Re: art, shape, and symmetry

Pedro--

Our convergence may be even closer than you indicate below. As my FIS
paper probably won't make the deadline, let me briefly comment here.

My remark on the focus of receiver verses message: Leyton allows the
receiver to host the "situating" mechanism. In contrast, I presume
that the impetus for situating needs to be in the information itself,
using a modified thermodynamics. In other words, though we all focus
on the actions of the receiver, we have to impute the primary agency
to information. You and I are in agreement on this point I think.
Moreover, the vast majority of FISers seem attracted to the larger
notion of functional agency in the information.

Back to Leyton. He uses a group theoretic "wreath product" to relate
control (including the organizational/constitutive impetus) to
content. For FIS to adopt Leyton's elegant group operators, we'd need
to add self-referential control groups WITHIN the content. That was
my point. I think this is a non-trivial problem. We could adopt
Michael's general approach but not his specific mechanism without
some bother.

In our work here, we accommodate this problem of
control-in-the-message by using speech act theory, a widely employed
technique. It presumes the agency to "do work" is in the information
itself and has many mature and useful computational tools. But it is
a mere trick, devoid of the type of theory FIS attempts.

Your language of cells work, Matsuno's examination of the grammar of
action, John C's implicit perspectives on intrinsic clustering
concepts all seem promising to me to fill this need for formal
principles. In this, I am acting as a consumer of ideas toward a
theory for my synthetic environments not a generator of those ideas.
But my perspective is one which has tried (often inexpertly) to dive
below the general ideas in search of formal mechanisms that work.

Leyton actually has a mechanism on which to comment, prompting the
type of discussion around which real progress can be made. Rosen, so
far as I can see does not, though his ordering of concepts is thought
provoking.

Best, Ted

>Dear Ted,
>
>Thanks for the exciting posting!
>I agree with most of your comments, and I think we are getting close to
>converge on really foundational items of our field. Let me slightly amplify
>the minor differences:
>Your elegant comments on Leyton (a complete surprise--thanks Jim!) induce
>me to initially support his position of focusing on the subject, either
>emitter or receiver. Actually we are working here (a few fisers in
>Zaragoza) on a sort of info theory, not really embodied, but at least
>attempting a bridge on how the info realms in the 'constitutive' and the
>'communicational' may interrelate. Our stuff is very modest (remember the
>language of cells contribution we presented to the fis 98, based on
>Javorsky's multidimensional partitions) and we are very excited with the
>'food for thought' that your posting and similar works that are arriving
>for the conf. do provide. Also, let me add that rather than talking about
>"cognition" of things like cells and elementary particles, I would join
>John Holgate's and prefer 'informational' (entities), however, I feel quite
>reluctant to consider as informational the merely physical existentialities
>(though, of course, one can always apply to them some Thermo or Sannon info
>measurements). Informational existences start with the living cell onwars.
>John Collier also made an intriguing point on Rosen--then shouldn't we look
>for co-defining clusters of info concepts, as Kauffman mentions in his
>Investigations, curiously relating Wittgenstein and Rosen views?
>
>best
>
>Pedro

-- 
Ted Goranson
Advanced Enterprise Research Office