Addresses the problem of psychotherapy coming to understand itself formally as a conversation in which healing of distortions and breakdowns in communication occurs. The paper proposes making concepts the basis for the psychotherapy conversation by linking psychotherapy to second-order cybernetics and utilizing Pask’s conversation theory. The first part describes cybernetics as the context for the study of the distortions and breakdowns in communication. The second part discusses conversation theory as a formal description of the procedures of psychotherapy, as a way to converse in psychotherapy, as a way to talk about psychotherapy and as a way to change the conversation of psychotherapy. The final part discusses four distinctive characteristics of the evolving conversation of psychotherapy where psychotherapy composes itself as a conversation. These characteristics are what psychotherapy is (its definition), what it is about (its object), how it proceeds (its methods), and what it is for (its value).
ICT does not have the ability to integrate into the daily life of its users owing to its lack of both consensual communication commands and social skill. The daily use of multiple ICTs imposes dysfunctional communications on its users. This paper highlights the limits and dangers of ICT and focuses on its non-neutral nature. A first-order change is presented in the form of a communications secretary by introducing a top down approach to ICT centered on the end user’s needs. This change is required for humans to take responsibility for their place in the ICT link instead of passively being conditioned by the goals of technology, thus enabling a second-order shift to occur by changing the rules of ICT and hence the system itself.
Self‐referential reflection inevitably reveals paradox. For some, paradox is a fruitful metaphor; for me, it raises problems that have epistemological implications. Traditionally paradox has been avoided by the problematic means of removing the observer from the domain of observation. Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems offers an alternative manner of dealing with paradox. Such systems observe the self‐reference resulting from including an observer within the domain of observation and in their recursively closed operations combine other‐reference with every self‐reference. In this way, paradox is able to be “unfolded” in the operational moment. Luhmann’s social systems require, however, a radically different view of the place of the individual in society from that of traditional social theory – he or she does not belong! Communications are the elementary units for the social processing of meaning. This requires a radical revision of our concept of communication: it is communication that reproduces communication, not individuals.
Becerra G. (2013) A brief introduction to Niklas Luhmann’s “Theory of Autopoietic Social Systems” and “Theory of Functional Social-Autopoietic Systems”. Intersticios. Revista sociológica de pensamiento crítico 7(2): 21–35. https://cepa.info/932
The aim of this paper is to present synthetically the central concepts and fundamental laws of Niklas Luhmann’s “Theory of Autopoietic Social Systems” and “Theory of Functional Social-Autopoietic Systems.” To do this we outline the conceptualization of notions like time, communications, observations, elements, relationships, complexity, connection, operation, environment, function, code, program, generalized symbolic media and their interrelationships and place within the laws of the theory. The guiding questions of this paper are: What entities do Luhmannian theory tell us about? How do these entities behave within the laws of the theory? And finally, the practical evaluation over the aims and goals of Luhmann’s theoretical program:, for which purposes? Relevance: The document presents, in a clear way, the central concepts of Luhmann’s theory of autopoiesis and its relevance to the study of social phenomena.
Beeson I. (2009) Information in organizations: Rethinking the autopoietic account. In: Magalhães R. & Sanchez R. (eds.) Autopoiesis in organizations and information systems. Emerald, Bingley: 185–199.
Excerpt: The rejection of the notion of information, as ordinarily understood, in the theory of autopoiesis, presents problems to theories of organization rooted in ideas of information, control, system, and communication. But the rejection seems well founded if the idea of a self-producing organism is taken seriously. There are various ways of trying to resolve the issue. We can say that autopoiesis cannot be extended to “third-order unities” (societies and organizations), so that its strictures are irrelevant, even if the autopoietic account can be useful metaphorically. Luhmann’s solution is to work out a full-blown autopoietic account of social systems in which the selfproducing entities are not individual human beings but communications. This is elegant, but discards autopoiesis’s biological foundation and so breaks the connection with living in the world. A reworking of ideas of information and communication using theories from pragmatics takes us closer to the autopoietic view by switching focus from stored information and instructive interaction toward a cooperative search for meaning and relevance. Such an approach, however, remains epistemologically focused (on how knowledge is exchanged), while (as Dell suggests) autopoiesis is oriented ontologically (toward existing and what exists). A more radical reworking of the idea of information taken from Gibson’s perceptual theory has therefore been suggested as more compatible with autopoiesis. In terms of the design and interpretation of organizations and organizational systems, an autopoietic account, coupled with a pragmatic approach to communication and a Gibsonian treatment of information pickup, would shift focus (and effort) away from information storage, control, and abstraction toward richer forms of interaction and awareness. While the message of organizational closure from autopoiesis has been taken to mean that individuals and organizations have limited capacity for change (so perhaps need to be forced), the positive conclusion from the theory is that individuals and organizations are autonomous, not finally determinable nor controllable, and so are open, even within their structural constraints, to inexhaustible possibilities.
Bernard-Weil E. (1994) The presence of Norbert Wiener in both order cybernetics. Kybernetes 23(6/7): 133–143.
When confronted with issues dealing with first and second order cybernetics, it seems that the manner of defining the former has been somewhat caricatured. The second appears to sometimes give rise to conclusions which are almost opposite to those of Wiener by questioning the possibility of a control for a system. We find in Wiener’s research a prefiguration of the autonomy concept, which, in our opinion, could bring an explanation – and a solution – in cases where control elicits some perverse effect; an acceptance of positive feedback if it serves a desired purpose; the central importance held for him by ergodic theory that we use in an addendum on imbalanced strange attractors control; the idea of a knowledge which may be the fruit of the control; an interest for logical paradoxes he put in relation to communication in nervous system; and already the notion of dialogue in the core of the relation man/man or man/machine. Of course, Wiener did not accord an equal development to all his insights, but we have not yet finished scrutinizing his writings. First and second order cybernetics perhaps form an agonistic/antagonistic couple of which neither element could overshadow the other.
Working for decades as both theorist and teacher, Ranulph Glanville came to believe that cybernetics and design are two sides of the same coin. Working as both practitioners and teachers, the authors present their understanding of Glanville and the relationships between cybernetics and design. We believe cybernetics offers a foundation for 21st-century design practice. We offer this rationale: – If design, then systems: Due in part to the rise of computing technology and its role in human communications, the domain of design has expanded from giving form to creating systems that support human interactions, thus, systems literacy becomes a necessary foundation for design. – If systems, then cybernetics: Interaction involves goals, feedback, and learning, the science of which is cybernetics. – If cybernetics, then second-order cybernetics: Framing wicked problems requires explicit values and viewpoints, accompanied by the responsibility to justify them with explicit arguments, thus incorporating subjectivity and the epistemology of second-order cybernetics. – If second-order cybernetics, then conversation: Design grounded in argumentation requires conversation so that participants may understand, agree, and collaborate on effective action. Second-order cybernetics frames design as conversation for learning together, and order design creates possibilities for others to have conversations, to learn, and to act.
This paper deals with organisational complexity, seen from the perspective of its unfolding from global to local concerns. Historically, this unfolding has produced rigid social systems, where those in power positions have forced unfair constraints over the majorities at the local level, and often excluded them. There is a need to move towards flexible, fair, social systems, inclusive in character. This transformation requires an increasing appreciation of communication problems in society and the embodiment of effective social systems. This transformation is presented as a problem‐solving paradigm which requires social systems with capacity to create and produce their own meanings, with capacity to manage necessary structural couplings among existing social systems, thus making this management a heuristic to produce necessary social differentiation to overcome communication failures among existing self‐producing, operationally closed, social systems. A key construct used in this paper to practically produce this management is the viable system model, developed by Stafford Beer.
Espejo R. & Dominici G. (2017) Cybernetics of value cocreation for product development. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 34(1): 24–40. https://cepa.info/4131
In marketing theory, the shift from the paradigm of value creation to value ‘cocreation’ calls for a deeper grasp of the interactions between producers and customers. Marketing studies have widely focused on the value cocreation concept, but so far, the mechanism through which consumers can be involved in the process of value cocreation through product development had found little space in marketing studies. In this theoretical paper, we aim to fill this gap and pave the way towards a better understanding of the mechanisms of value cocreation for product development through second-order cybernetics. We conceive the market arena as a physical or virtual place where communications of value propositions produce eigenforms driving the eigenbehaviours of producers and customers towards shared meaningful objects. Based on these assumptions, we offer a framework based on the viable systems model and the law of requisite variety to shed light on processes of interaction between producers and consumers in the market arena. The proposed framework can be an effective tool for the managers involved in product design and marketing to contribute to a firm’s policies by supplying a clearer picture of the systemic relations involved in the value cocreation for product innovation and product development.
Glanville R. (2001) And he was magic. Kybernetes 30(5/6): 652–673.
Pask’s great contribution to cybernetics is to take seriously the notion of interaction in the circular processes that lie at the heart of the subject. From his earliest days he worked with interactive systems. His master work, conversation theory, epitomises the interactive system, which he then extended and generalised into the interaction of actors theory. In this paper, the requirements that conversation places on our understanding of participants is presented in the form of a specification. In particular, the ways of behaving and the assumptions under which we have to behave if we are to be able to converse with success are expounded. These are in great contrast to neo‐Darwinian assumptions. The difference between communication by code and communication by conversation is explored, and the primacy of conversational communication is argued. Finally, it is claimed that the ways of behaving and the assumptions that are the requirements for a conversation to take place are presented as personal qualities that were particularly apparent in Pask himself.