{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T04:38:27Z","timestamp":1760243907711,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":71,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2010,4,13]],"date-time":"2010-04-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1271116800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Both Cybersemiotics and Info-computationalist research programmes represent attempts to unify understanding of information, knowledge and communication. The first one takes into account phenomenological aspects of signification which are insisting on the human experience \"from within\". The second adopts solely the view \"from the outside\" based on scientific practice, with an observing agent generating inter-subjective knowledge in a research community. The process of knowledge production, embodied into networks of cognizing agents interacting with the environment and developing through evolution is studied on different levels of abstraction in both frames of reference. In order to develop scientifically tractable models of evolution of intelligence in informational structures from pre-biotic\/chemical to living networked intelligent organisms, including the implementation of those models in artificial agents, a basic level language of Info-Computationalism has shown to be suitable. There are however contexts in which we deal with complex informational structures essentially dependent on human first person knowledge where high level language such as Cybersemiotics is the appropriate tool for conceptualization and communication. Two research projects are presented in order to exemplify the interplay of info-computational and higher-order approaches: The Blue Brain Project where the brain is modeled as info-computational system, a simulation in silico of a biological brain function, and Biosemiotics research on genes, information, and semiosis in which the process of semiosis is understood in info-computational terms. The article analyzes differences and convergences of Cybersemiotics and Info-computationalist approaches which by placing focus on distinct levels of organization, help elucidate processes of knowledge production in intelligent agents.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e12040878","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2010,4,13]],"date-time":"2010-04-13T11:15:22Z","timestamp":1271157322000},"page":"878-901","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["The Cybersemiotics and Info-Computationalist Research Programmes as Platforms for Knowledge Production in Organisms and Machines"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9881-400X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gordana","family":"Dodig Crnkovic","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"M\u00e4lardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Sweden"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2010,4,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Brier, S. (2008). Cybersemiotics. Why Information Is Not Enough!, University of Toronto Press.","DOI":"10.3138\/9781442687813"},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Qvortrup, L. (2003). The Hypercomplex Society, Peter Lang Publishing Co."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Throughout the text, the word \u201cmechanism\u201d is used to stand for not only mechanistic deterministic mechanisms, but any sort of scheme which explains how\/why things happen, i.e. the way the concept of \u201cmechanism\u201d is used in physics \u2013 as a generator of function and structure. In this sense \u201cHiggs mechanism\u201d refers to spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking, while \u201cautopoesis\u201d signifies a \u201cmechanism of self-organization\u201d."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Chalmers, D. (1996). 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He recognizes four types of things that can be given in answer to a why-question (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/aristotle-causality\/):\t\t  \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  -The material cause, that out of which\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  -The formal cause, the form, the account of what-it-is-to-be, e.g., the shape\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  -The efficient cause, the primary source of the change or rest and\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  -The final cause, the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done (or the things happen) Info-Computationalism presents a very suitable framework for understanding of all four causes including the final cause. Living organisms, having memory and intentionality (both eminently info-computational phenomena) are subject to all four causes, downward causation being the results of a living organism\u2019s ability to memorize, anticipate and control its own behavior."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Objection by Joseph Brenner: \u201cThis would exclude all non-Markovian processes in the world which do not depend only on their current state for their evolution.\u201d How to answer this objection? We can think in terms of Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) which is modeling phenomena as dynamical systems of interacting agents. Agents have identity and act autonomously. (so e.g., Wolfram\u2019s Cellular Automata are agents who act synchronously.) In general one assumes asynchrony and one models environment explicitly. ABM models go beyond state-determined automata by the inclusion of random-access memory capabilities. Agents can engage with their environments beyond concurrent state-determined interaction by using memory to store descriptions and representations of their environments. They can also have access to shared knowledge among the members of their particular agent society. Such agents are dynamically incoherent in the sense that their next state or action is not solely dependent on the previous state but rather depend also on some (random-access) memory that keeps the same value until it is accessed and that does not change with the dynamics of the environment-agent interactions. In the computing universe including the brain, the same hardware that performs computations is used as the memory as well."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Dodig-Crnkovic, G. (2009). Information and Computation Nets, VDM Verlag."},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Knick, M., and Radermacher, F. J. Integration of subsymbolic and symbolic information processing in robot control. 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