In-formation

There are at least two meanings for the category of Information, to discuss the issue I call them different names; namely In-formation and Information.

The title of this note is written in the way Varela describes it. My concern, I believe is wider, Information in all forms; for methodological reasons though, I prefer this separation and I explain here.

One meaning has to do with life, the other with everything else. I start with life because that is the kind of analysis which will guide us in understanding all other meanings.

How do we know?

We have been able to know before we know how we know; why is it necesary to answer this now?

One part of the answer is that now we know more neuroscience. It seems reasonable to incorporate this knowledge. Once the exercise is finished, or at least started, one can ask in what sense there is Information on the surface of a black hole?

Marks in space-time are semiotic as long as a complex enough brain decodes the message. If a leaf falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

A Google search takes you to modest and deep answers to this so-called riddle. I answer it here as a litmus test, so readers know where I am coming from. What I want to start here is a new form of skeptisism though, if that is possible.

I side against solipsism.

What I want to add to this answer here is that the concept of brain-environment homeostasis, is a practical way to go.

In-formation means formation of our brain in interaction within its parts, and through animal senses, to the other side of the solipsist divide; the other. The first question is consciousness. Not all living forms have it. It comes to people at certain age when they interact with their parents culture. The Ego is born after delivery. How long after? anywhere from 6 to 10 years. This I believe. I came to this idea reading The Tree of Knowledge by Maturana and Varela, and Liars, Lovers, and Heroes, by Sejnowski and Quartz.

We construct mathematics, and science. We believe both have to do with something else, something we do not construct. In-formation has its ontologic part, and a societal part. Two or more individuals agree on what the proper symbols for calculus are:

Newton: Leibniz:

The symbols bring images to our brain, but they are not speed, in this case, they are symbols.

Karl Menger follows different conventions for functions. He doesn't use: for the identity function; instead he uses . He names the identity function with . He doesn't use , he just writes . That is the name of the trigonometric function, and of the identity function. We believe something out there, like the sound of the falling leaf, exists, whether we hear it or not, or whether Menger is right, or everyvbody else is right not including the identity as a named function.

Neuroscience teaches us, as Sejnowski has studied for many years now, that there is a definite process that rationally can be called construction of concepts. Our brain is formed by a give and take process with other objects, until they reach a state of permanence, until, as Varela says, the brain builds itself each second, and millisecond of our whole life. I will say, when this homeostatic state is achieved, then we changed the immediate reality, and the immediate reality changed us, and then we reflect reality, and reality reflects us. We become one, like they believe in Budhist Philosophy. We affect the world, and the world affects us. We become one. One negociated reality.

Before I veer more into abstraction; I point out that when we teach, we have to help our students play with the ideas, in their own way. That is why a computer based mechanics course is better, than one without the programming. When the student programs mechanics, she knows better. She gets feedback by the compiler. Hey, you missed a variable here, hey maybe you do not understand the convention. Student and computer have to negociate meaning, until the teacher says: yes that is the answer, and everybody can go to sleep.

I am looking forward to teach Mechanics with Scheme, as you can find out in the course's website: sicm.

First I have to understand how my brain gets a Scheme program to prove that the action is stationary, and then I may understand what does it mean that Gravity is an entropic force.

This house cleaning, may help me to not project myself to reality. If I need all these formulas to know how an electron moves, that doesn't mean the electron needs them also. A later problem may be to find out exactly how does the electron move around: We will have to understand something out there the electron uses, and that we had missed so far.

I am not there yet.