This paper sets out the philosophical basis for the Extended Framework for General Systems Theory (EFGST), integrating two complementary perspectives:
- Cognitive Physicalism – everything that exists is physical and located in space–time, including cognition itself
- Critical Realism – reality exists independently of our knowledge, but our understanding of it is always mediated
Together, these provide a realist yet epistemically modest foundation for systems science.
The paper explores several key implications, including:
- systems as real, structured physical entities
- knowledge as model-based and necessarily partial
- the distinction between observable events and underlying causal structures
- and the idea that the future is constrained but not predetermined, unfolding through branching possibilities shaped by interaction and agency
One theme that runs throughout is that we never act directly on reality itself, but on representations of it; representations that are sufficient for action, but never complete.
To illustrate this, I’ve included a banner image accompanying the paper.
You might like to take a careful look at it…
The paper can be downloaded in pdf format from https://rational-understanding.com/EFGST#01
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