The Communication of Meaning in Anticipatory Systems: A Simulation Study of the Dynamics of Intentionality in Social Interactions

TL;DR

This paper models and simulates the dynamics of intentionality and meaning communication in social and psychological systems using hyper-incursive equations, highlighting their co-evolution and self-organization in social interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation framework based on hyper-incursive equations to model the layered anticipatory and meaning-processing interactions in social systems.

Findings

Psychological and social systems can be effectively modeled with hyper-incursive equations.

Couplings between systems facilitate reflexive meaning exchange.

Self-organization emerges at the global level of communication fluxes.

Abstract

Psychological and social systems provide us with a natural domain for the study of anticipations because these systems are based on and operate in terms of intentionality. Psychological systems can be expected to contain a model of themselves and their environments social systems can be strongly anticipatory and therefore co-construct their environments, for example, in techno-economic (co-)evolutions. Using Duboi's hyper-incursive and incursive formulations of the logistic equation, these two types of systems and their couplings can be simulated. In addition to their structural coupling, psychological and social systems are also coupled by providing meaning reflexively to each other's meaning-processing. Luhmann's distinctions among (1) interactions between intentions at the micro-level, (2) organization at the meso-level, and (3) self-organization of the fluxes of meaningful communication at the global level can be modeled and simulated using three hyper-incursive equations. The global level of self-organizing interactions among fluxes of communication is retained at the meso-level of organization. In a knowledge-based economy, these two levels of anticipatory structuration can be expected to propel each other at the supra-individual level.