Bay Area Artificial Intelligence Meetup Group Message Board › meetup discussion: TBA: Terrence Deacon: Redefining Information
meetup discussion: TBA: Terrence Deacon: Redefining Information
| Mark Carranza | |
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We're tremendously lucky to have Dr. Terrence Deacon speaking on August 22nd. He's an engaging speaker and has points of view fundamentally re-framing basic concepts of information and mind.
His last book, The Symbolic Species, is a highly recommended rethinking of the co-evolution of mind and language. He has a new book coming out soon about rethinking the concepts of information, which will be the subject of his talk. These are heady topics, so to get the group prepared, here are two papers in PDF format from http://www.teleodynam...  which will prepare for the talk. Let's discuss here.Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information Pt. 1 Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining Information Pt. 2 I also suggest reading this paper: Memes as Signs in the dynamic logic of semiosis: Molecular science meets computation theory Edited by Mark Carranza on Sep 12, 2010 8:58 AM |
| Mark Carranza | |
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These are dense and difficult papers. Many more examples would be helpful.
What strikes me most about the concepts in these papers are the somewhat backwards-from-intuitive notions of "constitutive absence." This paper argues that the problem of information that prevents the development of a scientific semiotic theory is the necessity of analyzing it as a negative relationship: defined with respect to absence. This is cryptically implicit in concepts of design and function in biology, acknowledged in psychological and philosophical accounts of intentionality and content, and is explicitly formulated in the mathematical theory of communication (aka “information theory”). 1) Within a larger context, the causal story of something expected not being there. "The dog that didn't bark in the night." 2) Information is reference to an something not within-the-information itself. "Imagine a unicorn." What I'm missing (in my head, it may well be in the papers,) is a development story of the "structural coupling" (after Maturana,) which leads to the establishment of context: relation to environment from which are formed the statistical predictions required by Shannon's theory of information -- which are somehow biologically functional. I think this is covered in Part 2 in a "Darwin" story, but I need to review it. |
| Phil | |
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Yes, it is covered in Part 2. He really starts digging into it starting on page 15. In part 1 he talks about how information is a reduction in entropy and notes that such reductions must have a cause. Extracting meaning from the information is the process of reacting appropriately to the initial cause of entropy reduction. Evolutionary forces cause systems composed of self-replicating systems to react in increasingly appropriate ways.
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| A former member | |
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"appropriate"?
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