(PART II)
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For FIS discussion with start 22.Jan. 2004 by S�ren Brier, Management,
Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, sbr.lpf@cbs.dk
Efficient, Formal and Final Causes in Heterarchy
Information science and also systems science has a problem of how meaning
and mind are created in evolution through emergence, when it does not state
an explicit metaphysics. Peirce thereby gives a foundation that supports
the evolutionary theory of system science and cybernetics. This happens
when the semiotic foundation is combined with the informational systems and
cybernetic grand schemes like Tom Stonier’s work (1997), or the Neauchatell
spiral of Eric Schwartz (1997).
The cybernetic thinking of self-organization and system closure has, in my
opinion, made an important contribution to our understanding of living
systems. But a combination of Peircian semiotics and modern cybernetics is
necessary to create a theory broad enough to include what is now called
biosemiotics, and encompass the core-epistemological problem of the
semiotic threshold. Biosemiotics, in both name and scope, has a tendency to
neglect the contribution of second-order cybernetics and autopoietic
theory, while cyberneticians, whose work combines and develops the area of
human social communication, tends to ignore the semiotic component (Ort and
Marcus 1999). In order to combine the contributions of both camps, a
broader foundation is needed. This is why I call my work Cybersemiotics,
which is actually short for Cyberbiosemiotics, as it is a further
development of biosemiotics (Brier 2003 is the last summary of the theory).
Modern systems thinking views nature as Nature containing multilevel,
multidimensional hierarchies of inter-related clusters forming a
heterogeneous general hierarchy of processual structures: A Heterarchy. In
the Fuschl conversation meeting April 2002, sponsored by the International
Federation of Systems Research (IFSR), the FIS-group discussed these
matters. Inspired by the conclusion of this work and the above analysis,
one can sketch the following scenario for meaning in the universe:
1. Levels emerge through emergent processes when new holons appear
through higher level organization. These principles can be placed into a
Peircean perspective, where potentialities (Firstness) are processes
manifested through constraints and forces (Secondness), into regularities
and patterns (Thirdness). This process is continuing in a recursive manner
from level to level. The new emergent level then acts as a potential for
the development of the next level.
2. Levels can form and dissolve when their dynamical parameters are
near critical points, like when nucleons form and dissolve in a “quark
soup”. Stabilization requires that the system moves further from the
critical point into organizing patterns, like energy wells.
3. In hierarchies there is a filtering of lower-level effects rising
from the bottom at each new emergent level. But there is also a binding
from the top, and the exclusion of alternative possibilities once one path
of emergence has stabilized (Downward causation).
4. Across levels, various forms of causation (Efficient: based on
energy transfer, Formal: based on pattern recognition, signal and
information, and Final: based on meaningful purpose and thus semiotic) are
more or less explicit (manifest). This leads to more or less explicit
manifestations of information and semiotic meaning at the various levels in
the world of energy and matter. The basic forms of causation can be seen at
all levels. Efficient causation is grounded in the Quantum vaccum,
zero-energy fields. But for each level the next lower level acts as its
material basis.
5. Emergent process laws are peculiar to each level, allowing
components to function together, and stabilizing levels in
pattern-formation and structure that can be described with an objective
information concept. This yields the dynamical integration that
individuates each level. In the special case in which this integration
involves active organizational processes we have autonomy, which is,
roughly speaking, a partially open form of autopoiesis that creates agency.
Kaufmann (1995) calls it ‘autocatalytical closure’.
6. It seems that total closure, as in autopoiesis, is important in
the creation of living systems. But the necessary degree of closure is
still under discussion. Hoffmeyer (1998) describes four additional steps
necessary for the creation of living systems, namely the establishment of
an inside-outside asymmetry (closed surface), then a proto-communication
over those surfaces is necessary (a community of surfaces); further a
digital re-description in the form of DNA to carry on the form of the
organism in procreation is necessary (Hoffmeyer and Emmeche (1991) call it
code-duality.) Finally, the formation of an interface (inside-outside
loops) is essential for the creation of interpretants. Machines lack
autopoiesis, reproduction, code-duality, and an inner organization of
membranes, and thus also lack both individually- and species-based
motivation and intentionality and therefore consequently also the ability
to establish a genuine interpretant.
7. Meaning is generated through the whole heterachy, especially
through individual systems’ relations to a larger natural or social
context. Thus, meaning is both generated on the individual levels of the
living or humans as well as in social systems.
8. Meaning is most manifest in the living systems that fulfill
Hoffmeyer’s conditions. But starting from dissipative systems, one can
define a heterarchy of pre-living self-organized systems as based on
degrees of closure, asymmetry between inside and outside, protocomunication
over membranes, digital representation and formation of interfaces.
9. The autonomous systems are related to various notions of meaningful
functionality that in turn are connected to various types of causality:
efficient, formal, final. The most full-blown version of meaning involves
finality in a self-conscious social-linguistic mind.
10. Distinctions in notions of meaning, according to social,
representational meaning versus personal, subjective, existential
meaningfulness, are further differentiations. These are dependent on a
theory of consciousness yet to be developed, where the biosemiotic theory
and worldview will be an important contribution.
Thanks to Allan Combs and John Collier that contributed significant to this
work.
Combining the results of modern science with Peircian biosemiotics, the
cybersemiotic framework operates on five levels of existence:
a) A primary chaotic level of continuity, quality, and potentiality,
with the tendency to form habits (Firstness). This would include the
quantum vacuum field as it is conceptualized by modern physics as one
aspect only.
b) A “causal” level of matter, energy, and causality by natural forces
(Secondness and its ‘brute force’). The level of efficient causation much
connected with physics.
c) An informational cybernetic system level of quasi-semiotic signals
that encompass the goal-oriented mechanical systems described by
first-order classical cybernetics. Described from a cybersemiotic view,
concepts of information as signals of differences make sense only when
interpreted as quasi-signs. This is the level of formal causation much
connected with chemistry and the level of reflexes in the body.
d) The semiotic level belonging to all living systems (biosemiotics)
and is much connected with biology. The living systems are the basis of
true triadic semiosis -- producing signification spheres in sign games.
This level encompasses the work of Uexk�ll (1934) and ethologists such as
Lorenz (1970-1971, 1973) and Tinbergen (1973) within a broad semiotic
framework. This is the level where unconscious final causation dominates.
e) The level of conscious languaging systems (language games,
arguments) is so far occupied only by the social realm of humans and their
culture. Here final causation is full-blown in self-consciousness.
Sign-making is thus immanent in nature, but manifest only in full triadic
semiosis within autopoietic living systems. The informational level is seen
as intermedial between the physical world of energy, matter and forces and
the semiotic world.
When information theory attempts to encompass the areas of meaning and
semantics, it also surpasses and destroys the semiotic threshold by
blurring the difference between informational and semiotic processes, and
thereby between mechanical signal manipulating (or quasi-semiotic systems)
and living systems. This produces all sorts of simplistic theories about
intelligences that are unable to account for the cognitive processes unique
to embodied living systems, not to mention those unique to conscious,
socio-linguistic systems.
I argue that sign-making is the threshold between cybernetics and
semiotics. The whole subject area of cybernetic information theory is
therefore quasi-semiotic.
Beneath this is the physico-chemical level that is generally best described
in terms of energy, matter, and causality by natural forces (Secondness)
but over the long term does have Thirdness processes that develop “natural
law” through symmetry-breaking and habit-formation in evolution.
Maturana and Varela in their theory of autopoiesis do not utilize the word
“information” when cognition is understood from the observing autopoietic
system. Nothing is transferred from the environment to the living system
that can be designated as meaningful information. But they admit that when
one observes from the outside, it appears that the system has obtained
information. In other words, information is created inside the autopoietic
system as formal causation when it receives a disturbance that it is
prepared for as a species through the creation of a structural coupling.
This is all on the level of reflex. On the next level, ethologists would
claim it had an instinctual perception, and that sign stimuli elicited an
Innate Release Mechanism (IRM) that caused a preprogrammed instinctive
behavior. From a Cybersemiotic perspective, one can view autopoiesis as a
necessary condition for differences in the environment to become meaningful
signs through the process of semiosis.
Through biosemiotics, cybersemiotics is introducing the concept of meaning
to science. A new aspect is added to biology. Thus we have a framework
theory, but we do keep the difference between the levels but unite standard
science with cybernetic information theory, semiotics and the level of
human linguistic meaning in a common framework, thus paving the way for a
true Third Culture that encompasses science, humanities and social sciences.
Further reading
For those interested in a longer version of the same arguments and some
visual models I refer to the online article in TrippleC:, which youi can
click directly on from here: Brier, S. (2003): “The Cybersemiotic model of
communication: An evolutionary view on the threshold between semiosis and
informational exchange.” TrippleC 1(1): 71-94.
http://triplec.uti.at/articles/tripleC1(1)_Brier.pdf
Questions:
1. Can’t we avoid the metaphysics?
2. Is a theory of levels really necessary?
3. Aren’t we supposed to keep mind and meaning out of scientific
theories?
4. Information science is supposed to explain life in a scientific way
that avoids theories of meaning. Thus doesn’t biosemiotics destroy the
whole ‘plot’ of information science?
5. Can’t we use other theories of mind and consciousness, for instance
from cognitive science or quantum consciousness, to avoid the idea
of subjectivity in nature?
6. Is final causation a scientific concept?
7. Is it possible to define science on another basis than the
mechanistic?
8. If we have given up the belief in a universal mechanistic science
shouldn’t we then avoid grand schemes like the intended her as they are
unscientific in their base.
9. The great thing about natural science is that physics, chemistry
and biology can be seen under one type of explanatory law system. Why
destroy that?
References
The list of references can be found at the fis archive:
http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/mailings/1245.html
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Received on Fri Jan 23 09:48:31 2004
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