Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 258

FIGU RE 2. The laws of “excluded contradiction” ( ) and of “excluded middle”
(x ⁄ ) in the twilight zones between no motion (M = 0) and approach (+), and
between approach (+) and withdrawal (-) as a function of the concentration (C) of
a perceptible agent.

x&x

x

The domain of relations between D and E which are computable by W represents
the “information” gained by W from watching W*:

Inf

(

W, D *

) ∫

Domain Re l

(

D E ,

) m

(m = 1,2,3,...m)
9.41 The logarithm (of base 2) of the number m of relations Rel m computable by
W (or the negative mean value of the logarithmitic probabilities of their occurance
<log 2 p i > =Sp i log 2 p i ;i = 1 Æ m) is the “amount of information, H” of the descrip-
tion D* with respect to W:

H D

(

*, W

) =

log m
2

m

Ê
Á

ˆ
˜

 1

( ) =-

or H D *, W p log p

i 2 i

9.42 This shows that information is a relative concept. And so is H.

9.5 We have from a paper by Jerzy Konorski 5 :

“. . . It is not so, as we would be inclined to think according to our introspection,
that the receipt of information and its utilization are two separate processes which
can be combined one with the other in any way; on the contrary, information and
its utilization are inseparable constituting, as a matter of fact, one single process.”