RE: Information as Disease: Betweenness/agency

Jerry,
 
Thanks for your stimulating comments.
 
You remarked:
 
<Does the concept of information depend on communication?
 
That's the big question, isn't it?

What we really need is a solid theory of 'agency' and mediated interaction.
(both Goranson and Fuchs come at agency from different angles in their papers).
 
Coeira's 'Mediated Agent Interaction' might be of interest http://www.coiera.com/papers/AIME-01.pdf
It looks at the contextual constraint of 'common ground' .
 
<Should the role of neuronal transmitters as communicators *between* cells be considered?
<This introduces a new issue: the logic of "betweenness" in contrast with simpler classical binary logic.
 
Yes I think classical 'first order' logic can be enhanced to include all 'prepositional' relationships
such as 'between-ness' 'with-ness' 'for-ness'. It is interesting that prepositional semantics
structures human spatial perceptions and perspectives. How we translate all that into
Pedro's neurological dimension I'm not sure.
 
But in a clinical environment 'for-ness' 'from-ness' and 'with-ness' relations are more important
than binary and/or distinctions. Contextual questions such as 'treatment for which patient?'
 'from the liver to where?' 'disease with which complications?' are more useful beyond
"Is disease X present or absent?".
 
We haven't yet mapped these prepositional relationships into our retrieval logic.
 
<Would it be helpful to first ask: What is a disease?
<And then enquire as to the nature of the sources of the disease?
 
Disease implies an impairment or breakdown of a healthy condition - bodily entropy.
 
Similarly, is an informational experience an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or
plant body? Does it (like a disease) place in question the status quo of the organism's
body of knowledge by interrupting the performance of vital functions as a response
to environmental factors (stimuli, data,documents) infectious agents (others' knowledge, noise,
advertising) or inherent defects (ignorance)?
 
We can either treat the information-disease connection as an interesting metaphor
or consider information itself as a form of entropic energy possibly impacting
on immune systems. This view of course runs counter to the negentropic position
and would need a lot more empirical clout to be believable.
 
<Many physicians believe that diseases are the consequence of a particular etiology -
<a particular sequence of processes that link an individual to its surroundings.
 
It may seem counterintuitive to treat both 'information' and disease as affordances of
our surroundings (rather than the results of material 'causes' - etiology) but the view that
medicine is a complex and uncertain process - rather than an exact science of cause
and effect - is also common. Sometimes disease (like information) just happens.
 
<Underlying these issues is the question of complexity - if we choose to simplify our
<descriptions of complex behaviors by removing the complexity, what have we gained?
 
Totally agree. Which brings us back to Wordsworth and Ortega. Using language to extrapolate away
from complexity may be the original sin of philosophy - not poetry or science, of course.
 
Cheers
 
John H
 

-----Original Message-----
From: jlrchand@erols.com [mailto:jlrchand@pop.mail.rcn.net]
Sent: Saturday, 28 September 2002 11:35
To: Multiple recipients of list FIS
Subject: Re: Doctrine of Limitation

Dear Colleagues:

In this email, I respond to several recent posts (pedro, John, Terry) of interest. This semester is unusually busy and I am disappointed that I lack the time to enter into these topics at greater depth.

Pedro:

>From the perspective of the natural sciences, I do not understand your post on "Doctrine of Limitation." I am particularly puzzled by the usage of the term Doctrine? Is this an essential part of your view or is it merely a substitution for another term, such as Law?
I am equally puzzled by the term, Limitation. Is a limitation being imposed? If so, what is being imposed and who is acting as the imposer?

The discussion you provide in the support of the Doctrine addresses a significant number of relatable ideas but the nature of these relations is not clear to me. For example, would it be appropriate to consider the role of history in relating the function of the central nervous system? Should the role of neuronal transmitters as communicators *between* cells be considered? This introduces a new issue: the logic of "betweenness" in contrast with simpler classical binary logic. I do not understand the issues with regard to electric fields as even a simple microbe sustains a membrane potential.

Underlying these issues is the question of complexity - if we choose to simplify our descriptions of complex behaviors by removing the complexity, what have we gained?

Terry asks:

" Is Information a Disease?"

and then describes the consequences of various forms of professional communications.

Would it be helpful to first ask: What is a disease?
And then enquire as to the nature of the sources of the disease?

Many physicians believe that diseases are the consequence of a particular etiology - a particular sequence of processes that link an individual to its surroundings. Terry apparently acknowledges this when she writes:
"All depends on the specifics and psychodynamics of the case."

John writes (Sept. 20 post):

"This is where PI meets Philosophy of Language. The separation of meaning from
grammar (Carnap, Chomsky et al) and from communication theory (Shannon and Weaver) has pretty well thrown out
the baby information with the bathwater of semantics. Hopefully PI will revisit some of these abandoned agendas.

Connectionists like David Chalmers have conveniently created the notion of 'information spaces and states' -

'Physics requires information states but cares only about their relations, not their intrinsic nature;
phenomenology requires information states but cares only about their intrinsic nature..
Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.'
(The Conscious Mind p. 305)".

I believe John's questions deserve very serious consideration.
At issue is source of the concept of information.
Does the concept of information depend on communication?

As John notes, the separation of meaning is not restricted to grammar and Shannon information theory. Most philosophers of mathematics claim that no meaning is attached to mathematical rules or structures. By way of contrast, the language of chemistry and chemical grammars are meaningful - a matter of common experience.

If one assumes that formally, "information" has no meaning, then one must turn elsewhere to identify the source of meaning and communication.
As a logical parallel, I would point out that the nature of entropy (as a physical phenomenon) depends of the co-existence of temperature and energy.
In bare bone terms:
you get nothing from nothing;
you get something from something.

Or, to place these notions in a more formal setting:
If the transfer of information generates new meanings for the recipient, what are the sources of the generating functions?
To what extent are the generating functions for human communication intrinsic to the nature of being human?

Cheers

Jerry LR Chandler