As sentient and social beings, we live in hope that we can be understood when we try to communicate with each other but we also know that we might be wrong. We strive for better understandings, engaging in an on-going dance of collective sense-making. This paper considers how communication among individuals involves co-creation of meaning by exploring narratives those expressed by a speaker and those created internally by listeners in efforts to achieve understanding. We note that the extent of these efforts varies from reliance on prejudice at one extreme to deep listening at the other, and that organizational barriers may exist which inhibit cocreation of meaning. We suggest that an open systems approach, which enables individuals to explore and share their contextually dependent understandings, will be helpful. We propose a framework that supports and guides participants in endeavors to co-create understandings of problem spaces through storytelling and listening.

Key words: communication, knowledge creation, listening, narratives, open systems, sense-making

Autonomy is modeled in terms of the property of certain far-from-equilibrium open systems to contribute toward maintaining themselves in their far-from-equilibrium conditions. Such contributions in self-maintenant systems, in turn, constitute the emergence of normative function. The intrinsic thermodynamic asymmetry between equilibrium and far-from-equilibrium processes yields the intrinsic normative asymmetry between function and dysfunction. Standard etiological models of function render function as causally epiphenomenal, while this model is of the emergence of causally efficacious function. Recursive self-maintenance – the meta-property of maintaining the property of being self-maintenant across variations in environment – yields the emergence of representation. This model of representation satisfies multiple criteria that standard approaches – such as symbolic or connectionist, or those of Fodor, Dretske, or Millikan – cannot.

“Strong computationalism” holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument presented herein is a simple development of that originally presented in Putnam’s “Representation & Reality”, which if correct, has important implications for Turing machine functionalism and the prospect of “conscious” machines. In the paper, instead of seeking to develop Putnam’s claim that, “everything implements every finite state automata”, I will try to establish the weaker result that “everything implements the specific machine Q on a particular input set (x)”. Then, equating Q (x) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the “strong AI” thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g., grass, rocks, etc.), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere. Relevance: This paper critiques the computational accounts of mind and cognition using a construction borrowed from Putnam.

Excerpt: This chapter will take a broad view on autopoiesis and relate it to the different disciplines for explanation. Section 7. 1 will shortly describe the concept of autopoiesis as a different way of looking at systems from both a closed systems view and an open systems view. Section 7. 2 pays attention to three main principles of autopoiesis that govern the development of systems. That results in Section 7. discussing the interaction of autopoietic systems with their environment. Section 7. 4 explores perception and cognition. A slight different theory is presented in Section 7. 5: allopoiesis for systems that do not have all properties of autopoietic systems.

Scholars have described the sculptures of Linda Stein, limbless, classicizing, thick-waisted female forms that are often wearable, in the context of gender performativity and/or embodied subjectivity, informed by the sumptuousness of her materials, which invite a haptic or touch-centered response. To encompass the performative nature of her wearable sculpture used as a component of her political activism and her developing concept of the interrelationship between individual, society and environment, I propose a reading through the lens of systems theory, particularly the concept of open systems. Associated with life, growth, and change, open systems took on political and social resonance for artists like Stein maturing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Historically coincident with the American women’s movement, the theorization of open systems in relation to society, biology and the environment was deployed by women artists in the early 1970s as an alternative means of conceiving social and environmental relationships. Relevance: I discuss the artist’s work through the theory of Gregory Bateson. In 1972, the anthropologist and cyberneticist argued that individuals, societies and ecosystems must be conceived integrally, as a complex, interrelated system. The notion of a self-sufficient, independent self is a fallacy in this model. According to Bateson, Mind itself expands to become “immanent in the larger system [of] man plus environment.”

Open peer commentary on the article “Second-Order Science of Interdisciplinary Research: A Polyocular Framework for Wicked Problems” by Hugo F. Alrøe & Egon Noe. Upshot: Contrary to Alrøe and Noe, problems are wicked not because they escape the technical expertise of the special sciences but because they reawaken the sciences’ totalizing impulse, which then leads to conflicting cross-disciplinary claims, on the basis of which the state must intervene. This situation is understandable against the backdrop of an “open systems” perspective, in which the sort of second-order perspective presupposed by wicked problems is spontaneously generated.

Higher education research frequently refers to the complex external conditions that give our old-fashioned universities a good reason to change. The underlying theoretical assumption of such framing is that organizations are open systems. This paper presents an alternative view, derived from the theory of social systems autopoiesis. It proposes that organizations, being open systems, are yet operationally closed, as all their activities and interactions with the environment are aspects of just one process: the recursive production of themselves, according to a pattern of their own identity. It is their identity that captures exactly what can and what cannot be sustained in their continuous self-production. Examining the organizational identity of universities within the theoretical framework of autopoiesis may hence shed new light on their resistance to change, explaining it as a systemic and social phenomenon, rather than an individual and psychological one. Since all processes of an autopoietic system are processes of its self-production, this paper argues that in the case of traditional European universities, the identity consists in the intertwinement of only two processes: (1) introducing continuous change in the scope of scientific knowledge and (2) educating new generations of scholars, who will carry on this activity. This surprisingly leaves at the wayside seemingly the most obvious “use of the university’: the adequate education of students for the job market.

Key words: European university, Traditional university, Social system, Autopoiesis, Organizational identity, Resistance to change

Excerpt: The theory of autopoiesis is based on taking a picture of the actual behavior of a living cell. As such, it is not an abstract theoretical model for life – there are many of these – but a phenomenological analysis of life as it is on Earth. It is, in a way, a picture of the blueprint of cellular life, and it is fascinating to see how many concepts related to the process of life – emergence, homeostasis, biological autonomy, operational closure, open systems, interaction with the environment, cognition, evolutionary drift, etc. – pour forth from this analysis in a coherent way. We will see some of these concepts in the next chapter. In addition, autopoiesis permits the construction of chemical models, as seen in chemical autopoiesis; and it pertains also to the social sciences, with the notion of social autopoiesis. A bridge between biology to the cognitive domain is also made possible. This richness is not present in the chemoton or any other autocatalytic networking. The main ingredient of this unity is the fact that all is seen “from within,” that is, from the logic of the internal organization of the living system. As soon as the autopoietic unit reaches the complexity of biological autonomy, everything that happens within the boundary, as well as the perturbing events from the outside, are interpreted and elaborated in order to maintain the identity of the living. We have also touched on some of the philosophical implications of these views, and added that the developments of autopoietic thinking have in some cases diverged from the original statements of Maturana and Varela. We will see that particularly in the case of the important notion of cognition, discussed in the next chapter. And we will see then that the notion of cognition permits a bridge between the biology of cellular life and the cognitive sciences. I mention this here just to make the point that autopoiesis is the only available simple theory that is capable of providing a unified view of life from the molecular level up to the level of human perception.

This paper describes a multi-disciplinary initiative to promote collaborative research in enactive artificial cognitive systems by developing the iCub: a open-systems 53 degree-of-freedom cognitive humanoid robot. At 94 cm tall, the iCub is the same size as a three year-old child. It will be able to crawl on all fours and sit up, its hands will allow dexterous manipulation, and its head and eyes are fully articulated. It has visual, vestibular, auditory, and haptic sensory capabilities. As an open system, the design and documentation of all hardware and software is licensed under the Free Software Foundation GNU licences so that the system can be freely replicated and customized. We begin this paper by outlining the enactive approach to cognition, drawing out the implications for phylogenetic configuration, the necessity for ontogenetic development, and the importance of humanoid embodiment. This is followed by a short discussion of our motivation for adopting an open-systems approach. We proceed to describe the iCub’s mechanical and electronic specifications, its software architecture, its cognitive architecture. We conclude by discussing the iCub phylogeny, i.e. the robot’s intended innate abilities, and an scenario for ontogenesis based on human neo-natal development.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assist an organization to restructure as a bi‐modal organization in order to achieve sustainability in today’s highly complex business world. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is conceptual and is based on relevant literature and the authors’ research and practice. Findings: Although fluid self‐organizing networks are the natural state for humankind, in most organizations “organizing” entails the process of autopoiesis. This process does not produce the open fluid organization that is required for success in today’s business world. While autopoiesis is taking place, informal socialization is taking place across the organization’s interpersonal networks. Under supportive conditions, this leads to the development of a bi‐modal organization where one or more open systems may emerge and co‐exist concurrently with the autopoietic system; these open systems include fluid networks and complex adaptive system. The bi‐modal organization achieves sustainability by balancing a certain amount of organization versus a certain amount of instability, leading to predictability with disorder, and planned long‐term strategy achieved through many concurrent short‐term actions. Research limitations/implications – Future research will involve an empirical study that will further examine the bi‐modal organization, its development, and its properties. Practical implications: The systems that surround a business organization now and for the foreseeable future are highly dynamic, competitive, and socially individualized, and demand a new organizational form and competencies that may only be exhibited by a bi‐modal organization based on an open system. The paper describes how an organization can restructure to become a bi‐modal organization. Social implications – The paper should help improve quality of work‐life and organizational structure. Originality/value – The paper describes a new organizational form designed to flourish in today’s complex business contexts.