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.

Søren Brier is a professor 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

Foreword: From Cybernetics to Cybersemiotics
MARCEL DANESI

Introduction: The Quest of Cybersemiotics

• I.1 Subject Matter and Aims
• I.2 Approach to Writing and Developing the Argument
• I.3 Technical Points
• I.4 Acknowledgments
• I.5 The Book’s View of the Subject Area and Cybersemiotics: A Summary

1 The Problems of the Information-Processing Paradigm as a Candidate for a Unified Science of Information

• 1.1 The Conflict between Informational and Semiotic Paradigms
• 1.2 Wienerian: Pan-Information
• 1.3 Peircean-Based Pan-Semiotics
• 1.4 The Document-Mediating System
• 1.5 The Technological Impetus for the Development of Information Science
• 1.6 The Development of the Information Processing Paradigm in Cognitive Science
• 1.7 Critique of the Objective Concept of Information in the Information Processing Paradigm
• 1.8 The Problem of Language as the Carrier of Information in Document-Mediating Systems Contents vii
• 1.9 LIS: The Science of Document-Mediating Systems
• 1.10 The Cognitive Perspectives Opening towards a Cybersemiotic Concept of Information in LIS
• 1.11 Aspects That Must Be Further Developed in the Framework of the Cognitive Viewpoint
• 1.12 Analysing the Possibility of an Information Science
• 1.13 The Cybernetic Turn
• 1.14 Peirce’s New List of Categories as the Foundation for a Theory of Cognition and Signification
• 1.15 Conclusion

2 The Self-Organization of Knowledge: Paradigms of Knowledge and Their Role in Deciding What Counts as Legitimate Knowledge

• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.2 Science and the Development of World Formula Thinking
• 2.3 Objectivist Metaphysics
• 2.4 The Turn Away from an Externalist towards an Internalist Realism
• 2.5 Developing a Framework to Understand the Relationships among the Sciences and Other Types of Knowledge
• 2.6 The Role of the Biology of Embodied Knowledge
• 2.7 A Suggestion for a Transdisciplinary Framework for the Conception of Knowledge

3 An Ethological Approach to Cognition

• 3.1 Overview
• 3.2 The Ethological Research Program
• 3.3 A Selective Historical Summary of the Ethological Science Project
• 3.4 The Necessity of a Galilean Psychology
• 3.5 Reventlow’s Theoretical and Methodological Background
• 3.6 The ‘Rependium’: An Attempt to Construct a Fundamental Galilean Concept in Psychology
• 3.7 Limitations to a Galilean Psychology

4 Bateson’s Concept of Information in Light of the Theory of Autopoiesis

• 4.1 The Pattern That Connects
• 4.2 Mind, Information, and Entropy
• 4.3 Autopoiesis, Mind, and Information
• 4.4 The Limits of ‘Bring-Forth-ism’
• 4.5 Information and Negative Entropy
• 4.6 The Problems of Order and Chance in Physics
• 4.7 A Philosophical Reflection on the Concept of Reality in
• Second-Order Cybernetics
• 4.8 On Matter and the Universe as the Ultimate Reality
• 4.9 Conclusions

5 A Cybersemiotic Re-entry Into von Foerster’s Construction of Second-Order Cybernetics

• 5.1 Introduction
• 5.2 From First- to Second-Order Cybernetics
• 5.3 The Ontology of Constructivism and Its Concept of Knowledge
• 5.4 Luhmann’s Theory of Socio-Communicative Systems
• 5.5 Semiosis and Second-Order Cybernetics
• 5.6 Cybersemiotics

6 Foundations of Cybersemiotics

• 6.1 The Complexity View
• 6.2 Peirce’s Philosophical Framework for Semiotics
• 6.3 One, Two, Three … Eternity
• 6.4 Sign Trigonometries and Classes
• 6.5 The Ten Fundamental Sign Classes
• 6.6 The Usefulness of Peirce’s Approach in LIS
• 6.7 Indexing in Light of Semiotics

7 Cognitive Semantics: Embodied Metaphors, Basic Level, and Motivation

• 7.1 Cognitive Semantics
• 7.2 Basic-Level Categorization
• 7.3 Kinaesthetic Image-Schemas
• 7.4 Metaphors, Metonymy, and Radial Structures
• 7.5 Idealized Cognitive Models
• 7.6 The Concept of Motivation in the Theory of Embodied Cognitive Semantics

8 The Cybersemiotic Integration of Umweltlehre, Ethology, Autopoiesis Theory, Second-Order Cybernetics, and Peircean Biosemiotics

• 8.1 The Mechanistic Quest for Basic Order
• 8.2 The Biological-Evolutionary View of the Roots of Cognition
• 8.3 The Cybernetics Theory of Information and Cognition
• 8.4 Luhmann’s Generalization of the Theory of Autopoiesis
• 8.5 The Relevance of Peirce’s Semiotics as a Framework for Biosemiotics
• 8.6 Living Systems as the True Individuals of the World
• 8.7 The Integration of Second-Order Cybernetics, Cognitive Biology (Autopoiesis), and Biosemiotics
• 8.8 Signification Spheres as Umwelten of Anticipation
• 8.9 The Ethological Model of Motivated Cognition Based on a Theory of Feeling
• 8.10 The Ecosemiotics Perspective

9 An Evolutionary View on the Threshold between Semiosis and Informational Exchange

• 9.1 Introduction
• 9.2 The Explanatory Quest of the Sciences since Religion Lost Power
• 9.3 Critique of Current Approaches
• 9.4 The Peircean Theory of Mind
• 9.5 Uniting System Science and Semiotics in a Theory of Evolution and Emergence

10 The Cybersemiotic Model of Information, Signification, Cognition, and Communication

• 10.1 The Cybersemiotic View of Cognition and Communication
• 10.2 Pheno-, Thought-, Endo-, and Intra-semiotics
• 10.3 The Cybersemiotic Model of Biosemiotics
• 10.4 Peirce and Luhmann from a Cybersemiotic Perspective

11 LIS and Cybersemiotics

• 11.1 Indexing and Idealized Cognitive Models
• 11.2 The Need for an Alternative Metatheory to the Information Processing Paradigm in the LIS Context
• 11.3 Indexing and Significance Effect

12 Summing Up Cybersemiotics: The Five-Level Cybersemiotic Framework for the Foundation of Information, Cognition, and Communication

• 12.1 Introduction
• 12.2 The Problem of Meaning
• 12.3 Mind and Reality
• 12.4 The Role of Information
• 12.5 Abduction as a Meaningful Rationality
• 12.6 Summary

Notes

References

Index