Re: [Fis] CONCLUDING THE SESSION

Dear Soeren,

We are getting closer, indeed.

You formulate:
> what this "substance in which information is communication" is and that
is the "medium of communication".

> To me this is the field of meaning, and it is generated by the embodied
mind in living systems. Un-embodied systems like the computer can
therefore not really produced meaning that means anything to humans. i
claim that the biological and the psychological autopoietic systems
produce this substance of meaning that the socio-communicative system
then operates in and modulates! What about that?

My point is that social systems produce meaning, e.g. situational meaning
and codified meaning generated by scientific discourses, that can be
understood by humans. I would agree with you that it would be impossible to
understand this if the self-organization of pyschological systems were
completely closed (as in Maturana's model). However, language here comes in
as an evolutionary achievements which enables us to communicate both
information and meaning at the same time. The communicated meaning is again
appreciated at the receiving end by a human being, but s/he may attribute a
different meaning to it. What was a meaning exchange at one moment in time,
may be an information exchange at a next moment.

If the self-organization of the social system were completely closed (this
is Luhmann's position), the social system would be able to generate its own
type of codification of the information ("meaning"), but we human being
would never be able to know this as a participant. We would only be able to
study society as another ecology. (This is Habermas's point against
Luhmann!) However, we are (im)perfectly able to understand socially
generated meaning, that is meaning as a result of interaction and
communication. Scientific discourses are the example par excellence: they
purify previous meaning by changing the meaning beyond the control of
individual contributions. Thus, meaning is generated at the supra-individual
level and understood at the individual level to a variable degree. The
distribution of the understanding then provides us with a first (not yet
reflected) concept of meaning at the social (that is, distributed) level. It
provides the substance of this communication of meaning because meaning can
be redistributed at this level.

Because codification is recursive, the non-linear dynamics of meaning
processing change the one-dimensional communication of information
(input-output). For example, scientific knowledge can be further developed
and be solidified in science-based technologies and innovation which change
our realities behind our back. In other words, the dynamics of the system
may change from agent-based to communication-based and then also
knowledge-based. The crucial variable is the progression of the codification
of the information in more than a single dimension.

The above should not be read as a fact, but as an expectation. However,
entertaining this hypothesis enriches the heuristics in the sociological
research design. (Let me stop here and not further explain this claim.)

With kind regards,

Loet

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Received on Thu Oct 9 15:39:17 2003