Dear Loet, Pedro and FIS Colleagues, It is very important to take in account the ontological structure of the "information subjects" in the reality. The hierarchy of the intellectual properties is not investigated in deep till now. Who may say that the human brain is one whole but not a very complicated system of small cells and possibly special kinds of bacteria and other micro organisms ? The phenomena of intelligence could not be investigated separately taking in account only one of its realizations. Let remember the very actual scientific area called "Natural Information Technologies". I expect in the future the scientific collegium to recognize special kind of intelligent systems which is seen today - social human-technic systems where the new kind of information subject was established - a society built by connected nodes of human-computer systems. Let remember Nord Africa. I think we made step to the next discussion. It is nice to meet Mark! Friendly regards Krassimir
-----Original Message----- From: Loet Leydesdorff Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 1:14 PM To: 'Pedro C. Marijuan' ; fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] Discussion colophon--James Hannam. Orders and OrderingPrinciples Dear Pedro, I understand that you have some problems with my epistemic stance. Let me try to clarify. Let me go back to Maturana (1978) "The Biology of Language ..." On p. 49, he formulated: " ... so that the relations of neuronal activity generated under consensual behavior become perturbations and components to further consensual behavior, an observer is operationally generated." And furthermore (at this same page): " ... the second-order consensual domain that it establishes with other organisms becomes indistinguishable from a semantic domain." This observer (at the biological level) is able to provide meaning to the information. However, as Maturana argues later in this paper this semantics is different from that of "human super-observers" introduced from p. 56 onwards. My interest is in human super-observers. I consider the latter as psychological systems which are able not only to provide meaning to the observations, but also to communicate meaning. The communication of meaning generates a supra-individual "super-semantic" domain, in which meaning cannot only be provided, but also changed; not in the sense of updated but because of the reflexivity involved. Robert Rosen's notion of anticipatory systems is here important. Dubois (1998) distinguished between incursive and hyper-incursive systems and between weak and strong anticipation. Both psychological observers and interhuman discourses can be considered as strongly anticipatory, that is, they use future states -- discursively and reflexively envisaged -- for the update. Non-human systems do not have this capacity: they learn by adaptation, but not in terms of entertaining and potentially discussing models. Models provide predictions of future states that can be used for updating the persent state of the systems which can entertain these models. Thus, new options are generated. This increases the redundancy; that is, against the arrow of time. Meaning providing already does so, but communication and codification of meaning enhances this process further. Non-human observers (e.g., monkeys) are able to provide meaning and perhaps sometimes to entertain a model, but they are not able to communicate these models. That makes the difference. If models cannot be communicated, they cannot be improved consciously and reflexively. Thus, a non-human may be an observer, but it cannot be a cogito. This makes the psychological system different from the biological. Cogitantes can entertain and discuss models (as cogitata). One of the models, for example, is the one of autopoiesis. Best wishes, Loet Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ -----Original Message----- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 11:29 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] Discussion colophon--James Hannam. Orders and Ordering Principles Dear FIS colleagues, I have some differences about the epistemic stance recently discussed by Karl, Loet (and in part, Joseph, but he looks more as trying to step on "the reality", whatever it is). Basically, their informational subject looks like the abstract, disembodied, non-situated, classical observer, equipped in a Cartesian austerity --and outside, just the Order or maybe the Disorder. My contention is that the epistemology of information science has to give room for non-human "observers", I mean, there is cognition and informational processes (forms of knowledge and intelligence included) in bacteria, living cells in general, non human nervous systems, and in a number of social constructions and institutions ("accounting" processes, specifically the sciences), even at the level of global human society we are living now in an epoch of planetary observation and actuation (eg, climate change) --not to speak only on politics and economics. The micro-macro info flows and knowledge circulation are fascinating epistemic problems of our time, when collectively considered. I have argued in previous messages that a new info "rhetorics" looks necessary, so to prepare the room for a new info epistemology. The problem of the "agent(s)" and the "world(s)", the abstract observer(s) and the real one(s), the necessary disciplinary involvement (particularly of the neurosciences, the "action" strike...) all of this looks very difficult to be handled directly. New way of thinking needed. best wishes ---Pedro PS. NEXT WEEK THE NEW DISCUSSION SESSION BY MARK BURGING ON INFO THEORY WILL BE ANNOUNCED. _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
