[arketyp]

What is a presymbolic computational system? Shannon entropy deals with alphabets in much the same capacity as Turing machines read symbols on a tape. Fundamentally it is about differentiating between states. I don't see how you can get a meaningful definition of information before starting with the notion of discrete states. Even fuzzy logic needs a semantic of states.

[dr_dshiv]

Presymbolic computation is the motivation for the first restricted Boltzmann machine, Paul Smolensky’s “Harmonium”. It’s a great paper.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA620727

[ohnoNotAgain321]

Presymbolic computation appears to me to be an invented term. Any theoretical or actual system can be framed in computational terms when analysed, but the properties provided through the use of symbols will still exist in a system, whether or not that analysis has been performed. The paper you cite appears to me to lean in the direction of cybernetics and control theory, that would naturally be able to translate into terms aligned to information theory. The same rules will apply to any physical system, no matter how complicated you believe it to be.

[dr_dshiv]

Not sure what you mean by “invented term.”

in any case, there seems to be a difference in describing a system with symbols and computational systems that use symbols for information processing. Some information processing seems possible in systems that don’t use symbols.

[ohnoNotAgain321]

Any computational system uses symbols, whether or not a person has analysed the system and defined those symbols; information is symbols.

[dr_dshiv]

You are suggesting that information was not existing before symbols?

[arketyp]

Where and when information exists so do symbols, in the abstract sense. It’s not symbols as representation of meaning but symbols as mediating meaning.