ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2021
The Natural Philosophy of Economic Information: Autonomous Agents and Physiosemiosis.
Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Towards Pragmatist Thermodynamics: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Entropy and Sustainability.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Exploring Information and Communication Theories for Synthetic Cell Research.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Information is a core concept in modern economics, yet its definition and empirical specification is elusive. One reason is the intellectual grip of the Shannon paradigm which marginalizes semantic information. However, a precise concept of economic information must be based on a theory of semantics, since what counts economically is the meaning, function and use of information. This paper introduces a new principled approach to information that adopts the paradigm of biosemiotics, rooted in the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce and builds on recent developments of the thermodynamics of information. Information processing by autonomous agents, defined as autopoietic heat engines, is conceived as physiosemiosis operating according to fundamental thermodynamic principles of information processing, as elucidated in recent work by Kolchinsky and Wolpert (KW). I plug the KW approach into a basic conceptual model of physiosemiosis and present an evolutionary interpretation. This approach has far-reaching implications for economics, such as suggesting an evolutionary view of the economic agent, choice and behavior, which is informed by applications of statistical thermodynamics on the brain.
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