Re: SUO: RE: Re: Semiotics Formalization
Matthew,
I'd like to relate your work to the terms I sketched
earlier. There's more than one way to formalize the same concepts
so I'll just state my preferences. Hopefully, discussing preference
for how formalizations are done may help the SUO in addition to the
conclusions we may arrive at in terms of particular ontology
content.
Comments below:
At 08:34 PM 9/15/2000 +0200, 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.
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.
I think that virtually any physical thing can carry
information. The ability to carry information is not part of the
identity of the object. So, I'd suggest that this notion should be
coded as a relation between the physical thing and the information it
carries. In the list I proposed earlier this would be
'realization-of'.
As an example, we might have
(instance-of MyCopyOfHamlet Book)
(instance-of Hamlet Play-Theater)
(realization-of MyCopyOfHamlet Hamlet)
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.
If I understand your explanation here, this would be equivalent to what
I'm calling 'Information'. This notion subsumes your Level 3
encoding. This could include subclasses for the concepts expressed
by words as well as the expression of those concepts as English and the
expression of that English as symbols on a printed page. I've
offered 'coding-of' as a relation which connects one instance of
information with another instance that codes the same information in a
different way.
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
I'd propose that we have an information carrier relation, a class of
information for concepts and a class for various expressions of
concepts.
Adam
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
>
> ¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤~~~~~~~~~¤
>
-----------------
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
(650) 424-0500 x571