Global Brain Institute

Modern understanding of determinism collides head on with our experience of free will and leaves little place for it if any as a real phenomenon. This article proposes a new reconciliation between free will and determinism. It traces the experience of choice to an epistemic gap inherent in mental processes due to them being based on physically realized computational processes. This gap weakens the grasp of determinism and allows for an effective kind of freedom. A new meaning of freedom is explored and shown to resolve the fundamental riddles of free will, or at least going a long way towards that end. Freedom as arising from the epistemic gap is no longer a mysterious property of an agent but rather a dynamic property of a wider state of affairs involving the agent, the distribution of computational resources and information flow. Some implications of the way that we are free and how it might be influenced by future technology are briefly discussed.  

This paper introduces Deleuze’s philosophy of becoming in system theoretic terms and proposes an alternative ontological foundation to the study of systems and complex systems in particular. A brief critique of system theory and difficulties apparent in it is proposed as an initial motivation to the discussion. Following is an overview aiming to provide an access to the ‘big picture’ of Deleuze’s revolutionary philosophical system with emphasize on a system theoretic approach and terminology. The major concepts of Deleuze’s ontology - difference, virtuality, multiplicity, assemblages, quasi-causation, becoming (individuation), intensity and progressive determination are introduced and discussed in some length. Deleuze’s work is a radical departure from the dogma of western philosophy that also guides the foundations of science and system theory. It replaces identity with difference and being with becoming, in other words, it provides system theory with an ontological ground based on change, heterogeneity and inexhaustible novelty-producing process that underlies all phenomena. The conceptual tools made available by this philosophy seem to capture the fundamental aspects of complexity and complex systems much better than the current conceptual system that is based on static transcendental ontological entities.

It is argued that the prospect of the emergence of a Global Brain as a planetary level Communication Command and Control system capable of demonstrating general intelligence depends on realizing a scalable cognitive process. We have described an agent based framework for scalable cognition by first defining cognition as the combination of two selective processes: Selection for relevance (attention mechanism) and selection for effective action. These selective processes are context sensitive and operate on events that mediate differences in the state of the agent’s environment. The structure of cognitive agents and the structure of the environment co-­‐define each other and therefore co-­‐emerge.
The framework suggests that the up-­‐scaling of the cognitive process is realized by the agent’s tendency to form cooperative coalitions. Every such coalition is in fact a super agent constructed from simpler constituent agents operating together in a collective cognitive process. Coalitions are formed and dismantled according to their relevance. The relevance of a coalition or a super agent is derived from: 1. the existence of sufficient triggers from the environment to which they respond effectively according to a context sensitive set of criteria. 2. The extent by which they influence other coalitions and participate in higher level coalitions. 3. A Decay factor that basically represents entropy and the tendency of ordered systems to disintegrate in time.
The concept of challenge is introduced into the framework as synonymous with context sensitive items of relevance that are selected by the attention mechanism. These items are analogous to the items ‘brought to consciousness‘ in Baars’ global workspace theory. As attention is spreading among agents, we say that challenges propagate within the population of agents along paths of influence that together form a network of influence. The propagation of challenges is analogous, at least in some aspects, to the monetary flow within a market system. Such flow abstracts the local context sensitive transactions and highlights instead the flow of the currency of attention. This is based on the understanding that the currency of attention ‘buys’ the resources necessary for effective action. Effective action in turn gains influence that further draws attention. This is quite different from the flow of information among agents because we hypothesize that what drives the formation of higher cognitive structures is the spreading of challenges and not only the spreading of information. Of particular interest in this sense is that aspect of propagation we called vertical propagation of challenges. Vertical propagation is associated with the formation of higher cognitive functions and takes place as challenges at a certain level are combined through the interactions of agents to a challenge of a higher level.
The final part of the paper explores general considerations and problems of modeling the framework and outlining initial directions for implementation. The approach is modular and divides the frameworkinto a few modeling problems: Modeling agents (the generic agent), modeling challenges and events (modeling the environment), modeling topological aspects and finally modeling coalitions and their formation which is the most critical aspect of the framework. All these are of course subjects to further research.
The ultimate test of implementing the framework is the demonstration of general intelligence i.e. the spontaneous discovery of problems in the environment and the emergence of specific problem solving capabilities without the guidance of a designer. This is of course a very hard problem to begin with but this paper makes some conceptual headway in figuring how to get there.

... Vijay A. Saraswat , Kenneth Kahn , David Weinbaum, Detecting stable properties of networks in concurrent logic programming languages, Proceedings of the seventh annual ACM Symposium on Principles of distributed computing, p.210-222, August 15-17, 1988, Toronto ...

A significant motivation for programming language research is to find good abstractions and conceptual frameworks that enable us to understand and re* son about, certain kinds of complex computational phenomena in a simple way. In this paper we show that the specification of ...

Our envisioning of the brink of Singularity begins with redefining Singularity as an historical process, rather than an event. It is the process of continuous intelligence expansion since the beginning of human civilization. We emphasize the value and significance of the continuity of this process rather than the intermediate stages through which it passes. By that, we position the brink of Singularity situation within the continuum of human evolution, the evolution of life and evolution as a universal process. We raise the question of what would be the desired configuration and dynamics of the sociotechnological system able to facilitate open-ended intelligence expansion. A World of Views is our vision of
such a configuration. We then argue why a World of Views is likely to be the only feasible configuration capable of sustaining the Singularity as a process of intelligence escaping its biological constraints and beyond. Finally, we propose
distributed social governance as a bootstrapping mechanism for a World of Views and link it with the current momentum of the sociotechnological system. At the basis of the evolutionary shift humanity is undergoing on the brink of Singularity is the progressive process of entering into symbiotic relationships
with its technological artifacts. This symbiotic convergence deemphasizes the anthropocentric perspective in regard to the future. Furthermore, the past consensual understanding of what constitutes our humanity cannot serve us effectively under circumstances of accelerating sociotechnological change. From the social perspective, the most important are those artifacts that augment social interaction of intelligent agents as currently the Internet primarily is. Such artifacts do not only change us individually, they transform the very fabric of human civilization. We take therefore a systemic approach, first by focusing our discussion on the dynamics of the sociotechnological organism humanity is becoming, and second by introducing worldviews as the relevant units of
evolution of sociotechnological organisms.
Our analysis of the sociotechnological evolution shows that circumstances of hyper-connectivity, reflexivity and acceleration beyond their many obvious benefits expose the sociotechnological system to fragility that will only increase in
the near future and may lead to some catastrophic though yet unpredictable consequences. In order to counter this systemic effect we apply the concept of antifragility - the property of systems that thrive on volatility and uncertainty -
and conclude that antifragility is necessary to secure the sociotechnological system from devastating catastrophic events. To that end, we need a paradigm shift towards what we call a World of Views. A World of Views is a nested, self-
organizing structure, where worldviews occupy the highest level but in themselves are modular, open and diverse. Diversity, modularity and openness are the essential properties that together characterize an adaptive structure
capable of containing failures while propagating successes within the larger system, thus realizing antifragility at multiple scales. An antifragile sociotechnological system, however, is much more than just dodging existential risks. We argue that the benefits of technology will gradually transport humanity into an age of abundance, which will in turn have profound
effects on sociotechnological evolution. This self-amplifying reciprocity will result in decline and even disappearance of evolutionary pressures that arise from limited resources and survival needs. We propose that abundance will catalyze
active expressions of freedom that will become novel evolutionary selectors. In our vision of the future, the expression of freedom rather than survival is the ultimate driving force of evolution. We conclude that the World of Views is a catalyst of future abundance, which in turn reinforces the dynamics intrinsic of the World of Views. This positive feedback mechanism, once set in motion, will bootstrap the sociotechnological system towards a World of Views. 
Finally, we introduce in broad lines a distributed social governance system that we foresee as instrumental to the development of a World of Views. Distributed social governance system is the implementation of a World of Views
on the social plane. It is a radical extension of a democratic governance regime in a sense of abolishing the single unified paradigm, in favor of continuous construction and dismantling of experimental models that partially work. It is clear to us that global education systems are the essential key towards distributed social governance, teaching us to live in a world without survival constraints, giving up the idea of a single value system, constructing individual and shared realities and constantly innovating on them.

Recent experiments have perfectly verified  the fact that quantum correlations between two entangled particles are stronger than any classical, local pre-quantum worldview allows. This is famously called the EPR paradox first conceived as a thought experiment and decades later realized in the lab. We discuss in depth the nature of the paradox and show that the problematics it presents is first and foremost epistemological. After briefly exploring resolutions to the paradox that after many decades of discourse still remain controversial, we argue that the paradox is rooted in the failure of our current metaphysical scheme, being the foundation of our knowledge, to accommodate and cohere our knowledge of the phenomena of entanglement. We then develop and make the case for a novel and more fundamental resolution of the paradox by changing the underlying metaphysical foundation from one based on individuals to a one based on individuation. We discuss in detail how in the light of this new scheme concepts central to the paradox such as realism, causality and locality are adjusted to the effect that the paradox is resolved without giving up these concepts so fundamental to our thinking. We conclude with a brief note about the important role of metaphysics to the progress of knowledge and our understanding of reality.

How does thought begin? Where does the thinking subject come from? What is cognition and how do objects of cognition arise? This work addresses these problems first by developing a metaphysical foundation and then applying it to develop an open-ended evolutionary systemic framework. The limitations of representation-based, object-oriented thinking are exposed and a way is sought to overcome them and access thought beyond representation. Based on the works of Bergson, Simon-
don and Deleuze an alternative metaphysics is proposed, one that replaces the individual as the primary metaphysical element with individuation as a primary metaphysical process and consequently makes difference primal to identity. This paradigmatic shift, it is shown, is the key to going beyond representation and understanding thought and cognition as open-ended, creative processes of self-organization. These
formative processes are of a universal scope and precede any kind of representable object, agency, or relation. Specifically they precede the subject-object dichotomy. In bringing forth order from non-order, sense from non-sense, knowledge from the unknown, they manifest open-ended intelligence – a kind of intelligence which is neither purposeful or predictive but rather experimental and productive. Guided by this
metaphysical approach and in conjunction with the theory of enactive cognition, population thinking and cybernetics, a framework of distributed systemic cognition is developed. It offers conceptual tools that can be applied to the study of complex systems and situations as they evolve.

To próba rekonstrukcji znaczenia "gry językowej" i konfrontacji zawartego w niej modelu komunikacji z kategoriami powstałymi współcześnie. Koncepcja Wittgesteina okazuje się być narzędziem umożliwiającym szerokie i nowoczesne spojrzenie na język. W ramach jednego terminu znaleźć się tu bowiem mogą obszary badań nad komunikacją, uwzględniające zdobycze licznych nauk zajmujących się językiem: pragmatyki językowej, antropologii językoznawczej, kognitywizmu, psychologii komunikacji, socjologii i wreszcie teorii komunikacji niewerbalnej.

Higher Education research frequently refers to the complex external conditions that give our old-fashioned universities a good reason to change. The underlying theoretical assumption of a such framing is that organizations are open systems. This paper presents an alternative view, derived from the theory of social systems autopoiesis. It proposes that organizations, being open systems, are yet operationally closed, as all their activities and interactions with the environment are aspects of just one process: the recursive production of themselves, according to a pattern of their own identity. It is their identity that captures exactly what can and what cannot be sustained in their continuous self-production. Examining the organizational identity of universities within the theoretical framework of autopoiesis may hence shed new light on their resistance to change, explaining it as a systemic and social phenomenon, rather than an individual and psychological one. Since all processes of an autopoietic system are processes of its self-production, this paper argues that in the case of traditional European universities, the identity consists in the intertwinement of only two processes: (i) introducing continuous change in the scope of scientific knowledge, and (ii) educating new generations of scholars, who will carry on this activity. This surprisingly leaves at the wayside seemingly the most obvious 'use of the university': the adequate education of students for the job market.

Contrary to the prevailing pessimistic AI takeover scenarios, the theory of the Global Brain (GB) argues that this foreseen collective, distributed superintelligence is bound to include humans as its key beneficiaries. This prediction follows from the contingency of evolution: we, as already present intelligent forms of life, are in a position to exert selective pressures onto the emerging new ones. As a result, it is foreseen that the cognitive architecture of the GB will include human beings and such technologies, which will best prove to advance our collective wellbeing. This paper aims to nuance and problematize this forecast by offering a novel combination of several existing theories: Kauffmann’s theory of adjacent possible, Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere, Luhmann’s theory of social systems, and Heylighen’s theory of intelligence. The resulting framework allows for a reinterpretation of the history of the human species in a way which suggests that it may not be individual humans, but our social systems, who are the most advanced intelligence currently operating on Earth. Our unique social systems, e merging from as early as the Neolithic out of mutual interrelations of the occurrences of symbolic communication of humans, are argued to be capable of individuating into autonomous, intelligent agents. The resulting distributedness of the currently dominating form of intelligence might challenge the predicted cognitive architecture of the Global Brain, as it is likely to introduce additional powerful sources of selective pressures. Since the rapid evolution of interconnecting technologies appears to open up immense emancipatory possibilities not only for humans, but also for the intelligently evolving ‘creatures of the semiosphere’, it is concluded that in the context of the rapidly self-organizing Global Brain, a close watch needs to be kept over the dynamics of the latter.

As governments and reformers attempt to forge a new identity for European universities, they contend with decades of research showing that reforms of higher education institutions are notoriously difficult to institute, and they usually fail. What may be seen as a historic exception to this pattern is the Humboldtian impulse for an unusually quick, deep, and lasting transformation of European universities. The aim of this paper is to propose a systems perspective of Humboldtian reforms based on the writings of another great German scholar, Niklas Luhmann (1986, 1995, 2009). The authors argue that far from being a reform, Humboldt’s accomplishment consisted in the naming and application of an institutional identity, which persists in European universities to this day and once again requires to be named and applied.
In the higher education literature of the past two decades, the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt rarely come up in any context other than forecasting their demise. The model of higher education known as Humboldtian is frequently designated an atavism of a bygone era, mismatched with the demands of the information age (Renaut, 2006; Tavoletti, 2010; Pechar, 2012). The three pillars of Humboldt’s concept of the university – the unity of teaching and research, academic self-governance, and the pursuit of truth for its own sake – are under siege. Universities organized after Humboldt’s model have been caught in a crossfire of increasingly massified higher education systems and the demands of a knowledge-based economy at a time of a declining welfare state (Clark, 1997; Schimank, 2000; Krücken, 2003; Schimank, 2009). Yet studies of academic staff confirm that despite the environmental forces embattling Humboldt’s model, political pressures to do away with it, and organizational arrangements that make its realization impossible, Humboldtian tenets still form the core of organizational identity for many universities organized or reformed according to the model. For academics, Humboldt is the rallying cry against forces of massification and academic capitalism. Despite pressures to the contrary, what the German reformer stands for is not only alive and well, but flying on the banners of academics in Germany (Krücken, 2003), Austria (Pechar, 2012), the Czech Republic (Pabian et al., 2011), Italy (Tavoletti, 2010), and Poland (Shaw, 2012). Even though the Humboldtian model is considered outdated, it is proving difficult if not impossible to uproot as the dominant cognitive scheme of European universities. Why, then, has this particular model succeeded in the domain where today’s attempts at reform seem doomed to fail?
To answer this question, the authors of this paper propose a theoretical lens that has only recently been applied to institutions of higher education (Lenartowicz, 2013), namely the concept of a social system's autopoiesis. The term, coined by two systems biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela (Maturana, 2002, 2010; Maturana & Varela, 2010), describes a basic operational principle that differentiates any living system from artificially created machines. The principle is one of continuous, recursive self-production as the fundamental process that governs a system’s activities. Such self-production requires constant exchange with the environment, but the blueprint according to which the system organizes itself and obtains resources from the environment is its own creation. To employ an illustrative metaphor, the “shopping list” of a living system is predefined by its specific identity, not by the environment’s “shop window”. What rules the exchange between a living system and its environment is thus the system’s autopoiesis – its recursive self-production. The term made its way to social sciences mainly through the works of Niklas Luhmann (1986, 1995, 2009), who conceptualized the organization as an autopoietic social system. Luhmann’s theory developed within the field of organization sciences (e.g. Seidl, 2004, 2005, 2009; Seidl & Becker, 2006; Magalhães & Sanchez, 2009; Lenartowicz, 2013) suggests that within an organization, only such change is easily adopted that is compatible with the root identity.
On that basis, the authors of this study pose the hypothesis that von Humboldt’s reform was lasting and effective because it was not a reform, but rather a reaffirmation of the root identity of European universities in a new context.
This identity consists in a disinterested pursuit of truth undertaken by a community that unites teaching and research in the context of autonomous self-governance. The authors demonstrate how the notions of the pursuit of truth, the unity of teaching and research, and academic self-governance were recursively self-produced in both medieval and Humboldtian universities, and how they continue as the constitutive “myth” of European universities - “far away from their organizational realities while at the same time constituting their chosen frame of reference” (Krücken, 2003, p. 327).
The root identity of European universities remains despite a host of external pressures or perturbations. When a system like the university is faced with a perturbation, it alters it functions in response as a compensation towards the external stimulus. Through the lens of Luhmann’s (2000) theory, actions taken by universities in response to the Lisbon Strategy and governments’ demands for greater entrepreneurship can be seen as compensations – alterations in functioning that do not affect the essential identity and become discontinued as soon as the external stimulus is removed. Authors of this paper point to scattered evidence that amidst the noise of perturbations and compensations, the main melody of universities’ core identity continues to be heard, and can only be ignored by policymakers at the peril of introducing long-lived and wasteful reforms. At moments of transition, such as the one encountered by Humboldt and the one faced by European universities today, the essential identity of universities needs to be articulated anew in the changed context and on new instruments. The authors conclude by proposing that the re- articulation of the identity of European universities today must take note of the postmodern multiplicity of truths, the domination of economics over other functional social systems, increased demand for higher education, and the continuing tension in politics between the logic or steering and controlling the activities of academia.

Spośród opisanych przez G. Burrella i G. Morgana (1979) czterech paradygmatów zarządzania aż trzy są bezspornie humanistyczne. Zważywszy na dominującą pozycję czwartego – funkcjonalistycznego – w zarządzaniu uprawianym jako dyscyplina ekonomiczna, nie jest dziwne, że humaniści zazwyczaj utożsamiają ów paradygmat z tą właśnie dyscypliną, coraz wyraźniej dystansując się od niego. Skoro jednak podział instytucjonalny polskiej nauki wyróżnia zarządzanie ekonomiczne i humanistyczne (nie tworząc dla niego miejsca w najbardziej oczywistej kategorii nauk społecznych), potrzebna wydaje się dziś refleksja nad statusem takich podejść badawczych, które zajmują się nieekonomicznym, ludzkim wymiarem organizacji i zarządzania, czyniąc to w sposób obiektywizujący oraz nastawiony na opis, wyjaśnianie i regulację, nie na radykalną zmianę. Orientacja epistemologiczna i społeczna tej grupy badań i koncepcji teoretycznych jest zgodna z charakterystyką paradygmatu „neopozytywistyczno-funkcjonalistyczno-systemowego” – jak go nazywa Ł. Sułkowski (2012). Nasze wystąpienie ma na celu przedstawienie argumentów za tym, że taki sposób uprawiania nauki ma w zarządzaniu humanistycznym rację bytu: nie tylko dlatego, że po prostu jest dziś obecny i rozwija się, ale także dlatego, że wnosi coś ważnego.
Rozdział obejmuje trzy części. Pierwsza, przybliża założenia humanistycznego oblicza funkcjonalizmu, skupionego na warunkach osiągania przez organizacje zakładanych celów niematerialnych, a więc szukającego sposobów na „utrzymanie orientacji wszystkich [osób] działających w organizacji publicznej lub społecznej na właściwe dla niej cele i wartości” (Łuczyński 2009). Druga część poświęcona jest przeglądowi badań i koncepcji, które można określić mianem humanistyczno-systemowych. Wpisują one rozumienie organizacji ludzkiej w założenia ogólnej teorii systemów (Bertalanffy 1969, Luhmann 1995), traktując ją jako szczególny typ systemów społecznych i badając współzależności, jakie łączą ją z innymi – psychicznymi i abstrakcyjnymi – systemami tworzonymi przez człowieka i jednocześnie stwarzającego go. Trzecia część stanowi syntezę dwóch powyższych, przedstawiając powyższe podejścia jako podejścia neopozytywistyczne, czy może raczej już „neo-neopozytywistyczne”: dążące do maksymalnej ścisłości logicznej rozumowania naukowego oraz jedności nauki, lecz już znacznie lepiej radzące sobie – podobnie jak  przyrodoznawstwo – ze złożonością i nieoznaczonością przedmiotu poznania oraz z subiektywizmem wszelkiej percepcji i dzięki temu nieograniczające już zakresu swoich zainteresowań do zewnętrznie obserwowalnych zachowań człowieka.

Celem europejskiej polityki publicznej jest dziś często przeorganizowanie tożsamości oraz rearanżacja dotychczasowych trajektorii. Przekonanie, że jest to w ogóle możliwe, wydaje się być oparte na systemowej tezie, głoszącej iż „zmiana w organizacji ma początek w jej otoczeniu” - zatem zmiany w granicach autonomicznych systemów społecznych mogą być skutecznie inicjowane i koordynowane za pomocą adekwatnych bodźców zewnętrznych. Niniejsza książka przedstawia pryzmat teoretyczny, który tezę tę poddaje w wątpliwość. Argumentuje, że choć systemy społeczne są systemami otwartymi, są one jednak „operacyjnie zamknięte”. Analogicznie do systemów żywych, wszelkie swoje interakcje z otoczeniem podporządkowują wewnętrznemu procesowi samowytwarzania się – autopoiesis.
Wskazuje to na możliwość istnienia potężnej bariery, przeciwdziałającej wywoływaniu zmian w systemach społecznych za pomocą procesów koordynowanych spoza ich granic. Ponieważ szczególne natężenie takich właśnie procesów występuje dziś w odniesieniu do tradycyjnych uniwersytetów publicznych, prezentowany pryzmat został tu przymierzony właśnie do nich. Autorka rekonstruuje wzorzec autonomicznego samowytwarzania się tradycyjnego uniwersytetu europejskiego i bada wpływ, jaki na autopoiesis uniwersytetów wywiera „lizboński postulat przedsiębiorczości” UE.