Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion

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ICE.  Discussion Note 9

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Re: ICE Discussion 7.  http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05282.html
In: ICE Discussion.    http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd1.html#05274

Hx: ICE.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/thread.html#194
Hx: ICE.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/thread.html#356

Hugh,

While I continue to reflect on your last message in something
of a lacksadaisical weekend mode, let me just toss a couple
of my favorite quotations from John Dewey into the ring:

| Many definitions of mind and thinking have been given.
| I know of but one that goes to the heart of the matter: --
| response to the doubtful as such.  No inanimate thing
| reacts to things 'as' problematic.
|
| John Dewey, "The Quest for Certainty", p. 179.

| If doubt and indeterminateness were wholly within the mind --
| whatever that may signify -- purely mental processes ought
| to get rid of them.  But experimental procedure signifies
| that actual alteration of an external situation is necessary
| to effect the conversion.  A 'situation' undergoes, through
| operations directed by thought, transition from problematic
| to settled, from internal discontinuity to coherency and
| organization.
|
| John Dewey, "The Quest for Certainty", p. 185.

| John Dewey, "The Quest for Certainty", in Jo Ann Boydston (ed.),
|'John Dewey:  The Later Works, 1925-1953, Volume 4: 1929',
| Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, 1988.

The way I see information is against the backdrop
of a prior state of uncertainty, a state of doubt
that is sufficiently irksome to instigate inquiry,
whose end is to reduce the irritation in question.
Accordingly, a measure of uncertainty leads on to
a corresponding measure of information -- so goes
the familiar tale of classical information theory.

Jon Awbrey

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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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