Thank you for your thoughtful remarks on interaction, artifacts and interaction.
You do justice to the inseparability of mind, self and society, a concept with
which we are all still coadapting.
Molly Freeman
Alfred Lang wrote:
> Dear Eva, Mike, Naoki, Eugene, Francoise, Bill, Luiz, Judy, and many more,
>
> though still lacking in time (hopefully soon to change! I'd also like
> to comment on the meme point of view and beg for being allowed to come
> to that later) and unable to really carefully read all those recent
> "interactions" among people about people and objects, I cannot resist
> adding a thought. I understand, the discussion began with the question
> of whether the use of the word "interaction" should include objects or
> artefacts or should be restricted to people and Mike arguing the former.
>
> I would not like to fight over the word, however, we certainly are in
> need of a word including both. "Entity" might be a (not entirely
> satisfying) candidate. Like Mike I tend to use the word interaction for
> the process of influence of anything that can have effects upon
> anything else discernible. It might be restricted to processes of a
> non-necessary and not fully contingent (as I say, semiotive) character.
> But almost negligible are cases of things having effects at all where
> influence is not mutual, even if sometimes quite onesided (such as e.g.
> in gravity systems of large and very small masses). The reason is that
> artefacts and persons, physical structures and people, in general, make
> each other up in the long run. The term transaction appears to be aptly
> used in cases of interaction that leave one or both interactants
> changed (including moved in time and space); because this is the basic
> process in all evolution: biotic, individual, or cultural, in
> particular.
>
> Now, my question is: why should we afford and even be happy to make a
> separation (supposedly real difference, not only our distinction,
> whether total or in certain respects only!) between people and
> artefacts on an a priori basis by attempting to define such entities in
> one of the two very ubiquitous ways: either (A) as classes of entities,
> defining each class by itself, such that any candidate token must be
> either a member or a nonmember of that class; or (B) both classes
> together by claiming a dichotomizing difference (in reality) or
> distinctive feature (of our convenience or arbitration) in such a way
> that any classifiable exemplar must belong either to A or to B? (We The
> consequences of both these procedures seem to me to be devastating, if
> we talk of consequential definitions, at least, definitions that lead
> to blinding one's sight in that they go beyond simple provisional
> markings of entities to allow for communication.
>
> Simply put, in case (A) we are left with insulae of "not-yet-knowledge"
> but taken for "knowledge", each defined by itself as a class, which
> cannot ever be brought into real connections but remain connected only
> in our heads; there they will remain nominal terms forever, as the
> medieval philosophers well knew; and the words stuck onto them start
> their proper life cycles.
>
> In the second case (B), it's the same problem, but, in addition, even
> worse, for two reasons at least; Because, firstly, by defining firstly
> one entity class in isolation, and, secondly, including a second class,
> entirely dependent on the first, we simply double our difficulties by
> believing to define two classes by defining one. Secondly, I know of no
> dichotomies in evolving systems that allow for a clearcut boundary
> between one class of entities and its, in some way, contrasting class.
> So we pay by multiplied difficulties and consequences of dwelling in a
> nominal world of terms that looses connection to its presumed reference
> field.
>
> (In fact there is a second, even more serious problem behind my present
> argument which I want to neglect for the moment (since it is presently
> discussed on the list, and intensively, so, in a very concrete form):
> namely the consequences of defining generals in the form of class
> membership and thus being forced to use extensional logic. The latter
> may be a good thing for dealing with well-defined symbols but quite
> problematic for dealing with "natural" or even with evolving systems
> and their parts. Knowledge is not in any kind of definition but in
> understanding interaction among definables. Definitions say only how
> things have effects upon the definer, rather than how they effect upon
> each other. The former is not really interesting in a general sense,
> though it might interest a narcisst.)
>
> Obviously, any distinction (in our view) or difference (referring to
> some variation among things existing or having effects independently of
> our way of conceiving it) between people and artefacts on the class
> level is an example of my case (B) above. The borderline between the
> two mututally dependent classes can mostly to always be conceived in
> probably several dozens of ways in a manner that could be of at least
> some value. Say, in the case of persons vs. things: living vs.
> non-living; operating on inherited vs. (also) on individually acquired
> guidelines; symbolizing vs. non-symbolizing in any of several kinds of
> definitions of symbols; internally vs. (also) externally symbolizing;
> intential vs. non-intentional, again in a variety of understandings of
> intentionality; rational vs. non-rational; creative vs. dumb; endowed
> with spoken language vs. not so; etc. etc. But I would not want now to
> go into any of such possible distinctions of differences. My point is
> another one, at the same time more general and more specifically
> pertinent.
>
> My point is with kinds of "definitions". To pack it in a question,
> first a general question, then one pertaining to the particular field:
> (1) Can we ever, if we realize we deal with a world of relatively
> self-sustained parts interacting and transacting selectively among each
> other and by exactly such transactions changing as well as stabilizing
> each other, often constituting each other in the first place -- can we
> ever hope to come to grips with such a world by using insularized or
> dichotomized concepts? Should we not use concepts capable to
> dynamically interact among each other (like their references) and thus
> generating new or alterating existing conceptions as it is the case
> with at least some of the real entities our concepts are supposed to
> refer? (For those who want to follow the line: a little more, though
> not enough, of this idea of constructive methodology is to be found in
> my recent article in C&P 3/1997 on Boesch.)
>
> (2) In the particular distinction discussed here (and possibly to be
> generalized to many more similar topics): how can we ever understand
> the difference or differences between entities we are inclined to
> categorize mutually exclusively as either persons or objects (natural
> or artefactual) when we put a difference into our definition(s) in the
> first place? Do we not deprive ourselves of the very possibility of
> understanding possible differences by depriving the entities in
> question of the chance of demonstrating such differences? Said again in
> the form of procedural advice: allow all sorts of exemplars of both or
> any types of things that you might have such an interest in and that
> may be loosly described as "interacting" in a very broad sense to
> really interact under "natural" conditions, i.e. such conditions under
> which these entities occur and encounter without your intervention, and
> then observe how they mutually deal with each other. (You might look
> for or arrange occasions where such encounters happen more often than
> naturally; of course you may vary such occasions in planned fashion to
> experiment on decisive questions; but to experiment from the very
> beginning can only make you blind.)
>
> I think you would soon find, that both people and many artefacts would
> not exist as you find them or would be quite different, if they had to
> exist without interactions of the kind you had your view on in the
> first place. The conclusion, of course, is that you could not
> understand either of the two classes of entities without understanding
> the other and also the kind of process binding then into one system of
> common evelution. So you have to investigate on the basis of a
> conception bringing them together into one single conceptual system.
> The real differences then might gradually arise out of observing their
> behavior within the single conception embracing both parts and their
> evolving, of their forming one type of system and yet being
> nevertheless so different and even apparently self-sustainded that in
> their interaction they would, each as an exemplar or token, complement
> and drive each other.
>
> Would this not in the long run lead to better science and understanding
> than fighting about this or that aprior definition the reason of which
> would probably not lie in the things discernible but rather in strings
> attached to the supposed distinction such as a desire to reserve a
> better place for humans in this world against anything else?
>
> Sorry, I didn't expect, once again, my glimpse of a response to grow
> into a note so long. Anyhow, for long I plan to write something "On the
> Tragedy of Definitions Fixed" or so. Naturally, all of the above does
> not at all imply that I might believe there are no real differences
> between people and artefacts. It only states my objections to
> presupposing any particular such distinction or difference rather than
> investigating it based on experience with the real "thing".
>
> All the best and Yours, Alfred
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang who-is-at psy.unibe.ch
> Website: http://www.cx.unibe.ch/psy/ukp/langpapers/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------