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Transforming Competition into
Collaboration
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Cybernetics and Philosophical
Theory of Knowledge
Studying the history of epistemology we perceive a clear trend, the
first theories of knowledge stressed its absolute, and permanent character
whereas the later theories put the emphasis on its relativity, its continuous
evolution, and importantly its active interference with the world. The trend
clearly is moving from a static, passive view of knowledge towards a more
adaptive and active one. Plato viewed knowledge as an awareness of absolute, universal
Ideas or forms, existing independent of any subject trying to apprehend to them.
Latter Aristotle puts more emphasis on logical and empirical methods for
gathering knowledge, but still accepting that knowledge is an apprehension of
necessary and universal principles. Following the Renaissance, two main
epistemological positions dominated philosophy: empiricism, which sees knowledge
as the product of sensory perception, and rationalism, which sees it as the
product of rational reflection. Use of empiricism in the experimental sciences
led to a view of knowledge based on “reflection-correspondence theory”.
According to this view knowledge results from a kind of mapping or reflection of
external objects. The understanding of knowledge, based on cybernetic view is much
more precise. This precision is achieved by introducing dynamics into the
picture. Asserting that a “thought” works because it implements some models
of the world, not because it somehow statically reflects it. In a static world
no knowledge, reflection or correspondence would be possible. From the cybernetics standpoint the world appears to be a
collection of interacted control systems, with each of these systems having a
goal, and which they are working to achieve. The subject of knowledge itself is
one of such systems, comprehending the surrounding reality in the light of its
own purposes and internal model of the world. After the reflection-correspondence theory, came Kantian syntheses of
empiricism and realism. According to the Kant, we have definite categories in
our minds, which form the basis for cognition of surrounding reality. These
categories couldn’t be achieved in any experience and given to us from the
beginning. The subject may get new knowledge using such categories as space,
time, objectivity and causality. Burtsev (2001) At the rise of 20th century a pragmatic view on epistemology
appeared in philosophy. Pragmatic epistemology sees knowledge as a set of
theories or models each representing description of some phenomenon or the class
of phenomena, and intended for solving certain problems. Classes of phenomena
are described by different theories, so they may overlap and correspondingly we
may have contradictions between them. As there are a number of ways to solve
given problem. The criterion of knowledge “quality” comes into the picture.
Pragmatic theories (models) have to agree to the following criteria: 1.
The theories should return correct (verifiable) predictions of behavior
of the observable phenomenon and,
2. The theories must be as
simple as possible. Knowledge as an absolute reality is not possible from the point of
pragmatic philosophy; we could only have some particular models of the world. It
gives no answer where the models come from, usually, it is assumed that new
knowledge is being built through the combination of pieces of already existing
knowledge with the “trial and error” method complemented by some heuristic
or intuition. One way to deal with this problem is offered by the
constructivism, which is based on Kantian syntheses of empiricism and realism.
Constructivism especially in its radical forms maintains that knowledge is built
by the subject. The knowledge has a weak coupling with reality and also has a
strong dependence on the subject. This leads to relativism or, asserting
equivalence of different models for the given phenomenon from the subject’s
point of view. There are no criteria to distinguish between true or adequate and
false knowledge or to compare a number of alternative theories of phenomenon. Two main approaches in constructivism could be found, which are
used to resolve the problem of knowledge relativity. The first suggests using
the coherence of the new knowledge with the knowledge already owned by the
subject, as the criteria of knowledge value. If it is impossible to include the
new knowledge in the existing worldview then such knowledge is ignored. The
second approach, which is called social constructivism, perceives society as the
criterion for knowledge selection. It proposes that knowledge is being developed
through the communication in community on the basis of notions, which exist in
society. It is obvious that construction of knowledge in our society takes place
both on the individual and social level therefore it is reasonable to use both
criteria at the same time. (Heylighen 1997). Evolutionary Epistemology
Constructivism is focused on knowledge in its relation to subject and
reality but it is not so clear about the process of new knowledge origin. We can
use the method suggested by evolutionary epistemology to deal with this problem.
Evolutionary epistemology tries to analyze rise of novel knowledge based on the
Darwinian theory of evolution. It implies that the subject (or group of
subjects) is forced to construct new knowledge to adapt to environment in the
broad sense. It argues that knowledge is built up through blind variation and
then undergoes selection under pressure of internal (e.g. coherence) or external
(e.g. experimental data) factors. It is also remarkable that from such viewpoint
we can consider processes of knowledge development on the different levels of
organization from organism (formation of new organs in biological speciation) to
social (forming of new scientific theories) in the similar way. Karl Popper was the first to make systematic appliance of
evolutionary ideas in the philosophical theory of knowledge. (Popper 1984). It
consists of to main provisions (Popper 1984). The first is that specifically
human ability to cognize as well as to produce scientific theories are the
results of natural selection and are tightly coupled with evolution of specific
human language. The second one is that evolution of scientific theories is
moving towards more and more successful and precise ones. Here we see that
selection of scientific theories is analogous to selection of organisms both are
based on the criterion of fitness. All living beings are also problem solvers;
problems arise together with origin of life. Popper proposes that when a particular problem arises it leads to
a number of attempts to solve it. A lot of tentative theories are generated and
then each of them critically examined, checked on the presence of errors. This
process is analogous to Darwinian selection. The given theory is considered as
true until we could not find errors in it. It is the essence of Popperian
critical method. When one problem has been solved; the solution gives rise to a
number of new questions and the whole sequence have to be repeated. So, the
evolution of theories is represented in the symbolic form: P1 -> TT -> EE -> P2, where P1 is initial problem; TT – tentative theories; EE – error
elimination and P2 – new problems. Popper gives striking example to illustrate evolutionary
epistemology, stating that it is only one step from amoeba to Einstein. Both the
amoeba, which have to survive in the given conditions, as well as Einstein, who
develops physical theories, solve their problems (P) by trial (TT) and error
elimination (EE) method. But the difference
between them lies the manner of error elimination. The amoeba does not
realize the elimination process, amoeba’s errors are eliminated through the
elimination of amoeba itself; this is a natural selection. On the other hand
Einstein has a language and can use it to find errors in his own theories.
Popper underline that the main difference between humans and other species is
the existence of language. The language is an instrument for abstraction of knowledge from
reality. We use language to create a medium where tentative theories could be
tested. People create language models of external reality in their minds, which
helps them to verify theories without direct interaction with the world. It is of importance to note that not only human can have knowledge
from the viewpoint of the evolutionary epistemology. The knowledge is viewed in
more broad sense so any adaptation can be interpreted as knowledge. This is very
fruitful idea, which allows constructing of unified epistemological theory for
all living creatures. Another philosopher who made an important contribution to the
evolutionary theory of knowledge was Donald Campbell; he also introduced the
term “evolutionary epistemology”. Campbell proposed the following three main
notions (Heylighen et al 1995). We can consider animal instincts, Kantian a
priori ideas, individual living experience, human culture as an examples of
vicarious selectors. The vicarious selectors are produced on the different
levels of development of cognizing systems (from primitive organisms to human
society) forming hierarchy in which some selectors have to fit to anothers.
Tentative hypothesis has to pass through the whole hierarchy before the subject
in his interaction with environment will use it. The whole nested hierarchy of
the vicarious selectors can be seen as a model of the world in the mind of the
subject. Cybernetic Epistemology
The distinguishable feature of life is purposefulness, knowledge can be
viewed as an instrument that used to achieve a certain goal, an instrument that
is needed to control the self-state and the state of some part of surrounding
world. It is natural to consider the evolution of living systems as development
of hierarchical systems of control. This was done by Valentin Turchin in his
book “The Phenomenon of Science” (Turchin 1977). Also we can find similar
idea in the fundamental work of Popper called “The Logic of Scientific
Discovery” (Popper 1959). The knowledge is some dynamical model of environment in the mind
of subject (cybernetic system) from the cybernetic epistemology viewpoint. The
system needs to produce definite action to reach the goal state, and the
knowledge is required to choose the right action. The knowledge must give
ability to predict result of certain action for the certain environment
conditions before this action is produced. Therefore the system should
necessarily have a model to generate predictions. Turchin adds that this is
universally true, and describes equally well in the case of a dog catching in
flight a piece of sugar, and an astronomer who computes the position of a planet
in the sky. In the first case, the model is built in the material of nervous
cells of the dog's brain, in the second case from the signs that the astronomer
writes on paper when he makes computations. (Turchin 1993). In some cases the
action chosen through modeling may be empty. It means that system does not
perform any action and just observes events in the outside world. But this
modeling scheme cannot be applied when observation or modeling processes could
affect dynamics of the world. This assumption, which is called non-interference,
holds easily for macrosystems but for quantum, social and psychological
phenomena it will be more complicated. In these cases model must include
description of interrelation between environment and system itself, i.e. be
recursive. |