Кибернетический манифест | Валентин Турчин, Клифф Джослин
Philosophy is the putting of our thought and language in order. Philosophy is important. Philosophy is a part of our knowledge.
Cybernetic epistemology defines knowledge as the existence in a cybernetic system of a model of some part of reality as it is perceived by the system. A model is a recursive generator of predictions about the world which allow the cybernetic system to make decisions about its actions. The notions of meaning and truth must be defined from this perspective. Knowledge is both objective and subjective because it results from the interaction of the subject (the cybernetic system) and the object (its environment). Knowledge about an object is always relative: it exists only as a part of a certain subject. We can study the relation between knowledge and reality (is the knowledge true or false, first of all); then the subject of knowledge becomes, in its turn, an object for another subject of knowledge. But knowledge in any form (a proposition, a prediction, a law), irrespective of any subject is a logical absurdity. A detailed development of cybernetic epistemology on the basis of these definitions is critical for the formalization of the natural science and natural philosophy, and the interpretation of mathematical systems.
Cybernetic metaphysics asserts that freedom is a fundamental property of things. Natural laws act as constraints on that freedom; they do not necessarily determine a course of events. This notion of freedom implies the existence of an agency, or agencies, that resolve the indeterminacy implicit in freedom by choosing one of the possible actions. Such an agency is defined as a will. A will exercises control over a syste when the freedom of that system is constrained by actions chosen by the will.
When a number of systems become integrated so that a new level of control emerges, we say that a metasystem has formed. We refer to this process as a metasystem transition. A metasystem transition is, by definition, a creative act. It cannot be solely directed by the internal structure or logic of a system, but must always comes from outside causes, from “above”.
The metasystem transition is the quantum of evolution. Highly organized systems, including living creatures, are multilevel hierarchies of control resulting from metasystem transitions of various scales. Major evolutionary events are large-scale metasystem transitions which take place in the framework of the trial-and-error processes of natural selection. Examples include: the formation of self-duplicating macromolecules; formation of multicellular organisms; emergence of intelligent organisms; formation of human society.
Human intelligence, as distinct from the intelligence of non-human animals, emerges from a meta- system transition, which is the organism’s ability to control the formation of associations of mental representations. All of specifically human intelligence, including imagination, language, self-consciousness, goal-setting, humor, arts and sciences, can be understood from this perspective.
The emergence of human intelligence precipitated a further, currently ongoing, metasystem transition, which is the integration of people into human societies. Human societies are qualitatively different from societies of animals because of the ability of the human being to create (not just use) language. Language serves two functions: communication between individuals and modeling of reality. These two functions are, on the level of social integration, analogous to those of the nervous system on the level of integration of cells into a multicellular organism. Using the material of language, people make new — symbolic — models of reality (scientific theories, in particular) such as never existed as neural models given us by nature. Language is, as it were, an extension of the human brain. Moreover, it is a unitary common extension of the brains of all members of society. It is a collective model of reality that all members of society labor to improve, and one that preserves the experience of preceding generations.
We make a strong analogy between societies and neural, multicellular organisms. The body of a society is the bodies of all people plus the things made by them. Its “physiology” is the culture of society. The emergence of human society marks the appearance of a new mechanism of Universal Evolution: previously it was natural selection, now it becomes conscious human effort. The variation and selection necessary for the increase of complexity of the organization of matter now takes place in the human brain; it becomes inseparable from the willed act of the human being. This is a turning point in the history of the world: the era of Reason begins. The human individual becomes a point of concentration of Cosmic Creativity. With the new mechanism of evolution, its rate increases manifold.
Turning to the future we predict that social integration will continue in two dimensions, which we can call width and depth. On the one hand (width), the growth of existing cultures will lead to the formation of a world society and government, and the ecological unification of the biosphere under human control. The ethics of cybernetical world-view demands that each of us act so as to preserve the species and the ecosystem, and to maximize the potential for continued integration and evolution.