Dear FIS colleagues,

The recent messages from Joe, Stan, and  Bob Ulanowicz (and many 
previous ones), with whom I wholeheartedly agree, may evidence that "the 
making of a new theory rarely occurs in isolation. Rather it depends on 
the support of colleagues, social networks and interactions within the 
scientific community, as well as the power of the theory itself." (Berry 
& Browne, 2008, about Darwin and Wallace confluence, or Charlie and 
Fred). Well, the ongoing discussion on categorization may demand a new 
metaphysics (as Joe & Bob have pointed), however given that factually 
any discipline becomes "metaphysical" when contemplated from the vantage 
point of another sufficiently distant discipline, I would claim that the 
pretended info science we seek becomes per se a new metaphysics --and 
further, that any advancement on our individual-social processes of 
categorization might preferentially come from taking support on the 
action-perception cycle that relevant neuroscientists claim as the 
foundations of our "automated cognition".

Neuroscientist J. Fuster was recently advocating the "cognit" 
substituting for the "concept". Any cognit, (also following Collins & 
Marijuan), would have "two ears" or two sides to be handled from:  the 
motor side and the perceptual side, always one of them playing a dominat 
part... Applied to language, this means that any pure "noun" category 
would inevitably be surrounded by a shadow of multiple related actions, 
and any "verb" would be surrounded by a shadow of potentially 
subordinated objects to be applied. The very neural programs to organize 
motor action take care of the loops or trajectories among the nodes and 
the networks of these cognits, organized by dominance and later on 
subject to grammar and logical refined constraints. But in our social 
linguistic games we continue to use this mixed, inner nature of our 
cognit/categories for metaphors, games of words, jokes, etc. Contexts 
delimitate very well what partial shadows are permissible and survive in 
order to create the ad hoc meaning.

Along the advancement of science we have arranged meaning construction 
in a rigorous way. Explicit logics (and writing!) have somehow dispersed 
all the shadows and have left but the pure categorical abstractions. At 
the same time, mathematical constructions have completely substituted 
for "action", working as a sort of "universal virtual constructor". 
Together with logics, they have created new forms of relating perception 
and action, new realms to configure social meanings as experimental 
knowledges---terrific ones in order to explore and to simulate nature, 
create technologies, etc. Paradoxically, by killing the cognits' inner 
shadows, they have really left in the shadow the individual and 
collective processes related to the "meaning" part: limitations of the 
individual, formulation and circulation of ideas, discussions, 
consensus, meetings and congresses, disciplinary "tribes"...

If the extent to which these expostulations have a grain of truth, it 
would also be part of the mission of info science to cast light upon all 
those shadows, to try to enlarge and re-naturalize categorization and 
logics, to throw a helping hand for a better social use of the stock of 
knowledge beyond mere pragmatics (those formidable 7.000 disciplinary 
fields to combine and recombine) , etc.

best regards

Pedro

PS. From Stan, "Hierarchy theorists propose.. that higher levels make 
ensemble representations of lower level configurations, while lower 
levels are affected by higher level informational constraints in the 
form of impinging boundary conditions."  It is really intriguing; would 
it apply to the division of work among the cells in a multicell 
organism? Who is lower and higher level there? Is the neuron "higher 
level" than the hepatocist, the brain than the liver?
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