ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the semi-formal theoretical language into which all the concepts and generalizations of all the internal and external subsystems can be translated. This theoretical language includes three sublanguages: information processing, cybernetics and semiotics. The information processing sublanguage reformulates all the subsystems as sets of goal-oriented information processing programs. Programs are optimally simple if they can process all and only the information needed for proper functioning in consistent and plausible ways. Loss of simplicity causes bugs to invade the programs: horse blinders (loss of comprehensiveness), fifth wheel (loss of parsimony), flip-flop (loss of consistency) or non-sense (loss of plausibility). The cybernetic sublanguage formulates the control mechanisms that regulate and maintain the subsystems’ homeostatic, balanced state. When programs are bugged, corrective feedback cannot be mobilized. Instead, uncontrolled deviation-amplifying feed-forward processes are set into operation. The purpose of therapy is to restore the system’s simplicity and therefore its homeostasis. In the semiotic language, behavior is analyzed on three levels of analysis: the raw material level; the semantic level; and the pragmatic level. The semiotic language and the information processing language are partly inter-translatable.
