So you wish to limit your definition of a system to an organism then? — apokrisis

Just a quick point for now. Definitely not (at least not literally). This is part of Luhmann's project, actually---to extend Maturana's concepts from biology to e.g. society (and also to find a mathematical basis for systems using Spencer-Brown's work). As for the connections to biosemiotics, I'm very interested in that, but my knowledge of biosemiotics is undeveloped. I'll try to come back to your post later anyhow.

And of course this is the thing about systems in interaction with their environments: they attempt to achieve predictability (and thus a kind of rigidity) not just by refusing to see what doesn't fit (as the counterculture would have it) but by making their environment more predictable, by eliminating what doesn't fit. Adaptation is required for the system to persist, but it can adapt itself to its environment or its environment to itself. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, and your examples were very interesting in that respect. A system must be less complex than its environment and it reduces complexity through a kind of code that "sees" only certain things in that environment. That becomes its reality. This is why I was saying earlier that systems establish different versions of reality. They observe and are perturbed by their environment but interpret it only according to a particular internal code that identifies them as a particular type of system. They create differences that determine their reality, and thus enable a form of "meaning" or "cognition" in a broad sense. That is, they are operationally closed (operate only according to their own internal rules or code), but they are cognitively open in that they are affected by their environment and interact with it. I'm not sure I would call this a "rigidity" but perhaps a structural limitation. But paradoxically, it is the reduction of complexity that allows systems to complexify (and adapt), and in fact reach higher orders of self-referential complexity (self-managing of complexity). The more efficiently they simplify, the more efficiently they can complexify in a sense.

(No meaningful difference can arise until all those differences arise coherently. A pure environment contains nothing to establish difference. Difference requires a coherent system that is different from its environment (A) and that is different within itself (C) for the differences described in (B) to manifest.)

Less than Nothing: Zizek

The sample is 300 pages long. 'Nuff said.

Here's my version as simple as I can make it. Do with it what you will.

A system can be seen as a "coherency of differences" as follows.

Difference A: Fundamentally, a system must establish a difference between itself and its environment.
Difference B: A system must "observe" / react to differences in that which is different to itself, i. e. its environment.
Difference C: A system must operate on the basis of internal differences. A pure homogeneity excludes operationality.

A, B, C, type differences must cohere in a system for a system to be identified singly as a system.

Therefore, a system can be seen as a coherency of differences.

My Masters thesis was on organisations making decisions despite their being undecidable. But only the good undecidable decisions are wise... — Banno

Ah nice, I hadn't considered that angle. :cool:

I don't think systems <=> coherencies is any definition. — Pieter R van Wyk

I didn't say they just were that. I said this:

Systems are coherencies of (self-recreating, in the case of autopoietic systems) differences between themselves and an environment — Baden

And I also clarified what I meant.

You asked a question. I answered with a definition and a detailed follow-up. I also gave you the theoretical context (Luhmann). You had everything you needed to make some sense of it.

If you don't want to get your brain out of first gear, don't ask in the first place.

[In general, if posters want non-academic, dumbed-down answers to their questions, why not just ask AI, why ask on a philosophy forum?]

I don't blame Mikie for his reaction (he didn't ask the question...). I'm reading a compilation of lectures by Luhmann at the moment, so these ideas are on my mind.

My understanding is that Luhmann worked on social systems, thus not a general systems theory — Pieter R van Wyk

He built from the mathematical work of Spencer Brown and the biological work of Humberto Maturana a kind of general system's theory that could be applied to society, but can also be applied to e.g. consciousness and other (autopoietic) systems.

But, yes, others may be more on point re what you're specifically looking for.

Just to add to that: We can only establish a difference by being some form of coherence that is different from the difference. Coherency in this observationally displaced sense is self-reflexive and is inhered in systems that self establish themselves as distinct from an environment. This (self-reflexive) coherency is more than a difference that makes a difference (it's not just information), it's a difference that grounds the possibility of difference from its perspective, allowing for information There's a kind of semantic bootstrapping here. Significance arising from an originary signification---this vs that, which is grounded in something that is not this or that but that can establish the distinction, i.e. a coherence. Without a corresponding coherence (observer/observation) there is naught. All this is to say there's a sense of "coherence" that inheres self-reflexivity that a difference like the difference between a rock and a tree does not in itself establish, i.e. a coherence that implicates a system as observer.

So if you posit a difference, you must posit a system that establishes difference through a coherency. But a rock cannot itself establish difference in relation to itself. From that point of view, it's not a coherency. The coherency can only reside in that case in the observer who states that the rock is a coherency. Short version, if coherency is understood self reflexively as semantically grounding then the definition above suffices. Coherency inheres the idea of a process of observation. If it's understood just as coherency as difference (something that can coherently be distinguished from something else), it doesn't.

We say someone is intelligent when they demonstrate analytic capacity but wise when they show good judgement. — Banno

:up: Intelligence decides among decidables, only wisdom among undecidables.

This is why I argue against education for technology. I think the world you want requires a liberal education. I have been alone with this argument for many years. I could die in peace if I were not the only one fighting for liberal education. — Athena

We are mostly singing from the same hymn sheet then. But I think it's OK to educate kids in how to use technology if they understand its situatedness with regard to subjectivity. And that can start simply by telling them: This stuff is not just something you use, but that if you use it, will use you. Here's how...

I think that's right in the sense that a fish doesn't actively experience water. It's too fundamental. On the other hand, water is an essential part of its lived experience, and if you take it out of the water, it definitely knows the difference.

Ha, let me clarify by commenting that woke is the anti-Coke. Uncle Sam drinks Coke and sprinkles golden urine on his flock. Satan drinks woke and pisses hellfire on his army of demons who terrorize colleges across the land. The final war as prophesied between the golden sheep and the woke demons, the fight between Coke and hellfire is ending now in the defeat of woke. Glory be to Coke…

[Taken verbatim from the real life sermon of our preacher hero, at the gates of Berkeley San Fran, wearing a sign “The Last Bastion of Satan”]

But, less facetiously, on one end of the spectrum, woke collapses into vain resistance (in the form of naive anger), and, on the other, it's just critical theory or something with fairly obvious value. And for anti-woke: on one side of the spectrum, it's non-resistance, naive passivity, wrapped up in indignance, and on the other, it's a justified critique of the excesses of woke as naive anger.

The media-fuelled woke/anti-woke war is a kind of a cartoonish oversimplification.

A rock is coherent and there is a difference between a rock and a hard place. — Banno

Yes, but I am not that difference unless I am the system. The system itself is the observer here.

The definition needs fleshing out for sure. There are also the ideas of open/closed, boundary and complexity. In one sense, a system represents a different category of reality from its environment.

Woke just is Satan. Satan stepped into the soul of the oppressed and told them to open their eyes, and they did so not to God but to Beelzebub. They became full of hell-fire and spat it on God-fearing folks who had no idea they were oppressing anyone. After all, they paid their taxes. And so the woke demons ran rampant for a while and spread their vile ideology. On they ran through university eggheads who bitten by these woke bugs became rotten stinky eggs farting woke gas all over their students. And the stupid young people who did not know God made a deity of the Dark Prince. Eventually the God-fearing folks got wise to this evil and learned how to defeat woke. But, irony of ironies, it was too late, for woke had defeated itself by making of the universities lakes of hellfire in which the stinky eggheads and their rotten students melted and disintegrated. And now that woke has been ended, let us all join hands and open our eyes to the Lord. Glory be...

[Paraphrased from an actual real life sermon by a cool holy man of the deep south who, though he had been sniffing coke that day, abstains on the Sabbath]

Donna Haraway --- A Cyborg Manifesto

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto

(RIpping read.)

Yes, see Nikhlas Luhmann.

Systems are coherencies of (self-recreating in the case of autopoietic systems) differences between themselves and an environment. (I can't remember what Luhmann's formulation is, but that springs to mind).

Luhmann draws heavily on Humberto Maturana and George Spencer-Brown.

Good. I like Sartre as an "in" to this approach to consciousness and I'm not particularly bothered by the critique in this context (also, my relative lack of knowledge of Husserl means I can't effectively argue the point anyway).

In a rough way, yes. I'm wanting the eating disorder example to be filled out in a general manner which might apply elsewhere -- but that means the idea is interesting. — Moliere

I'm trying to fill out above a context (more to come) that I'll try to loop back into a fuller application to body image disorders (including body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders).

The ideas of Lacan as a later psychoanalytic development are also of significance. At this stage, I haven't managed to read his actual writing as I I found it rather heavy going. But I did read one book, 'Using Lacanian Clinical Technique_ An Introduction', by Philip F Hill.
He offers a couple of relevant quotes from Lacan:
'Man is captivated by the image of his own body.'
'The sexual relation implies capture by the other's image.'
Hill explains the role of images in particular as central to falling in love in general.

It would make sense to argue that it is differ fall in love if one is struggling with one's own self image and that is why issues, such as body dysmorphic disorder, have such an intrusive impact in life. — Jack Cummins

Those quotes are super interesting and I don't remember coming across them in my study of Lacan. I agree that it's not only difficult but probably impossible to maintain a romantic loving relationship when trapped in a body image disorder. The other becomes the impossible point of validation and love dissolves into fear.

(Addendum: Non-resistance, vain resistance, and productive resistance.

Non-resistance does not recognize the problem and embraces humiliation. This is a process of fading liveability and a disappearing call to self. The “trace” of original being becomes uttterly invisible. The non-resisters may be “comfortable” but deny to themselves “higher” potentialities. They are ultimately proletarianized and disindividuated.

Vain resistance recognizes the problem but self-destructively misinterprets it. It denies to itself its internal logic. Vain resisters (such as sufferers of body image disorders) see the possibility of higher potentialities, but in their hystericized desire for them, the seeking of an impossible direct route to them, they deny themselves all comfort for glimpses of a trace that they immediately smother through their overwhelming desire for it.

Productive resistance recognizes the problem’s inherent lack of an ultimate solution, and negotiates a liveable compromise that yet avoids passivity. Productive resisters accept and embrace discomfort as a necessary part of the irreversible contract of subjectivity and as a route to higher potentialities manifested in creative, and therefore individuating, action. That is, they understand both the rewards and limits of individuation, and that its pains and satisfactions cannot be disentwined. )

Adding to this (hopefully for clarity) and then I'll come back with some specifics relating to your comments:

In the mirror, we see the grammatized self, and of course it’s not perfect but we want a “perfect” fit and there is a block to that that prevents validation.

Validation is a key concept here. Integration with the socio-symbolic installs in us the desire for validation. That is that we should see in our actions a reflection of its demands.

We should note here that its fundamental demand is inherent. It inheres in the fact that our experience of the world is split. The leading edge of experience is immediately formatted in a way that negativises it. The world is no longer presented in its full positivity. The world in-itself is what it is, cannot be what it is not, and is therefore an absolute positivity, but the creation of a system of symbolic structure inserts gaps into it. A scaffold is not a block, a web is not a sheet. For there to be conceptual understanding, there must be the creation of such negativity, of nothingness, and from this, the subject- object distinction.

The object in this dynamic becomes more than what it is and also less. It is more than what it is in that it is not just its physical reality, it is now also its conceptual reality. And it is less than what it is because the imposition of the socio-symbolic on sensory data is always a kind of reductive formatting. We do not feel the object fully as a pure significance of sense, that purity of significance is sculpted conceptually, and, in the shaping, something is lost, just as in the sculpting of a block we lose some of its physical substance to create an abstract substance as represented by the sculpted form, we lose some of the sentient substance of the object through its sculpting by conceptualisation.

For a pre-linguistic child, the object is pure significance. It is unified with the movement of its inner desire such that that desire functions in a purely reactive way according to the possibilities of urge and restraint. The world demands from without and within simultaneously and the child is satisfied or denied in that pure relation. The mother’s breast is an inner potential, an unfolding promise of the self rather than what we understand as an object. It is a unified reservoir of being which the child shares as its own being.

As objects are conceptualised through grammatization, so is the child self-conceptualised as subject, as a separation from its environment and others that must now connect through the socio-symbolic mediator. The “Big Other” is the guardian both of the world and the self. It gives us the world and the self-in-the-world, but the debt we must pay is that what we get can never be the “pure” world as a unified self-world. Our life world is infused with the negativity of grammatization, of mediated functionalities, of a “right” way of seeing things such that the demand, the moral demand inheres at its most basic level in the object as such. That is, the lamp demands to be seen as a “lamp”. The table demands to be seen as a “table”. Our base level conceptually-bound reactivity is our first step into the moral world. Such are we taught how to acquiesce. Such are our sensory instincts domesticated. This is the primeval bow to the socio-symbolic, the initial humiliation and our initiation ritual into its sphere.

And so are built higher orders of acquiescence. We join concepts and speak the language of the socio-symbolic both to others and to ourselves. It becomes our subjective and objective world. And then we accept the particular situational interpretations of the sociosymbolic. We acquiesce there too. This is a lamp (the primeval bow), I speak of it as a lamp (linguistic acquiescence), and I treat it as others do (situational acquiescence). These orders of sentient castration are overwhelming. What we know as “freedom” is given to us too as a socio-symbolic “object”. We bow first to “freedom” by understanding the concept, and then by speaking of it, and then by treating it as others do. Freedom in this way becomes just another reactivity, even in immediate reflection.

But we must reflect on our reflections. I think of freedom this way and why? And why, further, do I think this way in general? And why, further, do I think at all?. Only reflections of reflections can take us back to our origins. Yet still the route must be mediated. There is no way to cancel the contract that was signed for us with the blood of our unified world-relation, our pure sentience, That blood is set and dried. We can only negotiate the terms.

Here we return to the pathologies of the mirror (body image disorders) and situate them in a refusal to negotiate, a false hope of cancelling the contract, of seeing reflected back at us a grammatized self that is somehow also whole and therefore unificatory, that cancels our responsibility for our own happiness (the negotiation), that resolves the unresolvable split. The logic of the misunderstanding is a flee from action, that is action as socially legible (or potentially legible) action, and as the only way to negotiate a presence of self and receive validation of self. It is a hystericized reaction to inevitable actual imperfections in one’s impressions of the bodily image as situated under the gaze of the “ideal” grammatized (socially legible) body such that onto such imperfections are projected the original loss of the unified self that in its ungrammatized state was not to itself an other, a body in the world, but a world in and of itself.

And so the imperfections in the mirror come to bear the weight of impossible return. And the more they do, the more hystericized the reaction, the more fear of the magnified imperfections, the more the sufferer is bound to deny them by looking in the mirror to not find them (the pathology subsisting in the illogic of devoting all one’s energies in a search to not find that can only end when it fails its goal).

We see here how any negotiation becomes impossible in the hystericized denial of such a negotiation’s necessity. Body image pathologies are a route that takes the sufferer further and further from responsibility as they seek an impossible effacement of an inevitable difference, That is, they ultimately seek (unknowingly) the effacement of subjectivity itself in a search for a pure subjectivity that exists only in a false reflection or memory, a trace that does not represent the experience but only a view of it from outside so to speak, and a view only possible from outside, from the already split subject—for the pure unity is not a subjectivity but sentience in-itself that does not know itself and cannot experience itself as another as the split subject can.

So, in relation to subjectivity, the sufferer “throws the baby out with the bathwater” in a refusal to acknowledge that its humiliation by the socio-symbolic is a part of its being and being able to be in the only way now possible, in being able to feel the trace of lost being, even transiently. And so it self-humiliates its own socio-symbolic subjectivity in a masochistic act of revenge that cannot end in anything but exhaustion, that is, the exhaustion of the will to be in the subject, which is the only position from which it can act to fulfill itself, and the productive redirection of which is its only hope of its salvation.

Maybe you two have special skills. — Banno

Yes, yes, we do... None of which are helpful or even relevant, sadly.

I'd say that what is inevitably going to happen (and is already beginning to happen on TPF), is that folks are going to appeal to LLMs as indisputable authorities. "You say X but my almighty LLM says ~X, therefore you are wrong." This will occur explicitly and also in various implicit ways.. — Leontiskos

Unfortunately, it's almost inevitable now that Al will become in the near future THE general authority. So, thinking will no longer be a practical necessity. We could even draw a logical line from human laziness to a situation where people simply plug their "personality" into a mobile AI, stick it on themselves, and allow it to do all their conversing for them.

Because this is an appeal to an LLM it doesn't directly contravene the rule. Nevertheless, I would argue that it is still remarkably contrary to the spirit of philosophy. It is that look-up-the-infallible-answer routine, which is quite foreign to philosophy (and is itself based on an extremely dubious epistemology).

I hope TPF will discourage this "look up the infallible LLM answer" approach, especially as it becomes more prevalent. The risk of such an approach is that humans become interpreters for AI, where they get all their ideas from AI but then rewrite the ideas in their own voice. Such a result would be tantamount to the same outcome that the current rule wishes to avoid. — Leontiskos

All we can do is be the change we want to see. I'd rather lose on argument than bluff my way through one. That's the beginning of outsourcing your personality. The end is human jello permanently plugged into AI-Tik Tok, gurgling its way happily to death.

the glorification of crime is a very real phenomenon, particularly among young men. In my experience, the posters hanging on the walls of college dorms will generally be of either famous musicians (the poet archetype) or various Hollywood villains (e.g., Tony Montana of Scarface seems to have enduring popularity, Tyler Durden of Fight Club and Heath Ledger or Joaquin Phoenix's Joker as well). A Batman poster is the sort of thing you have your parents buy for you as a kid. As a teenager or young adult, you get a poster of the Joker. Having recently browsed through two different poster stores in flea markets, this trend still seems to be very much a thing, with horror movie characters also featuring heavily (athletes, of course, also remain popular). We could also consider the appeal of crime-focused video games (e.g. Grand Theft Auto, Hitman), gangster rap, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Skipping the Nietzsche debate for a more general comment relevant to this: It seems the way the “glorification of crime" often functions ideologically is as a kind of destructive substitute for creative self-recoding, that is, actual resistance to the socio-symbolic / Big Other or however you want to put it. The urge to resist gets channeled towards legible functionalities that are unthreatening on the meta level because they are a) by their nature identifiable and punishable by the overwhelming forces of state security (and even offer the state potentially welcome opportunities for the marginalization, ghettoization and reproduction of underclasses); and b) transformatively consumable and therefore self-neutralizing—the fantasy of being a criminal as an accepted social practice becomes a form of entertainment within which the impetus to actual deviancy is dissolved. This is not to suggest all crime follows this route, as genuine resistance such as it is may also be criminal, but to point to a kind of social defence mechanism that serves to redirect opportunities for resistance.

We might consider this a second order “grammatization”---to repurpose a coinage of Bernard Stiegler—the means by which the social order makes reality legible, predictable, and controllable. First order grammatization could be seen as applying directly to phenomena which are, in perception, individuated as functionally / aesthetically / practically categorized and conceptualized coherencies relativised by our human umwelt / life world (as opposed to the unconceptual functional coherencies of an animal’s umwelt). Being a socialized individual, I can’t see a tree or a lamp without seeing the concept of a tree or a lamp and that comes intertwined with the direct sensory phenomena to form the recognizable object etc. Second order grammatization then would be this process applied to concepts themselves, of e.g. resistance as criminality, and this happens through a controlled process of overcoding that is in its nature limiting, just as first order grammatization is limiting—the difference being that first order grammatization is aimed at creating (recognizably human) sociality whereas second order grammatization (ideological imprinting) is aimed at protecting/sustaining it.

Also, consider how these “deviant” messages are nowadays primarily delivered through the anaesthetising information machine of mass media where the audience is pre-conditioned into passivity from the get-go.

AI is result-oriented. Intellectual development, and particularly philosophical intellectual development, is process-oriented. If you just want to post the "right" answer, you are doing things wrong. It's no fun that way either. And apart from keeping things philosophical, we want to keep them human here. Within 10 years, the vast majority of the internet will be AI generated---such is the logic of competitiveness and consumerism. We won't be.

I don't use GPS while driving or LLMs for my TPF postings either. Call me a luddite ... I'm secure in my own cognitive abilities — 180 Proof

:up: :up:

This is no different than having your friend do your homework for you. If he explains you the topic, you read the book, you understand it, you do the assignment, you're fine. If he does it for you, then you cheated, and no one likes a cheater. — Hanover

:up: :up:

(To put my "way out" another way as it is vaguely worded above: It is to performatively reverse this situation of being-under-judgement by becoming the analyst and judge of one’s context, that is one’s cultural and social context. This creative reversal can take the form of art, philosophy, or science, the point is that one engages in the types of activities that change and develop the social weave rather than being smothered in it through a hystericized reaction to its prereflective installment. The sufferer is an inverse artist who is painted by a given socio-symbolic "God", cannot escape this portrait, and freezes in the mirror to concretize the situation and make it all the easirer for herself to be so painted. But, to regain control, she must paint the hand that is painting her. And for someone in such a faulty self-relationship, that will likely need to be a constant effort.)

There is so much to be questioned in theory and human experience. With diagnostic criteria of body dysmorohic disorder, erroneous perception comes into play. In particular, a person may be preoccupied with a feature of 'ugliness' which is not observed by others. But, so much involves cultural or intersubjective standards.

Some of this comes down to cultural aesthetics about the body. However, it also involves ideas of perfection in the wider sphere, including moral aspects. Here, I am suggesting that ideas of 'goodness' and 'badnees' come into play in self perception and ideas of what is seen as 'wrong' in the mirror. — Jack Cummins

Definitely. As hinted above, what can go wrong is at least in large part a hystericized reaction to being judged where one performatively tries to out-judge the judge and becomes stuck in the mirror which is the ostensible tool for so-doing, not realizing that the object in the mirror is always a socially mediated projection, a socio-symbolic weave layered over an irretrievably lost "pure" physicality---and at some level we cannot but know that. It's like being caught in a paradoxical spiral where one intensifies exactly what one is trying to avoid. The fear becomes self-manifesting.

The two may overlap, especially in conjunction with sexuality, which has so much of a significant role in both aesthetic and moral dimensions of identity and the arena of perception by an 'other'' or others. It involves self acceptance and repentance of one's personal worth, on a whole global or blurred picture of personal identity and self worth. It involves relationships and how one experiences in moments of alonenesx in the mirror of reflective self-awareness. — Jack Cummins

The connection with sexuality is really hard to work out. It's such a broad category when extended up from biology through psychology and into different cultural contexts. Happy to hear further ideas on this.

There is neither outside nor inside prior to interaction. We always understand ourselves though participation in normative discursive communities, but these are partially shared circumstances, subtended by perspectival positionings do not allow for their being swallowed up and dissolved into a flat social totality. We mirror ourselves in others as reciprocal interaffecting, but it is an interaffecting that doesn’t remove the utter particularity of individual vantage. — Joshs

I agree with this. I don't think I have said anything that suggests I don't. But if I appear to have, let's thrash it out.

(Ok maybe "utter particularity", I can't say I fully agree with. We can't escape certain commonalities.)

Of course, we don't need Sartre specifically for this theory, we need only the socially installed other at the level of prereflection, a theoretical destination that can be reached through many other thinkers; Vygotsky, who I mentioned above, comes to mind. And we can access the dynamic easily with everyday examples.

I might say to myself in the context of this conversation, "I think I'll mention thinker X... but wait, Joshs will probably rip him apart too", and what I've done there in a very simple sense is reflect on another, specifically the potential action of another, something we do all the time. But behind that is the fact that prereflectively my intentional acts are interwoven with the socially symbolic; Joshs was always already there in the original thought, but not as Joshs, rather as one part of the overall social weave---perhaps "critic-who-knows" or whatever---a weave that sets a "tone" or "colour" to the original thought such that a) thought can be recognized as multidimensional---capable of having such "tones" and "colours", and b) that capability is what sets thought apart from itself such that it can be recognized inherently as my thought of this or that. So, "critic-who-knows" and all the other functional sub-elements of the social system (and "critic-who-knows" is strictly a functional element with which both human and non-human actors can resonate---e.g. AI can be "critic-who-knows", or a book we are about to read can or etc.) are always-already-there in the developed person, the socialized self.

And, of course, this inheres bidirectionality. As the social system is installed in me, so am I installed in the social system. But things can go wrong. I am hypothesizing a kind of hystericized reaction to the presence of the other as gaze as manifested in the physical mirror relation, which relation then becomes diseased and destructive. And which reaction amounts to a fundamental denial / rejection of the reality of self as self-for/with/among/judged by etc other. We can come at this through Sartre (and I did so for the reasons I mentioned above) or Vygotsky or systems theory etc. But I'm curious if any of this makes sense to anyone else on its own terms.

@Joshs @Moliere

Interesting back and forth. I know Sartre is polarizing and has been accused of completely misunderstanding Heidegger. The Husserl angle I'm not as familiar with as I've always approached Husserl through the lens of his successors. Work to do on Husserl then. Thanks.

(Incidentally, if you look at this through a systems theory lens, the corollary of non-positional awareness is something like the structural coupling of the systems of consciousness and society through language. The other sneaks in again prereflectively.)

I wonder how your argument would change if we substituted Husserlian for Sartrean phenomenonology — Joshs

The short answer is it doesn't work, particularly if you mean later Husserl.

The more rambling answer is I've never given Husserl the attention he probably deserves. However, to my knowledge, Sartre's structure of intentionality is derivative of early Husserl. But we need Sartre's formulation "consciousness is what it is not" to set up the idea of the other being integrated into non-positional awareness. I see this as developmental (Vygotsky, Lacan) in a way that Sartre didn't really address as far as I know.

But the analogy of the sphere with a mirror on the inside and a hole to the outside (from secondary literature) got me thinking about mirror-based pathologies etc. Sartre doesn't give us these kinds of metaphors directly. He gives us situations like the man looking through the keyhole who suddenly finds himself observed, but I find this less evocative and want a bit more even at the risk of stretching the theory further than he may have intended. I think what I've said is pretty much consistent with him though.

Anyway, Husserl's "consonance" attempt to avoid solipsism is just more Descartes right? I don't find it convincing and Husserl got dumped by many of his follower's, including Sartre, by turning idealist in the end. Solipsism is something idealism can't really make go away. It's not just the thrust of subjectivity we need, it's a kind of meta-phenomenal grounding supplied by the integrated context of the other.

So, back to the short answer. Husserl's no good for me. And that's OK because I think he went off track in the end, didn't really explain why, and is ultimately superceded by Sartre and others who came after.

Who do you find more convincing, particularly in relation to solipsism, and why do you think Husserl went off his original track the way he did?

You guys... :grin:

He told me to "ruck off". So, I suppose he lost his temper, but I grant him the decency of some self-censorship.

Banned @daniel j lavender for refusing moderation. His recent discussion was a copypasta from elsewhere on the internet and has been removed.

Not a fan of the topic of Narcissus. To me what he had was a disease of the mind, not the lack humility, if this is the diagnosis. Symbolically, when it's already a disease, a procedure is necessary to be performed, not an analysis to be laid out. He was left to die alone. No sage could save him. — L'éléphant

I hope my previous comments have helped clarify where I'm coming from on this. A disease of the mind is just what I have in mind.

As I have said before, the self is a 'modern' coming of age, for in the primitive times, it was always 'the other' that primitive humans had looked at, not themselves. It was a process to have finally arrived at the self, the recognition of the self -- a very long time. It was also not experienced by a handful of people, rather the whole village. It was not self-love that brought us to the self-awareness, not narcissistic, rather it was the beginning of wisdom. — L'éléphant

I hadn't considered the historical perspective actually, so thank you for this.

The reflection in the mirror physically and psychologically is the foundation of personal and social identity. The sense of self is gained in front of the mirror in connection with the gaze of the other in social interaction. — Jack Cummins

Exactly.

The mirror itself is of significance. I remember when I lived with a mirror nearby my bed it was horrible to see myself as soon as I woke up each day. Of course, the mirror is a reverse image so it is not as one appears exactly to others as most people are not completely symmetrical. — Jack Cummins

This is the type of "haunting" of the mirror that can become a damaging pattern.

Self lies have also become the new mirrors even though they can be played around with. We live in a world of images and one can love or loath oneself. Identity problems arise in conjunction with such images, including eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder and gender identity problems.

Someone with body dysmorphic disorder is a perfect example of the Narcissus I'm pointing to. And the hyper-focus on image excacerbates the problem. The image is never stable, every angle, mirror or camera will present us with someone something different. Without something else solid to fall back on, it's easy to become destabilised by it. But that something to fall back on can never be something entirely physical. It must transcend the physical image. It must be an abstract structure of self that can stabilize it, conceptualize it, and "recover" it from the mirror.

The psychological aspects of self and the perception of self by others is the foundation of relationships and so many developmental and psychiatric issues. Autism is interesting as it is like a soliptist bubble in some ways.

I have read some of Sartre's writing on self, body and otherness, which I found helpful. Also, the social sciences shed light on the issues, including Erving Goffman's sociological work, 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life'. Also, object-relations theory, especially the work of Melanie Klein, looks at developmental aspects of self identity, with the role of mother as the initial mirror. — Jack Cummins

I'm in the middle of a Goffman book now ("Behaviour in public places"). Klein's work sounds interesting to. But yes, sociology is highly relevant here. My approach kind of flits between philosophy and the social sciences.

One book which I came across which I see as very significant is Martin Buber's 'I and Thou'. It compares the relationship between self and a personal 'God' and the human other. This is of importance in imagination and fantasy. As belief in God is facing there may be more attention to the opinions of others for a sense of self and self esteem. — Jack Cummins

I haven't explored Buber closely, but I should. He often comes up tangentially in my research.

But, as for the solution to the problem of self loathing or excessive self-love I am not sure that there is a complete solution. In practical terms, ito throw away the mirrors entirely might result in a complete disheveled appearance. Also, opinions of others may be overvalued but do need to be taken into account for coping in social life.

Agree, it's a healthy relationship with the mirror, and by extension with other, that's important. Fleeing the other or the image of the other is no healthier ultimately than overvaluing it. It's more the flip side of the same fear.

I am an existentialist outsider in many respects but don't wish to be a complete isolate. As people spend more time on the internet and phones there is a danger of going into a fantasy life in which the other becomes more remote. It may be a way of getting lost in a life of fantasy and preoccupation with an idealised imaginary image of oneself. To find the balance in navigating self and aloneness may be the way to wisdom. Through feedback from others we gain some awareness of our own blindspots, which may be uncomfortable but essential for deepening self-awareness. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I've deliberately isolated myself at times, and I am generally a loner, but it all must be with the goal of finding productive and fulfilling relationships with the other, because, again, the self is in some sense the other to the self. There is a radical awareness of and relationship to the other that we cannot do without.

It might also help to shed light on this if I clarify Sartre’s concept of consciousness that I’m making use of here, especially non-positional awareness. So, from a phenomenological angle, we can say consciousness is always consciousness of something, and from this we get intentionality. I look at the lamp in front of me and that is the object of my consciousness. But, of course, that is not the whole story, for I am not only aware of the lamp. It doesn’t fill my awareness. I do not become the object. For even to have an object, we must have a subject and implicit to non-positional awareness is that separation—what is going on is an observation that requires an observer, i.e. me. So, this is a moment to moment background knowledge and is pre-reflective. It is not me saying to myself after looking at the lamp, “I looked at the lamp”, it is included in, immanent in, the experience of looking at the lamp.

I read a good piece of secondary literature that helps visualize this. We can imagine non-positional awareness as a sphere on the inside of which is a mirror. Suppose there is a hole in the mirror to the outside, to the phenomenon. Well, consciousness simultaneously “reaches out” to that outside while mirroring itself on the inside and this happens in the moment. It’s what gives moments their immediate “feel” and what gives us the ability to immediately act in the world like a participant. It’s immanent to every act of consciousness rather than being in any way separate. It’s that immediate pre-reflective sense of being a subject observing an object that allows for later reflection. That later reflection is harder to visualize because it involves a kind of loop, where consciousness reaches out and returns to the self---through the filter of the previous immanent knowledge of it being a subject vs objects---in order to examine a moment or series of moments or the result of a moment, e.g. a feeling that is a part of itself, and in this act the subject is made object by consciousness.

And here, as Sartre points out we have no conceptually privileged access to the nature of our pre-reflective apparatus in terms of its pure being than we do to others' consciousness as immediate being. It can only be experienced reflectively as an object for us as others are. For the conceptual, I, the subject as self-understanding, solipsism makes no sense because we are in principle no better off in relation to our own pre-reflective existence than we are to that of others. That is, we can never find ourselves as substance, we are given to ourselves only through our actions, which allow for reflection.

What follows then is an attempt to explore a form of brokenness in or in our relation to this non-positional awareness, and, by extension, the other.

Just reread trying to look for an "in" for discussion. And the thing I'm wanting more of is specification of these enzymatic knowledge machines: How do they interact with the independent flows of code such that in place of identification, or in combatting this?, we get or somehow are interrupted by knowledge? But that's a Kudos on your writing because it means I wanted more, basically. It's an interesting premise, and I like the theoretical set up between what I would call, for lack of a better word, two subjectivities -- the social subjectivity (operating independent of individual intent) and the individual subjectivity (that sense of being you which, due to social subjectivity, is often a process of identification-with and enactment).

A thought that comes to mind are Koans. They're meant to stop that circuit of the self in a way. — Moliere

Thanks for this comment, Moliere, It gives me a chance to say a bit more about the EKM idea.

The first reason to posit theories like this as “enzymatic knowledge machines”, i.e. as assemblages of functional abstractions that coordinate and can be “plugged into” our mental machinery is to highlight the nature of what we are up against---that is, to set up the obverse, the media machine, which as a whole system and through the action of sub-systems, also “plugs into” us, but in a negative sense.

We might call media systems “anaesthetic information machines”---they neither promote knowledge nor activity in any positive sense but offer passivity through information or the illusion of activity and knowledge. So, we attempt to concretize the abstract such that we can focus on how things function and not be distracted by the fact that we can’t “see” a thing function at the level that matters. Natural and artificial machines, such as organisms and robots respectively, can’t so easily escape our notice, and we may even overestimate their functionality for that reason, whereas the opposite is the case when dealing with abstract assemblages. So, the first idea is to get people thinking about the abstract landscape and its functionality not just from the EKM side but from the opposing side. The EKM first and foremost is a warning.

Another point here is that conceptualisation is creation. By conceptualising theories of action as enzymatic machines, we create them as such and make positive use of philosophy (this dovetails with Deleuzian ideas of the nature of philosophy itself). The idea is to create territories of thought on which ground we have a chance of success. Traditional politics gets us nowhere as the real problem is always displaced. No politician is going to say we should limit tech companies activities because they are creating abstract machinic assemblages that parasitise our mental machinery. They are instead going to blab on about something like “privacy” or etc, which the tech companies love because then they just give us a list of check boxes that we can’t be bothered ticking and we’re back to square one. The machine rolls on.

Overall, the idea is to create conceptual spaces that lead to action to combat conceptual vacuums that lead to passivity. Poetry, art, koans, etc can certainly break the circuit and bring us back to ourselves in a way that helps us resist anaesthetic information machines, but they don’t give us a conceptual grounding on which to be confident in our understanding of them and therefore to actively combat them. I envision a future where people in general are educated about how society, and particularly its technological side, really works at an abstract level in relation to their subjectivites, rather than at a step removed. But we need to create a language and a set of concepts to talk about that that go beyond what we have now (which includes poetry, koans etc) to something more philosophical/scientific. Technology is accelerating its development, and our conceptual space needs to accelerate and expand to keep up or, frankly, we will be left behind.

Interesting points which I will come back to. For now, I should clarify that I am using Narcissus as a stand in for a neurosis whereby someone gets locked into or caught in the physical mirror because their relation to the other (the social mirror) is diseased. The most obvious corollaries are body image disorders, rather than narcissim per se.