[Fis] The two very important operations of Infos

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Loet and colleagues,

One of the advantages of a new discipline is the simplification of 
discourse, the creation of a new space where you can easily build new 
knowledge without copious management of other unnecessary, 
circumstantial ideas. I have already quoted in this list the famous 
quotation by Whitehead about the "mental liberation" in arithmetic that 
implied the use of zero. Something similar may happen nowadays 
concerning the wide reaching domains of information. But I see two 
problems about delineating the "information zero".
One, that life is not incorporated yet as the starting point of 
communication (I do not mean "biology"--rather it is each one's 
biography, historically and evolutionarily augmented/contemplated). At 
the end, every living agent "communicates" with other living agents, and 
the available tools to do that are signals that mean "portions" of its 
own life-cycle. We humans have shared sensorimotor tools that provide 
the common ground for our communication, for exporting those missing 
portions or needs in our lives. Formalizing the life cycle is quite 
problematic, however.
And the second "zero" concerns the need to constitute a new 
informational observer, endowed with the general mental characteristics 
required for information science. The observer of physics, chemistry, 
etc., is well equipped and we assume that his/her mind is properly 
"charged" with the corresponding principles, theories, experiences, etc. 
But in the case of info science, the topic matter is open-ended. What is 
the "charge" of this new observer? Depending on our specializations, we 
equip this observer with our preferred approach; so our unending back 
and forth. But many other knowledge bodies (or at least the 4-5 basic 
disciplines that Xueshan was commenting) may be needed to make sense of 
that particular informational/communicational phenomenon in cells, 
organisms, people, disciplines, enterprises, countries... If we accept 
this "ecumenical" contemplation of information science, how can that 
multi-observer be viable at all? Our cognitive limitations are so 
obvious... An elementary provisional solution (a pre-zero, a pre-science 
tool) for making it possible was suggested in those ten principles weeks 
ago.
In any case, I think these two absences or "zeroes" might be 
successfully filled in, without having to wait for too long.

Best wishes--Pedro

El 26/10/2017 a las 20:08, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:
> Dear Terry and colleagues,
>
>> (...) , there cannot be interminable regress of this displacement to 
>> establish these norms. At some point normativity requires ontological 
>> grounding where the grounded normative relation is the preservation 
>> of the systemic physical properties that produce the norm-preserving 
>> dynamic.
> I have problems with the words "ontological" and "physical" here, 
> whereas I agree with the need of grounding the normative. Among human 
> beings, this grounding of subjective normativity can be found in 
> intersubjectivity. Whereas the subjective remains/cogitans/ (in 
> doubt), the intersubjective can be considered as/cogitatum/ (the thing 
> about which one remains in doubt).
>
> For Descartes this/cogitatum/ is the Other of the/Cogito./ 
> The/Cogito/ knows itself to be incomplete, and to be distinguished 
> from what transcends it, the Transcendental or, in Descartes' 
> terminology, God. (This is the ontological proof of God's presence. 
> Kant showed that this proof does not hold: God cannot be proven to 
> exist.) Husserl (1929) steps in on this point in the/Cartesian 
> Meditations/: the/cogitatum/ which transcends us is intersubjectivity. 
> It is not physical. The physical is/res extensa/, whereas this 
> remains/res cogitans./ It cannot be retrieved, but one has reflexive 
> access to it.
>
> Interestingly, this philosophy provides Luhmann's point of departure. 
> The intersubjective can be operationalized as (interhuman) 
> communication. The codes in the communication can relatively be 
> stabilized. One can use the metaphor of eigenvectors of a 
> communication matrix. They remain our constructs, but they guide the 
> communication. (Luhmann uses "eigenvalues", but that is a 
> misunderstanding.) Using Parsons' idea of symbolic generalization of 
> the codes of communication, one can continue this metaphor and 
> consider other than the first eigenvector as "functional 
> differentiations" which enable the communication to process more 
> complexity. The model is derived from the /Trias Politica/: problems 
> can be solved in one of the branches or the other. The normativity of 
> the judiciary is different from the normativity of the legislative 
> branch, but they both ground the normativity that guides us.
>
> The sciences are then a way of communication; namely, scholarly 
> communication about rationalized expectations. Scholarly communication 
> is different from, for example, political communication. An agent 
> ("consciousness" in Luhmann's terminology) recombines reflexively and 
> has to integrate because of one's contingency. The transcendental 
> grounding is in the communication; it remains uncertain. Fortunately, 
> because this implies that it can be reconstructed (by us albeit not as 
> individuals).
>
> A non-human does not know oneself to be contingent. Lots of things 
> follow from this; for example, that the non-human does not have access 
> to our intersubjectivity as systems of expectations.
>
> Best,
> Loet
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> loet at leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>; 
> http://www.leydesdorff.net/
> Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of 
> Sussex;
>
> Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>, 
> Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
> <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
>
> Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;
>
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>
>
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-- 
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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