Christian Cote - Information flow, types and meaning specification

In hospital, pharmacists use analysis, measures and computations to build a precise representation of the patient states in a way to infer its individual behaviours. We will argue how a model of the information flow allows a definition of concept types: it represents how the conditions of a content conveyance build types that specify the meaning of functional linguistic categories in context.
   We mean by information flow a framework that represents the contents conveyed by information systems and networks. The flow is used as a large frame of distributed cognition that integrates cognitive processes of abstraction and representation into the elaboration of the information contents. The flow is applied in the frame of a hospital pharmacy to model how the information is produced and interpreted in the frame of the activity.
   Considering that the pharmacists know how the states of the world are abstracted and symbolized, the flow augments the semantic usual framework by a characterization of the “externalised” cognition as a universe of interpretation. It refers to the operations that build on the symbolic representations into the information system. This third level of interpretation is added on the two usual universes of interpretation (extensional and intensional).
   Following this semantic frame, the flow elaborates constraints on the linguistic categories and their relations, and these constraints specify the conveyed content. The regular trajectory of the information production in the course of the activity allows the elaboration of a particular predicative structure that defines a specific frame of attribute–value relations based on the satisfaction of the conditions of production, conveyance and interpretation of an original content.
   For example, for “M. Smith, Kinetic, 4.8 mg/ml, 12:24”, we write:    

lx ly [(12:24, (y, 1)), (<M. Smith1 (x, 2), Kinetic2 (x, y, 3, 4), mg/ml4 (x, 3)>, 4.83 (y))]

This complete structure (i.e. that can be interpreted anywhere without ambiguity) can be translated into five types, or primitives in a more abstract level (individual, event, property, specification and time).
   The information flow primitives are a frame of meaning where each primitive satisfies a large range of lexicons in a way to specify their meaning.
   An individual type integrates both the name of the patient, specific names of molecules and bacteria. A property is defined by a relation between an individual and an event ; it specifies a functional name as a singular constant affected by a cultural representation to an individual feature (i.e. “mg/ml”, “kg”…). The newest component of the information adjuncts a specification on the functional noun (positive-negative integers, numerals,…) in a way to represent a state in the world at a precise time and as issue of a specific operation. An event is an evolutionary process that classifies a collection of information in time and connects the information to the pharmacist frame of analysis (i.e. “weight”, “kinetics”, “half-life”, …).
   We explain by the information frame the distribution and the scope of some categories, especially functional names, time indices and events. At last, it illustrates a certain way to connect cognitive processes and language.

References

J. Barwise & J. Seligman (1997) Informationflow: the Logic of Distributed Systems, Cambridge University Press.

A. Clark & D. Chalmer (1998) The Extended Mind, Analysis 58: 1, pp.7-19 Blackwells.