Svar: Re: Theory of Information.

Dear Rafael

In the light of Jerry's last mail and my answer to it I agree with you remarks about the balance between consistency and reductionism. Their do need to be some kind of reflective metaphysical frame going beyond a Platonic inspired mathematical determinism. This is what I try to offer. At the same time the different levels and angles specific demands and nature of subject area has to be respected. I think that phenomenology has a lot to offer to biosemiotics and a theory of meaning and mind. We need to integrate first persons experience into a theory of meaning and nature. Nobody have done that so far contemplating the framework and results of modern science. It is a great challenge, but a necessary one to overcome for our culture. Thus we need forums like this and Gatherings of biosemiotics to bring together researchers from the sciences, biology, sociology and the humanities. This what we attempt to with the journal Cybernetics & Human Knowing and in the new fast expanding!
 group RC51 Sociocybernetics that has been established under the International Sociological Association (ISA). There is a conference in Corfu just before the ISSS-conference in Crete. I hope to see more FIS people there to connect the different "ends" of the FIS project. Se URL in my auto signature.

S�ren Brier, +45 3528 2689
http://www.flec.kvl.dk/personalprofile.asp?id=sbr&p=engelsk
Ed. of Cybernetics & Human Knowing
http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
Member of ed. board Triple c http://kaneda.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/tripleC/
Sociocybernetic group http://www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics/indice.html
The biosemiotic group http://www.molbio.ku.dk/MolBioPages/abk/PersonalPages/Jesper/BioGroup.html
Invitation to Conferences : Gatherings in Biosemiotics
http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/pr/gath.2003/gath.2003.cfp.html
Luhmann - opening of Systems theory http://asp.cbs.dk/ccc/luhmann.asp

>>> capurro@hdm-stuttgart.de 02/01 6:10 >>>
Dear Jerry,

thanks for your kind remarks and thoughts
concerning the future development of this
very fruitful discussion. This experience
of *creating knowledge* by making accessible
our different perspectives and pre-understandings
on the basis of the digital network is (at least for me)
prety unique.

I have become more and more aware of
the questions concerning the four concepts you
mention (communication, information, meaning
and semiotics) and... nature. One challenge
being to think coherently these concepts under
the perspective of the digital.

What happens when we trans-form modern mathematical
(natural) science into a theory (or groups of theories) that
are based on the concepts you mention? What are we
able to understand better? What do we *let appear*
that was not *visible* under our current theories? Is
this less *violent* (excuse me for using this metaphor)
as the case of using mathematical
representations for what is not a number? After
2.500 years it seems to me that we may not be aware
of what we habe been doing since the invention of
numbers and their *use* for understanding nature...

Communication and information are indeed fascinating
concepts and we may be coming into business with
nature (including numbers/structures) as we did it
some thousands of years ago. What I most like in
science is patience, no hurry, ruminating and feeling
free to fight against our own ideas.

We are not necessarily *less human* since we have, say, *de-humanized*
such concepts as work, energy, or --- information. I consider
the view of organisms (including ourselves) as 'tele-processors'
(or signal-processors or message-processors) as most
challenging and it has been fascinating for me to see/read
how some members of this group put this question within
the context of natural processes. If we *go back* to information
and meaning within the social context we may be able to
see better how a signal may entail meaning for a system
i.e. how a system is able to perceive something AS something
delimiting it within a horizon of indeterminacy, including the
perception of the own limits of the system = its death.
This gives rise to new sets of problems to which Pedro
has pointed several times.

The question of a *general theory of information* is for me
the question of how far a post-modern (or *hyper-modern*)
theory is able to integrate differences without falling into
reductionism. It should be able to allow a *re-entry* of
observed differences (or *pre-understandings*) and to
create different kinds of *links* and *nodes*. If this is the
case, then focus groups may be the right way
to deal with this kind of complexity in future.
In other words, a general theory of information
is only (?) possible as a network of
information (and communication) theories and of people
dealing with them and communicating to each other
their perspectives (or allowing others to tell them how
they are using a difference that makes a difference)

> Rafael:
>
> Your response on your views of the self of time was carefully
> articulated but I remain skeptical. The abstractions of time and
> space and mass are continuous variables, images of our conceptual
> domains, as Max Jammer well articulates. These concepts work
> together in quantitative structures to bring coherence to physical
> measurements. I remain puzzled on how these concepts relate to the
> logic of chemical or biological processes.
>
 Jerry, thanks, I remain skeptical too! Time is such a *fuzzy* concept
but... it concerns our lives. Under this perspective the symbol
*the concept of time* is an oxymoron as much
as for Kierkegaard *The concept Angst* (Der Begriff Angst). If we
are (Cyber-)Hegelians we should be aware of this dane too!

kind regards,

Rafael
Received on Sat Feb 1 22:21:10 2003