Søren Brier

Cybersemiotics: An Evolutionary World View Going Beyond Entropy and Information into the Question of Meaning

Abstract ：What makes Cybersemiotics different from other approaches attempting to produce a transdisciplinary theory of information, cognition and communication is its absolute naturalism, which forces us to view life, consciousness and cultural meaning all as a part of nature and evolution. It thus opposes a number of orthodoxies: 1. The physico-chemical scientific paradigm based on third person objective empirical knowledge and mathematical theory, but with no conceptions of experiental life, meaning and first person embodied consciousness and therefore meaningful linguistic intersubjectivity; 2. The biological and natural historical science approach understood as the combination of genetic evolutionary theory with an ecological and thermodynamic view based on the evolution of experiental living systems as the ground fact and engaged in a search for empirical truth, yet doing so without a theory of meaning and first person embodied consciousness and thereby linguistic meaningful intersubjectivity; 3. The linguistic-cultural-social structuralist constructivism that sees all knowledge as constructions of meaning produced by the intersubjective web of language, cultural mentality and power, but with no concept of empirical truth, life, evolution, ecology and a very weak concept of subjective embodied first person consciousness even while taking conscious intersubjective communication and knowledge processes as the basic fact to study (the linguistic turn); 4. Any approach which takes the qualitative distinction between subject and object as the ground fact, on which all meaningful knowledge is based, considering all result of the sciences including linguistics and embodiment of consciousness as secondary knowledge, as opposed to a phenomenological (Husserl) or actually phaneroscopic (Peirce) first person point of view considering conscious meaningful experiences in advance of the subject/object distinction. The phaneroscopic semiotics includes an intersubjective base as Peirce considers all knowledge as intersubjectively produced through signs and view emotions and qualia as Firstness. The integrative transdisciplinary synthesis of Cybersemiotics starts by accepting

Bateson and Peirce on the Pattern that Connects and the Sacred

Classical mechanicism viewed the world as a self-sufficient machine made by God, but not a part of God or with God’s presence in it. Cybernetics and information theory offers an alternative view on science to classical mechanistic physics with its mind–body dualism or eliminative materialism. The informational cybernetics of Gregory Bateson aims to change the understanding of evolution, ecology, mind and nature and the divine. Bateson developed a conception of God as an immanent informational pattern that connects everything in a cybernetic pantheism. Nevertheless Bateson’s theory of “Steps to an ecology of mind” as cybernetic recursive processes did not include first person experiences and qualia. Peircean semiotics delivers a phenomenological, realistic as well as naturalistic framework. In his hylozoic theory, mind is feeling on the inside and on the outside it can be seen as spontaneity, chance and chaos with a tendency to take habits, which is the law of mind manifesting itself as thoughts. The pantheistic aspect of Peirce’s philosophy is that he sees the evolutionary processes and habits of the universe as evolutionary love. But Since Peirce further argues for an emptiness from where the categories spring, he is a panentheist!

What Does it Take to Produce Interpretation? Informational, Peircean and Code-Semiotic Views on Biosemiotics

This paper presents a critical analysis of code-semiotics, which we see as the latest attempt to create paradigmatic foundation for solving the question of the emergence of life and consciousness. We view code semiotics as a an attempt to revise the empirical scientific Darwinian paradigm, and to go beyond the complex systems, emergence, self-organization, and informational paradigms, and also the selfish gene theory of Dawkins and the Peircean pragmaticist semiotic theory built on the simultaneous types of evolution. As such it is a new and bold attempt to use semiotics to solve the problems created by the evolutionary paradigm’s commitment to produce a theory of how to connect the two sides of the Cartesian dualistic view of physical reality and consciousness in a consistent way.

The cybersemiotic model of communication : An evolutionary model of the threshold between semiosis and informational exchange

Abstract The present paper discusses various suggestions for a philosophical framework for a transdisciplinary information science or a semiotic doctrine. These are: the mechanical materialistic, the pan-informational, the Luhmanian second order cybernetic approach, Peircian biosemiotics and finally, the pan-semiotic approach. The limitations of each are analyzed. The conclusion is that we will not have to choose between a cybernetic-informational and a semiotic approach. A combination of a Peircian-based biosemiotics with autopoiesis theory, second order cybernetics, and information science is suggested in a five-levelled cybersemiotic framework. The five levels are 1) a level of Firstness, 2) a level of mechanical matter, energy, and force as Secondness, 3) a cybernetic and thermodynamic level of information, 4) a level of sign games and 5) a level of conscious language games. These levels are then used to differentiate levels of information systems, sign and language games in human communication. In our model, Maturana and Varelas description of the logic of the living as autopoietic is accepted and expanded with Luhmanns generalization of the concept of autopoiesis to also cover psychological and socio-communicative systems. Adding a Peircian concept of semiosis to Luhmanns theory in the framework of biosemiotics enables us to view the interplay of mind and body as a sign play. I have in a previous publication (see list of references) suggested the term ‘sign play’ pertaining to exosemiotics processes between animals in the same species by stretching Wittgensteins language game concept into the animal world of signs. A new concept of intrasemiotics designates the semiosis of the interpenetration between the biological and psychological autopoietic systems as Luhmann defines them in his theory. I am suggesting a cybersemiotic model to combine these approaches, defining various concepts like thought-semiotics, phenosemiotic and intrasemiotics, combining them with the already known concepts of exosemiotics, ecosemiotics, and endosemiotics into a new view of self-organizing semiotic processes in living systems. Thus a new semiotic level of description is generated, where mind-body interactions can be understood on the same description level. This is the direction suggested to work in to create a broad philosophy of information, cognitive, and communication science that makes it possible for us to see the different approaches not as mutually exclusive, but rather as mutually complementary in accepting an ontology where reality do have structures and processes, but the foundation is hyper-complex and therefore not to be reduced by any knowledge system.

The construction of information and communication: A cybersemiotic reentry into Heinz von Foerster's metaphysical construction of second-order cybernetics

Abstract This article praises the development of second order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana, and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the bio-psychological foundation of the dynamics of information, cognition, and communication. Luhmanns development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The triple autopoietic differentiation between biological, psychological, and social-communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Finally, the paper shows that second order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning, and a concept of signs. C. S. Peirces theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown, through Varelas development of Spencer Browns ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a dynamic triadic categorical structure, that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a Cybersemiotics.

Information seen as part of the development of living intelligence: the five leveled Cybersemiotic framework for FIS

It is argued that a true transdisciplinary information science going from physical information to phenomenological understanding needs a metaphysical framework. Three different kinds of causality are implied: efficient, formal and final. And at least five different levels of existence are needed: 1. The quantum vacuum fields with entangled causation. 2. The physical level with is energy and force-based efficient causation. 3. The informational-chemical level with its formal causation based on pattern fitting. 4. The biological-semiotic level with its non-conscious final causation and 5. The social-linguistic level of self-consciousness with its conscious goal-oriented final causation. To integrate these consistently in an evolutionary theory as emergent levels, neither mechanical determinism nor complexity theory are sufficient because they cannot be a foundation for a theory of lived meaning. C. S. Peirces triadic semiotic philosophy combined with a cybernetic and systemic view, like N. Luhmanns, could create the framework I call Cybersemiotics.

Cybersemiotics and the Reasoning Powers of the Universe: Philosophy of Information in a Semiotic-Systemic Transdisciplinary Approach

To follow the transdisciplinary ambition in much information science and philosophy leading to cognitive science we need to include a phenomenological and hermeneutical ground in order to encompass a theory of interpretative meaning and signification to achieve a transdisciplinary theory of knowing and communication. This is also true if we start in cybernetics and system theory that also have transdisciplinary aspirations for instance in Batesons ecological concept of information as a difference that makes a difference and in Luhmann’s triple autopoietic communication-based system theory. Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmaticist semiotics integrates logic and information in interpretative semiotics. But although Peirce’s information theory is built on meaningful signs and he connects information to the growth of symbols, his information theory is empirically based in a realistic worldview, which in the development to modern biosemiotics include all living systems.

Cybersemiotics: A New Foundation for a Transdisciplinary Theory of Consciousness, Cognition, Meaning and Communication

The modern evolutionary paradigm combined with phenomenology forces us to view human consciousness as a product of evolution as well as accept humans as observers from the ‘inside of the universe’. The knowledge produced by science has first-person embodied consciousness combined with second-person meaningful communication in language as a prerequisite for third-person fallibilist scientific knowledge. Therefore, the study of consciousness forces us theoretically to encompass the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities in one framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, viewing the conscious lifeworld with its intentionality as well as the intersubjectivity of culture as a part of nature. But the sciences are without concepts of qualia; will and meaning and the European phenomenological-hermeneutic ‘sciences of meaning’ do not have an evolutionary foundation. It is therefore interesting that C.S. semiotics—in its modern form of a biosemiotics—was based on an evolutionary thinking and ecology of sign webs. But Cybersemiotics shows that it is also necessary to draw on our knowledge, from science and the technologically founded information sciences, systems theory and cybernetics to obtain a true transdisciplinary theory.

Information in Biosemiotics: Introduction to the Special Issue

Although semiotics emerged in efforts to scientifically investigate how signs function in language and culture, the 20 century has witnessed efforts to extend semiotic theory into the non-cultural realm, primarily in relation to living systems and computers. Resulting developments have been deployed to extend the scope of semiotics from strictly cultural communication to a “Biosemiotics” that encompasses communication of all living systems from the inside of cells to the whole biosphere. Biosemiotics is thus a research program that attempts to unite the areas of nature, mind, language, human consciousness and society in an evolutionary framework, and which tries to explain the qualitative differences between these as levels of emerging qualities, and to extrapolate its consequence for science and our anthropology. The science of signs, semiotics, has always been deeply intertwined with the concepts and issues of a broadly-conceived information science, including such concepts as communication, signals, codes, interpretation, and most especially “information” itself. But the concept of information and information science have their own history apart form the concept of sign and semiosis. Indeed, the mathematical concept of information is deeply rooted in the history and philosophy of science, where it has played a key role in changing a mechanistic foundation into one more compatible with evolutionary views of the universe. In his Critique of Practical Judgment, Kant realized that on the basis of a mechanical science of nature such as that of Newton, a proper theory of life could not be developed. Rather, living beings must, in Kant’s view, be understood as self-organized autonomous systems. Kant Biosemiotics (2013) 6:1–7 DOI 10.1007/s12304-012-9151-7

Ficta: remixing generalized symbolic media in the new scientific novel

This article analyzes the use of fictionalization in popular science communication as an answer to changing demands for science communication in the mass media. It concludes that a new genre—Ficta—arose especially with the work of Michael Crichton. The Ficta novel is a fiction novel based on a real scientific problem, often one that can have or already does have serious consequences for our culture or civilization. The Ficta novel is a new way for the entertainment society to reflect on scientific theories, their consequences and meaning. Jurassic Park is chosen for an in-depth analysis in order to bring out the essential characteristics of Ficta, showing how its reflections on complexity, fractals, self-reference, non-linearity and unpredictability in science transform our view of scientific knowledge as being the tool for deterministic control into a second order reflection on complexity and the limits of control and predictability.