[Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

Sat Apr 2 14:04:28 CEST 2016

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).

Dear Soren, 

The organization of bodies of knowledge in the sciences takes place at
another level than the integration of cognition in the body of an
individual. One cannot reduce the one level to the other, in my opinion.
Which research program of these two has priority? How do they relate –
potentially differently – to information?

Best,

Loet

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Honorary Professor,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;

 <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C.
Marijuan
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 2:01 PM
To: fis at listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

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

-------------------------------------------------------------

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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