Рефлексивные процессы и управление. Сборник материалов XI Международного симпозиума 16-17 октября 2017 г., Москва

The majority of the hands-on exercises takes the format of applied coding assignments. "Technical" approaches have more conventionally been associated with first-order cybernetics and utilitarian control systems. In this case, however, computer technology is taken as an output of past cybernetics to illustrate and inspire cybernetics and cyberneticians of the future. The hands-on exercises include: A programmable Turing Machine, a simple Wiener anti-aircraft predictor, a thermostat data logger, a Shannon mind reading machine, demonstrations of subjective participation in observation, various eigenwert and eigenbehaviour demonstrations based on recursive functions, a simulation of the Ebbinghaus "forgetting curve", and an implementation of Varela‘s autopoiesis cellular automata system.

The course has recently been delivered at the Institute of Media Science at Humboldt University in Berlin, and further deliveries are planned. The textbook and exercises are currently developed in German language and are scheduled to be published in a text book format soon. An extended version in English language is planned for the intermediate future. The proposed presentation will introduce the initiative and its underlying motivation, and offer a guided tour through key software exercises with short discussions of related cybernetic principles and ideas.

References

1. Mead, Margaret 1968. Cybernetics of cybernetics. In: Foerster H. von et al. (eds.) Purposive Systems. Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium of the American Society for Cybernetics. New York, NY: Spartan Books. 1-11.

Tatyana Medvedeva (Siberian State University of Transport, Novosibirsk) View of V. E. Lepskiy’s and S. A. Umpleby’s theories of cybernetics through the prism of intellectual traditions

Abstract.Understanding the differences between scientific approaches to cybernetics is difficult because of the very different histories and intellectual traditions in Russia and the US. This paper, first, describes the peculiarities of the Russian style of scientific thinking in comparison with the American approach. Second, it compares Vladimir E. Lepskiy‘s and Stuart A. Umpleby‘s theories of cybernetics looking at them through the prism of Russian and American intellectual traditions.

Keywords: intellectual traditions; first-order cybernetics; second-order cybernetics; third-order cybernetics

The Russian intellectual tradition

Characterizing the Russian intellectual tradition in comparison with the American intellectual tradition requires describing several points. Therearefundamentaldifferences. Among the most important differences, from our point of view, are the following:

1. Different interpretation of some fundamental concepts, for example, the definition of "development". "Development" has been interpreted in the West mostlyin terms of technology and science (a technocratic view of the term). Technologicalprogressisamainstreamidea. ButRussian civilization interprets "development" as transfiguration, self-perfection, vanquishing sinin people (a spiritual view of the problem).[Platonov, 2010]

2. The scientific implications of such a different understanding of fundamental ideas can be illustrated by the American and Russian development of the idea of I. P. Pavlov on the "conditioned reflex".Pavlov discovered a conditioned reflex while experimenting with animals as a physiologist. Later he learned that American psychologists were experimenting in the same way. He wrote about the difference between his work and the American work by noting that the practical American mind found that it is more important to know the external behavior of a man, than to guess about his internal state. The American science of behavior teaches us to act in the right (instrumentally successful) way. Russianpsychologyteachesusto make right (ethical) decisions.

3. Many Russian scientists often used different foundation for their process of thinking, they strove to build a better world, to include ethics and spirituality in scientific theories (N. A. Berdyaev, N. G. Chernyshevsky, and others). The first systematic critiques of classical rationalism as a scientific position were formulated in Russia. (Although rationalism led us to the gate of truth, it is fated not to open the gate. I. Odoevsky).