Cybersemiotics: Why Information Is Not EnoughA 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 framework that encompasses the complex area of information, cognition, and communication science. This 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 much common sense as it is cultured in the humanities and the sciences. Such an epistemological and ontological framework is also developed in this volume. Cybersemiotics not only builds a bridge between science and culture, it provides a framework that encompasses them both. The cybersemiotic 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. |
Contents
Paradigms of Knowledge and Their Role in Deciding What Counts as Legitimate Knowledge | |
3 An Ethological Approach to Cognition | |
4 Batesons Concept of Information in Light of the Theory of Autopoiesis | |
5 A Cybersemiotic Reentry into von Foersters Construction of SecondOrder Cybernetics | |
8 The Cybersemiotic Integration of Umweltlehre Ethology Autopoiesis Theory SecondOrder Cybernetics and Peircean Biosemiotics | |
9 An Evolutionary View on the Threshold between Semiosis and Informational Exchange | |
10 The Cybersemiotic Model of Information Signification Cognition and Communication | |
11 LIS and Cybersemiotics | |
The FiveLevel Cybersemiotic Framework for the Foundation of Information Cognition and Communication | |
Notes | |