Tag: Systems Theory

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46. When Cooperation becomes Dangerous

When Cooperation becomes Dangerous

We often assume that harmful social movements succeed because people are misinformed, irrational, or “don’t know the facts.” But knowing the truth is sometimes not enough to avoid this danger. History, and current events, suggest something more unsettling.

Many people do recognise deception. Many are sceptical. And yet socially harmful dynamics still emerge, mobilise, and sometimes gain power.

In a new article, I explore this puzzle using a systems perspective rather than a political or moral one. The central idea is simple but uncomfortable: social failure is often driven not by false belief, but by misdirected coupling; i.e., strong local alignment to individuals or groups whose behaviour undermines wider social viability.

Small, tightly committed groups can dominate outcomes even when most people privately disagree. Crowd dynamics and emotional contagion can temporarily override reflexive judgement. And harmful patterns can reproduce across generations through social learning and imitation, especially among the young.

This means that fact-checking, media literacy, and moral exhortation, while important, are often insufficient. The article argues that what is increasingly needed is a different kind of education:

  • awareness of psychological and social pathologies;
  • understanding of how coupling and crowd dynamics work; and
  • motivational reflexivity: the capacity to regulate behaviour under emotional and social pressure.

This is not about ideology or politics. It is about recognising system failure modes and learning how to constrain them before they propagate.

The full article is available as a downloadable PDF here:
https://rational-understanding.com/sst

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45. From Organisms to Nations: A Systems–Evolutionary Perspective on Social Development

From Organisms to Nations: A Systems–Evolutionary Perspective on Social Development

Human societies now operate at a scale unprecedented in history, yet they struggle to coordinate effectively in the face of environmental, social, and geopolitical crises. Climate change, institutional breakdown, misinformation, and persistent inequality are often treated as separate problems, to be solved through better politics, better technology, or better ethics. This paper starts from a different premise: that many of these difficulties are not failures of intention or morality, but symptoms of an unfinished stage of social development.

Using ideas from systems theory and evolutionary biology, the paper explores the possibility that human societies are still undergoing a process of evolutionary assembly, similar in important ways to the biological evolution that produced complex organisms. Social systems, ranging from individuals and organisations to nations, exhibit recurring structural patterns, but as they grow larger they tend to become less integrated even as their power increases. Functional specialisation expands what societies can do, but integration and control often lag behind.

The paper also argues that human needs themselves emerged in a developmental sequence, existence, relatedness, then growth, and that societies tend to follow the same pattern. When social systems prioritise growth before basic needs for security, belonging, and integration are met, instability and pathology predictably follow. From this perspective, phenomena such as criminality, institutional fragility, and environmental overshoot are not anomalies, but signals of insufficient integration at larger scales. Rather than proposing political solutions or institutional blueprints, the paper offers a way of understanding where humanity may be in its social evolutionary trajectory. It identifies two key barriers to further development, informational breakdown and weak systemic commitment, and suggests that the long-term viability of human societies depends on new forms of large-scale coordination and regulation grounded in accurate information, shared understanding, and recognition of deep interdependence.

The full paper can be downloaded in pdf format at https://rational understanding.com/sst

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18, The Relationship between Symbolic Reasoning Causality and Systems

The Relationship between Symbolic Reasoning, Causality and Systems

Some time ago, I published a paper proposing that the universal disciplines of natural language, mathematics, logic, causality, and systems theory might be unified within a single formal language.

Prior to that work, I had developed an enhanced form of set theory, Symbolic Reasoning, which successfully unified natural language, logic, and mathematics. While this framework was able to account for causality and information, it did so in a way that was both complex and, to my mind, unsatisfactory. It also did not yet extend to systems theory.

More recently, over the Christmas period, I arrived at the key insight needed to incorporate systems theory into the framework. In doing so, I was also able to greatly simplify how Symbolic Reasoning represents causality, capability, and information. What had previously required elaborate constructions could now be expressed directly and transparently in systems terms.

These extensions to Symbolic Reasoning are described in a PDF available for download here:

https://rational-understanding.com/my-books#srandsystems

To fully understand the framework, readers will also need a copy of The Mathematics of Language and Thought, both volumes of which are available for download in PDF format on the same page, immediately below.

Why this matters

Much of modern thought is fragmented across disciplines that use different languages to describe the same underlying phenomena. Causality, systems, information, meaning, and mathematics are often treated as separate domains, even though they repeatedly intersect in science, engineering, and everyday reasoning. The framework presented here matters because it offers a single, coherent formal language in which these domains can be expressed together, without metaphor or hand-waving. By grounding meaning, causality, and systems in shared symbolic structures, it becomes possible to reason more clearly about complex systems (natural, social, and artificial) and to see connections that are otherwise obscured by disciplinary boundaries.

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17. Extended Framework for a General Systems Theory

Introducing the Extended Framework for a General Systems Theory (EFGST)

The “Extended Framework for a General Systems Theory” (EFGST) builds upon the original “Framework for a General Systems Theory” that I first released several months ago. The original framework provided a structured, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding systems, their properties, and the causal processes that drive them.

This new Extended Framework expands this foundation with several key advances that connect systems theory more tightly to physical and informational dynamics:

  1. Seeds and Contra-Seeds describe how systems can be triggered to develop or decay through reinforcing or opposing influences.
  2. Mobus’s Concept of Systemness,  Integrated with the notion of state spaces, helps describe how systems maintain coherence, evolve, and approach attractors.
  3. Troncale’s Linkage Propositions are reinterpreted within EFGST as causal-probabilistic connections that can potentially be used to map probabilities across configuration and state spaces, providing a degree of predictability.
  4. Recomposition provides a new explanatory model for how complex systems build upon rather than replace their components, clarifying how emergence arises in distinct levels.

Together, these extensions bring the framework closer to a unified theory of system dynamics, applicable from physics and biology to social and cognitive systems.

You can read the overview paper and explore the detailed set of definitions and propositions here:

Overview Paper (Academia.edu): https://www.academia.edu/144773922/Overview_of_the_Extended_Framework_for_a_General_Systems_Theory

Overview Paper (Rational-Understanding) and Complete Definitions and Propositions List: https://rational-understanding.com/efgst/

These materials form the foundation for ongoing work towards an integrated General Systems Theory; one that connects the causal, energetic, and informational dimensions of system behaviour.

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10. A Systems View of Human Cognition

Three Minds in One — A Systems View of Human Cognition

Across a century of psychology, communication theory, and leadership research, the same insight keeps re-emerging: human cognition is triadic. Freud called it the Id, Ego, and Superego. Eric Berne described Child, Parent, and Adult ego states. More recently, systems thinkers speak of Ego, Eco, and Intuitive Intelligence.

Each of these frameworks highlights a different aspect of a common truth: the human mind is a layered system shaped by evolution, motivation, and reflexivity. We are driven by instinct, shaped by society, and guided by reflection. Understanding how these layers work can help us communicate better, make peace with ourselves, and grow as individuals and communities.

In my new article, I explore this recurring cognitive triad and its evolutionary foundations. I show how it maps onto brain structures, motivational needs (via Alderfer’s ERG theory), and modes of interpersonal communication. It also shows us how reflexivity and observation give us the tools to navigate these inner voices constructively.

You can read the full article in PDF format here: https://rational-understanding.com/my-books#freudandberne

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09. Unifying Universal Disciplines towards a General System Theory

Unifying Universal Disciplines towards a General System Theory

This paper can be downloaded free of charge from:

https://rational-understanding.com/UUDH#paper & https://www.academia.edu/127960952/Unifying_Universal_Disciplines_Towards_a_General_System_Theory

Systems theory, causality, natural language, and logic have traditionally been pursued as separate disciplines. However, underlying each of these domains are fundamental structures that suggest a deeper, unified framework. The way we structure our understanding of these disciplines is not arbitrary. Rather, it is dictated by principles that govern perception and cognition. It may also be dictated by principles that govern reality.

The Unified Universal Disciplines Hypothesis (UUDH) proposed in this paper posits that Fundamental systems theory, causality, natural language, and logic are different manifestations of the same underlying structure in the way that human beings perceive reality and reason. Each of these domains encodes and processes causal interactions in ways that reflect the level of complexity and perspective employed by the observer.

This paper presents the argument and describes the methodology for unifying these disciplines into a cohesive model that enables more precise reasoning across them. Symbolic Reasoning, an enhancement of traditional set theory, provides a formal tool to facilitate this unification.

UUDH has considerable and diverse explanatory power from quantum theory to human society. The unification of systems, causality, natural language, and logic represents a promising approach to developing a more comprehensive understanding of human cognition and external reality. By integrating these traditionally separate fields, we can enhance our ability to reason about complex systems in a coherent and structured manner. Symbolic Reasoning offers a powerful tool for this integration. However, the approach is hypothetical, and empirical testing is needed to verify it.

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15. Vanishing Properties and Social Change: A Systems Science Perspective

Vanishing Properties and Social Change: A Systems Science Perspective

Emergent Properties

In systems theory, an emergent property is a characteristic that arises at the level of a system but is absent in its individual components. This is commonly seen in nature, physics, and social systems. The classic example of an emergent property is, of course, consciousness. The human mind is conscious, but its component neurons are not.

Much has been written about emergent properties and the concept is a keystone in systems science. They are generally thought to have a causal basis and to be a consequence of interactions between the component parts. For example, there is much scientific evidence that consciousness is due to feedback through our sensory processing centres thereby making us aware of our own thoughts. Some of this evidence is discussed at https://rational-understanding.com/2021/10/22/consciousness/  

Vanishing Properties

But what of the complementary concept: disappearing or vanishing properties? There appears to be little, if any, awareness or discussion around this concept in the systems community. Yet the concept not only exists but also has a significant impact on the reality that we experience. Perhaps, it is because vanishing properties are often more easily explained than emergent ones, which to this day, seem to have a mystical aura around them?  Vanishing properties are crucial for understanding why large-scale social and environmental problems persist despite widespread individual concern.

Vanishing properties occur when attributes present in individual components fail to manifest at the system level. For example, atoms consist of positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. While the individual components have a charge, a neutral atom as a whole exhibits no net charge, effectively “cancelling out” this property.

While emergent properties have long been studied in systems science, the concept of vanishing properties remains underexplored. Yet, understanding how responsibility, action, and ethical concern can disappear in collective settings is crucial for tackling today’s most pressing social challenges from climate change to political engagement.

Before discussing practical examples of vanishing properties in society, I would first like to mention the work of two important figures in the field: Floyd Allport and Albert Bandura.

Floyd Allport

Floyd Allport (1890–1978) was a pioneering figure in social psychology, known for emphasising the importance of individual behaviour in social contexts. His work is highly relevant to the concept of vanishing properties in the social context, particularly in understanding how individual behaviours fail to manifest at the collective level. His rejection of the “group mind” aligns with the idea that societal patterns arise from the actions (or inactions) of individuals, rather than from some mystical or autonomous group entity. This perspective is crucial in explaining why individual responsibility or intention can disappear in collective settings, a key characteristic of vanishing properties.

For example, Allport’s research on social facilitation and inhibition provides insight into how people’s behaviour changes when they are part of a group. In some cases, the presence of others enhances individual performance (social facilitation), but in more complex or high-pressure situations, individuals may withhold action, assuming that others will take the lead (similar to the bystander effect). This can explain why personal responsibility for addressing issues like climate change, political activism, or poverty may vanish in large social settings. Individuals assume that their contributions are insignificant or that others will step in.

Allport’s emphasis on individual responsibility in collective settings influenced later research on diffusion of responsibility, groupthink, and social loafing, phenomena where action diminishes as group size increases.

Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura (1925–2021) was a pioneering psychologist best known for his work on social learning theory, self-efficacy, and moral disengagement. Later in his career, Bandura developed the theory of moral disengagement. This concept, which has been applied to understanding everything from corporate misconduct to social and environmental inaction, explains how individuals rationalise harmful or unethical behaviour, allowing them to detach from personal responsibility in a collective setting. It helps to explain why moral responsibility can vanish at the group level, even when individuals personally recognise an issue as wrong. Bandura identified several ways in which moral disengagement operates, including diffusion of responsibility, dehumanisation of victims, and euphemistic labelling, where harmful actions are framed in neutral or positive terms.

An example of the latter is Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. By using this term, the Russian government avoided the more negative connotations of “war” or “aggression,” which could trigger stronger domestic and international opposition. This euphemistic language helped to justify the military action, downplay its severity, and align public perception with the government’s narrative, making it easier for individuals to morally disengage from the real human suffering and destruction involved.

Another example of euphemistic labelling is found in corporate ‘greenwashing,’ where companies reframe environmentally harmful practices in misleadingly positive terms. For instance, airlines advertising ‘carbon-neutral flights’ often rely on questionable carbon offset schemes rather than reducing emissions.

Vanishing Properties in Society and Their Impact

In sociology, vanishing properties explain why problems arise with collective action. Despite individual awareness and concern, collective action often fails to materialise. Some examples of this effect are given below.

1. Climate Change and the Diffusion of Responsibility (The Bystander Effect)

The bystander effect is a psychological phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help someone in distress when others are present. They assume that someone else will take responsibility. The term was coined by John Darley and Bibb Latané in 1968 after their research on the murder of Kitty Genovese, where multiple witnesses reportedly failed to intervene. Their studies demonstrated that the presence of others leads to diffusion of responsibility, reducing the likelihood of individual action.

In the case of climate change, many individuals recognise it as a major issue and take small actions, e.g., recycling or reducing plastic use. However, many also believe their personal contributions are insignificant in the grand scheme, leading to widespread inaction. This results in what Garrett Hardin referred to in his 1968 essay as “The Tragedy of the Commons”. Resources become depleted because individuals have no incentive to limit their consumption and assume that others should take responsibility.

2. Political Apathy and Pluralistic Ignorance

Many individuals may privately disagree with an unjust policy or social norm but assume that others support it. Since no one openly challenges the status quo, it remains unchallenged, even if many oppose it internally. The result can be that policies and social structures persist even when the majority oppose them, as seen in past civil rights struggles and modern political apathy.

3. Voting and the Perceived Irrelevance of One Vote

A single individual’s vote has a small chance of changing the outcome of an election. However, if many people believe their vote does not matter, turnout decreases, affecting the result. The consequence can be low voter participation, the weakening of democracy, and unrepresentative governance.

4. Poverty and Compassion Fatigue

The concept of vanishing properties can also apply to the effect of group, as opposed to individual, issues on people. For example, when we hear about one specific person in need, we often feel empathy and a desire to help. However, large scale poverty can feel overwhelming, leading to a sense of powerlessness and disengagement. The consequence can be “compassion fatigue,” where we shut down emotionally in response to large-scale suffering.

Countering Vanishing Properties: Strategies for Social Change

While vanishing properties explain societal inertia, history has shown that effective strategies can counter this. Some examples of successful strategies are given below.

1. Climate Change: Social Norms and Behavioural Nudging

Sweden combined policy (carbon taxes) with visible social norms, such as increased bicycle lanes and renewable energy promotions. As people saw others adopting eco-friendly behaviours, individual actions reinforced collective responsibility rather than it vanishing.

While some argue that climate solutions require systemic action rather than individual behaviour changes, research shows that visible shifts in social norms can influence both policymakers and industries to adopt stronger regulations.

2. Political Activism: Breaking Pluralistic Ignorance

In early 20th-century Britain, many women privately supported suffrage but hesitated to voice their views due to societal norms. The Suffragettes’ public demonstrations, hunger strikes, and acts of civil disobedience helped break pluralistic ignorance. As more women openly demanded the right to vote, it became clear that widespread support existed, leading to legislative change with the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

3. Voting and Civic Engagement: Social Accountability

Studies have shown that making voting visible, e.g., posting about it online or wearing “I Voted” stickers, increases participation. Public visibility shifts voting from an isolated act to a socially expected norm, preventing individual effort from disappearing.

Sustained collective identity is crucial in overcoming vanishing properties. Social movements succeed when individuals feel part of a shared cause, reinforcing participation over time.

4. Poverty: Personalising the Narrative

Research has shown that people are more likely to donate or act when shown a single individual’s story rather than abstract statistics. Charities like Save the Children highlight personal narratives, making people feel that their actions have a direct impact.

Conclusion: Transforming Individual Concern into Collective Action

The concept of vanishing properties provides a powerful lens for understanding why major societal problems persist despite widespread concern. By recognising these dynamics, we can design interventions that restore personal responsibility at the collective level rather than letting it disappear.

Key takeaways:

  • Make action visible: Seeing others act reinforces personal responsibility.
  • Encourage small commitments: Micro-actions, like public pledges, create momentum.
  • Break the silence: When individuals speak out, they empower others to do the same.
  • Personalise large issues: Framing problems around individual stories makes them more relatable.

Understanding vanishing properties not only explains why change is hard, but also offers clear strategies to turn awareness into action. The challenge lies not in whether people care, but in ensuring that care translates into meaningful collective impact.

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38. A Theory of Society Derived from the Principles of Systems, Psychology, Ecology and Evolution Part 3

A Theory of Society Derived from the Principles of Systems, Psychology, Ecology, & Evolution (Part 3)

This paper is open access and can be downloaded free of charge in pdf format at https://rational-understanding.com/my-books#theory-of-society-3

Part 1 of this series of papers focussed largely on the principles of systems, ecology, and evolution to describe the ways in which individuals and organisations of all types interact, and so, create the structure of society. That is, how they exchange satisfiers and contra-satisfiers; satisfiers being those things that increase the level of satisfaction of our needs, and contra-satisfiers those things that decrease their level of satisfaction. However, Part 1 did not account for the choices that we make in the ways that we interact.

Human needs motivate our behaviour, but beliefs determine what form that behaviour takes. Although needs are fundamental to everything that has a function, beliefs are an emergent property of humanity, and a consequence of our ability to manipulate information and our highly social nature. However, beliefs can be true, or they can be false. In observing reality, we make mistakes and frequently distort it to satisfy our needs or avoid our contra-needs.

Part 3 will, therefore, discuss the psychological and social psychological aspects of our nature, particularly the beliefs, psychological defence mechanisms, and their socio-cultural reinforcement, that lead to our choices.

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06. Systems Theory from a Cognitive and Physicalist Perspective

Systems Theory from A Cognitive and Physicalist Perspective Updated

This paper, is available for download in pdf form at https://rational-understanding.com/my-books#Systems-Theory-from-a-Cognitive-and-Physicalist-Perspective

It was originally published in January, 2023, has been updated to include observations from:

  • “A Conceptual Framework for General System Theory”, John A. Challoner, March, 2024.
  • “Different Interpretations of Systems Terms” sent to the Research towards a General Systems Theory SIG of the International Society for the Systems Sciences’ in April, 2024.
  • “The Mathematics of Language and Thought”, John A. Challoner, 2021.

The paper discusses systems theory from a cognitive and physicalist perspective. The cognitive perspective holds that we are our minds and cannot escape the constraints imposed by their biology and evolutionary history. Nevertheless, human cognition is a reasonably accurate representation of reality. Physicalism holds that space-time comprises the whole of reality and that everything, including abstract concepts and information, exists within it.

From this perspective, conceptual and theoretical frameworks for systems theory are proposed and described. Concepts include: the importance of structure; the nature of relationships, causality, and physical laws; and the significance of recursion, hierarchy, holism, and emergence. Human cognitive factors are also discussed, including: their limitations; the nature of information and language; and the search for knowledge in a world of complexity and apparent disorder.

The paper includes the implications of this perspective for General System Theory and Social Systems Theory, suggesting further work to advance those disciplines.

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06. Behaviour is a System

Behaviour is a System

Human behaviour, whether that of an individual or that of a larger organisation, is a process. So, together with its inputs and outputs, it can be regarded as a system. The diagram below describes this system.

The behaviour system is part of a nested hierarchy comprising other systems. They are arranged as follows. The control component, in the case of an individual, is his mind, and in the case of a larger organisation, its leader. Together, the mental and physical resources that they directly control, i.e., the body of an individual or the people in a larger organisation, comprise the operational system. The operational system, together with the resources that it owns, comprise the resource system. Finally, the behaviour system comprises the resource system plus actual behaviour.

These systems operate in the following way. Paragraph numbers refer to those in the diagram.

  1. The environment comprises everything that is not a part of the system. It includes both the natural and the social environments. Inputs from the environment enter via the operational component. These inputs include risks and opportunities. The relevant parts of the operational component are, in the case of an individual, his physical senses, or in the case of a larger organisation particular individuals. For example, an individual may perceive a wasp as a threat of injury, or a government may see another nation as an opportunity for trade.
  2. Information from the environment is passed from the operational component to the control component, i.e., the mind or leader, where decisions are made. The operational component monitors the state of resources and satisfiers, i.e., those things that satisfy the individual or organisation’s needs. It also passes this information to the control component. For example, an individual may recognise that food in the refrigerator is running low, or a business that its stock of spare parts is too high.
  3. In return for this information, the control component makes decisions, and then, passes instructions to the operational component. These instructions are based on a risk, cost, benefit analysis that uses the value of satisfiers or contra-satisfiers and the resources required to create them. The value allocated to a satisfier or contra-satisfier depends on the interaction style of the individual or leader, i.e., whether they are co-operative, positively competitive, or negatively competitive. A negatively competitive individual may conclude that shoplifting is the way to fill their refrigerator. A government with a co-operative style may see a trading alliance as the way to improve their economy.
  4. Resources are acquired from the environment and become part of the resource reserves of the system, i.e., its property. They can be matter, energy or money. Resources can be acquired directly from the natural environment, or through trade with other individuals or organisations. Early humans were hunter-gatherers and acquired their food directly from nature. Today, however, many of us buy our bread from a baker or supermarket.
  5. The activities of the operational component, together with resources taken from reserves, act as inputs to the operations process. These inputs are satisfiers for the process. The operations process converts these resources into outputs. So, for example, an individual may cook the food in their refrigerator to create a meal. A business may assemble parts, or mix constituents, to create a sellable product.
  6. Some of these outputs are satisfiers for the operational component. We may, for example, eat part of the meal we have prepared to satisfy our personal need for sustenance. Similarly, governments and businesses pay the people who carry out their function.
  7. Other outputs can be satisfiers or contra-satisfiers that are used to trade for resources from other individuals or organisations. So, we may trade our labour for pay or provide a meal to friends in return for their friendship. Businesses do, of course, provide goods and services in return for payment. Alternatively, outputs can be operations on the natural environment to acquire resources, e.g., mining, hunting, or gathering. All behavioural outputs are constrained by the physical resources available, for example, an individual’s physical abilities. They are also constrained by the operational resources owned, for example, the financial capital of a business.
  8. Finally, behaviour can be observed, and so, the system of which it is a part outputs information to the environment. We can, for example, watch a football match or observe government activities, and thus, criticise them.

Organisations are recursive. Every organisation comprises several lesser ones. Every organisation, together with others, is also part of a larger one. This recursion continues downwards to individuals and upwards to all of humanity. This model describes the behaviour of every individual or organisation in that structure. So, it may provide the basis for a systems psychology of both individuals and organisations. Notably, it provides a basis for social learning theory which postulates that we emulate role models, that our behaviour is reinforced by the approval of others, i.e., satisfiers, and extinguished by their disapproval, i.e., contra-satisfiers.

The model may also be a basis for dynamic models of society, thereby enabling predictions to be made.