Psychonomics: The ontology of psychology

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PsychonomicsThe ontology of psychology
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Overview

• What is information? Where does it come from? How
  do we recognize and measure it?
• What is information processing?
• What is a rule?

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What really exists? What does it mean to
reallyexist

• Consider the binary digit 1101100010010111 -
  What is it?

• An integer

How can we tell the difference between a new
notation or representation and a new fact or
object?

• A real number

• A color

• A Japanese character

• A date

• A memory location

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What is information?

• Three related definitions
• i.) Claude Shannon / Norbert Wiener Reduction in
  uncertainty
• ii.) Greg Chaitlin The shortest representation
  ( elimination of redundancy)
• iii.) Gregory Bateson Differences that make a
  difference

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i.) Claude Shannon / Norbert Wiener Information
as reduction in uncertainty

• defined information as the negative condition
  (opposite) of the statistical properties of
  uncertainty in thermodynamic gases
• their equation defines information in terms of
  the number of decisions that must be made in
  order to change uncertainty to certainty

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i.) Claude Shannon / Norbert Wiener Information
as reduction in uncertainty

• information the number of decisions that must
  be made in order to change uncertainty into
  certainty
• In general, this is a log function of the number
  of items that is, each reduction takes away the
  same proportion of remaining uncertainty (usually
  half)
• Example How much information is in the alphabet?

Hint Ask someone to think of a letter and play
20 questions
You need at most 5 questions, so the answer is
about 5 bits of information (log2(26) 4.7)
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ii.) Greg Chaitin Information the shortest
representation

• Clever people can, in some situations, ask better
  questions
• an entity is said to contain as much information
  as can be contained in the shortest computer
  program (in a well-defined way) that can produce
  that entity
• that program is essentially equivalent to a
  description of that information
• Note the notion of elimination of redundancy an
  emphasis on the BEST representation as a measure
  of information content.

Q What does this say about random data sets?
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iii.) Gregory Bateson Information Differences
that make a difference

• One persons information is another persons
  irrelevancy
• For example, you will ignore the top bits of a
  byte if you dont need them so you compress any
  number of irrelevant bits (including random bits)
  down to 0

• - In biological systems- in human psychology- we
  have to ask What does these bits mean?
• information is a difference that makes a
  difference
• What makes a difference to an individual depends
  on what that individual wants to do his/her
  motivation and/or interests

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• Information and meaning are aligned, but in
  different worlds.
• Information allows meaning, but it does not
  specify meaning.
• Informationmeaning soilplants
• - they allow growth, but dont have anything to
  say about what will grow...

• What humans crave is meaning. What the world
  offers us is information.

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Where does information come from?

• Along with observation, we have three ways to get
  information

• 1.) By deduction Drawing a conclusion from a
  principle already known or assumed reasoning
  from generals to particulars

2.) By induction Deriving a general principle
from the observation of particular instances
3.) By abduction Deriving a general principle
when the major premiss is certain, and the minor
only probable
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What is information processing?

• Note that all three techniques take as input
  information
• Information comes from manipulating information
• We manipulate information by applying
  transformation rules to it

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What is a rule?

• We manipulate information by applying
  transformation rules
• There are two kinds of rules
• i.) Rules for determining type What is this X?
• ii.) Rules for transforming ( computing across)
  specified types (known as methods) What I can
  I do with X? What can X do for me? Why does X
  make a difference?

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What is a formal system?

• i.) Assumptions An explicit and finite list of
  axioms- without which, nothing.
• ii.) Symbols An explicit and finite list of
  symbols- without which, nothing to systematize
• iii.) Rules An explicit and finite list of
  rules for determining grammaticality- without
  which, gibberish
• iv.) Methods An explicit and finite list of
  steps of transformation- without which, chaos.

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What is a formal system?

• Logic, geometry, computer languages, statistical
  methods ARE formal systems
• Thermostats, electrical devices, other
  deterministic machines can be described by formal
  systems because they have a strong mapping with
  formal systems.
• Our 431 questions are What else can be described
  in formal terms? How much of the observable
  variability in humans can be captured in terms of
  the four components of a formal system? Of what
  can human psychology speak? Of what must it
  remain silent?

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Questions

• Why do we only want to speak of entities that
  fall under formal systems? What is gain/lost by
  this?
• How is kindness different from wood?
• Is kindness more or less real than wood?
  Why?
• Is kindness more or less real than
  intelligence? Why?
• Should we include moral axioms in our list of
  axioms defining what we can do in our system(s)?
  Why or why not?