[Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FIS Colleagues,

I am attaching herein Soeren's presentation. If you have any trouble 
with the attachment, the file is in fis web pages too:

http://fis.sciforum.net/fis-discussion-sessions/

By clicking on Soeren Brier's session (highlighted in red) you can 
immediately obtain it.

Nevertheless, below there is a selection of more general ideas from the 
paper. For those interested in FIS "archeology", Soeren presented in 
January 2004 a discussion session on Information, Autopoiesis, Life and 
Semiosis. It  can be found by scrolling in the same above link.

Best greetings--Pedro

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  Infobiosemiotics


Søren Brier, CBS

This discussion aims at contributing to the definition of a universal 
concept of information covering objective as well as subjective 
experiential and intersubjective meaningful cognition and communication 
argued in more length in Brier (2015a). My take on the problem is that 
information is not primarily a technological term but a phenomenon that 
emerges from intersubjective meaningful sign based cognition and 
communication in living systems. The purpose of this discussion is to 
discuss a possible philosophical framework for an integral and more 
adequate concept of information uniting all isolated disciplines (Brier, 
2010, 2011, 2013a+b+c).

The attempts to create /objective concepts/ of information were good for 
technology (Brilliouin 1962) and the development of AI, but not able to 
develop theories that could include the /experiential (*subjective*) 
aspect/ of informing that leads to meaning in the social setting (Brier 
2015b). The statistical concept of Shannon (Shannon and Weaver 
1963/1948) is the most famous objective concept but it was only a 
technical invention based on a mathematical concept of entropy, but 
never intended to encompass meaning.Norbert Wiener (/1963) /combined the 
mathematics statistical with Boltzmann’s thermodynamically entropy 
concept and defined information as neg-entropy. Wiener then saw the 
statistical information’s entropy as a representation for mind and the 
thermodynamically entropy as representing matter. So he thought he had 
solved the mind matter problem through his and Schrödinger’s (1944/2012) 
definition of information as neg-entropy. The idea was developed further 
into an evolutionary and ecological framework by Gregory Bateson (1972, 
1979, 19827) resulting in an ecological cybernetic concept of mind as 
self-organized differences that made a difference for a cybernetically 
conceptualized mind (Brier 2008b). But this concepts that could not 
encompass meaning and experience of embodied living and social systems 
(Brier 2008a, 2010, 2011).

My main point is that from the present material, energetic or 
informational ontologies worldview we do not have any idea of how life, 
feeling, awareness and qualia could emerge from that foundation.

Ever since Russell and Whitehead’s attempt in Principia Mathematica to 
make a unified mathematical language for all sciences and logical 
positivism failed (Carnap, 1967 & Cartwright et.al. 1996),the strongest 
paradigm attempting in a new unification is now the info-computational 
formalism based on the mathematic calculus developed by Gregory Chaitin 
(2006 and 2007) ). The paradigm is only in its early beginning and is 
looking for a concept of natural computing (Dodig-Crnkovic, 2012) going 
beyond the Turing concept of computing. But even that still does not 
encompass the experiential feeling mind and the meaning orienting aspect 
of intersubjective communication wither be only sign or also language based.

So far there is no conclusive evidence to make us believe that the core 
of reality across nature, culture, life and mind is purely absolute 
mathematical law as Penrose (2004) seems to suggest or purely 
computational.Meaning is a way of making ‘sense’ of things for the 
individual in the world perceived. It is a non-mathematical existential 
feeling aspect of life related to reflection past, present and future of 
existence in the surrounding environment, in humans enhanced by 
language, writings, pictures, music through culture. In animals 
cognition and communication are connected to survival, procreation and 
pleasure. In humans beings cognition develops into consciousness through 
subjective experiential and meaning based (self-) reflection of the 
individual’s role in the external world and becomes an existential aspect.

My conclusion is therefore that a broader foundation is needed in order 
to understand the basis for information and communication in living 
systems. Therefore we need to include a phenomenological and 
hermeneutical ground in order to integrate a theory of 
interpretative//subjective/ and intersubjective meaning and 
signification with a theory of /objective/ information, which has a 
physical grounding (see for instance Plamen, Rosen & Gare 2015). Thus 
the question is how can we establish an alternative transdisciplinary 
model of the sciences and the humanities to the logical positivist 
reductionism on one hand and to postmodernist relativist constructivism 
on the other in the form of a transdisciplinary concept of Wissenschaft 
(i.e. “knowledge creation”, implying both subjectivism and objectivism)? 
The body and its meaning-making processes is a complex multidimensional 
object of research that necessitates trans-disciplinary theoretical 
approaches including biological sciences, primarily biosemiotics and 
bio-cybernetics, cognition and communication sciences, phenomenology, 
hermeneutics, philosophy of science and philosophical theology (Harney 
2015, Davies & Gregersen 2009).

Peirce develops his pragmaticism as a way to unite empirical research, 
meaning and experience. His ontology is not only materialistic science 
but does also include meaning through embodied interaction through 
/experiential living/ bodies and thereby the social as well as the 
subjective forms of cognition, meaning and interpretation. Thereby he 
goes further than Popper’s (1978) view of the three worlds. 
Communication is not only a world of objective knowledge but is 
intersubjective meaningful information. Peirce’s idea of ‘the world’ is 
much bigger than what science considers being ‘the world’...

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