Re: [Critical-Realism] Critical Realism and Philosophy of Information

["J.A.Toynbee" <J.A.Toynbee@xxxxxxxxxx>]

David,

That's very interesting. I'm working on a similar strand but in relation
to copyright and the ontology of music. Here's a piece of mine which
might be of interest, written just as I was starting to get into CR. 

(2006) 'Copyright, the Work and Phonographic Orality in Music', Social
and Legal Studies, 15/1, pp. 77-99.

I think my central thrust is that the commodification of symbolic forms
exposes contradictions in the capitalist mode of production which are
not properly resolvable short of social transformation. On the
'cyberlaw' scholars, yes I entirely agree that the notion of 'code'
obfuscates the central issues. But I would also suggest that
attributions of rival/non-rival don't help much either. This kind of
classical economic terminology simply turns the problem of the commodity
and exchange into a matter of economic natural kinds.

Best, 

Jason

------------------------------------------
Dr Jason Toynbee
Senior Lecturer in Media Studies
Sociology Department
Faculty of Social Science
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David
Opderbeck
Sent: 14 December 2007 15:22
To: critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Critical-Realism] Critical Realism and Philosophy of
Information


Jose-Carlos and Dave Taylor -- thanks for the helpful feedback!  I have
read Shannon and other work following off of Shannon such as Norbert
Weiner.  I'm relatively new to critical realism, though, having come to
it through discussions in the religion-and-science field.

Here's what I'm working on:  I'm an intellectual property law scholar.
Although my field deals with the legal regulation of "information," the
notion of "information" itself is undeveloped in our literature.  The
predominant underlying assumption is that "information" is a sort of
economic commodity, and that it should be viewed through the lens of
neo-classical economic theory as a sort of "public good" (a non-rival
resource).  There is also a significant stream of our literature that
focuses on "authorship" from a postmodern deconstructionist perspective,
and essentially argues that control over cultural production is entirely
and issue of power.  Finally, there are "cyberlaw" scholars who focus on
Internet regulation who -- I would argue -- mish-mash the economic and
postmodern ideas about information to suggest that information in
cyberspace is socially constructed "code" (including computer code),
which can be kept "open" without depleting the "information commons"
because it also functions as a non-rival economic commodity.

I want to critique and synthesize these perspectives on "information"
through a critical realist lens.  What I am thinking is that
"information / code" is neither a non-rival economic resource nor
entirely a social construction.  I want to conceive of "information"
similar to the way in which Bhaskar conceives of "society" in "The
Possibility of Naturalism" -- as something that is both a given and a
product of continual transformation by people.  In other words, I want
to introduce a critical realist ontology of information to the debates
over the control intellectual property.  I think this will suggest a
more communitarian ethical and regulatory approach than the sort of
libertarian presuppositions that I think underlie much of the existing
literature.  At the very least, I don't think anyone in my field has
made a serious stab at this sort of thing.
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism

_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism