[Fis] Answer to Mark

[Mark Johnson]

Dear Fernando,

Without wanting to spawn a new debate, I think it might be useful to flag
something up about the 'phenomenology' that you mention. I understand
Joseph's reaction to what to you say and I agree. However, phenomenology is
a rich a complex topic, and few scholars have the tenacity to delve deeply
into the difficult and detailed thinking of Husserl, Heidegger, Schutz,
tracing it's evolution in French existentialism, hermeneutics, or from
Schutz to Berger, Luckmann, Parsons and then Luhmann. At the very least
there is the division between Husserlian transcendental phenomenology with
its "transcendental ego" to which Heidegger and many others objected, and
the existential phenomenology of everyday experience which Heidegger
developed instead. Husserl, for his part thought Heidegger had completely
misunderstood him. To say he might have been right is not to take away the
genius of Heidegger's own insights.

The point is, when we say "phenomenology", what do we mean?

Joseph's concern relates (I think) to what appears to be a missing account
of "intersubjectivity" in your paper. But of course, intersubjectivity was
a central concern for Husserl, and his ideas on it were much refined by
Schutz, who seems to me to be a critically important figure (I'm grateful
to Loet for pointing me in Schutz's direction!). To be 'phenomenological'
does not preclude intersubjectivity. However, if you are Heideggerian, then
I think it is true that Heidegger's understanding of human relations is
rather weak (interesting to reflect on this in relation to Heidegger's
politics!)

I suspect that the phenomenological literature and its history is of
considerable relevance to current debates about information.

Best wishes,

Mark

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Fernando Flores <
fernando.flores at kultur.lu.se> wrote:

> Dear Mark
>
>
>
> Thanks for your commentaries. Our use of the term “foundational” is more
> philosophical than practical. You are right; the term contradicts in some
> sense our intentions which are “very” practical. (This is a term which we
> could leave behind without hesitation.) In fact, we have no intentions in
> “instituting” a new concept of “information”. Our work is “foundational”
> only in one aspect, and that is in searching for methods to measure the
> informational value of collective acts in everyday life. We found that it
> was necessary to classify human acts in such a way that their informational
> value could be “operative” (useful in practical tasks); we did that,
> grouping the acts in types depending on their complexity. We found that
> these acts could also be distinguished in relation to their consequences on
> the everyday world. We noticed that the movement from the very complex acts
> to the simplest acts follows a reduction of the surrounding world and that
> the human body is the natural reference in the understanding of this
> reduction. We knew that we could express informational value in relation to
> probabilities and found in the von Mises/Popper frequency series a possible
> and easy solution (an accessible mathematics). We insist; we have been
> working only with practical problems and we have not been thinking so much
> of which concept of information we are using; we believe that cybernetics
> does not address the practical problems we confront. However, we are sure
> that if we succeed, some cybernetic theorem will explain our success. The
> question is that the state of knowledge we have today is insufficient to
> understand the simplest informational problems in our surrounding world.
> Informational theory and cybernetics have been developed in the world of
> Physics; instead, we try to develop solutions that work in everyday life.
> If you understand as “variety” the measure of the “states of a system”, the
> series of von Mises/Popper could be our kind of variety, but we are not
> sure. You are certain, our “acts” are neither “actions” nor “events”, but
> they are not the hybrids of Latour either. Our acts are phenomenological;
> they are intended to be congruent with concepts as “work”, “money”,
> “culture”, “thing”, “market”, and the like. The concept “informational
> value” for example, is very close to the concept of “information” without
> meaning exact the same.
>
>
>
>
>
> Fernando Flores PhD
>
> Associate Professor
>
> History of Ideas and Sciences
>
> Lund University
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
>


-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonmwj1 at gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
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