Re: What Is Information That A Sign May Bear It? -- Discussion

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WIS.  Discussion Note 15

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HT  = Hugh Trenchard
JA  = Jon Awbrey
TAG = T.A. Goudge
TG  = Tom Gollier

Re: WIS Discussion 13.  http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05315.html
In: WIS.                http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd19.html#04317

NB.  it looks like both the arisbe and inquiry lists are down today,
     so i will archive this at the ontology site, at least for now.

hah!  i see you 'see' my big picture and 'raise' me a bigger one!
but i am determined to stay focused, and so i'll just pull a few
cards off the cuff, and sit this hand out til i can deal with it.

welcome to the wonderful world of the peircean microcosmos,
where you will find reflected in its sphere all the diversity
of views that you will find exploding through the macro-thereof.

it would be act of great foolhardiness to venture global opinions
based on the contents of an abstract, and at my age i am more and
more trying to avoid such acts, so let me venture only this much.

let's pick one or three issues that we can see arising from the current
interaction of peirce studies and bio.cyb.org.com.plex.scio.net studies
and see what we can do to clarify it an incremental bit.  tom gollier
will be able to tell you that the fire has burned for years and years
on the peirce list about these issues, and, from the sample that i saw,
shows no signs of either dimmerung down or bringing more lux than fiat,
so i peircenally would be happy with e-miserating one quantum at a time.

if i had to pick an issue that seems to exhibit the most misunderstanding,
and if i am still foolhardy enough to try and tackle that, it would be the
problems that arise over the nature of the sign relation in the interfarce
beyween peirce's theory of signs and the way that it is currently transmuted
in some sectors of the biosemiotic circle.  and this issue implicates at its
core the usual suspect, to wit, the problem about irreducibly 3-adic relations.

so that would be where i would start ---

if i had my druthers ...

jon awbrey

HT: I thought you might be interested in an abstract
    by Soren Brier to be discussed at the upcoming 2004
    "Towards a Science of Consciousness" conference in Tucson.

HT: It looks interesting and relevant to my studies too.
    Are you acquainted with Brier's analysis of Peirce?
    Brier's abstract is as follows:

| Name: Søren Brier
| 
| Affiliation: Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School
| 
| Email: [email protected]
| 
| Abstract Title:  "C.S. Peirce's Theory of Mind and of Consciousness
| as Biosemiotic Reflected Mind:  A Cybersemiotic Approach"
| 
| Abstract: Peirce's triadic semiotic solution to the problem
| of consciousness is based on Synechism, Tychism and Agapism.
| That is to say a continuity or field thinking, a non-mechanistic
| hyper-complexity ontology and a panentheistic evolutionary
| understanding of the divine as that -- both transcendent and
| immanent -- dynamic hyper-complex spontaneity, which is the
| generator of feeling and qualia that is the inside matter.
| When matter is organised in the protoplasm the Firstness
| of mind emerges through the Secondness of matter as manifest
| Thirdness of habits of nature and signification.
| 
| In a modern bio-cyber-semiotic understanding it is the autocatalytic/autopoietic
| closure of the living systems that generates mind and cognition, as we understand
| them in everyday thinking, and gives rise to meaning seeking interpretations.
| Niklas Luhmann explains this in humans in a triple autopoietic functionalist
| model, which on the animal level generates individuals with an interest in
| surviving and on the human level creates language borne social consciousness.
| 
| Cybersemiotics explains the rise of meaningful interpretations from
| inner and outer semiotic communication systems arising in and with
| the organization of the living from the level of the cell and onward
| through multicellular organisms to humans.  This creates /an Umwelt
| (von Uexküll) or a signification sphere (Brier) of those aspects in
| the environment that can be perceived meaningful by the organism.
| In animals the signification sphere is created through sign games
| (Brier) and in humans through their language games (Wittgenstein).
| Combining and integrating the models of consciousness and communication
| of Luhmann and Peirce gives a new entrance to the problem of consciousness.
| Below you can find some of the latest and easily accessible of my papers
| in which the theory is developed.
| 
| Literature
| Brier, S. (2001): "Cybersemiotics and Umweltslehre", Semiotica.
| Special issue on Jakob von Uexküll, 134-1/4, 779-814.
|
| Brier, S. (2001): "Cybersemiotics: A Reconceptualization of
| the Foundation for Information Science ", Systems Research
| and Behavioral Science, Yearbook. Sys.Res. 18, 421-427.
|
| Brier, S. (2002): "Intrasemiotics and Cybersemiotics",
| Sign System Studies 30.1:113-127.
|
| Brier, S. (2002/2003): "Luhmann Semiotized",
| Journal of Sociocybernetics, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002/2003, pp. 13-22.
| http://www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics/Journal/dentro.html
|
| Brier, S. (2003):" Information seen as part of the development of
| living intelligence: the five leveled Cybersemiotic framework for FIS".
| Entropy: 2003,5, 88-99. http://www.mdpi.org/entropy/list03.htm
|
| Brier, S. (2003): "The Cybersemiotic model of communication:
| An evolutionary view on the threshold between semiosis and
| informational exchange."
| TrippleC 1(1): 71-94. http://triplec.uti.at/articles

TG: Since you've veered off into probability and statistics,
    perhaps you, or someone else, can help me out.  T.A. Goudge
    in "The Concept of Evolution," [*Mind*, New Series, Volume 63,
    Issue 249 (Jan., 1954) p. 16-25.] writes:

TAG: | The statistical representation of this process [evolution]
     | is made possible because the genetical constitution of each
     | individual organism is held to consist of a set of discrete
     | units (genes) whose interaction controls all the observable
     | characteristics of the individual." [p. 18]

TG: Where does the statistical need for "a set of discrete units" controlling
    the observable, and statistically correlated, characteristics come from?
    Would statiticians in general recognize this requirement?

TG: Personally, I tend to favor such a requirement and am opposed to the
    idea of Galton and Pearson that statistics can be used to come to
    conclusions without worrying about the underlying mechanism (those
    discrete units). I don't consider it an historical accident that
    eugenicism arose from their attempts to employ statistics in just
    that way.  I also think the fact that Mendel was not associated
    with Darwin during most of Peirce's lifetime is a key element
    commonly ignored in assessing his thoughts on evolution.
    But I've never seen anything, except this one quote,
    along these lines.

TG: Anyway, the need for some concern with the underlying mechanism might
    tie into Frances concern with the dyadic nature of signs themselves,
    apart from agents giving them a triadic sense, so perhaps I'm not
    completely off the topic.

JA: i remember something about the stats of discrete assortment
    from when i was hot on this stuff in high schol -- it's
    the same think as planck's hypothesis of the quantum
    as that was the only way he could figure to avoid
    the infrared(?) catastrophe, since if electrons
    could make continuous transitions they would
    all run downhill as quick as they could,
    or maybe it was uphill, i forget.
    so the discreteness is kind of
    like the escapement on the
    clock of evolution.

JA: i can't remember if it had anything on genetics especially,
    but the best all-round treatment of these statistical and
    computational issues by someone versed in peirce's logic
    would be this:

    | Arthur W. Burks,
    |'Chance, Cause, Reason:  An Inquiry into the Nature of Scientific Evidence',
    | University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1977.

JA: while looking for this ref data, i also
    found this old note of some pertinence:

JA: The choice of a probability model is an abductive choice.
    You cannot eliminate the riskiness of this choice by any
    deductive or inductive means.  Some people call this the
    "reference class problem".  I think I recall there being
    a good discussion of it, perhaps under some other alias,
    in Burks, 'Chance, Cause, Reason'.

JA: It is analogous to the "system identification" problem,
    a good account for AI applications being given by Arbib
    in the 2 'Metaphorical Brain' volumes.

JA: You cannot avoid the circumstantial bias of looking under a priorly chosen
    reference class (lamppost) and you will only identify the unknown system,
    if at all, as falling in with those that are visible thereunder.

JA: The problem of systematizing inquiry, which involves in part the
    problem of "giving a rule to abduction", is a bit more like this:

JA: Given a motley assortment of clues, gathered under a motley assortment
    of lampposts, the clues entangling a mass of conflicting indictments
    with reguard to the identity of the system that is susceptible to
    being rounded up among their respective gangs of usual suspects,
    what lamppost should we look under next?

JA: As long as we don't fall for the line and the sinker
    of a risk-free method and a value-free science, then
    all the rest of this stuff I think is just beautiful.

JA: On a more timely topical note, we must not forget the possibility
    of what might be called a "hypo-critical request for information".

JA: i also remember fom my daze in a^2 that burks
    was in a research group with holland, et. al.
    i think one of their issues was the evolution
    of aggression, shades of '2001, space oddity',
    so he may have written more specific papers.

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