[FRIAM] causation / evolution

Fri Dec 1 12:03:40 EST 2017

Hi, David, 

I have been kept home from FRIAM by a cold (hard not to share a cold at
FRIAM) so I am going to answer your letter as a sort of friam-substitute.  

People have pressed Maturana on me before and I have tried him, but
something in me has balked.  I get pissed at authors who, like the
complexity folks, seem stuck on their own words.  Perhaps you could
recommend ... or even link me to? ... a reader-friendly source?    I
appreciate teaser below.  I am going to lard it to give you an idea of some
of the problems I have.  

By the way, Dave.  There was some indication, I thought, that you might
return for a couple of weeks in December.  I don't want to miss that, if it
happens.  If it is happening today, I will drive up there and give you all
my cold.  Please make sure I have ample warning.  I might even spring for
coffee or a beer.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2017 8:49 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] causation / evolution

If I remember correctly, the last time I attended "the mother church," a
discussion about causation was a thread in a larger discussion about
evolution. Later reflection on that discussion led me to revisit the work of
Maturana and Varela (autopoeisis and structural coupling). 

Later, in response to West's quasi-tantrum "Truth" discussion on this list,
I found myself returning to the same source. I am going to present a two-day
workshop on the design of complex systems (as opposed to the design of
complicated systems, like software, which is mere engineering) and, once
again, found myself consulting the Chilean biologists.

So I am curious as to whether or not others on the list have found the work
of Maturana and Varela of interest in understanding complex systems? Does
anyone else see connections to past and present (causation, systems,
evolution) FRIAM discussions? Am I wandering in the deep woods again without
a competent guide?

A brief excerpt of comments by students of M&V is included below, perhaps to
trigger memories, perhaps to plant seeds.

dave west

Maturana-the-biologist was unhappy with enumerating features of living
systems to define 'life', and wanted to capture the invariant feature of
living systems around which natural selection operates. He wanted to do this
in a way that retained the autonomy of living systems as a central feature,
and hence without recourse to referential concepts like 'purpose' or
'function'. 

Systems are structure determined. That is, anything a system does at any
moment in time is determined by its structure - its component bits and
pieces, and the relationships between them. Maturana and Varela are at pains
to take account of the perspective of the observer when talking of systems
and how they behave in relation to their environment. The behaviour of a
system is something ascribed to it by someone observing it in interaction
with its environment. Hence behaviour is not something that is 'in' a
system, and to refer to how a system relates to its environment whilst
trying to understand it as an autonomous entity violates that very notion of
autonomy. This is why all of the mechanics of the process of Autopoiesis
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis>  [NST==>I think this word
encapsulates my rage, here.  I deplore people who take a word that is chosen
because it is so misleading and then ram it up the ass of the literature.
Yes, I know.  "Poetry" does come for the greek word for "creation" and so
the word does mean, in greek, self-creation.  BUT WE DON'T SPEAK GREEK!  So
every English or French or ???? user of that term has to fight off the
notion of a self creating poetry, which is groovy, but not very helpful.
The author who invented that term was more interested in appearing groovy
than in reaching his audience, and I depise him for it.   <==nst]  as
described by Maturana and Varela are kept strictly within the bounds of the
Autopoietic system. This strict requirement is enforced via concepts like
'operational closure' and 'organizational closure.'

[NST==>Ach!  I HATE the way people use the word system.  Let's say two male
cats are having a catfight over a female. We can choose to focus on the
individuals, the "dance" of the fight, the relation to the female's
movements, or the relation to the great horned owl sitting quietly in a tree
paying close attention to the proceedings.  What constitutes the system is
entirely a matter of our interest.  To define a system we need a figure, a
ground, and a point of view.  This is not to say that "systems" are in the
mind of the beholder.  An eclipse is real, but you have to stand in a
particular place to see it.  <==nst] 

The consequences of this perspective are not always obvious. A good example
however, is the immune system's ability to distinguish between self and
non-self. 

[NST==>Sorry, if I am being a picky-jerk, here, but .. this bit of rhetoric
exemplifies the problem.  The immune system may distinguish between "self"
and "non-self", but that is not its main function . to distinguish between
the immune system and everything else.  That is what distinguishing between
self and non self MEANS in the plain meaning of the words.  Yet we are asked
to forgive that little slip-of-the-tongue, even though it mucks up the whole
conversation.  What exactly is the "self" that the immune system is
distinguishing between.  Not itself, for sure.  But that's the whole
problem, isn't it?  How do we distinguish the boundaries of a system without
engaging at least two other systems in the definition, hence making them
part of the system.  <==nst] 

Varela has been pointing out for some time that this is an observed
behaviour, produced by the operational dynamics of the immune system in its
environment, and that it is wrong to look for some discriminatory
recognition mechanism within the immune system. Attention should be focused
on the internal dynamics of the immune system, and how this is affected by
and affects its environment of operation in such a way as to give rise to
the behaviour observed. A similar approach is taken to the nervous system.

Autopoietic theory of course recognises that systems exist within
environments, relate to them, and at low enough material level are entirely
open to them. 

[NST==>I gather that those who talk this language see themselves as
anti-Cartesians.  To me , it seems, sopped in cartesianism.  The key notion
of CArtesianism is foundationalism, the notion that before we have any kind
of a discussion we must strip our understandings down to some bare bones,
for Decartes, the cogito. That is what is so refreshing about Pragmatism.
Pragmatists start in the middle.  We keep looking at the world from various
points of view.  From this point of view, this looks like a system; from
this other point of view, it seems a part of larger system; from yet another
point of view, a collage of systems; from a 4th point of view, it disappears
altogether.  Perhaps after a few decades, or millennia, of that sort of
work, we come to agree on some foundations.  Foundations are not the
beginning of our labors; they are its most sought after result.  <==nst] 

Thanks Dave for starting this discussion.  I hope the "usual suspects" will
get engaged.  And I hope you will appear at Friam soon to stimulate us. 

Nick 

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