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

MODEL (Conceptual system) 2)

"A system perceived as a unit by an observer (i.e. the modeller)"(E. VACCARI & H. D'AMATO, 2000, p. 170)

"In general a modeller formulates a CSM for some specific purpose which determines the aspect (i.e. selection of specific significant attributes among the infinity of potentially distinguishable ones) or the process (i.e. time function relations between attributes) to conceptualise" (Ibid)

However, there are doubts about the practical use of the CSM when translated to a computational method.

The authors state that "basic metaphysical assumptions underlying the computational approach are the existence of a language of thoughts (FODOR, 1975) and the independence (based on the notion of computational equivalence) of a cognitive process performance from the medium carrying on the process itself. The approach is based on the assumed similarity between the mind and a universal Turing machine (NEWELL, SHAW and SIMON, 1958) from which the notion of a physical symbol system as an information processing device has been derived.

A physical symbol system necessary and sufficient to produce intelligent behavior (NEWELL & SIMON, 1976) is a set of physical patterns/discrete symbol strings and a set of explicit rules. The rules can also be coded as symbolic structures and they describe how to manipulate the symbols"(Ibid)

This seems in fact to be a quite simplistic linear and somehow nearly mechanistic view, very different from the nature of neuronal net activity in the brain (i.e. multisimultaneous processing, with reinforcements, dampenings, parallel distributed processing)

In fact, the classical computational approach evacuates the real complexity of modeled systems. This is why conventional artificial intelligence does not seem so "intelligent", after all.

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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