Philosophy and Cybernetics: Questions and Issues (original) (raw)
Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics, 2020
The main purpose of this special issue is to show some intersections and/or relationships between the fields of Philosophy and Cybernetics (including Second Order Cybernetics). Philosophy and Cybernetics are, implicitly or explicitly, cybernetically related. The more explicit these relationships are made the more is the probability of emergent properties between them with the respective synergies generated by co-regulative negative feedback (or feed-forward) and potential co-amplificatory positive feedback. This forward also shows, briefly and schematically, the cybernetic relationships between 'reflections' and 'reflexion'. The latter is based on Second Order Cybernetics which, in turn, is based on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, mainly supported by Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Niels Bohr's Complementarity Principle.
Cybernetics and Contemporary Philosophies of Technology
The interdisciplinarity of Cybernetics has been both its strength and its weakness: a strength in that it enabled an originality of thought and a breadth of application not possible within conventional scholarly structures, but a weakness in that it never truly found a home that might institutionalise it, and from which it might reach out to the established disciplines. Its peripatetic constituents and porous, shifting borders makes the direct influence of Cybernetics on contemporary philosophies of technology difficult to establish, though some direct lines of influence can be traced. But any presence of parallels, or overlaps, provides circumstantial evidence of prescient status, if not influence, and such status is indicative of the intellectual significance of Cybernetics, regardless of influence. In this paper we identify key characteristics of Cybernetics that find parallels in contemporary philosophies of technology. These imbrications include: the constructed ontology of beings (and their performances) through information flows; beings as heterogeneous assemblages; the immaterial materiality of being; being and performing as reflexive, recursive and relational; beings seeking homeostasis; and the universality of all of the above.
Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 2008
In the history of cybernetics there have been several attempts by cyberneticians to put themselves into the circularities of their theories and designs, invoking a shift from the cybernetics of mechanisms to a cybernetics of cybernetics. The latter is the title of a book chapter by Margaret Mead (1968) and of Heinz von Foerster's (1974) edited compilation of articles on cybernetics. Foerster introduced the concept of second-order cybernetics which may have overshadowed or sidelined other reflexivities. I am attempting to recover four reflexive turns, describe their origin, implications, and suggest ways in which they continue what Karl Müller (2007) calls an unfinished revolution. These turns are not discussed here in their historical succession but as conceptual expansions of cybernetics.
L. Floridi (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Computing and Information, 2004
The term cybernetics was first used in 1947 by Norbert Wiener with reference to the centrifugal governor that James Watt had fitted to his steam engine, and above all to Clerk Maxwell, who had subjected governors to a general mathematical treatment in 1868. Wiener used the word “governor” in the sense of the Latin corruption of the Greek term kubernetes, or “steersman.” Wiener defined cybernetics as the study of “control and communication in the animal and the machine” (Wiener 1948). This definition captures the original ambition of cybernetics to appear as a unified theory of the behavior of living organisms and machines, viewed as systems governed by the same physical laws. The initial phase of cybernetics involved disciplines more or less directly related to the study of such systems, like communication and control engineering, biology, psychology, logic, and neurophysiology. Very soon, a number of attempts were made to place the concept of control at the focus of analysis also in other fields, such as economics, sociology, and anthropology. The original ambition of “classical” cybernetics thus seemed to involve also several human sciences, as it developed in a highly interdisciplinary approach, aimed at seeking common concepts and methods in rather different disciplines. In classical cybernetics, this ambition did not produce the desired results and new approaches had to be attempted in order to achieve them, at least partially. In this chapter, we shall focus our attention in the first place on the specific topics and key concepts of the original program in cybernetics and their significance for some classical philosophic problems (those related to ethics are dealt with in Chapter 5, COMPUTER ETHICS, and Chapter 6, COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION AND HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION). We shall then examine the various limitations of cybernetics. This will enable us to assess different, more recent, research programs that are either ideally related to cybernetics or that claim, more strongly, to represent an actual reappraisal of it on a completely new basis.
Technophany, 2025
This article examines the intersection of philosophy and cybernetics, proposing Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as a crucial foundation for renewed cybernetics in the twentyfirst century. By revisiting Norbert Wiener's foundational insights and reinterpreting key cybernetic principles, it explores how Luhmann's second-order observation and the concept of meaning challenge the traditional distinctions between human consciousness and technology. The paper argues that Luhmann's approach not only addresses concerns of dehumanization in a technologically advanced society but also offers a dynamic framework for rethinking human self-perception and social organization without denying it cybernetic foundations. This exploration highlights the potential of systems theory to redefine the philosophical significance of cybernetics, providing tools for understanding the evolving interactions among humans, machines, and society in modernity.
The Footprint of Cybernetics in the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
Philosophy of Science (Falsafe-ye-Elm), 2022
Many attempts have been made in the history and philosophy of science to suppose machines as human beings. Sometimes they are attributed mind, sometimes emotions, and sometimes intelligence. All this is to make the border between humans and machines as narrow as possible, so that one day they may unite. But this effort can be made in another direction. It is possible to bring humans closer to machines as much as possible with a systematic view, which is what the cybernetic perspective has done. This approach has played a significant role in the emergence of artificial intelligence studies and along with the two approaches of computationalism and representationalism has been able to introduce artificial intelligence as the most important and functional field of science to the world.
The New Science of Cybernetics: A Primer
Journal on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 2013
Historically, the new science of cybernetics can be viewed as a potential outline of Heinz von Foerster’s vision of second-order cybernetics as the science of observing systems or, alternatively, of living systems by living systems for living systems. Heinz von Foerster introduced the concept of second-order cybernetics on several occasions, without specifying, however, its content and cognitive organization (Foerster, 1974, 2003) Systematically, the new science of cybernetics operates on a new level which, not quite unexpectedly and surprisingly, can be characterized as second-order level. This secondorder level is self-reflexive by nature and by design, because this level comes into play whenever a concept, a model or an academic field turns onto itself, like in understanding understanding or in cybernetics of cybernetics. Functionally, the new science of cybernetics can be viewed as a transor post-disciplinary second-order field for navigating through an ocean of first-orde...
Between Cybernetics and a Cybernetics of Cybernetics György Kepes's Vision and Values Series
I launch our day-long workshop on artist and impresario György Kepes, in particular his Vision + Values Series, with the terms " cybernetics " and a " cybernetics of cybernetics. " I explore how these ideas unfold in various places within Kepes's publishing exploits, both within and beyond the V+V Series. I do so not foremost according to objects, artworks or artefacts, arguing that the publishing endeavors of Kepes might be construed as cybernetic because of, say, the interactive and kinetic nature of work by George Rickey and Naum Gabo, or, say, the ecological processes inherent in the work of Robert Smithson or PULSA. While possible, as all figures elicited contributed to Kepes's books, I will not pursue definitions in this way. Rather, I define said terms according to the words published in Kepes's anthologies – by way of the writers in his collective stable of thinkers, their style of writing, and the language they used. Thus, what follows is an argument for the cybernetics of Kepes's work based on a close reading of the text as artefact. If cybernetics is the science of observed systems, second-order cybernetics is the science of observing systems: which is to say, first-order cybernetics is based on the logic of watching, creating, and organizing systems from a stable locus outside of the system while second-order cybernetics is based on the observer located within the dynamic system, affected by and affecting the system through the act of observation. The latter, the subject/observer of second-order cybernetics, is thus molding, molded by, and participating within the self-organization of a given system.