Search Results (5)

Info-autopoiesis or the self-referenced, recursive, interactive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and/or relational needs relies on Bateson’s difference which makes a difference. Living beings, as active manipulators/observers of their environment, derive meaning from the sensorially detected motion of matter and/or energy in the Universe. The process of info-autopoiesis in humans is found to be triadic in nature and incorporates the simultaneity of a quantitative/objective perspective with a qualitative/subjective perspective. In this process of meaningful engagement with the environment, humans create and transform endogenous semantic information into countless expressions of exogeneous syntactic information, which is synonymous with ordered material structure and artificial creation. Other humans can interpret exogeneous syntactic information and uniquely transform it into semantic information that can take multifarious forms. This asymmetrical process is the basis to postulate the central dogma of information that states ‘info-autopoiesis results in endogenous semantic information that irreversibly becomes exogeneous syntactic information’. In other words, once the artificial, syntactic world, including machines, created by humans comes into being it can only be interpreted by others, i.e., it does not necessarily convey the same intended meaning to all. Additionally, these artificial creations only recognize, extract, create, transmit, preserve, store, and utilize syntactic information, unable to transform syntactic information into semantic information. In other words, our resourceful capacity for syntactic creation does not allow for creation of artificial beings with comparable capabilities as us for meaning making. It suggests that our dreams for sentient artificial general intelligence and superintelligence are misguided and parallel the central dogma of molecular biology which states that ‘once (sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get out again’. Full article

Digital information and communication technologies have been a powerful force for change since the middle of the 20th century. Their Promethean reach demands laying bare their hidden tentacles to maximize benefit and minimize harm to living-beings-in-their-environment, requiring an unambiguous and practical definition of information to show that the interactions of living beings with their environment are constitutive of information generation, information exchange, information relations, and life. The purpose of this paper is to discover the connection between info-autopoiesis, based on Bateson’s difference which makes a difference, the self-referenced, recursive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and social needs; and digitalisation, viewed as both the ability to encode information in multifarious but equivalent forms to allow for embodied syntactic occurrence, and as the means to artificially generate information that is beyond the reach of its originators. Full article

Information is not a fundamental quantity of the Universe. However, in denying the fundamental nature of information, we assert its importance for living beings in their environment. Living beings use their sensory organs to discover the non-living and those living in their environment. Through their sensory organs, they discover the bountifulness of matter and/or energy as expressions of their environmental spatial/temporal motion/change, as information or differences which make a difference. This paper begins the discovery of a phenomenology of information, or the fundamental study of information as an expression of how ‘we experience things; thus, the meanings things have in our experience.’ This brings to the forefront the process of info-autopoiesis, or the self-referenced, recursive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and social needs. Elucidating how living beings interact with their environment and how these interactions are constitutive of information generation, information exchange, information relations and life. Information cannot be the primary element that allows living beings their unique existence. Full article

This paper builds upon my earlier studies in interpreting interculturally how the Kashmiri nondual Śaiva thinkers Upaladeva (c. 900–950 CE) and Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE) in their Pratyabhijñā philosophical theology respond to and reinterpret the Buddhist semantic theory of reference as the exclusion of the inapplicable (anyāpoha). It engages the issues in the Pratyabhijñā debate with the Buddhists, with the interrelations of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s theory of Information, Saussurean structuralist semiotics, and Peircean pragmatic semiotics. Full article

From ancient times, the history of human beings has developed by a succession of steps and sometimes jumps, until reaching the relative sophistication of the modern brain and culture. Researchers are attempting to create systems that mimic human thinking, understand speech, or beat the best human chess player. Understanding the mechanisms of intelligence, and creating intelligent artifacts are the twin goals of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Great mathematical minds have played a key role in AI in recent years; to name only a few: Janos Neumann (also known as John von Neumann), Konrad Zuse, Norbert Wiener, Claude E. Shannon, Alan M. Turing, Grigore Moisil, Lofti A. Zadeh, Ronald R. Yager, Michio Sugeno, Solomon Marcus, or Lászlo A. Barabási. Introducing the study of AI is not merely useful because of its capability for solving difficult problems, but also because of its mathematical nature. It prepares us to understand the current world, enabling us to act on the challenges of the future. Full article