Re: [Fis] CONCLUDING THE SESSION

Dear Loet

Sorry to have been occupied elsewhere. I do not disagree with your
vision here and that the socio-communication field modulates knowledge
and meaning in this interpersonal field.

My point is that it is done on the basis of meaning generated by the
embodied minds of individuals. We know then that they are already
linguistic cyborgs, because their individual minds become programmed
with language and through that culture, to be able to operate in the
social and thereby obtain the specific self reflective human
consciousness. Thereby the existential perspective is generated when the
social is reflected in the individual mind and its role and place in the
social world is pondered. I see no way out to avoid the existential. If
anything this is one of the most important factors of the new level of
consciousness that is generated be socio-communication. Science is an
important part of that. I insert Wittgenstein's language games in
Luhmann's theory theory, again to give some grounding for how meaning
emerges in language from our human practices in the real social world.

Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
>
> 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

-- 
Best wishes S�ren Brier
Copenhagen Business School
Dept. of Management, Politics and Philosophy 
Bl�g�rdsgade 23 B, 3. floor, room 326, DK-2200 Copenhagen N.
Telephone +45 38152208, mail sbr.lpf@cbs.dk .
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