Re: [Fis] DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Mark Johnson]

I'd be interested to know whether "mattering" is considered within
"meaning". I suspect "mattering" is distinct.

thinking aloud

Science isn't just meaningful. It matters to scientists. Perhaps it's
only because it matters to some people, it exists.

Re. meaning, I think the connection between meaning and expectation is
correct. I agree Shannon is helpful for constructing approaches to
explore this. But we expect many things, yet only a few of them really
matter.

There are many varieties of transcendental argument about information
which start from assumed mechanistic properties of nature. Yet we have
no certainty about whether nature's apparent regularities are real or
not - it is conjecture. There does appear to be a kind of "cybernetic
functionalism" (which I think is what Soren is complaining about)
which maintains scepticism about reality at one level, and positivism
at another. Not all cybernetics is culpable of this however. I would
be interested in an approach to information which avoids untestable
assumptions about "natural necessity".

Is there a "personalist" interpretation of information which starts
from concrete personal being (note that 'personal' does not have to
mean "individual": persons well be relations), and does not seek to
reduce personal being to more abstract "foundations"?

From a personalist perspective, information may simply be constraint.
Is the difference between things that matter and things that mean
something differences in relations between constraints? Bateson's
double-bind, which definitely matters to those caught in it, is a
particular dynamics of constraint. Bateson also specified constraint
dynamics in what he called "symmetrical schizmogenesis" (seen in
tit-for-tat engagements, fighting) and "complementary schizmogenesis"
(seen in master slave relations). This is a good start

A question which I don't think Bateson addresses, but maybe Ashby had
an idea about, is what science would look like if we sought agreement
about the constraints which we share rather than our theories about
causation. I don't think that would be a functionalist pursuit.

Best wishes,

Mark







On 9 April 2016 at 11:21, Loet Leydesdorff  wrote:
> Dear Pedro,
>
>
>
> I disagree about putting "meaning" outside the scope of natural sciences.
>
>
>
> I doubt that anybody on this list would disagree about using the metaphor of
> meaning in the natural sciences.
>
>
>
> Maturana (1978, p. 49): “In still other words, if an organism is observed in
> its operation within a second-order consensual domain, it appears to the
> observer as if its nervous system interacted with internal representations
> of the circumstances of its interactions, and as if the changes of state of
> the organism were determined by the semantic value of these representations.
> Yet all that takes place in the operation of the nervous system is the
> structure-determined dynamics of changing relations of relative neuronal
> activity proper to a closed neuronal network.”
>
> http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html#Descriptions
>
>
>
> In other context, Maturana used the concept of “languaging”.
>
>
>
> My point is about the differentia specifica of inter-human communication
> which assumes a next-order contingency of expectations structured by
> “horizons of meaning” (Husserl). One needs a specific (social-science) set
> of theories and methods to access this domain, in my opinion. In concrete
> projects, one can try to operationalize in terms of the information sciences
> / information theory. One can also collaborate “interdisciplinarily” at the
> relevant interface, notably with the computer sciences. The use of metaphors
> in other disciplines, however,  cannot be denied.
>
>
>
> This is just a reaction; I had one penny left this week. J
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Loet
>
>
>
>
> ___
> Fis mailing list
> Fis@listas.unizar.es
> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
>



-- 
Dr. Mark William Johnson
Institute of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
University of Liverpool

Visiting Professor
Far Eastern Federal University, Russia

Phone: 07786 064505
Email: johnsonm...@gmail.com
Blog: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com

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[Fis] 答复: _ RE: _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[zhou liqian]

Dear Søren and FIS colleagues,

I love your talks as usual and agree with your points that we should treat 
first person perspective (e.g. meaning, experience, consciousness) as serious 
as third person perspective. However, I wonder the relationships between the 
four perspectives you proposes in your cyber(bio)semiotics stars. Are they 
unifying that there is a unifying way to explain them all from bottom up or top 
down, or just complementary as Bohr's complementary principle?

Best
Zhou Liqian

发件人: Fis  代表 Christophe 

发送时间: 2016年4月7日 11:05
收件人: Søren Brier
抄送: fis@listas.unizar.es
主题: [Fis] _ RE: _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

Dear Soren,
To avoid a possible misunderstanding let me say that the MGS has no ambition to 
reach a ’full Peircean semiotic framework’.
The Meaning Generator System has been designed to introduce what looked to me 
as missing in the young ‘science of cognition’ in the mid 90’s. ‘Meaning’ was a 
key concept without any model for meaning generation in an evolutionary 
perspective. The MGS was designed to fill the gap. At that time I did not know 
about Peirce (was at IBM on very different subjects). Information on Peirce 
work came in later.
The MGS has some compatibility with the Peircean approach as both rely on 
interpretation. But two key points of the MGS are not really present in the 
Peircean framework: the evolutionary story from animals to humans and the 
development of a meaning generation process (Peirce tells about the generated 
meaning (the Interpretant) but does not tell much about a meaning generation 
process (the Interpreter)).
So my question about the MGS as a possible introduction to the concepts of 
meaning and experience is not to be understood as strictly part of the Perceian 
semiotic framework. And the question is still being asked.
Best
Christophe


De : Søren Brier 
Envoyé : mercredi 6 avril 2016 02:04
À : 'Christophe'
Cc : fis@listas.unizar.es
Objet : SV: [Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS


Dear Christophe



Never the less we consider that cats and dogs or dolphins –I have played with 
them all – to have an inner experimental life in order also to support their 
perceptual skills for instance and they have memory and recognition 
capabilities.



I do appreciate that you work with these things and try to move your modelling 
more towards a Peircean biosemiotic paradigm. But in what I have seen from you 
so far I do not think you have moved to a full Peircean semiotic framework.



But even if, then biosemiotics is certainly not (yet?) accepted as a natural 
science, which for instance is the reason that Barbieri left biosemiotics and 
is trying to establish his own code-biology.



But of cause we need to work with growing  amounts and quality of awareness.



Frederick Stjernfelt sometimes with Kalevi Kull and Jesper Hoffmeyer has tried 
to flesh out a hierarchy of semiotics levels in the plant and animal kingdoms 
in several articles.



   Best



 Søren



Fra: Christophe [mailto:christophe.men...@hotmail.fr]
Sendt: 3. april 2016 14:06
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es
Emne: RE: [Fis] _ DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS





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

Re: [Fis] DISCUSSION SESSION: INFOBIOSEMIOTICS

[Francesco Rizzo]

Caro Karl,
la chiamiamo natura, ma è tutta arte. A. Einstein e S. Hawking pensavano
che Dio non giocasse a dadi. Il primo non ha avuto il tempo di ricredersi,
il secondo si. Ha perso una scommessa, circa la non emissione di
informazione da parte dei buchi neri sostenuta nel 1975, dopo (2004-5) ha
dovuto ricredersi. Io da economista, non da fisico, secondo il mio processo
di tras-in-forma-azione che ha come "input" (immissione) la materia,
l'energia e l'informazione e come "output"  (emissione) la materia,
l'energia e l'informazione in stato diverso, la pensa(vo) diversamente: ed
ho avuto ragione. La natura non ha bisogno di retorica ed è
ininterrottamente sottoposta ad un processo di trasinformazione a partire
dal "big bang". Nei primi tre vv. della "Genesi", che può condividersi
senza avere alcuna fede religiosa, è scritto: "In principio Dio creò il
cielo e la terra. La terra era informe e deserta e le tenebre ricoprivano
l'abisso e lo spirito di Dio aleggiava sulle acque. Dio disse: 'Sia luce!'.
E la luce fu". In questo processo informazione significa dare o prendere
forma. Quindi l'informazione "non" è il modo che ciò che è il caso si
differenzia da ciò che non il caso, tranne che non si voglia sostituire
caso con caos. Io uso "sfondo e primo piano in concomitanza e gioc(o) con
interferenza tra i due", perché la conoscenza ha fondamenti biologici e
dipende dall'immaginazione umana che si realizza a diversi livelli di
inferenza - da molto astratti a molto concreti -  e in una dinamica
spazio-temporale.
Comunque, non ho la pretesa di possedere alcuna verità. E ascolto e leggo
sempre con attenzione le parole dette e scritte dagli altri. Specialmente
se autorevoli.
Grazie.
Francesco

2016-04-09 18:24 GMT+02:00 Karl Javorszky :

> not in Italian but in full concordance with what Rico ha dito:
> information as a concept lies behind all and each of the ways of looking
> at the world. Whatever the picture, it has a background to it.
> Could it be that a description of the background is common to each and all
> of the pictures one makes of the world?
>
> Rational thinking has always been cautious and only permitted speaking
> about what is clearly delineated. All other is art.
> Now we see that Nature is not that well educated in rhetoric, and makes
> allusions also to that what is the background in our imagination. She
> simply does not use our perspectives and our bifurcations. She uses
> background and foreground concurrently and plays with interferences between
> the two.
>
> The general answer to "and relative to what?" is non-existence as such,
> the background sui generis. That, to which everything else is different,
> just like the thing as such has something common with everything else. The
> general idea of how different a background is to the foreground shown/known
> could well be the root for the concept of information. That what we know,
> what is the case, is no information. Information is how that what is the
> case differs from what is not the case.
> Karl
> On 9 Apr 2016 16:56, "Francesco Rizzo" <13francesco.ri...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Cari Tutti,
>> il concetto o significato di informazione è unico, quel che varia è il
>> modo di qualificarlo o quantificarlo in ragione dei diversi tipi o
>> categorie di informazione: naturale o termodinamica, genetica, semantica e
>> matematica. E questo lo dico da studioso di economia della scienza o
>> dell'esistenza, non da studioso di esistenza o  della scienza economica.
>> Un abbraccio, non solo fisico, ma anche emo-ra-zionale.
>> Francesco
>>
>> 2016-04-09 12:21 GMT+02:00 Loet Leydesdorff :
>>
>>> Dear Pedro,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I disagree about putting "meaning" outside the scope of natural
>>> sciences.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I doubt that anybody on this list would disagree about using the
>>> metaphor of meaning in the natural sciences.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Maturana (1978, p. 49): “In still other words, if an organism is
>>> observed in its operation within a second-order consensual domain, it
>>> appears to the observer as if its nervous system interacted with internal
>>> representations of the circumstances of its interactions, and as if the
>>> changes of state of the organism were determined by the semantic value of
>>> these representations. Yet all that takes place in the operation of the
>>> nervous system is the structure-determined dynamics of changing relations
>>> of relative neuronal activity proper to a closed neuronal network.”
>>>
>>> http://www.enolagaia.com/M78BoL.html#Descriptions
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In other context, Maturana used the concept of “languaging”.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My point is about the *differentia specifica* of inter-human
>>> communication which assumes a next-order contingency of expectations
>>> structured by “horizons of meaning” (Husserl). One needs a specific
>>> (social-science) set of theories and methods to access this domain, in my
>>> opinion. In concrete projects, one can try to operationalize in terms of
>>> the information