(Herewith Soeren's response, again the server has stopped it (?) From my
part, only saying that we are in polar opposites, so the difficulty
--and interest-- of the exchanges. Anyone can interpret sentences in his
own, but my intention was far from offending: knowledge exchanges are
fun in themselves and should always be fun. OK, I suggest a future fis
discussion session inviting some interesting semiotician --outside our
circle-- so that a lively discussion might be maintained. best --Pedro)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: SV: SV: [Fis] "The Travellers"
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 20:38:24 +0100
From: Søren Brier <sb....@cbs.dk>
To: Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>, fis@listas.unizar.es
<fis@listas.unizar.es>
References:
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<201410270613.s9r6dbm7004...@ortiz.unizar.es>
<CAEvKwyRr06Wg=fzkk+5Dq1Hf3z9=zrgb86dt06pr-43tv2t...@mail.gmail.com>
<ca+nf4cx-m2aul891wg-qrm568tvnrjznneqk+pbcq+pbrry...@mail.gmail.com>
<5450ef85.2060...@aragon.es>
<d98697a7796aed4589385cf99329a76c05c66be...@exchange01.hhk.dk>
<54523d16.4060...@aragon.es>
Dear Pedro
Thank you for your answer. Reading it, I am surprised that you are unable to
see that you are the one starting this discussion with an arrogant tone. I
certainly felt offended by your mail.
Though I am originally a biologist I have come to teach philosophy of science
interdisciplinary and do research in many different paradigms and learned to
consciously reflect on paradigms and methodology and has had to live with the
neglect of these aspect from people within classical educations and research
traditions. But in Denmark it is now obligatory for all students to have a
course in philosophy or theory of science.
What I read out of you answer is, that you are so entranced in the received
view of science (which I was originally educated in) that you do not consider
yourself to be in any kind of paradigm or metaphysics and therefore do not have
to make a conscious reflection and a comparison with the work in other
paradigms, which is of cause an insult to us who have worked with these things
for 30 years and who's work you seem to neglect. Neglecting is a much more
powerful weapon than critique in the world of science - actually the ultimate
one -and then you can top it off by suggesting to leave those paradigms that
has not had your interest anyway and you therefore do not have the proper
knowledge of.
I wonder what the non-insulting meaning of your sentence: "Semiotics could be OK
for the previous generation--something attuned to our scientific times is needed
now." is for a biologist like me who has worked with semiotics for 25 years and
being part of creating the association of biosemiotic studies, which now has it yearly
conference, a journal and a book series with Springer?? A status that FIS has not
achieved yet.
I have known you for a long time and in that period you have shown no interest in
semiotics or commented on any papers and books in biosemiotics or on the relation
between information and what so ever. My own book "Cybersemiotics: Why information
is not enough" is now out in paperback and Kindle and as a Google book .
It has taken me more than 20 years to get a reasonable understanding of
Peirce's semiotic philosophy and why and how I think it offers a more
comprehensive framework for transdisciplinary view of the natural, life, social
and human sciences that is much more fruitful than info-computationalism. So I
am a little impatient with people who discharge Peirce without having studying
him properly. The same goes for Luhmann's systems theory. It is not unusual to
see people discharge theoretical work they have not come to terms with and are
therefore unable to deliver a fruitful critique of on the basis of their own
conception of being in the received view and therefore not having to bother
with other views; which is pretty much my interpretation of your standing.
It is of cause your right to choose your own outlook and peace be with that,
but when you deem research you have not worked with deeply for many years - be
it the theories of Peircean semiotics and information concept or Luhmann or
Ethological theory of cognition - as obsolete, it is certainly insulting for
those who has chosen to work with these theories and have published within them
for more than 20 years against the dominating views, to proceed as if they have
no standing what so ever worth mentioning and it is certainly not supportive
for the fruitful research exchange that FIS is supposed to support.
So I responded to your arrogance with a comparable arrogance.
But now I have given you a little phenomenological insight in my first person
experience and my intersubjective hermeneutical horizon from a long life in
inter- and transdisciplinary work going from physics, chemistry, biology to
comparative psychology, information and library science, first and second
order cybernetics, systems theory and science, information theory and science,
Saussurian semiology as well as Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics from a
philosophy of science view point.
Best wishes
Søren/Soeren
home page with articles: Cybersemiotics.com
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Pedro C. Marijuan [mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es]
Sendt: 30. oktober 2014 14:29
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
Cc: Søren Brier
Emne: Re: SV: [Fis] "The Travellers"
Dear FIS colleagues,
I am responding to a mail from Soeren (below) that, curiously, was retained by
the list filter. Sorry, but some parts of his message are written in a rather
arrogant tone that does not match the unconditionally polite style of our
exchanges. This is a pluralistic list and quite different positions may be
defended, always within appropriate scholarly bounds.
First, my comment on semiotics was as it was --not with the exaggeration
introduced by Soeren. Looking in positive, it is interesting that in the 80's I
also started a PhD thesis on the parallel evolution of neuroanatomy and
behavior, with a pretty strong ethological content, but stopped it as I could
not converge to any relevant outcome. Instead I moved downwards, and started
the informational study of the cell and the evolution of biological information
processing... Later on the approach pleased Michel Conrad, and the rest is part
of fis history.
About my "physicalist" conception of signaling and biological information, I think the two recent papers in BioSystems ("On prokaryotic Intelligence..." and "On eukaryotic Intelligence...") represent an original view that can enrich the current system biology debates on signaling bases of intelligence--or not!, people will tell.
To keep the explanation short, the way cellular life has channeled the energy flow (eg, Morowitz, 1968) versus the channeling of the "information flow" contains lessons for the further deployment of biological and social complexity. In particular, the cellular processual distinction between "metabolite" and "signal" looks fascinating, in human terms it is like reading the newspaper vs, eating a sandwich (it can be found in my recent paper of fis-Moscow, journal Information)...
Not far from these views, engineer Adrian Bejan (2012) has recently proposed a "constructal law" based on the circulation needs of the energy flow in nature and society--could we devise a parallel or complementary scheme for the information flow? Actually Bejan's attempt covers it but rather poorly, at least compared with the depth of the energetic part.
In part, I am frustrated that we have been living the most momentous changes in
the social history of information and at fis have been able to say very little
about. Rather than struggling to achieve the true, monolithic, universal theory
of information, shouldn't we aspire to frame a convivial multi-disciplinary
space where plenty of both APPLIED and theoretical research on informational
entities can be developed and cross-fertilize?
And this is my Second of the week.
Best regards
---Pedro
Søren Brier wrote:
Dear Pedro
This is a wonderful mail revealing all sorts of theoretical views and philosophy of
science prejudices. This one takes the price: " Semiotics could be OK for the
previous generation--something attuned to our scientific times is needed now." The
conclusion is that semiotics is not something new and advanced but old-fashioned and
outdated !!! The Peircean biosemioticians are fooling themselves ! They are not
scientific.
This is a crucial discussion that many of us have with Marcello Barbieri on a somewhat different theoretical platform. But he is wonderfully clear and explicit in his argumentation and always attempting to produce new alternative models and theories, not just arguing from the status quo of science.
I wonder how deep your own understanding of semiotics actually is - especially Peircean semiotics.
Peirce is very naturalistic. Your other price remark arouse this suspicion " of course,
later on Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Eibelsfeldt, etc. were to develop ad hoc theoretical
schemes". As one having written a master dissertation in Lorenz theoretical development of the
ethological paradigm over a period of 30 years and lecturing at the Konrad Lorenz institute and
researched in comparative psychology for three years after that, I must say that your knowledge of
this area of research is very weak. I have used some of the results of this analysis in my book
"Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough". Which you probably have not bothered to
read as you deemed it outdated in its birth and unscientific.
I also wonder what the theoretical framework is for the concept of "signal". Is
it objective information transfer in a Shannon or a Wiener framework? Does it include any
first person experiential aspects and any social meaning aspects? Or is it - as I
suspect - a pure physicalistic approach used for explaining processes on the biological,
the psychological and the social level as well, but ignoring the special qualities of
those compared to the physical level?
Best
Søren
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Fis [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] På vegne af Pedro C.
Marijuan
Sendt: 29. oktober 2014 14:46
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
Emne: Re: [Fis] "The Travellers"
Dear FIS colleagues,
Quite interesting exchanges, really. The discussion reminds me the
times when behaviorism and ethology were at odds on how to focus the
study of human/animal behavior. (Maybe I already talked about that
some months
ago.) On the one side, a rigorous theory and a strongly reductionist point of view
were advanced --about learning, conditioned & unconditioned stimuli, responses,
observation standards, laboratory exclusive scenario, etc. On the other side, it
was observing behavior in nature, approaching without preconceptions and
tentatively characterizing the situations and results; it was the naturalistic
strategy, apprehending from nature before forming any theoretical scheme (of
course, later on Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Eibestfeldt, etc. were to develop ad hoc
theoretical schemes).
How can we develop a theory on signals without the previous naturalistic approach to the involved phenomena? Particularly when the panorama has dramatically changed after the information-biomolecular revolution. We have a rich background of cellular signaling systems, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, to explore and cohere. We have important neuroscientific ideas (although not so well developed). We have social physics and social networks approaches to the social dynamics of information. We should travel to all of those camps, not to stay there, but to advance a soft all-encompassing perspective, later on to be confronted with the new ideas from physics too. The intertwining between self-production and communication is a promising general aspect to explore, in my opinion...
socially and biologically it makes a lot of sense.
Semiotics could be OK for the previous generation--something attuned to our
scientific times is needed now.
best ---Pedro
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias
de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan
Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
-------------------------------------------------
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