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

REPRESENTATION (Active or latent) 3)

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Active representation, according to Fr CRICK and Ch. KOCH is the process of explicitation of an implicit representation present in our neural network and evoked by some perception, through a pattern of firing neurons.

These authors write: "A latent representation of a face must also be stored in the brain, probably as a special pattern of synaptic connexions between neurons… For example, you probably have a representation of the Statue of Liberty in your brain, a representation that usually is inactive. If you do think about the statue, the representation becomes active. with the relevant neurons firing away" (1992, p.112).

Of course, there is still a need to explain how these latent representations become established, through some initial perception, internally transformed and made available for retrieval.

In R. FISCHER words, who applies the notion to parallel distributed processing, "… what was learned is not a representation, but the state of all.. neuron-like connections" (1992, p.212).

This is the latent representation capacity, out of which we may at will obtain instant representations of what we "know", according to what and how we "know".

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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