Context: There is a long-running dispute within musicology regarding the relationship between music and language. The widespread acceptance of the position that music and language are distinct communicative modalities has encouraged the development of semiotic approaches that are similarly distinct. Problem: What would a semiotic theory look like that, while accepting the distinction of the modalities, unifies the semiotic approach under a single banner, together with logic? Method: The theory proposed for this role is that of the “semiotic eigencycle,” the workings of which are explored in terms of von Foerster’s trivial machines by considering musical temperament, and then in terms of non-trivial machines through an analysis of the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony nr. 6 “Pathétique.” Results: The result is a view of music as an expression of a cognitive modality alongside those of natural language and logic, each of which constitutes irreducible phases of a single cognitive semiotic process. Such an approach allows music to inform semiotics as much as semiotics informs musicology. Implications: One of the unexpected implications of this view is that it suggests a way to understand the objective/subjective dichotomy as a construction, which may be of assistance in the maintenance of a methodological rejection thereof in more general discourse. Constructivist content: The article relies on the ideas of eigenforms and eigenbehavior, first proposed by von Foerster. The radical constructivist framework of von Glasersfeld is adopted throughout and forms the basis of much of the reasoning.

Key words: Music, semiotic eigencycle, non-trivial machines, radical constructivism.

This book presents a mathematical analysis of explanations. A valid explanation must be self-consistent, and the expectations it generates must be valid. Beyond this, the correctness of any ontology defined by an explanation cannot be investigated. The analysis does not operate with speculative arguments about reality. Instead, it defines a fully general framework where the logical consequences of mere self-consistency can be analyzed. Self-consistency implies symmetries which can be mathematically expressed. That expression is true for any self-consistent explanation, and it also stands only a few algebraic steps away from the relationships of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and special relativity. General relativity also arises as an approximated solution, from a framework that is fully consistent with quantum mechanics. The fact that modern physics can be deduced this way implies that physics is not so much about reality as it is about valid mental representations of expectations of reality. The algebraic steps in the analysis represent arbitrary terminology choices, and the rest falls out from self-consistency alone. Expectations can always be expressed in a form where the data is categorized to look like modern physics. Also it is shown that the same expectations can always be expressed in many different but equally valid forms. Relevance: The book deals with epistemological questions on a constructivist background and portrays “ontological claims,” i.e., claims about actual reality as undefendable (belief based) and thus meaningless.

Review of Bernhard Poerksen, The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism, translated from German by Alison Rosemary Koeck and Wolfram Karl Koeck, Imprint Academic, 2003, 192 pp., £14. 95/$29. 90. Bernhard Poerksen, a Junior Professor of journalism and communication theory at the University of Hamburg, has composed a very nice little book, consisting of interviews with some of the leading proponents of the constructivist school-which is probably not a school, but a convenient expression for some similarities between some writers, leaving apart their differences. His victims are Heinz von Foerster, Ernst von Glasersfeld, Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, Gerhard Roth, Siegfried J. Schmidt, Helm Stierlin, and Paul Watzlawick. He has taken the role of the television interviewer, using his favorite position face to face with a series of celebrities to pose all the questions which the viewer would like to pose himself, and pressing them on their logic and consistency. Poerksen is well acquainted with their works and well prepared, so that he can follow them to their pet areas, whether is in pragmatism, brain theory or therapy. Often his questions are what Heinz von Foerster calls positive, meaning that they are not based on a conflicting theory, but accept the point of view of the interviewee in order to clarify and elaborate. In this way, you can do propaganda for a theory even by criticizing it. Poerksen is a sympathetic interviewer, and as he is too young to be a competitor, he is getting an excellent treatment by his chosen theorists, according to the principle that an old cat will fight another old cat, but never a kitten.

Wolfgang Wagner is a current and productive advocate of the social representation approach. He developed a version of the theory in which social representations are freed from individual minds and instead conceived of as concerted interactions. These epistemological starting points come very close to the enactive outlook on consensually coordinated actions. Yet Wagner is not radical enough in that he continues to see concerted interaction as an expression of representations that are already shared by the actors constituting a group. In our view, the ubiquitous notion of sharedness – which is also found in studies on social models, cultural patterns, schemas, scenarios, and so forth – is conceptually problematic and reveals a misapprehension of how orchestrated actions come about. Moreover, it obscures a proper understanding of what really constitutes intrinsically social behavior. Enactivism provides a much more consistent epistemology for a psychology that is intrinsically social.

Key words: cultural psychology, culture, enactivism, epistemology, sharedness, social representations

This paper describes the semiotic approach to organism in two proto-biosemiotic thinkers, Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas. Both authors develop ideas that have become central terms of biosemiotics: the organism as subject, the realisation of the living as a closed circular self, the value concept, and, in the case of Langer, the concept of symbol. Langer tries to develop a theory of cultural symbolism based on a theory of organism as a self-realising entity creating meaning and value. This paper deals mainly with what both authors independently call “feeling.” Both authors describe “feeling” as a value-based perspective, established as a result of the active self interest manifested by an organic system. The findings of Jonas and Langer show the generation of a subject pole, or biosemiotic agent, under a more precise accent, as e.g. Uexküll does. Their ideas can also be affiliated to the interpretation of autopoiesis given by the late Francisco Varela (embodied cognition or “enactivism”). A synthesis of these positions might lead to insights how symbolic expression arises from biological conditions of living.

Excerpt: Current thinking about computers and their impact on society has been shaped by a rationalistic tradition that needs to be re-examined and challenged as a source of understanding, As a first step we will characterize the tradition of rationalism and logical empiricism that can be traced back at least to Plato. This tradition has been the mainspring of Western science and technology, and has demonstrated its effectiveness most clearly in the ‘hard sciences’ – those that explain the operation of deterministic mechanisms whose principles can be captured in formal systems. The tradition finds its highest expression in mathematics and logic, and has greatly influenced the development of linguistics and cognitive psychology. We will make no attempt to provide a full historical account of this tradition, or to situate it on some kind of intellectual map Instead, we have chosen to concentrate on understanding its effects on current discourse and practice, especially in relation to the development and impact of computers. The purpose of this chapter is to outline its major points and illustrate their embodiment in current theories of language, mind, and action.