Sovereign Information

At one point in The Philosopher's Stone: Chaos, Synchronicity, and the Hidden Order of the World David Peat contrasts an information theory view of communication with what might be characterized as a mental construction theory.

The problem with the [information] theory is its essential passivity in the way it deals with how information is exchanged between a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter generates a message, in code, which is then sent to the receiver, which decodes it and extracts the information. Communication is seen in terms of an exchange or interaction along a communication channel. [...] The French linguist G. Fauconnier has, to some extent, moved toward a more realistic theory of communication with his idea of "mental spaces." [...] each person is involved in a continuous act of creativity as he or she attempts to build "mental spaces" that will resonate, one with the other.

One wants to insert here the possibility of internal and multiple dialogues at play in and through the communicating self. That is there could be lots and lots interactions that conform to information theory and out of these interactions arise "mental spaces". A hint is given by Peat a few pages earlier:

This idea of communication is really an investigation into the permeability and dissolution of the boundary a system creates in order to preserve its own autonomy.

In the next sentence he undercuts any radical consequence that might arise from a notion of multiple systems interacting. He begins rather than arrives at an autonomous subject. It is a beginning point rather than the culmination of systems in communication. He writes: "A human individual, for example, is sovereign over his or her body, mind and experience." In some mental spaces, yes, there is an experience of sovereignty. But not in all.

We can begin by assuming that to any conversation there are more than two parties. A royal sovereign "we".

And so for day 517
13.05.2008