BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

BEHAVIOR (Specific action) 5)

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A type of action standardised in accordance with a specific task.

A specific action pertaining to a pattern of behavior can be repeated without any adaptive variations as many times as needed.

Only machines – mainly so-called robots – can be programed for specific action behavior.

Living systems, particularly human beings, are not efficient specific behavior actors, precisely because they are good at adaptive variations.

H. COLLINS observes:"We can replace workers on production lines with machines, but only after we have organised the factory so that the tasks can be accomplished through standardised behavior, rather than varying actions" (1992, p.39).

Specific action behavior thus introduced as algorithms and routines, become completely stabilized and context independent.

COLLINS adds: "The theory of the specific action behavior… gives us a simple test which highlights most of the difficulties of making machines that mimic human action" (p.39).

This is true at least for machines guided by algorithms, but could become less so for machines trained by learning.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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