Lou Kauffman - Cybernetic Tools - Contribution to Discussion Panel at ASC2020 Global Conversation

This is an presentation contributed to a discussion panel on systems and cybernetics as part of the ASC2020 Global Conversation.

[cyberneticssociety]

Very important and useful overview of the cybernetic turn rooted in the reflexive nature of language, which mirrors the reflexive nature of the world, I suggest. Language can encompass and be equal to its own metalanguage, which he argues provides a natural freedom. But does it also allow the possibility that language can be used to imprison others? And if so, does it mean that this experience is the possibility to become — as well as needing to become — a reflexive path of development that counters the enticements of rhetoric and fake news, including one’s own false reporting to oneself?
He quotes a key sentence from Heinz von Foerster: “I am the observed relation between myself and observing myself.” He shows this in relation to a single he created in the ancient iconic sigil of the Ouroboros as well as a symbolic logical statement using Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form: "I equals marked I I*", where * also denotes marked. Foerster’s statement can be restated from another perspective: "The I AM observes myself observing my supposed self and the supposed world yet knows itself as I do not.”
I am also reminded in relation to a statement he makes — you the observer are coalesced with what you observe, you are coalesced with the language you use — which is the ancient Yogic (=joined) statement Tat Tvam Asi, that art thou.
He makes — in a symbolic poetic form — the statement “Within the reflexive context/we can rebuild and/extend science/to include/the world as/conversation, /a conversation that/ constructs/itself/ and/a/world. (Each lash is a new line.)
Some critical questions.
Can language reflect on language? Is it more accurate to say that a thinker reflects through (the modal medium and representational forms) of language upon (the nature of) language (itself)? Kaufmann reflects on language. He does so through a combination of natural English (with technical terms) and symbolic language (with technical sigils and signs). The symbolic language always returns to (English) language in his use, but the English can also return to the Sign language. Thus the symbolic language is a kind of alphabet for a kind of language in the universe of language and both enable translations.
How do the events constituting the situated morphological transformations (changes in the topological form or in the syntax and terms) map onto events only modelled in their effects (“let x be y" shows up in a new form but Aristotle’s study of such processes of motion (change) consider both termination (catastrophe) and causal agents or events. Kauffman is inside his Red King and Alice? Are they ineradicably his — although they might be yours too?
What do you think?
AJ