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I'm reading @danieldennett's latest, from Bacteria to Bach, and really like the distinction he draws between semantic information and pragmatic implication... (p. 122)
@danieldennett When we talk about information “meaning” something to the organism, this doesn’t necessarily imply comprehension.
@danieldennett It's not semantic info "represented" in the system – it’s pragmatic info – the arrangement of bits of the system such that when it is presented with a certain situation (info about the world or itself – state A) it will tend to move to state B, rather than states C or D or E.
@danieldennett The system doesn’t need to comprehend anything about that – it just does it. Nowhere in the system can you find some bits that represent that meaning – it’s just the complex configuration of the hardware (or really the highly adaptable wetware) that does the work.
@danieldennett Complex systems have historicity - they reconfigure themselves to pragmatically embed or embody statistical relationships between things (objects, events, actions, outcomes) so as to affect future behavior.
