My start into this theme, puzzle or paradox consists of the following
three quotations from last week. First, Gordon Wells reports on his
difficulties to understand the concept of "crystallized knowledge
*in* artifacts" as used by Engestr=F6m and Cole in a chapter for
Salomon's book on Distributed Cognition. Then David Russell offers
a solution, namely to always think of artifacts-in-use when one
wants to talk of the knowing and of knowledge. Finally Jay Lemke writes
up some thoughts on the relation of social systems and persons, not
answering directly to Gordon and David. But in essence he says that
knowledge resides in *practices*, making these the fundamental units
of social systems.=20
At 23:33 23.4.1996, Gordon Wells "What and where is knowledge":
>What I am trying to understand is what it is that is "in" both people and=
=20
>artifacts that can be referred to as "knowledge". Or to put it=20
>differently: people engaged in an activity know with the aid of=20
>artifacts, but what and where is "knowledge"?
At 09:21 24.4.1996, David Russell "Re: What and where is knowledge":
>Perhaps "knowledge", as (my) Dewey tried to say, might be more usefully
>(for the purposes of analyzing learning and teaching) be better
>conceptualized as "know-how," where the knowing and doing are inseparable
>functions of human interaction. I think of this as something like what Jay
>was getting at last year when he insisted, if I recall, that tools be
>thought of for CHAT purposes always as tools-in-use. It's harder to ask
>"where's the know-how?" than to ask "where is knowledge?"--a sign that we
>might be overcoming the tendency of (scientific) English to
>nominalize/reify (inter)actions into things (I'm thinking of Jim Martin and
>Halliday's WRITING SCIENCE).=20
At 22:07 25.4.1996, Jay Lemke "Luhmann and units":
>I feel some kinship with Arne's reference to Luhmann (whom I am
>only beginning now to read) that individual persons are not parts
>of social systems at all. In my view social systems are composed
>of practices (one level of aggregation and organization of which
>corresponds to 'activity' as in Leontiev, _sensu stricto_), and
>not of persons. 'Persons' are another construct, out of
>practices, construed by still other practices. And such 'persons'
>are not identical to 'organisms', though they are indeed
>'individuals' (in the technical sense in which electrons are not
>and an ecosystem also is). ...
The paradox that arises from the confrontation of these quotes is
roughly this: If *there are* indeed the autonomous process levels (in=20
the sense of a critical ontology) of persons/humans/individuals, on
the one hand, and of social systems (groups, families, organisations),=20
on the other hand, then what we mean with "personal knowledge"=20
(as knowing-that, experience, wiseness, or skill, expertise, mastery)=20
must, *at the same time!*, be totally separated from the "distributed=20
knowledge" operating in a social system, and also "intimately
connected" to that web of practices, because these are all practices
*of* people (Luhmann uses the German "Menschen").=20
It seems to me that everybody has a very strong tendency to evade
this paradox. Usually the autonomy of persons is accepted, and the
autonomy of social systems is denied insofar as the possibility
of a "group mind" is radically excluded. Social systems are seen
like natural systems; non-thinking, brute force machinery, much
like the "world of billiard balls and galaxies" (as Gregory Bateson,=20
depicts this world view--very different from his own--in his
"Mind and Nature - A Necessary Unity"). Some who have read Marxian
writing construe social systems as operating to the dictate of a=20
different kind of laws, as "the system" driven by greed and profit,=20
Capitalism, whatever.
Postmodern thinking turns this totally around, it seems to me,
and grants everything cognitive only to social systems, evading
the paradox by a denial of the autonomy of persons/individuals/humans.
Jay writes:
>... But I am afraid that such a model does
>not allow any autonomy at all to notions like minds or psyches;
>they are possible units we may construct, whose usefulness must
>be demonstrated against plausible alternatives, but all within
>the framework of dynamic self-organizing (and self-construing,
>i.e. semiotic) systems of practices (which are themselves always
>also material processes of the ecosystem).
>
>At-the-computer-to-you-writing-JAY-of-today.
This extremely de-centred view is not necessary, though, even if
we opt for only one underlying theory for our constructions of
the human and the natural world -- dynamic self-organization
of material systems, autopoiesis, self-production of the living
and the knowing things. The beauty of this new paradigm is to
incorporate freedom, contingency-as-opposed-to-determination,
even love and mutual aid, into the world as a whole, and in all
of its levels, parts, and elements. To be sure, there have been
many similar world-views in our common human history, Eastern,=20
Western, Southern... The important difference is the connection
of the romantic enchantment of nature with the operational means
of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Therefore, it is today
possible to demonstrate self-organisation and emergence of=20
autonomy by pointing to computer screens, running models.
Of course, Jay is right, it has to be demonstrated that the
construction (theory, world-view, practice of accepting)
simultaneous autonomies of persons and communities (Gemeinschaften
und Gesellschaften) does indeed give "us" (persons and institutions)
the necessary means to find a healthy way out of "our" present
problematic.=20
Luhmann provides a very interesting tool: the concept of=20
"interpenetration", and he stresses his conviction that it is this
idea that explains both the relation between persons ("psychische
Systeme") and social systems, on the one hand, and the relations
between two persons, what he aptly calls "intimacy relations".
I had the archetypical Aha!-effect when I read this: The autonomy
of social systems could be easily understood for those who adhere
to the modern (Cartesian) idea of the subject by looking at them
as "just like a partner-person, not like a natural habitat or=20
surrounding". And the postmodern ones could understand the
autonomy of persons with the help of their own model of a social=20
system. -- Stop it, Arne(3), says Arne(2): Aren't they doing
this already? Multiple selves, writing-this-JAYs-of-today ?
Yes=3Dbut: these are mostly self-understandings of these same
voices, and the problem of how *two of those* might ever form
a new, emergent autopoiesis is not solved at all, rather it
becomes (nearly "infinitely") more complex than in the modern
version (of romance, say).
So, what has all of this to do with the problem of the distributed
and the personal knowledge ? Well, all I can do here and today,
is to point at this interesting parallel:
If we understand "Mind" first as a *process* of cognition, of
understanding and self-regulation, and second as "the pattern
that connects" (Bateson), then there surely "are" public minds
at work everywhere. Also, Descartes is right in his pointing to
the autonomy of the poor conscious me reflecting about his
life, there's simply no way to deny the autonomy of my me except
the deed of killing my self. So, "there is" a "mental" mind, too,
for sure, and I know what I know, and what not (hopefully).
=20
It is helpful to understand the relation between me and a group
in the image of the relation between me and my intimate partner.
His or her knowledge: How is it related to my knowledge? We know
several things together in a way that is a property (both senses)
of the partnership, and that no one of us can simply take away
when we divorce, and still use them. One remembers the possibility
of realising a certain action, but it turns out to be impossible
because there has been a joint practice, and this has gone with
the end of the dyadic autopoiesis.
So, if you concede that "there are" *intimate Minds* going on
even if partners are spatially separated--otherwise the
typical synchronicities would be "queer phenomena" to be=20
disregarded by non-esoteric scholars--then there are (for the
modernists) also *public minds* doing their business of knowing
and scheming and reckoning, and (for the postmodernists) also
the *mental minds* (or psyches) going on "inside" persons. The
inside is really that of an Umwelt in Uexk=FCll's sense, keeping
in mind Gregory Bateson's admonition to not break the cycles
of the bodily operations into external "material" and internal
"ideal" part-processes. -- I know, by the way, that Jay thinks
exactly along these lines about the fruitfulness (if any) of
using the inside/outside topology.
Ah, yes, one other hint before I close this Sunday's epistle:
Yutaka Sayeki once presented a beautiful graph, another very
interesting variant of the triangular icon for mediation:
Me =3D>=3D indirect =3D>=3D Them (alien)
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\ /
\-> Thou >/ =20
(medium,mediator,interpreter)
See you, read you: Arne.
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