Yağmur Denizhan - A Generalized Modeling Approach to Learning and Creativity

We are excited to welcome the distinguished academic Yağmur Denizhan to the Lounge this month.

In cybernetic practice, learning is represented as the data-driven improvement of an initially inaccurate model, whereby the indeterminacies in the model are specified on the basis of information contained in the data. If taken at face value, this might lead to the naive conclusion that continued communication with an object of inquiry would allow an agent’s
earlier conception (i.e., “model”) of it to be iteratively improved towards an eventual “perfect knowledge”. However, before arriving at any conclusion that would also be applicable to living agents, one has to clarify many questions, which usually have trivial answers in a technological context:

• Where does the initial model of the object of inquiry come from?
• How can an agent distinguish relevant information from disruptive factors
• contained in the received data?
• Does the object of inquiry exist as a distinct entity with which one can
• communicate in an isolated manner?
• Does the agent exist as an entity distinct from its objects of inquiry?
• Can learning provide creativity?

In this presentation, we will focus on the entangled process whereby objects of modeling, models, and agents emerge and co-evolve. Towards this end, we will start from a simple cybernetic conception and depart from it towards a generalized philosophical notion of model that will then be used in a framework that accommodates both routine learning and
creativity. Along this path, control-theoretical and system-dynamics concepts will be complemented and extended by notions borrowed from biology, biosemiotics, and Gilbert Simondon’s Theory of Individuation.

Bio
Yağmur Denizhan has been a full-time faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul-Türkiye from 1988 until her retirement in 2026. She has also served for 16 years as the Head of the Graduate Program in Systems and Control Engineering at the same university. Her academic work spans fields such as robotics, control
systems, nonlinear and chaotic systems, and modeling of biological systems. She also conducts philosophical research on interdisciplinary topics, including cognitive science, biosemiotics, systems theory, social impacts of technology, and engineering education. Yağmur Denizhan is a member of the Board of the Turkish National Committee for Automatic Control, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and the International Society for Information Studies, as well as an Advisory Board member of the Global Sustainable Information Society Institute.

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This event will be recorded. The event link will be published on meetup.com 1 hour prior.

Please note the time slot - this is an afternoon event for those on EDT (12:00 pm to 2:00 pm).