language (reconstructing its origins) and accountability reconsidering its cybernetics klaus...

Language(reconstructing its origins)

and Accountability reconsidering its Cybernetics

Klaus KrippendorffGregory Bateson Professor for Cybernetics, Language and Culture

The Annenberg School for CommunicationUniversity of Pennsylvania

[email protected]

Workshop on Language 2007.11.19 in Vienna

Plan

• Questioning some assumptions of second-order cybernetics

• Coordination

• Bootstrapping conceptions

• Accountability

• Discourse

• Discourse of (second-order) cybernetics

Questioning some assumptions

• Cognitivism

• The role of the observer

• Abstractions

• Fundamentalizing any one discourse

• Theories of language

• Reconsidering (second-order) cybernetics


• Cognitivism

A Mind produces subjective representations of the objective world outside Descartes

B The experiential world is a platform to reach the world

outside Husserl

C Human beings are born into an environment and rely on equipment, nature and present others. They need to construct uses Heidegger

All evidence of human cognition is extracted from language use or constituted in language.

Is radical constructivism radically cognitivist?

Proceeding as in B? Why not C?


• Cognitivism


Knowledge during the enlightenment became what detached observers, spectators, could describe, explain and theorize

Second-order cybernetics insists on entering the observer in the observed, calling for descriptions of processes of observation von Foerster

What would happen if we were to shift to how-to knowledge as a criterion for understanding? The knowledge of one’s ability to make something happen, including generating data by scientific experiments?

If language performs constructed or created reality, descriptions and explanations become problematic accounts


• Cognitivism


• Abstractions

Abstractions like “THE observer” cannot be observed, does not exist as such but resides primarily in language (and only secondarily in cognition)

Need to consider all concepts as embodied somewhereconcepts in the language used by speakers / writersactions as performed by someonegovernments do not speak, people docybernetics does not do anything, cyberneticians do

Experiments in category theory suggests super-ordinate categories are not imaginable Rosch (1978)


• Cognitivism


• Abstractions


There are numerous discourse communities seeking superior status – physics, economics, biology – claiming to be more fundamental than others

To understand languaging, its history of embodiments in generations of users is important. No discipline is more important than the process of human engagement with the world

For example, autopoiesis (Maturana’s theory) is not required for living systems to live. It is a construction in language and important in the discourse of biology. Yet in everyday life, language use constitutes the very phenomena described: “This is the 3rd Heinz von Foerster conference”


• Cognitivism


• Abstractions


• Theories of language

Abstract/objectivist – medium of representation Vološinov (1929)

Individual/subjectivist – medium of expression Vološinov (1929)

Hermeneutic/interpretivist – medium of rearticulation von Glasersfeld (1983)

Constructive/constitutive – medium of being in language

Coordination

• Coordination vs. subordination

• Con-sensual coordination

• Coordination theory

• Coordination and conversation

• Language games

Coordination


• Coordination = co-ordination = jointly worked out dynamics, relation R

• Subordination according to a principle R or authority

Coordination



Language is the consensual coordination of consensual coordination

of action Maturana (1988)

Implicit aboutness from representational notions of language ?

Consensual = jointly sensed (not by consensus = con-sensual

Coordination



• Coordination theory Newcomb(1953)

Minimally two individuals A, B and a jointly seen object X

I obs [A obs (B-X) and B obs (A-X)]

I obs [A coordinates with B re X]

I obs [A obs (B obs (A-X)-X) with B obs (A obs (B-X) re X]

coordination = acquiescence on not conflict

I obs [A-B-X]

Coordination





In A-B-X,

The co-sensed object X migrates to the topic X

Bateson’s distinction Watzlawick et al. (1967)

Content = co-sensed object X or topic X jointly attended to

Relationship = tacit languaging R between A and B

Coordination





• Language games Wittgenstein (1953)

Categorizing coordinations R

• Constitutive rules assign meanings to (speech) acts also Searle (1969)

• Regulative rules specify when to use which (speech) acts

Conversations do not require rules

Rules are created when tacit participation breaks down

(see accountability below)

Bootstrapping conceptions

• A theory of metaphor

• From kinesthetic metaphors to interpersonal metaphors

• Social constructions and metaphor use


• A theory of metaphor Lakoff and Johnson (1980)

Analogy: A is to B as C is to D

Metaphor: • Vocabulary from a familiar domain and a present domain

• Superficial resemblance between the two domains

• Entailments from the familiar domain change the perception of the present domain



• From kinesthetic metaphors to interpersonal metaphors Johnson (1987)

Examples of early coordinations of vocabularies with experiences

up – down in(side) – outside (not inside) push – pull can – cannot doings – happenings objects – actions

Examples of later uses of metaphors

head of the householdcollecting data (facts)

war on drugsdiseased neighborhood

road rage



• From kinesthetic metaphors to interpersonal metaphors

• Social constructions and metaphor use

Coordination of the entailments of metaphors (vocabulary use)

Accountability

• Agency vs. determinism

• Responsibility – assumed, assigned, declared

• Ethics embodied in interactions or a proposed universal?

• Accounts

• Languaging, performative language, speech acts

Accountability


There are many determinisms: causal, logical, cognitive, environmental

Determinism is the proposition that events, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, are determined by prior occurrences

Determinism and agency offer incompatible explanations

Structural determinism is the proposition that events within organisms are determined by the structure of that organism, not by the structure of its environment

Agency is the capacity of human beings to choose among actions that have consequences for self and others in the world

It presupposes a space of possibility and entails accountability

Accountability


Responsibility is often entangled with authority (authorship)


Responsibility

can be assumed for the well-being of others (in need of protection)

(assuming leadership or authority)

Responsibility

can be assigned by an authority to someone to do something

(accepting the assigning authority)

Responsibility

can be declared for a valuable contribution or failure

Accountability


Four theories of language: Medium of representation – determined by truths Medium of expression – determined by internal states Medium of interpretation – determined by social norms Medium of being in language = performing speech acts


Speech acts Searle (1969) (too simple)

Assertives – commit a speaker to the truth of a proposition Commissives – commit a speaker to future acts Expressives – express a speaker’s attitude toward an X Directives – command a hearer to perform an act Declaratives – change reality in accord with a declaration

Languaging entails choices


Accountability


Kinds of accounts: Mills (1940), Scott (1968), Buttny (1993)

• Explanations – coordination of understanding

Accounts are • requested

• given or denied. If denied: or acquiesced

• accepted or rejected. If rejected:

• Excuses – denying agency (invoking acceptable reasons to)

• Justifications – appealing to virtues

• Accounts



Accountability


• Explanations

• Excuses

• Justifications

• Ethics embodied in interactions or a proposed universal system?

• Accounts



Accounts invoke a radically distributed ethics, one whose propositions emerge when acts are perceived as incomprehensible, irresponsible or immoral.

Practicing accountability makes universal systems of ethics dispensable

Discourse

Conversation recap:

• Is self-organizing – creates its own con-sensual history and a continuously evolving identity

• Is embodied in the languaging by its constituents – presentness

• Constituents create spaces for each other – practice agency – assure dialogical equality

• Preserves the possibility of its continuation – assures belongingness

Conversations degenerate into discourses when any one or more of the above are violated

Discourse

Conversations degenerate into discourses when

• Agency is confined to institutionalized spaces – rational, functional

• Organization is confined by assigned purposes

• Participants claim unequal powers and access to reality (hierarchies)

• Constituents are less important than what they are expected to produce

• Certainties and conclusions are valued

Discourse

A discourse is a constrained conversation It

• institutes its recurrent practices

• surfaces in texts, the objects it constructs

• is kept alive by a discourse community

• maintains its boundary

• justifies itself to outsiders of the discourse

Discourse


A consistent universe that is observable and theorizable by trained physicists in causal terms. It excludes observing physicists and cannot understand how it is being studied


What does the discourse of physics construct?

Bodily injuries and illnesses that are treatable by medical professionals

What does the discourse of medicine construct?

What does the discourse of biology construct?

Living organisms that can be described as structure determined systems (using functional explanations that generalize observations which are incomprehensible by these organisms)

Discourse


There are two schools

Objectivists construct disembodied social systems as determined within their own variables e.g., Luhmann. Individual constituents do not play a role in such systems – except in the aggregate (statistics)


What does the discourse of sociology construct?

Constructivists construct social systems that constitute themselves in descriptions of them, either by their own constituents or by their theorists.

What does a design discourse construct?

Proposals for artifacts (devices, practices, texts) that enable stakeholders to realize something that would not come about naturally

Discourse


• institutes its recurrent practices


• is kept alive by a discourse community

• maintains its boundary

• justifies itself to outsiders of the discourse

Discourse of (second-order) cybernetics

• Cybernetics is a discourse, an organized way of languaging

• As an interdiscipline, cybernetics is not privileging materiality, it can work with disciplines compatible with its core ideas

• Cyberneticians constitute a discourse community, dedicated to advancing its core ideas – circularity, process, information, participation (involvement) in the world

• Cyberneticians consider themselves accountable to those affected by what they bring forth – knowingly or not

• Cyberneticians construct artifacts – linguistic, computational or material – that open new possibilities for their users

(Second-order) cybernetics is the discourse of participation in systems under continuous construction by its constituents

language (reconstructing its origins) and accountability reconsidering its cybernetics klaus...

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