Dear FIS,
I. comparing and matching - how it is done in humans The concept of information has something to do -
among other things - with our being humans (homo sapiens). [Wittgenstein: "Even if we knew the
language of lions, we would not understand them."] In humans, one may start using a reasonable
interpretation of the term "information" after the passing of the milestone of "first
organisator" which has the traditional name of EIGHT-MONTHS-ANXIETY.
The name 8MA is kept by tradition, because at the time it was first described (ca. 1920) it appeared
at around 8 months of age and had the form of an anxiety reaction. Nowadays (with better care and
more insight into paedagogics) it appears at 5-6 months and has the form of an irritation. The trade
(very conservative trade) has not changed the name for it, however. It is the normal reaction of a
healthy child on encountering someone who is not the mother. The reaction ceases after a few days or
weeks.
The 8MA is explained as follows:
Before, the infant cannot recognise (and distinguish) mother from not-mother. After, the infant has
gotten used to the fact that not every human face is the mother's.
Therefore, the appearance of the 8MA signifies that:
a) memory functions,
b) cognition (sensory input/perception) functions,
c) matching functions (memory finds the corresponding image, image finds the corresponding memory
content),
d) evaluation functions (infant is happy if the face is mother's and frustrated if it is not
mother's, no mixing up)
In psychology, one treats the 8MA as a very basic organisational threshold. It is important to note,
that the 8MA is a natural, physiological process and that the appearance of the hiccup 8MA is of no
relevance in itself for the maturing of the child. Indeed, in many cases it does not appear
specifically contoured at all. In all healthy cases the phase 8MA ends with the child learning to
experience itself in the newly opened world without any frustration: it gets used to live in a
mental world which is neither itself nor the mother (the ur-object in the analytical system of
explanations).
The 8MA serves as a model on which to discuss the emergence of information in a system which before
knew not otherwise and after can routinely handle the alternatives. The abstract infant experiencing
its 8MA in this model was before the 8MA a purely experiencing and learning organism and we see it
after the 8MA as being able to remember and compare.
II. the existence of alternatives (me/not-me, the ur-object) Before the 8MA one cannot speak of
information processing within the (abstract) infant. It cannot maintain a mental image with which to
compare the cognition. The first re-cognition is a mix (match or mis-match) between memory and
cognition. The 8MA shows us that starting that organisational developmental stage, an alternative
exists (not-mother).
The differentiation into "me" and "not-me" has already been done way before the
8MA. Within the womb and in the first few weeks/months of its own life, the infant is in a symbiosis
and it cannot distinguish mental/neurological input ex own body and ex outside, transmitted by the
sensory organs. We use the term "ur-object" for the mammae of the mother which are thought
to be the first thing ("object") the infant learns to distinguish from itself. Every
single mental image of "not-me" is thought to have been differentiated from the basic
"not-me".
III. The unit of information is a match
One cannot conceive an idea of an information which does not relate to something different. The
information is a pointer which connects <entityA> to <entityB>. (The sentence "this
is the same" needs a continuation "as {that, there, such, then, ...}".) Thinking (the
processing of information) cannot begin before there are (at least) two objects which to compare.
The nervous system must be able to distinguish so that it can attain distinct
states/results/reactions. If it could not be <otherwise> it could also be not <so>. The
information that it is <so> would not be an information if it could not be <otherwise>
so that the match returns <.t.|.f.>. A stand-alone fact cannot be an information. It must be
one of some alternatives so that it can contain that what causes the reaction.
We can relate the intensity of the reaction to an extent of differences between the alternatives.
IV. Details of the reaction: memory - perception The remembered concept of the mother and the sensory
input evaluate into some sort of {hologram, complex, bio-logical entity, place-quality-time triplet}
composition between biochemical and electrical descriptions of what is the case. The two kinds of
inputs get translated into a common system of references which allows their comparison. There is
reason to assume that the remembered image is more on the biochemical side, as the reactions that
gave its name to the 8MA are on the hormonal level (the feeling to be with the mother gets
distorted, not the "abstract" thought). The perceived image comes to the brain by means of
the optical nerves which translate the photochemical changes in the eye into patterns of electrical
impulses.
Let us see the remembered image as a biochemical composition and the perceived image as an
electrical discharge pattern. This simplification may allow a general idea about how information is
processed in the human brain. The patterns and the compositions match if the brain works
undisturbed.
V. Common counting system
The 8 months old infant can mix biochemical compositions and patterns of electrical discharges. An
evaluation algorithm obviously does function and yields correct results. One would assume that there
is a logical sub-space in which both the rules that govern biochemical compositions and also the
rules which govern electrical impulses both apply. In the tradition of the European rationalists and
encyclopaedists one will assume a rational way of organisation within this common logical space, in
which both sets of rules apply: those governing the behaviour of liquids and those governing the
behaviour of solid-state objects (sequences presuppose existing and solid neighbourhood relations).
In the tradition of the Viennese formalists, we propose that the formal description of what rules
apply in the mentioned sup-space of the logical space, we propose that here the counting rules on N
apply. Assuming a numeric congruence within the descriptions of what is the case once in the for!
malism of non-sequenced and once in the formalism of sequenced arguments of a logical sentence
shows immediately this to be a highly specific special case. The whole system of thoughts that
distinguish liquids from solids is the organisation of neighbourhood relations.
VI. Deviating counting systems -neighbourhood relations To the side of what is valid for both the
sequenced and the commutative formulation of what is the case are logical sub-spaces in which either
that is true which is valid for a commutative, but not for a sequenced, arrangement, or that is true
which is valid for a sequenced, but not for a commutative arrangement.
In this concept, the neighbourhood relations within the arguments create neighbourhood relations
between a) what can be the case in this moment and b) what can happen next or what has been before.
In plain speech: what happens now is governed by what has happened before and what it was what
changed. What we feel now is governed by what has happened before, and what will happen next is
governed by what we feel now. So far the state of the infant before 8MA. Now comes the comparison:
what we feel now is at the same time the consequence of what has happened before and of what we feel
in a different fashion now. The sensory input has been translated into a feeling. The two feelings
match or do not match. One is the remembered, the other the perceived. The perceived images are
organised differently than the remembered. At the end of the 8MA the infant learns that it can
organise the images ex memory and the images ex perception so that the matching match and the new
get learnt as!
new. This means that inborn and learnt experiences are stored differently, like
instincts and urges are considered to be of different genesis, qualities, properties to the learnt,
thought up, abstract contents of the brain.
The two differing qualities are stored according to two differing systems of storage algorithms.
This brings with it that they have differing preferred paths for random walks. (One feels attracted
to doing something different that one thinks one should do: two differing predictions about the
future: two differing neighbourhood relations' systems.) Then, one may conclude that neighbouring to
the common logical sub-space in which both rules apply, there are diverging sets of rules once for
commutative and once for sequenced arrangements. (Because one can, by probabilistic means, predict
the sequential position of an argument from the commutative structure it is a part of, therefore
there exist many forms of in-between varieties of a common logical set of rules, e.g. one knows
quite a bit about the place but less about the qualities, or the other way around.)
VII. Conclusion
Information can evolve within a tautological system if varieties exist which have the same logical
value. The de-differentiated, scalar, basic picture in a common counting system yields then
equivalence.
In the human brain, information has the form of deviation between expected and perceived. An
additional trouble is that both expected and perceived must be brought into a uniform fashion for
the moment of the comparison. That what is expected is often not that what is perceived forms the
basis for our interactions with the world and within/among our brain's contents. The collection of
what (has-been-expected, serving as a basis for what) is expected is organised differently to what
is experienced. (The memory is a more archaic, instinctive property of the brain than the
perception.) The memory is a biochemically organised collection, the perception is organised along
electric impulses. Their interaction creates the moment. Outside their interaction, they are
organised differently. (Our instincts are not only semantically different to our concepts, but are
neighboured, catalogised in a different fashion, in an internal, bureocratic sense.) The information
lies in the match be!
tween a feeling and a thought. As there are differently many feelings to thoughts, the inborn
imbalance of the universe, as seen through the experiences of an 8 months old baby, is inevitable.
The baby understands to find the corresponding memory content to a perception element. The set of
memory contents and the set of perception inputs do have common evaluation algorithms, but are each
organised differently. Information is a sur-, in- or bijective relation between elements of the
memory and elements of the perception. Counting all possible memory contents and all possible
perception elements one finds partly congruent, partly incongruent subsets. This allows modelling
information using only the properties of natural numbers.
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Received on Thu Sep 29 09:41:49 2005
