the series of bio-economic metaphors raised by Aleks would be quite interesting (impossible here, but just as a detail, the ATP is presented as 'currency' in most textbooks: wrong, at is just pure 'fuel'; the only cellular currency may be established around "second messengers" cAMP, Ca++, cGMP, etc.).

JLRC
As a part of human communication, Alex's narrative is grounded in at two different systems of logic and perhaps three or four. In particular, I ask myself how should the informed nature of metabolism be translated into the informed nature of energy / fuel?
Alex could provide us with the logics of his narrative so that we can examine them by the usual methods of science.

Pedro:
In general I accept the difficulty on pointing at any clear-and-cut info metaphor to be presented as an alternative to those seductive images from reductionism & mechanism and pseudo-holism... Shouldn't we plan some devoted work on advancing in this metaphorical aspect too?

JLRC
The natural sciences are generally viewed as being related to prediction.
The natural sciences are generally viewed as being based on logical communication of results among individuals such that we can address the profound issue of reproducibility.
Why should we reduce our standards of consistency and prediction and reproducibility?

Pedro:
 Finally, my past message trying to "nail" down a metaphor on value within social networks, may be formulated more succinctly as follows: when the social value of some object gets "measured" as a price, what we collectively perform is an estimation of the capability of that object to promote "formation of social structures" around itself...

At present, science is working on chemical networks, biochemical networks, and the implications for higher systems. Given the complexity of these networks I expect it will be several decades before a substantial approach to social networks will be developed. One potent difficulty, in addition to the intractable mathematics, is the indivisibility of the individual, yet, at the same time, the individual can demonstrate enormous sensitivity to conditions as a consequence of memory and organization. Since it is already clear that we need a special mathematics for chemistry, I suspect we will need a very special mathematics of individuals systems for the creation of memory within a biochemical / biological system (which is Soren's point, if I understand him correctly.).

We may have to evolve entire new symbol systems in order to tackle such problems. Such a task is daunting but it is better to face the reality of our situation than to mislead our supporters about our capabilities.

Pedro continues (the browser accidently deleted the "quotation markers):

Perhaps sort of a middle road between Bob's and Karl's views (could multidimensional partitions as descriptors of social nets complexity provide a complement to the current conceptualization of ascendancy?). Then, a pressing issue to consider in this tentative revision of social ascendancy may be that social information is very largely "decoupled" from entropy growth (as biological information itself). An additional problem concerning Karl's partitional approach is that he has not developed a consistent methodology yet---and the attempts made by me and Morris a few years ago, produced contradictory results with him. So I friendly depart from his views when he heuristically establishes the number of multidimensional partitions.

 Today seems to be my disagreement day: Lots of stuff to discuss in Paris!

 regards

 Pedro

In short, I view the concept of information as part of human communication and specialized to various symbol systems in various stages of a long historical development. Each symbol system uses a different encoding, decoding and logical systems. The widely used narrative that presupposes that all human communication can be framed within a single linear stream of alphabetic symbols and a single system of logic seems to me not to be a fruitful approach. It fails for transmission of biochemical information (structural and optical isomers) and if it fails for relatively simple chemical systems, it certainly fails for biological systems based on the genetic code.

Despite the relatively pessimistic tone of this message, I do think that we are making progress on conceptualizing human communication. Despite this bit of optimism, I wonder if social evolution is not progressing faster than the growth of our understanding of human communication.

It also seems to me that the philosophers of both the European and the Anglo-American schools have a lot more work ahead of them than the current (dogmatic?) philosophies of the science of information suggest.

Pedro, thanks for a stimulating post.

Cheers

Jerry

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Mon May 30 23:02:43 2005