NEW PERSPECTIVES ON CYBERNETICS SYNTHESE LffiRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University ofLeyden WESLEY C. SALMON, University of Pittsburgh VOLUME 220 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON CYBERNETICS Self-Organization, Autonomy and Connectionism Edited by GERTRUDIS V AN DE VIJVER University o/Ghent, Belgium Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data NeH perspectlves on cybernetlcs : se1f-organlzatlon. autonoay. and connectlonisa I edited by Gertrudls van de Vljver. p. CI. -- (Synthese 11brary ; v. 2201 1nc1udes blb)lographlca1 references and Index. 1. Cybernetlcs. 2. Se1f-organlzlng systems. 3. Automatlc contro1. 1. Vljver. Gertrudis van deo 11. Serles. Q310.N48 1992 003·.5--dc20 91-34827 ISBN 978-90-481-4107-4 ISBN 978-94-015-8062-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8062-5 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without wrilten permission from the copyright owner. CONTENTS G. Van de Vijver: Preface 1 G. Pask: Introduction: Different kinds of cybernetics 11 Self-organization and complexity H. Allan: Ends and meaning in machine-like systems 35 S. Salthe: Hierarchical non-equilibrium self-organization as the new post-cybernetic perspective 49 E. Bernard-Weil: A priori and a posteriori in cognitive praxis: the model for the regulation of agonistic antagonistic couples 59 F. Heylighen: Non-rational cognitive processes as changes of distinctions 77 Epistemological issues F. Vandamme: Self-organization and autonomy in a post-cybernetic perspective. Epistemological issues 97 G. Van de Vijver: The experimental epistemology of W.S. McCulloch. A minimalistic interpretation 105 D. Andler: From paleo- to neo-connectionism 125 P. Livet: Second cybernetics: a double strategy for representing cognition 147 T. Meynen: The bringing forth of dialogue: Latour versus Maturana 157 A. Goudsmit: A one-sided boundary: on the limits of knowing organiza- tional closure 175 P. Burghgraeve: Mechanistic explanations and structure-determined systems. Maturana and the human sciences 207 Sociological issues G. Pask: Correspondence, consensus, coherence and the rape of democracy 221 E. Rosseel: Writers of the lost I: second-order self-observation and absolute writership 233 Index 247 PREFACE Gertrudis Van de Vijver· Seminar of Logic and Epistemology University of Ghent Before being classified under the fashionable denominators of complexity and chaos, self-organization and autonomy were intensely inquired into in the cybernetic tradition. Despite all rejections that cybernetics has gone through in the second half of this century, today its importance is more and more recognized. Its decisive influence for connectionist theories, autopoietic and constructivist theories, for different forms of applied or experimental epistemology, is being more and more understood and generally accepted. It is mainly due to the success of connectionist models that we observe today a revival of interest for cybernetics. The 1943 article by McCulloch and Pitts is evidently a founding article. Cybernetics has however a much broader interest than the one linked to technical-mathematical details relevant to the construction of networks. For instance, the evolution from first to second order cybernetics, the ways of approaching biological and cognitive phenomena in the latter and the limits that were formulated there, are particularly meaningful to understand current developments and divergences in connectionism. A nuanced picture of cybernetic's history and its present state is therefore clearly epistemologically essential. The major differences between first and second order cybernetics are traced out in the Introduction by Gordon Pasko We will therefore limit ourselves to a brief sketch of some elements of the history of cybernetics - a history full of misunderstandings, mistaken interpretations, denials and rejections - which are of importance for the studies that are nowadays to be situated under the denominators of self-organization and complexity. First order cybernetics, starting at the beginning of the forties with the work of Wiener, Rosenblueth, Bigelow, McCulloch, Pitts, and many others, was definitely an interdisciplinary project. It was, as a consequence, marked by a great diversity in aims and by quite divergent views on how cognitive, biological and teleological phenomena had to be studied and explained. Although it is generally described, rather monolithically, as the science of the control and communication in the animal and the machine, its status and meaning as a scientific discipline were not and are not that straightforward. G. Van de Vijver (ed.), New Perspectives on Cybernetics, 1-9. © 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2 G. VAN DE VUVER Is cybernetics a science of feedback-mechanisms or of information? Does it give expression to the idea of a neo-mechanicism, an 'experimental philosophy' relevant to very different fields of research ? Is it rather a methodology of action, a strategy, an art ? Or does it have in the first place a technological value ? As Gordon Pask states in the Introduction to this volume, the interpretation of the meaning of cybernetics depends on the philosophical orientation one has with regard to science. It is indeed not at all evident that experiment, technology and art ought to be seen in all cases as distinct. These distinctions however did play a role in the reception of cybernetics in the scientific community. The technological side of the cybernetical project never posed many problems. Cybernetics was, certainly after 1953, mainly identified with this aspect and its importance was accepted as such. The following statement by McCulloch, in 1961, is characteristic in this respect: "In English medicine cybernetics is still a dirty word, but in their industry it has been washed in the holy water of filthy lucre." (McCulloch, 1965, pp. 221-222). The reception of what we called the experimental side of the cybernetic project was and is, however, much more delicate. The importance and diversity of the cybernetical research, from its beginning till second order cybernetics, makes it quite incomprehensible that it has been rejected for such a long time on the basis of a monolithic and necessarily historically mistaken picture, a picture which reduces its value to a mere technological one. Questions about the scientific character, about the objectivity of cybernetics remain vivid up to this day, leading to surprised reactions in seeing cybernetic research continuing, and to quick answers such as: "Cybernetics ? Cybernetics is dead!". Was it the aim to understand in a scientific way teleological phenomena that caused the great stir being made in the scientific community? Was this the reason for the all too passionate and general rejection that lasted for more than 40 years ? Was it the geneml interdisciplinary project which was in the first place represented by Norbert Wiener? That cybernetics was genemlly subjected to criticism and rejection, has indeed, according to us, to do with the aim of understanding, within a scientific context, teleological phenomena in a broad sense. In this context, we can refer to the reactions on the founding article "Behaviour, Purpose, Teleology". However, we do not want to deal with this aspect here; we will briefly indicate what are the major shifts in the view on teleology from first cybernetics to the new cybernetics. PREFACE 3 In first cybernetics, as we can see in the above mentioned article, teleology was essentially connected with the possibility of control, and necessitated the presence of a well-defined goal-object and a completely specified system. External observation, a classical view on objectivity in which subject and object are separable, were some of the epistemological features of first order cybernetics. However, the fact of stressing the necessity of control had not only as a consequence that technological aims were quite naturally pursued in the first place, it also implied that some forms of purposiveness could not be accounted for. The first cybernetics' interpretation implied essential simplifications on the level of the meaning of goal-directedness. The teleological problem as Kant had formulated it in connection with biological organizations, and that we can describe to-day in terms of self­ organization and autonomy, necessitates another approach than the one of first cybernetics in terms of control. The paradox that Kant had linked to teleology (or to internal purposive forms or natural purposes) is related to the fact that a purposive system has to move or develop towards a purpose before that purpose is present, apparently even before a purpose can be conceived of. A genuine purposive system does not only possess a representation of the purpose towards which it is moving, it also has to construct that representation itself. Along the main lines of the cybernetical project, it had to be possible to understand and explain how certain kinds of systems - artificial and biological - can develop