On the issue of the relation between Aristotle's causal categories and
information, here is how I would make it out:
Suppose we have a physical event that has signifiance to a system of
interpretance. Then:
formal cause determines WHAT HAS HAPPENED and therefore HOW IT WAS
BROUGHT ABOUT
material cause determined WHAT WAS UTILIZED IN CONSTRUCTING THIS HAPPENING
thus, both together determined the LOCATION WHERE IT HAS HAPPENED
while
efficient cause determined WHEN IT HAPPENED
final cause determined WHY IT HAS HAPPENED
formal, material and final would be involved in generating the meaning of
the event.
Replying to Karl's
>Retranslating in word usage of Michael:
>The correspondence of information with the experienced, physical world is
a
>TWO-WAY correspondence.
>
>After these half-steps will have been met with the customary deep silence
we
>can progress to the next thought:
This "two-way correspondence" can be worked up as in Peircean semiotics. A
sign is co-constructed by a System of Interpretance and indications from
counterstructures of (or associated with) some external situation/object.
STAN
>Quoting Michael Devereux <dbar_x@cybermesa.com>:
>
>Dear Michael,
>
>You wrote:
>
><So, according to Landauer, and many scientists who have read his work,
the
><correspondence of information with the experienced, physical world is
>definite.
>
>We had a brief side conversation about this last year.
>
>Landauer did define information (data)as a physical but also a 'slippery'
>experience and pretty convincingly set about proving it. That uncertain
>'slipperiness' takes us into QI and probability theory - information as
>unexpected variety within a constraint (in scientific and in aesthetic
>experience).
>
>Is the commodification of information not similar to the mechanisation of
>time as a physical clock in the eighteenth and nineteenth century -
>till Messieurs Heidegger and Einstein came along? Likewise before Humboldt
>the phenomenon of language was simply nominalist marks describing objects.
>
> From another perspective matter is form with an address (form-at) and
>form yields shape pattern and matter (in science and art). Lanadauer's
>in-format-ion corresponds to Aristotle's first - material - cause
“that o
>ut of
>which a thing comes to be, and which persists,” and represents
marked dat
>a,
>documents, hardware/software etc. X is what Y is made out of.
>
>John Collier's recent attempts to base 'information' on formal causation
>and symmetry breaking tend to address the second - formal - cause the
>statement
>of essence (X is what it is to be Y). [in-form-ation]. Von Weiszacker and
L
>yre
>'s pragmatic school found information on the efficient cause
>(X produces Y) [in-formation] Paninformationists (like Norbert Wiener)
>who deny
>the materialist basis of information tend to describe the final cause
>(X is what Y is for) [in-for-mation].
>
>If we can ground our concepts of information on Aristotelian causation
>IS may no longer be the pseudo-science it is today.
>
>In this sense the 'difference that MAKES a difference' can be based on
>Aristotle's cause (aitos) (what makes information intrinsically
information
>)
>(AITOS = make).
>
>The relationship between the phenomenon information and the material world
>is what information science is yet to discover.
>
>That split between 'informatio sensis' and 'informatio intellectus
possibil
>is'
>(informationem de voluntate et meditationem de potestate nexu individuo
>commiscens et copulans) which occurred in Bacon's Novum Organum
>still continues today in rival material/nonmaterial or realist/antirealist
>information theories.
>
>In a quantum sense both are wrong and both are right at the same time.
>
>Sincerely
>
>John H
>
>
>> Dear Andrei, John, and colleagues,
>>
>> The relationship between information and the material world was
>> correctly described, I believe, some ten years ago, by Rolf Landauer,
>> the chief scientist at the IBM Watson laboratory in New York. In
>> several seminal papers he insisted that all information is physical.
>> In his words, "Information is not a disembodied abstract entity;
it
>> is always tied to a physical representation. It is represented by
>> engraving on a stone tablet, a spin, a charge, a hole in a punched
>> card, a mark on paper, or some other equivalent. This ties the
>> handling of information to all the possibilities and restrictions of
>> our real physical world, its laws of physics, and its storehouse of
>> available parts." (Physics Letters A 217, 1996, p. 188.)
>> When information is exchanged between two objects, as in a
>> measurement, there is, necessarily, a transfer of some physical
>> thing. I would note that all physical objects are composed of quanta
>> and all quanta carry energy. So, according to Landauer, and many
>> scientists who have read his work, the correspondence of information
>> with the experienced, physical world is definite.
>> Cordially,
>>
>> Michael Devereux
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> fis mailing list
>> fis@listas.unizar.es
>> http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
>>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>This message was sent using MyMail
>
>_______________________________________________
>fis mailing list
>fis@listas.unizar.es
>http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Sat Jul 22 21:04:53 2006
