Abstract

Context: Much of early cybernetics and most systems theories uncritically embrace the object of their attention, celebrating the theorists’ superior understanding of the complexities in the social systems they observe, dismissing the narratives that circulate among human participants of such systems. Problem: While second-order cybernetics was promoted as an observer-centered approach, one that recognizes the indisputable role of human beings in describing and theorizing about their observations, it remains stuck in theorizing about and describing observations, of necessity confined to uncritical accounts of the realities constructed by an observer. Method: I exemplify the emancipatory effort of critical cybernetics to overcome epistemological pathologies in the narratives that construct unequal power relationships, which forces those who do not possess the resources to reconceptualize their situation into compliance with those in command of them. In particular, I focus on pathologies due to the use of epistemologically misleading metaphors, but do not limit myself to such tropes, and discuss several other epistemological pathologies, often overlooked, and naively complied with, yet worthy of examining for their inhuman consequences. Results: Critical cybernetics starts from a conception of social realities as networked communications among their linguistically competent human constituents, making commitments to one another, drawing distinctions, and acting on their own and others’ differences thus created. It employs a sympoietic conception of social organizations that prioritizes their human constituents, rendering the viability of the whole secondary to the well-being of its human constituents. Criticality is not observable, nor are the alternative realties it implicates. Therefore, criticism can occur only in language, but may well have noticeable consequences if enacted socially. It follows that the discourse of critical cybernetics has to practice a conception of language capable of altering existing realities. Implications: The primary concern of critical cybernetics is emancipatory. As a result, concerns arise whenever identifiable epistemological problems become systemic pathologies, defined as unwanted constraints on the agency of human beings, leading to feelings of being entrapped in untenable social conditions, undue burdens, frustrations, injustices, oppression, enslavement, and helplessness. Entrapment entails the inability to know what to do next except to comply with untenable situations, often blaming others for one’s painful conditions. Because of this inability, the empathetic aim of critical cybernetics is to make people aware of the role they are playing in perpetuating their own confinements through the narratives they tell one another. As an interdisciplinary discourse, the emancipatory aim of critical cybernetics is to encourage those suffering from systemic pathologies to adopt new language, language that opens previously unseen paths of action leading out of their confinements.

Key words: Emancipation, epistemological pathologies, human-centeredness, language, metaphors, power, social science, sympoiesis, systemic pathologies.

Citation

Krippendorff K. (2023) A critical cybernetics. Constructivist Foundations 19(1): 82–93. https://constructivist.info/19/1/082 Copy Citation

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