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

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David

"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"

This broad approach has been used in CR work on the production of meaning,
which might be worth a look:

Fairclough, N., Jessop, B. & Sayer, A. (2004) 'Critical realism and
semiosis', in J. Joseph & J. M. Roberts (eds), Realism, Discourse and
Deconstruction, London & New York: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. & Wodak, R. (1997) 'Critical discourse analysis', in T. van
Dijk (ed.) Discourse as Social Interaction, London: Sage, 258-284.
Nellhaus, T. (1998) 'Signs, social ontology, and critical realism,' Journal
for the Theory of Social Behaviour 28 (1): 1-24.

Fairclough and Nellhaus have entries in this area in Dictionary of Critical
Realism.

You're work sounds really interesting and important.

Mervyn 
 

-----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

__________ NOD32 2723 (20071214) Information __________

This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
http://www.eset.com



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