Semantic Sphere 1

Pierre Lévy is a professor at the Department of Communication of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research. He was endowed with a Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence at the University of Ottawa in 2002. His CRC in Collective Intelligence was the first academic institution worldwide to be explicitly focused on this new scientific field. He is the author of 12 books about the cultural and social impacts of digital technologies that have been translated into more than 10 languages. He has received several scientific awards in France, Italy, and Canada.

• Acknowledgements xvChapter 1. General Introduction 11.1. The vision: to enhance cognitive processes 21.2. A transdisciplinary intellectual adventure 51.3. The result: toward hypercortical cognition 271.4. General plan of this book 35PART 1. THE PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION 37Chapter 2. The Nature of Information 412.1. Orientation 412.2. The information paradigm 452.3. Layers of encoding 562.4. Evolution in information nature 662.5. The unity of nature 69Chapter 3. Symbolic Cognition 753.1. Delimitation of the field of symbolic cognition763.2. The secondary reflexivity of symbolic cognition 783.3. Symbolic power and its manifestations 803.4. The reciprocal enveloping of the phenomenal world and semantic world 823.5. The open intelligence of culture 843.6. Differences between animal and human collective intelligence 85Chapter 4. Creative Conversation 894.1. Beyond “collective stupidity” 894.2. Reflexive explication and sharing of knowledge 924.3. The symbolic medium of creative conversation 103Chapter 5. Toward an Epistemological Transformation of the Human Sciences 1135.1. The stakes of human development 1135.2. Critique of the human sciences 1205.3. The threefold renewal of the human sciences 1255.4. The Ouroboros 133Chapter 6. The Information Economy 1356.1. The symbiosis of knowledge capital and cognitive labor 1366.2. Toward scientific self-management of collective intelligence 1406.3. Flows of symbolic energy 1446.4. Ecosystems of ideas and the semantic information economy 1486.5. The semantic information economy in the digital medium 154PART 2. MODELING COGNITION 159Chapter 7. Introduction to the Scientific Knowledge of the Mind 1617.1. Research program 1617.2. The mind in nature 1657.3. The three symbolic functions of the cortex 1717.4. The IEML model of symbolic cognition. 1767.5. The architecture of the Hypercortex 1847.6. Overview: toward a reflexive collective intelligence 187Chapter 8. The Computer Science Perspective: Toward a Reflexive Intelligence 1898.1. Augmented collective intelligence 1898.2. The purpose of automatic manipulation of symbols: cognitive modeling and self-knowledge 1948.3. The means of automatic manipulation of symbols: beyond probabilities and logic 202Chapter 9. General Presentation of the IEML Semantic Sphere 2079.1. Ideas 2089.2. Concepts 2139.3. Unity and calculability 2179.4. Symmetry 2209.5. Internal coherence 2259.6. Inexhaustible complexity 230Chapter 10. The IEML Metalanguage 23510.1. The problem of encoding concepts 23510.2. Text units 23810.3. Circuits of meaning 24110.4. Between text and circuits 244Chapter 11. The IEML Semantic Machine 25311.1. Overview of the functions involved in symbolic cognition 25311.2. Requirements for the construction of the IEML semantic machine 25811.3. The IEML textual machine (S) 26111.4. The STAR (Semantic Tool for Augmented Reasoning) linguistic engine (B) 26411.5. The conceptual machine (T) 26711.6. Conclusion 270Chapter 12. The Hypercortex 27512.1. The role of media and symbolic systems in cognition 27512.2. The digital medium 27712.3. The evolution of the layers of addressing in the digital medium 28412.4. Between the Cortex and the Hypercortex 28912.5. Toward an observatory of collective intelligence 29112.6. Conclusion: the computability and interoperability of semantic and hermeneutic functions 296Chapter 13. Hermeneutic Memory 29913.1. Toward a semantic organization of memory 29913.2. The layers of complexity of memory 30213.3. Radical hermeneutics 30413.4. The hermeneutics of information 30813.5. The hermeneutics of knowledge 31213.6. Wisdom 31713.7. Collective interpretation games 318Chapter 14. The Perspective of the Humanities: Toward Explicit Knowledge 32314.1. Context 32314.2. Methodology: the digital humanities 32714.3. Epistemology: explicating symbolic cognition 331Chapter 15. Observing Collective Intelligence 34115.1. The semantic sphere as a mirror of concepts 34115.2. The structure of the cognitive image 34615.3. The two eyes of reflexive observation 350Bibliography 353Index 377