This Thesis proposes a new epistemological ontology which bas two peculiar characteristics: Objects in its Universe are formulated as being self-observers (i.e. reflexive); and the nature of observation of Objects by others is shown to contain the logic for computing relationships between Objects in the Universe. This Universe is non-hierarchical, and permits of mutually contradictory beliefs about its Objects to be simultaneously held by different observers. The logic by which observers construct hierarchies in the Universe is shown to need only one variable in order to operate, and to operate from the oscillatory nature of the self-observing Objects producing a sense of local time in both observer, and observed Objects; the times of which must temporarily come together for observations to be made. Using these notions of Objects and observations, a means, based on the potential for observers to construct hierarchies, is found for analysing arguments, and (potentially) for the improvement of computer performance. A way is described for the representation of observations of Objects to be made, and a conversational idiom is established to account for communication between different observers. The views put forward in this Thesis are demonstrated by various experiments, stories, and references.

Excerpt: Countless worlds made from nothing by use of symbols – so might a satirist summarize some of Cassirer’s major themes. These themes – the multiplicity of worlds, the speciousness of ‘the given’, the creative power of the understanding, the variety and formative function of symbols – are also integral to my own thinking. Sometimes, though, I forget that they have been so eloquently set forth by Cassirer, 1 partly perhaps because his emphasis on myth, his concern with the comparative study of cultures, and his talk of the human spirit have been mistakenly associated with current trends toward mystical obscurantism, anti-intellectual intuition ism, or anti-scientific humanism. Acutally these attitudes are as alien to Cassirer as to my own skeptical, analytic, constructionalist orientation. My aim in what follows is less to defend certain theses that Cassirer and I share than to take a hard look at some crucial questions they raise. In just what sense are there many worlds? What distinguishes genuine from spurious worlds? What are worlds made of? How are they made, and what role do symbols play in the making? And how is worldmaking related to knowing? These questions must be faced even if full and final answers are far off.

The fundamental feature that characterizes living systems is autonomy, and any account of their organization as systems that can exist as individual unities must show what autonomy is as a phenomenon proper to them, and how it arises in their operation as such unities. Accordingly the following is proposed. (1) That autonomy in living systems is a feature of self-production (autopoiesis), and that a living system is properly characterized only as a network of processes of production of components that is continuously, and recursively, generated and realized as a concrete entity (unity) in the physical space, by the interactions of the same components that it produces as such a network. This organization I call the autopoietic organization, and any system that exhibits it is an autopoietic system in the space in which its components exist; in this sense living systems are autopoietic systems in the physical space. (2) That the basic consequence of the autopoietic organization is that everything that takes place in an autopoietic system is subordinated to the realization of its autopoiesis, otherwise it disintegrates. (3) That the fundamental feature that characterizes the nervous system is that it is a closed network of interacting neurons in which every state of neuronal activity generates other states of neuronal activity. Since the nervous system is a component subsystem in an autopoietic unity, it operates by generating states of relative neuronal activity that participate in the realization of the autopoiesis of the organism which it integrates. (4) That the autopoietic states that an organism adopts are determined by its structure (the structure of the nervous system included), and that the structure of the organism (including its nervous system) is at any instant the result of its evolutionary and ontogenic structural coupling with the medium in which it is autopoietic, obtained while the autopoiesis is realized. (5) That language arises as phenomenon proper to living systems from the reciprocal structural coupling of at least two organisms with nervous systems, and that self-consciousness arises as an individual phenomenon from the recursive structural coupling of an organism with language with its own structure through recursive self-description. |314|

This paper, the first in a series concerning the neurobiology of sensory cilia, describes the ultrastructure of our chosen model system – the proximal femoral chordotonal organ (FCO) in pro-and mesothoracic grasshopper legs. The FCO is a bundle of 150–200 longitudinally oriented chordotonal sensilla. Each chordotonal sensillum is a mechano-receptive unit that contains two bipolar neurons whose dendrites bear sensory cilia. The structure of the sensory cilia leads us to suggest that they are motile cilia that respond to the mechanical stimulus with an “active stroke” which excites a transducer membrane at the dendrite tip.