REPRESENTATION (Quantal)
Charles François (2004). REPRESENTATION (Quantal), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 2846.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2846 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
Mac KAY states: “Representations communicable in a two-valued (yes or no) form are necessarily quantal in structure, since an ”imperceptible change“ in a two valued logical form is by definition meaningless. All the changes are discrete, therefore the elementary concepts of logical representations are discrete and enumerable…
- “In general, a pattern reduced to such fundamental terms will contain a certain number of distinguishable groups or clusters of elements, the elements in each group being indistinguishable among themselves. There are thus two numerical features of interest:
1) The member of distinguishable groups or clusters of indistinguishable elements in a representation, and
2) The number of elements in a given group or cluster“ (1969, p.164).
Thus, quantal representation can generally be matricial.