The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics

Fourth Day: Cognition, Perception, Memory, Symbols

Fourth Day Cognition, Perception, Memory, Symbols Cognition → computing a reality. —Heinz von Foerster, Understanding Understanding The prophecy does not run, that a man will get this result when he follows this rule in making a transformation—but that he will get this result, when we say that he is following the rule. —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics And God said, Let there bee lights in the firmament of the heauen, to diuide the day from the night: and let them be for signes and for seasons, and for dayes and yeeres. . . . And the euening and the morning were the fourth day. —Genesis 1:14–19 In our fourth conversation, new possibilities should arise for us, of distinctions, possibilities of orientation, of remembering—and of forgetting. So far we have been operating with something that we could call an “MS system.” In our game box we found recursively coupled motor-sensory systems, MS systems. A further type in the box is the MBS system—a brain interpolates itself between the motorium and the sensorium . . . 90 Fourth Day Now I see where the B comes in. The first type has a single recursion. The second is repeatedly closed recursively. Can we pass review on the important differences in the architecture of these two systems? Of course I could say a lot about that—but I don’t want to. I would much rather get back on my hobbyhorse and invite you to gallop away with me. Our theme is cognition. I want to point out that one cannot talk about cognition without cognition. The problem for us, therefore, is not so much to describe types of toys but in being able to describe toys while we ourselves are toys in this toy box. This problem is hardly ever taken up, because it isn’t seen, or because if it is seen, it is suppressed and pushed aside. One of the most common excuses is: If we talk about ourselves , paradoxes arise. And in a logical system as important as biology or psychology one may not open the door to paradoxes. For me, this argument is a bad excuse. Another reason why people don’t like to touch on this problem further, even if they’ve seen it, is that it requires a whole new form of problem solving. We are so trained in always solving the problems of others that we hardly have any time left for our own, let alone for solving them, that’s why problem-solving therapies in nonpersonal matters or outsiderpsychotherapies are flourishing. Interestingly, the circular dance continues because therapists, too, are primarily concerned with solving the problems of others, hardly ever with the solution of their own. The solving of one’s own problems requires its own solution: a certain form for posing the question and a form for creating something within this question , which one can consider as a form of solution, alone or with others. For me, therefore, it poses much less of a problem to say, “Ah, a brain emerges and develops, a wonderful apparatus with so and so many buttons , which can perform these or those operations. Put these operations together, and then if you input ‘pop, pop,’ ‘peep peep’ comes out.” Such devices can be put together in manifold ways, and in this area there certainly are witty solutions, monotonous architectures, baroque blueprints , nonsense formulations. What interests me lies in another area: “How does a conversation structure itself if I’m earnestly dealing with a problem, the successful solution of which the conversation about the problem already assumes?” The problem of cognition must already, in Cognition, Perception, Memory, Symbols 91 an important sense, be solved in advance if I start talking about cognition . Everything that I explain now about cognition, motor and sensory functions, the brain and nerves, is already anticipated because we not only possess the aforementioned abilities but have also learned to work with them successfully. It would be lovely if in the course of the conversation we could strive toward and achieve the goal of drawing attention to these fundamental problems. If we climb up, down, or into the world of mental phenomena, then our problem is, “How can we talk about mental or linguistic phenomena with the language and the mental capacities that we’ve taken as givens in these questions?” I repeat Wittgenstein: “What is a question?” “What is language?” If you...