Philosophical and Methodological Foundations Post-non-classical Third-Order Cybernetics

Abstract

The article presents a philosophical and methodological analysis of the evolu­tion of paradigms of cybernetics of the first, second and third-order. We used N. Bohr’s principle of correspondence, established in physical science, the ideas of scientific revolutions by T.S. Kuhn, J. Holton’s ideas about the use in new paradigms of cross-cutting thematic structures as peculiar trajectories of the historical development of science, as well as M. Polanyi’s ideas about the influence of personal knowledge of creators on the content of new scien­tific paradigms. An analysis of three examples proposed by third-order cyber­netics allowed us to conclude that they set particular directions of develop­ment, but cannot claim to be a qualitatively new step in the development of cybernetics, the transition to third-order cybernetics, which would include both private paradigms of first and second-order cybernetics. For the philo­sophical and methodological basis for the formation of new paradigms of cy­bernetics, we propose a construction of three types of scientific rationality (V.S. Stepin), which meets the requirements of the N. Bohr’s principle of cor­respondence and the criteria of T.S. Kuhn. From these positions, the article substantiates the correctness of the formation of post-non-classical cyber­netics of self-developing poly-subjective (reflexive-active) environments in which there are three stages of development of subjective paradigms, basic philosophical approaches, objects of control, control mechanisms, types of observers, activity and subjectness approaches, basic types of reflexion, ethi­cal regulators, ideas about information and knowledge, subjects and pseudo-subjectness of digital transformation and artificial intelligence, disciplinary scientific approaches. The presented logic of development gives arguments that post-non-classical cybernetics has grounds to be cybernetics of the third order.