Re: SemEco 1 - answer re system, boundaries, materialism

From: Alfred Lang (alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 11:41:12 PST


Steve, you wrote:

> I would choose the word "systems" for the sense Alfred is using the
>word "structure".

and gave many good reasons. And I think I have good reasons not to
use 'system' instead of 'structure'. That semeco offers tools to deal
with systems is so evident that it need not be said. Except for the
emphasis of ecosystem, i.e. systems differentiated in an individual
organism and its umwelt (environment specific to that individual). My
reasons will become evident in my next few postings.

Let me only say in advance, that I find system terminology is not
without problems. There are basically two approaches, one treats of
systems with fixed structures, treats of their dynamics exclusively
and has no means to explain how the systems structure come about or
can change. Cybernetics and all sorts or regulative systems attaing
target states are example of this. The second approach wants to
explain how system structure comes about. It needs to presuppose
framing structural conditions and claims processes are constituive of
structuring themselves. Examples of this approach are the
self-organization theories (see below for the notion of "self" and
the role of boundaries). The two approaches have nothing in common, I
think. I believe this is because they separate structure and process
in an arbitrary way.

So I do not want to be confounded with system theorists. In addition,
they usually treat systems as mechanisms, often conceived
stochastically. And they may use information theory notions, again
essentially mechanistic concepts depending on not alway fitting
quantification. In contrast, I think it is necessary to conceive of
systems allowing of genuine evolution as being operating on the basis
of meaning, i.e. I conceive them semiotically. But you will soon see
that my generative semiotic differs from normal semiotic.

I think I could say that I want to differentiate as clearly and as
realistically as possible between structure and process in relative
distinction in order to bring them in their proper co-relation:
processe always involve structures, and structures result from and
carry processes.

Also you write:
> Sorting out boundaries within and between systems, such as their
>evolving and devolving structures, then becomes an important part of
>analyzing reality. I believe this is consistent with what Alfred
>was saying except to introduce the term "systems."

Probably not, I should warn. Which also speaks again reminding system
theory notions. Indeed, systems are mostly defined, i.e. the notion
implies system boundaries; what belongs to a system, what not? So we
are in a similar situation as with objects: we have to define them in
advance, based on how they effect us, rather than how they buils
themselves under given circumstances. Semeco, in contrast, treats
processes and structures as of equal weight, but gives strategic
primacy to processes or the dynamic relations between system parts.
And such system parts need not pre-exist; they can form in the moment
and be gone after the process. This is not what one e usually thinks
of a system It is the bindings of structures rather than the
boundaries of systems, that semeco focusses upon.

Our philosophical and scientific traditions give primacy, probably
more than strategically, rather essentially, to substances. Systems
may often be seen as a kind of more complex and dynamic in itself
objects. Think of Plato or Aristoteles and all their followers. They
ask: what is this or that? I suspect that is a consequence of the
operation of the figure-ground principle in our perceptual-cognitive
organisation. As soon as you think evolutively the prime question
becomes=: how does this relate to what?

The figure-ground principle, in my opinion one of the, if not the
greatest attainment of modern psychology, lies at the base of our
traditional conceptualities. I may quote here from a post I wrote to
XMCA on 2000.08.30. It also says more to the boundary problem you
rise.

Obviously the figure-ground organization of perception and the
ensuing cognitive constancy and fixation tendencies over time is
playing games with the observer, both when looking at persons and at
"objects" of the environment. It is well known that also the ground
may be essential for the ensuing receptive and actional process. "The
function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold of sensuous
impressions to unity." (Peirce, loc.cit., §16). I suspect that this
feature of our psychological organization is at the root of the
notion introduced by the Greek philosophers of "substantia" as a
carrier of "accidentes" which is at the base of the possibility of
class concepts, as ravaging as practical. (I judge the
figure-ground-principle to be one of several great and missed chances
of the psychologists to bring their empirically based knowledge to
bear widely in philosophy and the sciences including psychology
itself. Psychology is so often a "science" that follows, confirms and
elaborates preconceptions and so fixing beliefs rather than
dissecting and extending our understanding.)

This fixating inclination may also have lead to the notions of object
and subject and the strange reversal of meaning of the latter in the
history of ideas from the subjected to the subjecting. As a
consequence in the Western world -- and well made powerful in its
basic language features, not so in all languages of the world --
substances have gained primacy over relations and thus the static
dominates the dynamic. Parmenides and Platon have superseded, also
suppressed Heraclites, so to say. And thus the ideal of the eternal
existence has produced the objective of catching all conceivable
processes in terms of law or function in the hope of predicting
things forever: sort of staticization of the dynamic. Systematically,
being has been given precedence over becoming. Of course, there is no
good justification for that. Most scientists, though researching
processes, are only happy when they succeed to freeze events and
activities in a formula. In our conceiving it, ours is still, in
spite of so much knowledge about the evolutive nature of the cosmos,
of our planet, of life, of individuals and of culture, essentially a
static world view. I think the subject-object opposition is one of
the most powerful manifestation of this. Much activity in the field
is an attempt to reintroduce process and so amend the fixating power
the the concepts. Unfortunately, it is not of "concrete things" and
their dynamics. It is of abstracted notions neglecting the
connectedness and dynamics of the real systems in question. (Cf. my
other message to come soon on the concrete and abstraction.)

Of course, in some way, both a static how-things-are and a dynamic
how-things-come-about view are correct. The problem is with primacy.
You cannot extend a static understanding to become a dynamic one. Yet
the static can be a phase of dynamics in the real world. Evolution is
as much stabilized as it is innovative. Innovation alone would
explode things, overstabilization will paralyse and make further
evolution impossible. I cannot understand the widespread desire to
fix things; it breaks life. Twice in evolution a fixation strategy
has gained a major hold: instinct in bioevolution and science in
cultural evolution. Both function on the premise that the world will
behave as it has before. Of course both are very elegant strategies
-- as long as the world stays the same. As soon as things change it
is a deadly strategy; witness the animal phylae extinct. Science is
allright in dealing with atoms and the like; applying the same
principle to life, persons, and cultures is deadly because it fails
the real. Our children shall have to suffer the experience. To create
a static concept of the object and the subject is forgetting about
the real thing. It is hopeless to think you can do it provisionally
and then introduce dynamics as an amendment. (You may think, even if
you agree in principle, I am overstating my case? Perhaps. But don't
forget that there is a long history of people claiming that same case
of giving more weight to the processes almost in vain and most have
been actively suppressed: from Heraclites to Herder, from Bruno to
Bergson, from Peirce to Dewey, from Nietzsche to
"you-name-your-favorite" etc.)

As to the materialistic differentiations, I agree with your points,
Steve. I meant reductionistic materialims. Yet this again is not a
reasonable category for me. Matter, and in turn materialism, in any
sense, is (based on) one of those abstractions reified our conceptual
store abound. You will later see how I can avoid the notion by
undermining the distinction between mind and matter in any version.
The ground is already in the matter-energy-formation term.

Best, Alfred

-- 

Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland http://www.langpapers.net --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch



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