Gary: It's too soon to do your poll. There's still no common
understanding about what "information about X in Y" means. Progress is
so slow and painful, yet I see it coming, despite the ranting.
Strangely, I usually agree with both sides. Am I confused? Are they?
Are we all?
Here are some of the many questions that have been going around:
1) Is there information about d(t) in p(t) [what does it mean for X
to have information about Y? is that d(t) in p(t) (at a particular
time) or d in p (the whole waveform)?]
2) Is information transferred from d(t) to p(t)? [what's the relation
between "transmission" and "aboutness" from (1)?]
3) Is there any useful information about d(t) in p(t) [what's "useful"
information?]
4) Can d(t) be reconstructed from p(t)? [what does this have to do
with information from d to p?]
5) Can p(t) HELP in reconstructing d(t)? [what's the quantitative
measure, and what does that have to do with information?]
6) Is IT irrelavent to PCT? [seems unlikely: IT isn't complete bunk]
7) Is IT interesting wrt/PCT? [depends on what aspects of PCT you're
interested in: necessary properties of ECSs or their actual
construction and function]
8) Does PCT require IT? [require for what purpose: can it make
accurate predictions wo/IT? can it make better predictions w/IT?]
9) Can PCT be stated in IT terms? [what good is a complementary model
for its own sake?]
10) Can PCT be derived from IT? [show me]
11) etc.
I think so far a farily good job has been done exploring many of these
questions. As yet, few of them have answers. Question (1) depends on
most of the rest, and will be a long time coming.
Patience! Perseverence! Do not disengage! (but do, please take a break!)
O----------------------------------------------------------------------------->
Cliff Joslyn, Cybernetician at Large, 327 Spring St #2 Portland ME 04102 USA
Systems Science, SUNY Binghamton NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
cjoslyn@bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu joslyn@kong.gsfc.nasa.gov
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .