Dear John,
Your feeling of going around in circles is almost always an effect of not
listening. ("Grumpy, grumpy"). I understand that you want us to read more
of your previous oeuvre. (I read some of it, but not all.)
Let me begin by quoting you from the previous email:
"For one thing, complete formalization of meaning kills meaning. Meaning
must be open-ended and fallible."
First, I am not sure that meaning is a living thing that can be killed. I
would like to distinguish analytically between the embodiment of meaning
and the meaning-processing in cultural processes. That is why I claimed in
the previous email that social systems contain one more degree of freedom.
I suppose that we agree that meaning can be considered as an attribute of
the communication. Meaning is generated by exchanging information on top of
the information exchange process. This can first be done by the
communicating systems which provide meaning to the information, but in
social systems one is additionally able to communicate meaning. It
generates a next layer of possible exchanges. In biological systems,
meaning can only be developed along a life-cycle. A social system, however,
contains a non-linear dynamics of processing situational meanings. This is
what I mean with an additional degree of freedom.
For example, some meanings can be codified in a scientific discourse and
others are not. Thus, in addition to stabilization of a meaning like in a
niche of communication, meanings can also be globalized. I suppose that you
mean this reference to a horizon of meaning with "open-ended and fallible."
The system of reference, however, is different in social systems from
biological ones. In the latter the system of reference for the "open-
endedness" is a given system, while in social systems this selection
environment of possible meaning is also generated by the exchanges as a
system of expectations.
Most of the authors you cite are generalizing (or not) on the basis of
biological systems theory. This was also at the center of the exchange
between Sven and me: what is the differentia specifica of a social system?
It seems to me that this is to be found in the way how meaning is processed
differently from the processing of meaning in biological and psychological
systems. At the psychological level, meaning is still coupled
(structurally?) to the biological environment. In the social exchange of
meaning a bifurcation between the production of meaning and the diffusion
of meaning seems possible.
With kind regards,
Loet
_____
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
<mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net> loet@leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
<http://www.upublish.com/books/leydesdorff-sci.htm>
_____
From: John Collier [mailto:collierj@ukzn.ac.za]
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 9:43 AM
To: Steven Ericsson Zenith; Loet Leydesdorff
Cc: 'fis-listas.unizar.es'; list@iase.info
Subject: Re: [Fis] Re: What is information ?
Folks,
Some remarks on formalization and its limits follow, interspersed.
At 03:15 AM 2005/10/03, Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote:
Dear Loet,
I understand your concerns but how else are we to proceed? Shannon's model
is not nullified but it does not appear to characterize all that we would
wish it to. I am not asking for a full rewrite I am simply observing that
we need to extend information theory into the area where we lack rigor -
where the model seemingly needs to be extended. I am simply contending
that we cannot deal with the notion of information in isolation.
In my view we need to develop two new models that complement current
physical theory with the mathematical rigor of Shannon: a theory of
organism (how sentient entities come to be) and a theory of semeiotics (how
sentient entities operate) - where semeiotics includes a theory of
communication and what I will call "memeiosis" which describes the exchange
of "information" and the development of concepts by individuals in groups
of sentient entities. Done rigorously, this is inevitably a mathematical
theory of meaning as you suggest.
For reasons why I doubt that a mathematical theory of meaning is
impossible, see Pragmatist Pragmatics: The functional context of
utterances, forthcoming in Philosophica. Konrad Talmont-Kaminski and I
argue that a formal pragmatics is impossible, and that a theory of meaning
requires pragmatics, therefore a formal theory of meaning is impossible.
However once we have the meaning of a communication fixed, we can then use
formal methods that are well known. The argument uses Barwise and
Seligman's version of information flow, and draws on work in formal
pragmatics by Montague, Kaplan and Stalnaker, situation semantics of
Barwise and Perry, and insights from Peirce. There is a draft version at
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/pragmatist%20pragmatics.pdf
As to "expected information can only be provided with meaning by
information systems"; I think this is problematic without a clear
definition of what you mean by "information systems." From my point of
view computational models do not adequately account for sentience.
Nor for living systems in general if Robert Rosen's arguments in Life
Itself are correct. He shows rigorously how a system can fail to be
computable or mechanical in the sense of a terminating (Knuth) algorithm.
Henri Atlan has made similar arguments, to the effect that certain
molecular systems on which living systems depend have infinite
"sophistication", which I take to be equivalent to Bennett's logical depth.
Interestingly, there is a review article from Science on the early stages
of sea urchin development that claims that there are emergent properties of
the developmental system (not reducible to the parts of the regulatory
network) at early stages. I have not been able to evaluate this claim
myself. The article is A Genomic Regulatory Network for Development
Eric H. Davidson,1 * Jonathan P. Rast,1 Paola Oliveri,1 Andrew Ransick,1
Cristina Calestani,1
Chiou-Hwa Yuh,1 Takuya Minokawa,1 Gabriele Amore,1 Veronica Hinman,1
Ce��sar Arenas-Mena,1
Ochan Otim,1 C. Titus Brown,1 Carolina B. Livi,1 Pei Yun Lee,1 Roger
Revilla,1 Alistair G. Rust,2 ��
Zheng jun Pan,2 �� Maria J. Schilstra,2 Peter J. C. Clarke,2 Maria I.
Arnone,3 Lee Rowen,4
R. Andrew Cameron,1 David R. McClay,5 Leroy Hood,4 Hamid Bolouri2
Development of the body plan is controlled by large networks of regulatory
genes. A gene regulatory network that controls the speci��cation of
endoderm and mesoderm in the sea urchin embryo is summarized here.
The network was derived from large-scale perturbation analyses, in
combination
with computational methodologies, genomic data, cis-regulatory
analysis, and molecular embryology. The network contains over 40 genes
at present, and each node can be directly verified at the DNA sequence
level by cis-regulatory analysis. Its architecture reveals specific and
general
aspects of development, such as how given cells generate their
ordained fates in the embryo and why the process moves inexorably
forward in developmental time.
1 MARCH 2002 VOL 1672 295 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
Ultimately our theory of information must reduce to our model of nature -
and today that model appears incomplete.
And if Atlan, Rosen and Hood are correct, then it must remain forever
incomplete, for relatively easily understandable formal reasons.
With respect,
Steven
Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
Dear Steven,
I agree that there are obviously two usages of the word information: a
group of definitions akin to Shannon's mathematical definition and a group
of definitions which define information as "what in-forms" a system
(Varela). In the latter case, the system invests some meaning in the
information or, more generally, positions the information in its framework.
Perhaps, one could use the word "observed information" for this, while the
Shannon-information remains "expected information."
Again, for an explanation of how these two ideas can be brought together
and be used as the core for at least four philosophically current versions
of causal connection, see my ��Causation is the Transfer of Information��,
Howard Sankey (ed) Causation, Natural Laws and Explanation (Dordrecht,
Kluwer, 1999): 279-331. A copy is available at
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/causinf.pdf.
What I like best about Shannon's approach is the mathematical character
which frees us from specific semantics. When I read your mailings, for
example, it seems that I have to buy a whole philosophy if I wish to
understand it. From my perspective, this philosophy sounds like a meta-
biology (unlike a meta-physics). Biological systems theory has helped us
enormously in understanding how information can be stored into information
systems and thus provided with meaning (by codification along the system's
own axis). Social and psychic systems, however, can entertain (and perhaps
communicate) horizons of meaning. Thus, they obviously have more degrees of
freedom for processing information and meaning than biological systems
(while the latter are also embodied?).
I am not at all sure that the latter have more degrees of freedom. The
difference seems to me to be much more in terms of response time and extent
(thought is faster than evolution, culture expands spatial extent, as does
communication in general). A number of distinctions need to be made to sort
this out, but Cliff Hooker and I made them in "Complexly Organised
Dynamical Systems", Open Systems and Information Dynamics, 6 (1999): 241-
302. There is a copy available at
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/casrg/publications/Cods.pdf.
For more
detail about the reducibility issues, and a more direct connection to
meaning, see my Autonomy in Anticipatory Systems: Significance for
Functionality, Intentionality and Meaning In Daniel M. Dubois (ed)
Proceedings of CASYS��98, The Second International Conference on Computing
Anticipatory Systems. (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1999). It can be found at
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/casys98.pdf
It seems to me that we need a kind of mathematical theory of meaning. How
can meaning be defined in the abstract, yet without giving it meaning with
reference to any body of knowledge other than the abstract one which is
contained, for example, in the mathematical theory of communication and its
elaboration into non-linear dynamics? Let me make a first proposal:
expected information can only be provided with meaning by information
systems. I know that this circular definition begs the question, but it is
only meant as a first step.
It is certainly not sufficient without being really question begging. For
one thing, complete formalization of meaning kills meaning. Meaning must be
open-ended and fallible. For the argument for this see my THE DYNAMICAL
BASIS OF INFORMATION AND THE ORIGINS OF SEMIOSIS, in Edwina Taborsky (ed)
Semiosis. Evolution. Energy Towards a Reconceptualization of the Sign.
Aachen Shaker Verlag 1999 Bochum Publications in Semiotics New Series. Vol.
3 (1999): 111-136. It can be found at
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/papers/Dyninf3.pdf.
The argument is
basically Peircean, but with more modern formalism. If you understand
semiotics, then you understand why a formal and complete theory of meaning
is impossible. It is possible, however, to link up a formal but incomplete
theory of information with a theory of meaning.
Sorry to harp here, but I keep feeling that we are going around in circles,
repeating again and again issues that have either been solved or else have
been shown to have no formal and complete solution. I mention my own papers
mostly because I have taken a lot of trouble to review these issues.
Everyone on the fis list should read Heinz von Foerster's 1960 paper 'On
self-organizing systems and their environments'. There is a reprint in his
collection Understanding Understanding. Forty five years later we shouldn't
still be inventing the wheel this group seems to be spinning around on.
Grumpy, grumpy,
John
Professor John Collier collierj@ukzn.ac.
za
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html
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Received on Fri Oct 7 07:54:32 2005
