On Oct 18, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Leenus Kannoth <[log in to unmask]<mailto:lee
[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

Dear Luke and all,

Do books contain or transmit knowledge?

On 18 October 2017 at 20:26, Krippendorff, Klaus <
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> My answer to this question is NEITHER.


I have to agree with Klaus ... the following is from Gramma/topology pp.
253 onwards.

"Only communication can communicate, and likewise only a conversation can
‘speak’ to another conversation. Cybernetically, meaning that when we see
the observer as an autopoietic unity, we should acknowledge that
operational closure means, in effect, that people do not talk to each other
as much as they are talking to (having a conversation, or interacting with)
themselves and their environment, and the person you are ‘talking’ to,
interacting with, is just an element in that environment. You are not
talking to a person as much as ‘talking to’ their language use, their
conversation being sent out, or communicated, to you. What we have here are
two ‘speech bubble conversations’ trying to make sense of one another, as
much as two autopoietic systems trying to ‘feed’ themselves[1] in the
process of self-generation

Figure 27A shows two people[2] having a conversation, but since each person
is an autopoietic system bent on self-generation, they can’t actually
‘detect’ each other directly, except through their outputs. Only the
communications that make up the conversational field can ‘detect and
connect’ within that field of interconnectedness, that *inbetween* that is
the meta-environment ‘outside’ each system. We must also remember that the
communication from system (1) is, to system (2), simply part of the
background possibility, part of the medium that makes up (2)’s outside
environment, and therefore nothing special compared to the communication
from (2); that constitutes the first and biggest hurdle in the
communication process.


*     Figure 27.* *Conversational echolocation*
​

However, since there is no such thing as a direct transfer of information,
but only mediation, in Figure 27B we can see some of the paths that
information emanating from both (1) and (2) follow, and the real-time
process is beginning to look more complex than would appear to be the case
when we are simply chatting over the garden fence. In order for (2) to make
any sense of the conversation, the system must distinguish[3] between its
own production and that of the other system (1), which has to compete with
all the other streams of communications in the meta-environment. The
conversational event, an interactive space filled with various inputs,
shows its face differently to each system taking part in the conversational
event. This ‘*inter*face’ constitutes the
situation-understanding-interpretation field for each system, and the only
‘content’ that can speak to system (2). Figure 27C tries to unravel some of
what is being produced and received, with some of the received information
stemming from (2)s own production.




We not only transmit information to a receiver, the conversational partner
(to fall back into old terminology), but we also receive information from
that other-to-the self: we are *told* that, but the system does not ‘know’
this, or cares, only seeing the field it can make use of, and all the
signals it allows are also ones mediated by this field or ‘world’. Then
again, we also receive information from ourselves, in the act of
transmission, and those are also mediated by the outside field/world.
Concrete or direct narratives (2) are signals the self receives from the
phenomenal world where its experience lies, but of course also from memory,
where this experience is lodged or stored; to complicate matters what seems
to be the same signals are received from the field we interact with, but
these were not produced by ‘us’, and are therefore virtual and mediated. As
Figure 27D shows, virtual and mediated (1) signals are stimuli for our
direct and memory experiences, produced by (1), and either sent in speech
(virtual direct) or we receive these signals because we observe the effects
of these signals bouncing off ‘the world’ as it were, hence virtual
mediated. There are also signals, if one may call them that, created by
listening to your own transmissions, which are the equivalent of (1)s
virtual mediated signals. All this means that an autopoietic system is “a
system of communication … that produces and reproduces through the system
everything that functions for the system as a unit” (Luhmann, 2002:161),
that two people in conversation do not ‘see’ each other, but each system
‘needs’ the other, or, rather, each system needs stimulation because,
despite being operationally closed, it is at the same time informationally
open."

------------------------------

[1] Part of this process, and one of the most important aspects of
conversation theory, is this aspect of teach it back, whether by a person,
and object, or a whole context.

[2] A ‘conversation’ happens between any two or more elements.

[3] What differentiates between an informational garden fence gossip and a
privet-crossing ‘bore-the-neighbours-to-death’ monologue is Pask’s Last
Theorem, which states that like concepts repel, and unlike concepts attract
(Green, 2004:1438). The concepts that ‘nestle recursively’ within the
conversation (within the interactions of actors) are either garden fence
positive (unlike / attract) or boringly negative (like / repel).

Johann


-- 
Dr. Johann van der Merwe
Independent Design Researcher


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