831.3
Research Program Gap Between Luhmann's Social Systems Theory and Contemporary Systems Sciences

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 6:00 PM
Room: Booth 47
Oral Presentation
Hiroshi DEGUCHI , Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan
We discuss the issues of social systems theory in comparison with contemporary systems sciences. Social systems theory by N. Luhmann is characterized by theoretical approach of macro communication process [Luhmann, 1984]. This approach came from the theory of representation collective by E. Durkheim. This macro approach is natural from a sociological point of view.
    While it is  strange and out of scope from the standpoint of standard semantics of analytic philosophy. In the history of analytic philosophy, the meaning of proper name is given by referred object in the real world or at least as rigid designator (Soul A. Kripke) or definite description (Bertrand Russell) [Kripke,1972]. Common noun is treated as a set of objects. There is a weak connection between sociological treatment of representation collective and these analytic philosophical treatment.
    There is a strong gap of research program between Luhmann’s social systems theory and contemporary systems theory. The gap causes incommensurability between two research groups about theoretical terms such as systems boundary, environment, micro-macro link, self reference, communication, complexity, and autopoiesis.
The purpose of this presentation is to find the missing link between research programs and bridge this gap from theoretical and methodological points of views.