[Fis] art and meaning

Dear Soren:

In this post, you bring several important issues to the fore.

Would you expand on your views, or the views of Luhmann with regard
to the questions inserted in your text?

On Feb 20, 2006, at 6:00 AM, fis-request@listas.unizar.es wrote:

> Dear Stan and Gordana
>
> When you talk information here are you thinking of Shannon or
> Wiener information? Or some logical measure of structure and
> organization? Or do you include meaning?

Is this a question about your philosophy of mathematics?
In other words, within the symbol system created by mathematicians,
the Shannon formulation of information has meaning. By this I mean
that a skilled practitoner can encode / decode messages between the
alphabetic symbol systems and the mathematical symbol system. The
meaning of the original message is preserved by preserving the
symbolic order of the message.

Note that a biochemical view of information includes logical measures
of structure and organization. While the encoding of chemical
information into DNA is not a generic process, it certainly includes
logical measures of structure and organization.
>
> Luhmann says that a message is consisting of meaning, information
> and the form of expression.
>
Does Luhmann extend these remarks such that sharper distinctions can
be drawn?
What are his working definitions of these terms?
And what is the concept of "the form of expression"? Does this
include only exteriorization of sentience and also excludes interior
sentience?

> It makes sense to me that information is the quantitative and
> structural aspect of meaning and intention.
>
How do you propose to quantify intention as a generic quality of
information or is it restrictive?

> But I see no way of measuring meaning.

Could you expand on this negation?

> Luhmann talks of a surplus of possibilities of choice and action,

(As an aside, chemical information provides a rich surplus of choices
if viewed from the lens of the possible reactions and the observed
reactions.)
What were Luhmann's bases for declaring a surplus of choices?

> which, I do not find sufficient for instance to describe the
> meaning of a religious og philosophical message about the meaning
> of suffering and love.

The nature of mathematical extension may preclude any basis for
extension to such categories as suffering or love. Is it your intent
to refute clams that assert that Shannon information includes
extensions to suffering and love?

Cheers

Jerry

> Søren
>

Jerry LR Chandler
Research Professor
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
George Mason University

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Received on Mon Feb 20 22:57:11 2006