Search Results (15)

This study develops a Constraint-Driven Model of Intelligence to explain the emergence of structured meaning in complex systems, reconciling probability and cybernetics. It applies a conceptual–analytic procedure, conducted entirely through logical reasoning and theoretical analysis, without empirical measurement, data acquisition, experimental manipulation, or statistical testing, and is therefore methodologically separate from empirical artificial intelligence research. Phenomena such as model collapse are cited as theoretical instances for epistemic argumentation, without asserting empirical verification. Building on Émile Borel’s Infinite Monkey Theorem, which demonstrates the theoretical inevitability of order in unbounded stochastic processes, and Gregory Bateson’s principle of negative explanation, which defines structure as the result of systematically eliminated alternatives, the analysis formalizes how constraints break ergodicity and generate asymmetry. Shannon’s entropy quantifies the informational effects of constraints, while Simon’s bounded rationality and Turing’s algorithmic limits show how cognitive and computational boundaries produce tractable outcomes. Applied to modern AI, the model accounts for model collapse in recursive training, showing that the loss of asymmetric constraints produces low-entropy, repetitive outputs, demonstrating the epistemic necessity of constraint regulation. Comparing probabilistic and cybernetic accounts of emergence, the study shows that structured intelligence arises not from stochastic exploration alone, but from bounded, recursive, selective processes. This model is transdisciplinary, formalizing how constraints from socioeconomic pressures to subcultural circulation shape diversity, innovation, and functional asymmetry, establishing a generalizable cybernetic epistemology for the generation of structured intelligence and meaning across domains. By formalizing these concepts through set-theoretic derivations and integrative synthesis, this non-empirical model advances a cybernetic epistemology, separate from quantitative AI evaluations or experimental designs. Full article

This essay takes advantage of the current context of superdiversity to define a form of hybrid heuristics between North American anthropology and research-creation “in” the arts. In an attempt to alleviate the epistemological disaster described by Gregory Bateson as the loss of the unity of the biosphere and humanity, I position myself within a nomothetic perspective of Boasian anthropology and a postqualitative approach to research-creation. My research-creation proposes clay as an epistemic object and develops a creative methodology in the form of an experimental system that borrows from the following two types of change observable in living organisms: static and schismatic changes. The artistic activities, presented as two heuristic cycles, seek to broaden the self-reflexivity inherent in the use of clay by human groups. They provoke decentring leading to a loss of control where a new identity has to be defined. This reveals itself in terms of system thinking as the reconstruction of a new reality that is defined neither entirely by my artistic practice nor entirely by my theoretical framework derived from anthropology. It is a “place of passage” between both. It is a new identity that can be defined by the “change of change” that I call “creative anthropology”. This transdisciplinary approach introduces a “second glance” into anthropological research and opens up breaches through research-creation. It works to develop new narratives and test posthumanism in the field of my artistic practice. Full article

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a largely technical field, still guided by a biomedical model of health that seeks to isolate factors that cause injury. Despite a growing literature on organisational and managerial factors influencing occupational health, their full integration into the OHS concept has been slow. A broader understanding is still needed to recognise the restructuring of work and the link between well-being at work and management style. In the context of a rapidly changing world of work, increasing workforce diversity, and inequality, OHS needs to take account of the social sciences and humanities to broaden its reductionist vision. Occupational illnesses, distress, and suffering, especially in relation to relational or organisational issues, have no initial cause or specific ontology; they result from a long-standing process or repetitive relational pattern that needs to be exposed and understood in greater depth, considering contextual factors and dynamics. Using the authors’ anthropological backgrounds and the basic principles of the double bind theory developed many decades ago by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues at the Palo Alto School of Communication, we propose a reflection on pragmatic paradoxes or double bind situations in the workplace (which can be briefly defined as the presence of contradictory or conflicting demands or messages), their potential impact on workers’ health and well-being, and how to resolve them. This paper sought to explore the world of pragmatic paradoxes and double binds by discussing different categories, types, or forms of paradoxes/double binds that occur in the context of occupational health and their underlying mechanisms. It also includes a discussion of the possible link to the concept of super-diversity, as it too is associated with migration channels, employment, gendered flows, and local systems. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of this understanding for health professionals, researchers, and policymakers, from a perspective of promoting more holistic and context-sensitive interactional approaches to occupational health. Full article

This article focuses on methods for designing heuristic models within the paradigm of systems theory and in the disciplinary context of intercultural communication. The main question arises from the striking observation that common language is insufficient to develop knowledge about human communication, especially when many factors of complexity (such as ambiguity, paradoxes, or uncertainty) are involved in the composition of an abstract research object. This epistemological, theoretical, and methodological problem is one of the main challenges to the scientificity of anthropological theories and concepts on culture. Moreover, these questions lie at the heart of research on intercultural communication. Authors and theorists in the complexity sciences have already stressed the need, in such cases, to think in terms of models or semiotic representations, since these tools of thought can mediate much more effectively than unformalized language between the heterogeneous set of perceptions arising from the field of experience, on the one hand, and the philosophical principles that organize speculative thought, on the other. This sets the scene for a reflection on the need to master the theory of heuristic models when it comes to developing scientific knowledge in the field of intercultural communication. In this essay, my first aim is to make explicit the conditions likely to ensure the heuristic value of a model, while my second aim is to clarify the operational function and required level of abstraction of certain terms, such as heading, concept, category, model, and system that are among the most commonly used by academics in their descriptive accounts or explanatory hypotheses. To achieve this second objective, I propose to create cognitive meta-categories to identify the three (nominal, cardinal, or ordinal) roles of words in the reference grids that we use to classify our ideas and to specify how to use these meta-categories in the construction of our heuristic models. Alongside the theoretical presentation, examples of application are provided, almost all of which are drawn from my own research into the increased cultural vigilance of the majority population in Québec since the reasonable accommodation crisis in this French-speaking province of Canada. The typology I propose will perhaps help to avoid the confusion regularly committed by authors who attribute only cosmetic functions to words that nevertheless have a highly heuristic value and who forget to consider the logical leaps of their theoretical thinking in the construction of heuristic models. Full article

Recent developments, begun by the ascending spiral of the anticipated endless prospects of ChatGPT, promote artificial intelligence (AI) as an indispensable tool and commodity whose time has come. Yet the sinister specter of a technology that has hidden and unmanageable attributes that might be harmful to society looms in the background, as well as the likelihood that it will never deliver on the purported promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Currently, the prospects for the development of AI and AGI are more a matter of opinion than based on a consistent methodological approach. Thus, there is a need to take a step back to develop a general framework from which to evaluate current AI efforts, which also permits the determination of the limits to its future prospects as AGI. To gain insight into the development of a general framework, a key question needs to be resolved: what is the connection between human intelligence and machine intelligence? This is the question that needs a response because humans are at the center of AI creation and realize that, without an understanding of how we become what we become, we have no chance of finding a solution. This work proposes info-autopoiesis, the self-referential, recursive, and interactive process of self-production of information, as the needed general framework. Info-autopoiesis shows how the key ingredient of information is fundamental to an insightful resolution to this crucial question and allows predictions as to the present and future of AGI. Full article

This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads to unnecessary suffering. The initial foundation examines the process of growth and the role that the imagination plays in the construction of narrative identity—an important part of human development. Literal idolatry interrupts this original process through the creation of a social imaginary that corrupts natural measures for self-correction. At the same time, a creative faith contains the capacity to dislodge the rigid boundaries of literal idolatry. A creative faith narrative identities in ways that open beyond simple coherence and completeness. It can also revitalize social institutions and public spaces. The argument concludes by arguing fictional narratives augment the work of theology in grounding and inspiring creative faith. Full article

Info-autopoiesis or the self-referenced, recursive, interactive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and/or relational needs relies on Bateson’s difference which makes a difference. Living beings, as active manipulators/observers of their environment, derive meaning from the sensorially detected motion of matter and/or energy in the Universe. The process of info-autopoiesis in humans is found to be triadic in nature and incorporates the simultaneity of a quantitative/objective perspective with a qualitative/subjective perspective. In this process of meaningful engagement with the environment, humans create and transform endogenous semantic information into countless expressions of exogeneous syntactic information, which is synonymous with ordered material structure and artificial creation. Other humans can interpret exogeneous syntactic information and uniquely transform it into semantic information that can take multifarious forms. This asymmetrical process is the basis to postulate the central dogma of information that states ‘info-autopoiesis results in endogenous semantic information that irreversibly becomes exogeneous syntactic information’. In other words, once the artificial, syntactic world, including machines, created by humans comes into being it can only be interpreted by others, i.e., it does not necessarily convey the same intended meaning to all. Additionally, these artificial creations only recognize, extract, create, transmit, preserve, store, and utilize syntactic information, unable to transform syntactic information into semantic information. In other words, our resourceful capacity for syntactic creation does not allow for creation of artificial beings with comparable capabilities as us for meaning making. It suggests that our dreams for sentient artificial general intelligence and superintelligence are misguided and parallel the central dogma of molecular biology which states that ‘once (sequential) information has passed into protein it cannot get out again’. Full article

Digital information and communication technologies have been a powerful force for change since the middle of the 20th century. Their Promethean reach demands laying bare their hidden tentacles to maximize benefit and minimize harm to living-beings-in-their-environment, requiring an unambiguous and practical definition of information to show that the interactions of living beings with their environment are constitutive of information generation, information exchange, information relations, and life. The purpose of this paper is to discover the connection between info-autopoiesis, based on Bateson’s difference which makes a difference, the self-referenced, recursive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and social needs; and digitalisation, viewed as both the ability to encode information in multifarious but equivalent forms to allow for embodied syntactic occurrence, and as the means to artificially generate information that is beyond the reach of its originators. Full article

Information is not a fundamental quantity of the Universe. However, in denying the fundamental nature of information, we assert its importance for living beings in their environment. Living beings use their sensory organs to discover the non-living and those living in their environment. Through their sensory organs, they discover the bountifulness of matter and/or energy as expressions of their environmental spatial/temporal motion/change, as information or differences which make a difference. This paper begins the discovery of a phenomenology of information, or the fundamental study of information as an expression of how ‘we experience things; thus, the meanings things have in our experience.’ This brings to the forefront the process of info-autopoiesis, or the self-referenced, recursive process of information self-production that engages all living beings in their efforts to satisfy their physiological and social needs. Elucidating how living beings interact with their environment and how these interactions are constitutive of information generation, information exchange, information relations and life. Information cannot be the primary element that allows living beings their unique existence. Full article

The goal of this paper is to represent two approaches to the phenomenon of information, explicating its nature and essence. In this context, Mark Burgin demonstrates how the general theory of information (GTI) describes and elucidates the phenomenon of information by explaining the axiomatic foundations for information studies and presenting the comprising mathematical theory of information. The perspective promoted by Jaime F. Cárdenas-García is based on Gregory Bateson’s description of information as “difference which makes a difference” and involves the process of info-autopoiesis as a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process. Full article

The goal of this work is to explain a novel information paradigm claiming that all information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s difference that makes a difference. To highlight and illustrate this fundamental process, a simulation based on one-parameter feedback is presented. It simulates a homeorhetic process, innate to organisms, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. The illustrated recursive process is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. Full article

During the twentieth century, indigenous peoples have often embraced the category of indigenous while also having to face the ambiguities and limitations of this concept. Indigeneity, whether represented by indigenous people themselves or others, tends to face a “double bind”, as defined by Gregory Bateson, in which “no matter what a person does, he can’t win.” One exit strategy suggested by Bateson is meta-communication—communication about communication—in which new solutions emerge from a questioning of system-internal assumptions. We offer case studies from Ecuador, Peru and Alaska that chart some recent indigenous experiences and strategies for such scenarios. Full article

No map fully coincides with the territory it represents. If the map and territory do not coincide, what can the map capture of the territory? According to Bateson, the answer is its differences. Drawing from Gregory Bateson’s ideas, we can envision an ethnographic representation of the city through which we can represent the urban territory through the different ways its inhabitants perceive it. In this article, I describe the process that led me to build a map of post-apartheid Cape Town from Long Street. I took inspiration from Bateson’s book Naven and compared it with the District Six Museum map in Cape Town with the objective of representing post-apartheid Cape Town through its differences. Full article

Climate change is projected to increase the seasonality in river flows in the great river systems of Himalaya and impose challenges to regional food production. Since climate change increases the uncertainty in local weather patterns, people’s ability to maintain local agricultural production will probably depend on how flexible the local farming systems are to adjust to unpredictable changes. The objective of this paper is to investigate the flexibility of one such farming system which is located in Mustang, Nepal, Himalaya. Defining flexibility as “uncommitted potentialities for change” following Gregory Bateson, the paper identifies opportunities for change in the farming system, as well as factors that constrain flexibility. Further developing the concept of flexibility, it is suggested that flexibility may be analyzed in terms of scope, type and temporal flexibility. Although there are several underexploited resources in the studied farming system, the present situation is not regarded as one of irrational and suboptimal exploitation of resources. Instead, unexploited resources imply opportunities for change, which provide the system with flexibility to rapidly adjust agricultural production to varying and uncertain conditions of production. Full article

In this paper I am going to be dealing with Gregory Bateson, a theorist who is one of the founders of cybernetics, an acknowledged precursor of Biosemiotics, and in all respects highly transdisciplinary. Until his entry into cybernetics Bateson was an anthropologist and like anthropologists of his day, accepted a semantic approach to meaning through the classic work of Ogden and Richards and their thought-word-meaning triangle. Ogden and Richards developed their semantic triangle from Peirce, but effectively turned the Peircian semiotic triad into a pentad of addressors and addressees, to which Bateson added context and reflexivity through feedback loops. The emergence of cybernetics and information theory in the 1940s increased the salience of the notion of feedback yet, he argued, information theory had truncated the notion of meaning. Bateson’s discussion of the logical categories of learning and communication distinguished the difference between and ‘sign’ and ‘signal’. Cybernetic signaling was a form of zero‑learning; living systems were interpretative and engaged in several logical types of learning. Twenty years later he took up similar sorts of issues with regard to the new science of ecology which had framed systemic ‘entropy’ solely in thermodynamic terms and ignored communication and learning in living systems. His concept of Bioentropy is presented in section two of this paper as is its association with redundancy. Bioentropy, in turn, led to his offering an entirely new definition of information: “the difference that makes a difference.” The definition could apply to both human and non-human communication patterns, since some forms of animal communication could not undertake logical typing. Finally, he believed that his own systemic approach was insufficient for meta-dualism. He promoted the idea of an ecological aesthetics which needed to be sufficiently objective to deal with the many disruptions in its own recursive relations, yet subjective and self-reflexive in the manner of a creative epistemology. ‘Rigor’ and ‘imagination’ became Bateson’s meta-logical types and aesthetics his meta-dualism. He drew his inspiration from the aesthetics of R.G. Collingwood. By mediating scientific rigor with Collingwood’s ‘imaginary’ Bateson brought about his own conception of mediated ‘thirdness’—different from C.S. Peirce—but one which brought cultural ‘mind’ more closely into association with ‘the mind of nature’. Full article