Purpose: When reviewing the prospectus of mainstream universities that offer psychology majors, one would be hard-pressed to find any cybernetic approaches included in their course material. This is an unfortunate observation as most psychological problems arise in a relational context. Reasons for this status quo are presented. The purpose of this paper is to reduce obstacles for prospective learners in cybernetic psychology, with the hope that cybernetic psychology may be assimilated and seen as an equal footing paradigm in mainstream psychology teachings. Design/methodology/approach – A popular cybernetics web site is often used by students who are learning cybernetic psychology. Using the responses from students who frequent the online resource, solutions are presented based on the questions that students have asked the author of the site. Findings: Students are taught different therapy paradigms in terms of models; the psychodynamic model, the medical model, the person-centred model; the systems model and so forth. Their position to the model is external and they can critically evaluate the different models and apply each model in an interpretation and analysis of various psychology case studies. Cybernetic psychology becomes problematic when that line of thinking is used. Practical implications: Cybernetic psychology stands as an ethical choice for therapy. Reducing the boundaries for cybernetic therapies to be assimilated in the mainstream context, especially if offered by universities as an equal footing paradigm, which would be in keeping with the WHO’s call for responsible ethical therapy interventions. Originality/value – There is limited information on how to perform cybernetic psychology. This is understandable owing to the nature of cybernetics; however, reliable and stable approaches should still be available for students who are new to this epistemology. There needs to be an entering point into this way of thinking so that cybernetic psychology remains accessible to newcomers.

Key words: Psychology, cybernetics, model, second-order cybernetics, systems, therapy

Upshot: University engineering qualifications are accredited according to various international accords that are perceived as a restrictive factor in curricula redesign. I argue that this may not be the case owing to the discipline-independent wide-ranging content that may populate the qualifications. Also, I point out that the educator’s teaching style is their choice and that educators may act as agents of change bringing ethical changes to their curricula. Finally, I question the role of the teacher and its future relevance in competition with artificial intelligence.

In this article I will outline the basic theoretical assumptions of two examples of the confederative and the integrative views of the living – respectively Ganti’s Chemoton theory and Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic theory – by showing that they are both consistent perspectives, but they differ in the accounts they make of the role of organization in biological systems. In doing so I will also put into evidence how the choice between these two theoretical frameworks is strictly connected to the problem of structure and function in living organisms and entails different strategies of investigation.

Key words: biological autonomy, organization, autopoiesis, Chemoton theory

Excerpt: The Origin of Humanness, written in the early 1990s, brings together two strands of research: Maturana Romesin’s research into the origin of humanness and Verden-Zöller’s research into the rise of self-consciousness in the child during early mother-child play relations. The authors’ core claim is that the human species has evolved by conserving love as a fundamental domain of cooperation expressed through the basic emotions or moods of mutual respect, care, acceptance and trust (Homo sapiens-amans) rather than competition and aggression (Homo sapiens aggressans or arrogance). In this, they do not declare an ethical imperative, but rather situate ethics in biology, since, in their view, a responsible concern for the well-being of the other (human, species, biosphere, etc.) arises naturally from a manner of living in the biology of love. This is what they propose as a way for conserving the existence of social human beings (and what they call “social consciousness”) and for countering the dominant culture of domination, submission or indifference in Western society. Ethics, in this sense, is a choice of emotioning on an individual basis that in relation to a social community defines how a particular manner of living is to be conserved over the coming generations.

Open peer commentary on the article “Elementary Students’ Construction of Geometric Transformation Reasoning in a Dynamic Animation Environment” by Alan Maloney. Upshot: This commentary assumes a constructionist perspective to discuss the choice of methods, conclusions and design goals that Panorkou and Maloney make in their study of students’ activities with the Graph ’n Glyphs microworld.

Summary: Some of the most authoritative names from the constructivist community have been called on to contribute to this volume, coherent with the editors’ choice to start from a broad definition of psychological constructivism, and to maintain its various expressions and derivations… It seems clear that the editors strongly recommended the authors to include many examples and clinical cases to demonstrate with actual facts the applicability of the epistemological assumptions of constructivism to clinical practice. In my opinion, in addition to reaching this target, this work provides numerous suggestions to those clinicians already conscious of the efficacy of the therapeutic applications of constructivism.

Currently, considerable debate focuses on whether mind is located in the head or in the individual-in-social-action, and whether development is cognitive self-organization or enculturation into established practices. In this article, I question assumptions that initiate this apparent forced choice between constructivist and sociocultural perspectives. I contend that the two perspectives are complementary. Also, claims that either perspective captures the essence of people and communities should be rejected for pragmatic justifications that consider the contextual relevance and usefulness of a perspective. I argue that the sociocultural perspective informs theories of the conditions far the possibility of learning, whereas theories developed from the constructivist perspective focus on what students learn and the processes by which they do so.

Open peer commentary on the article “Ethics: A Radical-constructivist Approach” by Andreas Quale. Upshot: I agree with some of Quale’s general conclusions, in particular that each individual knower is responsible for choosing among alternatives and the pragmatic consequences that are related to this choice. However, in adopting implicitly the premise according which individual human existence precedes coexistence or social existence, and in focusing on the cognitive operations of a “generic subject” (that is, a disembodied subject coming from nowhere and deprived of any historicity and sociality), Quale’s argumentation becomes questionable. I illustrate this point of view by analysing his discourse concerning the role of language in the conceptualization of cognition and his attempt to ground the source of ethics in the individual construction of the world.

In this contribution to the Festschrift devoted to Heinz von Foerster, choices are shown to be constitutive in processes of human self-organization. This is pursued along three dimensions that are seen as inherently connected: the epistemological dimension of reality construction; the communal dimension of dialogical closure; and the ethical dimension of autonomy and dialogical responsibility. In order to exemplify his style of working as a mentor, Heinz von Foerster is portrayed in interaction, drawing largely on the author’s experience. As one concrete case of a far-reaching general approach, the paper brings out the implications of his way of thinking for cooperative software design. This leads to an epistemological view of the design process, to guidelines for communal work focussing on dialogue and self-organization, and to the ethics of systems design, which means taking responsibility for the choices made in design and the choice scopes associated with computer-based systems.

Key words: Software design, epistemological foundations for design, self-organization in cooperative work, ethics of design

In this article, several of Heinz von Foerster’s papers have been recombined in order to demonstrate that during the late sixties and seventies he has developed a grand unified theory of cognition which is far more radical, complex and encompassing than subsequent or even contemporary approaches. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that working with a series of recombinative operators one is able to generate new contents out of already published materials. Finally, as a last leitmotif, Heinz von Foerster’s cognitive action program turns out to be a devastating criticism of intentional action frameworks like Rational Choice and paves the way for a most promising alternative research path.