Preface v 1. Cybersemiotics and the Question of Knowledge 1 Søren Brier 2. Information Dynamics in a Categorical Setting 35 (original) (raw)
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A Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems: Info-Computational vs. Mechanistic
The dialogue develops arguments for and against adopting a new world system -info-computationalist naturalism -that is poised to replace the traditional mechanistic view. We try to figure out what the infocomputational paradigm would mean, in particular its pancomputationalism. We discuss steps towards developing the new generalized notion of computing that is necessary here which includes both symbolic and sub-symbolic information processing, and its relation to traditional notions. We investigate whether pancomputationalism can possibly provide the basic causal structure to the world, whether the overall research programme of info-computationalist naturalism appears productive, especially when it comes to new rigorous approaches to the living world and whether it can revigorate computationalism in the philosophy of mind. It is important to point out that info-computational naturalism does not invalidate mechanistic approach within the domains where it has shown its soundness, but it extends the domain of research to the classes of phenomena which were not possible to adequately address in terms of mechanistic approaches. The relationship is like the one between relativistic and classical physics or between non-Euclidean and Euclidian geometry, i.e. the new paradigm includes and generalizes the old one,
Cybersemiotics and the question of knowledge
Information and Computation
The introduction of this book states its purpose and paradigmatic view point as follows: "The book focuses on relations between information and computation. Information is a basic structure of the world, while computation is a process of the dynamic change of information. In order for anything to exist for an individual, the individual must get information on it, either by means of perception or by re-organization of the existing information into new patterns and networks in the brain." Though I am supportive of this transdisciplinary endeavor, I will argue that it is only possible if the informational and computational view of what Dodig-Crnkovic (2006) calls the pancomputational/paninformational view is integrated with a Peircean semiotic insight. This needs to be done in order to relate an evolutionary theory of information more realistically to the actual phenomenologically experienced knowing processes and functions in the human social world. It is my view that in order to make such an integration, one needs to include a theory of first person awareness, qualia, signification and the communication of meaning integrated with cybernetic informational and computational theories. I will argue that there is no way to bypass the crucial role of naturally developed and culture-born self-conscious embodied awareness if one wants to arrive at a transdisciplinary theory of information, cognition and communication including language. In short, this is the ambition of making a scientific theory of knowing and knowledge in the form of a cybersemiotics. The question is, if science as we know it can encompass self-consciousness and meaning as causal agents in nature or, rather, encompass the reality Book Title 2 that the synergy between nature, living systems, consciousness and intersubjective communication produces.
Library Trends
As an answer to the humanistic, socially oriented critique of the information-processing paradigms used as a conceptual frame for library information science, this article formulates a broader and less objective concept of communication than that of the information-processing paradigm. Knowledge can be seen as the mental phenomenon that documents (combining signs into text, depending on the state of knowledge of the recipient) can cause through interpretation. The examination of these "correct circumstances" is an important part of information science. This article represents the following developments in the concept of information: Information is understood as potential until somebody interprets it. The objective carriers of potential knowledge are signs. Signs need interpretation to release knowledge in the form of interpretants. Interpretation is based on the total semantic network, horizons, worldviews, and experience of the person, including the emotional and social aspects. The realm of meaning is rooted in social-historical as well as embodied evolutionary processes that go beyond computational algorithmically logic. The semantic network derives a decisive aspect of signification from a person's embodied cultural worldview, which, in turn, derives from, develops, and has its roots in undefined tacit knowledge. To theoretically encompass both the computational and the semantic aspects of document classification and retrieval, we need to combine the cybernetic functionalistic approach with the semiotic pragmatic understanding of meaning as social and embodied. For such a marriage, it is necessary to go into the constructivistic secondorder cybernetics and autopoiesis theory of von Foerster, Maturana, and Luhmann, on the one hand, and the pragmatic triadic semiotics of Peirce
To follow the transdisciplinary ambition in much information science and philosophy leading to cognitive science we need to include a phenomenological and hermeneutical ground in order to encompass a theory of interpretative meaning and signification to achieve a transdisciplinary theory of knowing and communication. This is also true if we start in cybernetics and system theory that also have transdisciplinary aspirations for instance in Batesons ecological concept of information as a difference that makes a difference and in Luhmann’s triple autopoietic communication-based system theory. Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmaticist semiotics integrates logic and information in interpretative semiotics. But although Peirce’s information theory is built on meaningful signs and he connects information to the growth of symbols, his information theory is empirically based in a realistic worldview, which in the development to modern biosemiotics include all living systems.
Biosemiotics, 2012
This article explores the usefulness of interdisciplinarity as method of enquiry by proposing an investigation of the concept of information in the light of semiotics. This is because, as Kull, Deacon, Emmeche, Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt state, information is an implicitly semiotic term (Biological Theory 4(2):167-173, 2009: 169), but the logical relation between semiosis and information has not been sufficiently clarified yet. Across the history of cybernetics, the concept of information undergoes an uneven development; that is, information is an 'objective' entity in first order cybernetics, and becomes a 'subjective' entity in second order cybernetics. This contradiction relegates the status of information to that of a 'true' or 'false' formal logic problem. The present study proposes that a solution to this contradiction can be found in Deely's reconfiguration of Peirce's 'object' (as found in his triadic model of semiosis) into 'thing' and 'object' (Deely 1981). This ontology allows one to argue that information is neither 'true' nor 'false', and to suggest that, when considered in light of its workability, information can be both true and false, and as such it constitutes an organism's purely objective reality (Deely 2009b). It is stated that in the process of building such a reality, information is 'motivated' by environmental, physiological, emotional (including past feelings and expectations) constraints which are, in turn, framed by observership. Information is therefore found in the irreducible cybersemiotic process that links at once all these conditions and that is simultaneously constrained by them. The integration of cybernetics' and semiotics' understanding of information shows that history is the analytical principle that grants scientific rigour to interdisciplinary investigations. As such, in any attempt to clarify its epistemological stance (e.g. the semiotic aspect of information), it is argued that biosemiotics does not need only to acknowledge semiotics (as it does), but also cybernetics in its interdisciplinary heritage.
Nets of Information and Computation
idt.mdh.se
This book is dedicated to the memory of two people who most profoundly influenced my worldview: my uncle Anton Dodig, who was the first one to show me the proof of Pythagoras theorem -a magic moment I will never forget, along with his innumerable demonstrations of the effectiveness of logical analysis which taught me the amazing power of reason; and to my mother Jelena whose fascination for chemistry and in particular for experiment inspired my enduring love for scientific exploration.
Entropy, 2010
Both Cybersemiotics and Info-computationalist research programmes represent attempts to unify understanding of information, knowledge and communication. The first one takes into account phenomenological aspects of signification which are insisting on the human experience "from within". The second adopts solely the view "from the outside" based on scientific practice, with an observing agent generating inter-subjective knowledge in a research community. The process of knowledge production, embodied into networks of cognizing agents interacting with the environment and developing through evolution is studied on different levels of abstraction in both frames of reference. In order to develop scientifically tractable models of evolution of intelligence in informational structures from pre-biotic/chemical to living networked intelligent organisms, including the implementation of those models in artificial agents, a basic level language of Info-Computationalism has shown to be suitable. There are however contexts in which we deal with complex informational structures essentially dependent on human first person knowledge where high level language such as Cybersemiotics is the appropriate tool for conceptualization and communication. Two research projects are presented in order to exemplify the interplay of info-computational and higher-order approaches: The Blue Brain Project where the brain is modeled as info-computational system, a simulation in silico of a biological brain function, and Biosemiotics research on genes, information, and semiosis in which the process of semiosis is understood in info-computational terms. The article analyzes differences and convergences of Cybersemiotics and Info-computationalist approaches which by placing focus on distinct levels of organization, help elucidate processes of knowledge production in intelligent agents.
Philosophy of Information, a New Renaissance and the Discreet Charm of the Computational Paradigm
Computing and Philosophy Conference, E-CAP …, 2004
The ontology of each theory is always embedded in natural language with all of its ambiguity. Attempts to automate the communication between different ontologies face the problem of compatibility of concepts with different semantic origins. Coming from different Universes, terms with the same spelling may have a continuum of meanings. The formalization problem met in the semantic web or ontology engineering is thus closely related to the natural language semantic continuum. The emergence of a common context necessary to assure the minimum "common language" is a natural consequence of this process of intense communication that develops in parallel with computationalization of almost every conceivable field of human activity. The necessity of conceptualization of this new global space calls for understanding across the borders of previously relatively independent, locally defined Universes. In that way a need and potential for a new Renaissance, in which sciences and humanities, arts and engineering can reach a new synthesis, has emerged.