SUO: Re: Semiotics Formalization
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Matthew,
In the interests of working toward "mutually intelligible codes" (MIC's)
and other sorts of interoperability, I will try to match the categories
of information elements that you mention below with the nearest available
concepts in the "pragmatic theory of signs", at least, as I understand it.
West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK wrote:
>
> 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.
This sounds like what I call a "sign", perhaps with an emphasis
on its physical nature or its token particularity.
> An example of a pattern that does not contain information:
> - the pattern made by the cement and bricks in a wall.
I dunno -- you would have to ask the archeologist --
but I guess that I get what you mean.
> Note that the pattern does not have to be human interpretable,
> but it does have to be capable of interpretation.
This seems to confirm the tentative identification, as it is the defining
property of a sign to be interpreted by another (perhaps the same) sign,
speaking technically, its "interpretant sign", with the whole transition
between them occurring with respect to an object, their common referent.
> 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.
Personally, I will have trouble using the word "class" this way, since I am
forced by dint (or "dent") of my prior training to treat it as one of those
very special "reserved words", in this case, for the extension of a property
rather than the property itself. But I like the word "pattern", so akin to
the way that the Greek "idea" was rendered by the Latin "form", which hints
at something beyond the mere shape which is far more formidable, something
like the force of beauty.
By how is this relevant to information? I am guessing because "pattern" is
another name for what we, more prosaicly, call "constraint" or "redundancy",
which is the essence of information, if ever there were one. All in all,
the pattern that is preserved under a suitable class of transformations
is probably what I would call the "type" of the sign.
> 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.
This idea, I think, is covered by what the pragmatists call the
"ultimate interpretant", but I, more akin to a "pragmatician",
have little hope, myself, of meeting up with ultimates any time
soon, or ever within this finitary form of life, and so I tend
to associate the notion of generic meaning with the device of
a "canonical sign", frequently ensconced as a "normal form".
I often get the impression that this is what other people
mean when they speak of the concept or the idea itself.
> 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/
> ============================================
Well, this is very tentative, but maybe it will do for a start.
Regards,
Jon
> > -----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
> >
> > ¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
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