CYBERSEMIOTICS
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 792 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
A synthesis of systems theory, second order cybernetics and the semiotics of Charles S. PEIRCE (N. ORT, 2001, p. 155)
The concept has been introduced by S. BRIER (1995, p.3-14). It is closely related to biological and particularly human communication because:
- only organized entities (i.e. systems) are able to communicate
- communication needs of reciprocal observation in a recursive way
- elaborated meanings appear only through recurrent dialogue among living observers
- signs and signals are the “commodities” traded through communication, which would be impossible without this type of “currency”.
BRIER writes: “Cyber-semiotics is based on different view of what a sign — and more specifically a symbol — is than the syntactic denotative concept of cognitive science. It is based on PEIRCE's semiotics ” (p.6). Formerly “the mechanistic idea of reason and knowledge — and of logic , of course - has led to a simplistic understanding of how meaning functions in both language and practice. The mechanicist hopes that the causal interaction of symbols can be explained through their syntactic relations ” (p.5). Of course this implies communication without the bio-neuro-psychological presence of the communicators .
BRIER writes, refering himself to a text of FODOR which basically endorses the mechanicist view as expressed through the recourse to purely syntactic relations : “There are many arguments against this. Mine are from a biological perspective. I do not think that meaning can be fully represented in a syntactic logical form. Meaning is very much tied to biological existence. Two important aspects of this are the dynamics of biological organization in relation both to evolution and to the dynamics of population . The new concepts developed within second-order cybernetics and bio-semiotics , which describe these qualities, are autopoiesis and code -duality. In this paper I want to suggest a combination of these including a semiotic approach. This what I call cyber-semiotics” (p.6).
Thus, cyber-semiotics should be understood as cyber-bio-semiotics, in which the “cyber-” aspect should not be reduced to the purely mechanistic feedbacks of Wienerian original cybernetics.