CYBERSEMIOTICS AND THE QUESTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

The introduction of this book states its purpose and paradigmatic view point as follows: “The book focuses on relations between information and computation. Information is a basic structure of the world, while computation is a process of the dynamic change of information. In order for anything to exist for an individual, the individual must get information on it, either by means of perception or by re-organization of the existing information into new patterns and networks in the brain.” Though I am supportive of this transdisciplinary endeavor, I will argue that it is only possible if the informational and computational view of what Dodig-Crnkovic (2006) calls the pancomputational/paninformational view is integrated with a Peircean semiotic insight. This needs to be done in order to relate an evolutionary theory of information more realistically to the actual phenomenologically experienced knowing processes and functions in the human social world. It is my view that in order to make such an integration, one needs to include a theory of first person awareness, qualia, signification and the communication of meaning integrated with cybernetic informational and computational theories. I will argue that there is no way to bypass the crucial role of naturally developed and culture-born self-conscious embodied awareness if one wants to arrive at a transdisciplinary theory of information, cognition and communication including language. In short, this is the ambition of making a scientific theory of knowing and knowledge in the form of a cybersemiotics. The question is, if science as we know it can encompass self-consciousness and meaning as causal agents in nature or, rather, encompass the reality