In Von Foerester's department we studied the competition and co-operation between evolving systems. The population is rarely homogeneous; different species co-exist in dynamic equilibrium. For various reasons it is particularly interesting when a hybrid of several previously distinct species becomes more stable than any one (the hybrid is dubbed "resonant" by analogy with a resonant molecule, such as benzene, where a hybrid form is more stable than any of the classical descriptors. As with the molecule it is important to realize that the hybrid is something "novel" and not an admixture of the descriptors). An evolving hybrid is a self-organizing system, as defined in Chapter 3, in terms of its relation to an observer, for an observer must continually change his reference frame to make sense of it. But, in this context, to "change our reference frame" only means that we perform different conceptual experiments, try to make sense of unitary actions, sequences of actions and so on, in short, that we "converse". The rules of evolution and development are determined by the connectivity of an albeit very flexible computer, a network so constructed that the fabric from which it is made will be irrelevant. On the other hand, if we look at self-organizing systems in the real world, their evolution and development is determined by their fabric and because of this, "changing our reference frame" comes to mean making physically different - often incomparable - kinds of experiment. (ATC 102-103)

It is perfectly obvious that managers are unable to deal with the problems of modern industry. If you rig up a computer to give a manager all the information he needs about the state of the factory, it is necessary to include about a day's lag - otherwise he decides in a frenzy of misguided zeal that leaves the place in a shambles. He is not stupid. On the contrary, he is a highly trained, intelligent man. His decision capacity is simply overloaded. But if you cannot tolerate the lag, and, nowadays, we cannot, the manager must be replaced.

An obvious solution lies in "Two heads are better than one". But whilst true in a way, this adage was always defective. You cannot add wisdom by adding heads on a committee. That is the fallacy of team research (you cannot buy a research team. With luck it grows, making its own common language and thriving on pesonal interplay which has nothing to do with research). I suspect it is also fallacy of managerial groups. (ATC 112)

First, can we do it? Yes. There are existence proofs. Research teams that do work. Often enough husband and wife share a common language and make jointly wise decisions. I have seen the process also in groups of actors at club theatres, amongst jazz musicians and in football teams. These are stable communities that mke genuine group decisions. Of course, they play at decision making all day long, and respond concertedly when a familiar situation appears in the real world. The rapport between horse and rider is not dissimilar; they decide together about the terrain. But, I have never seen this efficient organization in industry. The atmosphere is too earnest (maybe it must be). There is something that makes us approach the paper mill with a ponderous solemnity alien to a honky tonk. For all that, it may not be impossible to recapture some of the requisite abandon, by having managers play together via an adaptive machine. By analogy, the managers ride the same horse and the terrain is replaced by an image of their factory. At any rate, some serious work is in progress. (ATC 112)

Hence the present theory is designed to explain attentino span and atention directing as a necessary property of the cognitive process in a processor-independent manner; that is, in a way that is applicable to any processor in which the cognitive process could be executed. The explanation goes along these lines.

Any cognitive process, later identified with a concept, is shown to reproduce or, equisignificantly, to stabilize a relation. Generally, this is a relation between entities in an environment, though it need not be. Further, it is shown that any non-transient process (an observable concept) is reproducible in the context of a certain class of relations. The word "reproducible" is used in the sense of the theory of abstract (or synbolic) reproductive automata, onto which most cognitive activities are mapped. Under execution, a concept (alias process) owes its integrity to actual reproduction, not just to the fact that it is reproducible. As a result, an appropriate context must exist and, by hypothesis, this together with the process under execution, is the field of attention. (CCL 4-5)

The present theory answers the second illustrative question by affirming the necessary existence of modes whenever cognition is observable. Under circumstances that are to be delineated, the replication of a cognitive process (for example, the replication of a concept of R in the earlier paradigm "A is conscious with B of R") depends upon the existence of a conversation between distinct and integral participants A and B. The reproduction of the process is manifest in the A, B, dialogue as a complex of explanations, from A to B and vice versa, which is later called an understanding. The crucial point is that replicative cycles can be observed and manipulated if and only if they are reified in terms of understandings that split the cycle into parts which belong to A and to B. (It should be emphasized that A's understanding of B and B's understanding of A, which is the event detected in the already mentioned extension of Turing's test, has no direct connection with an observer's understanding of the A, B dialogue). (CCL 5-6)

If teaching is the contro of learning, then it might be mechanized. That is not to say that it must be mechanized or that mechanization is either economic or practically advantageous. But it might be mechanized insofar as a control procedure is a prescription for what to do at each step in a process; frequently, (in the case of feedback control) a prescription that is contingent upon evidence regarding the current state of the process. The controller, which executes the prescriptive strategy, may be a human being who carries out some algorithm otr it may be an artifact, made in the metal, which does the same thing. In other cases again, the function of executing the control strategy may be relegated to the student himself insofar as he adheres to certain rules and interprets the contents of a programmed book. The important thing, in all these cases, is that a stratey exists. (TM 1-2)

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