SUO: RE: Re: Semiotics Formalization
Dear colleagues,
We (EPISTLE) recognise elements of information at 3 basic levels.
Level 1 - information carrier
Individuals that carry some pattern that can be decoded are known as
information carriers (this is not what we call a generic type, i.e.
reflecting the underlying nature of the individual).
Examples include:
- a paper document with writing on it.
- a hard disc in a computer with magnetic marks on it
- the dance of a bee to show its hive where honey can be found
- the DNA in a molecule.
An example of a pattern that does not contain information:
- the pattern made by the cement and bricks in a wall.
Note that the pattern does not have to be human interpretable, but it does
have to be capable of interpretation.
Level 2 - class of encoded information
The pattern conveyed by the information carrier. This is an abstract object
(we would call it a class of individual - where members of the class have a
common pattern). So for example, if you had 5 copies of a paper document,
the class of encoded information is the pattern that they share.
Examples include:
- the words on a page of text
- the ASCII codes that can be derived from reading a hard disk
Note: there can be transformations between encodings.
Level 3 - class of information
meaning independent of how it can be encoded.
e.g. the idea/concept of "Matthew", independent of whether it is e.g. spoken
or written.
At each of these levels information can be classified: e.g.
Classes of Information Carrier
- paper document
- hard disk
Class of class of encoded information
- ASCII
- English
Class of class of information
- entity type
- relation
- predicate
Regards
Matthew
============================================
Matthew West
Asset Information Management
Shell Services International
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
http://www.shellservices.com/
============================================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@oakland.edu]
> Sent: 14 September 2000 22:44
> To: Stand Up Ontology
> Subject: SUO: Re: Semiotics Formalization
>
>
>
> Adam Pease (in reply to an off-list messaage) wrote:
> >
> > Jon,
> >
> > I appreciate your comments but I'm not quite sure how they
> > add to the ontology. Are you proposing a Sign class which
> > is a subclass of Information and subclass of PhysicialThing?
> >
> > Adam
> >
> <...>
>
> ¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
>
> Adam,
>
> I do not know how others understand the word "information",
> but for me it has its meaning in a particular kind of context.
>
> In the setting where this notion of information makes sense to me,
> we have, as a part of the overall background set-up, a measure of
> a quantity called "entropy" or "uncertainty". This is a measure on
> distributions ("frequency distributions" or "probability densities").
>
> The distribution F : X -> R is a function from a sample space X
> to the real numbers R, such that the real value F(x) EUR R can be
> interpreted as the probability that x will happen. (More carefully,
> this interpretation only works for discrete frequency distributions,
> but that is more or less the general idea.) (Also, it is traditional
> to use a capital omega for the sample space, for "outcomes" or perhaps
> for "occurrences", I think, but here I will have to sign it
> with an "X".)
>
> The entropy or uncertainty measure M is thus a function of the
> type M : (X -> R) -> R, and it satisfies some additional axioms
> that make it a decent formalization of our intuitive notions of
> doubt or uncertainty in the situations that are described by the
> distributions of type (X -> R).
>
> In this setting, if we can say what our measure of uncertainty
> would be both before and after receiving a particular sign, say,
> by way of making an observation or by way of some other courier,
> then we can define a quantity called the "information capacity"
> of the set of signs at issue. The information capacity is the
> "average uncertainty reduction on receiving each sign" (AURORES).
> Thus comes the dawn of information theory.
>
> The way I understand it, sign-tokens are physical things --
> they are actually another set of "outcomes" that "occur"
> in the real world, and so they have to have some sort of
> physical basis, but sign-types are classes of sign-tokens,
> what statistical folks called "events", that is, subsets
> of some sample space, and so they have an abstract quality
> to them. We "typically" intend the token as a representative
> of its class, and so there is almost always some ambiguity here.
>
> So when I hear people talking about a category of being that
> they call "information", I have to stop and say to myself:
> Okay, they mean a sign that is given in a setting where it
> posseses and potentially conveys a quantity of information.
>
> Anyway, this is how I understand these things. As I read over what
> I just wrote, however, I notice that it looks more like a personal
> attempt to come up with a rational -- and risky -- reconstruction
> of what I rememeber of classical information theory, but within the
> kind of sign-theoretic setting that I get from Peirce, and I now see
> that many of the details are looking kind of fuzzy.
>
> So, thanks for the chance to at least start on the work of
> clarification,
> and I will shift this back to on-list communication so as not
> to protect
> it from the criticism of others who might be able to help out here.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon
>
> ¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
>