From: VirgilT7@aol.com
Date: Thu Jun 25 1998 - 00:04:11 MDT
In a message dated 6/24/98 10:52:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, johnkc@well.com
writes:
<< So even in the unlikely possibility that there is something more
fundamental
than information we need not worry about it because we'll never understand
it.
Information on the other hand we understand, in fact it's the only thing we
can understand.>>
It does not follow from the fact that X is that which allows definitions to
exist that X cannot be defined. What we're looking for is information about
the ontological status of information.
<< >I think the question of the status of information (a set of facts
>about a thing or just any set of concepts?)
How about a set of facts about facts?>>
That would be subsumed under the "set of facts about a thing" I think.
<<Only in pure mathematics is experiment unnecessary, and that is most
certainly the study of information about information. When the recursion of
the information about information idea gets very high such as in physics or
even higher in biology or sociology things are far too complicated to figure
out from first principles and experiment is essential.>>
What we're dealing with here though is a very, very basic question: Is
information fundamental? That's the kind of question to be resolved by the
parent of all empirical sciences, philosophy, although its investigations can
and are of course informed by the empirical sciences.
And I'm not sure that it would be correct to characterize pure mathematics as
the study of information about information. Numbers need not necessarily
inform us of anything but themselves. Pure mathematics can be applied in the
study of information of course. But once we do that we're no longer studying
pure mathematics but in the realm of applying mathematics.
Andrew
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