Dear Colleagues Pedro wrote:
Actually most of our social exchanges are supradetermined by status, self-image, ambitions, affinity, collective identities, deception, self-deception, attraction, etc. Rather than noise, it is life itself! Haven't we a lot of work to be done in these essential matters? Loet wrote: It seems to me that one can use models from biology to study inter-human communication; but inter-human communication is not alive. The dynamics are non-linear, but probably very different from the dynamics among molecules. Without the individual reflections on perceptions, the social distribution of expectations would not be reproduced. However, one cannot reduce these structural couplings to dependency relations, in my opinion. Christophe wrote: The only point I would disagree with you is the last part of the sentence, as human behavior is much more than life itself. The constraints that humans have to satisfy contain some specificities like valorize ego and limit anxiety. The field of human constraints is not that well understood. Probably because it is closely linked to these mysterious human specificities. So we are looking at a difficult subject: understand information flow within entities that we do not understand. Joseph writes: I think that the pessimism of Loet and Christophe could be helped by looking for dynamic relations at the different levels that are grounded in basic physics and chemistry, namely ones of changing actuality and potentiality. The dynamics are not /the same/, but if they have some common principle, we have something at least to work with. We do take over the biological model in its totality, but that portion of it which applies throughout nature. The couplings (Loet) are probably not simple dependency relations, but interactive relations involving presence and absence, along the lines of Deacon. Christophe is right that we do not understand completely the human entities within which information flow occurs, but the rules (Luhn) they follow are not necessarily totally different or mysterious. Someone with an oversized ego, A, is going to behave accordingly until he runs, inevitably, into some resistance (someone with a bigger ego, B). The subsequent dynamics will follow the same pattern as at lower levels, A's usual behavior will be potentialized at the expense of B's. Under good conditions, the A and B interaction will produce an emergent behavior, AB, in which, however, the original 'egos' have not totally disappeared. If this line is followed, there is not a total, but a minimum continuity in the form of the interactions between non-life and life. Information is in this form. Best, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: Loet Leydesdorff To: fis@listas.unizar.es Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:18 AM Subject: Re: [Fis] social flow Dear colleagues, It seems to me that one can use models from biology to study inter-human communication; but inter-human communication is not alive. The dynamics are non-linear, but probably very different from the dynamics among molecules. For example, counterfactual orders can be shaped culturally among us such as the rule of law. This cannot be reduced to biological principles (such as survival of the fittest). The dynamics of expectations are very different from that of historical events. The psychological may be mediating reflexively between the cultural and the biological, with a dynamics of itself. Without the individual reflections on perceptions, the social distribution of expectations would not be reproduced. However, one cannot reduce these structural couplings to dependency relations, in my opinion. Best, Loet Reference: Niklas Luhmann's Magnificent Contribution to the Sociological Tradition: The Emergence of the Knowledge-Based Economy as an Order of Expectations, in: Nachtflug der Eule: 150 Stimmen zum Werk von Niklas Luhmann. Gedenkbuch zum 15. Todestag von Niklas Luhmann (8. Dezember 1927 Lüneburg - 6. November 1998 Oerlinghausen), Magdalena Tzaneva (Ed.). Berlin: LiDi Europe Verlagshaus, 2013; http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2355880 . From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 9:53 PM To: Joseph Brenner; Roly Belfer Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] social flow Dear FIS colleagues, Many thanks for the comments exchanged. Welcome to Roly, the first party of the Xian's conference publishing in the list (I mean concerning the invited speakers, as Bi-Lin who also posted recently was a Xian participant too). I agree with Roli's interpretation and Joseph's points, and also with the direction started by John. It is one of the few times we are producing interesting ideas on social information infrastructures. Perhaps at the time being the "received wisdom" on communication & social information is not working terribly well. For instance, Jakobson six communication functions could be perfectly collapsed into three, or expanded into nine... I have found a similar "relativity" in the not so many approaches to cellular / biological communication. One of the essential points to reconsider is, in my opinion, the lack of connection between communication and life itself. Without entering self-production of the living there can be no sense, no meaning. The notion of information flow (rather than the "signal") has helped me to cohere the cellular intertwining scheme. But, little problem, how can the gap to the human dimension be crossed? Essentially human communication is not logical, but bio-logical... amorphously structured around the advancement of one's life, and that includes masterminding well organized motor apparatuses, as those involved in language production and language interpretation ("cerebellar computation"). Logics is a byproduct of this motor/perceptual system underlying our concepts and the interlinking of our exchnges, which becomes mastermined by the fitness demands within social groups --responding to Bi-Lin's off line comments too. Actually most of our social exchanges are supradetermined by status, self-image, ambitions, affinity, collective identities, deception, self-deception, attraction, etc. Rather than noise, it is life itself! Haven't we a lot of work to be done in these essential matters? best ---Pedro -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- De: Joseph Brenner [joe.bren...@bluewin.ch] Enviado el: jueves, 21 de noviembre de 2013 20:22 Para: Roly Belfer; PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es Asunto: Re: [Fis] social flow Dear Roly, Dear Pedro, Thank you for taking this thread in a for me very interesting direction. As you know, interesting means what I find my logical system can confirm, improve, validate, etc. The two notes share one feature that one might criticize, namely, that they deal essentially with present, conscious material, whereas "information flow" almost by defintion seems to involve components that are absent, potential, unconscious, etc. Similarly, the application of the Square of Opposition in Roly's reference would at first sight appear to be explanatory, but on closer inspection, I find everything reduced back to binary logic, arrows in a box. What has to be added, pace Jakobson, is some notion of the actual dynamics of what Roly calls "a mutual relateable framework". And let's not be too greedy: let's get the pairwise interactions right and then see where we can go with more complex ones. Cheers, Joseph ----- Original Message ----- From: Roly Belfer To: Pedro C. Marijuan Cc: fis@listas.unizar.es Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2013 4:44 PM Subject: Re: [Fis] social flow Dear Pedro Thank you! there is some sort of synchronicity here: I was just recently thinking about Roman Jakobson and his 6 levels of semiotic analysis. Especially the phatic expression, as some kind of white noise that is necessary for the interpersonal informational "handshake". That is, an infosphere - be it organic or more like artificial info networks - would need to have actants operate in a mutually relateable framework (even if it is only pairwise). The meaningless/senseless datum is important for establishing the lines of communication, and perhaps some emergent properties (such as intimacy, grouping, pre-communicative acceptance). Do you know of any quantified work re Jakobson? (I keep this around for different purposes) Best Roly On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es> wrote: Dear FIS colleagues, Just a wandering thought, in part motivated by the highly formal contents of the other discussion track. What are the major contents, topics, and styles in our social, spontaneous exchanges? Seemingly the response is that most of those exchanges are just casual, irrelevant, performed for their own sake. There are scholarly references about that---though our own perusal of social life may quite agree. The information flow, the circulation of social information, becomes the message itself (echoing McLuhan), amorphously gluing the different networks of the social structure... Flowing naturally in spontaneous exchanges and also fabricated and recirculated by the media. Our talkative species needs the daily dose --otherwise mental health resents quite easily. I am these days reading Robert Trivers (2011) on self-deception and how the info flow we are conscious of becomes a highly self-centered concoction for for our own social self-promotion. I think it partially dovetails with the above: "we are the content." best ---Pedro -- ------------------------------------------------- Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ ------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
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