449 research outputs found
Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition
Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of
industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of
knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New
developments in information processing and information communication
technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions,
representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective,
multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative
work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences,
sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary
unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the
descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process
of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied
domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their
design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and
various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user
experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions.
When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from
different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing
common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our
environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces
for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of
transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics.
We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our
different research fields that include information studies, computability,
human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and
philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for
Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and
Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor
Return of Logos: Ontological Memory ā Information ā Time
Total ontological unification of matter at all levels of reality as a whole, its āgraspā of its dialectical structure, space dimensionality and structure of the language of nature ā āhouse of Beingā [1], gives the opportunity to see the āplaceā and to understand the nature of information as a phenomenon of Ontological (structural) Memory (OntoMemory), the measure of being of the whole, āthe soul of matterā, qualitative quantity of the absolute forms of existence of matter (absolute states). āInformationā and ātimeā are multivalent phenomena of Ontological Memory substantiating the essential unity of the world on the āhorizontalā and āverticalā. Ontological constructing of dialectics of Logos self-motion, total unification of matter, āgraspā of the nature of information leads to the necessity of introducing a new unit of information showing the ideas of dialectical formation and generation of new structures and meanings, namely Delta-Logit (Ī-Logit), qualitative quantum-prototecton, fundamental organizing, absolute existential-extreme. The simplest mathematical symbol represents the dialectical microprocessor of the Nature. Ontological formula of John A. Wheeler Ā«It from BitĀ» [2] is āgraspedā as the first dialectic link in the chain of ontological formulas ā āIt from Ī-Logitā ā āIt from OntoMemoryā ā āIt from Logos, Logos into Itā. Ontological Memory - core, semantic attractor of the new conceptual structure of the world of the Information Age, which is based on Absolute generating structure (Ā«general framework structureĀ»), the representant of onto-genetic code and algorithm of the Universe
Looking Forward, Not Back: Supporting Structuralism in the Present
The view that the fundamental kind properties are intrinsic properties enjoys reflexive endorsement by most metaphysicians of science. But ontic structural realists deny that there are any fundamental intrinsic properties at all. Given that structuralists distrust intuition as a guide to truth, and given that we currently lack a fundamental physical theory that we could consult instead to order settle the issue, it might seem as if there is simply nowhere for this debate to go at present. However, I will argue that there exists an as-yet untapped resource for arguing for ontic structuralism ā namely, the way that fundamentality is conceptualized in our most fundamental physical frameworks. By arguing that physical objects must be subject to the āGoldilockās principleā if they are to count as fundamental, I argue that we can no longer view the majority of properties defining them as intrinsic. As such, ontic structural realism can be regarded as the right metaphysics for fundamental physics, and that this is so even though we do not yet claim to know precisely what that fundamental physics is
The good, the true, and the beautiful : toward a unified account of great meaning in life
Three of the great sources of meaning in life are the good, the true, and the beautiful, and I aim to make headway on the grand Enlightenment project of ascertaining what, if anything, they have in common. Concretely, if we take a (stereotypical) Mother Teresa, Mandela, Darwin, Einstein, Dostoyevsky, and Picasso, what might they share that makes it apt to deem their lives to have truly mattered? I provide reason to doubt two influential answers, noting a common flaw that supernaturalism and consequentialism share. I instead develop their most plausible rival, a naturalist and non-consequentialist account of what enables moral achievement, intellectual reflection, and aesthetic creation to confer great meaning on a personās life, namely, the idea that they do so insofar as a person transcends an aspect of herself in some substantial way. I criticize several self-transcendence theories that contemporary philosophers have advanced, before presenting a new self-transcendence view and defending it as the most promising
Nature as a Network of Morphological Infocomputational Processes for Cognitive Agents
This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted
Still minding the gap? Reflecting on transitions between concepts of information in varied domains
This conceptual paper, a contribution to the tenth anniversary special issue of information, gives a cross-disciplinary review of general and unified theories of information. A selective literature review is used to update a 2013 article on bridging the gaps between conceptions of information in different domains, including material from the physical and biological sciences, from the humanities and social sciences including library and information science, and from philosophy. A variety of approaches and theories are reviewed, including those of Brenner, Brier, Burgin and Wu, Capurro, CĆ”rdenas-GarcĆa and Ireland, Hidalgo, Hofkirchner, Kolchinsky and Wolpert, Floridi, Mingers and Standing, Popper, and Stonier. The gaps between disciplinary views of information remain, although there has been progress, and increasing interest, in bridging them. The solution is likely to be either a general theory of sufficient flexibility to cope with multiple meanings of information, or multiple and distinct theories for different domains, but with a complementary nature, and ideally boundary spanning concepts
Recent books delineating the emergent academic filed of the Study of Information
One of the imperative tasks of theoretical information studies is exploration of methods and techniques of presentation of information. In this article, we study the presentation of information in the following three books describing the results of the collaboration of researchers with the goal of defining the emergent filed of the Study of Information: Philosophy and Methodology of Information: The Study of Information in a Transdisciplinary Perspective (2019), Theoretical Information Studies: Information in the World (2020) and Information and Computation (2011), published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Series in Information Studies
One Goal for All the Sciences?
In numerous writings Philip Kitcher argues against the thesis that understanding nature or searching for truth in general are goals that are shared by all the sciences. Neither do the sciences aim for common distinctive truths, such as natural laws. Thus, the question is: can the sciences be characterized as sciences by one of their goals? According to Kitcher this seems possible. The sciences, so he claims, aim for unification. In this paper I shall argue that unification should not be understood as an aim but rather as a method the sciences use depending on the specific problems they pursue. Therefore, it seems, there is not one goal for all the science
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