Selected Self-Organization and the Semiotics of Evolutionary Systems

Abstract

Heinz von Foerster (1965, 1969, 1977) equated the ability of an organization to classify its environment with the notion of eigenbehavior. He postulated the existence of some stable structures (eigenvalues) which are maintained in the operations of an organization’s dynamics. Following Piaget (von Foerster, 1977), he observed that any specific instance of observation of such an organization will still be the result of an indefinite succession of cognitive/sensory-motor operations. This reiterated the constructivist position that observables do not refer directly to real world objects, but are instead the result of an infinite cascade of cognitive and sensory-motor operations in some environment/subject coupling. Eigenvalues are self-defining, or self-referent, through the imbedding dynamics — implying a complementary relationship (circularity, closure) between eigen-values and cognitive/sensory-motor operators: one implies, or defines, the other. “Eigenvalues represent the externally observable manifestations of the (introspectively accessible) cognitive (operations)” (ibid., p. 278, italics added). Further, “Ontologically, Eigenvalues and objects, and likewise, ontogenetically, stable behavior and the manifestation of a subject’s ‘grasp’ of an object cannot be distinguished” (ibid., p. 280). Eigenbehavior is thus used to define the behavior of autonomous, cognitive systems, which through the closure (self-referential recursion) of the sensory-motor interactions in their nervous systems, give rise to perceptual regularities as objects (Varela, 1979, ch. 13).