In this review I discuss the ideas of the book The Psychology of Science (1966) from A.Maslow. His book is in a certain sense outstanding because the point of view is in one respect inspired by an artificial borderline between the mainstream-view of empirical science and the mainstream-view of psychotherapy. In another respect the book discusses a possible integrated view of empirical science with psychotherapy as an integral part. The point of view of the reviewer is the new paradigm of a Generative Cultural Anthropology[GCA]. Part I of this review gives a summary of the content of the book as understood by the reviewer and part II reports some considerations reflecting the relationship of the point of view of Maslow and the point of view of GCA.
Update 4.July 2018 (Chapter 4 Actor Model; improving the terminology of environments with actors, actors as input-output systems, basic and real interface, a first typology of input-output systems…)
Update 20.July 2018 (Disentanglement of chapter ‘Simulation & Verification’ into two independent chapters; corrections in the chapter ‘Introduction’; corrections in chapter ‘AAI Analysis’; extracting ‘Simulation’ from chapter ‘Actor Story’ to new chapter ‘Simulation’; New chapter ‘Simulation’; Rewriting of chapter ‘Looking Forward’)
Update 22.July 2018 (Rewriting the beginning of the chapter ‘Actor Story (AS)’, not completed; converting chapter ‘AS+AM Summary’ to ‘AS and AM Philosophy’, not completed)
Update 23.July 2018 (Attaching a new chapter with a Case Study illustrating an actor story (AS). This case study is still unfinished. It is a case study of a real project!)
Update 8.August 2018 (Modifying chapter AS as Text, Comic, Graph; especially section about the textual mode and the pictorial mode; first sketch for a mapping from the textual mode into the pictorial mode)
Update 9.August 2018 (Modification of the section ‘Mathematical Actor Story (MAS) in chapter 4).
Update 11.August 2018 (Improving chapter 3 ‘Actor Story; nearly complete rewriting of chapter 4 ‘AS as text, comic, graph’.)
Update 13.August 2018 (I am still catched by the chapters 3+4. In chapter the cognitive structure of the actors has been further enhanced; in chapter 4 a complete example of a mathematical actor story could now been attached.)
Update 14.August 2018 (minor corrections to chapter 4 + 5; change-statements define for each state individual combinatorial spaces (a little bit like a quantum state); whether and how these spaces will be concretized/ realized depends completely from the participating actors)
Update 15.August 2018 (Canceled the appendix with the case study stub and replaced it with an overview for a supporting software tool which is needed for the real usage of this theory. At the moment it is open who will write the software.)
Update 2.October 2018 (Configuring the whole book now with 3 parts: I. Theory, II. Application, III. Software. Gerd has his focus on part I, Zeynep will focus on part II and ‘somebody’ will focus on part III (in the worst case we will — nevertheless — have a minimal version :-)). For a first quick overview about everything read the ‘Preface’ and the ‘Introduction’.
Update 4.November 2018 (Rewriting the Introduction (and some minor corrections in the Preface). The idea of the rewriting was to address all the topics which will be discussed in the book and pointing out to the logical connections between them. This induces some wrong links in the following chapters, which are not yet updated. Some chapters are yet completely missing. But to improve the clearness of the focus and the logical inter-dependencies helps to elaborate the missing texts a lot. Another change is the wording of the title. Until now it is difficult to find a title which is exactly matching the content. The new proposal shows the focus ‘AAI’ but lists the keywords of the main topics within AAA analysis because these topics are usually not necessarily associated with AAI.)
ACTOR-ACTOR INTERACTION [AAI]. An Actor Centered Approach to Problem Solving. Combining Engineering and Philosophy
by
GERD DOEBEN-HENISCH in cooperation with LOUWRENCE ERASMUS, ZEYNEP TUNCER
PRE-VIEW: NEW EXPANDED AAI THEORY 23.January 2019: Outline of the new expanded AAI Paradigm. Before re-writing the main text with these ideas the new advanced AAI theory will first be tested during the summer 2019 within a lecture with student teams as well as in several workshops outside the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences with members of different institutions.
On the cover page of this blog you find a first general view on the subject matter of an integrated engineering approach for the future. Here we give a short description of the main idea of the analysis phase of systems engineering how this will be realized within the actor-actor interaction paradigm as described in this text.
INTRODUCTION
Overview of the analysis phase of systems engineering as realized within an actor-actor interaction paradigm
As you can see in figure Nr.1 there are the following main topics within the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) paradigm as used in this text (Comment: The more traditional formula is known as Human-Machine Interaction (HMI)):
Triggered by a problem document D_p from the problem phase (P) of the engineering process the AAI-experts have to analyze, what are the potential requirements following from this document, all the time also communicating with the stakeholder to keep in touch with the hidden intentions of the stakeholder.
The idea is to identify at least one task (T) with at least one goal state (G) which shall be arrived after running a task.
A task is assumed to represent a sequence of states (at least a start state and a goal state) which can have more than one option in every state, not excluding repetitions.
Every task presupposes some context (C) which gives the environment for the task.
The number of tasks and their length is in principle not limited, but their can be certain constraints (CS) given which have to be fulfilled required by the stakeholder or by some other important rules/ laws. Such constraints will probably limit the number of tasks as well as their length.
Actor Story
Every task as a sequence of states can be viewed as a story which describes a process. A story is a text (TXT) which is static and hides the implicit meaning in the brains of the participating actors. Only if an actor has some (learned) understanding of the used language then the actor is able to translate the perceptions of the process in an appropriate text and vice versa the text into corresponding perceptions or equivalently ‘thoughts’ representing the perceptions.
In this text it is assumed that a story is describing only the observable behavior of the participating actors, not their possible internal states (IS). For to describe the internal states (IS) it is further assumed that one describes the internal states in a new text called actor model (AM). The usual story is called an actor story (AS). Thus the actor story (AS) is the environment for the actor models (AM).
In this text three main modes of actor stories are distinguished:
An actor story written in some everyday language L_0 called AS_L0 .
A translation of the everyday language L_0 into a mathematical language L_math which can represent graphs, called AS_Lmath.
A translation of the hidden meaning which resides in the brains of the AAI-experts into a pictorial language L_pict (like a comic strip), called AS_Lpict.
To make the relationship between the graph-version AS_Lmath and the pictorial version AS_Lpict visible one needs an explicit mapping Int from one version into the other one, like: Int : AS_Lmath <—> AS_Lpict. This mapping Int works like a lexicon from one language into another one.
From a philosophy of science point of view one has to consider that the different kinds of actor stories have a meaning which is rooted in the intended processes assumed to be necessary for the realization of the different tasks. The processes as such are dynamic, but the stories as such are static. Thus a stakeholder (SH) or an AAI-expert who wants to get some understanding of the intended processes has to rely on his internal brain simulations associated with the meaning of these stories. Because every actor has its own internal simulation which can not be perceived from the other actors there is some probability that the simulations of the different actors can be different. This can cause misunderstandings, errors, and frustrations.(Comment: This problem has been discussed in [DHW07])
One remedy to minimize such errors is the construction of automata (AT) derived from the math mode AS_Lmath of the actor stories. Because the math mode represents a graph one can derive Der from this version directly (and automatically) the description of an automaton which can completely simulate the actor story, thus one can assume Der(AS_Lmath) = AT_AS_Lmath.
But, from the point of view of Philosophy of science this derived automaton AT_AS_Lmath is still only a static text. This text describes the potential behavior of an automaton AT. Taking a real computer (COMP) one can feed this real computer with the description of the automaton AT AT_AS_Lmath and make the real computer behave like the described automaton. If we did this then we have a real simulation (SIM) of the theoretical behavior of the theoretical automaton AT realized by the real computer COMP. Thus we have SIM = COMP(AT_AS_Lmath). (Comment: These ideas have been discussed in [EDH11].)
Such a real simulation is dynamic and visible for everybody. All participating actors can see the same simulation and if there is some deviation from the intention of the stakeholder then this can become perceivable for everybody immediately.
Actor Model
As mentioned above the actor story (AS) describes only the observable behavior of some actor, but not possible internal states (IS) which could be responsible for the observable behavior.
If necessary it is possible to define for every actor an individual actor model; indeed one can define more than one model to explore the possibilities of different internal structures to enable a certain behavior.
The general pattern of actor models follows in this text the concept of input-output systems (IOSYS), which are in principle able to learn. What the term ‘learning’ designates concretely will be explained in later sections. The same holds of the term ‘intelligent’ and ‘intelligence’.
The basic assumptions about input-output systems used here reads a follows:
Def: Input-Output System (IOSYS)
IOSYS(x) iff x=< I, O, IS, phi>
phi : I x IS —> IS x O
I := Input
O := Output
IS := Internal
As in the case of the actor story (AS) the primary descriptions of actor models (AM) are static texts. To make the hidden meanings of these descriptions ‘explicit’, ‘visible’ one has again to convert the static texts into descriptions of automata, which can be feed into real computers which in turn then simulate the behavior of these theoretical automata as a real process.
Combining the real simulation of an actor story with the real simulations of all the participating actors described in the actor models can show a dynamic, impressive process which is full visible to all collaborating stakeholders and AAI-experts.
Testing
Having all actor stories and actor models at hand, ideally implemented as real simulations, one has to test the interaction of the elaborated actors with real actors, which are intended to work within these explorative stories and models. This is done by actor tests (former: usability tests) where (i) real actors are confronted with real tasks and have to perform in the intended way; (ii) real actors are interviewed with questionnaires about their subjective feelings during their task completion.
Every such test will yield some new insights how to change the settings a bit to gain eventually some improvements. Repeating these cycles of designing, testing, and modifying can generate a finite set of test-results T where possibly one subset is the ‘best’ compared to all the others. This can give some security that this design is probably the ‘relative best design’ with regards to T.
[DHW07] G. Doeben-Henisch and M. Wagner. Validation within safety critical systems engineering from a computation semiotics point of view.
Proceedings of the IEEE Africon2007 Conference, pages Pages: 1 – 7, 2007.
[EDH11] Louwrence Erasmus and Gerd Doeben-Henisch. A theory of the
system engineering process. In ISEM 2011 International Conference. IEEE, 2011.
RESTART OF UFFMM AS SCIENTIFIC WORKPLACE.
For the Integrated Engineering of the Future (SW4IEF)
Campaining the Actor-Actor Systems Engineering (AASE) paradigm
Last Update June-22, 2018, 15:32 CET. See below: Case Studies — Templates – AASE Micro Edition – and Scheduling 2018 —
RESTART
This is a complete new restart of the old uffmm-site. It is intended as a working place for those people who are interested in an integrated engineering of the future.
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
A widely known and useful concept for a general approach to the engineering of problems is systems engineering (SE).
Open for nearly every kind of a possible problem does a systems engineering process (SEP) organize the process how to analyze the problem, and turn this analysis into a possible design for a solution. This proposed solution will be examined by important criteria and, if it reaches an optimal version, it will be implemented as a real working system. After final evaluations this solution will start its carrier in the real world.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
In a meta-scientific point of view the systems engineering process can become itself the object of an analysis. This is usually done by a discipline called philosophy of science (PoS). Philosophy of science is asking, e.g., what the ‘ingredients’ of an systems-engineering process are, or how these ingredients do interact? How can such a process ‘fail’? ‘How can such a process be optimized’? Therefore a philosophy of science perspective can help to make a systems engineering process more transparent and thereby supports an optimization of these processes.
A core idea of the philosophy of science perspective followed in this text is the assumption, that a systems engineering process is primarily based on different kinds of actors (AC) whose interactions enable and direct the whole process. These assumptions are also valid in that case, where the actors are not any more only biological systems like human persons and non-biological systems called machines, but also in that case where the traditional machines (M) are increasingly replaced by ‘intelligent machines (IM)‘. Therefore the well know paradigm of human-machine interaction (HMI) — or earlier ‘human-computer interaction (HCI)’ will be replaced in this text by the new paradigm of Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI). In this new version the main perspective is not the difference of man on one side and machines on the other but the kind of interactions between actors of all kind which are necessary and possible.
INTELLIGENT MACHINES
The concept of intelligent machines (IM) is understood here as a special case of the general Actor (A) concept which includes as other sub-cases biological systems, predominantly humans as instantiations of the species Homo Sapiens. While until today the question of biological intelligence and machine intelligence is usually treated separately and differently it is intended in this text to use one general concept of intelligence for all actors. This allows then more direct comparisons and evaluations. Whether biological actors are in some sense better than the non-biological actors or vice versa can seriously only be discussed when the used concept of intelligence is the same.
ACTOR STORY AND ACTOR MODELS
And, as it will be explained in the following sections, the used paradigm of actor-actor interactions uses the two main concepts of actor story (AS) as well as actor model (AM). Actor models are embedded in the actor stories. Whether an actor model describes biological or non-biological actors does not matter. Independent of the inner structures of an actor model (which can be completely different) the actor story is always completely described in terms of observable behavior which are the same for all kinds of actors (Comment: The major scientific disciplines for the analysis of behavior are biology, psychology, and sociology).
AASE PARADIGM
In analogy to the so-called ‘Object-Oriented (OO) approach in Software-Engineering (SWE)’ we campaign here the ‘Actor-Actor (AA) Systems Engineering (SE)’ approach. This takes the systems Engineering approach as a base concepts and re-works the whole framework from the point of view of the actor-actor paradigm. AASE is seen here as a theory as well as an domain of applications.
Figure: Ontologies of the AASE paradigm
To understand the different perspectives of the used theory it can help to the figure ‘AASE-Paradigm Ontologies’. Within the systems engineering process (SEP) we have AAI-experts as acting actors. To describe these we need a ‘meta-level’ realized by a ‘philosophy of the actor’. The AAI-experts themselves are elaborating within an AAI-analysis an actor story (AS) as framework for different kinds of intended actors. To describe the inner structures of these intended actors one needs different kinds of ‘actor models’. The domain of actor-model structures overlaps with the domain of ‘machine learning (ML)’ and with ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’.
SOFTWARE
What will be described and developed separated from these theoretical considerations is an appropriate software environment which allows the construction of solutions within the AASE approach including e.g. the construction of intelligent machines too. This software environment is called in this text emerging-mind lab (EML) and it will be another public blog as well.
THEORY MICRO EDITION & CASE STUDIES
How we proceed
Because the overall framework of the intended integrated theory is too large to write it down in one condensed text with all the necessary illustrating examples we decided in Dec 2017 to follow a bottom-up approach by writing primarily case studies from different fields. While doing this we can introduce stepwise the general theory by developing a Micro Edition of the Theory in parallel to the case studies. Because the Theory Micro Edition has gained a sufficient minimal completeness already in April 2018 we do not need anymore a separate template for case studies. We will use the Theory Micro Edition as ‘template’ instead.
To keep the case studies readable as far as possible all needed mathematical concepts and formulas will be explained in a separate appendix section which is central for all case studies. This allows an evolutionary increase in the formal apparatus used for the integrated theory.
Here you can find the actual version of the theory which will continuously be updated and extended by related topics.
At the end of the text you find a list of ToDos where everybody is invited to collaborate. The main editor is Gerd Doeben-Henisch deciding whether the proposal fits into the final text or not.
This sections describes main developments in the history from HCI to AAI.
SCHEDULE 2018
The Milestone for a first outline in a book format has been reached June-22, 2018. The milestone for a first final version is scheduled for October-4, 2018.
