Thanks, Bruce, for your kind support, at least to some extent, for my
way of dealing with objects, systems and boundaries. And that you
extend the reservations in view the role of boundaries to AT.
Activity systems certainly also fall under precarious doubt of
whether to include and to exclude what?
The solutions you propose in your paper with Francis Wilson goes a
step in the same direction I have been struggling before I took the
courage to reverse primacy: to give strategic primacy to the
relations rather than to substances, things, objects, systems and the
like. Systems are internally differentiated objects, aren't they? If
yes, my objections to the notion of object pertain to systems
predefined as well.
You, like me, emphasize that systems with boundaries are determined
doubly in that
>both the nature of the subject matter and the stance of the observer
>will define the boundaries best suited to a particular goal.
The first is inevitable, the second, if also not to evade, sort of
forbids general theory and would render all science so far
perspectival and interest colored. That may indeed be the case. And
it would be reasonable to accept the fact. Which is certainly
accepted today by some philosophers of science and a handful of
scientists from some branches. However, some discomfort may forbid
such overgeneralization. Science is of high value even if it is not
100% clean.
I also have argued that much of science suffers
>from the impossibility of seeing the whole (i.e. everything in all
>its interconnections) and a resulting overeagerness to deal with
>what appears tractable.
Think e.g. of the role of linear polynomial equations that have been
used because nonlinear polynomials have simply not been manageable
before computers could and still are problematic. But the
counter-measures you propose produce similar effect. I'd liken them
to moral rules. They may be taken into consideration as long as one
has a strong conscience or as long as there are no consequences to
fear. And certainly not as long as you take great advantage from not
following them. So I was and am not really satisfied to leave the
strategy as is and do some patchwork to amend a little bit.
I had been engaged in understanding boundaries for decades, first in
understanding the built environment, but soon extended to much more.
One of the things that gave me thought has been the observation that
most disciplines have treated boundaries one-sidedly. E.g. law and
social relations think of boundaries as separating, almost
exclusively; one example are state or home boundaries and their
fences and inclusive vs. exclusive rights. Another example is the
notions of ego or self or person and attempts to clear what belongs
to it and what not. Biology, at least parts of it, on the other side
has happily focussed on the role of boundaries as something to
connect two domains in subtle ways; the prime example of this is the
membrane, e.g. the cell membrane.
SemEco may, I am not yet fully sure about that, make the notion of
boundary if not superfluous, at least it does strongly degrade it to
secondary and minor importance. With the strategic primacy of
relations over substances, of the intercourse over the relata, it
becomes possible to get at something by following the relations at
work to bring it about. So you can renounce defining a system or its
parts in advance (in the double sense of the word defining: drawing
boundaries (latin: fines) and fixing the essentials of something
under neglect of the rest of its qualities and potentials to make it
usable as a class concept).
My further and most important example quite important for starting
entirely new ways of thinking from which SemEco then emerged were
attempts to understand the boundary between the person and her
environment. It was in the early 80s that I decided this cannot be
done (see the somewhat dated English paper under:
http://www.psy.unibe.ch/ukp/langpapers/pap1980-89/1985_ecological_boundaries.htm
Much of the person or self is obviously outside the body boundaries.
Yet take somebodies cloth or items of memory away, replace the with
an uniform and obligatory normalized items and s/he will be another
person. The same with deeply related others. Witness the history of
hundreds of despotisms, small or large, all over the word and through
history and their enslaving successes with such procedures. Or some
parts of the body may be lost and the person persists. Etc. etc.
Here is one the origins of my giving up that idea of pre-defining
things according to our own fancy.
There has been a long development along these lines which cannot be
expanded her. Eventually I was getting a push around 1990 when, with
assistance of Peirce, I developed generative semiotic and semiotic
ecology.
Today I would hold your view that the boundaries of systems
>must be defined by means of a process which
>uncovers the real logical interconnections which are relevant in determining
>the answer to a particular question / how to reach a given goal. Thus the
>boundaries used (which are not the only possible ones) flow out of the
>nature of the raw material under consideration - including its historical
>development and the conditions for its coming into being i.e. process and
>structure or perhaps better put, structure in process.
for a very good, though a bit provisional and also risky (for
succumbing illusive paths) step into eventually giving up the need or
the urge to define system boundaries. I see in your remark that
understanding (I would say, rather than boundaries) "flow out of the
nature of the raw material under consideration" the crucial point.
But not so when system boundaries are decided upon from outside and
in advance>
The SemEco strategy: If it is reasonable to think that the world is
constituted and regulated through the generative relations among
existing structures, then understanding such process does best to
reconstruct such generative and modifying etc. processes. Make
generic conceptions that do with suitable symbols what can happen in
an evolutive world. This would allow to describe what really happens
in observed parts of some world. And there would be no need to define
systems to be observed in advance. You would just allow your
descriptive tools to follow chains and nets of influence going from
structures to structures that you can discern (and infer structures
needed to fill the gap where observation is unattainable). If your
conceptual tools are generic enough it would keep your research down
to earth rather than succumbing system notions designed in advance
and projected onto the world.
Best, Alfred
--Alfred Lang, Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland http://www.langpapers.net --- alfred.lang@psy.unibe.ch
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