From second-order cybernetics to cybersemiotics: A semiotic re-entry into the second-order cybernetics of Heinz von Foerster

Abstract

This article praises the development of second‐order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the biopsychological foundation of the dynamics of cognition and communication. Luhmann's development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The differentiation between biological, psychological and social‐communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Furthermore, Varela's development of Spencer Brown's ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a triadic categorical basic structure is considered vital. Finally the paper shows that second‐order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning and a concept of signs. C.S. Peirce's theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a cybersemiotics.

Finding an information concept suited for a universal theory of information

“…I have in Brier (1996aBrier ( , 1996bBrier ( and 2008 criticized the information-processing paradigm and second-order cybernetics, including Niklas Luhmann's communication theory (Luhmann 1995), for not being able to produce a foundational theory of signification and meaning as it lack a phenomenological first person view. It was not Shannon's intension, but his work has been used that way.…”

Cybersemiotics: a reconceptualization of the foundation for information science

“…I am looking for a united framework for FIS that, by relativizing the objective information concept and the pan-semiotic semiosis concept, can become a more comprehensive framework, avoiding overly fundamentalistic statements about the nature of reality. This transdisciplinary framework covers the same area as biosemiotics: Cognition and communication of living systems', but with a much more explicit integration of cybernetic and system theory about mechanical systems, living systems, and social systems, which is why I call it Cybersemiotics (Brier, 1996a(Brier, , 1996b(Brier, , 1998.…”

“…This hope and intention form the regulative idea for science. See Brier (1996a) for further argumentation. These differences (Secondness) only become information when they are selected by an autopoietic system, making structural couplings which, being only signals, are often connected to a signi®cation process, i.e.…”

“…He is drawing both on second order cybernetics and autopoiesis theory in a social system science framework. But a general information science also has to cover the basis of the concept of meaning and signi®cation, and that is not done satisfactorily in functionalistic±cybernetic theories like Luhmann's, although he uses the concept (Brier, 1996a).…”

Trans-scientific frameworks of knowing: complementarity views of the different types of human knowledge

“…This tradition has not so far made any crucial impression on the study of the brain and behaviour of the organism. Secondorder cybernetics seems to be one of the few traditions that have taken up 'the inner view' in a biological although still functionalistic tradition (Brier, 1996c). This epistemological foundation of secondorder cybernetics connects it on the one hand with evolutionary epistemology and on the other hand with important points in Heidegger's phenomenology.…”