[Fis] Data - Reflection - Information

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Mark:

>Do we want to defend a definition of meaning which is tied to 
>scientific practice as we know it? Would that be too narrow? Ours may 
>not be the only way of doing science...
I meant my remarks analytically. You provide them with a normative turn 
as defensive against alternative ways of doing science.

>A non-discursive science might be possible - a science based around 
>shared musical experience, or meditation, for example. Or even Hesse's 
>"Glasperlenspiel"... Higher level coordination need not necessarily 
>occur in language. Our communication technologies may one day give us 
>new post-linguistic ways of coordinating ourselves.
Why should one wish to consider this as science? One can make music 
together without doing science. Musicology, however, is discursive 
reasoning about these practices.

>Codification is important in our science as we know it. But it should 
>also be said that our science is blind to many things. Its reductionism 
>prevents effective interdisciplinary inquiry, it struggles to reconcile 
>practices, bodies, and egos, and its recent obsession with journal 
>publication has produced the conditions of Babel which has fed the 
>pathology in our institutions. There's less meaning in the academy than 
>there was 50 years ago.
This is a question with a Monty Python flavor: what is the meaning of 
science? what is the meaning of life?

>The implication is that our distinguishing between information and 
>meaning in science may be an epiphenomenon of something deeper.
One can always ask for "something deeper". The answers, however, tend to 
become religious. I am interested in operationalization and design.

Best,
Loet

>
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Mark
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: Loet Leydesdorff <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>
>Sent: ‎14/‎10/‎2017 16:06
>To: Terrence W. DEACON <mailto:deacon at berkeley.edu>; Sungchul Ji 
><mailto:sji at pharmacy.rutgers.edu>
>Cc: foundationofinformationscience <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
>Subject: Re: [Fis] Data - Reflection - Information
>
>Dear Terry and colleagues,
>
>>"Language is rather the special case, the most unusual communicative 
>>adaptation to ever have evolved, and one that grows out of and depends 
>>on informationa/semiotic capacities shared with other species and with 
>>biology in general."
>Let me try to argue in favor of "meaning", "language", and "discursive 
>knowledge", precisely because they provide the "differentia specifica" 
>of mankind. "Meaning" can be provided by non-humans such as animals or 
>networks, but distinguishing between the information content and the 
>meaning of a message requires a discourse. The discourse enables us to 
>codify the meaning of the information at the supra-individual level. 
>Discursive knowledge is based on further codification of this 
>intersubjective meaning. All categories used, for example, in this 
>discussion are codified in scholarly discourses. The discourse(s) 
>provide(s) the top of the hierarchy that controls given the cybernetic 
>principle that construction is bottom up and control top-down.
>
>Husserl uses "intentionality" and "intersubjective intentionality" 
>instead of "meaning". Perhaps, this has advantages; but I am not so 
>sure that the difference is more than semantic. In Cartesian 
>Meditations (1929) he argues that this intersubjective intentionality 
>provides us with the basis of an empirical philosophy of science. The 
>sciences do not begin with observations, but with the specification of 
>expectations in discourses. A predator also observes his prey, but in 
>scholarly discourses, systematic observations serve the update of 
>codified (that is, theoretical) expectations.
>
>Best,
>Loet
>
>
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