BCSSS

International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

2nd Edition, as published by Charles François 2004 Presented by the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science Vienna for public access.

About

The International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics was first edited and published by the system scientist Charles François in 1997. The online version that is provided here was based on the 2nd edition in 2004. It was uploaded and gifted to the center by ASC president Michael Lissack in 2019; the BCSSS purchased the rights for the re-publication of this volume in 200?. In 2018, the original editor expressed his wish to pass on the stewardship over the maintenance and further development of the encyclopedia to the Bertalanffy Center. In the future, the BCSSS seeks to further develop the encyclopedia by open collaboration within the systems sciences. Until the center has found and been able to implement an adequate technical solution for this, the static website is made accessible for the benefit of public scholarship and education.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

SEMANTIC NOISE 3)

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1. "Any feature of the message that reduces the sharpness of the selective operation on the required subspace." (D. Mac KAY, 1969, p.74)

This somewhat abstract formulation means that, as any question specifies an area in which required information helps to make meaning more precise, anything that confuses or oscures that information is "noise" in a sense akin to the perturbating noise in a physical channel of communication.

Semantic noise, however, is different from irrelevant information.

2. "Ambiguity in the denotation or connotation of a message" (R.L. ACKOFF and F.E. EMERY, 1972, p.182).

These authors state: "A message may be misinterpreted – that is, B responds to the wrong thing – and still produces the type of response intended" (Ibid).

Misinterpretation is the result either of sloppy semantics from the sender (who does not consider the possibility of ambiguity inherent to the situation) or imprecision in the code itself.

In some critical cases, the message cannot be interpreted if the situation is not well known.

Categories

  • 1) General information
  • 2) Methodology or model
  • 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
  • 4) Human sciences
  • 5) Discipline oriented

Publisher

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).

To cite this page, please use the following information:

Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]

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