Democracy as consensus? The case of artificial consensus

We consider here how democracy cannot be reduced to consensus and majorityvoting without taking in count contextual systemic social properties. We intend Democracy as context-sensitive, emergent property of social systems. We consider possible empirical confirmatory approaches to be used in case of strategic decisions as in thecase of the Brexit. We present the example of medical practice where no physician would decide a medical treatment on the base of a diagnosis having little more than fifty percent of probabilities to be true (neither a judge would condemn a defendant in court). In the post-industrial, knowledge societies we must face the end of the identity between universal suffrage and democracy

The social field designed by architecture

In the literature disciplinary researches, e.g., physics, studied the behaviour of elements, such as particles, in a context provided with properties, e.g., electromagnetic and gravitational. This context is classically considered as field, i.e., a physical quantity associated to each point of space-time. Social sciences and psychology use the concept of Force Field introduced by the social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) The Force Field or life space was assumed to be -in any individual or social group- changing with experience and intended as representation of the environment, personal values, emotions and goals. We may say the cognitive system combined with representations and stimuli of the environment. This short essay focuses on Architecture as design of structures able to represent and induce properties of the cognitive systems possessed by inhabitants as well their transformation processes relating to social processes in progress. The subject is studied by Environmental Psychology, in the conceptual framework of Space Syntax. On one hand, the structure of space created through Architecture both represents and induces the social field within which inhabitants behave. On the other hand, inhabitants behave by using such a social field. Within this conceptual framework we may hypothesise the existence of a process of self-architecture by social systems. We explore the coherence, in such social fields, between different aspects such as architecture, design, fashion, music and painting

Post-industrial systems of societies

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Growth and Development: A possible systemic understanding

Approaches for representing quantitative processes of growth for single systems are considered focussing especially upon logistic growth processes. Attention is then extended to processes of growth for complex systems such as Multiple Systems comprising components belonging to more than one system. Complex system populations of growth processes are considered in an attempt to gain an understanding of their growth. We consider in this regard various possible approaches for understanding development and its being an emergent property. We present some possible ways of understanding emergent development which can not be suitably considered as being reducible to the properties of sequences of processes of growth

A conceptual proposal on the undecidability of the distribution law of prime numbers and theoretical consequences

Within the conceptual framework of number theory, we consider prime numbers and the classic still unsolved problem to find a complete law of their distribution. We ask ourselves if such persisting difficulties could be understood as due to theoretical incompatibilities. We consider the problem in the conceptual framework of computational theory. This article is a contribution to the philosophy of mathematics proposing different possible understandings of the supposed theoretical unavailability and indemonstrability of the existence of a law of distribution of prime numbers. Tentatively, we conceptually consider demonstrability as computability, in our case the conceptual availability of an algorithm able to compute the general properties of the presumed primes’ distribution law without computing such distribution. The link between the conceptual availability of a distribution law of primes and decidability is given by considering how to decide if a number is prime without computing. The supposed distribution law should allow for any given prime knowing the next prime without factorial computing. Factorial properties of numbers, such as their property of primality, require their factorisation (or equivalent, e.g., the sieves), i.e., effective computing. However, we have factorisation techniques available, but there are no (non-quantum) known algorithms which can effectively factor arbitrary large integers. Then factorisation is undecidable. We consider the theoretical unavailability of a distribution law for factorial properties, as being prime, equivalent to its non-computability, undecidability. The availability and demonstrability of a hypothetical law of distribution of primes is inconsistent with its undecidability. The perspective is to transform this conjecture into a theorem

Creativity as Cognitive design \ud The case of mesoscopic variables in Meta-Structures\ud

Creativity is an open problem which has been differently approached by several disciplines since a long time. In this contribution we consider as creative the constructivist design an observer does on the description levels of complex phenomena, such as the self-organized and emergent ones ( e.g., Bènard rollers, Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, flocks, swarms, and more radical cognitive and social emergences). We consider this design as related to the Gestaltian creation of a language fit for representing natural processes and the observer in an integrated way. Organised systems, both artificial and most of the natural ones are designed/ modelled according to a logical closed model which masters all the inter-relation between their constitutive elements, and which can be described by an algorithm or a single formal model. We will show there that logical openness and DYSAM (Dynamical Usage of Models) are the proper tools for those phenomena which cannot be described by algorithms or by a single formal model. The strong correlation between emergence and creativity suggests that an open model is the best way to provide a formal definition of creativity. A specific application relates to the possibility to shape the emergence of Collective Behaviours. Different modelling approaches have been introduced, based on symbolic as well as sub-symbolic rules of interaction to simulate collective phenomena by means of computational emergence. Another approach is based on modelling collective phenomena as sequences of Multiple Systems established by percentages of conceptually interchangeable agents taking on the same roles at different times and different roles at the same time. In the Meta-Structures project we propose to use mesoscopic variables as creative design, invention, good continuity and imitation of the description level. In the project we propose to define the coherence of sequences of Multiple Systems by using the values taken on by the dynamic mesoscopic clusters of its constitutive elements, such as the instantaneous number of elements having, in a flock, the same speed, distance from their nearest neighbours, direction and altitude. In Meta-Structures the collective behaviour’s coherence corresponds, for instance, to the scalar values taken by speed, distance, direction and altitude along time, through statistical strategies of interpolation, quasi-periodicity, levels of ergodicity and their reciprocal relationship. In this case the constructivist role of the observer is considered creative as it relates to neither non-linear replication nor transposition of levels of description and models used for artificial systems, like reductionism. Creativity rather lies in inventing new mesoscopic variables able to identify coherent patterns in complex systems. As it is known, mesoscopic variables represent partial macroscopic properties of a system by using some of the microscopic degrees of freedom possessed by composing elements. Such partial usage of microscopic as well as macroscopic properties allows a kind of Gestaltian continuity and imitation between levels of descriptions for mesoscopic modelling. \ud \u

Knowledge to Manage the Knowledge Society: Complexity and the Systemic Concept of Crisis

We briefly propose a possibly more precise systemic understanding of the process of crisis with the purpose of allowing suitable, appropriate modifying interventions. Examples and types of crises are introduced. At a suitable level of representation we consider crisis as a non-autonomous parasitic process of the hosting one(s); processes acquiring characteristics autonomous with respect to those of the hosting process(es); processes converging to degeneration and malfunctioning; which are emergent and given by coherent, subsequent and related new degenerative properties or loss of coherence among emergent processes of the hosting one(s). Possible symptoms for diagnostics and prediction of processes of crisis are outlined. Types of crisis are considered and some generic exemplifying types of actions on crises are proposed. The main purpose of this article is to show that different types of processes of crisis having different natures are possible and that suitable, appropriate approaches should be adopted