Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...

Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal (...) is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information. (shrink)

Providing a new conceptual scaffold for further research in biology and cognition, this book introduces the new field of cognitive biology, a systems biology approach showing that further progress in this field will depend on a deep recognition of developmental processes, as well as on the consideration of the developed organism as an agent able to modify and control its surrounding environment. The role of cognition, the means through which the organism is able to cope with its environment, cannot be (...) underestimated. In particular, it is shown that this activity is grounded on a theory of information based on Bayesian probabilities. The organism is considered as a cybernetic system able to integrate a processor as a source of variety (the genetic system), a regulator of its own homeostasis (the metabolic system), and a selecting system separating the self from the non-self (the membrane in unicellular organisms). Any organism is a complex system that can survive only if it is able to maintain its internal order against the spontaneous tendency towards disruption. Therefore, it is forced to monitor and control its environment and so to establish feedback circuits resulting in co-adaptation. Cognitive and biological processes are shown to be inseparable. (shrink)

The mathematical theory of communication.

The goal of this work is to explain a novel information paradigm claiming that all information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s difference that makes a difference. To highlight and illustrate this fundamental process, a simulation based on one-parameter feedback is presented. It simulates a homeorhetic process, innate to organisms, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. The illustrated recursive process is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for (...) information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

This short piece is a partial translation of the introduction to Gilbert Simondon’s most succinct philosophical reflections on the notions of form, information, and potentials. The material was presented on February 27, 1960, at the Session of the Société française de philosophie. After the abstract and Simondon’s definitions of form, information, and transductive operation, there is a discussion between Simondon and other attendees who were present at his talk, including Paul Ricoeur and Jean Hyppolite, both of whom had been part (...) of Simondon’s viva panel in 1958. The piece represents an interesting moment in the history of philosophy where cybernetics and information theory were problematized by thinkers like Simondon, who thought that the concept of information needed to be expanded and refined to adequately account for processes of individuation, or "ontogenesis.". (shrink)

The necessary but not sufficient conditions for biological informational concepts like signs, symbols, memories, instructions, and messages are (1) an object or referent that the information is about, (2) a physical embodiment or vehicle that stands for what the information is about (the object), and (3) an interpreter or agent that separates the referent information from the vehicle’s material structure, and that establishes the stands-for relation. This separation is named the epistemic cut, and explaining clearly how the stands-for relation is (...) realized is named the symbol-matter problem. (4) A necessary physical condition is that all informational vehicles are material boundary conditions or constraints acting on the lawful dynamics of local systems. It is useful to define a dependency hierarchy of information types: (1) syntactic information (i.e., communication theory), (2) heritable information acquired by variation and natural selection, (3) non-heritable learned or creative information, and (4) measured physical information in the context of natural laws. High information storage capacity is most reliably implemented by discrete linear sequences of non-dynamic vehicles, while the execution of information for control and construction is a non-holonomic dynamic process. The first epistemic cut occurs in self-replication. The first interpretation of base sequence information is by protein folding; the last interpretation of base sequence information is by natural selection. Evolution has evolved senses and nervous systems that acquire non-heritable information, and only very recently after billions of years, the competence for human language. Genetic and human languages are the only known complete general purpose languages. They have fundamental properties in common, but are entirely different in their acquisition, storage and interpretation. (shrink)

This paper proposes Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenetic theory of individuation as an overarching framework for multilevel semiosis. What renders this theory suitable for this role is the fact that it shares a significant part of its heritage with biosemiotics, which provides compatibility between them. Unlike many philosophers who have worked on individuation, Simondon envisages a general process of individuation that starts with a metastable preindividual. This process ultimately constitutes an axiomatisation of ontogenesis and manifests itself in three basic modes: physical, vital (...) and psycho-collective. In any of these modes a transductive operation is at work resolving the disparities of the preindividual whereby new structures emerge. Depending on the mode of individuation, the emerging structures can create new disparities that ask for further individuation. Simondon refers to such conversion of structure to operation and vice versa as allagmatics. He also extends his theory to scientific methodology establishing a healthy balance between reductionism and holism. His theory can be used to amend Peircean metaphysics to improve its compatibility with contemporary scientific discourse. (shrink)

A cluster of similar trends emerging in separate fields of science and philosophy points to new opportunities to apply biosemiotic ideas as tools for conceptual integration in theoretical biology. I characterize these developments as the outcome of a “relational turn” in these disciplines. They signal a shift of attention away from objects and things and towards relational structures and processes. Increasingly sophisticated research technologies of molecular biology have generated an enormous quantity of experimental data, sparking a need for relational approaches (...) that could help to find recurrent patterns in the mass of data. Earlier conceptions of relational biology and cybernetics, once deemed too abstract and speculative, are now resurrected and applied by means of new computational and simulation tools. I think this receptivity should be extended to incorporate nets of semiotic relations as heuristic guides for discerning global patterns of interactions in living systems. In this article I review aspects of systems biology and new directions in evolutionary theory, focusing on the role of circular and downward causation in relational structures and dynamical networks. I also indicate promising avenues of integration of some ideas of biosemiotics with those emerging from these new currents in biology. Relational developments in biology bear a telling similarity to a parallel relational turn presently manifest in the philosophy of science, rooted in the philosophy of physics and mathematics and in different varieties of structural and informational realism. The recognition of the relational nature of reality within these disciplines entails a tacit repudiation of nominalistic biases in science that have hindered the reception of semitiotic conceptions in biology. In previous investigations I explored connections between two kinds of relational structures: the networks of self-referential circular loops that appear pervasively in living systems, and the triadic relational structures that Peircean semiotics places at the basis of all semiotic transactions. Current relational views in the sciences seem oblivious to the difference between dyadic and triadic relations. Incorporating this essential distinction from biosemiotics into other fields could be a first step in seizing the opportunities opened by the relational turn for a renewal of biology and of natural philosophy in general, across disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

All information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of info-autopoiesis or information self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s ‘difference which makes a difference’. To highlight and illustrate the fundamental nature of the info-autopoietic process, initially, two simulations based on one-parameter feedback are presented. The first, simulates a homeostatic control mechanism (thermostat) which is representative of a mechanistic, cybernetic system with very predictable dynamics, fully dependent on an external referent. The second, simulates a homeorhetic process, (...) inherent to biological systems, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. Further, the active incorporation/interference of viral particles by prokaryotic cells and the activation of CRISPR-Cas can be understood as info-autopoiesis at the most fundamental cellular level, as well as constituting a planetary network of self-referenced information. Moreover, other examples of the info-autopoietic nature of information are presented to show the generality of its applicability. In short, info-autopoiesis is a recursive process that is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

Simondon adopts some concepts of social psychology as ‘in group’ and ‘out group’, namely from Kurt Lewin and Gordon Allport, that allow him to describe the fundamental processes shaping the domain of collective individuation, and to challenge Bergson’s distinction between a ‘closed’ community and an ‘open’ society. Reconstructing Simondon’s sources is necessary to understand how he tries to provide an analysis of the social system without presupposing a given anthropology, but rather exploring different perspectives on the human/nature threshold through the (...) concept of transindividual. In his study of the social system Simondon progressively gives conceptual shape to the processes he calls transindividual thanks to the ontogenetic analysis of the phenomena of belief, work and language. In all these domains, a ‘basic community’ emerges just over the threshold of the biological group, where the structural ambivalence of all collective processes as simultaneously closed and open becomes clear. That is why Simondon does not present the concept of the transindividual as a solution to the epistemological problem of psychic and collective individuation, but rather as the ‘field’ in which a whole series of social, biological and technical dimensions can be made converge towards a science of anthropogenic processes. (shrink)

Peirce is the father of semiotics. However, his theory was developed long before the developments in information theory. The codification procedures studied by the latter turn out to be crucial also for biology. At the root of both information and semiosis there are equivalence classes. In the case of biological systems, we speak of functional equivalence classes. Equivalence classes represent the grid that organism impose on biochemical processes and signals of the external or internal environment. The whole feedback circuit that (...) is built in this way allows information control. Symbolic systems represent another kind of dealing-with-information as far as they deal with the matching of our concepts with the world. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored (...) to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic. (shrink)

Analyzes Schelling's arguments for his idealism and pieces together a description of his theory of nature from among the large number of his writings in this area. It also traces the influence of Naturphilosophie on 19th-century science and connects it with recent System Theory.

A historical and critical analysis of the concept of the gene that attempts to provide new perspectives and metaphors for the transformation of biology and its philosophy.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universitèat Dèusseldorf, 1981.

This report reviews what quantum physics and information theory have to tell us about the age-old question, How come existence? No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law. (2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum. (3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations (...) and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive. (4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit. (shrink)

Compiling twenty articles on the nature of life and on the objective of the natural sciences, this remarkable book complements Robert Rosen's groundbreaking Life Itself--a work that influenced a wide range of philosophers, biologists, linguists, and social scientists. In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to come.

Development and Evolution surveys and illuminates the key themes of rapidly changing fields and areas of controversy that the redefining the theory and philosophy of biology. It continues Stanley Salthe's investigation of evolutionary theory, begun in his influential book Evolving Hierarchical Systems, while negating the implicit philosophical mechanisms of much of that work. Here Salthe attempts to reinitiate a theory of biology from the perspective of development rather than from that of evolution, recognizing the applicability of general systems thinking to (...) biological and social phenomena and pointing towards a non-Darwinian and even a postmodern biology. (shrink)

This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances.

On this tour of the universe of signs, Jesper Hoffmeyer travels back to the Big Bang, visits the tiniest places deep within cells, and ends his journey with us - complex organisms capable of speech and reason. He shows that life at its most basic depends on the survival of messages written in the code of DNA molecules, and on the tiny cell - the fertilized egg - that must interpret the message and from it construct an organism. What propels (...) this journey is Hoffmeyer's attempt to discover how nature could come to mean something to someone; indeed, how "something" could become "someone." How could a biological self become a semiotic self? (shrink)

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to the influential French philosopher Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of individuation. Gilbert Simondon, one of the most influential contemporary French philosophers, published only three works: L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique and L'individuation psychique et collective, both drawn from his doctoral thesis, and Du mode d'existence des objets techniques. It is this last work that brought Simondon into the public eye; as a consequence, he has been considered a “thinker of technics” and cited often in pedagogical reports (...) on teaching technology. Yet Simondon was a philosopher whose ambitions lay in an in-depth renewal of ontology as a process of individuation—that is, how individuals come into being, persist, and transform. In this accessible yet rigorous introduction to Simondon's work, Muriel Combes helps to bridge the gap between Simondon's account of technics and his philosophy of individuation. Some thinkers have found inspiration in Simondon's philosophy of individuation, notably Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Combes's account, first published in French in 1999, is one of the only studies of Simondon to appear in English. Combes breaks new ground, exploring an ethics and politics adequate to Simondon's hypothesis of preindividual being, considering through the lens of transindividual philosophy what form a nonservile relation to technology might take today. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Simondon's work. (shrink)

An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers of cybernetics—some (...) of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

Collected in this text are the written notes of courses on the concept of nature give by Merleau-Ponty at the College de France in the 1950s. The ideas that animated the philosopher's lectures emerge in an early, fluid form in the process of being elaborated, negotiated, critiqued and reconsidered.

Defending Robert Rosen’s claim that in every confrontation between physics and biology it is physics that has always had to give ground, it is shown that many of the most important advances in mathematics and physics over the last two centuries have followed from Schelling’s demand for a new physics that could make the emergence of life intelligible. Consequently, while reductionism prevails in biology, many biophysicists are resolutely anti-reductionist. This history is used to identify and defend a fragmented but progressive (...) tradition of anti-reductionist biomathematics. It is shown that the mathematicoephysico echemical morphology research program, the biosemiotics movement, and the relational biology of Rosen, although they have developed independently of each other, are built on and advance this antireductionist tradition of thought. It is suggested that understanding this history and its relationship to the broader history of post-Newtonian science could provide guidance for and justify both the integration of these strands and radically new work in post-reductionist biomathematics. (shrink)

The fracture in the emerging discipline of biosemiotics when the code biologist Marcello Barbieri claimed that Peircian biosemiotics is not genuine science raises anew the question: What is science? When it comes to radically new approaches in science, there is no simple answer to this question, because if successful, these new approaches change what is understood to be science. This is what Galileo, Darwin and Einstein did to science, and with quantum theory, opposing interpretations are not merely about what theory (...) is right, but what is real science. Peirce's work, as he acknowledged, is really a continuation of efforts of Schelling to challenge the heritage of Newtonian science for the very good reason that the deep assumptions of Newtonian science had made sentient life, human consciousness and free will unintelligible, the condition for there being science. Pointing out the need for such a revolution in science has not succeeded as a defence of Peircian biosemiotics, however. In this paper, I will defend the scientific credentials of Peircian biosemiotics by relating it to the theoretical biology of the bio-mathematician, Robert Rosen. Rosen's relational biology, focusing on anticipatory systems and giving a place to final causes, should also be seen as a rigorous development of the Schellingian project to conceive nature in such a way that the emergence of sentient life, mind and science are intelligible. Rosen has made a very strong case for the characterization of his ideas as a real advance not only in science, but in how science should be understood, and I will argue that it is possible to provide a strong defence of Peircian biosemiotics as science through Rosen's defence of relational biology. In the process, I will show how biosemiotics can and should become a crucial component of anticipatory systems theory. (shrink)

The final version of the paper is published pp. 117-166 in: Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrell (eds.): On Semiotic Modeling . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1991.