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

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David

Thanks for this.  I'm seeing Shannon's definition of information at the
"structural" level; his processing and error correction logics at the
"processing mechanism" level; particular pieces of information (objects such
as texts, messages)as having four types and levels of significance
(obviously as programs which may be treated as data, less obviously as
definitions of program and data objects for the future use of programs); and
individual data events or tokens (unlike physical items) being physically
carried, shareable or broadcastable without loss, but corruptible and
possibly corrupted.  

Weiner is about populations, of course.  It is a lot easier to follow what's
happening with a population of electrons constrained to circulate within a
wire, and either itself being controlled (a homeostat, e.g. a stabilised
power supply); or carrying analogue information possibly of different types
(a servomechanism, as in steering a ship or car: correcting not just
direction but speed and occasionally course, as to dock/turn off or avoid
hazards ahead).  The flow of money/credit is similarly constrained by
economic institutions, and it important to be clear of the difference
between money carrying power, and it carrying information which constrains
or releases the power we already have.  The justification for legislatation
allowing the constraining of empowering information shareable without loss
is on this basis extremely dodgy.  If people's incomes were not dependent
(as they are in the present economic system) on selling what it has taken
them time, effort and real resources to acquire, there would be not even be
this instrumental justification for it.    

>From which you may guess that what I'm working on is developing an economic
system in which love of money is no longer the root of all evil: in which
livelihoods and investments are available to all in the form of credit
(available in reality from the previous labours of society) to be repaid in
the [usually near] future by earning/having earned your living maintaining
or improving society or achieving investment objectives.  This, Newman's
"Development of Ideas" and Darwin's evolution of existing species are in
their own domains really on very similar schematic lines to Bhaskar's TSMA,
and should in my opinion be seen as complementing and capable of
illuminating each other.

Best

Dave  

-----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.
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