Comments on: Reflections on the Conference: Causes and Reality

By: tfischer

tfischer — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 11:43:00 +0000

If you are interested, here is a paper on the problems of assuming kinds of causality white using the tertium-non-datur principle. This was published in a computer aided architectural design context:

http://www.tfischer.de/14_post_review.pdf

By: burlgrey

burlgrey — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:45:45 +0000

Good catch Mark, interesting stuff!

Ben,
I believe definitions are not a problem with this at all. Of course virtually infinite confusions can whirl around definitions, but simple conversation can resolve almost if not all, assuming normal friendly relationships which I‘ve always experienced at ASC conferences. Of course I suppose an “invisible” presupposition could perhaps masquerade as a definitional problem!

I find the problem at the deepest and most fundamental level: Soren requires the presupposition of an independent reality which Maturana, Glasersfeld, Krippendorff, Kauffman and I explicitly reject.

This screen may not be a felicitous forum for much detail but I offer (from dozens) two quotes from Soren’s 2008 book “Cybersemiotics” 469 pages! which confirm for me my experience watching him question Maturana in utter frustration at a Vancouver conference.

[1] p.92 “(Maturana) …never addresses the resistance of reality.”
[2] p 93 “My concern here has been the function of the concept of ‘outside reality’/snip/ we should not give up the notion of a partly independent ‘outside reality’

I highly suggest reading Krippendorff’s latest book “On Communicating: Otherness, Meaning, and Information. 2009. In chapter 10 Klaus explicates the limitations of semiotics with precision and clarity. {for me }

By: boltmwj1

boltmwj1 — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:37:09 +0000

hmmm. Bit of googling and I found this, which is intriguing and I’m sorry I missed it!
http://dica-lab.org/rab/conference-details/programme
Roy Bhaskar and Soren Brier sharing a session – that might be interesting! Bhaskar’s Critical Realism makes some powerful criticisms of constructivism. Some have attempted to make the link between the two: I like John Mingers’s work which links Realist philosophy to cybernetics (particularly Luhmann and Maturana) and phenomenology – see his ‘Realising Systems Thinking’. Soren Brier seems to make some use of Luhmann too.

By: bensweeting

bensweeting — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:19:12 +0000

@Burl
I know of them but I’ve not read them yet. I wonder if the difference is mainly terminological or whether it is deeper?
I tend to find terminological arguments a little tiresome. from everyday conversation its clear one word can mean all sorts of different things and the same thing can be meant by many different words. when writing my undergarduate dissertation i had cause to look into a lot of the theological debates of early christianity – although the different parties in fact tended to all more or less agree with each other one side would use one word to mean one thing and the other side (in a different culture) would use it to mean something else. so everyone sounded like a heretic to everyone else! one of the things i find powerful about verbal conversation as a way of communicating is that you dont really have to agree on terminology very precisely – because of the circularity involved you can always check the meaning by comparing it with other things. we can communicate quite powerfully using wonderfully fuzzy language.

By: boltmwj1

boltmwj1 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:50:18 +0000

Hi Judy,
Thanks for the video – I saw it a while ago and it made me chuckle then as it does now!
I think we have to be very careful with language here. The distinction between constraint and cause is very subtle – at least in the sense that constraints are causal. Constraints are not insuperable – particularly ‘psychological’ ones (I’m thinking of William Blake’s ‘Mind-Forged Manacles’). And in fact possibilities too are causal. Are possibilities constraints? Probably: if I believe something is possible, then it might blind me to the other possibilities (which might be more achievable!)

I wonder if the most useful distinction might be between the ‘real’ and the ‘actual’?

By: judy

judy — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:24:48 +0000

If one cannot objectify then how can one claim to know a cause — the best we can do is know contraints so that we might generate possibilities….

I think this short might help — maybe not, enjoy, I hope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-J35j2jGeo

By: boltmwj1

boltmwj1 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:33:00 +0000

Ben, I think we agree on this.

The question is how it affects what we do. In my work at the university, there have been two contrasting approaches both involving cybernetic models. The first approach is a ‘blueprint’ approach – designing technologies, interventions, strategies etc according to principles of variety management. These don’t always work, because the world turns out to be more complex in that was initially thought when the modelling was done.

The second approach, which I favour, is a more ‘realist’ approach. This involves studying deeply the organisation as it is, and asking a transcendental question: given it’s like this, what might the mechanisms be like? The modelling tools help to express these mechansisms (mostly VSM, but I use Luhmann a lot too). There is no blueprint, although there might be a broad strategic direction, but from the insight gained through modelling, incremental interventions appear to have greater success.

By: burlgrey

burlgrey — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:36:39 +0000

Ben,

I like your open questioning about this stuff.
I’m deeply interested in exploring how we’re talking here.

While most of us have many immediate things on our plate, I hope we can continue to negotiate toward some stable or reliable meanings for our words/epistemological frames.

No time now for incisive questions but wonder to what extent, if any, you’ve followed the possibly ‘incommensurate’ positions between two of our top scholars: Soren Brier and Klaus Krippendorff. I have a copy of each one’s last book and both have complete mastery of all the vocabulary of cybernetics^2, Heinz, Ernst etc… but cannot agree on how to talk about the most basic questions of all: “The World.”, “Reality”, etc!!!

By: bensweeting

bensweeting — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:12:09 +0000

Thank you Ranulph. I have more (I think quite difficult) questions on this but I’m going to save them for another time. I think it would be interesting to flesh this position out fully sometime.

By: bensweeting

bensweeting — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:07:05 +0000

In my view the distinction between relative/ subjective and absolute/ objective is a misleading and problematic one.

I find von Foerster’s initial undecidable decision, which Ranulph mentions, between my in-dependence from the world and inter-dependence with it very powerful – I tend to see more content in this than that which Ranulph has already mentioned (the choice between the world being real or imagined). What for me is so special about this formulation is that my individuality/ subjectivity (that I don’t know objectively for sure) is because I am inter-dependent with (part of) the WORLD (whichever way you would like to define that). my understanding is relative because it is inter-dependent with the world. it is the objective viewpoint that denies the ‘reality’ of the world by making it only an object to be comprehended at a distance.

I think this is an utterly radical and wonderful position which has the potential to heal the split between the subjective and the objective.

Concepts such as ‘doing the right thing’ make much more sense in this understanding. Objective timeless rules tend to be reductive. Leaving ethical choices to totally arbitrary opinion (where *anything can be justified because it is ‘my’ good) is open to sophistry + tends towards the self at the expense of others. If we can understand ourselves as individuals responsible for our own ethical choices but in constrant inter-dependent reciprocal relations with others + the world then it is possible to ask a question of the order ‘what does it mean to live a good life?’ without the answer having to either be an objective rule or a arbitrary whim.