Optimizing information processing and judgment
New integrated system -
for Information processing and Judgement in any area.
Combining four dimensions:
Psychology, logic, causal analysis and language/ communication.
Individual or social system
Living system (individual, group, organization or society ..) with awareness, information, communication and behavior.
Example: scheme Basic Dimensions in mental processes
Valuation, appraisal
Immediate Experience, Bubble of Perception: Quality of experience is most essential motivation
of the organism.
'You can not climb out of your mind' (R. Rorty).
Implies subjective consciousness.
'Consciousness is a major thing not to notice' (R. Grush & P. Smith Churchland, 1995).
Example: scheme Human information processing
Association, synthesis
Content and consistency of experience : model, determines associative thinking.
'We anticipate events by construing their replications' (Kelly, G.A., 1955; Construct Theory,
Construction Collorary').
'The map is not the territory' (A. Korzybski).
Example: scheme World and world model
Selecting + Deciding
Planning Patterns: Abstract structure, represents logical combinations and implications: preconditions
for truth value.
'To discover truths is the task of all sciences, it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth'
(G. Frege).
Example: scheme Structure of Decisions
Encoding + Decoding
'Rules' and 'vocabulary' - from language, culture, events or improvisation - for expressing information.
Preconditions for communication.
'The choice of the signifier.. has no natural connection with the signified'
(F. de Saussure, 1916; 1922: p.200).
'The connection of linguistic forms with their meanings is wholly arbitrary' (L. Bloomfield, 1933, p.145)
.
Example: scheme Encoding and decoding
Physical behavior
Using information to achieve desired results.
Observation + Expression
Collecting and distributing information.
Model of functioning/system
What determines well-being, responding, decision-making of people?
Laws of truth,
valid schemes of inference
How do you know what is true, probable, or plausible?
Laws of cause-effect,
causal hypothesis/model
What is causing a phenomenon - and what are its consequences?
Sending and receiving of information
What does language 'tell'? What does communication 'do'?
Quality: meanings, sense-data, emotions, esthetics, .. qualia
Capacity for consciousness -
Unique features:
(·) Is a necessary condition for all experience and information that we can know of.
(·) Includes quality of experience, intrinsic value, sensory experience, emotion, qualia etc..
Examples:
• Conscious awareness.
• Conscious noting something (on grounds of difference).
• Degree of global intensity of consciousness.
• Subjective sensations (sentiency).
• Quality aspects of experiences (qualia).
• Clarity, sharpness and detail of experience (lucidity).
• Dynamics of experience (vividness).
• Degree of specific intensity of experience (impressiveness).
• Sense encountered (pregnancy).
• Meaning perceived (intensionality).
• Overall experience of quality (e.g. experienced degree of happiness, contentment, gratification,
fulfillment, satisfaction).
(see a.o. Miller, Kaplan, Searle, Nagel, Chalmers, Lanier, etc.).
Quantity: combinations, derivation relations
Abstract organization -
Unique features:
(·) Is open to discrete difference, basis of information.
(·) Is quantifiable. Quantity includes e.g., size, number , sign, syntax, structure, complexity, etc..
(·) Is systematically 'creative'. Combinatorics gives rise to differentiation, by which other
aspects and variations appear.
(·) Is, by combinatory explosion, infinitely expandable (up to unlimited cardinality).
However, any valid expansion or transformation will always be immediately and
inherently reversible, i.e. reducible again to its starting parameters.
(·) Embodies extrinsic organization . Implies Multiple Realizibility . Offers raw material for
Virtual Reality.
(·) Is subject to logical laws, which are described in formal logic and meta-logic.
(eg Frege, Hilbert, Cantor, Russell, Zermelo, Herbrand, Tarski,
Gödel, Church, Kleene, Turing, Lindenbaum, Henkin, Skolem, Löwenheim, Robinson, etc.).
Operation: dynamics; causal mechanisms
Physical structure -
Unique features:
(·) Is apparently inherent to physical phenomena such as matter, energie, space and time.
(·) Implies intrinsic organization.
(·) Comprises cause-effect relations (causality).
(see Kant, Peirce, Wehl, Popper, Lakatos and others).
Physical manifestation: expressions
Intersubjective experience -
Unique features:
(·) Communication consists of 'the offering and accepting of meaning' (V.Satir, 1976).
(·) Communication enables mutual understanding. The value of shared experience comprises more than '
the sum of its parts'.
(see Korzybski, Leech, Heider, Keller & Brown, Satir, etc.).
A.o. consciousness, contingency, freedom of choice
Intangible / mental domain.
Includes subjective consciousness, meaning, 'room' for freedom of choice.
Matter/ energy, time-space, quanta
Material / physical domain.
Laws are described in relativist physics (eg Lorentz, Einstein) , quantum mechanics
(eg De Broglie, Schrödinger).
All possibly accessible sources of experience, information and knowledge
Traceable reality
at the disposal of our experience - both material and immaterial.
All possible phenomena, entities, patterns and 'beables
', in whatever domain, level or stage of existence, and irrespective of degree of accessibility
All of reality - All beings and beables.
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