[Fis] _ Response to several commentators:

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Maxine:

 

Thank you for these extensive and interesting contributions and answers.

 

Husserl’s concern was precisely with how the world, the world that definitively includes Others, thus bodies and we-relationships, is constituted, thus how we come to the concepts, judgements, and meanings we do. His habit of beginning over and over from the beginning testifies to a relentless spirit of investigation (…)

 

The crux remains, in my opinion, that only an “intersubjective phenomenology, which is founded on that discipline” (Meditations, p. 155) can apprehend this “total science”. 

 

I come to Husserl from the communication angle: this intersubjectivity can nowadays be analyzed as communication (of information and meaning). The level of abstraction of Husserl’s epoche and Shannon’s concept of yet meaningless information can be made compatible. Luhmann made the connection by relating communication to (Husserl’s) intersubjectivity.

 

In other words, intersubjectivity can be operationalized as inter-human communication. Inter-human communication adds the sharing and processing of meaning to the communication of (Shannon-type) information. (The latter relation was not specified by Luhmann who used a less abstract definition of information as a priori meaningful; cf. Bateson.)

 

I understand that this is very sketchy. I elaborated the model in a paper < http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251 > which is currently under submission. The abstract reads as follows:

 

Following a suggestion of Warren Weaver, we extend the Shannon model of communication piecemeal into a complex systems model in which communication is differentiated both vertically and horizontally. This model enables us to bridge the divide between Niklas Luhmann's theory of the self-organization of meaning in communications and empirical research using information theory. First, we distinguish between communication relations and correlations among patterns of relations. The correlations span a vector space in which relations are positioned and can be provided with meaning. Second, positions provide reflexive perspectives. Whereas the different meanings are integrated locally, each instantiation opens global perspectives--"horizons of meaning"--along eigenvectors of the communication matrix. These next-order codifications of meaning can be expected to generate redundancies when interacting in instantiations. Increases in redundancy indicate new options and can be measured as local reduction of prevailing uncertainty (in bits). The systemic generation of new options can be considered as a hallmark of the knowledge-based economy.

 

The reference to “horizons of meaning” makes Husserl relevant. For example, the bodily encounter with the Other can now be considered as specifically coded communication, when interhuman. The difference with Husserl is that the transcendental becomes thus constructed (by inte-human communication). The loss of a transcendental given seems a gain to me.

 

Best,

Loet

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