ᛕᎥᕼᗷᗴᖇᑎᗴ丅Ꭵᑕᔕ @Kihbernetics@qoto.org

1️⃣ Kihbernetic #System with
2️⃣ fundamental #Processes: a recursive #Autopoietic self-production for growth and learning, and a linear #Allopoietic production of “other things”, such as behavior and waste, distributed in
3️⃣ Control #Levels, of #Regulation, immersed in, and dealing with things in the system’s environment, #Control for managing the workload of different regulators, and #Guidance to provide long-term goals and preserve the identity of the system, all using
4️⃣ #Variables: sensory #Input of data and other resources, motor #Output of behavior, #Information as the difference that will make a difference in the subsequent (updated) #Knowledge state, all interconnecting
5️⃣ #Functions: the #Control-ed #Reaction to external stimuli, the #Perception of sensory states, the #Prediction of the expected outcome of past behavior, and the repeated #Integration of new information into an updated knowledge state.

A 3D #space of a natural #system can be visualized as created from the interaction of 2D #planes made of #matter and of #energy that modulate (change the form of or constrain) each other, leaving a 1D #information #sequence as a record of how their interaction unfolds in #time.

Not all #control in real #life requires an immediate response of the dynamical #system to what’s happening in its environment.

Constraining the behavior of a system in a functional way, i.e., control, can be exerted here and now—by the specific parameters of environments. Such is the case of tropisms: a plant turns in the direction of a light. However, in cases in which control is displaced in time, the functional ‘‘freezing’’ of some degrees of freedom has to be written somehow and somewhere (i.e., some form of memory must occur), and—if one wants to have a physical description of this memory process—according to Pattee, one has to employ an alternative sort of description in the form of time-independent constraints. This description is “symbolic’’ in the sense of consisting of timeless structures, having external significance, that—themselves—form a system, being non-arbitrarily linked together by certain rules. According to Pattee, the two kinds of description (symbolic code and physical laws) are incommensurate. Neither is reducible to the other.

J. Rączaszek-Leonardi building on #HH_Pattee’s work on Reconciling #symbolic and #dynamic aspects of #language

https://www.academia.edu/899225/Reconciling_symbolic_and_dynamic_aspects_of_language_Toward_a_dynamic_psycholinguistics

A #sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its #interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its #object, as that in which itself stands to C.

#CS_Peirce (1902)

In #Kihbernetics a sign is the #model describing (documenting) a #system (“mental model”) abstracted from a real #phenomenon (object) by an #observer (the interpretant).

Just discovered there is an interesting etymological link between the words #Stance and #System by which a system may be defined as “having the same stance” or “standing together”

Stance

“comes from the Italian “stanza” which means stopping place (like a room within the house). Your stance is something that’s not likely to change. You have stopped there, your decision is made. You’re done.”

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/stance

Origin:

stā-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to stand, set down, make or be firm,” with derivatives meaning “place or thing that is standing.”

e.g. Afghanistan - the place of the Afghani peoples, and in

Greek histēmi “put, place, cause to stand; weigh,”

https://www.etymonline.com/word/stance

System

Greek systema “organized whole, a whole compounded of parts,” from stem of synistanai “to place together, organize, form in order,” from syn- “together” (see syn-) + root of histanai “cause to stand,” from PIE root *sta- “to stand, make or be firm.”

https://www.etymonline.com/word/system

I think Maturana may have “jumped the gun” here by succumbing to the cybernetic #control vs. #controlled type of thinking and using a gun (a mere passive #product or #structure) as a metaphor for an active, living #system.

In my mind, the notion of external control so pervasive in #cybernetics does not fit well with the notions of #autopoiesis and #constructivism.

Unlike a (living) system, the gun has no other #choice but to react to the trigger, except, as Maturana notes, in case of malfunction (which is not equivalent to choice).

Ashby’s principle of requisite #variety states, in fact, that the variety of the #controlling system must be large at least as the variety of the #controlled system .

As an external #observer can never have the full picture of the internal variety of states the controlled system can find itself in, it is obvious that, for control to be #effective, the controller must be an integral part of the same self-organized (controlled) #system.

A truly remarkable thinker
Anthony Wilden - #System and #Structure
Essays in Communication and Exchange - Second edition (1980)

According to #WRAshby, #Regulation is blocking the flow of #Variety from the (environmental) #Disturbance to the (internal, #System protected) #EssentialVariable. There are two primary forms of blocking the effect of the disturbance on the system:
1️⃣ Passive (by sheltering from), and
2️⃣ Active (on par with)
From:
W. Ross Ashby (1956) - An Introduction to Cybernetics, (Chapman & Hall, London) - available electronically from:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html

Systems thinkers use a number of different terms for the three basic concepts in the “system’s triad” so that we have a “real system” as opposed to the “conceptual system” which is sometimes also called the “mental model” which is again different from the (real) descriptive or simulation model. In #Kihbernetics we make the distinction between #Machine, #System and #Model unambiguous following the rules specified in the works of #WRAshby and #HRMaturana

Ashby warns us against our first impulse to point at the pendulum and say ‘the system is that thing there’ because this has a fundamental disadvantage in that “every material object contains no less than an infinity of variables” from which “different observers (with different aims) may reasonably make an infinity of different selections.”

Therefore, there must first be given an #observer, and a #system is then defined as “any set of variables selected by that observer from those available on the real ‘machine‘”.

#HRMaturana defines a #system, as “a #configuration of #relations that an #observer abstracts in the flow of #interactions and #transformations of a #collection of #elements distinguished in the observers daily living” that is “spontaneously or artificially #conserved” in its #dynamic within some “#domain of concern” of the observer.

So, in Kihbernetics, the triad looks like this:

#Anticipation IS #Computation.

The #Model used by a computing #System to anticipate the #State of affairs in its #Environment depends heavily upon the #Knowledge state of the anticipatory system.

Knowledge is the #Integral result of the system’s #History of all previous computations. The same system will anticipate different outcomes depending on its current knowledge state

An anticipatory system does not need to be a #purposeful system.

#Purpose and Anticipation are only necessary for #Control.

There is no anticipation in #Evolution.

Apart from that, a very interesting article:

https://www.academia.edu/5729941/Anticipation_and_dynamics_Rosens_anticipation_in_the_perspective_of_time?email_work_card=view-paper

The 1, 2, 3, and 4 of #dynamical_systems:
1️⃣ one #system with a purpose
2️⃣ two #processes (linear work and recursive growth)
3️⃣ three #functions (selection, storage, and production)
4️⃣ four #variables (disturbance, difference, control, and output)