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CSLI Calendar, 4 January 1990, vol. 5:11


       C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
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4 January 1990                      Stanford                   Vol. 5, No. 11
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    A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and
Information (CSLI), Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
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	  CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT THURSDAY, 11 JANUARY 1990

12:00 noon		TINLunch
      Cordura 100	Reading: The Role of Infons in a Mathematical
			Theory of Information, First Draft: January 1990
			by Keith Devlin
			Discussion led by Pat Hayes
			(hayes.pa@xerox.com)
			Abstract below
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			     ANNOUNCEMENT

CSLI Seminars will be scheduled irregularly during winter quarter;
watch the Calendar for announcements.
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			 NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
 Reading: The Role of Infons in a Mathematical Theory of Information
		      First Draft: January 1990
			   by Keith Devlin
		     Discussion led by Pat Hayes

While reading every introduction I can find to situation theory, I
have got stuck on the idea of an infon, and puzzled about which side
of the reference arrow it should be placed.  It is a mistake, I
gather, to think of an infon as something like a proposition, or
perhaps even a sentence: something which is about the world.  Rather,
I understand, an infon is actually part of the world, a piece of the
informational stuff out of which our universe is constructed.  But if
this is so, what is a negative infon?  All the introductions just take
this idea as obvious, but it worries me.  Apart from the fact that
falsehoods clearly aren't in the world, even if we allow them there,
then -- as Quine once said about possible individuals -- there would
seem to have to be too many of them.

In recent netmail, Keith Devlin and I discussed this, and he used me
(with my permission) as a Simplicio in his recent paper.  This
TINLunch is in part a presentation of his paper, and in part an
explanation of why I don't find his answers soothe my worries, and why
Simplicio believes that a simpler, less radical, notion of information
seems to offer a better account.  The key is to put information in
representations, not in the world.

We will consider rectangles and tree-stumps, why the sea is boiling
hot, and whether pigs have wings.