Rehabilitating Information

Abstract

Abstract:In an early paper on logic, C.S. Peirce defined a concept of 'information' very different from the later conceptions which gave rise to 'information science', and indirectly to current problems such as an overload of 'useless information'. A study of further developments in Peircean semiotics, and in related conceptual frameworks including the cybernetics of Bateson and the cybersemiotics of Brier, reveals deep relations between Peirce's concept of information and the irreducibly triadic nature of signs. Since all sciences, indeed all cognition and communication, are semiotic processes, the core semiotic principle implicit in the Peircean concept may clarify how our uses of language and other symbolic media can actually inform-and thus transform-the way we humans inhabit the biosphere.

The Natural Philosophy of Economic Information: Autonomous Agents and Physiosemiosis

“…Finally, we must pick up the thread left loose in the previous section, where I argued that the coarse graining functions evolve on the population level (Figure 4). This idea has been adumbrated by Peirce who refers the notion of habit to "communities" [50]. In the biosemiotic context, this means that signs acquire meaning on the species level, whereas the individual level is that of "meaningless" variation.…”