Early work in cybernetics, a theory of systems as information processors, solidified under two essential presumptions:

1. that thinking is computation
2. physical laws exist that explain how nature appears to possess a form of finality, or teleonomy. The presumption is essentially that things do not just happen randomly, but tend towards certain regular states despite the fact that it cannot be said that they necessarily had to.

NB: The problem of imputing necessity to nature (natural world of empirical laws) defined Kant's critical philosophy. Hume famously reputed the argument that nature operated according to necessity (that things could not be otherwise) and demonstrated that all we can safely say is that human beings give the idea of necessity to nature by habit of association. We see the sun rise everyday which leads us to believe that it MUST rise tomorrow. Hume believed that anything not encountered in our experience, could not be said to have necessary validity, or be used as part of an argument that claimed to be beyond dispute. Kant argued that because we cannot derive the idea of necessity from our experience (we never experience necessity, so why do we have the idea of it in the first place?), even by association, that it must be a category of thought. It must be natural to the mind, occuring before experience takes place, if not to nature itself. Moreover, Kant held that the idea of necessity actively structures our perception of nature.

Back to cybernetics. Cyberneticians were not mind-body dualists. For them, mind or thinking is mechanical: minds basically are computing machines--minds are not just IN human bodies, and they don't define what it means to be human. The claim is more general. As Jean-Pierre Dupuy put it,

“[t]he computation involved is not the mental operation of a human being who manipulates symbols in applying rules, such as those of addition or multiplication; instead it is what a particular class of machines do—machines technically referred to as ‘algorithms.’”

Cybernetic systems were thought of as machines that precisely pilot, control or direct _their own activities_. Why? To reduce the complexity or noise in their environments and make possible dynamic properties and behaviors in their responses to this complexity. How can dynamic properties result from operations of self-control and self-direction, from a reduction of environmental complexity? Are such systems geared toward stasis? How do dynamic properties and behaviors result from systemic reductions of complexity?

Cybernetic systems draw a distinction between themselves and their environments and, once the distinction is drawn, consist in control mechanisms internal to the boundaries of a system. The environments of these systems thus act as mere triggers or perturbing devices. They thus build up their own, internal complexity as part of their historical responses to change in the environment. Control mechanisms operate to reproduce the system homeostatically, that is, control mechanisms represent the systems auto-poietic character: the fact that it produces itself by reproducing its elements or operations (without making recourse to the environment through an exchnage of information. Think of a thermostat. Or a heat-seeking missile.

Cybernetics thus addresses the following problems:
1. The self-organization of complex systems and
2. Their self-regulation through operations such as feedback;
3. The passage between the differing levels of integration of a system;
4. The modalities of openness and closure of a system;
5. The question of teleology and finality.
6. The concept of code or information.

Things I like at the moment

These are the things I like at the moment.

Football. I think college football is more entertaining than pro football. The tradition, the rivalries, the discussions, and of course the mascots get me excited on Saturdays. I wish the people around me like it more. Pro football on the other hand is awesome for fantasy sports and reading about it the next day. Watching pros isn't that much fun for some reason.

Data. I managed to gather a lot of it, and even though it sure causes pain during analysis I feel better having them. What are they going to tell me?

Avocados and tofu. They are tasty in a way that I would have not liked when I was little.

And last but not least, New Morning. New Morning posted a whopper on systems. I'm happy to see philosophy represented well. It made me jealous of philosophers for being able to argue endlessly without people thinking you are an ass.

Fort Collins, Colorado

Falcon "the balloon boy" tricked us. Yes he did. His whole family did. What I don't understand is why would anyone choose to be on a TV when he could have gone flying in a UFO instead? Why do people want to be on TV in the first place? Where am I, in Hollywood? Funny how everyone here hates LA, but they already live in a small town version of it.

Systems and Individuals

‘System’ is a key philosophical concept, which in the 18th century became indissolubly linked with the philosophical problem of individuation. Individuation is the problem of determining how individuals are individualized, taking on discrete identities. Why did the concept of system become linked with the problem of individuation? Individuation presumes that there are individuals. That is, contrary to some monism of substance, if we accept that there are individuals, then we challenge the notion of the whole. Of course, questions of parts and wholes, the one and the many, are as ancient as philosophical thinking itself. Yet the problem of individuation flourished in the philosophical literature only with the demise of religion, or, the idea that one substance maintained a relationship of primacy, generally causal, with respect to all others. As soon as credence was given to the notion that individuals have viable being, in themselves, the conventional notion of system, as a whole or unity of nature, was undermined. Thus, system philosophy is not about the unity or wholeness of the world. Rather, it endorses the view that the world is composed of gaps, fissures, and relations among parts without any ultimate coherence. Systems philosophy is an attempt to grasp a world of multiplicity, and even the etymology of the term system suggests that a system is a unity *of* differences. That said, system philosophy does endorse the idea that multiplicity and difference, a world of individuals, may nonetheless be thought, or conceptualized, in some consistent way. When the idea that the concept of system no longer describes the whole, or the set of all sets, rises to prominence, what comes into being is a set of conceptual tools developed matching in complexity with a world without some holistic finality.
The problem of individuation itself used to describe a world where individuals were basic, indivisible substances, or atoms. In such a world, relations among individuals matter less than cataloging the basic atoms of being, and little attention is paid to the processes undergone by individuals. Such processes can only be accidents of substance, not the essence of individuals. However, research in systems in the 19th and 20th century, as well as the undermining of the world of classical thermodynamics towards a vision of dynamic systems at far-from-equilibrium conditions without final ends or stases, showed the limits of understanding individuals as basic substances. One might think of the importance of the theory of ‘elective affinities’ among chemical substances, an invention of 19th century chemistry, which placed primacy not in individual substances, but in the relations between substances. Iron (Fe) is defined less by the number of protons it carries than by the fact that it undergoes very different changes in its properties in the presence of atmospheric oxygen (rust) versus in the cells of living organisms (nutrient). Thus, studying chemical substances became a question of stoichiometrical relationships in dynamic interactions and processes. The reductionistic study of individual atoms gave way to the study of relations and processes in dynamic interactions. If an individual (an atom, a tree, a society) were to reveal the secrets of its identity and its behavior, it must be related systemically to other individuals. A systemic conception of individuality meant understanding individuals as results and processes generated in dynamic interactions. In this way, the traditional concept of individuality was shown to reflect an already-individuated effect of systemic being, and that examining the systemic relations and processes that generate individuality granted a richer conception of individuality.
Thinking systemically called traditional scientific concepts of linear causality, determinism, and reductionism into question, replacing them with notions of circular causality, self-organization, indeterminacy, and the unpredictable emergence of order from disorder. Thinking systemically meant working toward developing a unified theory and methodological approach to investigate not just the classical simplicities of the mechanistically structured material world, but also the complexities of biological, cognitive, and even social systems. Thus was set into motion a new, post-Newtonian scientific paradigm for research.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, studying systems, whether in science or philosophy, goes hand in hand with addressing problems specific to:
1. The self-organization of complex systems and
2. Their self-regulation through operations such as feedback
3. The passage between the differing levels of integration of a system;
4. The modalities of openness and closure of a system (system boundaries);
5. The question of teleology and finality;
6. The concept of code or information.
Systems, on the parameters listed above, presuppose the following assumptions
1) individuals are results of systems;
2) systems articulate relations and processes;
3) an individual is the generated result of systemic relations and processes;
4) following 1-3, if we want to explain how individuals are individualized (take on particular identities), we must first think of individuals as systems.

Evidence vs Theory

The posts on systems got me thinking: evidence or logic, which should we trust more? Part of the project I'm involved in looks at how lignin degrades compared to cellulose. Lignin is a carbon molecule with many different bonds making it very hard to degrade. It requires many different kinds of enzymes working in concert. Because of this, only a hand full of microorganisms can degrade it. Cellulose on the other hand is a carbon molecule with simple linkages that takes just a few enzymes to degrade. Many microorganisms can degrade cellulose because of this. So by logic, cellulose should degrade faster than lignin. But when we put them out in the forest soil, lignin degraded faster than cellulose! We've looked everywhere for a reason, but found none. The logic behind degradation is solid. There were no experimental mistakes we can think of. And lignin and cellulose were pure. So, should we trust the logic and ignore the evidence, or should we trust at the evidence and try and find different logic behind it?

Systems: science vs philosophy #2

Here's what New Morning had to say;

Philosophers understand systems in ways similar to scientists. However, whereas scientists tend to use systemic analyses, philosophers question the significance of such analyses. As well, philosophers inquire into the *concept* of systems. That is, philosophers tend to care less about this or that system and more about the generic being of a system. What are systems, uberhaupt?-- This is a philosopher's question. In the above description of systems from Jackson's post there is an implicit understanding of the nature and function of systems. A philosopher would concern himself with what is left implicit in Jackson's understanding of system and ask if there were any *presuppositions* about the nature and function of systems. These presuppositions might obscure a larger understanding of systems. A philosopher might wonder if *all* systems operate in relation to external boundaries, or if only a certain species of systems do, such as autopoietic systems, or dynamical systems which constantly receive inputs of energy or matter in order to maintain themselves. Might then the scientists too specific understanding of systems obscure his research of systems that do not function by drawing a boundary from an environment, such as self-referential systems or the system of all systems?

But it is indeed the case that the dominant, and also current, scientific understanding of systems is one where systems are defined against external boundaries. Apart from grand theories of the universe that define the whole of the world systemically, or the curious and quirky Gaia hypothesis, it seems the case that we live in a world defined by systems that operate due to their capacity to distinguish themselves from their environments through the use of boundaries, such as plant and animal cells, brains, languages, the economy, etc.

I think ecosystem science is moving toward the direction of examining implicit assumptions of systems study. But we haven't found it not too necessary because evidence can convince a lot of people in science. I think ecosystem scientists feel less of a need to examine them because we can test the functions of a system without knowing what are all the implicit assumptions or the general principles governing all other systems. And, unlike philosophers, scientists are interested in the contents of a system than the system itself.

Systems philosophy, which I distinguish from the sociological "systems theory," is very much a field not of armchair speculation, but of empirical research, and modern political-economy. The very notion of system is today inseparable from modern society's attempt to manage and monitor itself. Michel Foucault, French philosopher and intellectual historian of the 1960s through 80s, characterized society through the ways in which it observed itself, controlled itself, and defined itself. The core concepts that define and articulate systems are precisely ones of control and observation. However, just what systems philosophy means by these terms is less clear than that doxa which tends to define our most common understanding of systems. We tend to think of systems as imparting an organization to their elements that are at least minimally alien to these elements. Systems, in everyday parlance, have thus been commonly treated as alien to our freedoms (as bureaucracies), our desires, and we commonly hear it said that systems should be resisted, or overturned. But what ideas of control and observation does systems philosophy entertain?

Control: In systems philosophy control is a way of designating the way in which systems *communicate* or maintain themselves. System maintenance is indeed a question of the manner in which a system communicates. This discourse of "communication" owes in largest part to the cyberneticians of the 20th century, such as Norbert Weiner, etc. Control, for Weiner, was only an act of communication while control only occurs for systems if communication also happens. We are far less weary of the idea of communication than we are of control, but the reasons for this are generally ideological.

The cybernetic development of the concept of control was meant to challenge older philosophical ideas of causation. Classical laws of cause and effect were based on the idea that there was more being or perfection in the cause than in the effect (such as God in comparison with his creatures). As philosophers took the idea that God, or basic substances, could possibly possess less being, or less force and efficacy than the things they caused to be unsound reasoning, so a tradition of thought had it that cause preceded effect and that cause explained effect. We still tend to think this way today. Yet in social communication, for instance, it is easy to see that we have to wait for causes to cause their effects and that causes can cause many, sometimes surprising, effects. Time and uncertaintly have been imported into our active understanding of social communication. The cyberneticians realized that causes *select* their effects and that effects have to select their causes.

More to come...