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Maturana, Humberto: http://www.inteco.cl/biology/askold.htm">ask Humberto Maturana im www

This month´s question is from Ezequiel Di Paolo from School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex. In many of their books/articles both Maturana and Varela state that the operation of *distinction* can only arise once a consensual domain has been established between a group of organisms. While I can see, more or less clearly, that the opposite of this pro- position is not the case, namely that distinction or reference is not a primitive operation in a consensual domain, I cannot see how this operation actually arises from other, more basic operations. This is a crucial point (for my work in particular) since it would provide directions as to what (cognitive) requisites would be needed for a society of communicating agents to become a society of observers. Answer: An operation of distiction is something that an observer does as he or she cleaves an entity from a background that arises at the same time as the entity distinguished, and which thus constitutes the domain in which the distinguished entity exists. As the observer exist and operates as such in language, and language is a manner of flowing in living together in consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors, distinctions can only take place within the language consensual domain. A new system arises spontaneously included in a larger system when an operational cleavage occurs within the larger system that constitutes a systemic dynamics that realizes and conserves the organization of the new system. As the new system arises, the larger one becomes the medium of its realization. This process is usually called self-organization. I consider that this expression is fully inadequate because the system arises as the organization that defines it begins to be conserved through the mentioned cleavage and systemic dynamic of conservation. The organization conserved defines the system and constitutes its self, and as such does not preexist its origin. I call the process through which a system arises, spontaneous organization. The distinction of a system is an act of cognition by an observer, and can occur only in the domain of structural coupling in which he or she operates. And this is so because languaging occurs as a manner of operating in recursive coordinations of consensual behaviors, so the observers can do in language only what is possible within the operational coherences in which they operate. Therefore, there is a basic congrence between what the observer does and the domain of structural coherences in which he or she does his or her doings. This is so precisely because languaging occurs as a flow in coordinations of doings of structure determined systems. Consensualization occurs as a process in the flow of structural coupling in recursive interactions, as there is recursive interactions it is possible that languaging may take place, and as languaging takes place as a flow in recursive coordinations of consensual behaviors, language occurs in the concretness of structural coupling. Consensual is a notion that connotes what occurs in the flow of living together and as such it is abstract, but the process connoted occurs in the concretness of structural coupling. Humberto Maturana Romesin. Santiago de Chile, January 1997.

This month's question is from Paul Samson.
Dear Mr. Maturana,

1. At the moment there is a tendency in some sociological circles to put big questions about the approach for Constructionist Social Theory from Niklas Luhmann (German Professor, Bielefeld University) in Sociology and before in Law. What is your opinion in the use of the autopoiesis 'tool' in explaining "the total of social live" as based on the 'medium', communication wich is a two-sided, something between mind and the rest of the world.

2. Is it so that your theory has no explanation for feelings, or morality as moving principles,

3. Or even more: in your theory everything seems to happen as an at random, heuristic event between man and mankind.

Thanks for reading & Perhaps for answering


ANSWER:
Dear Mr. Paul Samson,

thanks for your question, and please forgive the delay in answereing it.

1. I consider that social systems are not autopoietic systems.
Moreover, I think that even if it were adequate to talk abot them as third orderautopoietic systems, talking that way would obscure what is proper to them which is the dynamics of relations in coexistence of living systems. In my understanding in human social systems the realization of human beings as languaging beings is central. We human beings may exist in social systems that arise as a result of our interactions, and we become human beings by growing in a human social domain.

2. Certainly in what I propose as the biology of cognition there is explanation for feelings and morality as moving human dynamics, but to understand such explanation you must look at what I say about language and emotions. I do not use autopoiesis as an explanatory principle. Autopoiesis is a characterization of aparticular kind of systems. We living systems are molecular autopoietic systems. But the manner that we live arises in the relational dydnamics of our realization as autopoietic systems in an interactional space, and is not a result of our autopoiesis even though it occurs through our realization as autopoietic systems.

3. In what I say randomness is a commentary of the observer about events that arise without him or her being able to claim that they depend on each other. We human beings as all living systems and the medium in which we exist, exist as structure determined systems, so every thing occurs in us and in the medium as aspects of a structure determined dynamics. The confusion arises in the explicit or implicit belief in that structural determinism implies predictability. This is not the case.

Greetings. Humberto Maturana R.

Santiago, July 1997.

September 1997


This month's question is from Paul Bains.

Dr Maturana,

You have often spoken about perception and have characterized it interms of 'congruent action'.

In your published work you do not seem to have discussed how it is that weactually SEE a world that appears (at first sight) to BE IN FRONT OF US outside of our bodies.

Could you comment on this. I know that you say that objects arise in languaging. Does vision have a location.

Finally, when you say that we make things exist in language what about autopoietic systems. Do they only 'insist' until they are distinguished by an observer in language.


ANSWER:

Perception is a comentary that an observer does when he or she sees some animal operating congruently with its circumstances in the flow of its interactions.

So, perception occurs as a process of congruent operation with the circumstances that results of the congruent structural dynamics of the organism and the medium as a result of a history of congruent structural changes of the organism and medium.

Seeing occurs in the living in coherence with the medium with the perticipation of the eyes. So, actually seeing the world outside is a manner of describing what happens in seeing by an observer.

I say that objects arise as distinctions of the observer in language as they appear in conversations as entities. They are not made by language, they are operations or coordinations of operations in conversations. We usually act and speak as if it had sense to say that objects exist by themselves prior to the distinction that brings them about. BUT TO THE EXTENT THAT WE EXIST IN LANGUAGING THAT HAS NO SENSE. at the same time, once we have generated a domain of objects in a conversation, and as we operate in that domain, we can operate as if the objects of that domain existed independently from us. Remember that we are explaining experiences, as closed structure determined systems, and we are not referring to an independent reality.

The notion of autopoiesis is an explanatory notion, and to say that living systems are molecular autopoietic systems is both the explanation of living systems and the claim that if there were a molecular autopoietic system, a living system would be there.

September 1997


This month's question is from Paul Bains.

Dr Maturana,

You have often spoken about perception and have characterized it interms of 'congruent action'.

In your published work you do not seem to have discussed how it is that weactually SEE a world that appears (at first sight) to BE IN FRONT OF US outside of our bodies.

Could you comment on this. I know that you say that objects arise in languaging. Does vision have a location.

Finally, when you say that we make things exist in language what about autopoietic systems. Do they only 'insist' until they are distinguished by an observer in language.


ANSWER:

Perception is a comentary that an observer does when he or she sees some animal operating congruently with its circumstances in the flow of its interactions.

So, perception occurs as a process of congruent operation with the circumstances that results of the congruent structural dynamics of the organism and the medium as a result of a history of congruent structural changes of the organism and medium.

Seeing occurs in the living in coherence with the medium with the perticipation of the eyes. So, actually seeing the world outside is a manner of describing what happens in seeing by an observer.

I say that objects arise as distinctions of the observer in language as they appear in conversations as entities. They are not made by language, they are operations or coordinations of operations in conversations. We usually act and speak as if it had sense to say that objects exist by themselves prior to the distinction that brings them about. BUT TO THE EXTENT THAT WE EXIST IN LANGUAGING THAT HAS NO SENSE. at the same time, once we have generated a domain of objects in a conversation, and as we operate in that domain, we can operate as if the objects of that domain existed independently from us. Remember that we are explaining experiences, as closed structure determined systems, and we are not referring to an independent reality.

The notion of autopoiesis is an explanatory notion, and to say that living systems are molecular autopoietic systems is both the explanation of living systems and the claim that if there were a molecular autopoietic system, a living system would be there.

January 1998 This month's question is from Jeff Blumberg from Johannesberg, South Africa Dear Dr Maturana, I'm not sure whether you are familiar with the work of Stuart Kauffman? In his book "At Home in the Universe" on page 274. he tends to brush aside the idea that autopoiesis is anything original. He mentions that the image dates back before you coined the term. He refers to Kant, and then Goodwin, writing about the idea of an organism as an autpoetic (sic) whole. I first read of your autopoiesis in Capra's book The Web of Life. Do I respect Kauffman's expose, or can I brush him aside. Thank you. Jeff Blumberg Johannesberg, South Africa ANSWER: Dear Mr. Blumberg Yes, I know the work of Start Kauffman that you mention. I think that he is very superficial in his assessment, and speaks without having seriously considered what he talks about. No doubt in many occassion have people spoken of living system as self sustaing totalities. But I do much more than just having the idea of living systems as autopoietic systems in the possible aristotelian or kantian sense. I do not know about Goodwin that seems to be his friend. What I do is to spell out the nature of the living system as a molecular autopoietic system when I indicate: that a living system is a molecular autopoietic system, and that as such it is a closed network of molecular productions in which, a) the molecules produced are of the same kinds of the molecules that produced them, b) recursively constitute with their interactions the same network of productions that produce them, and c) specify with their operation the extension of the network as a whole in the molecular space. At the same time I am explicit in claiming that as molecular systems living system are necessarily open to the flow of matter and energy, out as autopoietic systems they are closed in their dynamics of states. I am also explicit in claiming that as living systems are discrete entities, they exist as such only as long as their condition of autopoietic molecular singularities is conserved. I have also claimed that the history of living systems is the history of the reproductive conservation of molecular autopoietic systems in a continuous opennes for change in the manner that it is realized. I have also said that the origin of living systems occurs as a case of spontaneous organization. Notice that I speak of spontaneous organization, not of self organization as Mr Kauffman speaks. And I do so because the selfness of a system arises with the system, so a system cannot organize itself. Nor Aristoteles, nor Kant, and I think that none of Mr. Kauffman friends have done what I have done. No doubt many people may have said similar things, or may have been close to point to them, but they are not said or pointed at until they are so. No, I do not think that you should brush away what Mr. Kauffman says, but you should look into it to see the validity of what he says in the domain in which it has validity. Yours sincerely, Humberto Maturana R. January, 1998