The Great Distortion: A Cybernetic Approach On The Economic, Part 2
Several instant implications of the outlined concepts
The intrinsic purpose of chimerical cumulation
If the attention is not involved in the self-regulative organismic flow or sexual intersubjection, but in the time-based communication, it will be a source of chimerical cumulation, objectifying cumulative meanings. It is the sphere of the economics. A however, the regulated attention binding towards possession of objects or even marketing of products, enables the chimerical structures being stable in clocked spaces interpreted as time.
On the recovery-longing of the subject
The subject’s emancipative longing for recovery of control over its own somatic awarenessand its organismic integrity can be observed through the whole human culture in its multiple evidence.
The non-chimerical world of living corresponds to the mentioned recovery-longingof the subject, because this yearning collides with personalized consciousness of joint action, which is affected by the chimerically performed intersubjectivity.
The longing is the most decisive for the understanding of the fundamental sense of the main traditionally emerged ordering systems of the social, at least of both economy and ethics.
Communication networks enable informative cumulation without possession of objects, and seem tendencially to be a step on a way to the future of somatic continuum (Table A), corresponding to the mentioned subject’s emancipative longing.
The value of human difference: On the non-cumulative ethics
The themes like velosity, uncertainty, coplexity and ambiguity are already a part oft the both economical and ethical discource, defined in economic literature as VUCA[1]. What the two discourses have in common besides the certain relevance for publicity?
The social purpose of attention, if interpreted in ethical categories, is responsibility, and it is ambivalent. Self-responsibility is consistent. But applied on the others, it becomes an instrument. It means, that instrumentalized responsibility is basically manipulative.
The Infosomatic Systems
The term “socio-technical” is not consistent enough from the consequent constructivist perspective to designate the essential parameters. Neither “social” or “technical” are consistent termini as both apply to the complex heterogenic phenomena, which do not manifest a simply auto- or allopoietic nature, nor the traditional term is precise enough to describe the sense-issuing poietic emergences, which are determinant for both humanity and techniques.
Chimerical validity of design
The cumulative validities enable the viability of the info-somatic systems. Metaphorically cumulative validities can be called “chimerical beings”, as they “populate” the technologically enabled information spheres.
Design is a human activity towards the adaption of the natural environment to the needs of shared cognition, so that another environment is situated, which is embodied in a allopoietic way. The technology is mathematically clocked functional enabling infrastructure; its issues are the cumulative validities of the chimerical certainty.
The Limits of Cumulative Economy
As the infosomatic principle of order, operated by chimerical validities, the economy is not a stable state, but a steered transitive event. Hence the first step towards a non-dualizing approach on economy would be to upgrade the classical economic principles, still valued by mainstream economists.
On the one side, the subjects’ integrity of self-regulation with its initial totality, on the other side, the attention is needed for maintaining chimerical validities. It is the pure form of the classical discrepancy of the marginalism economical principle and the related idea of “homo economicus”. The upgrade-concept would focus the more basic human attitude, according to which the concept of “homo intendentus” would make sense.
The Emancipation of “Homo Intendentus”
In a socio-economic sense, the arising of homo intendentusis an emancipative process along the fulfilment trace of human potentiality.
It progresses economically with digitalisation, emerging of social media and at least so-called sharing economy. The overarching emancipatory trends were “back to self-regulation” or “back to awareness” or – in a negative phrasing – away from the marketing and social order paradigms based on persuasion, fear or overwhelming.
The less attention flows into the persuasive regulation on the socio-economic level, the more will be attracted to the potential of self-regulation and though to the ethical paradigms, as already mentioned.
In the philosophical categories of the “concept of man”, the divergent developments were possible and also take place actually, that’s why, dealing with the economic trends, we necessarily observe the ethical aspects. The “homo oeconomicus” was rationally conditioned. The essential while cognitively more viable creativity of the autonomous orientation was a topic of braking regulation over generations.
It was socially tolerated only as luxury as so-called “self-realization”, according to the Maslow Pyramid of Needs. The conceptual distortion between the cognitively essential orientation of the subject and the economically absorbable “self-realization” is still the main source of the most social discrepancies, used for economical purpose to generate the artificially scarce resources or limited goods.
The homo intendentusis creative per his autonomous orientation. The knowledge loses its authority to be handled as a product or an object of economic activity, being portioned or packaged. As every human subject is ethically chartered to have an own one, which is the orientative knowledgeof knowing-why, and not the persuasive knowledge of knowing how, the society of homo intendentushas to become an ethically regulated society.
The mainstream of homo intendentus would be a complete diversity of the self-oriented subjects, and its driven by the relevance for the autonomous orientation of each subject. The most valued resource of the mainly unfolded society of homo intendentuswould be alienated in-awareness, and the most valued goods were coupled to the intact in-awareness.
The Trans-Cumulative Ethics
The ethics, which were not corrupted by the conceptual distortion of the validity-driven chimerical regulation, were the trans-cumulative ethics. Its imperative could be, upgraded from the known inspired by cybernetic epistemology ethical imperative von Foerester’s[2]. It would sound: "Act always so as to increase your awareness for the potential."
The trans-chimerical ethical imperative would be: "Act always so as to increase your potentiality." The equivalent esthetical imperative would be: "Be aware always so as to optimize your orientation."
The aesthetical imperative[3]: “If you desire to increase your potentiality, learn how to optimize your orientation".
Trans-cumulative ethics is non-mediate ethics or ethics without importance, which means without necessity or of using validities. As the semantically cumulated conceptual knowledge of others, merged with specific interest of others, validities attract in-awareness by overwhelming or persuasion, which is the meaning of what we call importanceand the origin of what we call attention. Alienated from the subjects’ orientation flow, the semantically cumulated moments of attention compile knowledge, which cannot be used for the own orientation.
Divide and rule: The Chimerical Distortion
Conceptual distortion is the determinant quality of the chimerical validities to be focused here. It is cumulated in the semantic structure of the used languages.
The human languages are full of concepts, which are based on the chimerical distortion and cannot be thought through without being questioned in their integrity. There are a lot of typical chimerical concepts that are often considered to be "realistic" and the natural scientist even try to measure them. Such concepts, which are the basic determinants of chimerical economics, are “time”, “measures”, “person” etc. The main inventions of the chimerical economics are based on “money”, “market”, “labour”, “product” and so on. We are not able to discuss all those concepts and inventions here, but we just mention several of them later, because their deconstruction is important for the re-contextualization of the actual economics framework.
The Chimerical Validities of the Cumulative Economy
We define chimerical validitiesas intersubjective constructs, operated as a scarce resource in a cumulative way. This construct are normally institutionalized in the foundations of common sense. They are self-evident in a certain civilization, as they determinate the whole frameworks of what is called “common sense of everyday life”, which is also an intersubjective construct tending to become a cumulative validity. The constitutional aspects of cumulative validities are institutionalizationand the semantically represented distortion. They can also be communicated, valued, manipulated, scarce, inflated, qualified and certified. “Institutionalized” is used here in the meaning as “supported by the semantic frameworks of shared cognition”.
The intersubjective construction of tasteis a typical basic validity of cumulative economy, so we can use it as an example for explanation purpose.
The natural pendant to taste ware the cognitively determined highly individual impression of suitable in a moment and according to the plenty of differently weighted sensations to intuitively decide what is good for the certain organism to eat in a certain situation. But as such it can either be communicated nor qualified and though barely manipulated. There is nor even a word for it in the most human languages. It is therefore considered as an animalic sensation. Being alienated from its described cognitive purpose the validity of taste can be handled in an economic way as a resource.
The Validity of Sapient Leadership
A single cognitively autonomous subject, who wilfully self-alienates its somatic awarenessfor the purpose of a joint action of the several by getting a credit of attention from the least, is supposed to become a leader.
For the purpose of more stable attention flow, which guarantees more efficient repetition of the same or similar joint action sequences, this mutual self-alienation of somatic awarenessevolves in a way of distribution of attention by task division. This is a basic chimerical denominator of human sociality, compiling its civilizational equilibrium.
The chimerical sourcing
The enabling model of the basic chimerical denominator is based on cumulating of infosomatic attention. The shared representation of the certain projection, supported by the communicative collusions and coupled with sanctions, enable the intersubjective construction of those premises we call ‘future’, one of the ground validities of the human civilization.
If the awareness of now, alienated from a cognitive subject in a consistent way, enables the representation of future, so economy is basically an enabling infrastructure of its realization.
Chimerical Distortion and Technological Environment
The frustrated self-orientation causes insecurity, and it is not a socio-psychological phenomenon only. The autopoetic systems are seldom completely autonomous, thriving in their ideal environment. If the environment is partially broken or inconsistent for a while, the autopoetic system has to survive by going an unorthodox way or allying itself with the other systems. If the ideal environment is broken or changed for several generations, the affected cognitive systems survive by sharing cognition, they acquire new segments of reality by settlement or expansion of their perception and action capabilities, opening up, adopting or even creating new environments.
If the autopoietic system has not enough information for the legitimation of its next movement, it has to rely either on some external input (i.e. steering information) or on built-in rules (i.e. instincts, conscience) to secure their viability, depending upon the complexity of a certain autopoietic system - insect, animal or human, artificial intelligence or even social system. The external input could be provided by any kind of what we call medium like chemical messenger for insects, alpha-animal for social animals or even any signals by human for pets or external operator steering for artificial intelligence. The second were, as mentioned above, instincts for insects and animals, conscience for single human beings or ethical systems like religions for social groups or emergency programs for artificial intelligence.
The very complex emergent autopoietic systems have to defend their integrity both from the external incontinuity of a broken environment and from the internal dysfunction of the constituents.
The Dichotomy Of Resource And Need
There are two purposes of autopoietic awareness, if observed on the level of a subject from the perspective of cognition. The somatic awareness is cognitively provided for the organismic self-regulation, which makes its total integrity to a fundamental resource of the human reality construction and thus to an absolute economic value per se. But in an actual context of human reality construction (or just actuality) the total integrity is not viable, so we can only observe its potentiality[4].
On the other side there is awareness alienation for the cognitive purpose of orientation, which is infosomatic attention.
In the natural world the infosomatic attentionserves self-preservation and sexual self-recovery, so that we can legitimately conceive this kind of alienated somatic awarenessas attention for the potential.
In the situation of the shared cognition, the attention of the subject at some point in the social evolution partially is channelled towards the described cumulative validities, the attention towards the actual. The “attention towards vtowards the actualalidities”, attracted for or by the cumulative constructs, makes no longer sense for cognitive viability on the organismic level, so the attention to the actualis regulated by the intersubjective relevance and especially by cumulating of alienated attention in validities, which serves substantially the consistency of the social.
If the genuine human need is “maintaining the integrity of awareness” in the meaning, which includes also the mentioned above attention to the potential, so it contrasts to the genuine scarce attention for the actual, which is prototypical for all the so called scare recourse of economy.
One is successful in a chimeric-economic sense by a certain grade of self-alienation. In a fact, the more irreversible the grade of the individual distortion, the stronger is the economic advantage of the person. Rich means the quantitative equivalent of the access to the economically secured compensation infrastructure of the infosomatic actuality.
As a historically developed principle of order at bottom of the chimerical economy constructs a justice principle of economic potentiality, which is opposite to what constitutes the initial cognitive need, the integrity of awareness. Profit maximization means increasing the economic potentiality (mainly at the expense of the potentiality of awareness), is therefore opposed to the original organismic sense.
According to the said, the dichotomy of resource and need is essential for any economic activity, where the resource is attention for the actual, and the need are both integrity of awarenessand attention for the potentialin their initial self-consistency.
So chimerical economy is a specific method of the human shared cognition, which enables environment construction by actualization through cumulating validities.
For example, the medical economy is primarily situated on the alienated by actualization integrity of awarenessas its main specific resource, and the other branches exploit mainly the alienated by actualization attention for the potential.
Thought through, the introduced above concept can explain all the essential problems of the chimerical economy.
The End or Ambivalence Of Economy?
As conceived, the human activity, known as economy, is a certain order of the specific human shared cognition, enabling environment construction by actualization through cumulating validities.
On the one side, the chimerical economy is the economy, as we know it, and it creates conditions for the enabling infrastructure of the trans-chimerical self-regulation. On the other side, the fully emancipated economy of shared attention is less chimeric, because it does not deal with alienated subjects’ awareness in a way, which is representative for economic activity. In a wider perspective, it can be seen as evolutionarily necessary to cumulate efforts by the way of the shared action. The resulting emergence of an enabling infrastructure for the trans-chimerical self-regulation could be the next evolutional step.
As the logical inference, the following questions were relevant to think through the present approach: Is there any economy possible besides the chimerical one? Will the revelation of the chimerical nature make “emancipated” upgrade of economy possible? Or will de-cumulated economy transform itself into an essentially non-economic principle of order and mean the end of economy as we now it?
Two Drives of the Economic: Somatic awareness and Infosomatic attention
The paradigm change from the Smith’s self-interest to mathematical formula of profit maximization was one of the steps towards desubjectification. In its conceptual potentiality, this self-interest was not so far from the understanding of the integrity of self-oriented subject as the main economic resource.
As mentioned, somatic awarenessmeans total integrity of organismic autopsies of the self-oriented subject. This meta-concept has two fundamental aspects to be respected for its proper understanding. The self-oriented subjectdenotes a single human being in his ability of sharing cognition in an intersubjective way, the performing subject of the human reality construction. The “total integrity” of somatic awarenessis a hypothetic concept of the ideal cognitive integrity of the organismic self-regulation. If somatic awarenessis alienated while intersubjective reality-construction, it is transformed into infosomatic attention.
The semantically sustained construct of “person” is a typical chimerical validity, which addresses the todays mainly performed concept of man. This concept focuses the human subjects’ actuality as social actor, involved in the embracing processes of the chimerical economy, regulated by different persuasive infrastructures with their overwhelming practices and supported by cumulative ethics.
In summery, by “somatic awareness” we mean the internal total integrity of the subject’s absolute potentiality before its intersubjective alienation. If we say “infosomatic attention” we mean the economic resource, which is in a fact partially alienated and intersubjectively transformed somatic awareness, involved in the sharing processes in an economic way.
Awareness, attention and infosomatic environment: Production factors thought through
In the mainstream economics, the so-called factors of production, resources or inputs meant what is used in the production process to produce output – the so-called goods or services.
The three classical factors of production ground, labour and capital of the orthodox economics by Smith and Ricado[5]were later expanded by knowledge[6]and energy.
But even if “ground” was later upgraded as “all natural resources” or natural environment, and “labour” as „all human resources“, the semantic distortion within this traditional mainstream concept is increasingly high.
Problematic are both the blurring boundaries between the factors and the redundancy of the related concepts, what make the consistent interdisciplinary research in the economics to a sophisticated task. There are continuously new attempts to re-classify the factors of production by adding or re-defining factors involving the concepts of management, machines, materials, money, nomenclature, right or others. The basic factors thought through sill imply some aspects of the other ones, as labour and money have characteristics to be interpreted as capital.
And even if there are economists[7]who criticize orthodox economics for overlooking the role of natural resources and the effects of declining resource capital, technology[8]or even entrepreneurship[9]are described as factors of production, there are no consistent concepts to overcome the mentioned semantic distortion in any serious economic discourse actually.
If we re-contextualize the idea of production factors in accordance with the basic emergences, founded in this paper, we can receive a viable constellation.
From the constructivist perspective one cannot say with epistemological reliability, what is natural environment, but we can assert with high probability, that the organismic self-regulation is most intact in an environment that corresponds to it. So the described concept of awarenessis a worthy equivalent.
Labour as clocked joint action for an external purpose means a certain technology of systematic awareness alienation and mostly adequate with what we called attention for the actual.
What is called capital is a certain environment aimed to stabilize the reality construction in a basic mathematical way as already described. Only the stable environment enables such a continuity of reality construction, that one can go out of a intersubjectively projected future state, when something is done in the actuality. That founds the attention credit, that economists call capital.
Even within a modern mainstream discourse, the consumer goods can be easily interpreted as cumulated services, but if we apply the mentioned findings on the concept of goods, so all those consumer goods or services can be defined as a result of a skilled complexity reduction, which occurs through a cumulative objectification by the means of shared attention, clocked in a certain way.
[1]Oliver Mack et al. Managing in a VUCA World, Springer
[2]"Act always so as to increase the number of choices."
[3]“The aesthetical imperative: If you desire to see, learn how to act.
[4]The potentiality of the never actual total integrity of infosomatic awareness can be observed indirectly in the subject’s recovery longing, described separately.
[5]Adam Smith (1776), The Wealth of Nations, Smith: Wealth of Nations | Library of Economics and LibertyB.I, Ch.6, Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities in paragraph I.6.9.
[6]Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus (2004). Economics, 18th ed., "Factors of production", "Capital", Human capital", and "Land" under Glossary of Terms.
[7]Robert U. Ayres; Benjamin Warr (2009). The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity. Edward Elgar Publishing.
[8]Michael Parkin and Gerardo Esquivel (1999). Macroeconomía(in Spanish) (5th ed.). Mexico: Addison Wesley. p. 160
[9]Sullivan, Arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 4
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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