Dear colleagues,
I must join Marcin in being thankful to Sayd for starting the
discussion, and also confess that not all contributions are perfectly
understandable to me, but all of it is stimulating.
Also, I agree with John whose papers I found very valuable when studying
the subject. My feeling is that we would greatly profit from
understanding the domain of applicability for each of the definitions.
They appear to me much like Wittgenstein�s family-resemblance case, and
it would be useful to exactly see who is who and what the role of every
one is.
It is possible that we might end up with several distinct definitions
that are good for different purposes. Talking about semantics vs.
syntactic: Isn�t it the same relation there as it is between form and
content? There is no syntax without semantic, and vice versa. If you
decide to describe the transfer of information, that defines the meaning
of your formalism. Applying it to processes where the transfer itself is
not an issue would not be the best idea.
Some definitions apply well in the case of communication, some to
describe system dynamics and still others to its structure (those might
correspond to communicational, generative and constitutive information
of Pedro�s INFORMATION AND THE LIVING CELL,
http://www.mdpi.net/ec/papers/fis2002/131/INFORMATION%20AND%20THE%20LIVING%20CELL-1.htm.
Those views constitute the �bottom-up� approach.
Even �/logico-linguistic-semantic/ approach (Carnap, Bar-Hillel, Nauta,
Dreske), respectively attempting the extension of the informational to
dynamic laws and to symbolic realms.� (ibid) is of interest, in that
case from the �top-down� perspective.
Both perspectives are good to have, as they constitute an
auto-corrective mechanism. They simply are bootstrapped and there is no
one without the other. We may choose to focus on the one sort of
phenomena (microscopic, e.g. cell-level), investigating its behavior,
keeping the other part constant (the fact that all what is observed is
observed by human being who itself is an information-processing system.)
I believe that interdisciplinary* approach is essential in the critique
of the definition of the term "information�, and that philosophers and
scientists alike have a work to do.
Best,
Gordana
*Maybe also maximally charitable approach where different schools of
thought [definitions] are given a (well-defined) place.
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Received on Fri Sep 2 23:17:09 2005
