Re: [Fis] social flow

[PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ]

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 
mailto: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 stru

[Fis] FW: social flow

[Christophe]

Dear Pedro, 

The framework you present is interesting and deserves some comments.

You write: “Without
entering self-production of the living there can be no sense, no meaning”. I
agree. You positions meaning generation with the coming up of life in evolution,
assuming there is no meaning generation in the world of inert matter. But what
is life? The best definition I know: “the sum of the functions by which death
is resisted” [Bichat]. So life is organized around maintaining its nature, 
around
satisfying a “stay alive” constraint (not that circular if you position the
constraint as local vs ubiquist laws). But we should keep in mind that the 
nature
of life is a mystery for today science and philosophy.

Then come humans: “But, little problem, how can the gap to the human dimension
be crossed?" Humans are indeed living entities, but with self-consciousness
and free-will in addition. And these performances also are mysteries for today
science & philosophy. Also comes in language ” amorphously structured around 
the advancement of one's life”. And,  key point: ”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!” 

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. 
The former can indeed feed the
latter but I feel that an evolutionary thread should be explicitly considered in
order to make available a background that we understand. 

(More on this in http://philpapers.org/archive/MENCOI ).

Best

Christophe

From: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
To: joe.bren...@bluewin.ch; avi...@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:52:58 +
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 a

Re: [Fis] social flow

[Loet Leydesdorff]

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] s

Re: [Fis] social flow

[Loet Leydesdorff]

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] s

[Fis] Fw: social flow. Finding correspondences

[Joseph Brenner]

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 &