We've all been through the difficulties with definitions of "complexity",
"emergence", etc. many times so one would hope we could be cautious about things
like "spirituality", "information" etc. for which definition is a real problem as
well. In the spirit of Francis' request that we try to provide the world with a
better way of discussing some of these problems, I suggest that the modeling
relation in the semiotic context Bill Dress provided is a means for doing
something very important. That something is to step OUTSIDE each of our belief
structures for a moment and to compare them from without, not from the view of any
one of them. A simple consequence of doing that is to see that within science and
medicine there is a concept of "spirituality" which has as its formal system in
the modeling relation asomething totally compatable with the strictly material
aspects in science. In other belief structures there is another notion of
"spirituality" which almost deliberitally goes against the material formalism held
by science. Much confusion can be generated by mixing these under one word.
I suggest tyhat we can do the same with "information" and its relationship to the
mind/body problem vs its general presence independent of human mind.
Respectfully,
Don Mikulecky
Cliff Joslyn wrote:
> >First, the statement "completely fallacious" seems to be there to replace the
> >need for actual supporting arguments.
>
> I said originally:
>
> >But there is a corresponding tendency towards the completely
> fallacious >inference that "spiritual life is informational, biological
> life is also >informational, therefore biology is spiritual". The converse
> is also not >sound logically: "biological life is informational, spiritual
> life is >informational, therefore spirit is biological", but at least it's
> PLAUSIBLE, >if only on evolutionary grounds.
>
> Thus I meant "completely fallacious inference" on LOGICAL grounds. In other
> words, there is no syllogism of the form:
>
> X is A (spirit is informational)
> Y is A (life is informational)
> ======
> Y is X (life is spiritual)
>
> Nor can one derive "X is Y", or that spirit has a biological basis in
> virtue of its "informationality".
>
> Note that EITHER might be TRUE. I was simply saying that one can't simply
> derive it by observing some facts and making the inference, which I believe
> is a TENDENCY among those who hold this "pansemiotic" or "paninformational"
> or "pancontrol" view.
>
> ----
> O------------------------------------------------------------------------>
> | Cliff Joslyn, Member of the Technical Staff (Cybernetician at Large)
> | Distributed Knowledge Systems Team, Computer Research Group (CIC-3)
> | Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mail Stop B265, Los Alamos NM 87545 USA
> | joslyn@lanl.gov http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~joslyn (505) 667-9096
> V All the world is biscuit-shaped. . .
>
> ========================================
> Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from Cliff Joslyn <joslyn@lanl.gov>
========================================
Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from Don Mikulecky <mikuleck@hsc.vcu.edu>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 20 2000 - 17:45:22 BST