Organizational Closure and

Conceptual Coherence
BERNARD SCOTTa
Centre for Educational Technology and Development, Portland Building,
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT: This paper reviews ideas developed by the late Gordon Pask as
part of his conversation theory (CT). 1,2 CT uses theories of the dynamics of
complex, self-organizing systems, in conjunction with models of conceptual
structures, in order to give an account of conceptual coherence (for example,
of a theory or a belief system) as a form of organizational closure. In Pask’s
own terms, CT is concerned both with the kinematics of knowledge structures
and the kinetics of knowing and coming to know. The main features of model-
ling conceptual structures and processes used by Pask are presented. We con-
tinue by presenting a summary two-cycle model of learning, aimed to capture
some of Pask’s key insights with respect to conceptual coherence and the orga-
nizational closure of conceptual systems. Parallels are drawn with other work
in epistemology,3–5 classic cybernetic studies of self-organization, 6–8 and the
concept of autopoiesis. 9 The two-cycle model is then applied recursively to
generate learning cycles and conceptual structures at different levels of ab-
straction, as a contribution to the work of Pask on the topology of thought.
Finally, the model is applied reflexively. That is, its own form is considered as
a topic for conversation and conceptualization. Carrying out such a reflection
provides a coherent way of characterizing epistemological limits, while retain-
ing a clear sense of there being an (in principle) unlimited praxeology of
awareness.

INTRODUCTION

Many of the ideas expressed in this paper are inspired by and derived from con-
versation theory (CT) as developed in a number of publications by the late Gordon
Pask.1,2,10–12 In an early outline of the scope of CT, Pask demarcated a subtheory of
conversational domains.13 This subtheory is predicated on the assumption that con-
versations are about something, the conversation has a subject matter, a topic to be
addressed. The subtheory of conversational domains has itself many ramifications
and research goals, including:

• How do conversational domains come into being and evolve?

• What constitutes a conversational domain as a coherent knowable, whole?
• How may the structure of a conversational domain be analyzed and described?

aTelecommunication: Voice: 0116 257 7662; fax: 0116 250 6101.

bscott@dmu.ac.uk

301
302 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Narrative forms, dramatic stories, and expositions can be described in a variety of

ways using scripts, frames, and general schemas, and by carrying out after the event
analyses of discourse and written text. These structures represent only a limited view
of the knowledge content of a conversational domain.14,15 Pask’s subtheory of con-
versational domains provides a canonical way of modelling the structure of knowl-
edge content such that all possible narrative forms may be revealed and articulated
as particular forms.
The first part of the paper provides a brief introduction to the main concepts of
CT. This is followed by the construction of a generic model for the knowledge con-
tent of conversational domains. Novel aspects of the model are that, in a unified
framework, it distinguishes conceptual and procedural knowledge, relations of
entailment and analogy, and hierarchical and heterarchical conceptual structures. By
adopting a particular perspective on a body of knowledge, a class of expository nar-
ratives may be distinguished that are semantically equivalent but structurally varied
in well defined ways.
In the later part of the paper, the model is interpreted dynamically, as a model of
conceptualization and directed thought. These ideas are summarized in the form of
a two-cycle model of learning. The model affords discussion of the relation between
the conceptual coherence of belief systems and the dynamics of organizationally
closed systems.
Pask distinguished two complementary aspects to the dynamics of directed
thought: generalization (voiding distinctions) and bifurcation (making distinctions).
The two-cycle model is applied recursively to generate learning cycles and concep-
tual structures at different levels of abstraction, as a contribution to Pask’s work on
the topology of thought.
Finally, the model is applied reflexively in order to a provide a coherent way of
characterizing epistemological limits (referred to by Pask as the “ineffable” and the
“ineluctable” aspects of knowing). There is a discussion of the sense in which,
despite such limits, the praxeology of awareness (what may be experienced) is
unlimited.

CONVERSATION THEORY

Although CT may be elaborated as a general theory of human communication and

social interaction, here, for the sake of brevity, it is interpreted as a theory of learning
and teaching, in which one participant (the teacher) wishes to expound a body of
knowledge to a second participant (the learner). Parts of the body of knowledge are
referred to as topics; the term concept is reserved for the mental procedures that in-
dicate understanding of a topic. Particular instantiations or models of topics are re-
ferred to as relations, which may be defined canonically with respect to a particular
universe of discourse and associated modelling facility (see F IGURE 1).
Pask’s formal definition of a concept is that it “is a procedure for recognizing,
reproducing or maintaining a relation”. As discussed later in the paper, correspond-
ing to the idea of a body of subject matter being a knowable, coherent whole, Pask
SCOTT: ORGANIZATIONAL CLOSURE AND COHERENCE 303

FIGURE 1. The “skeleton” of a conversation (after Pask).

distinguishes cognitive organizations that are self-reproducing qua organizationally

closed systems of concepts. Pask refers to such systems as psychological (p-)
individuals.
A major innovation of CT is that psychological unities (p-individuals) are not
necessarily in one-to-one correspondence with biological unities (Pask refers to the
latter as mechanical (m-) individuals). Thus, one brain may house several conceptual
systems as p-individuals and several brains and bodies (m-individuals) may house
one conceptual system as a single p-individual (as in the distributed cognition of a
team at work).
For any particular topic within a conversational domain, it is possible to distin-
guish between why and how levels of explanation and understanding. The why level
is concerned with explaining or justifying what a topic is in terms of other topics.
The how level is concerned with describing how to do a topic, how to recognize it,
construct it, maintain it as a relation (see F IG . 1; the horizontal arrows represent sym-
bolic exchanges about the why and how of topics). Pask refers to learning about why
as comprehension learning and learning about how as operation learning.
304 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

A MODEL FOR THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE

Pask’s starting point for constructing a model of knowledge is the basic idea that
a body of knowledge or subject matter consists of a set of topics related one to
another. Two basic forms of relations between topics are distinguished: entailment
relations (hierarchical) and relations of analogy (heterarchical). A static representa-
tion of such relations is called an entailment structure.
Entailment structures reveal the why of knowledge, the conceptual structures that
relate topics one to another. For a full semantics, the content of topics, their how,
needs to be specified. This can be done operationally in the form of task structures,
defined with respect to a canonical modelling facility. In Pask’s phrase, task struc-
tures show “what may be done”. They show the “procedural knowledge” or “perfor-
mance competencies” that someone who understands a particular topic is deemed to
have. Task structures may be represented in a variety of ways, for example, as a pre-
cedence chart showing order relations between the goals and subgoals of a task or as
a flow chart showing a sequence of operations, tests, branches, and iterations.
In order to encompass the idea of the coherence of a conversational domain, the
idea of a body of knowledge being a learnable, memorable whole, it is necessary to
extend and elaborate the entailment structure model as follows.
1. Any topic at the lowest level of an hierarchical entailment structure may be ana-
lyzed further in order to reveal subtopics. Pask’s term for such an analysis of a topic
is unzipping. For example, the topic “table” may be unzipped to reveal subtopics
concerned with “having legs” or “having a flat surface”.
2. An entailment structure may be embedded within a larger hierarchical form. For
example, topics to do with “furniture” may be embedded within a larger structure of
topics concerned with “human dwellings”.
3. Topics may be explained in terms of each other in different ways. If an entail-
ment structure shows that topic A can be explained in terms of entailed topics B and
C, then, in principle, topic B can be explained in terms of topics A and C, and topic
C can be explained in terms of topics A and B. If these local cycles are added to an
entailment structure, the resulting form is what Pask refers to as an entailment
mesh.
As modelled so far, the conversational domain, qua entailment mesh, is but a lab-
yrinth of topics, albeit with extensible edges. It does not represent the intuitive idea
that a body of knowledge is coherent globally, as a totality.
Strawson expresses the general idea thus: “Let us imagine…the model of an elab-
orate network, a system, of connected items, concepts, such that the function
of…each concept, could…be properly understood only by grasping its connections
with the others, its place in the system…there will be no reason to worry if, in the
process of tracing connections from one point to another of the network, we find our-
selves returning to our starting point…the general charge of circularity would lose
its sting for we might have moved in a wide, revealing, and illuminating circle.” 5
As an example, within the domain “biology”, in explaining the topic “evolution”
one may refer to the topic “cell”; conversely, in explaining the topic “cell”, one may
refer to the topic “evolution”. It perhaps should be pointed out that it is only in recent
years that mainstream philosophers, like Strawson, have accepted the legitimacy of
virtuous (i.e., not vicious) circularities in conceptual systems.
SCOTT: ORGANIZATIONAL CLOSURE AND COHERENCE 305

Pask models the global aspect of coherence as follows. Imagine that the edges of
an entailment mesh extend until they meet. The meeting of opposing edges, top and
bottom, left and right results in a closed form, a torus. Pask refers to the resulting
closed systems of concepts as a globally cyclic entailment mesh.
A conversational domain can also be extended by analogy. However, for analogy
relations to be coherent, the bodies of knowledge they are relating together must
themselves be coherent.
Having modelled the coherence of a conversational domain as a globally cyclic
entailment mesh, we can now retrace our steps in order to articulate the concept of a
narrative form and to reveal the set of possible narrative forms that a particular con-
versational domain may engender.

CONSTRUCTING AN EXPOSITORY NARRATIVE

For present purposes, a composer of an expository narrative is taken to be some-

one whose conceptual repertoire includes a coherent, stable conceptual system for
the subject matter in question. We thus avoid considering the case where, in the act
of composition, new understandings evolve. This simplifies the task of modelling
narrative forms but, of course does not do full justice to the reality of composition.
In Pask’s writings, it is axiomatic that conceptual systems evolve, that “man is a sys-
tem that needs to learn”.16
As above, we may model a body of subject matter as an entailment mesh. The first
step of composition then becomes that of adopting a perspective, assuming a point
of view about that which is to be explained. Adopting a perspective on an entailment
mesh has two complementary aspects, corresponding to the complementary process-
es of comprehension learning and operation learning referred to earlier.
1. A head topic is distinguished with a supporting set of subordinate, entailed top-
ics that are its conceptual support and justification from that perspective. In essence
this corresponds to the act of isolating an hierarchical entailment structure from the
entailment mesh in which it is embedded. Pask refers to this operation as pruning.
The only cyclic connections permitted in a pruned structure are those that relate two
or more simple structures analogically.
2. In principle and, at least, potentially, the adoption of a perspective calls forth one
or more particular universes of discourse that can be conceived of as a multidimen-
sional spaces in which possible relations may be recognized, constructed, and
maintained. As earlier, Pask’s generic term for a canonical version of such a uni-
verse is “modelling facility”.
Where the topic hierarchy is a simple entailment structure with one head topic and
where the context does indeed serve as a universe of discourse that supports the per-
mitted operations on relations, then the topic hierarchy may, by a suitable semantic,
be placed in one-to-one correspondence with the task structures that operationally
specify the content of those topics. That is, in general, where concepts are executable
as a set of operations, there is an isomorphism between the declarative, coherence
aspects of conceptualization concerned with saying why something is what it is, and
the procedural aspects of conceptualization concerned with saying how operations
306 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

are carried out, how the concepts may be modelled or instantiated as relations in a
particular context (modelling facility or universe).
The combination of conceptual coherence with executability of operations as the
basis for an epistemology or model of knowledge is not peculiar to Pask, although
he perhaps has developed the most detailed models. Rescher3,4 refers to “conceptual
idealism” combined with a “methodological pragmatism”. George17 succinctly
states that “a theory is a model together with its interpretation”. Miller and Johnson-
Laird18 propose “a conceptual theory of meaning…tied to procedural interpretation
of sentences.”
Particular narratives composed may have different emphases, depending on the
narrators’ aims. Where there is an emphasis on teaching the how of operational con-
tent, for example, mastery of a set of skills, a clear mapping between topic descrip-
tions (minimally, topic names) and particular operations is of signal importance. In
military operations, such as dismantling an automatic weapon, there is a requirement
to be able to “name parts” but the emphasis is on being able to carry out operations.
Where the emphasis is on conceptual descriptions and why type explanations,
task structures may be less well defined. They may even be tacit assumption that the
student is already familiar with the basic operational topology of the universe that is
being talked about, that he or she has the required set of operators to model and in-
stantiate topics if so required. In this latter case it is not usual to insist on making
explicit the isomorphism between entailment structure explanations and task struc-
ture operations. An example of this would be a lesson about the social consequences
of genetic engineering, where a basic understanding of genetics is assumed.
Analogies may be thought of as topics that say how one set of topics maybe trans-
formed into another set of topics or, equivalently, as metanarratives that say how one
narrative may be transformed into or derived from another.
When expounding analogies, different narrative sequences may be adopted
depending on the students’ needs and the demands of the subject matter being
expounded. For example, one may set up a framework of description correspondenc-
es, saying that topics in one universe are indeed similar to another and, at a later
stage, demonstrate this by matching operations and clarifying and highlighting by
demonstration just what are the similarities and the differences between the topics in
the two universes of discourse. Alternatively, one may provide operational experi-
ence and conceptual description in the two distinct contexts and establish the analo-
gy relations at a later date. Indeed, part of a teaching strategy might be that one gives
the learner the opportunity to recognize and establish those relations himself, by a
process of what Spearman19 refers to as education (see Mason20 for recent studies
of the role of analogies in conceptual change).

THE TWO-CYCLE MODEL OF LEARNING

Introduction
Pask was fascinated by the dynamics of mental life and conceptualization. The
account given above of narrative composition and entailment meshes may be inter-
preted as a series of static snapshots of activities within a dynamic, organizationally
closed, self-reproducing system of concepts. Such a system learns by evolving,
SCOTT: ORGANIZATIONAL CLOSURE AND COHERENCE 307

becoming more informed, but it is also constrained to maintain a focus of attention,

to survive as a centre of awareness. In doing so, it may become informed about itself.
Rescher, in his writings on epistemology1,2 develops ideas about truth and con-
ceptualization that are remarkably close to those of Pask. F IGURE 2 summarizes
these ideas. The important thing to note is that the conceptual system depicted is, as
in Pask’s models of conceptualization, dynamic.
What we see here is an evolutionary epistemology, one in which rationality is an
emergent concept. The logics of coherence and correspondence/executability that
are used to justify the truth of belief systems, have themselves emerged precisely be-
cause they do serve to maintain the organizational closure9 of the self-organizing,7,8
“information-tight”6 m-individuals that embody them. Some have argued that such
an emergence (consciousness, as “knowing with oneself”) occurred as a singularity
in human evolution, and which is recapitulated in child development.21–23
What the concept of the organizational closure of an observing system provides
is a coherence in our theorizing. In the terms used earlier, organizational closure im-
plies the existence of a set of executable operations but with the dynamic imperative
that, whatever other relations they may serve to produce, they must reproduce them-

FIGURE 2. The two-cycle model of learning (after Rescher).

308 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

selves. This is the essence of biological autopoiesis.9 The relation of reproducibility

is the “essential variable” 6 that must be maintained.
Whatever else it may achieve as a mutually supportive set of declarations about
why and how, the “bottom-line” for the coherence of a conversational domain and
the systems of concepts (p-individuals) that inhabit it is whether or not it is also sup-
portive of the reproduction of the m-individuals that embody those p-individuals.

Recursive Application of the Two-Cycle Model

The two-cycle model may be applied recursively to generate learning cycles and
conceptual structures at different levels of abstraction. Generalization of forms of
knowledge leads to generalizations about forms of knowing and, ipso facto, logic
and logics of logics, cybernetics and cybernetics of cybernetics. It is clearly these op-
erations that Rescher has in mind. Beliefs are not only coherent because they are mu-
tually supportive (as in one of Strawson’s cycles), they are also coherent because
they conform to canons of justification. Reason assesses the logical hygiene of belief
systems.
Pask, as well as noting the dynamics of generalization (abstracting the form or
genus of an analogy), also notes there is a dynamics of “bifurcation” or “speciation”
of ideas. We do, in our “need to learn”, generate novelty. We make distinctions as
well as void them.24

Reflexive Application of the Two-Cycle Model

The model may be applied reflexively. That is, its own form may be considered
as a topic for conversation and conceptualization. Carrying out such a reflection pro-
vides a coherent way of characterizing epistemological limits (referred to by Pask as
the “ineffable” and the “ineluctable” aspects of knowing), but retaining a clear sense
of there being an (in principle) unlimited praxeology of awareness. The observer
may “enter himself into the domain of descriptions” 23 and know himself as someone
who is telling/being told a story but for whom the whole story can never be finally
told (ineffability). He may also recognize that as someone living a story, his partici-
pation cannot be withdrawn. Life, as experience, is un-unlockable (ineluctable) (cf.,
Wittgenstein’s aphorism, “Death is not an event in life” 25).
As an observer he or she may make and void distinctions. One may journey in the
hope that the ineluctable may yet yield a key; the ineffable may be experienced.
However, then we would have found the singularity that allows us to “transcend into
another domain” (to use another of von Foerster’s phrases23), one in which the
knower/known distinction has been voided.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

A more detailed account of the relationship between knowledge structures and

narrative forms is provided elsewhere.26 For more on the concept of the organiza-
tional closure of conceptual systems see Pask’s own accounts.27,28
This paper has outlined an evolutionary “bottom-up” epistemology, where we see
ourselves as constructors and inventors and where reasoner and reason have
SCOTT: ORGANIZATIONAL CLOSURE AND COHERENCE 309

co-evolved. It would be remiss, particularly in view of the clear limits such an epis-
temology demarcates, not to indicate that other epistemologies, predicated on other
metaphysical assumptions, are not ruled out. As von Foerster23 elegantly notes,
“there are undecideables”. If we so choose, we may also countenance a “top-down”,
idealist epistemology, where we see ourselves as approaching and discovering “the
good, the true, the beautiful”.

REFERENCES

1. P ASK, G. 1975. Conversation Cognition and Learning. Elsevier. Amsterdam.

2. P ASK, G. 1976. Conversation Theory: Applications in Education and Epistemology.
Elsevier. Amsterdam.
3. R ESCHER, N. 1973. Conceptual Idealism. Basil Blackwell. Oxford.
4. R ESCHER, N. 1977. Methodological Pragmatism. Basil Blackwell. Oxford.
5. S TRAWSON, P.F. 1922. Analysis and Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. London.
6. A SHBY, W.R. 1956. Introduction to Cybernetics. Wiley. New York.
7. VON F OERSTER, H. 1960. On self-organizing systems and their environments. In
Self-Organising Systems. M.C. Yovits & S. Cameron, Eds. :30–50. Pergamon Press.
London.
8. B EER, S. 1965. Decision and Control. Wiley. New York.
9. M ATURANA, H. & V ARELA, F.J. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition. Reidel. Dordrecht,
Holland.
10. P ASK, G., B. S COTT & D. K ALLIKOURDIS. 1973. A theory of conversations and individ-
uals exemplified by the learning process on CASTE. Int. J. Man-Machine Stud. 5:
443–566.
11. P ASK, G., D. K ALLIKOURDIS & B. S COTT. 1975. The representation of knowables. Int.
J. Man-Machine Stud. 7: 15–134.
12. S COTT, B. 1993. Working with Gordon: developing and applying conversation theory
1968–1978. Syst. Res. 10: 167–182.
13. P ASK, G. 1972. A fresh look at cognition and the individual. Int. J. Man-Machine Stud.
4: 211–216.
14. F LOOD, J., Ed. 1984. Understanding Reading Comprehension: Cognition, Language
and the Structure of Prose. International Reading Association, Newark, DE.
15. B RITTON, K. & A.C. G RAESSER, Eds. 1996. Models of Understanding Text. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates. Mahwah, NJ.
16. P ASK, G. 1968. Man as a system that needs to learn. In Automaton Theory and Learn-
ing Systems. D. Stewart, Ed. :137–208. Academic Press. London.
17. G EORGE, F.H. 1973. The Brain as a Computer, 2nd edit. Pergamon. Oxford.
18. M ILLER, G.A. & P.N. J OHNSON-L AIRD. 1976. Language and Perception. Cambridge
University Press. Cambridge.
19. S PEARMAN, C. 1923. The Nature of “Intelligence” and the Principles of Cognition.
Macmillan. London.
20. M ASON, L. 1994. Cognitive and metacognitive aspects in conceptual change by anal-
ogy. Instruct. Sci. 22: 157–187.
21. M EAD, G.H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. C.W. Morris, Ed. Spartan Books. New
York.
22. M ATURANA, H. 1995. Biology of self-consciousness. In Consciousness: Distinction
and Reflection. G. Tratteur, Ed. :145–175. Bibliopolis. Napoli.
23. VON F OERSTER, H. 1993. Ethics and second-order cybernetics. Psychiatria Danubia 5:
40–46.
24. S PENCER-B ROWN, G. 1969. Laws of Form. George, Allen and Unwin. London.
25. W ITTGENSTEIN, L.L. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge. London.
26. S COTT, B. 1999. Knowledge content and narrative structures. In Words on the Web:
Language Aspects of Computer Mediated Communication. L. Pemberton and S.
Shurville, Eds. :13–24. Intellect Books. Exeter.
310 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

27. P ASK, G. 1981. Organizational closure of potentially conscious systems. In Autopoie-

sis. M. Zelany, Ed. :265–307. Elsevier. Amsterdam.
28. P ASK, G. 1996. Heinz von Foerster’s self-organization, the progenitor of conversation
and interaction theories. Syst. Res. 13: 349–362.