Re: RE: RE: [Fis] CONCLUDING THE SESSION

Dear Loet

1. Meaning is an "update value"? Is that a social thing?

2. At the same time you define it statistically as reduction of uncertainty? But this goes for physical systems too.

3. Then add that this needs a selective system. Does that imply that only social systems are selective?

4. Unless you want to define the social from the concept of meaning, then it is not a reducing of the social to claim that all living systems work with meaning, and add that only language producing system make conscious meaning.

5. Do you restrict �the social to humans? Chimpanzees then do not have social organization and interaction?

6. Luhmann says that meaning is a reduction of complexity. Is that not what all living system do?

7. What are the non-living systems that produce meaning never the less??

8. Are your meaning concept based on Luhmann? Because I do not understand neither yours not Luhmann's concept of meaning.

9. Maybe it is because your theory is not able to think the living, but only either the dead physical-chemical or the social meaningful?

10. To be consistent you then have to put the biological system under the mechanical and let meaning appear by the creation of souls from the Divine in a thinking world or somehow emerge from the mechanical world?

11. But that is philosophy of course, not sociology � and it is my experience that those researchers, who like you define themselves as sociologist, do not feel obliged to answer those questions, because they are ontological.

12. But FIS is about foundations, so I do think we need to address the foundations here.

----- Original Message -----
From: Loet Leydesdorff <loet@leydesdorff.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2003 8:59 pm
Subject: RE: RE: [Fis] CONCLUDING THE SESSION

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Soeren Brier [ <')" >sbr.lpf@cbs.dk> sbr.lpf@cbs.dk]
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 6:19 PM
> > To: Loet Leydesdorff
> > Subject: Re: RE: [Fis] CONCLUDING THE SESSION
> >
> >
> > Dear Loet
> >
> > To your answer's here. I cannot see how there can be any
> > connection between neg-entropy and meaning. I agree that it
> > is only living system that can attach meaning to information
> > patterns. This is done because living systems are individuals
> > with an interest in surviving. This is the first level of
> > meaning. Peircer taks about signification when an organism
> > get mening out of non-intensional signals and turn then into
> > sign by giving them meaning in relation to it form of life.
>
> Meaning can be generated by any system that can provide the incoming
> information with an update value. One can consider this as a -?H when
> using the Shannon notation (Brillouin, 1964). This information
> (negentropy) reduces the uncertainty prevailing in the system. The
> probabilistic entropy is related to ("normalized in terms of") the
> expected information content of the system updating (Brillouin, at p.
> 11: "The knowledge of such additional information allows us
> ...."). Some
> uncertainty can then discarded as noise. However, this selection
> presumes a selecting system. This system thus provides the information
> with a first-order meaning. Meaning can be considered as implied when
> the information is codified (by a system).
>
> It is not possible to reduce the meaning in social exchanges to the
> living carriers of the communication because that would not
> sufficientlyappreciate the interaction terms (as different from
> the aggregation).
> Social systems process meaning, but are not necessarily alive. (In my
> opinion, the distinction between human-centered psychology and the
> studyof interpersonal communication is the major achievement of
> Luhmann'ssociology.) Social systems, for example, produce
> situational meaning in
> addition to the meaning perceived by each of the participants.
> >
> > Therefor I do not like to used the term ' pattern
> > recognition" at the molecular level. I prefer 'pattern
> > fitting*, becaue the operation do not demand an awareness
> > with a memory.
> >
> > I thus see the information level as a straight
> > physical-statistical level without meaning assumptions - and
> > without a full theory of life.
> >
> I agree with this last conclusion. However, I appreciate the
> informationtheoretical concepts because I wish to study non-living
> systems that
> process meaning nevertheless. I am not a biologist, but a social
> scientist. Reducing social science to biology has been a recipee for
> social and scientific disaster.
>
> With kind regards, Loet
>
>

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Received on Thu Oct 9 00:19:26 2003