Healthy competition does not exist. (Maturana 1990: 13)
…The key purpose of Homo sapiens is not the quality of its economy but the quality of itself. (V. U. Degtiar 2009: 144[1])
Chapter I: Overcoming the duality of economics
In the most human societies, one is usually involved in the constraints of the declared economic necessity. On the one side, it is tacitly perceived as the naturally given instance of regulation and order. On the other side, the rules of the economic are coupled to a manmade framework of differently weighted collusions.
Instead of a sophisticated mathematical corset, mystery of the invisible hand or psychological pyramid of needs, we need a consequent non-dualizing view on the economy as allopoietic experiment within the autopoietic environment.
The economic regulation seems tightly connected with other social regulations, like law or ethics. For example Karl Homann (2006)[2]indicates the common nature of morality and economic reason.
So what if we conceive the socio-economic without recycling the usual dualistic prejudices?
At least several related concepts from the constructivist discourse give us a chance, to think the economic through - from the consistently constructivist perspective, meeting both - the operative conciseness of the single subject and the conceptual complexity of interdisciplinary discourse.
By this attempt we aim a viable, non-redundant and non-dualistic upgrade of the actual economic discourse on the ground of the open complexity. The application of this upgrade at least in the management practice would enhance the power of self-regulation and human potentiality to solve the leading micro-economic discrepancies.
The non-chimerical approach focuses on the adjustment of complexity by shared cognition, which it is characteristic for human reality construction. The resulting cumulative interdependency enables the economic activity. That’s why the intersubjectivity (Leon Tsvasman, 2006)of shared cognition is our main perspective in this paper.
The trans-cumulative view on the cumulative economy is a critical perspective, which questions the legitimacy of cumulative interdependency. That’s why the extension of the non-chimerical approach is given in the trans-cumulative ethics with its own imperatives.
After the clearing of the relation between the intersubjectivity of shared cognition and the human adjustment of complexity, the several concepts will be introduced to upgrade the ideas of market, needs, mathematical computability etc. and related assumptions.
The economics will be discussed by using the concepts of infosomatic validity and cumulative reality construction. The non-chimerical approach and the trans-cumulative ethics will be positioned to increase the viability of the economic practice.
Since space is limited we stay focused on the philosophical issues of the economical. We will provide the reading community with an original framework by pointing out the possible perspectives of practice to be deepened in the later publications.
Chapter I: The basic questions of the economic behind the economics
Is there a natural drive behind human economic activity?
What is economy about? Asking this question, you judge the economy by what it produces, as “the system by which goods and services are produced, sold, and bought in a country”. The modern economics, based on this question, does focus on how economies work, and on interactions of economic agents. Such economics is prone to models whose validity cannot be clearly demonstrated. Isn’t it more revealing, if you want to know, either man invented economy for any cognitive purpose? Has it evolved according to any natural drive like self-regulation? In this case you mean “the economic”, not “the economy” (the actual performance of the economic). However, the knowledge about “the economic” is increasingly useful since economization is prevalent in all areas of life. That’s why I suggest to better asking in this approach: What is the nature of the economic?
Even if you are an economist, you avoid interrogating the nature of your subject. You accept it as given practice, described with models. For example, you can research on economic practice by using of a decision theory to underlie economic reasoning. You can also apply the mathematical game theory to prognosticate the performance of the certain economic parameters. Whether statistics or mathematics, the mainstream-economists use to prefer quantitative methods. That’s why the mainstream economics is based on a framework of concepts like market or economic value. Their performance can be practically described by quantitative methods. In a fact, a quantitative aspect of the modern economics cannot be ignored. The challenge is to ensure that the mathematical models match the human determinants.
What is the human purpose of the economic?
Ontology, methodology and epistemology of economics are seldom questioned. Justified by natural selection and evolutionary probabilities, philosophy of economics will mainly provide you with evolutional concepts to underline its ethical issues (Alexander Rosenberg, Daniel Hausman).
The nature of the economic becomes self-evident when focused on the evolution of its essential human drive to act in an economic way. It means a certain behavior, resulting in economic transactions. The comprehensive understanding of this human drive will define the limits of the economic in human society and to answer i.e. following practical questions: Why mainstream culture rewards possession by constructing statics? Why love cannot be completely economized? Is the idea of “Homo Oeconomicus” realistic and viable enough to explore the future of “Share Economy”etc.?
As a person, you need to be at least physically intact. We call it safety or security. To ensure it, you use to buy an insurance package or a gun, to build a fence and to dress appropriately. But the economically usable paths of satisfaction in this case are not congruent with the original need. A fetus in the mother's body gets this need satisfied in a way without the need to consume something. Even an animal in virgin forest does not need any products or services to exchange for an equivalent of the performance. An animal accomplishes by directing its attention to something, which can be impenetrable or secures its continuity, everything else is irrelevant. This is cognition. So why should human cognition be realized economically?
My first assumption to fix the human purpose of the economic is, that in economic terms, only something, which arises on the basis of interdependence, can be exploited. That is to say, the needs as such cannot be satisfied economically, but the necessity of need, which is produced by in the course of common, joint or shared action, i.e. interdependently.
What does economic interdependence have to do with human cognition?
The most living organisms perform cognitive capacities to enable the organism to deal with environmental complexity. For Fred Dretske (1981), information is a resource that organisms use to survive; cognitive systems are information consuming, or information exploiting, systems. Peter Godfrey-Smith[3]claims that the function of cognition is to enable organisms to deal with environmental complexity. But what exactly is environmental complexity? There are some reasons to believe that curtain complexity have been important in the evolution of human interdependency.
I suggest that the most useful concept of complexity here is a simple one. Complexity is heterogeneity. Complexity is variety, diversity, doing a lot of different things or having the capacity to occupy a lot of different states.
Before the mathematically described performance is possible, the economic begins in the human being on the cognitive level and in the field of joint action.
The mainstream-definition of the economical activity is: The rational disposition over scarce means to satisfy needs and desires. (Helmstädter 1974: 2)
The basic problem of human beings from the economists' point of view in the fact that they only have scarce resources at their disposal to achieve their not concise goals. The human being – conceived as "Homo Oeconomicus" - is believed to be rational, which means especially, he is able to dispose of the scarce resources available in an optimal manner. Optimal simply means: To achieve a given goal with as little effort as possible or to achieve as much as possible with given means.
Economic activity is present in almost all areas of life, as we are confronted almost endlessly with very limited resources but with an infinite number of goals. The economic sphere is that, in which the question of disposition is the decisive problem.
An economic explanation of a social phenomenon begins with the presumption of rationality: the phenomenon is described as an aggregated product of the individual purposeful actors.
The practical problem is, that humans only act rationally, if they accept the rules of the economic, and it is not without a certain compulsion. Otherwise, there would not be so many different protests of cultural or political nature against a total economization. That people do not act rationally according to the economic rules does not mean that they act arbitrarily. They do not act rationally with regard to the quantitative appropriateness of economic self-observation, but they act consistently with regard to their own cognition.
What exactly is the real scarce resource?
When looking at needs and scarcity from the perspective of evolutionary constructivism (Maturana etc.), the whole of nature can be considered as economic. What we need is to check what is really scarce and which cognitive drive rules behind the need replacement of the economic activity.
Here is the set of three successive complexes of the coherent assumptions, which will be explained in the following non-dualistic approach on the economic, chapter after chapter as well as the involved concepts and termini. In the third assumption there is a definition of “the economic” in accordance with “the economy”. Like the other organisms, human beings are autopoietic systems. Information is a resource that organisms use to survive - they are information consuming. Human cognition is co-cognition, and its medium is actuality. Human experience of actuality is a kind of proto-awareness, alienated from the needs of organismic self-regulation. Actuality is an enabling environment of joint action resulting in complexity adjustment. The stronger organismic cognition is intersubjectively attracted, the more information is present in the actuality, and the less is available for the organismic self-regulation. The complexity of actuality escalates in the course of the increasingly deficient self-regulation. The less autopoietic self-regulation takes place, the more allopoietic infrastructure is realized. We suggest denoting the described discrepancy with the term "distortion". The more distortion takes place the more technical is the common reality. Human proto-awareness is an essential scarce resource of the intersubjective actuality, and overcoming distortion is the essential need of the involved human organisms. Because of their singularity, we suggest calling both - the essential scarce resourceand the essential need“infosomatic drives”. The economicemerges as the equilibrium of both infosomatic drives. Because the mainstream economy works with distorted or chimeric models, the "infosomatic" conception of the economic is non-dualistic and non-chimeric.
The fundamental empirical observationbehind these set of assumptions concerns the fact that all the economically relevant transactions are based on a certain additional focusing of cognitively driven attentionof the persons involved. In the praxis, this subjective attention focusing correlates to the intersubjectively legitimized set of the extrinsic rational or ethical agreements, before it successively results in the relevant behavioural change. The systemic of the economically driven joint action maintains the infrastructure of the economic.
Chapter III: The deal with complexity
From the perspective of critical constructivism, world and information co-construct one another[4]. Tracing the cybernetic foundations of information (Shannon 1948[5], Wiener 1948[6], von Glasersfeld 2006[7]) reaffirms the assumption that both intersubjective knowledge and subjective orientation (Tsvasman 2002[8], 2006[9]) are mutually dependent.
Complexityis handled in the naive-realistic discourse as a kind of “objective” emergence within the world of human experience. Representative is in this connection the Neil Johnson’s definition of complexity as “phenomena, which emergefrom a collection of interacting objects"[10]. Both the objects and relations are considered to be legitimate aspects of the whole.
The insight behind the constructivist perspective is that meaning is intersubjectively constructed and hence objectified. As aptly summed up by social constructivist Alexander Wendt (1992, 396–7), “people act toward objects, including other actors, on the basis of the meanings that the objects have for them”[11]. Observing complexity in its relational quality, we assume that only the reduced complexity is representational in the categories of the objectified meaning. From the consequent or radical-constructivist point of view, the reduction of complexity enables objectification, and it takes place by intersubjective representation during the joint action.
The relational perception incurs objection through consciousness, in which “intersubjected subject” turns into “person” – an intersubjectively constructed subject, involved in joint action and distinguished by its “subject constancy” as described in Tsvasman 2008[12]. Nevertheless, to be epistemologically neutral, the term “adjustment” (of complexity) is used here instead of “reduction”. In this metaphor, intersubjectivityin our reading (Tsvasman 2006[13]) is related to the concept of complexity like language to the idea of reality.
The interdependency appears to be a fundamental human way to actively deal with the complexity of environment to construct certainty. As semantic interdependency, intersubjectivity evolves on the level of meanings. The pragmatic interdependency, realized on the level of joint action, appears to be an urge of the economic.
Chapter IV: The scarcity of all scarcity
As the first assumption, the present approach focuses on the concepts of somatic singularity and somatic presence, circumscribed in the following explanation.
Initially bound by the organismic autopoiesis(in the meaning, treaded and shaped by Maturana[14]/Varela[15]and Zeleny[16]) and alienated from it by the intersubjective actuality, somatic singularityis assumed as a hypothetic base of what we call “awareness for the actual” or attention. At least, the concept of somatic presenceis to be handled as the resource of intersubjective complexity adjustment by the means of joint action. It also prefesses the adjustment of interdependency, which we assume to be a fundamental intrinsic sense behind the processes we perceive as economic.
To avoid confusion with the broader meaning of cognitionas mental activity and to emphasize the quality as precursor of attention - especially on the level of human subject’s autopoietic potentiality - the mentioned concept will be referred in the following as somatic awareness.
Somatic awarenesscan also be described as self-sufficient proto-cognition, addressed to somatic singularityand maintaining somatic presence. Somatic awarenessis an evolutional prototype of self-awareness. The difference is that somatic awareness addresses potentiality, and self-awareness refers to actuality. Somatic awarenessis much more the idea of what makes human organism operate optimally in its ideal medium. Somatic awarenessfocuses the autopoietic potentiality of the organism, without nessesity of allopoietic reconstruction or adjustment of the initial medium of nature. It is also less sophisticated than “the subconscious” of psychologists, being at least a re-contextualized constructivist equivalent of its evolutional prototype. In a conscious person, which is – whether child or adult – actually a product of intersubjective embodiment, the somatic awareness remains mainly hermetic and mostly latent present throughout life parallel to the subject’s consciousness.
As autopoietic system, each human being is initially an operationally closed organism, and there are sufficient processes within this organism to maintain its whole, even without being controlled by consciousness. The intact form thiswholeit used to be called “health”, but this word is misleading as it describes a chimerical conceptof the functionally intact human organism. The chimerical conceptswill be discussed later.
Autopoietic systems are "structurally coupled" with their medium, embedded in a dynamic of changes that can be recalled as sensory-motor coupling. This continuous dynamic is considered as a rudimentary form of cognitionand can be observed throughout life-forms. This cognition maintains human being as self-sufficient organism even without human consciousness and its specific concept of self.
On this account somatic awarenessmeans not a cognitive concept of organismic self-awareness, but mainly that drive, which can be observed as attention.
In the categories of structural coupling, the actual equilibrium of both system and environment results from the mutual non-disrructive perturbations, which anables system responding to events in its environment in a viable way[17].
If autopoiesis of living systems persists, the organism’s potential embodies itself within its initial environment. In the case, the environment is partially or temporarily inconsistent, but the system is able to expand the limits of its environment by joint action, we deal with distortion of environment, and probably with social organisation on the level of the organism. In the case, the living system is able to intersubjective orientation by the objectification of meanings through joint action, we deal with complexity adjustment.
Chapter V: The “broken” nature: Distortion and poietic divergence
The natural distortion caused divergence of complexity adjustment, resulting in a parallelism of autopoiesisand allopoiesis(both concepts described by Maturana[18]) in the evolution of the human reality construction. The natural distortionis indirectly observable in the process initiated by the human evolution. It is like “singularity” of astrophysics, a hypothetic concept, because in the constructivist approach we lean on von Graersfeld’s “episthemology without ontology”[19]and do not question any kind of ontological or metaphysical events (like global catastrophe of any kind, etc).
The chimeric distortionis of semantic nature, caused by allopoieticobjectivation of meanings. The constructs ofactualityand potentialityare the parts of the initial infosomatic infrastructure(s. Table A).
Table A: The small matrix of the human reality construction.
Autopoiesisappears as an authentic organisation of living and allopoiesis- as anthropogenic organisation, resulting in technology. It enables the infrastructure of human reality construction with its intrinsic sense of validity-driven environment-adoption of the specific human world of living. Whether the adoption can absorb the natural environment with its autopoiesis, or if it will “replace” it by a completely allopoietic enviroment,is the actual question of human existence.
In the anthropogenic world both embodiment and realisation emerge mutually. What makes certain equilibrium of complexity adjustmentviable? Mainly it is the direction of the somatic awareness, which fixes the quality of a certain “actuality” and an appropriate “presence”, as shown in the figure.
Figure B: Direction of Somatic Awareness (commented fragment of the “small matrix”).
If somatic awarenessis directed towards the somatic singularity, the organismic actuality maintains the somatic presence of a certain subject. Steered towards the somatic singularity of the others, the intersubjective actuality increases the cognitive presence of the human. Alienated towards infosomatic meanings, it increases actuality of cumulative validities, maintaining chimerical presence.
Chapter VI: Emerged by shoes: The allopoietic nature of the economic
The following metaphorical foray “Emerged by Shoes” is symbolically representative for the most of human inventions and technologies:
Since human being is evolved barefoot in his primary medium (nature), he invents shoes to overcome longer distances and thus extends his medium. The emerged medium changes the human being itself, and it accrues mutually. The emerged human maintains shoes as an agent of the expanded medium. The concept of shoes attracts attention as a medium of a certain extension, but also the extended medium itself attracts attention.
As human being extends his primary medium by joint action, enabled through co-cognition, it maintains also the intersubjective constructs of both – the medium of extension [20] and the extended medium.
As the organismic cognition in the initial medium switches into the shared cognition in the expanded medium, the organismic potentiality fades, and the intersubjective potentiality - increases. The attention in our reading invents its actuality, making intersubjective autopoiesis more and the organismic one - less actual.[21]
The genuine purpose of the intersubjectivity of shared action, which is represented in any economic activity, is the viable environment for continuous cumulating of the alienated somatic awarenessfor the human complexity adjustment in a viable way.
Chapter VII: Infosomatic attention: The genuine economic resource?
We could also work out the relation between cognition and human attention, which is mostly important for the understanding of the non-chimerical approach, but we prefer to inventsomatic awarenessas a consistent placeholder and a legitimate link in a chain between autopoiesis and attention, in order to later re-contextualize the economic. So we use this construct to get rid of distortion, provided by the mentioned traditional concepts and to concretise the concept of cognition good enough to go through. In a fact, somatic awarenessis a certain aspect of cognition, used here to explain economy as the 18thcamel in a popular story used by Heinz von Foerster to explain reality[22].
Like the "splitting the atom" is conzeptualised in the physics as a source of nuclear power, so the “splitted” somatic presenceis a source of the released power of shared attention, responsible for human technology. The metaphoric “ontic urge” of attention is alienated somatic awareness. By the way, the intersubjectivity of shared cognition takes place at the expense of self-oriented subject (the conept founded by Tsvasman 2008) [23], which is the non-chimerical potentiality oh human being.
On the one side, we have somatic awareness, alienated from its organismic purpose of the autonomous self-regulation, to be the resource of intersubjective complexity adjustment. The alienation itself is an energy-intensive venture, emerging at the expenses of the organismic potentiality for the purpose of intersubjective actuality.
On the other side there is attention, the medium of human reality construction. To avoid likelihood of confusion with the naiv-realistic meaning of attention and to underline the origin from the intersubjectively alienated somatic awareness, it is further referred to as infosomatic attention. The “info-” refers to intersubjectivity in its quality as "enabler of complexity adjustment", and “-somatic” is for "arising from alienated somatic awareness".
All in all infosomatic attentionis an economic proto-resource, as its scarcity is fundamental for the human activity pertaining to use as a resource. Economy is therefore the thrifty dealing with or management of the infosomatic attention. The consequent non-chimerical definition of economy will be a subject of the following chapters.
Chapter VIII: Enabled by joint action: The matter of the economic
Because of the scarcity of infosomatic attention, that human activity, traditionally interpreted as economic, appears to be the viable principle of intersubjective reality construction by the means of joint action. The realization of this principle seems to be divergent in the course of human evolution, so that several methods of continuous sharing attention for the purpose of joint action can be observed.
One of them, evolved into so-called market economy, is the method of cumulating attention. Attention is an intersubjective equivalent of somatic awareness, the organismic medium of self-regulation. Embodied by manipulating of the subject’s cognititionin a clocked[24]way, attention makes communication possible.
To deal with the dynamics outlined above in a differentiated way, the concept of infosomatic validitywill be introduced.
Infosomaticis related to the intersubjective embodiment of subject’s autopoiesis. Validitymeans, inter-subjectively cumulated representations of joint activity, which can be reproduced by sharing attention through using the meaning as medium of cumulative infrastructure.
The most viable and though determining method of the shared reproduction of validities is natural human language, emerging in the here in the meaning: attention-driven complexity-adjusted construction[25]construction of continuity, space and objects[26]. The other less cumulating method of the shared reproduction (mainly applied towards the continuity of structural coupling) is music.
Economically relevant is for example, mathematics as another semantic method of the skilled intersubjective complexity handling by the way of specific validities, dealing with shared reproduction of the most elementary common validity (which is “being separated” as subject), being perceived as an object, if represented in an intersubjective way.
Chapter IX: Empowered by the actual: Cumulative validity
As Peirce[27]investigated, why mathematics deals with quantity, what the different systems of quantity are, how they are characterized, and what the logical nature of infinity is, he focused the relationship of logic and metaphysics. To apply that philosophical view on mathematics onto the human economic activity in an outlined constructivist perspective, the several determinant aspects seem relevant.
If meaning is a medium of reality adjustment, so quantity is its minimal common difference (leaned on Bateson[28]), relevant for the cognitive purpose of attention. In philosophy quantity is minimal common quality. In Kant’s definition, quantity is “function of thought in judgment", containing "three moments... universal, particular, singular“[29].
All the qualitative information of meaning is the purpose, why cognitive awareness should be alienated from the autopoietic self-regulation. If the purpose is overcoming of cognitive distortion[30]of the sexual difference, so structural coupling legitimates the attention. In this case it is directed towards the organismic potential of the other subject. This is then “awareness to the potential” we shorten as p-attention(as shown in Table A). If the purpose is joint action, so the attention is for cumulating. We call it “awareness for the actual” or a-attention.
If we accept the clocked complexity adjustment by inter-acting, we can see why shared action, conditioned by language, is becoming a medium of complexity adjustment by cumulating of the alienated somatic awarenessof the involved subjects.
The so-called technologic environment results from the described economic activity. It is a true medium of complexity adjustment by the interrelation of the cumulative methods, used for the economic purpose, which is certainty construction by the means of cumulative validity.
Chapter X: Somatic potentiality and infosomatic actuality
The concepts of intersubjectivity and attention, leant on the radical constructivism (in interpretation of von Glasersfeld or S. J. Schmidt[31]), are shaped in this approach in the following assumptions.
The human intersubjectivity tends to transfer the semantic representations of the shared action into cumulated values in a clocked way, which is than time-based and basically manipulative towards both - the involved self-orienting subject with its initial attention integrity and the initial integrity of the natural environment.
The intersubjectively performed attention flow is being channelled in the enabling environment, constructed step-by-step during the history of human civilisation, which is a certain emergence of the specific complexity handling, appeared to be viable for human reality construction. The mentioned environment - evolved from book printing through Internet and media convergence to the virtual reality – is the matter of so called “media society” (leaned on concepts of “noosphere” or “noogenese” by Vernadski[32]and Teilhard de Chardin[33]etc.).
In the economic perspective, the enabling environmentemancipates the relational matter of human reality construction and its enabling infrastructure, called technology.
Chapter XI: Economy of distortion
As the authentic natural and sexual distortions were reinforced by the intersubjective complexity adjustment by the way of chimerical construction, it resulted in a functional divide of spitted wholeness (somatic singularity), release of somatic awarenessand the principal scarcity of infosomatic attention towards the actual (a-attention, s. Table 1). This discrepancy is both the urge and the legitimacy of the current economic principle of order, based on scarcity.
There are at least several viable principles of order possible, based on ethical, aesthetical or mathematical validation. There is less wisom in searching for non-chimerical pendants for the dynamic components of chimerical economy. But there are some correlations visible in the table A.
If somatic presenceis a main urge, so “recovery longing for somatic singularity” can be conceived as a source of all “needs”. A-attentionis the authentic recourse, and certainty construction- a pendant to industrial production. P-attentionis the prototype of “land”, and “recovery longing for somatic presence” – of “labour”. What we call “capital” is then nothing but a clocked certainty of orientation, drawing from the infosomatic construction of future, which is divergent. Its ambivalence results in divergent ambivalence of two possible ways of futurisation.
For the purpose of a better traceable link to the economic, the allopoietic objectivation of certainty construction is shown as distortive objection, the representation of recovery longing – as economic subjection, and the ordering equilibrium of the both opposing forces is the intrinsic drive of chimerical economy.
Chapter XII: Technology of the channelled consciousness
The introduced concept of infosomatic validitieshas to be differentiated in terms of the actual economic approach. Cumulated according to the rules, provided by a described method of the skilled inter-subjective complexity handling, based on mathematical reduction, infosomatic validitiesare stabilized into chimerical validities.
The medium to guarantee the infosomatic cumulation by the means of shared attention is what we call money. It is evident throughout its four economic functions – medium of exchange, measure of value, standard of payment, store of value.
Powered by the alienated somatic awareness, the potentially self-oriented subjects internalize the intersubjective values by emerging the self-construction of the involved subjects, which results in the time-based externalization of the chimerical validities of the own identity as a so called “person” which can be charecterized in our reading as subject constancy, an active - performing and designing - instance of chimerical actuality.
By emergingchimerical validities, the clocked construction of the chimerical environmentis adapted for human subjects, whose attention is partially alienated from their self-regulation.
If the attention is involved neither in the organismic autopoiesis as somatic awarenessnor in the cognitive intersubjection as attention towards the potentialor p-attention, it is alienated by intersubjectivity as infosomatic attentionor attention to the actual. Clocked while shared action, which is time-based communication, it will be a source of cumulating of those validities, emerging as chimerical objects. It is the sphere of the economics with its value-driven realization and secondary embodiment.
Continuous management of chimerical validitiesbinds attention enabling the chimerical infrastructures to be stable in the categories of time. Communication networks enable informative accumulation without possession, and realise the secondary pre-longing.
As an infosomatic totality, the human subject is not interested in intersubjectivity, until it is proved as a necessity for survival in a “broken” first-order nature, initially, a mechanism of emergency with its communication and specific social constructions – of time, language etc.
The emergency, induced by overcoming the first-level separation of the subject’s organismic nature assumes the sexually driven p-attention. Its communication is almost non-verbal. The emergency of the “broken” nature assumes the intersubjectivity of the aimed joint or collective acting; its communication is of a semantic order.
Tracking attention back is a technological process, realized by constructs in a joint action (a sematic source of what we call ‘health’ and ‘medicine’ etc.) Two flows of attention – alienation, which is a separating force (the base of any social order and ethics), and tracking back – the force of reconstruction (the mostly economic one) - are the main fundamental driving forces of reality construction. So reconstruction is a specific economic flow.
In those terms the economic values are not driven by needs, but by the cognitive drive of the restoring of the initial attention integrity.
Digitalization appears to be its consequent outgrowth, emancipating attention from cultivation of emergent validities into the operative steering of trans-cumulative shared dynamics.
In the means of the concept the human economical activity appears to be manipulative towards the initial first-order environment.
The human intersubjectivity with its by the activity of joint action specific attention binding, transfers representations into emergent validities, alienating attention from the organismic self-regulation.
The other kind of intersubjectivity were pairing – also an originally duration-limited state of emergency from the position of a single organism, but it is the only attention-alienation legitimate in the first order nature. The corresponding social construction of this attention flow is what we call family. Its re-construction flow is love.
The drive of economy can be observed as infosomaticre-construction of the somatic awareness, which is based on emancipatory process. So its intrinsic sense (or “need” in the common economic categories) is the compensation of the lost somatic singularity.
In the categories introduced above communication is conceived a realization medium of intersubjectivity, which causes time relation and hence specific human meanings. The sexually driven communication realizes the construction of family. The global networking of information society emancipated intersubjectivity flow. Part 2 follows in the next posting...
[1]V. U. Degtiar (2009): “Cybernetics and Communication”. In: Parra-Luna, Francisco (Ed.): Systems Science and Cybernetics - Volume III.
[2]Karl Homann (2006): The Sense and Limits of the Economic Method in Business Ethics, Wittenberg-Zentrum für Globale Ethik e.V (Ed.)Also avaliable at: http://www.wcge.org/download/DP_2006-5_Homann_-_The_Sense_and_Limits_of_the_Economic_Method_in_Business_Ethics_o.pdf
[3]http://www.its.caltech.edu/~theory/Godfrey-Smith.pdf
[4]Joe L. Kincheloe 2005. Critical Constructivism Primer, NY: Peter Lang
[5]Shannon, C.E. (1948) The mathematical theory of communication. Bell Systems Technical Journal, 27, 379-423 & 623-656.
[6]Wiener, N. (1948) Cybernetics, Cambridge Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press.
[7]Ernst von Glasersfeld (2006): Informationsübertragung, in: Leon R. Tsvasman (Hg.): Das große Lexikon Medien und Kommunikation. Kompendium interdisziplinärer Konzepte. Würzburg
[8]Leon Tsvasman (2002): Kommunikative Aspekte individueller Orientierung, Berlin.
[9]Leon Tsvasman (2006): Orientierung, in: Leon R. Tsvasman (Hg.): Das große Lexikon Medien und Kommunikation. Kompendium interdisziplinärer Konzepte. Würzburg
[10]Johnson, Neil F. (2009). "Chapter 1: Two's company, three is complexity". Simply complexity: A clear guide to complexity theory(PDF). Oneworld Publications. p. 3
[11]Wendt, A. 1992. Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics. International Organization, 46: 391–425
[12]Leon R. Tsvasman (2008), On the Viability of Being a Self-Orienting Subject. Constructivist Foundations(CF, ISSN 1782-348X) vol. 3, number 2, March 2008, pp. 84-86.
[13]Leon Tsvasman (2006): Intersubjektivität, in: Leon R. Tsvasman (Hg.): Das große Lexikon Medien und Kommunikation. Kompendium interdisziplinärer Konzepte. Würzburg
[14]Maturana, Humberto (1987). "Everything is said by an observer". In Thompson, William Irwin. Gaia, a Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Press. pp. 65–82, 71.
[15]Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela(1987): Der Baum der Erkenntnis. Die biologischen Wurzeln des Erkennens. Goldmann, München, ISBN 3-442-11460-8, S. 83ff, insbes. S. 98
[16]Milan Zeleny, (Hrsg.): Autopoiesis: A Theory of the Living Organizations. New York 1981
[17]H. R. Maturana and F. J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1980.
[18]Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, R. Uribe: Autopoiesis: the organization of living systems, its characterization and model. In: Currents in Modern Biology. 5, 1974, S. 187
[19]von Glasersfeld Ernst (1987), Siegener Gespräche über Radikalen Konstruktivismus, in: Schmidt 1987
[20]The shoes, the wheel, domesticized animals or other tools, techniques or technology.
[21]As shared cognition will soon emerge once again in the expanded medium of virtual reality, there will be two possibilities – to restore organismic potentiality in a virtually restored ideal medium, probably mixed with the segments of a cured nature or to expand intersubjective potentiality by minimizing of organismic cognition. The first possibility were natural, the second – chimerical.
[22]Segal, Lynn, The Dreamof Reality: Heinzvon Foerster's Constructivism, ist ed., New York, W. W. Norton, 1986
[23]Leon R. Tsvasman (2008), On the Viability of Being a Self-Orienting Subject. Constructivist Foundations (CF, ISSN 1782-348X) vol. 3, number 2, March 2008, pp. 84-86.
[24]By clocking is meant mental representation during joint action, which arises in portions or sequences because of the biologically limited operational capacity of human brain.
[25]which is actually the conceptual demarcation of „semantic“.
[26]Ernst von Glasersfeld (2006): Konzeptuelle Semantik, in: Leon R. Tsvasman (Hg.): Das große Lexikon Medien und Kommunikation.Kompendium interdisziplinärer Konzepte. Würzburg
[27]Peirce, C. S. (1895 [c.]). On the Logic of Quantity. MS [R] 13, pp. 1-13; 7-12.
[28]Bateson (1978) "Number is Different from Quantity". In: CoEvolution Quarterly, Spring 1978, pp. 44-46
[29]Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason: A70/B95
[30]Not to confuse with the „cognitive dissonance“ of psychologists.
[31]Schmidt, S. J. (1994b): Konstruktivismus in der Medienforschung: Konzepte, Kritiken, Konsequenzen. In: Merten/ Schmidt/ Weischenberg (Hg.): Die Wirklichkeit der Medien. Opladen: Westdeutscher. 592-623.
[32]Vladimir I. Vernadskij: Der Mensch in der Biosphäre. Zur Naturgeschichte der Vernunft. Hrsg. v. Wolfgang Hofkirchner. Frankfurt, 1997
[33]Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1959): Der Mensch im Kosmos. Beck, München 1959, Neuauflage 2010
The complete essay by Dr. Leon Tsvasman: The Great Distortion: The Cybernetic Approach on The Economic and the Trans-Cumulative Ethics can be requested under: medialityresearch@gmail.com