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Humberto R. Maturana
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8. The answer
It follows from all that I have said about systems that they exist only in conservation of organization and conservation of adaptation as constitutive conditions of their existence, and that this applies to the observer as a living system as well. It also follows that the present state of any living system, the observer included, or, in general terms, the present state of any system or entity distinguished, is always that of a node in an ongoing network of cophylogenic and coontogenic structural drifts. At the same time it also follows that as long as it is distinguished, any system is distinguished in conservation of organization and adaptation in its domains of existence, and that a domain of existence is a domain of structural coupling that entails all the operational coherences that make possible the system that specifies it. Or, in other words, from all that I have said so far it follows; first, that every entity that is distinguished is distinguished in operational correspondence with its domain of existence, and, therefore, that each living system distinguished is necessarily distinguished in adequate action in its domain of structural coupling; second, that an obserever can only distinguish that which he or she distinguishes, and that he or she does so as an expression of the operational coherences of the domain of praxis of living in which he or she makes the description. Let us now consider the question of cognition with all that I have said in mind.i) Cognition. Since the only criterion with which we assess cognition is our assessment of adequate action in a domain that we specify with a question, I proposed, in section 2 of this article, that my task in explaining cognition as a biological phenomenon was to show how does adequate action arise in any domain during the operation of a living system. This I have done in the previous sections by showing that a living system is necessarily always engaged in adequate action in the domain in which it is distinguished as a living system in the praxis of living of the observer. And I have shown that this is so because it is constitutive of the phenomenon of observing that any system distinguished should be distinguished both in conservation of organization and of structural coupling and as a node in network of structural drifts. Accordingly, in the distinction of living systems, this distinction as entities engaged us adequate action consists in bringing them forth (in the praxis of living of the observer), both in conservation of autopoiesis and of adaptation and as a moment in their ontongenic drift in a medium. In other words, I have shown that for any particular circumstance of distinction of a living system, conservation of living (conservation of autopiesis and of adaptation) constitutes adequate action in those circumstances, and, hence, knowledge: living systems are cognitive systems, and to live is to know. But, by showing this I have also shown that any interaction with living system can be viewed by an observer as a question posed to it, as a challenge to its life that constitutes a domain of existence where he or she expects adequate action of it. And, at the same time, I have also shown, then, that the actual acceptance by the observer of an answer to a question posed to a living system, entails his or her recognition of adequate action by the living system in the domain specified by the question, and that this recognition of adequate action consists in the distinction of the living system in that domain under conditions of conservation of autopiesis and adaptation. In what follows I present this general explanatory proposition under the guise of a particular scientific explanation:
The satisfaction of these four conditions results: a) in the validation, as a scientific explanation, of my proposition that cognition as adequate action in living systems is a consequence of their structural drift with conservation of organization and adaptation; b) in showing that adequate action (cognition) is constitutive to living systems because it is entailed in their existence as such; c) in entailing that different living system differ in their domains of adequate actions (domains of cognition) to the extent that they realize different niches; and d) in showing that the domain of adequate actions (domain of cognition) of a living system changes as its structure, or the structure of the medium, or both, change while it conserves organization and adaptation.
- The phenomenon to be explained is adequate action by a living system at any moment in which an observer distinguishes it as a living system in action in a particular domain. And I propose this as the phenomenom to be explained in the understanding that the adequate actions of a living system are its interactions with conservation of class identity in the domain in which it is distinguished.
- Given that structural coupling in its domain of existence (conservation of adaptation) is a condition of existence for any system distinguished by an observer, the generative mechanism for adequate action in a living system as a structurally changing system, is the structural drift with conservation of adaptation through which it stays in continuous adequate action while it realizes its niche, or disintegrates. Since a system is distinguished only in structural coupling, when an observer distinguishes a living system he or she necessarily distinguishes it in adequate action in the domain of its distinction, and distinguishes it as a system that constitutively remains in structural coupling in its domain of existence regardless of how much its structure, or the structure of the medium, or both, change while it stays alive.
- Given the generative mechanism proposed in (b),the following phenomena can be deduced to take place in the domain of experiences of an observer: i) the observer should see adequate action taking place in the form of coordinated behaviour in living systems that are in coontogenic structural drift while in recurrent interactions with conservation of reciprocal adaptation; ii) the observer should see that living sytems is coontogeny separate or disintegrate, or both, when their reciprocal adaptation is lost.
- The phenomena deduced in (c) are apparent in the domain of experiences of an observer in the dynamics of constitution and realization of social systems, and in all circumstances of recurrent interactions between living systems during their ontogenies, in what appears to us as learning to live together. One of these cases in our human operation in language.
As the same time, it is apparent from all the above that what I say of cognition as an explanation of the praxis of living takes place in the praxis of living, and that goes to the extent that what I say is effective action in the generation of the phenomena of cognition, what I say takes place as cognition. If what I say sounds strange, it is only because we are in the habit of thinking about cognition in the explanatory pathway of objectivity without parenthesis, as if the phenomenon connoted by the word cognition entailed pointing to something whose existence can be asserted to be independent of the pointing of the observer. I have shown that this is not and cannot be the case. Cognition cannot be understood as a biological phenomenon if objectivity is not put in parentheses, nor can it be understood as such if one is not willing to follow all the consequences of such an epistemological act.
Let us now treat human operation in language as one of the phenomena which takes place as a consequence of the operation of cognition as adequate (or effective) action. It is particularly necessary to proceed in this manner because our operation in language as observers in the praxis of living is, at the same time, our problem and our instrument for analisys and explanation.
ii) Language. We human beings are living systems that exist in language. This means that although we exist as human beings in language and although our cognitive domains (domains of adequate actions) as such take place in the domain of languaging, our languaging takes place through our operation as living system. Accordingly, in what follows I shall consider what takes place in language as language arises as a biological phenomenon from the operation of living systems in recurrent interactions with conservation of organization and adaptation through their coontogenic structural drift, and thus show language as a consequence of the same mechanism that explains the phenomena of cognition:
- When two or more autopoietic systems interact recurrently, and the dynamic structure of each follows a course of change contingent upon the history of each's interactions with the others, there is a coontogenic structural drift that gives rise to an ontogenically established domain of recurrent interactions between them which appears to an observer as a domain of consensual coordinations of actions or disctinctions in an environment. This coontogenically established domain of recurrent interactions I call a domain of consesual coordinations of actions or distinctions, or, more generally, a consensual domain of interactions, because it arises as a particular manner of living together contingent upon the unique history of recurrent interactions of the participate during their coontogeny. Furthermore, because an observer can describe such a domain of recurrent interactions in semantic terms, by referring the different coordinations of actions (or distinctions) involved to the different consequences that they have in the domain in which they are distinguished, I also call a consensual domain of interactions a linguistic domain. Finally, I call the behaviour through which an organism participates in an ontogenic domain of recurrent interactions, consensual or linguistic according to whether I want to emphasize the ontogenic origin of the behaviour (consensual), or its implications in the present state of the ongoing interactions (linguistic). Similarly, I speak of coordinations of actions or coordinations of distinctions, according to whether I want to emphasize what takes place in the interaction in the relation to the participants (coordinations of actions), or what takes place in the interactions in relation to an environment (coordinations of distinctions).
- When one or more living systems continue their coontogenic structural drift through their recurrent interactions in a consensual domain, it possible for a recursion to take place in their consensual behaviour resulting in the production of a consensual coordination of consensual coordinations of actions. If this were to happen, what an observer would see would be that the participants of a consensual domain of interactions would be operating in their consensual behaviour making consensual distinctions upon their consensual distinctions, in a process that would recursively make a consensual action a consensual token for a consensual distinction token for a consensual distinction that it obscures. Indeed, this process is precisely what takes place in our languaging in the praxis of living. Accordingly, I claim that the pehnomenon of language takes place in the coontogeny of living system when two or more organism operate, through their recurrent ontogenic consensual interactions, in an ongoing process of recursive consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of actions or distinctions (Maturana, 1978). Or, in other words, I claim that such recursive consensual coordination of consensual coordinations of actions or distinctions in any domain, is the phenomenon of language. Furthermore, I claim that objects arise in language as consensual coordinations of actions that operationally obscure for further recursive consensual coordinations of actions by the observers the consensual coordinations of actions (distinctions) that they coordinate. Objects are in the process of languaging, consensual coordinations of actions that operate as tokens for the consensual coordinations of actions that they coordinate. Objects do not pre-exist language. Finally, I claim that all the phenomena that we as observers distinguish in our operation in language arise in the living of living systems, through their coontogenic structural drift when this results in an ongoing process of consensual coordinations of actions, as a consequence of the proposed mechanism for the generation of the phenomenon of cognition.
- Languaging takes place in the praxis of living: we human beings find ourselves as living system immersed in it. In the explanation of language as a biological phenomenon it becomes apparent that languaging arises, when it arises, as a manner of coexistence of living systems. As such. languaging takes place as a consequence of a coontogenic structural drift under recurrent consensual interactions. For this reason, language takes place as a system of recurrent interactions in a domain of structural coupling. Interactions in language do not take place in a domain of abstractions; on the contrary, they take place in the concreteness of the bodyhoods of the participants. Interactions in language are structural interactions. Notions such as transmission of information, symbolization, denotation, meaning, or syntax, are secondary to the constitution of the phenomenon of languaging in the living of the living systems that live it. Such notions arise as reflections in language upon what takes place in languaging. It is for this reason that what takes place in language has consequences in our bodyhoods; and the descriptions and explanations that we make become parts of our domain of existence. We undergo our ontongenic and phylogenic drifts as human beings in structural coupling in our domain of existence as languaging system. As such language takes place in the praxis of living of the observer, an also generates the praxis of living of the observer.
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