Interaction and Social Information - re2 to Bob Artigiani

I appreciated your reply fully. Rather than deepening differences between
our approaches - which even may not be as deep as you presumed in your
reply- I would like to stick to an issue we both are trying to deal with:
Interaction and Communication.

Bob wrote:
>I think we
>are both recognizing that when a fluctuation within a society alters its
>internal relations it also alters the society*s relations with the
external
>world. Both alterations will affect social roles played by individuals,
>which will threaten and confuse some and lead many to resist. This is
>indeed entropy.

OK, but some others may nnot be "treatened and confused", but rother
pleasured by the change of roles to play. So there will be also
information-energy and not only entropy. Shurely, we know that a lot of
changed behaviour appears, but most of them has never been selected (that4s
what frustrated people who modified their roles, isnt it?)

>So I am not denying there are internal sources of evolutionary change but
>merely stating what I think is now a platitude--that there is an entropy
>price to pay for it.

Please, look also on anatropic ("constructive") behaviour, where the
"price" for change is payed by ("rewarding") information-energy.

>If you will accept that [platitude], then we can bring back the Idea of
>Progress, give meaning to history, and support an Enlightenment
>ideal*without being blind to costs (entropy) or naive about expectations
>(no guarantees variations will produce more humane realities).

Accepted. But even if variations dont guaranty, they are the "source" of
social evolution (see my contribution to fis-vienna, "The role of
variety...", in World Futures 97).

>....the argument is that we not assume a
>fully developed human self, consciousness, mind, etc is just plain given.

Thats clear. But, drawing the consequences, we may not more insist in
explaining what human behaviour, mind, self etc "is", because it does not
"be" (ger: sein), but rather try to explain how and why it changes,
devellops, progresses etc., how it "becomes or gets" (ger: werden).
Maybe the differences sound just semantic. But I thing, that in order to
explain social phase changes (right now ocurring globally), we shuld rather
give the accent to change-fenomena than to order-questions.

>...So information is about something, in this case the context in which a
society is >embedded.

I still agree. But look at what is saied: the context of society! We dont
talk about people or persons that live in a social context. We talk about
societies in a whatsoever context! And what is that context? For persons we
know the context or environment is a social one. And for social systems? I
think that there is a informational environment (on "top"), and a
psicological environment (on "bottom"). Do you see so?

>But I do not imagine that information is sitting *out there* in some
>Platonic world waiting to be discovered. If the world is truly dynamic
and
>evolving, then information is created.

You explain here, that info is created by social dynamics. I agree. But
that does not hinder, that info is in social systems environment too.

>.... I argued social roles store or record information
>rather than saying they are made of it. And it is important to me that if
>the information is social what is stored in a role is not just what an
>individual knows but what the society in which the individual acts knows.

OK, lets say society knows and store this knowledge in roles (instituions,
VEMs etc.). I dont have any problem with that. I just emphasized on the
storage-method used by society, and called in "communication" or
"interaction". Doing so, I dont eliminate roles etc., but rather am able to
explain how they are constructed, created, "built". Thats because sociology
may also be interested in deconscruct, deteriorate, "destroy" things not
desireable.
Even here, differences sound semantic. Although roles "store" information,
that storage is not that one of the computers hard disk. Its the storage of
a complex chaning beeing, called social role. So if roles "store", they
"process" in fact information. If this happens self-organized, we may speek
of "construction", dont we?

>...Gottfried and I seem to
>be led to different conclusions about what the *stuff* of societies is.
>I bent mine [mind] by saying to myself if societies are real they
>must be made of something; if they are made from human beings the
something
>of which societies are made must be their interactions;

If the are made by interactions (I agree), they cannot be made at the same
time by human beeings. Please explain!

>if interactions
>make a difference and create information then relations between humans
>affect what they do; if behavior matters in this circumstance it must be
>because what individual humans do is correlated*people act as if they know
>what one another are doing.

Shurely, behaviour matters, but its social behavoiour rather than
individual one. Once again: we are not trying to explain individual
behaviour socially conditioned, but social behaviour conditioned by
information-flows.
There are two different levels of observation, are there?

> But, again, it is reduced uncertainty
>about a world changed by interactions.

Thats what it is.

>Why would we do that [something]? Because by our collective actions we
>created*not discovered*a new world, a world in which selection acts on the
>whole rather than directly on the parts. Thus, I think it is these
>interactions and their combined effects which release environmental matter
>and energy flows processed by correlated behaviors that constitute
>societies.

Constituion of society by selected acts and interactions. OK. These are
stored in social facts (roles, values etc.), to be reproduced, copied etc.
Its not the person that "interacts" with other persons, its a reality of
interaction communicating with social roles.

>It is not easy to see behavior as stuff, for our Western minds have been
>habituated to more materialistic perceptions. But if there is a new
>scientific paradigm here we need to bend our minds to see things
>differently.

No problem to see it as "stuff", as "social matter" if you want. But this
matter is reflexive, it deliberates, it reacts and acts upon social
stimuli. Its not the stuff of the Rocky Mountains, as you will agree.

>Individuals, however, need tools for
>anticipating how to choose between behavioral options. One tool is the
>slave-driver*s lash. But another with more long-term benefits for
everyone
>is Values, Ethics, and Morals (VEMs). For me, they map the roles and
>relations constituting societies, as, I think, DNA maps the roles and
>relations constituting organisms.

No doubt and conceded. But again here you try "only" to explain individual
behaviour by anticipating options. Staying on this explication-level, VEMs
may be more to DNA. But, "beneath" DNA, there are information codes which
replicate, which is a sort of interaction. I meen, its on that level that
we can explain real social behaviour, the behaviour not of individuals but
of entire social systems.
Shurely, we may extend the roles-approach also to them. The role of
government, family etc. But thats not the same as the social role of a
person (President, mother etc.). Presidents and mothers are not the
government or the family, they are just "human beeings", as history reveals
in our times.
So, how to explain the role of collectivities? That can not be done by
explaining the social roles its members play, but by the interaction of
that roles, by a communication-process called social system.

Best greetings

Gottfried Stockinger

Vienna, Austria.
Tel *43-1- 983 39 79
or
Belem, Brazil
Tel:*55 -91- 225 2140
Received on Mon Sep 28 17:18:13 1998