Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion

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ICE.  Discussion Note 13

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| And as imagination bodies forth
| The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
| Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
| A local habitation and a name.
|
| 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 5.1.18

AK =  Antti Karttunen
HT = Hugh Trenchard
JA =  Jon Awbrey
MB = Mark Buchanan
MW = Mitchell Waldrop
PC = Paul Cilliers

hugh,

the following analogy comes to mind --

STM : LTM  ::  devil : deep blue sea

or maybe that should be --

maxwell's demon : wine dark sea

which is a way of saying that you force me
to go back and try to remember why i began
x-posting the current thread of inquiry to
the global brain's body in the first place.
you may blame the usual suspect, jack park,
as it was something he said about the main
idea, as he saw it, behind topic maps that
called to mind all the phreno-logical bits
about neuro-logical localization, and that
brought to mind in its turn a whole passel
of packetses about quantum logical locales,
and all the "limits of localization" (LOL).

in particular, there were a number of critical issues that
arose in the following exchange with antti kartunnen, none
of which i have gotten around to squarely addressing as of
yet, but have mostly been busy trying to establish a frame
for picturing the general landscape.

AK: But this puzzles me:

CSP: | In the same way, when he learns that 'D' is red,
     | the term 'D-like red' becomes equivalent to 'red'.

AK: Because here D belongs to the realm of
    Sphere, Extension, and Breadth, so how
    can you compare it with "red"?  (What is
    "D-like" red, or "Antti Karttunen-like red"?)

JA: my guess is that "x-like" means "having all of the discourse-relative
    or currently noted properties of x".  but we have in this discourse
    currently noted only the property Red of D, or properties that are
    immediate implications of that.  in effect, D serves merely as
    yet another exemplar of the quality Red, as that is all the
    information that we have of it.

JA: more generally, peirce's use of "particulars" and "properties" is more
    like particles and waves than the usual hard lines that the descent of
    mind that de-evolved from atomic logicism imagines it can draw between
    absolute individuals and absolute predicates.

JA: it's a thing i've been looking for an excuse to get back to,
    and the occasion of your remark provides as good a catalyst
    as any i've seen lately for getting around, back, down tuit.
    and let me invent a not-so-subtle subtitle for it that i'll
    design to startle if not to shock, and that is a little bit
    that i'd like to call "peirce-heisenberg uncertainty" (phu),
    and by this phu to say that c.s. peirce in 1865 had already
    discovered by sheer logical detection and lectured publicly
    on all of the principal principles of the later-to-be-great
    uncertainty principle.  in effect, it says that information
    is the only "symmetry invariant meaning" (sim) that we have,
    that it can be cast to moderate and relative extents, never
    to absolute degrees, as information about individuals or as
    information about qualities, but only in a trade-off within
    the quantity of information that avails itself at any given
    moment, though the quantity and quality of information will
    of course be free to vary from moment to moment in due time.

JA: i will copy this to the global brain list, because it bears
    on some discussion there about the "limits of localization".
    one more alias:  the "folly of particles and waves" (fopaw).

with that background now fresh in mind,
let me attend to your latest additions.

HT: Thanks for the comments, Jon.  I am not sure I understand completely
    your criticism of my comments, but if I may be allowed to paraphrase,
    I take from your reply the following:  complexity may be a property of
    physical processes which in itself does not allow room for elevating it
    to the status of a quasi-mystical description of things, and that it is
    easy to give it such status without empirical or logical justification.

i wouldn't want to say that i've reached the point of criticism yet,
but remain in the "compare and contrast" phase of casting about for
some kind of initial common ground.  and just off hand, i can't say
that i easily recognize your summary as a paraphrase of my comments.

HT: If this is somewhat along the lines of what
    you say, then I would say I am misunderstood --
    but please feel to set me straight.

HT: I understand complexity essentially as the study of networks,
    or the interconnectivity of things.  Mark Buchanan in his
    book 'Nexus' puts it very simply (at 18):

HT, quoting MB:

    | The study of networks is part of the general area of
    | science known as complexity.  In an abstract sense,
    | any collection of interacting parts -- from atoms
    | and molecules to bacteria, pedestrians, traders
    | on a stock market floor, and even nations --
    | represents a kind of substance.  Regardless
    | of what it is made of, that substance
    | satisfies certain laws of form, the
    | discovery of which is the aim of
    | complexity theory.

HT: Mitchell Waldrop, in his book 'Complexity: The Emerging Science
    at the Edge of Order and Chaos', states in a similarly succinct
    fashion:

HT, quoting MW:

    | ... every one of these questions refers to a system
    | that is complex, in the sense that a great many agents
    | are interacting with each other in a great many ways.
    | Think of the quadrillions of chemically reacting proteins,
    | lipids, and nucleic acids that make up a living cell, or the
    | billions of interconnected neurons that make up the brain, or
    | the millions of mutually interdependent individuals who make
    | up human society.

HT: Paul Cilliers, in 'Complexity and Postmodernism', before going
    on to discuss the properties of complex systems, remarks that:

HT, quoting PC:

    | In a complex system ... the interaction between the system
    | and its environment, are of such a nature that the system
    | as a whole cannot be understood simply by analysing its
    | components.

HT: With this, he incorporates the concept of chaos into the
    definition of complexity, which Langton (I believe) first
    described as "pushing the edge of chaos" because it treads
    a fine line between linearity and complete unpredictability.

HT: I'll stop there for now, to see if I am heading in the direction
    you are leading me.  Whatever the case, I refer to complexity not
    only in the sense of the properties which define complex systems,
    but also in terms of the information quantity inherent with a given
    system.  This, as I've said, is where I've run into trouble (among
    other areas to be sure), and I'm working on clarifying my position
    in that vein.

HT: I am discovering though, that it is only very recently that science
    generally has been coming to grips with the concept of information,
    and it is still in the process of being sorted out.

HT: But let me know if it is my particular application of
    the concept of complexity you would like me to clarify.

these popular accounts of "emerging science" are very valuable in attracting
attention to inherently fascinating subjects, and heaven knows that i have
soaked up enough of them in my time.  but they necessarily soft-peddle
an array of difficult issues of the more boring methodological sort.
just by way of my first impressions of the comments that you have
collected here, one such issue that i find missing in them is
any recognition of the problem of "system identification".
of course, i am just going by what you have quoted so far,
as i can remember reading only the waldrop book, or one
such book by him, and that was quite a few years ago.

the point that i'd mention on that account is that references to
systems and networks, along with their properties and parameters,
such as any number of ostensibly concrete measures of complexity,
like node degrees, number of cycles, graph-theoretic connectivity,
and so on, are references to a form of description that is being
used to describe a putative reality -- they are not directly the
form of reality itself.

the other point that comes to mind is a historical one.
c.s. peirce came to grips with a concept of information
very early in his lifelong quest to understand how the
"logic of science" really worked, and he gave lectures
on this "theory of information" throughout the years of
1865-1866 at harvard university and the lowell institute.
if you say that it is only very recently that the rest of
the scientific establishment has come to grips with what
c.s. peirce so long ago came to grips with, the i guess
that i'd be inclined to agree, but then, it's hardly
a unique instance of that.

i append a few excerpts from these lectures
to assist the e-stablishment in catching up
with the recent revolutions in information.

jon awbrey

Charles Sanders Peirce, Harvard Lectures (1865)

23.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000216.html -- CE 1, 272
24.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000217.html -- CE 1, 272-274
25.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000218.html -- CE 1, 274
26.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000219.html -- CE 1, 274-275
27.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000220.html -- CE 1, 275-276
28.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000221.html -- CE 1, 276
29.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000222.html -- CE 1, 276-277
30.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000223.html -- CE 1, 277
31.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000224.html -- CE 1, 278-279
32.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000225.html -- CE 1, 279-280
33.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000226.html -- CE 1, 280
34.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000227.html -- CE 1, 280-281
35.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000228.html -- CE 1, 281-282
36.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000229.html -- CE 1, 282-283
37.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000230.html -- CE 1, 283
38.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000356.html -- CE 1, 285
39.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000357.html -- CE 1, 285-286
40.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000358.html -- CE 1, 286-288
41.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000359.html -- CE 1, 288
42.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000361.html -- CE 1, 288-289
43.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000362.html -- CE 1, 289
44.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-April/000363.html -- CE 1, 289-290

Charles Sanders Peirce, Lowell Lectures (1866)

11.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000204.html -- CE 1, 458-459
12.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000205.html -- CE 1, 459-460
13.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000206.html -- CE 1, 460
14.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000207.html -- CE 1, 461
15.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000208.html -- CE 1, 461
16.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000209.html -- CE 1, 462
17.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000210.html -- CE 1, 462
18.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000211.html -- CE 1, 462-463
19.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000212.html -- CE 1, 463-464
20.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000213.html -- CE 1, 464-465
21.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000214.html -- CE 1, 465
22.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000215.html -- CE 1, 466-467

02.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000195.html -- CE 1, 467
03.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000196.html -- CE 1, 467-468
04.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000197.html -- CE 1, 468-469
05.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000198.html -- CE 1, 469
06.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000199.html -- CE 1, 470
07.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2003-March/000200.html -- CE 1, 470-471

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