|
EconStor >
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Frankfurt a. M. >
Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30173
|
| | |
| Title: | | Entropy, function and evolution: naturalizing Peircian semiosis  |
| Authors: | | Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten |
| Issue Date: | | 2010 |
| Series/Report no.: | | Working paper series // Frankfurt School of Finance & Management 134 |
| Abstract: | | Cybersemiotics claims that the standard uses of the Shannon information concept as applied on systems with cognition and communication fail to account for the semantic dimension of semiosis. This argument does not properly recognize the role of entropy in semiosis. Entropy comes into full play if semiosis is seen as a purely physical process involving causal interactions between physical systems with functions. Functions emerge from evolutionary processes, as conceived in recent philosophical contributions to teleosemantics. In this context, causal interactions can be interpreted in a dual mode, namely as standard causation and as an observation. Thus, a function appears to be the interpretand in the Peircian triadic notion of the sign. Recognizing this duality, the Gibbs/Jaynes notion of entropy can be added to the picture, which shares an essential conceptual feature with the notion of function: Both concepts are a part of a physicalist ontology, but are observer relative at the same time. Thus, it is possible to give an account of semiosis within the entropy framework without limiting the notion of entropy to the Shannon measure, but taking full account of the thermodynamic definition. A central feature of this approach is the conceptual linkage between the evolution of functions and maximum entropy production. |
| Subjects: | | Functions Jaynes' approach to entropy observer relativity maximum entropy production evolution of functions Peirce's concept of semiosis semiosphere |
| JEL: | | A12 Z0 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
|
| |
| | |
Download bibliographical data as:
BibTeX
|
| |
Share on:http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30173
|
Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
|