2007/08/07 13:45 Hiroshi Deguchi, "Systems Sciences Toward the New Liberal Arts for the Global Society of 21st Century", ISSS Tokyo 2007
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Hiroshi Deguchi, Leader of 21 Century COE Program ABSSS, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
[Deguchi]

Problems of systems science
- Little influence for connecting science and humanities
Mission of SGSR: change isomorphy to commensurability
System concepts popular, e.g. feedback
- But little linkage to CAS or SSME
Haven't established a philosophy of science for artificial and social semantics
Gap between social and general systems theory
- Luhmann is based on macro communication processes
Foundation of epistemology
- Kripke: causal chain/ but too naive
- Quine
Liberal arts
- Contrast to professional, vocation or technical curriculum
- Includes literature, language, philosophy, math and science
Classical liberal arts of the Oriental world
- Mo-tzu (490-403 BC)
- Philosophy partially from architectural concepts
- School came from lower classes
- Ethics as sympathy (sometimes wrongly translated to universal love)
- Peace keep against attacks of war.
- Activities included: logic, rhetoric, optics, ethics, peace keeping and political practice (no mucis)
First social simulation by Mo-Tzu B.C. 400
Liberal arts as free from what?
- Mission traditionally to serve God and man, and to become free from all others except God in the context of pre-modern society
What are the life world platforms of the 21st century?
We are living partially embedded and partially disembedded society
- Semantic differentiation = cross cultural platform
So, propose: new liberty under the cross-cultural, trans-state and trans-civilization context
Draw: intellectual map
- New liberal arts should support the ability of drawing the intellectual map of knowledge
Approach
- 2x2: participatory intersubjective; vs. rational and normative
- 2x2: market vs. non-market; public vs. private
Commensurability gap:
- One: gap betwen social systems theory and other systems theory
- e.g. Luhmann gave different meaning to "system boundary"
- Other: gap between emergent CAS and ABM
Macro-micro link
Gaps are becoming more serious
- Need the ways of the inter-subjective
To overcome the commensurability problem ...
Ten new liberal arts domains
- 1. Mathematical thoery of systems modeling that includes mathematical aspects of systemic properties
- 2. Conflict resolution and accommodation
- 3. System modeling and practices of participatory approach to construct the shared knowledge inside organizations or societies
- 4. Extension of rational decision-making, including evolutionary and learning aspects of decision-making
- 5. Anticipatory systems theory and the internal model
- 6. Integration of functional and bottom-up approach
- 7. Social semantics and communication theory for inter-subjective construction of shared understanding
- 8. Systems sciences for cultural contexts, services analysis and value creation: focused on SSME
- 9. Agent-based social simulation: systems dynamics provides functional stock and flow points of view, need to extend from bottom-up approach.
- Social architecture design by SOARS, not for prediction, but for comunication, sharing of internal model and option evaluation
- 10. Systems philosophy and methodology under communication with traditional philosophy of sciences
[Questions]
Holistic approach?
- Liberal arts is not working well at universities
Interdisciplinary approach?
- An individual who can speak multiple languages, not bringing together disciplinary people as a group

