Date:        Thu, 04 Jul 1996 09:17:53 EDT
From: Karen Ocana <BJFC-AT-musicb.mcgill.ca>
Subject: Re[2]: Desiring machines


Brian,
  I wonder why he calls this post "desiring machines"?  I was in
touch with him I forget exactly why, oh, just to compare projects
i think, and he pointed me to a very important section in Anti-
Oedipus, viz. the section called "L'Inconscient Machinique", esp.
where desiring machiens are described as molecular, oh yes, i guess
he was claiming that desiring machines were a concept of Ruyer's
(but I'm not about to go and start reading Ruyer!)
  What am I going to do??  I'm going nuts.  And of course ther eis no
way i can write a 40-day plan (which made me very depressed yesterday)
  Anyways (as we canucks always say), i will try to have some semblance
of a second chapter to soonish.
  ANd i'm going to post you a passage with a query concerning
becoming-man/becoming-woman although it deals with it from the D&G side
and not the Carter side.  Why did I ever think I could write this
sort of a comparative thesis?  Parthenogenesis is not an image!  hanging
on the cross is an image.  And Evelyn's transformation into New Eve is
full of images.  There's an enormous gap between images (sense
experience) and concepts (ideas) and i suppose feats of the imagination
are what bridge these.  And faith and bluffing and lies and whatever.
  desiring machines?
karen. i'm sure i'll feel much calmer after i've read for a while.
>Sent this to another list but thought I'd send to this cognitive entity as
>well. I wonder why? (Same Sarfatti).
>
>Abstract.
>Are 'mental' phenomena 'in' the head or do they arise in the behavioural
>relational dynamics that constitutes language? (q.v. Maturana).
>
>"in the consideration of our problems one of the most dangerous ideas is the
>idea that we think _with_, or _in_ our heads". (Wittgenstein, Philosophical
>Grammar, 106).
>
>A recent post by Stanley Klein to the Quantum-d list argues that the
>neuronal correlates of consciousness will be found in some _classical_
>neural architecture rather than thru some quantum insight (e.g. microtubules).
>
>_But are we looking in the right place_? The Santiago school (i.e. Humberto
>Maturana & co. would argue that consciousness is not a neurophysiological
>phenomenon but rather a fourth order recursion in 'languaging'. He also
>proposes a non-informational account of neuronal archicture.
>It is monadic or operationally closed.
>
>(I am anticipating a comment from Jack Sarfatti along the lines that he's
>talking about the _source_ of experience _not_ language or
>self-consciousness....no brain, no dasein - or 'form of life').
>
>"Consciousness is lived as it is lived as an experience, and cannot be
>handled as an entity, or as a process, or as an operation of the n. system,
>nor can it be attached to any structural feature of the n.system, even
>though if the structure of the n.system is altered the experience of
>consciousness is also altered or disappears."
>(Maturana, Biology of Self-Consciousness. [I have an early manuscript but
>the essay is now in print circa 95. I once found it on an Alta Vista search
>of Maturana]).
>
>What Maturana is arguing (to the extent that I understand him) is that
>consciousness and the self-distinction arise in the relational dynamics that
>constitute the process of language in the living of languaging animals. What
>is peculiar to us, is that the distinction of relations of relations that
>take place in the flow of languaging, allows our n.systems to "operate
>inside themselves in the recursive distinctions of relations that constitute
>the operation in language and self-consciousness in solitude."
>
>The tricky bit is that Maturana is making a distinction btwn the relational
>dynamics of the organism and its operationally closed neuronal network.
>Sensors and effectors are features of the organism _not_ of the neuronal
>network. The organism and neuronal network intersect structurally but have
>non-intersecting operational dynamics. A Leibnizian/Wittgensteinian
>theoretical biology:
>
>"In the living system, the encounters of the organism at its sensory
>surfaces modulate the structure of the n. system, so that this changes the
>flow of its operations, and thru the structural changes that the n.system
>triggers at the effector surfaces of the organism, the n. system modulates
>the flow of the behaviour of the organism. This is the secret of the
>operations of the n. system and the organism that makes possible what we
>call 'mental phenomena". Maturana, Biol. Res: 15-26 (1995)
>
>Interestingly Maturana goes on to claim that the obstacles to building an
>artificial system that can participate in languaging, and, eventually, live
>the experience of self- consciousness are _conceptual_ rather than
>technical. He argues that the difficulty is _in accepting that one is
>dealing with phenomena that do not take place where they seem to take place_.
>
>It seems worthwhile to compare his approach with that of the quantum mob.
>Perhaps there could be some intersection, particularly in designing an
>artificial sysem that thru its recurrent interactions with another system
>(that could be a human being) there thereby takes place coordinations of
>coordinations of behaviour?
>
>As an outsider I am surprised how Maturana's work has been virtually
>ignored. (Varela certainly dumped him). A buddhist clash about illusion.
>Maturana believes in the distinction reality/illusion, decided _a
>posteriori_, while Buddhism espouses the second aspect exclusively. Maturana
>is no longer invited to the Naropa Institute in Boulder where Varela has
>regularly lectured.
>
>The crucial point for Wittgenstein, concerning comuters, is that they are
>_not alive_ and do not _have_ a body. Only what can (logically) die, (or
>suffer or desire) can have a body.
>To have the right stuff wouldn't the quantum chip would have to be a
>molecular autopoietic/self-producing 'being'? (Perhaps nanotechnology is
>already producing autopoietic sysems)?
>Sorry if all this seems confused. I am. Both Maturana and Heidegger and
>Wittgenstein seem to exclude 'animals' (natural automata) from the world of
>language and desire and suffering. But see Jeffrey Masson and ...[the other
>author's name escapes me] 'The emotional life of animals', for another approach
>
>Paul Bains
>
>"It comes to this: only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves
>like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees. is
>blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious". Wittgenstein,
>Philosophical Investigations, s.281).
>
>This makes plasma clouds difficult conscious candidates _for us_. But
>perhaps not for some other autopoietic machinic form of life?:
>
>"Imagine an autopoietic entity whose particles are constructed from
>galaxies. Or conversely, a cognivity constituted on the scale of quarks. A
>different panorama, another ontological consistency". Felix Guattari,
>Chaosmosis, Indiana univ press, 1995, p 52.
>
>