Open peer commentary on the article “Audience and Eigenform: Cybersemiotic Epistemology and the “Truth of the Human Spirit” in Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Truthfulness, for both actors and their audiences, emerges at the intersection of physiology and social embeddedness, according to Scholte’s argument for the importance of parsing eigenforms. But an understanding of this process on the part of actors and embedding it in their training cannot alone effectuate the social change for which Scholte calls absent change in what is presented in visible, mainstream venues in productions willing to deploy analogous progressive insights and techniques.

Open peer commentary on the article “Audience and Eigenform: Cybersemiotic Epistemology and the “Truth of the Human Spirit” in Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Scholte’s counterintuitive use of the arts as laboratories of perceptual inquiry investigates meaning, language and formation of perceptual systems. Theory of Logical Types offers one way of understanding the power of theatre as a tool revealing the contextual organizing structures of perception.

Open peer commentary on the article “Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: This commentary reflects broadly on the concept of eigenform and reflexive domains, focusing on the idea that second-order science is neither the same as nor completely distinct from ordinary living.

Open peer commentary on the article “Eigenform and Reflexivity” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: Kauffman proposes to understand scientific thinking as including not only observations but also the act that enables their intentional use. This provides a constructivist opportunity: extending scientific thinking to gaining personal expertise.

Open peer commentary on the article “Audience and Eigenform: Cybersemiotic Epistemology and the “Truth of the Human Spirit” in Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Scholte’s article offers a most valuable reflection on cybernetics and acting. This commentary reflects on interaction mechanisms between actors and audiences.

Context: The evolution of perceptual systems and hence of observers remains largely disconnected from the question of the emergence of classical objects and spacetime. This disconnection between the biosciences and physics impedes progress toward understanding the role of the “observer” in physical theory. Problem: In this article we consider the problem of how to understand objects and spacetime in observer-relative evolutionary terms. Method: We rely on a comparative analysis using multiple formal frameworks. Results: The eigenform construct of von Foerster is compared to other formal representations of observer-environment interactions. Eigenforms are shown to be encoded on observer-environment interfaces and to encode fitness consequences of actions. Space and time are components of observational outcomes in this framework; it is suggested that spacetime constitutes an error-correcting code for fitness consequences. Implications: Our results contribute to an understanding of the world in which neither objects nor spacetime are observer-independent. Constructivist content: The eigenform concept of von Foerster is linked to the concepts of decoherence and holographic encoding from physics and the concept of fitness from evolutionary biology.

Key words: Active inference, boundary, conscious agent, icon, Markov blanket, redundancy.

Open peer commentary on the article “Semiosis as Eigenform and Observation as Recursive Interpretation” by Diana Gasparyan. Abstract: In order to capitalize on the self-referentiality of interpretation, as marked by Gasparyan, I suggest considering semiosis - the process of signification - as a systemic consequence of interacting agents with a need to act under uncertainty.

Context: By proposing to regard objects as “tokens for eigenbehavior,” von Foerster’s seminal paper opposes the intuitive subject-object dualism of traditional philosophy, which considers objects to be instances of an external world Problem: We argue that this proposal has two implications, one for epistemology and one for the demarcation between the natural sciences and the humanities. Method: Our arguments are based on insights gained in computational models and from reviewing the contributions to this special issue. Results: Epistemologically, von Foerster’s proposal suggests that what is called “reality” could be seen as an ensemble of eigenforms generated by the eigenbehavior that arises in the interaction of multiple dynamics. Regarding science, the contributions to this special issue demonstrate that the concept of eigenbehavior can be applied to a variety of disciplines from the formal and natural sciences to the humanities. Its universal applicability provides a strong argument for transdisciplinarity, and its emphasis on the observer points in the direction of an observer-inclusive science. Implications: Thinking in eigenbehavior may not only have implications for tearing down the barriers between sciences and humanities (although a common methodology based on von Foerster’s transdisciplinary approach is still to crystalize), a better understanding of eigenbehaviors may also have profound effects on our understanding of ourselves. This also opens the way to innovative behavior design/modification technologies.

Key words: Eigenbehavior, eigenform, Heinz von Foerster, computational philosophy, scientific methodology, observer-inclusive science, transdisciplinarity, nondualism

Context: Recent decades have seen the development of new branches of semiotics, including biosemiotics, cognitive semiotics, and cybersemiotics. An important feature of these concepts is the question of the relationship between the linguistic and extralinguistic world: in particular, the constructivist question of the role of observation and the observer in semiosis. Problem: Our understanding of the observer’s role in the framework of second-order cybernetics is incomplete without understanding where in the observation the significant activity, semiosis, takes place. By describing this process, we will see that semiosis has the structure of an eigenform. I will concentrate on linguistic semiosis, and will illuminate the role of the sign and interpretation, emphasizing the scheme and logic of this process. Method: I use theoretical and conceptual methods of argumentation, such as logical (deductive) and philosophical (phenomenological) proofs and thought experiments. Results: My argumentation underlines the importance of including interpretation (via the observer) in the process of signification. It reveals the reciprocal connections among all three elements (sign, object and interpretant) and their cyclic nature. I show that semiosis works according to the principle of an eigenform because of the cyclic and recursive nature of semiotic interpretation. Implications: My conclusions have productive implications for epistemic theories, linguistic theories, philosophy of language, theories of semiology, and semantics. They support the idea that we are unable to understand the world beyond language. Linguistic semiosis is an eigenform that creates the world in itself and through itself. The sign and the object are mutually and referentially related to each other. Constructivist content: Using the concept of eigenform helps to clarify how linguistic semiosis allows people to exist in language, bring forth objects and meaning potentials and construct reality. In this process, human beings self-fabricate as observers and, using aspects of “language,” become interpreters.

Key words: Eigenform, interpretation, interpretant, linguistic semiosis, object, recursion, semiotics, semiosis, sign.

Open peer commentary on the article “Semiosis as Eigenform and Observation as Recursive Interpretation” by Diana Gasparyan. Abstract: I discuss what it means to comprehend in Gasparyan’s theory that defines language as an eigenform. For that, I raise questions concerning the conditions of mutual understanding of signs, Gasparyan’s pragmatic approach, and her reference to society as a limit of interpretation.