Re: Information and Volition

The situation in modeling is different from what is happening in the natural world because models are simple systems. My father used arrows to encompass all the kinds of entailments that would be happening because they are impossible to describe more concretely than that, and even that (one arrow, at one end of a system, etc) is not accurate. There's no way to accurately model a complex system. I would say that the arrows are describing entailment of some sort. It may be partly information or not, it may be other kinds of entailment. But you are correct in interpreting my father's belief that information can entail behaviors/responses in an organism as much as any physical stimuli can-- in fact the two are not distinguishable from each other in a model, it seems to me-- and that the relationship between the system and these entailments is a crucial aspect of any natural system.
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> Then, as we've all quoted, RR believed that such relationships are just
> as "physical" as material states. In that case they must apply to
> physics, i.e., physical systems as well as biological ones. Hence
> relational biology teaches physics (as RR claimed). But if they are
> valid only in biology, then how can they be considered physical?

Here we have an interesting problem. The term "material states" is pure physics and is exactly why contemporary physics cannot address problems of complexity or complex systems like those in biology. There is no such thing as a "state" in an organism. It's a dynamical system that cannot be reduced to states without destroying the system. It cannot be studied via that perspective because life doesn't exist in a state-based view finder. Now, I think what John K. was saying was something different here, but I wanted to make that point before addressing what it is that I THINK he was saying: That if biological systems, ie organisms, are "just as physical" and the relationships are "just as physical" then why aren't they a universal? What my father was saying is that contemporary physics is too limited in what it defines as "physical". He said complexity is enlarging the view of what physics needs to be able to "see". In other words, if you are using comtemporary physics, you will conclude that biology IS a "special case".... but physics is only studying the tip of the ice berg if it insists on limiting its applications by these artificial constraints. Physics, as a field, is ignoring the rest of the ice berg at its peril. When my father realized that atoms are complex systems, it was a real doozy of a realization, believe me!

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> So, I'm saying the relationships are a natural definition for
> information. Can we really have a definition of information that doesn't
> apply to the terms endoding and decoding?

I hope I've pointed out the difference in these comparisons so that you realize that information is something that is defined differently in an actual organism's relationship with its environment from the relationships in a model? As far as the definition of information becoming a universal definition in natural systems, as in the definition being actually some sort of Natural Law... that I don't know. It doesn't make sense to ME, personally, but I would have to look at my father's writing on those specific aspects to sort out whether my reluctance to accept that notion is coming from his tutelege or from my own common sense. All I can tell you is that I perceive a difference in how organisms behave compared to how molecules or atoms do (as well as many other similarities and differences).