This paper presents a selective overview of scientific achievements of Professor Wojciech Gasparski as perceived from the personal perspective of the author. Special attention is paid to Professor's contributions to design methodology, general systems theory and business ethics. The counterpoint to the main thread of the presentation consists in the problem of action planning by an intelligent robot and a reference to roboethics. The paper has been written to honour W. Gasparski's 70th birthday anniversary.
General systems theory has offered various options about how to conceptualise systems. Opposing Luhmann’s narrow conception of system, the author proposes to combine systems- and actor theoretical approaches in order to model social systems (including literature) as nonlinear, interrelated complexes of systems where causal structures depend – among other things – upon the decision of goal-oriented subsystems, namely actors whose sociality is introduced into the system via culture. The second part of this chapter is devoted to some consequences arriving from the observer problem; e.g. the mutual construction of system and environment, the relation observer: meaning vis a vis the operational closure of cognitive systems, and a constructivist reading of the concept of the ‘empirical’.
The analyses Ingarden had carried out of relatively isolated systems are important from the point of view of the ontology of mind as they lead to a precise description of the form and the mode of existence of consciousness within the multilevel structure of human existence and in a broader context of the causal structure of the physical world. Ingarden's position regarding the form and mode of existence of consciousness and the role of relatively isolated system in the structure of human being is compatible with the results of contemporary research within the general systems theory, dynamical systems theory and cognitive neuroscience. Still, in many respects it exceeds their findings. The account of consciousness as a relatively isolated system leads to rejection of the main assumptions of the transcendental (in a Husserlian sense) philosophy of mind and becomes compatible with the interdisciplinary research programme dealing with the analysis of the systemic nature of a human being and his mental dimension.
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