[Fis] Toward a Calculus of Redundancy: Signification, Codification, and Anticipation in Cultural Evolution; preprint

[Jose Javier Blanco Rivero]

Dear Loet,

I want to thank you for sharing this insightful article. I myself have been
experimenting with the difference between information and meaning, although
from a different background -that of intellectual history.
Your essay deserves a thoughtful a comment which I cannot attempt here. But
I´d would like to make some remarks.

1. I´ve been working with Luhmann too and I strongly desagree with
translating "Sinn" by "meaning" -although Luhmann himself might have
agreed. In the Spanish traslation of Social Systems, for example, they make
a more loyal translation from the German (they translate Sinn by "sentido"
and not by "significado"). I think it is more than a idiomatic question,
since distinguishing between sense-making (Sinn), information and meaning
might give us insight into the obscure process of meaning and knowlegde
processing that we are trying to clear out.
Sense-making might not be a good candidate for an english speaker, but I
think it works quite well when you need to distinguish between linguistic
meanings  (those produced directly by language and discourse) and the
pragmatics of communication. When you make sense of something, that
involves semantics and pragmatics,that involves linguistic meaning and
information processing from the social environment.
By the way, in that very page you cite Luhmann (1995, p.67) the German
sociologist draws a distinction between "Sinn" and Information, arguing
that is time what makes it important, because information only informs
once, but maintains its "meaning" when repeated.

2. I´ve noticed that in previous papers you have argued that meaning is
communicated, but here you say "Unlike information, meaning is not
communicated" (p. 3). So, have you changed your mind? Why?

3. I agree with your thesis that the processing of meaning and the
processing of information are two different but related things. But I have
some doubts about the relationship between meaning, information and coding.
You say when meaning is assigned to information, options arise and so does
redundancy, but the proliferation of meanings is restrained by coding; and
that codes structure the processing of meaning acting as a selection
mechanism on redundancy.  I might recognize that meaning be coded, for
instance, by being coupled to a binary opposition (the concept of nature
"physis" has oscillated around the poles of generation and degeneration).
But cannot information be coded as well? For instance, incursive and
hyper-incursive operations may be guided by selective mechanisms, or codes
that contribute to the differentiation of the system and can account for
its Eigenbehavior (I´m thinking of Luhmann´s functional systems). And
redundancy might also be informative and semantic. I can think of semantic
(or meaning) redundancy when examining intellectual traditions (Liberalism,
Communism, etc.) Hence, self organization of meaning do not always coincide
with the self organization of information that drives systems
differentiation.

4. I wonder why to remain attached to the sender-receiver model of
communication. It seems inadecuate to me in such a sofisticated theoretical
arrengement you propose.

5. I think the question of time is not adequately dealt with. I wonder how
can one measure (Hmax) and (Hsystem) in a social system. If we are dealing
with complex systems (and social systems are indeed complex) the system
itself cannot know (Hmax). And if an observer could, what kind of observer
could that be? On another hand, the realized states of the system are not
at the system`s disposition per se. The system needs some kind of memory
function by means of which it reconstructs past states in a relevant manner
to certain present. I think of the literature on historical memory, for
instance. The past as such is not there, but there remains material objects
(incluiding texts, videos and so on) from which a social system can
reconstruct its memory (or as Luhmann would say: resorting to schemes or
frames).

best regards,

José Javier

2017-09-03 11:06 GMT-03:00 Loet Leydesdorff <loet at leydesdorff.net>:

> *Toward a Calculus of Redundancy:
> <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3030525>*
> *Signification, Codification, and Anticipation in Cultural Evolution
> <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3030525>*
>
> Loet Leydesdorff, Mark W. Johnson, and Inga Ivanova
>
> *Abstract*
> Whereas the generation of Shannon-type information is coupled to the
> second law of thermodynamics, redundancy—that is, the complement of
> information to the maximum entropy—can be increased by making further
> distinctions. The dynamics of discursive knowledge production can thus
> infuse the historical dynamics with a cultural evolution. Providing the
> information with meaning first proliferates the number of options. Meanings
> are provided with hindsight at positions in the vector space, as against
> relations in the network space. The main axes (eigenvectors) of the vector
> space map the codes of the communication spanning horizons of meaning; the
> codes structure the communications as selection mechanisms. Unlike
> hard-wired DNA, the codes of non-biological systems co-evolve with the
> variation. Discursive knowledge can be considered as meta-coded
> communication which enables us to entertain models of the processing of
> meaning and information. This reinforces the hindsight perspective and can
> turn codification reflexively into coding anticipation. The dynamics of
> information, meaning, and knowledge can be evaluated empirically using the
> sign of mutual information as an indicator.
>
> ** apologies for cross-postings
> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3030525
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Loet Leydesdorff
>
> Professor, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
>
> 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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