The problem and the solution share an epistemological context, each helping drive the other.
Second ‘phase’ (to the right): In this context ‘more of the solution’ creates ‘more of the problem’ through a symmetrical relationship. The SAME problem is produced by the SAME solution. No real transformation is forthcoming from within the system, because it perpetuates itself from both sides.
Linear-Progressive Solution:
Linear-Progressive Solution
A solution to a problem is found that does not perpetuate the original problem, but this creates a new problem (or problems) of its own, likely at the same level (with the same form) as the original, although with different content or within a different arena (problem ‘leaking’).
Second ‘phase’ (to the right): This leads to a potential proliferation and regress of problems, because the epistemological context is never addressed at any level. DIFFERENT problems are produced by DIFFERENT solutions OF THE SAME ORDER. Transformation is possible but likely occurs with great difficulty and haphazardly, if at all.
Second-order Solution:
Second-Order Solution
The epistemological context of the first order is seen as problematic, becoming the basis for a second-order solution that relies upon different epistemological distinctions. It is “second-order” because it explicitly recognizes the cyclic recapitulation of the first-order problem-solution system’s epistemological distinctions, and chooses not to participate by making different distinctions. Thus the problem-solution system becomes a new problem that is of a directly higher order.
Second ‘phase’ (to the right): The solution to the original problem-solution system creates a new problem of a higher order (this would be the third-order problem), necessitating the uncovering of the epistemological limitations in the second-order problem-solution system (which now becomes the third-order problem). HIGHER-ORDER problems are created by HIGHER-ORDER solutions. Continuing in this way leads to higher-order levels of recursivity, but after only a few levels a practical limit is reached, and the system becomes to expansive and diffuse to affect transformation by itself.
Simple Multivariant Ecology of Solutions:
Multivariant Ecology of Solutions
In an example of a more realistic (and complex) setting, a problem may be addressed with a “problematic solution” while at the same time efforts are made to seek a solution of a lineal type, which may create its own problem while being taken at the object of a second-order solution.
Second ‘phase’ (to the right): The system of systems can evolve as a self-embedded ecology, where new opportunities for feedback become inevitable. The network continues to evolve, involve, devolve, and revolve, all at once.
One thing that struck me as interesting was that feedback, as a concept, seems to assume two things (and probably more): 1) step-wise time (and thus some kind of “state” in which a system can be identified, and thus 2) some kind of ‘levels’ within and between systems, in part based on their “state”.
So feedback, at least in the way that I’ve been thinking about it up to now, is this idea that state A of a system precipitates state B in some way, but that state B has non-trivial links ‘back’ to processes that help create state A. But of course because we are talking about the evolution of systems, this idea of ‘back’ may be better understood inversely, as ‘forward’, in the sense that there is a real distinction between state A, state B(sub-A), which is the state of system B-as-influenced-by-A, and then state A(sub-B,sub-A) the state of A-influenced-by-B-which-is-already-influenced-by-A…. And this goes on, so we have something more like a system-of-relations (S) at various points, which are distinguished by virtue of the feedback relations between its states A and B.
Here’s an attempt at a table explicating the pattern of what we mean by “feedback”:
S1 A
S2 B(A)
S3 A(B(A))
S4 B(A(B(A)))
S5 A(B(A(B(A))))
You can see the pattern unfolding infinitely — the thing is that when we think about it in this way, the pattern that is unfolding is one that does so on the basis of these ‘moments’ (S1, S2, …). But these moments are always arbitrary; there doesn’t seem to be any ontological significance to them outside of the context of their actual identification by someone thinking about cybernetics. Our knowledge of the system becomes apropos when we question it, when a need for knowledge arises… and not otherwise.
If this is true, it’s kind of misleading to have the idea of “a system” that exists “in a state” and that this state influences some other system’s state, and so forth. It’s too reductive… and it seems to fall prey to Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (Others familiar with quantum physics, and specifically the Einstein-Bohr debates may see some parallels with this line of thinking.)
When thinking about TIME and evolving systems, we run into some serious complexities, because different information flows through a given portion of a system at different rates depending upon the nature of that part of the system and the nature of the information being carried. Heat flows at one speed through a specific material, at another speed through another material. Information carried by light moves still differently, as does linguistic meaning, different types of sensation, etc. etc. etc.. Just about every ‘channel’ of information has its own unique set of variables in this regard, so there is no way to divvy up a given system into “state A” or “state B” with complete certainty, because at any arbitrary snapshot point, an important bit of information from one part of the system might be ‘on its way’ but not yet resulting in any modification elsewhere in the system in a significant way — in other words feedback has an analog character. We can create digital systems in which feedback appears to operate step-wise, but this is always an oversimplification… (perhaps not if we get to the quantum level, but even then I have a suspicion that something, perhaps not either analog or digital, has a role to play in what is now left out of the loop entirely, i.e. is attributed to ‘randomness’). In any case any macroscopic digital process always (?) includes analog processes (on higher and lower levels). The point is that it is misleading to speak of “states” at all.
So what? Well, our very ability to speak about feedback seems to presuppose a conceptual reliance upon “states”. Hmmmmm. What if we got rid of “states” and started to look more at the processes? What if we slipped out of the subtle reification of “statehood” and into the flowing of flows? The processes of processes? It seems then impossible to consider anything but the whole; everything is a whole, evolves-as-whole, is-always-whole-ing, and never ‘just is’.
For example in an old-style mercury thermostat, the state changes from “on” to “off” to “on” again. The way it does this is through a process of feedback between the temperature of the room and the curvature of a bi-metallic strip. When the temperature is too cold (given a specific calibration point to begin with), the bimetallic strip curves in on itself, causing mercury (a conductive liquid)to fall to one side of its containing vial, where it closes an electrical circuit, making the heater go on. When the temperature is warm enough, the bi-metallic strip expands and causes the vial to tilt the other way, so that the mercury ends up in the other side of the vial, breaking the circuit and causing the heater to go off. Wash, rinse, repeat, over and over.
This is the ‘classic’ case of a feedback system. The system of the room+thermostat includes a feedback “mechanism” by which information ABOUT the “state” of the system is influential in determining the BEHAVIOR of the system. But there is something arbitrary about thinking of the system as composed of a room and a thermostat. We could divide things up into any number of different configurations, which would give slightly different perspectives on the whole. For example we can distinguish the temperature of different volumes of air, the internal components of the thermostat, the volume of air in the heating ducts and their placement, etc. “The thermostat” and “the room” are just cognitive shortcuts for more complex interrelations that, on the one hand, can be usefully summed up by such shortcuts, but which on the other hand deflects awareness from the process by which the making of the distinctions occurs, and its interactive, contingent, on-going nature. This is a general issue that crops up around epistemology.
Exploring a bit further, it would then seem that if we take such an idea to heart, it becomes much more difficult to speak of “levels” that are clear and distinct (to borrow a pithy and dangerous phrase from Descartes)–for the basis for any such distinction is some clarity about difference, and the basis for clarity is the distinction of difference. Alchemically, this is like the operation of precipitation, where a flowing, dissolving, ever-changing substance becomes punctuated by moments of particularly which separate themselves off from the activity of being-in-process with the rest of the solution. Identity becomes not only possible but fitting: here we have the formation of a crystal. It is here, it is this size, it is moving like this, it is not any of these other equally separate and identifiable crystals. (In terms of the alchemical language of process, this is the Earth element at work.)
In other words, the concept of feedback works well by virtue of its implicit reliance upon the tendency to make distinctions in complex wholes: this “part” of a system and that “part” of a system, this “state” at one time and some other “state” at another. Such distinctions may represent an a-ontological punctuation of difference within a field of activity that admits–without the activity of the distinguisher–of no such intrinsic difference. That is to say, distinctions have a certain amount of… freedom to them. Our distinguishing of one state or part of a system may not be rooted in some kind of ontologically independent “reality” which can, on its own hold up the validity of that distinction. Such validity always requires the situated contextuality of the distinguisher. (In terms of the alchemical language of process, this is the element of Water at work).
One can think of the thermostat/room system as a homeostatic one, which brings the room temperature towards some specific target through negative feedback. But this ‘stasis’ is somewhat illusory; it is accomplished by continual change. No matter how the system is constructed, it is change that creates the stasis. So it’s more accurate to think of the thermostat/room system as evolving around a cyclic attractor, where the temperature regularly fluctuates above and below a certain average (the ‘target’ temperature). It is also the stasis that creates change; the curling and uncurling of the bimetallic strip can only occur if the ambient temperature has some aspect that is constant (in this case, that the temperature STAYS above or below the target value–you’ll notice that this is a case of higher-order constancy, a constancy that is possible on the basis of change that maintains a difference).
So we sometimes make a distinction about levels: on a ‘higher’ level the system is essentially constant, while on a ‘lower’ level it is continually in flux. But again these are cognitive shortcuts for interweaving processes which do not admit of such self-distinction. The ‘levels’ are identified BY us FOR us. Just as the identification of ‘states’ is contextually contingent and not necessarily ontological, so it is with the identification of ‘levels’.
This is not to say that our distinctions are completely unguided or arbitrary–because we can’t overlook the fact that we ourselves are involved in any system by virtue of our interaction with it. Even if we are ‘just looking’ at a system, we cannot but help look with eyes that see only particularities that evolve with our ability to distinguish them. Even our seeing is cybernetic, involved in recursive looping between the ‘out there’ and the ‘in here’. The seeing is not either ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’, but partakes of both aspects, being guided by outer processes and inner processes simultaneously, and which affects the ‘seeing system’ in multiple ways, some of which may be inconsequential, and some of which may make all the difference in the world.
I made this button for all those people out there who want to keep complexity complex, who understand that feedback is the name of the game, and that the main rule of the game is that the rules must continually be modified. If you know about Calvinball, you know what I’m talking about: a recursive looping, a complex manifestation of manifestation, a new way of knowing, and a new way of knowing about knowing, which happens to be very, very old.
This post is about bringing forth a different way of speaking about ethics, which is usually bogged down with a load of ridiculously unquestioned Western philosophical THOUGHT baggage, which keeps ethics locked nicely away in principles which themselves are never acted, only known.
For this reason, Varela’s idea that perception is based in ACTION is profound. Passive perception is not possible – we are not capable of being ‘only’ receivers; we are always embedded in our perception through its enactment. This enactment helps co-create the very world that is perceived through its selection — through recurrent sensori-motor feedback loops — out of the infinitely vast number of possible ways to perceive.
THEN: Thoughts are not divorced from the world either, but arise from the recurrence of sensori-motor feedback loops — the very same loops that constitute the enactment of our perception and the (re/co)discovery of the world, now not only perceptually, but CONceptually. The ability to perceptually guide action leads to the formation of CONCEPTS. !?!?!? “The cognitive self is its own implementation: its history and its action are of one piece.” (p. 54)
Hence: “experience both makes possible and constrains conceptual understanding across a multitude of cognitive domains.” (p. 16)
This provides the lynchpin by which Varela connects cognitive science to ethical know-how. The coupling between self-world-percept-concept that occurs within our sensori-motor feedback loops provides a habitual basis for our future interactions with ourselves and the world. We are autopoetical morphisms arising spontaneously in a given environment out of the evolving background of previous sensori-motor-cognitive couplings. We continually enact our enactment… Varela calls these microworlds and microidentities, because they are completely context-dependent; the type of action, the mode of thinking, the quality of sensation: all these are predicated on their past instantiation.
For this reason it is not enough to ‘think about’ ethics, for ethics can never be divorced from the acts which constitute it. Each microworld calls forth something new (or something old) from our microidentities, just as our microidentities uniquely call forth new microworlds. But to speak of microworlds and microidentities is too reifying. There are no such things, as Varela well knows.
Nevertheless, ethics requires cultivation. We are gardens in which seeds for ethical know-how must be planted and grown with care; we cannot depend solely upon the coupling strategies we have inherited from our own past. Cultivating ethical know-how is synonymous with the dispersal of our reliance upon these very couplings through the realization of their emptiness. We move from unknown knowing to known knowing, and onward to unknowable knowing. To get there (where there IS no there), requires practice. Not practice of injunctions, but of their essential dissolution into the same emptiness that the self no longer occupies.
How does this relate to ethical action? By allowing it to make its appearance out of the uniqueness of the moment. When we are full of everything that we have been, we obscure what we might be; because we always encounter more in the world than we have put there ourselves, it is not enough to remain oneself. By practicing the pattern of patternlessness, we become keyed to the unfolding of the uniqueness of the moment. It is a paradox: we must habitute ourselves to ahabituation, we must practice not practicing…
Every conversation can lead to conversion; to a new context, a different way of perceiving, a step out of habitual patterns of thinking that we unknowingly carry with us or alternately identify as self. As one who attempts to live with Morin’s “new way of thinking”, one is never converted; one can only be continually in conversion, or rather, in continual oscillation between stasis and motion. Once we see things from a new vantage point, it is not enough to simply adopt that vantage point, for every vantage point is only a brief resting place from which we cast off again into the unknown.
((When I was 12 years old, and lived right at the exact place where the dusky plains of Colorado met the surging foothills in a meeting of two geographical worlds, I would come home from school and occasionally foray into what seemed to be the wilderness to my young mind. There was one particular mountain, which I dubbed Coyote Mountain for the small coyote den tucked in some rocks at its base, which had been calling out for climbing. I had spied out my route over the previous hours by looking at its face through my bedroom window. Once I was on the mountain things were different. After a steep and breathless climb I sensed I was nearing the summit, as I could see only sky above where the mountain rose in front of me a few hundred yards away. My focus was increased and I rushed to the top… only to realize that I had only made it halfway up! The major portion of the mountain lay ahead of me, having been blocked by its lower half; a situation that of course only happens when one is ON the mountain. From my perch at home it seemed the whole thing was laid out neatly before me, but I was unable to account for what it would really be like once I was actually “in conversation” with the mountain directly, and not surveying it from afar. Now, I realized that a whole new part of the mountain was available to me, and in a completely new way that reorganized my previous knowledge. It was possible to see in a new way.))
But conversion is not linear, it doesn’t proceed nicely. It retroacts upon itself, so that one’s new perspective modifies the way in which we used to perceive; our perception becomes perceived, and is thus modified in the act. ((On the mountain I learned something not just about the mountain; I learned something about my perception, and saw the same world in new ways.))
Not only this, but one does not merely experience conversion passively; for one’s movement is also the movement of the other, i.e. one converts and one is converted, simultaneously. We cannot escape that our change is also a change in the world, available to the world for new conversation. And likewise this converting is also retroactive; it too, changes how we perceive our own perception, because we see that our perception is not merely passive, but active as well. It thus becomes impossible to say what “I” think or perceive (if, following Bohm, thinking is a complex order of perception), because I am in the world, and the world is in me. To claim that such and such a thought is “mine”, or that “this is MY pain”, is a form of totalitarian hubris, for we do not know very much about what this “I” is, or rather where it has come from or where it is going. The “I” is constantly stymied by the fact that it cannot find its own boundaries. All boundaries of the self, when approached by the self, recede as a horizon, a limitless limit. In George Spencer Brown’s calculus of distinction, the “I” is the space within the mark, which makes the mark in order to be what it is, but in so doing necessitates the space outside the mark, the unmarked, which is to the mark as the horizon to a traveler. In this case, the unmarked is precisely that which is not available to the “I” – the infinite pleroma.
There are always more horizons to explore. We could also say there are more verizons to explore as well, which lead us not outward so much as upward, and from which our perspective of the horizon, as in leaving the Earth, recedes into its own circle. This circle of the Earth is now perceivable in its entirety as Brown’s mark, but from a new vantage point. Now, a completely new set of horizons become apparent, of a different order than the initial horizon; yet all horizons are as equally unreachable as they are infinitely approachable.
All of these are conversations, all are conversions. Transdisciplinarity is the art of staying in the conversation. It is the art of living constantly between horizons, as if on the boundary of a fractal. The fractal is always a temporary horizon, never an absolute place to rest. It is living always with the question: does this point on which I stand lie inside or outside the form? This question is never resolved if we stay on the boundary; its solution can only occur if we abandon the never-ending process of iteration, of self-recursion, and then the answer is always trivial. Just as the answer to Ramana Maharshi’s entreaty to live ever on the boundary through the continual asking of the recursive question “Who am I” is equally trivial: it is “I”. The point is not to answer the question, but is rather to keep from ever answering it!
Thus, transdisciplinarity is in the unfortunate position of having been identified as such. To the extent that this is the case, it has stepped off the boundary. We see transdisciplinarity outside our window and we survey it, we think we see a path, and we make plans. Then we step foot on the soil and now we must walk what hitherto we have only thought. The order of our plan meets the disorder of the real environment; if we have fixed our view of transdisciplinarity, we cannot reach the summit. Our view of transdisciplinarity, as Morin points out, is “antagonistic, concurrent, and complementary.” We must continually be able to stay in communication, in a dialogic relationship, so we can continually recontextualize, globalize, and re-globalize again our relationship with transdisciplinarity.
In this way, our view of transdisciplinarity becomes transdisciplinary. The cause acts on the effect, and the effect acts on the cause. Our emergent view continually alters the emergence of our view, which thus emerges anew. This is transdisciplinarity not squared, but circled. But the marking of the circle is never permanent. We must learn both how to make the mark and to unmake it. This always occurs through the making of a new mark, a new distinction, which itself calls out for unmaking. Transdisciplinarity is the art of this making and unmaking.
((Sitting in my room, I now see the mountain anew. It is both more and less than before. I am both more and less than before. We are both more and less than before.))
