[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Louis H Kauffman]

Dear Mark,
1. The way we think is part of how Nature works.
2. Thought is not separate from our contact with Nature.
3. Concept arises in the integration of thought and percept.
4. Thought is singular in that thought can be the object of thought and this 
becomes a place where subject and object are coalesced.
5. The fusion of thought with itself is the place from which we can understand 
the fusion of ourselves with Nature in a unity that precedes 
the apparent distinctions that we take for granted.
Best,
Lou K.

> On Apr 3, 2016, at 3:49 AM, Mark Johnson  wrote:
> 
> Dear Soren, Lou and Loet,
> 
> I can appreciate that Bateson might have had it in for hypnotists and
> missionaries, but therapists can be really useful! Had Othello had a
> good one, Desdemona would have lived – they might have even done some
> family therapy!
> 
> More deeply, Bateson’s highlighting of the difference between the way
> we think and the way nature works is important. How can a concept of
> information help us to think in tune with nature, rather than against
> it?
> 
> Loet’s description of social systems as encoded systems of
> expectations within which selections are made is helpful. A concept of
> information is such a selection. But we live in a world of finite
> resources and our expectations form within what appear to be real
> limits: Othello saw only one Desdemona. Similarly, there appears to be
> scarcity of food, money, shelter, safety, education, opportunity for
> ourselves and for our children upon whose flourishing we stake our own
> happiness. These limits may be imagined or constructed, but their
> effects are real to the point that people will risk their lives
> crossing oceans, fight and kill for them. This is a result of how we
> think: it leads to hierarchy, exclusion and the production of more
> scarcity. Nature appears not to work like this.
> 
> If we accept that the way we think is fundamentally different from the
> way nature works, how might a concept of information avoid
> exacerbating the pathologies of human existence? Wouldn’t it just turn
> us into information bible-bashers hawking our ideas in online forums
> (because universities are no longer interested in them!)? Would new
> metrics help? Or would that simply create new scarcity in the form of
> a technocratic elite? Or maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree. Maybe
> it’s not “information” at all (whatever that is) – or maybe it’s “not
> information”.
> 
> I like “not information” as the study of the constraints within which
> our crazy thinking takes place because it continually draws us back to
> what isn't thought. Without wanting to bash any bibles, Bateson got
> this - see for example the chapter in Steps on "A Re-examination of
> Bateson's Rule". Good therapists get it too. I don't know Peirce well
> enough... Which leads me to a question: “What are the criteria for a
> good theory of information?”
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Mark
> 
> On 3 April 2016 at 07:50, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:
>> Dear Soren,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In my opinion, there are two issues here (again J ):
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 1. the issue of non-verbal (e.g., bodily) communication;
>> 
>> 2. the meta-biological or transdisciplinary integration vs. the
>> differentiation among the disciplines.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ad 1. Although I don’t agree with Luhmann on many things, his insistence
>> that everything communicated among humans is culturally coded, is fully
>> acceptable to me. “Love” is not a counter-example. Unlike animals, our
>> behavior is regulated by codes of communication. Preparing "Love” as a
>> passion, Luhmann spent months in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris reading
>> the emergence of romantic love in the literature of the early 18th century.
>> A similar intuition can be found in Giddens’ book “The Transformation of
>> Intimacy”. Of course, one sometimes needs bodily presence; Luhmann uses here
>> the concept of “symbiotic mechanisms”; but this is only relevant for the
>> variation. The selection mechanisms – which impulses are to be followed –
>> are cultural. Among human beings, this means: in terms of mutual and/or
>> shared expectations. The realm of expecting the other to entertain
>> expectations, shapes a “second contingency” which is otherwise absent in the
>> animal kingdom. (If you wish, you can consider it as a function of the
>> cortex as a symbiotic mechanism.)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> This special status of human society should make us resilient against using
>> biological metaphors. Socio-biology has a terrible history since it links
>> social processes with evolutionary ones. The rule of law, however, protects
>> us against “survival of the fittest” as a structure of expectations. One
>> cannot define “the fittest” without using one (coded!) vocabulary or
>> another, and these vocabularies (discourses; Foucault) can be different; but
>> always disciplining. The codes function as selection mechanisms different
>> from an 

[Fis] _ Re: _ Re: _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Stanley N Salthe]

All --  There is the World, and there is Nature, our model of the world.
Nature is based in (usually one kind of) logic, even though there is scant
evidence that the world operates only or mostly logically. The evidence
that there is is found in successful applications of engineering and
technology, leaving most aspects of the world (including much of human
mentality) un-modeled. Information is a logical notion. It exists in (as I
see it) three levels in a subsumptive hierarchy -- {variety {choice
{interpretation/effect}}}. So information is part of our model of the
world. Since our species has been (almost excessively) successful, we can
be assured that the world does have logical properties, to which our
mentality has become adapted. However, aspects of the world that are (one
might say) ‘illogical’ appear to be closing in upon us. These aspects
include, I think, what Søren is trying to capture in his thinking.

STAN

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 4:49 AM, Mark Johnson  wrote:

> Dear Soren, Lou and Loet,
>
> I can appreciate that Bateson might have had it in for hypnotists and
> missionaries, but therapists can be really useful! Had Othello had a
> good one, Desdemona would have lived – they might have even done some
> family therapy!
>
> More deeply, Bateson’s highlighting of the difference between the way
> we think and the way nature works is important. How can a concept of
> information help us to think in tune with nature, rather than against
> it?
>
> Loet’s description of social systems as encoded systems of
> expectations within which selections are made is helpful. A concept of
> information is such a selection. But we live in a world of finite
> resources and our expectations form within what appear to be real
> limits: Othello saw only one Desdemona. Similarly, there appears to be
> scarcity of food, money, shelter, safety, education, opportunity for
> ourselves and for our children upon whose flourishing we stake our own
> happiness. These limits may be imagined or constructed, but their
> effects are real to the point that people will risk their lives
> crossing oceans, fight and kill for them. This is a result of how we
> think: it leads to hierarchy, exclusion and the production of more
> scarcity. Nature appears not to work like this.
>
> If we accept that the way we think is fundamentally different from the
> way nature works, how might a concept of information avoid
> exacerbating the pathologies of human existence? Wouldn’t it just turn
> us into information bible-bashers hawking our ideas in online forums
> (because universities are no longer interested in them!)? Would new
> metrics help? Or would that simply create new scarcity in the form of
> a technocratic elite? Or maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree. Maybe
> it’s not “information” at all (whatever that is) – or maybe it’s “not
> information”.
>
> I like “not information” as the study of the constraints within which
> our crazy thinking takes place because it continually draws us back to
> what isn't thought. Without wanting to bash any bibles, Bateson got
> this - see for example the chapter in Steps on "A Re-examination of
> Bateson's Rule". Good therapists get it too. I don't know Peirce well
> enough... Which leads me to a question: “What are the criteria for a
> good theory of information?”
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mark
>
> On 3 April 2016 at 07:50, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:
> > Dear Soren,
> >
> >
> >
> > In my opinion, there are two issues here (again J ):
> >
> >
> >
> > 1. the issue of non-verbal (e.g., bodily) communication;
> >
> > 2. the meta-biological or transdisciplinary integration vs. the
> > differentiation among the disciplines.
> >
> >
> >
> > Ad 1. Although I don’t agree with Luhmann on many things, his insistence
> > that everything communicated among humans is culturally coded, is fully
> > acceptable to me. “Love” is not a counter-example. Unlike animals, our
> > behavior is regulated by codes of communication. Preparing "Love” as a
> > passion, Luhmann spent months in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris
> reading
> > the emergence of romantic love in the literature of the early 18th
> century.
> > A similar intuition can be found in Giddens’ book “The Transformation of
> > Intimacy”. Of course, one sometimes needs bodily presence; Luhmann uses
> here
> > the concept of “symbiotic mechanisms”; but this is only relevant for the
> > variation. The selection mechanisms – which impulses are to be followed –
> > are cultural. Among human beings, this means: in terms of mutual and/or
> > shared expectations. The realm of expecting the other to entertain
> > expectations, shapes a “second contingency” which is otherwise absent in
> the
> > animal kingdom. (If you wish, you can consider it as a function of the
> > cortex as a symbiotic mechanism.)
> >
> >
> >
> > This special status of human society should make us resilient against
> using
> > biological metaphors. 

[Fis] _ RE: _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Christophe]

Dear Soren,
Thanks for these details on the Peircean approach.
You write that ‘the concept of experience and meaning does not exist in the 
vocabulary of the theoretical framework of natural sciences'.
Would you consider the modeling of meaning generation (MGS in previous post) 
and the linking of intentionality to meaning generation (2015 Gatherings 
presentation http://philpapers.org/rec/MENBAM-2) as introducing such a 
framework ?

[http://philpapers.org/assets/raw/philpapers-plus250.jpg]

Christophe Menant, Biosemiotics, Aboutness, Meaning and 
...
philpapers.org
The management of meaningful information by biological entities is at the core 
of biosemiotics [Hoffmeyer 2010]. Intentionality, the ‘aboutness’ of mental 
states ...




Looking at another part of your presentation, you write.

My conclusion is therefore that a broader foundation is needed in order to 
understand the basis for information and communication in living systems. 
Therefore we need to include a phenomenological and hermeneutical ground in 
order to integrate a theory of interpretative/subjective and intersubjective 
meaning and signification with a theory of objective information, which has a 
physical grounding (see for instance Plamen, Rosen & Gare 2015). Thus the 
question is how can we establish an alternative transdisciplinary model of the 
sciences and the humanities to the logical positivist reductionism on one hand 
and to postmodernist relativist constructivism on the other in the form of a 
transdisciplinary concept of Wissenschaft (i.e. “knowledge creation”, implying 
both subjectivism and objectivism)? The body and its meaning-making processes 
is a complex multidimensional object of research that necessitates 
trans-disciplinary theoretical approaches including biological sciences, 
primarily biosemiotics and bio-cybernetics, cognition and communication 
sciences, phenomenology, hermeneutics, philosophy of science and philosophical 
theology (Harney 2015, Davies & Gregersen 2009).

I’m not sure that introducing ‘the basis for information and communication in 
living systems’ should be done by referring to complex notions like 
phenomenology, hermeneutics, inter-subjectivity or philosophical theology.
The relations of most animals with their environment can be addressed in quite 
simple terms. A paramecium avoiding a drop of acid or a mouse escaping a cat 
can be modeled quite simply (see previous post). Of course it is pretty obvious 
that an elaborated philosophical vocabulary comes as a needed tool for the 
human living system where complex characteristics like self-consciousness and 
free will are to be considered. But using such a vocabulary for basic life may 
run against an evolutionary framework which looks to me as mandatory when 
addressing information and communication in living systems.
Animals and humans are at different levels of living complexity. They should be 
differentiated in terms of meaning generation as they are not submitted to the 
same constraints. And an evolutionary thread looks as naturally introducing 
such a differentiation in terms of increasing complexity.
But perhaps you want to include such a differentiation in your approach.
Pls let us know
Best
Christophe


De : Søren Brier 
Envoyé : samedi 2 avril 2016 00:43
À : 'Christophe'
Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
Objet : SV: [Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS


Dear Christophe



I agree in your argument that where we should rather focus  on the natures of 
life and of consciousness.



This is also where I have been going with my research on Peircean biosemiotics  
and the development of Cybersemiotics. Let me make a first introduction to how 
Peirce formulate a different approach. If you then want I can go into further 
detail. References can be  found in the long version of my target article.



Many analytical philosophers of science might argue that meaning and experience 
are not central notions while truth, objectivity, scientific method, 
observation, theory, etc are (Carnap 1967, Bar-Hillel and Carnap’ s (1953) and  
Bar-Hillel (1964)). In the view of many researchers this is seen as due to a 
lack of accept of phenomenology and hermeneutics (for instance Plamen, Rosen & 
Gare 2015 and Brier 2010). Husserl’s early phenomenology had a problem with 
getting out to the outer world (Harney 2015), where Peirce develops his 
pragmaticism as a way to unite empirical research, meaning and experience 
(Ransdell,1989). His phaneroscopy makes it clear that his ontology is not only 
materialistic science using only mechanistic explanatory models but does also 
include meaning through embodied interaction through experiential living bodies 
and thereby the social as well as the subjective forms of cognition, meaning 
and interpretation (Brier 2015 a+b).

Thereby Peirce goes further than Popper’s (1978) view of the 

[Fis] _ MODERATION NOTE

[pedro marijuan]

Participants are kindly reminded that only two messages per week are allowed. 
BlackBerry de movistar, allí donde estés está tu oficin@

-Original Message-
From: Louis H Kauffman 
Sender: Fis 
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 00:18:08 
To: fis
Cc: Søren Brier
Subject: [Fis] _ Re:  _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

Dear Soren,
Excellent!
What it amounts to is that you and I interpret all this a bit differently.
I am happy with Bateson’s unmarked states and his 
"All that is 
for the preacher
> The hypnotist, therapist and missionary
> They will come after me
> And use the little that I said
> To bait more traps
> For those who cannot bear
> The lonely
> Skeleton
>of Truth”
Best,
Lou


> On Apr 2, 2016, at 9:18 PM, Søren Brier  wrote:
> 
> Dear Lou
>  
> I did red these very nice metalogues, but these are not the philosophy of 
> science conceptual network underlying the real theory:
> For Bateson, mind is a cybernetic phe­nomenon, a sort of mental ecology. The 
> mental ecology relates to an ability to register differen­ces and is an 
> intrin­sic system property. The elementary, cyberne­tic system with its 
> messages in circuits is the simplest mental unit, even when the total system 
> does not include living organ­isms. Every living system has the following 
> charac­teristics that we generally call men­tal:
> 1. The system shall operate with and upon differences.
> 2. The system shall consist of closed loops or networks of path­ways a­long 
> which differ­ences and transforms of dif­fer­ences shall be trans­mitted. 
> (What is transmitted on a neuron is not an impulse; it is news of a 
> difference).
> 3. Many events within the system shall be energized by the respon­ding ­part 
> rather than by impact from the trig­gering part.
> 4. The system shall show self‑corrective­ness in the direc­tion of 
> home­ostasis and/or in the direction of runaway. Self-correc­tiveness implies 
> trial and error.
> (Bateson 1973: 458)
> 
> Mind is synonymous with a cybernetic system that is compri­sed of a total, 
> self-correc­ting unit that prepares infor­mation. Mind is imma­nent in this 
> wholeness. When Bateson says that mind is immanent, he means that the mental 
> is immanent in the entire system, in the complete message circuit. One can 
> therefore say that mind is immanent in the circuits that are complete inside 
> the brain. Mind is also immanent in the greater cir­cuits, which complete the 
> system “brain + body.” Finally, mind is imma­nent in the even greater system 
> “man + environ­ment” or - more generally - “orga­nism + environment,” which 
> is identical to the elementary unit of evo­lution, i.e., the thinking, acting 
> and deciding agent:
> The individual mind is immanent, but not only in the body. It is imma­nent 
> also in pathways and messages outsi­de the body; and there is a larger Mind, 
> of which the individual is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is com­parable 
> to God and is perhaps what some people mean by “God,” but it is still 
> immanent in the total inter-con­nec­ted social system and planetary ecology. 
> Freud­ian psychology expanded the concept of mind inward to in­clude the 
> whole communi­cation system within the body - the auto­nomic, the habitual 
> and the vast range of uncons­cious processes. What I am saying expands mind 
> outward. And both of these changes reduce the scope of the cons­cious self. A 
> certain humility becomes appropri­ate, tem­pered by the dignity or joy of 
> being part of something bigger. A part -- if you will -- of God.
> (Bateson 1973: 436-37).
> 
> Bateson’s cybernetics thus leads towards mind as immanent in both animate and 
> inanimate nature as well as in culture, because mind is essentially the 
> informational and logical pattern that connects everything through its 
> virtual recursive dynamics of differences and logical types. The theory is 
> neither idealistic nor materialistic. It is informational and 
> functionalistic[1] .Norbert Wiener (1965/1948) has an 
> objective information concept, which Bateson develops to be more relational 
> and therefore more ecological. He develops a cybernetic concept of mind that 
> includes humans and culture. Bateson’s worldview seems biological. He sees 
> life and mind as coexisting in an ecological and evolutionary dynamic, 
> integrating the whole biosphere. Bateson clearly sympathizes with the 
> etholo­gists (Brier 1993, 1995) when he resists the positivistic split 
> between the rational and the emotional in lan­guage and thinking that is so 
> important for cognitive science. He acknowledges emotions as an important 
> cognitive process:
> It is the attempt to separate intel­lect from emotion that is mons­trous, and 
> I suggest that it is equally monstrous -- and dangerous -- to attempt to 
> 

Re: [Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Dear Soren, 

 

In my opinion, there are two issues here (again J ):

 

1. the issue of non-verbal (e.g., bodily) communication; 

2. the meta-biological or transdisciplinary integration vs. the
differentiation among the disciplines.

 

Ad 1. Although I don't agree with Luhmann on many things, his insistence
that everything communicated among humans is culturally coded, is fully
acceptable to me. "Love" is not a counter-example. Unlike animals, our
behavior is regulated by codes of communication. Preparing "Love" as a
passion, Luhmann spent months in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris reading
the emergence of romantic love in the literature of the early 18th century.
A similar intuition can be found in Giddens' book "The Transformation of
Intimacy". Of course, one sometimes needs bodily presence; Luhmann uses here
the concept of "symbiotic mechanisms"; but this is only relevant for the
variation. The selection mechanisms - which impulses are to be followed -
are cultural. Among human beings, this means: in terms of mutual and/or
shared expectations. The realm of expecting the other to entertain
expectations, shapes a "second contingency" which is otherwise absent in the
animal kingdom. (If you wish, you can consider it as a function of the
cortex as a symbiotic mechanism.)

 

This special status of human society should make us resilient against using
biological metaphors. Socio-biology has a terrible history since it links
social processes with evolutionary ones. The rule of law, however, protects
us against "survival of the fittest" as a structure of expectations. One
cannot define "the fittest" without using one (coded!) vocabulary or
another, and these vocabularies (discourses; Foucault) can be different; but
always disciplining. The codes function as selection mechanisms different
from an assumed "nature". (Inga Ivanova used the term "fractional
manifold".) The selection mechanisms are also coordination mechanisms; their
differentiation enables us to process more complexity.

 

2. As Krippendorff once emphasized, one should be suspicious about using the
word "system" in this context because it entails a biological metaphor of
integration and wholeness. Because the codes tend to differentiate and thus
to generate misunderstandings (variation), the social system can process
complexity by an order of magnitude more than any biological system. The
notion of "system" tends to reify, whereas in sociological theorizing it is
important to keep a firm eye on the second contingency of interacting
expectations. The clarification of misunderstandings, for example, enables
us to solve problems; sometimes one may need to invent new metaphors and
words. From this perspective, the sciences can be considered as rationalized
systems of expectations which operate in terms of codes retained above the
individual level. (Note that this is different from belief structures - cf.
the sociology of scientific knowledge of Bloor and Barnes -- because beliefs
remain attributes to agents of communities of agents.)

 

"Transdisciplinary integration" may be needed for one's internal well-being
(or soul), but it can be expected to remain a local instantiation. Since we
decapitated the ointed body of the King of France, there is no center left
(Lyotard). One may feel a need for integration and community. Community is
another coded form of communication (religion?). I provocatively advised my
students to keep that celebration for the Sunday mornings. Aren't we
celebrating our community today?

 

Central to our community is the notion of "information". A mathematical
theory of information (e.g., Shannon) enables us to entertain models that
one can use from one level to another, for testing hypothesis. These models
may come from biology (e.g. Lotka-Volterra), engineering (anticipatory
systems; Dubois), complex systems theory (Simon, Ashby), etc. For example:
can interactions among codes be modeled using Lotka-Volterra? (Ivanova
, 2014; in Scientometrics). The math is not meta, but epi
because the other domains can also be considered as specific domains of
communication. Maturana, for example, argues that a biology is generated
whenever molecules can be communicated (as more complex than atoms exchanged
in a chemistry).

 

3. Let me return to the theme of "love": note the transition from "Love" as
Christ, and thus the only intimate relations (17th century) to love as
passion in interpersonal relations. Here, Husserl is relevant: the
intersubjective is secularized. Luhmann proposed to operationalize this as
communication. In later work (after 1990), Luhmann than moved from the
communication of expectations to "observations". Observations, however,
serve us to update the expectations. The dynamics of expectations are the
proper subject of a sociology. Observations presume observing "systems"; but
it is problematic to consider evolving discourse as a "system" (see above).
The codes in the communication of expectations enable us also