Cybernetic Sparks and Philosophical Feedback Loops

Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about "exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines" (Bateson, 1971, p. 23). This paper adopts his line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields' primary concerns closely cohere. The world's most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramović to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor. The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.

Circular Causality of Emotions in Moving Pictures

In the framework of predictive coding, as explained by Giovanni Pezzulo in his article Why do you fear the bogeyman? An embodied predictive coding model of perceptual inference (2014), humans construct instances of emotions by a double arrow of explanation of stimuli. Top-down cognitive models explain in a predictive fashion the emotional value of stimuli. At the same time, feelings and emotions depend on the perception of internal changes in the body. When confronted with uncertain auditory and visual information, a multimodal internal state assigns more weight to interoceptive information (rather than auditory and visual information) like visceral and autonomic states as hunger or thirst (motivational conditions). In short, an emotional mood can constrain the construction of a particular instance of emotion. This observation suggests that the dynamics of generative processes of Bayesian inference contain a mechanism of bidirectional link between perceptual and cognitive inference and feelings and emotions. In other words, “subjective feeling states and emotions influence perceptual and cognitive inference, which in turn produce new subjective feeling states and emotions” as a self-fulfilling prophecy (Pezzulo 2014, 908). This article focuses on the short introductory scene from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), claiming that the construction / emergence of the fear and sadness emotions are created out of the circular causal coupling instantiated between cinematic bottom-up mood cues and top-down cognitive explanations.

Understanding the Dynamics of Green and Blue Spaces for Health and Wellbeing Outcomes in Ireland: A Systemic Stakeholder Perspective

Despite the recognised benefits to human health from green and blue spaces, socioeconomic inequalities in access to and use of such spaces have been observed. Using a multidisciplinary, multistakeholder systems approach and structural equation modelling, this paper examines the structural and behavioural dynamics of green and blue spaces, people and health and wellbeing outcomes. Systems thinking offers a deeper understanding of the dynamics of collective choices at all levels within the determinants and the circular causality of these processes. The resulting map shows that behavioural and structural dynamics of green and blue spaces reinforce social cohesion, mental and physical benefits and their circular causality. Acknowledging the importance of multiple uses of green and blue spaces, this paper concludes that delivering universal services at a scale and intensity proportionate to the degree of need is vital to ensure services and health and wellbeing benefits are available to all, not only the most advantaged.

A new epistemology for mental disorders

Psychopathology has been criticized for decades for its reliance on a over-reductionist approach which views mental disorders as disease-like natural kinds that result from pathological changes in brain structure and function. The lack of progress in developing better treatments for mental disorders happened in spite of a great deal of research trying to uncover its neural bases. A new ontoepistemology for mental disorders is proposed, focusing on a biocultural model, in which brains are understood as embodied and embedded in ecosocial niches - zones of living within a milieu that can be occupied by a particular individual with its form of life, and with which brains enact particular transactions characterized by circular causality. In this approach, neurobiological bases are always-already associated with interpersonal, social, and cultural factors, and therefore are inseparable from these factors. As an ontoepistemology, this approach leads to methodological changes in how mental disorders are studied, as well as to consequences to interventions.

Cybernetics for the Social Sciences

This publication meets a long-felt need to show the relevance of cybernetics for the social sciences (including psychology, sociology, and anthropology). User-friendly descriptions of the core concepts of cybernetics are provided, with examples of how they can be used in the social sciences. It is explained how cybernetics functions as a transdiscipline that unifies other disciplines and a metadiscipline that provides insights about how other disciplines function. An account of how cybernetics emerged as a distinct field is provided, following interdisciplinary meetings in the 1940s, convened to explore feedback and circular causality in biological and social systems. How encountering cybernetics transformed the author’s thinking and his understanding of life in general, is also recounted.

KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN STATE MACHINES OF CONTROL SYSTEMS

The questions of knowledge representation in control automata of control systems are considered. It is proposed to describe the interaction of the system object and the control automaton using the functions of actions and reactions; to consider the states of the control machine as elements that form the contour of activity and control in the system; describe causal relationships in circuits based on the principles of circular causality; the structure of the state controlled by all interface elements is proposed. Examples of Prologue programs with a knowledge base on the contour of activity and queries about the serviceability of contour elements are given.

Education, Consciousness and Negative Feedback: Towards the Renewal of Modern Philosophy of Education

Among the biggest challenges facing the contemporary human condition, and therefore also education, is responding to the climate crisis. One of the sources of the crisis is assumed to be absent-mindedness, presented by Leslie Dewart as a distortion of the development of human consciousness. Dewart’s poorly-known philosophical consciousness study is presented in this paper in broad outline. The problems in the study of consciousness, the most important of which are the qualitative representations—qualia—and the question of free will, are also briefly discussed. These problems are then examined transcendental analytically, with the question of what one must assume in order to allow the emergence of these phenomena. From the resulting conception of causal relationship, we proceed to the circular causality as a prerequisite for life, namely the homeostatic systems and negative feedback. An organization of action that is essential to animals and humans is presented, using William Powers’ perceptual control theory (PCT), and the role of consciousness in this organization is drafted according to the studies of Martin Taylor. Action is seen as continuous problem solving, in which negative feedback is used to bring perceptions into line with the goals. The fundamental function of consciousness is revealed as the direction and enhancement of learning. Based on PCT, it can be shown that the main practical problems in animal and, especially, human action, are related to adverse side effects of action and the resulting various conflicts. The climate crisis is a typical example of the problematic side effects of collective action. Dewart’s concept of absent-mindedness can therefore be defined as an inability to responsibly account for the side effects of action. Thus, the main task of education is to forestall, through negative feedback and in cooperation with learner consciousness, absent-mindedness and the problems it causes.

Education, Consciousness and Negative Feedback: Towards the Renewal of Modern Philosophy of Education

Among the biggest challenges facing the contemporary human condition, and therefore also education, is responding to the climate crisis. The source of the crisis is assumed to be absent-mindedness, presented by Leslie Dewart as a distortion of the development of human consciousness. Dewart's poorly-known philosophical consciousness study is presented in this paper in broad outline. The problems in the study of consciousness, the most important of which are the qualitative representations – qualia – and the question of free will, are also briefly discussed. These problems are then examined transcendental analytically, with the question of what one must assume in order to allow the emergence of these phenomena. From the resulting conception of causal relationship, we proceed to the circular causality as a prerequisite for life, namely the homeostatic systems and negative feedback. An organization of action that is essential to animals and humans is presented, using William Powers’ perceptual control theory (PCT), and the role of consciousness in this organization is drafted according to the studies of Martin Taylor. Action is seen as continuous problem solving, in which negative feedback is used to bring perceptions into line with the goals. The fundamental function of consciousness is revealed as the direction and enhancement of learning. Based on PCT, it can be shown that the main practical problems in animal and, especially, human action, are related to adverse side effects of action and the resulting various conflicts. The climate crisis is a typical example of the problematic side effects of collective action. Dewart's concept of absent-mindedness can therefore be defined as an inability to responsibly account for the side effects of action. Thus, the main task of education is to forestall, through negative feedback and in cooperation with learner consciousness, absent-mindedness and the problems it causes.

Terms in Electoral Law Through the Prism of the Concept of Balance of the Constitutional Regulation of Electoral Relations

Introduction: the concept of terms in electoral law is an established system of views on the procedural aspects of the implementation of electoral legal relations. However, certain aspects of electoral terms have been and will continue to be changed in order to improve the electoral process. The purpose of the work is to identify the substantial factors that influence the transformation of electoral terms. Methods: in the course of the research, both general scientific and special methods of cognition of social and legal phenomena (the formal legal method and the circular causality method) were used. Results: the reasons for the transformation of electoral terms under the influence of the implementation of the concept of balance of the constitutional regulation, which in this case has a transformative effect on the electoral legal relations, are revealed. Conclusions: the search for a balance between the need to form the public authorities and modern realities, which do not always allow for the effective organization of the electoral process, will be accompanied by the transformation of the legally established concept of electoral terms implemented in modern Russia.