The transdisciplinary view of information theory from a cybersemiotic perspective

Søren Brier

pp. 23-49

in: Fidelia Ibekwe-San Juan, Thomas M. Dousa (eds), Theories of information, communication and knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

When looking at various information concepts, we discover that they have different theoretical foundations that are almost incommensurable, some in the exact sciences, some in the life sciences, some in the social sciences and some in the humanities. Especially those from the natural sciences attempt to be transdisciplinary and want to encompass the whole area in a sort of unified science without a concept of meaning. I argue that, in order to arrive at a transdisciplinary view of information, meaning, cognition and communication, it is necessary to go beyond the idea that the universe is a computer or even a quantum computer running on qubits. I argue that a pan-informational approach based on a pan-computational ontology, impedes a proper phenomenological theory of quale consciousness and meaningful interpretation. The opposite pole is that of the semiotic and hermenutical paradigms that are based on interpretation, signification and meaning, but with no concepts of objective information. One way of overcoming the incommensurability between paradigms and knowledge areas with different foundations is to produce transdisciplinary frameworks where interdisciplinary connections are made possible by a meta-reframing, where signs, meaning and interpretation are the foundational concepts within which information concepts have to function. I argue that C.S. Peirce's phenomenological, pragmaticist, triadic, and evolutionary concept of semiosis creates a new paradigmatic transdisciplinary framework within which a redefined cybernetic information concept can fit as an important aspect. Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the communicative interactions, partly linguistic, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based.

Cited authors

Peirce Charles Sanders