Tags / 9 quotes from 1 source
#Maturana
Life, The Multiverse And Everything: An Introduction To The Ideas Of Humberto Maturana Interpreting Maturana
At the moment of experiencing we cannot tell a perception from an hallucination
It is constitutive for Maturana that at the moment of experiencing we cannot tell a perception from an hallucination. From his analysis, the science of neurophysiology has failed to generate a mechanism which could explain our hearing/seeing objects external to us, independent…
Consensual behaviour (linguistic behaviour)
Consensual behaviour is behaviour between two systems as a result of living together. These would not have appeared had they not lived together. The behaviour is contingent upon their ontogenies. These behaviours can be described as interactions in the medium. This consensual…
Being in love as co-ontogeny
Being in love means making a space for one another so that each becomes part of the domain of existence of the other, and within their continuous recurrency of interactions they form a system in which they have a co-ontogeny. It is the recurrency of interaction within the…
Maturana vs varela about symbolic/semantic explanation
By sticking to structural descriptions Maturana aims to empty out all other types of symbolic explanations. The starkness of Maturana's position is ameliorated by Varela (1981) who, while agreeing with Maturana that notions of purpose, information or code cannot play any…
From linguistic behavior to language
Given sufficient structural plasticity and the continuation of recurrent interactions then we may observe the coordination of behaviour - not only in relation to interactions in the medium but also in relation to these coordinations of actions. That is they coordinate their…
Control; productivity
The notion of control arises in the context of productivity. Maturana talks about 3 main modes in which we can act and these 3 are distinguished largely in terms of differences of intent. Firstly, the Science mode - the intent here is explanations. Secondly, the Technology mode…
What makes us human is languaging
What makes us human is languaging. "Humanity arises in the social dynamics in which languaging takes place". This is difficult to prove but Maturana cites examples of feral children brought up by wolves so that what we find are wolves with the genetics of Homo Sapiens. They…
The previous statement entails that the assumption of an objective reality is a "miss-take"
In other words, if we take seriously the fact that in the experiential domain this distinction is impossible, then it follows that we cannot rely - for the validation of our arguments - on any assumption that entails having a privileged or direct access to 'outside' objects…
The cat and the mouse
Prior to human beings there were no objects, since objects arose with language. If we see a cat chasing and catching a mouse, then for Maturana the 'cat' is (not) eating the 'mouse'. Rather "it is flowing in the structural dynamics of its structural coupling/congruence in its…