por Humberto Maturana
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If one looks at the two shadows of an object that simultaneously partially intercepts the path of two different lights, one white and one red, and if one has trichromatic vision, then one sees that the area of the shadow from the white light that receives red light looks red, and that the area of the shadow from the red light that receives white light looks blue-green. This experience is compelling and unavoidable, even if one knows that the area of the shadow from the red light should look white or gray because it receives only white light. If one asks how it is that one sees blue green where there is white light only, one is told by a reliable authority that the experience of the blue green shadow is a chromatic illusion because there in no blue-green shadow to justify it as a perception. We live numerous experiences in our daily life that we class like this as illusions or hallucinations and not as perceptions, claiming that they do not constitute the capture of an independent reality because we can disqualify them by resorting to the opinion of a friend whose authority we accept, or by relying upon a different sensory experience that we consider as a more acceptable perceptual criterion. In the experience itself, however, we cannot distinguish between what we call an illusion, hallucination or a perception: illusion, hallucination, and perception are experientially indistinguishable. It is only through the use of a different experience as a metaexperiential authoritative criterion of distinction, either of the same observer or of somebody else subject to similar restrictions, that such a distinction is socially made. Our incapacity to experientially distinguish between what we socially call illusion, hallucination or perception, is constitutive in us as living systems, and is not a limitation of our present state of knowledge. The recognition of this circumstances should lead us to put a question mark on any perceptual certainty.
i) An invitation. The word perception comes from the latin expression per capire which means "through capture", and carries with it the implicit understanding that to perceive is to capture the features of a world independent of the observer. This view assumes objectivity, and, hence, the possibility of knowing a world independent of the observer, as the ontological condition on which the distinction between illusion, hallucination and perception that it entails is based. Therefore, to question the operational validity in the biological domain of the distinction between illusion, hallucination and perception, is to question the ontological validity of the notion of objectivity in the explanation of the phenomenon of cognition. But, how then to proceed? Any reflexion or comment about how the praxis of living comes about is an explanation, a reformulation of what takes place. If this reformulation does not question the properties of the observer, if it takes for granted cognition and language, then it must assume the independent existence of what is known. If this reformulation questions the properties of the observer, if it asks about how cognition and language arise, then it must accept the experiential indistinguishability between illusion, hallucination and perception, and take as constitutive that existence is dependent on the biology of the observer. Most philosophical traditions pertain to the first case assuming the independent existence of something, such as matter, energy, ideas, God, mind, spirit ..... or reality. I invite the reader to follow the second, and to take seriously the constitutive condition of the biological condition of the observer, following all the consequences that this constitutive condition entails.
ii) Objectivity in parenthesis. The assumption of objectivity is not needed for the generation of a scientific explanation. Therefore, in the process of being a scientist explaining cognition as a biological phenomenon I shall proceed without using the notion of objectivity to validate what I say, that is, I shall put objectivity in parenthesis. In other words, I shall go on using an object language because this is the only language that we have (and can have), but although I shall use the experience of being in language as my starting point while I use language to explain cognition and language, I shall not claim that what I say is valid because there is an independent objective reality that validates it. I shall speak as a biologist, and as such I shall use the criterion of validation of scientific statements to validate what I say, accepting that everything that takes place is brought forth by the observer in his or her praxis of living as a primary experiential condition, and that any explanation is secondary.
iii) The universum versus the multiversa. The assumption of objectivity, objectivity without parenthesis, entails the assumption that existence is indpendent of the observer, that there is an independent domain of existence, the universum, that is the ultimate reference for the validation of any explanation. With objectivity without parenthesis things, entities, exist with independency of the observer that distinguishes them, and it is the independent existence of things (entities, ideas) that specifies the truth. Objectivity without parenthesis entails unity, and, in the long run, reductionism, because it entails reality as a single ultimate domain defined by independent existence. He or she who has access to reality is necessarily right in any dispute, an those who do not have such access are necessarily wrong. In the universum coexistencee demands obedience to knowledge.
Contrary to all this, objectivity with parenthesis entails accepting that existence is brought forth by the distinctions of the observer, that there are as many domains of existence as kinds of distinctions the observer performs: objectivity in parenthesis entails the multiversa, entails that existence is constitutively dependent on the observer, ant that there are as many domains of truths as domains of existence she or he brings forth in her or his distinctions. At the same time, objectivity in parenthesis entails that different domains of existence constitutively do not intersect because they are brought forth by different kinds of operations of distinction,. and, therefore, it constituvely negates phenomenal reductionism. Finally, under objectivity in parenthesis each versum of the multiversa is equally valid if not equally pleasant to be part of, and disagreements between observers, when they arise not from trivial logical mistakes within the same versum but from the observers standing in different versa, will have to be solved not by claiming a privileged access to an independent reality, but through the generation of a common versum through coexistence in mutual acceptance. In the multiversa coexistence demands consensus, that is, common knowledge.
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