[Fis] Fwd: Section 4/Re: Steps to a theory of reference & significance

[Francesco Rizzo]

Cari Tutti,
la strada indicata da Terrence W. Deacon è quella giusta per smatassare il
discorso che ha ripreso fiamma. Egli possiede la chiave per aprire la porta
o il ponte dell'Informazione: legge generale che vale per l'intera
esistenza e tutta la conoscenza. La distinzione tra processi biologici,
fisici e semiotici non regge. Per portare l'acqua al mulino di tutti è
necessario che ognuno, in modo local-globale o specifico-generale,
comunichi, narri e racconti quel che ha compreso e sperimentato nel proprio
campo di indagine e ricerca. Poi chi ha più sale condisce la minestra per
tutti. Unica è la meravigliosa armonia che governa il mondo. Unico è il
sapere che la coglie. Basta avere un poco di pazienza e sperare che la
scintilla della sintesi o della visione olistica emani dalla mente e dal
cuore di qualcuno o di più di uno. Per quel che mi riguarda, come detto in
altri messaggi, ho applicato e verificato questi elementi epistemologici e
suggerimenti logistici, metodologici e  procedurali nel campo della scienza
economica ed ho inventato o scoperto una "Nuova economia".
Ritengo poco intelligente dire che tanto ho appreso e tanto comunico con
grande umiltà e sempre pronto a ricredermi, aperto allo stupore delle cose
nuove che non finiscono mai di meravigliare. Questa è la vita degli uomini.
Questa  è la "ragione creativa" di Dio.
Un abbraccio affettuosissimo.
Francesco Rizzo.

2015-01-12 22:39 GMT+01:00 Terrence W. DEACON <deacon at berkeley.edu>:

> Dear Loet,
>
> Thanks for these comments. I very consciously avoided opening up my
> argument to include anything psychological for many of the reasons you
> cite as interesting and troublesome. But mainly because I wanted to
> avoid allowing tacit homuncular assumptions to do any of the
> explanatory work.  And because my primary aim is to argue that
> information in the full sense (involving reference and significance)
> need not be treated as taboo in the physical and natural sciences.
> Currently we talk about information in the shadow of a kind of tacit
> methodological dualism: think of the common use of the term
> 'mind-brain' that shows up in much modern consciousness talk. Such a
> move as I try to make here is essential if we are to legitimate
> biosemiotic and neurosemiotic sciences, for example. And although
> Shannonian-inspired approaches to issues of human communication—such
> as in the computational analysis of language structure—have yielded
> remarkable insights, they basically just treat reference and
> significance as unanalyzed givens and never addresses these issues
> directly. Teleo-semantic issues may not be seen even to be worth
> quibbling about in psychology but there are many in other domains who
> consider representational theories to be unscientific.
>
> So my goal in this case is quite modest, and yet perhaps also a bit
> foolhardy. I want to suggest a simplest possible model system to use
> as the basis for formalizing the link between physical processes and
> semiotic processes. Perhaps someday after considerably elaborating
> this analysis it could contribute to issues of the psychology of human
> interactions. I hope to recruit some interest into pursuing this goal.
>
> — Terry
>
> On 1/12/15, Loet Leydesdorff <loet at leydesdorff.net> wrote:
> > Dear Terry and colleagues,
> >
> >
> >
> > I read the discussion paper with interest. Much of it makes sense to me,
> > but I am not sure whether I follow everything. Thank you for this
> > contribution.
> >
> >
> >
> > My main interest is with the special case (p. 8) of non-passive
> information
> > media; particularly in the relation to psychological systems, and social
> > and cultural ones. In the latter, perhaps even more than the former, one
> > can begin to see the contextual conditions to interact among themselves;
> > for example, when expectations are expected such as in the double
> > contingency among reflexive persons. As Parsons expressed it: Ego expects
> > Alter to entertain expectations about Ego and Alter such as one’s own
> ones.
> >
> >
> >
> > It seems to me that the systems then are layered: biological ones on top
> of
> > physical ones, but with a teleogical dimension of the entropy (or a
> > next-order loop, in other words); psychological ones on top of some
> > biological systems; and social and cultural ones processing exclusively
> in
> > terms of references (e.g., symbols). The time-subscripts of expectations
> > refer to a next moment in time (t+1). In the theory and computation of
> > anticipatory systems one finds the further distinctions between systems
> > which refer both to their own past and their own current or next state,
> and
> > systems which operate exclusively in terms of expectations of next-moment
> > of time states. The former are considered incursive, whereas the latter
> are
> > hyper-incursive ones. One can easily write the equations, and then it is
> > obvious that the dynamics are very different from biological systems.
> > Hyper-incursive systems operate against the arrow of time.
> >
> >
> >
> > Whereas the teleological dimension is only one among various dynamics in
> > the case of biological and psychological systems, an additional degree of
> > freedom is available when the teleological constraints can interact among
> > them such as in the case that different value systems collide to various
> > extents. For example, political discourse entertains meanings with a
> > codification different from scholarly discourse. Since these
> > hyper-incursive systems operate entirely with reference to future states
> > (in terms of models), they generate redundancies instead of Shannon
> > entropy, by enlarging the set of possible states continuously. The
> > psychological carriers of these exchanges of expectations relate the
> > redundancies thus generated reflexively to their teleology as discussed
> in
> > your paper.
> >
> >
> >
> > In summary, it seems to me that you perhaps too easily jump from
> biological
> > teleology to next-order systems and thus introduce a biologism in
> studying
> > the dynamics of references. The substrates of mediation can change with
> > each turn. One can perhaps distinguish the system layers by answering the
> > question of what is mediated (how and why) in each layer? For example, a
> > biology is generated when molecules are exchanged instead of atoms (as in
> > chemistry).
> >
> >
> >
> > The dynamics of the physical medium at the bottom lose relevance when one
> > moves upwards, whereas the Shannon-dynamics remains relevant since
> > statistical, potentially also with reference to next-order media. However
> > paradoxical this may sound, one can study the variation of the redundancy
> > generation or, in other words, the interactions among the conditions,
> using
> > entropy calculus because the latter is not constrained to the physics
> > domain. Thus, your distinction of the Shannon and Boltzmann entropies
> > provides room for a wider use of the Shannon entropy.
> >
> >
> >
> > Let me posit that the specification of the medium in terms of what is
> > communicated (atoms, molecules, words, meaning, etc.) provides us with
> room
> > for each time a special theory of communication; for example, the
> > communication of molecules in a biology, whereas the mathematical theory
> of
> > communication (Shannon, etc.) enables us to specify the differences and
> > similarities among the special theories. This is a rich source of
> > heuristics and algorithms. I sense a tendency in your discussion paper to
> > ground all the theory in physics (thermodynamics) as a meta-theory or
> grand
> > theory of communication. Is this erroneous? Can the special cases further
> > develop with a next-lower level as the noise generating medium?
> >
> >
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Loet Leydesdorff
> >
> >
> >
> > Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam
> > Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
> > Honorary Professor, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
> > Sussex; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
> > <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
> > Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London; Guest Professor
> > Zhejiang University, Hangzhou;
> > http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
> >
>
>
> --
> Professor Terrence W. Deacon
> University of California, Berkeley
>
> _______________________________________________
> Fis mailing list
> Fis at listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listas.unizar.es/pipermail/fis/attachments/20150113/ba20f451/attachment.html>