Excerpt: Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”

This paper makes a comparison between enactivism and Levinas’ philosophy. Enactivism is a recent development in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that generally defines cognition in terms of a subject’s natural interactions with the physical environment. In recent years, enactivists have been focusing on social and ethical relations by introducing the concept of participatory sensemaking, according to which ethical know-how spontaneously emerges out of natural relations of participation and communication, that is, through the exchange of knowledge. This paper will argue first that, although participatory sensemaking is a valuable concept in that it offers a practical and realistic way of understanding ethics, it nevertheless downplays the significance of otherness for understanding ethics. I will argue that Levinas’ work demonstrates in turn that otherness is significant for ethics in that we cannot completely anticipate others through participation or know-how. We cannot live the other’s experiences or suffering, which makes ethical relation so difficult and serious (e.g. care for a terminally ill person always falls short to a certain extent). I will argue next that enactivism and Levinas’ philosophy nevertheless do not exclude each other insofar they share a similar concept of subjectivity as a quality of naturally interacting with the external world to gain knowledge (Levinas speaks of dwelling). Finally, I will argue that enactivism’s notion of participatory sensemaking also offers something which Levinas’ insufficiently defines, namely a concept of social justice, based on equality and participation, that emerges out of natural relations.

Key words: enactivism, levinas, otherness, social justice, naturalism

Most of what nowadays is called evolutionary epistemology tries to explain the phylogenetic acquisition of inborn ‘knowledge’ and the evolution of the mental instruments concerned – mostly in terms of adaptation to external conditions. These conditions, however, cannot be described but in terms of what is provided by the mental instruments which are said to be brought about just by these conditions themselves. So they cannot be defined in an objective and non-circular way. This problem is approached here by what is called the external world as proposed by Campbell’s ‘natural selection epistemology’. If cognitive operators are extended by means of experimental operators the result can be expressed in classical terms if both commute (quantitative extensions). Otherwise non-classical approaches such as quantum mechanics are required (qualitative extensions). As qualitative extensions never can be excluded, it follows that there will be no definitive set of theories of everything’. From applying this concept to the inborn operators of mathematical thinking and their algorithmic extensions it follows that there will be no definitive set of axioms, i. e. it would explain Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. The ontological prerequisites being the basis of the various epistemologies discussed in the philosophy of science, are replaced by the requirement of consistency: our cognitive phenotype has to bring about a world picture within which the cognitive phenotype itself can be explained as resulting from an abiotic, then biotic, organic, cognitive and eventually scientific evolution. Any cognitive phenotype reproducing in this sense (together with its organic phenotype) represents a possible and consistent world together with its interpretation and mastery – and none of them is ontologically privileged.

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

John R. Searle (1998) upholds what he calls “external realism” that there is a real world that exists independently of us, a world of mountains, trees, oceans, molecules, and so on. Some research findings in cognitive science, however, are compelling us to re-examine such a framework. In this essay I insist, from a cognitive science perspective, that the so-called external world we perceive as it is, is not independent of us, it is dependent on us in such a manner that those entities such as mountains and oceans are the end results of our perceptual processes, and as such they are in our phenomenal or mental space. It is a world as causes for our perceptual processes that is considered to be independent of us, though we have no direct, empirical access to the world as such.

A major concern is to demonstrate the contradictory nature of Maturana’s conception of ontology. A realist view of the external world is presented, assuming that the independence of the common-sense and scientific entities of the world from our schemes of representation does not render the world an ineffable, inaccessible realm of unspecifiable objects. The theory of Maturana is examined in details with regard to a possible philosophical interpretation, concluding that though Maturana describes himself as presenting a doctrine free of all ontological commitments, that self-description is false.

The essay is in the form of a dialogue between the two authors. We take John Wheeler’s idea of “It from Bit” as an essential clue and we rework the structure of the bit not to the qubit, but to a logical particle that is its own anti-particle, a logical Marjorana particle. This is our key example of the amphibian nature of mathematics and the external world. We emphasize that mathematics is a combination of calculation and concept. At the conceptual level, mathematics is structured to be independent of time and multiplicity. Mathematics in this way occurs before number and counting. From this timeless domain, mathematics and mathematicians can explore worlds of multiplicity and infinity beyond the apparent limitations of the physical world and see that among these possible worlds there are coincidences with what is observed.

My basic posture concerning Umwelt (world view) is based on the assumption that our perception and understanding of “universals” derives from the functional properties of our brains. Such universals are ultimately constructed by the functional state we know as consciousness. From such a brain-centric perspective, Umwelt is what our brain makes from the sensory inputs arising from their responses to the external world and the ancestral brain network derived from our evolutionary history. Ultimately, then, our Umwelt derives from the sensory specification of internal brain function, mostly determined genetically and epigenetically during development and honed by the leaning process.

Excerpt: Insofar as constructivism maintains nothing more than the unapproachability of the external world “in itself” and the closure of knowing – without yielding, at any rate, to the old skeptical or “solipsistic” doubt that an external world exists at all – there is nothing new to be found in it. Nonetheless, the theoretical form in which this is expressed has innovative aspects – even such radical innovations – that it is possible to gain the impression that the theory of a self-referring cognition closed in upon itself has only now acquired a viable form. One can express this more precisely: it has only now acquired a form in which it can represent itself as knowledge. A problem arises here, however. With the word “constructivism” (taken over from mathematics) premature victories have been proclaimed, and one has to accept that there will be those who step aside, with a shake of the head, denying the validity of these claims. It is important, therefore, to investigate the question of what is new and convincing here – and this will lead the discussion far afield.

Excerpt: We speak of self-organization whenever an operatively closed system uses its own operations to build structures that it can either reuse and change later on, or else dismiss and forget. Computers depend on external programming, although computer-generated programs may be developed eventually. By contrast, autopoietic systems produce their own structures and are capable of specifying their operations via these structures (structural determination). This mode of operation does not exclude causal environmental influences. Some of Munch’s paintings bear traces of water damage because they were left outdoors. While some people might consider this beautiful, no one would argue that the rain completed the painting. Nor would anyone try to prove the appropriateness of the rain’s decisions with regard to the altered formal structure of the painting. Rather, the impression is that a painting was not and could not have been painted in this manner. Self-organization owes its possibilities and its room for play to the differentiation of the system. Accordingly, art observes itself by means of the distinction between a reality “out there” and a fictional reality. The doubling of reality generates a medium of its own, in which the fixation of forms becomes not only possible but necessary, if the medium is to be reproduced. The opportunity and the need to do something go hand in hand. This conceptual model will guide the following analyses. In functional systems, we call the system’s basal structure – a structure that is produced and reproduced by the system’s operations – a code. In contrast to the concept of code in linguistics, we think here of a binary schematism that knows only two values and that excludes third values at the level of coding. A code must fulfill the following requirements: (1) it must correspond to the system’s function, which is to say, it must be able to translate the viewpoint of the function into a guiding difference; and (2) it must be complete in the sense of Spencer Brown’s definition, “Distinction is perfect continence,” rather than distinguishing just anything. The code must completely cover the functional domain for which the system is responsible. It must therefore (3) be selective with regard to the external world and (4) provide information within the system. (5) The code must be open to supplements (programs) that offer (and modify) criteria to determine which of the two code values is to be considered in any given case. (6) All of this is cast into the form of a preferential code, that is, into an asymmetrical form that requires a distinction between a positive and a negative value. The positive value can be used within the system; at the least, it promises a condensed probability of acceptance. The negative value serves as a value of reflection; it determines what kinds of program are most likely to fulfill the promise of meaning implied in the positive code value.