Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not Enough!

by Brier, Soren

• ISBN13: 9780802092205
• ISBN10: 0802092209
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-05-10
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

A growing field of inquiry, biosemiotics is a theory of cognition and communication that unites the living and the cultural world. What is missing from this theory, however, is the unification of the information and computational realms of the non-living natural and technical world. Cybersemiotics provides such a framework.By integrating cybernetic information theory into the unique semiotic framework of C. S. Peirce, Søren Brier attempts to find a unified conceptual frame work encompassing the complex area of information, cognition, and communication science. The integration is performed through Niklas Luhmann's autopoietic systems theory of social communication. The link between cybernetics and semiotics is further an ethological and evolutionary theory of embodiment combined with Lakoff and Johnson's 'philosophy in the flesh.' This demands the development of a transdisciplinary philosophy of knowledge: as common sense as well as it is cultured in the humanities and the sciences. Such an epistemological and ontological frame work is also developed in the book.Cybersemiotics not only builds a bridge between science and culture, but it also provides at framework encompassing them both. The Cyber-semiotic framework offers a platform for a new level of global dialogue between knowledge systems including a view of science that does not compete with religion but offers the possibility for mutual and fruitful exchange.

Author Biography

Soren Brier is a professor in semiotics in the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies at the Centre for Language, Cognition, and Mentality, Copenhagen Business School.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xiii
Foreword: From Cybernetics to Cybersemiotics	p. xvii
Introduction: The Quest of Cybersemiotics	p. 3
Subject Matter and Aims	p. 3
Approach to Writing and Developing the Argument	p. 14
Technical Points	p. 15
Acknowledgments	p. 18
The Book's View of the Subject Area and Cybersemiotics: A Summary	p. 20
The Problems of the Information-Processing Paradigm as a Candidate for a Unified Science of Information	p. 35
The Conflict between Informational and Semiotic Paradigms	p. 35
Wienerian: Pan-Information	p. 37
Peircean-Based Pan-Semiotics	p. 41
The Document-Mediating System	p. 44
The Technological Impetus for the Development of Information Science	p. 47
The Development of the Information Processing Paradigm in Cognitive Science	p. 51
Critique of the Objective Concept of Information in the Information Processing Paradigm	p. 59
The Problem of Language as the Carrier of Information in Document-Mediating Systems	p. 69
LIS: The Science of Document-Mediating Systems	p. 75
The Cognitive Perspectives Opening towards a Cybersemiotic Concept of Information in LIS	p. 78
Aspects That Must Be Further Developed in the Framework of the Cognitive Viewpoint	p. 80
Analysing the Possibility of an Information Science	p. 81
The Cybernetic Turn	p. 84
Peirce's New List of Categories as the Foundation for a Theory of Cognition and Signification	p. 94
Conclusion	p. 100
The Self-Organization of Knowledge: Paradigms of Knowledge and Their Role in Deciding What Counts as Legitimate Knowledge	p. 103
Introduction	p. 103
Science and the Development of World Formula Thinking	p. 104
Objectivist Metaphysics	p. 106
The Turn Away from an Externalist towards an Internalist Realism	p. 116
Developing a Framework to Understand the Relationships among the Sciences and Other Types of Knowledge	p. 119
The Role of the Biology of Embodied Knowledge	p. 130
A Suggestion for a Transdisciplinary Framework for the Conception of Knowledge	p. 137
An Ethological Approach to Cognition	p. 147
Overview	p. 147
The Ethological Research Program	p. 150
A Selective Historical Summary of the Ethological Science Project	p. 153
The Necessity of a Galilean Psychology	p. 158
Reventlow's Theoretical and Methodological Background	p. 160
The 'Rependium': An Attempt to Construct a Fundamental Galilean Concept in Psychology	p. 165
Limitations to a Galilean Psychology	p. 169
Bateson's Concept of Information in Light of the Theory of Autopoiesis	p. 174
The Pattern That Connects	p. 174
Mind, Information, and Entropy	p. 177
Autopoiesis, Mind, and Information	p. 179
The Limits of 'Bring-Forth-ism'	p. 181
Information and Negative Entropy	p. 185
The Problems of Order and Chance in Physics	p. 187
A Philosophial Reflection on the Concept of Reality in Second-Order Cybernetics	p. 194
On Matter and the Universe as the Ultimate Reality	p. 199
Conclusions	p. 204
A Cybersemiotic Re-entry Into von Foerster's Construction of Second-Order Cybernetics	p. 207
Introduction	p. 207
From First- to Second-Order Cybernetics	p. 207
The Ontology of Constructivism and Its Concept of Knowledge	p. 210
Luhmann's Theory of Socio-Communicative Systems	p. 234
Semiosis and Second-Order Cybernetics	p. 252
Cybersemiotics	p. 261
Foundations of Cybersemiotics	p. 264
The Complexity View	p. 264
Peirce's Philosophical Framework for Semiotics	p. 268
One, Two, Three ... Eternity	p. 271
Sign Trigonometries and Classes	p. 276
The Ten Fundamental Sign Classes	p. 280
The Usefulness of Peirce's Approach in LIS	p. 284
Indexing in Light of Semiotics	p. 291
Cognitive Semantics: Embodied Metaphors, Basic Level, and Motivation	p. 295
Cognitive Semantics	p. 295
Basic-Level Categorization	p. 298
Kinaesthetic Image-Schemas	p. 302
Metaphors, Metonymy, and Radial Structures	p. 303
Idealized Cognitive Models	p. 305
The Concept of Motivation in the Theory of Embodied Cognitive Semantics	p. 307
The Cybersemiotic Integration of Umweltlehre, Ethology, Autopoiesis Theory, Second-Order Cybernetics, and Peircean Biosemiotics	p. 312
The Mechanistic Quest for Basic Order	p. 312
The Biological-Evolutionary View of the Roots of Cognition	p. 313
The Cybernetics Theory of Information and Cognition	p. 325
Luhmann's Generalization of the Theory of Autopoiesis	p. 328
The Relevance of Peirce's Semiotics as a Framework for Biosemiotics	p. 331
Living Systems as the True Individuals of the World	p. 336
The Integration of Second-Order Cybernetics, Cognitive Biology (Autopoiesis), and Biosemiotics	p. 338
Signification Spheres as Umwelten of Anticipation	p. 342
The Ethological Model of Motivated Cognition Based on a Theory of Feeling	p. 344
The Ecosemiotics Perspective	p. 349
An Evolutionary View on the Threshold between Semiosis and Informational Exchange	p. 352
Introduction	p. 352
The Explanatory Quest of the Sciences since Religion Lost Power	p. 358
Critique of Current Approaches	p. 366
The Peircean Theory of Mind	p. 371
Uniting System Science and Semiotics in a Theory of Evolution and Emergence	p. 381
The Cybersemiotic Model of Information, Signification, Cognition, and Communication	p. 392
The Cybersemiotic View of Cognition and Communication	p. 392
Pheno-, Thought-, Endo-, and Intra-semiotics	p. 395
The Cybersemiotic Model of Biosemiotics	p. 399
Peirce and Luhmann from a Cybersemiotic Perspective	p. 402
LIS and Cybersemiotics	p. 415
Indexing and Idealized Cognitive Models	p. 415
The Need for an Alternative Metatheory to the Information Processing Paradigm in the LIS Context	p. 417
Indexing and Significance Effect	p. 420
Summing Up Cybersemiotics: The Five-Level Cybersemiotic Framework for the Foundation of Information, Cognition, and Communication	p. 425
Introduction	p. 425
The Problem of Meaning	p. 429
Mind and Reality	p. 433
The Role of Information	p. 435
Abduction as a Meaningful Rationality	p. 436
Summary	p. 437
Notes	p. 441
References	p. 453
Index	p. 471
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