Hi Paul and Mike,
you have chosen a very significant passage re the thoroughness people
are connected to their environment and Mike's response gives more and
detailed background.
> >Living
>>beings suffer and die when isolated from their environment, whether
> >in terms of energy, stuff or "innovation" ("news" if you want) i.e.
>>coordinated reorganization of internal and external structures.
Indeed the Montreal and many other experiments on sensory deprivation
have deep consequences that were only partially drawn then and since.
Why not? I think because the then and present basic belief is humans
are machines dependent on stimulation. So the results were mostly
interpreted as demonstrating humans need input to be functioning;
otherwise they go wild. That is an interpretation on the motivational
level. This is certainly not wrong. But much more interesting, in my
view, is an interpretation that says humans are part systems in
connection with their environment. If this connection is radically
disturbed, e.g. by reduction to near zero traffic the inner system
will dysfunction. Iit is in fact more than sensory input deprivation,
acting is also blocked. Ordinarily there is two-way traffic; only
partially similar would be an overload because the system can
"switch" in filters. This view would rather suggest that the IntrA-
is a subsystem that is dependent on coordination with the ExtrA- or
environmental subsystem.
I have a passage in notes to the section quoted by Paul suppressed in
my post because it is far-reaching and maybe difficult to digest (and
there is already enough to). Since you and Mike are interested I
shall add here the gist of it.
They key point of the passage is: coordinated reorganization of
internal and external structures. That process is is usually known as
sensory input or stimulation (vs. deprivation). I called it
"innovation" in my text, sometimes in jargon "news" because it is
what can introduce innovation into the IntrA structures, as by news,
i.e. structures not already formed and stored for replication. And it
can also, not to forget, innovate some ExtrA-structures. It is of
course better, as Mike has well understood, to speak of
discoordination / coordination, which also means discrepancy between
IntrA and ExtrA and thus forces to bring things into the move. In
consequence, I would conceive of this coordinating process as in
essence one of learning. For when the IntrA is reorganized as a
function of the ExtrA the former has learned about the latter.
Similarly when some ExtrA structure is reorganized in terms of
existing IntrA-structures the formes has "learnt" by the acting of
the latter upon the former. We don't call this learning, the
environment does not, only individuals do learn, we say. But as a
result of the its changes the environment will behave differently;
and is not that the point in learning? Perhaps better to say: we
observe an act of culture generation, inside and outside. For often,
the induced reorganization change is mutual
It is obvious from this theory what has been found in practice and
has never found a totally satisfying explanation as far as I can see:
an active individual will also learn better, active in the sense that
it has the possibility to arrange and rearrange parts of the
environment. Also an active individual rearranging environmental
organization and allowed to live on with that can make use of it as
an external memory. E.g. walking a new city will create many bounds
between internal and external memory and will allow for much better
and safer orientation than learning from a map. A self-arranged
bookshelf will allow to find almost everthing, even if other than
perfectly in order.
Perfect coordination is perhaps less of a problem than it is boring,
Mike. The random manner the IntrA-system is running with deprivation
is a strong argument against to constructivist contention that humans
be isolated from their environs.
Thanks also for reminding Ed Hutchins' book, Paul. Blurring the
boundaries between person and environment is certainly an important
first step (see my 1985 paper in English: "Ecological Boundaries" on
the net). More helpful is conceiving of the intercourse as mutual or
coordinated reorganisation. Hutchins has many examples well fitting
my perspective; as far as I remember his "functional systems" could
easily be reinterpreted eco-semiotically.
Alfred
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch Website: http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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