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advanced in having developed practical applications.
There is nothing equivalent in the Peircean domain (or any other
Western school of thought) to the Reflexive Control equations developed by
Lefebvre and Lepsky with the supporting developments in characterizing Free
Will. Lefebvre, according to Nozawa, combined the integrated concepts of
Feelings, Free Will, and Thinking with the concepts of situational awareness
and reality. The integrated processes became known as Reflexive Processes,
filling the void in mentalistic sciences created by Behaviorism. A study of the
proceedings of the October 2000 Reflexive Control Symposium held in
Moscow would probably reveal additional areas of development. It may be said
that Reflexive Processes is a form of Peirce’s highly developed Scientific
Philosophy and that it could easily be replaced by Peirce’s Scientific
Philosophy. The following table shows Reflexive Processes and the
corresponding elements of Peircean Scientific Philosophy:
Reflexive Processes
Scientific Philosophy
Situational Awareness Phaneroscopy (Situational
Awareness)
Reflexive Control
Normative Science
Feelings
Esthetics
Free Will
Ethics
Thinking
Semeiotic
Reality
Metaphysics (Reality)
Although the terminology is different, the words describing Peirce’s
categories have the same general meaning as those of Reflexive Processes.
Peirce, however, was more precise in his definitions, and the underlying
construct of his theoretical knowledge is better developed, according to
Nozawa. The Peircean categories should be interpreted as scientific categories
and not metaphysical or theological.
Recent Examples of RC
The Russian military has actively attempted to exploit the concept of
reflexive control during the recent past. For example, during the temporary
occupation of the Russian White House by members of Parliament in October
1993, the Russian military reputedly employed reflexive control to remove the
parliamentarians and their supporters from the building, albeit against the
explicit orders of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. How they did so is quite
interesting. For days, President Yeltsin had not been able to make the White
House’s occupiers budge. Additionally, the occupiers even refused to come out
to address their supporters who had surrounded the building, probably because
the Russian security police (MVD) or regular police were also in the crowd and
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