the thought-premise of traditional ethnics is that "human is … animal". This kind of concept could demonstrate the human's moral behavior, however, it would be faced with two difficulties in the end. The first is that it negates the need that human should "pursue to become real human", because it understand human as something "established being". The second is that it can't exceed the animal's layer to think on the standard of "real human", even though it is admitted by some people that human should "pursue to become real human". In the era of information, having great changes take place in the being manner of human, these two difficulties are more and more obviously, and even restrict the research and use to the technology of information exactly. Under these circumstances, how human should understand himself all rounds? Which standard should be set up for human "pursue to become real human"? Like these kinds of problems are becoming so important in the era of information that ethnics would have to search for seriously. Being searching after these kinds of problems, information ethnics would exceed the layer of traditional ethnics, and become a kind of philosophy that of in the era of information.

Modern revolution of information technology gave birth to a new kind of practical form - virtual practice. It has gradually penetrated into every corner of society, and profoundly changing the way of human existence. In this paper, the comparison between generation of virtual practice and traditional practice reveals the nature of virtual practice to improve human existence.

This paper is about an application of rough set derived lattices onto analyzing the dynamics of literary text. Due to the double approximation nature of rough set theory, a pseudo-closure obtained from two different equivalence relations allows us to form arbitrary lattices. Moreover, such double approximations with different equivalence relations permit us to obtain lattice fixed points based on two interpretations. The two interpretations used for literary text analysis are subjects and their attributes. The attributes chosen for this application are verbs. The progression of a story is defined by the sequence of verbs (or event occurrences). By fixing a window size and sliding the window down the story steps, we obtain a lattice representing the relationship between subjects and their attributes. The resulting lattice provides information such as complementarity (lattice complement existence rate) and distributivity (lattice complement possession rate). These measurements depend on the overlap and the lack of overlap among the attributes of characters. As the story develops and new character and attributes are provided as the source of lattices, one can observe its evolution. In fact, a dramatic change in the behavior of characters in a scene is reflected in the particular shifts in the character-attribute relationship. This method lets us quantify the developments of character behavioral dynamics in a story.

In this article we show how it is possible to use Channel Theory [Barwise and Seligman, 1997] for modeling the process of information extraction realized by audiences of audio-visual contents. To do this, we rely on the concepts proposed by Channel Theory and, especially, its treatment of representational systems. We then show how the information an agent is capable of extracting from a content depends on the number of channels he is able to establish between the content and the set of classifications he is able to discriminate. The agent can endeavor the extraction of information through these channels from the totality of content; however, we discuss the advantages of extracting from its constituents in order to obtain a greater number of informational items that represent it. After showing how the extraction process is endeavored for each channel, we propose a method of representation of all the informative values an agent can obtain from a content using a matrix constituted by the channels the agent is able to establish on the content (source classifications), and the ones he can understand as individual (destination classifications). We finally show how this representation allows reflecting the evolution of the informative items through the evolution of audio-visual content.

There are many different mathematical definitions of information that have their various uses, but I will be concerned with notions of information used in applications in various branches of science that are distinguished by their topic, i.e., what they apply to. I describe the major uses information, and show their relations to each other. I will argue that the various uses form a nested hierarchy, in which each is a restriction on the previous, inheriting the properties of its predecessor, but adding in new features that make it a special case. The lowest level is physical information determined by distinctions and the highest is explicit representation in linguistic social communication. Is there anything common to information at all these levels? I will argue that there is, and that information in each case is what Donald MacKay (1969) called a distinction that makes a difference. What distinguishes the use of information at each level is what distinctions make a causal difference at that level. At each successive level distinctions that make a difference at a previous level make no difference at that level. In order to create this sort of filter new levels have to be formed by cohesion peculiar to the identifying characteristics at that level. A consequence of this view is that information must have causal powers, and that there is a tight connection between information and causation.

This article is concerned with redefining the notion of information from a perspective of systems theory. In recent years, the notion of information, which was closely related to the framework of old cybernetics, has been refined in parallel with the emergence of new cybernetics, especially second-order cybernetics and autopoiesis. The systemic view of new cybernetics provides us with the notion of "informationally closed system." This notion is congruent with the epistemological implications of radical constructivism. In order to help understand this argument, we aim at highlighting the development of autopoietic systems theory in Japan. Autopoiesis has often been considered as a thoroughly closed system in Japan, where the relationships between autopoiesis and radical constructivism have frequently been overlooked. This is mainly because the importance which autopoietic systems theory originally attaches to the notion of observer and observation has been inadequately discussed, and autopoietic systems theory is regarded as distinct from second-order cybernetics and radical constructivism. However, they must be dealt with together, and Humberto Maturana should be given credit for his ontology of observing. Since the publication of his paper "Biology of Cognition," Maturana has been attempting to explain the notion of observation as a biological phenomenon in his own way. Likewise, by taking into consideration the notion of observation, we can build a unified theory of information. Fundamental Informatics, which is being developed by Toru Nishigaki, outlines a unified approach to information by putting human observers at the center of his theory. Social and mechanical information is generated only when human observers conduct observations on the basis of biological information, and this mechanism of generation of information is discussed through the notion of "hierarchical autonomous system." For an autopoietic organization to be realized, of course, no hierarchy of systems is required, but observers are likely to construct some hierarchy between two systems. The construction of certain hierarchies of systems by observers is of great use for the explanation of fictitious phenomena of information transmission.

This paper discusses methodological issues related to a possible framework for a unified theory of information. The question we would like to ask here is what kind of philosophical suppositions are important as bases for a new information theory. We concentrate on the relationship between systems theory and semiotics, or to put it more concretely, the relationship between autopoiesis theory and biosemiotics. These theories give rise to two decisive viewpoints that seem potentially contradictory and consequently provoke a fruitful controversy which is conducive for the consideration of philosophical suppositions vital for a new information theory. As the first step in our analysis, we examine the cybersemiotics of Søren Brier and Fundamental Informatics (FI) of Toru Nishigaki, which are both oriented to systems theory and semiotics and look toward a new fundamental theory of information. It is pointed out that cybersemiotics eventually takes a pan-semiotic view; FI, on the contrary, is mainly based on systems theory. Next, we reveal the potential problem between systems theory and semiotics through a discussion on the treatment of the notion of information in the early autopoiesis theory. The standpoint of autopoiesis theory is fundamentally different from the standpoint of biosemiotics. The former presumes that life just keeps operating and has no concern with the difference between inside and outside of itself, whereas the latter presumes that life distinguishes its environment as the other from itself and acts autonomously. This corresponds to the gap between mechanical views on life and semiotic views on life, and constitutes an aporia of views on life. Nevertheless, a way to overcome this contradiction can be found in systems theory itself. Although semiotic explanations are evaluated as merely arbitrary views of an observer in autopoiesis theory, we have to remind ourselves of the relativity of observing that is the most important epistemological feature of second-order cybernetics and autopoiesis theory. Since any distinction implies the work of an observer, it is impossible to strictly distinguish systemic phenomenology from our description, nor can we insist that either explanation has an intrinsically superior status. Some philosophical suppositions vital for a new information theory are derived from this discussion. The following three points are given in our context as basic principles: epistemology rather than ontology, constructivism rather than metaphysics, meta-theoretical recursiveness rather than linear consistency. These three suppositions have some affinity to the features of second-order cybernetic systems theory, but we can also see similar features in certain aspects of semiotics.

The transmission of the linguistic message in the communication is composed of six steps, including coding, sending, transmitting, receiving, decoding and giving feedback of the message. In this procedure, the information asymmetry is permanent while symmetry is relative. The symmetry both in the quantity and quality is the perfect state in intercommunication. There are three events which could affect the information symmetry: transmission, integration and feedback. There might be some noises exist in the linguistic message which the speaker has sent. From the attribute of the noise, it can be divided into two types: the primary noise and the secondary noise. The noise might but not certain to debase the efficiency of the transmission. It is absolutely necessary for the listener to reduce the inconveniences that the noises would cause.

"Towards a new science of information", put forward by Wolfgang Hofkirchner, is the theme of Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science in Beijing (FIS 2010), which is a new aim for global information scientists. This paper describes main features of traditional information science and advances a framework of new information science: "1+4+3", in which "1" means theoretical informatics, "4" stands for communication theory, cybernetics, computer science, and robotics, and "3" indicates natural informatics, social informatics, and humanities informatics. The "1", "4", and "3" locate at three levels respectively: theoretical informatics, tool informatics, and domain informatics.

This passage has recalled the formation of information ethics, the author studied analytically the current status of information ethics, general essence and special essence of information ethics, and predicted the future trends of information ethic.