Humberto Maturana Autopoiesis,Structural Coupling and Cognition

Cybernetics & Human Knowing vol.9, no 3-4, 2002 pg 29 Self-consciousness The difficulty in understanding self-consciousness rests in finding the process through which we distinguish ourselves as if we were independent entities of our operation so that we can see ourselves as such, and are finding the domain in which we exist as selves. I found the answer through understanding language and the arising of objects and our living in inter-objectivity. Objects arise in languaging (in the flow of recursive coordinations of doings in the flow of living together). The arising objects are lived as if they were independent entities (that can be distinguished as such and handled in the coordinations of doings). Thus, when an observer sees two persons in the flow of coordinations of coordinations of doings through the coordinations of doings on their bodies, he or she can claim that those persons are operating in the domain of awareness of aspects of their doings that are seen as parts of their bodies. Furthermore, the observer can see that those persons treat their bodies and the rising parts of their bodies as if they were independent entities at the same time that through their sensations they are those parts and doings. The body, and its parts and the self as the distinction of their distinguishing them, arise in language in the same manner as any other entity arises in the flow of languaging as a manner of doing things together. The observer sees that the operation of self-consciousness is the reflective distinction of a self in language that takes place as an operation that constitutes our body and our being as an object in inter-objectivity, yet the person in the flow of his or her living in languaging lives the self-distinction in the paradox of distinguishing an independent entity that feels as being the doing of the distinction. It is not easy to see the nature of self-consciousness as an operation in living in language when one thinks that language takes place as a symbolic operation that refers to entities that can be distinguished because of their independent existence. If to be conscious means to be aware of something as it exists independently of the being that is aware of it, how could a human being become aware of him or herself? It is because of this difficulty that we speak as we refer to ourselves as if we had a dual existence (i.e., when we say "I am speaking about myself", or "I, in my true self".) The conceptual problem generated in this apparent existential duality dissolves as we understand that language consists in living together in a flow of coordinations of coordinations of consensual behaviours that arise in the pleasure of the flow of doing things together in recursive interactions. In the origin of humanness the self must have arisen in the same manner that it arises in modern human babies, namely the flow of the coordinations of coordinations of behaviours that bring about the body and its parts as shared objects of inter-objectivity through the mother/child play that calls attention to the proprioceptive sensations that arise through doing things together in coordinations of coordinations of doings. It is because of this that I say that self-consciousness is a recursive operation in languaging that constitutes an open-ended possibility for the continuous arising of new worlds that we may live as we recursively live as self-conscious languaging beings. Indeed, we can generate many new worlds but we do not have to do so: wherever we may be, conceptually or manipulatevely, there is always another realm that we may bring forth through our languaging. We are living in a culture that acts as if we should do everything that we imagine as possible. We do not see that in doing so we are not just letting things be, we are making a choice - and we do not see that we should be responsible for it. Indeed, since languaging occurs as a manner of flowing in living together in coordinations of coordinations of consensual behaviours, we can generate any new world that we may language into existence. But we do not have to do so. No matter in what operational domain we may be, there is always another domain of existence that we may bring forth in the recursions of our languaging by conserving the configuration of dynamic relations that define the new domain. We can realise all that we imagine if we respect the structural coherences of the domain in which we imagine it. But we do not have to do everything that we can do, or that we can conceive to be possible. We do not have to engage in all the reflections, or develop all the concepts, or build all the technologies that we can imagine. It is precisely because of this that we have to choose. It is in our living as reflective self-conscious human beings that we can be aware of the possible consequences of what we do, and of the nature of the domains of existence that we bring about, and of the implications to our living of what we do in the different worlds that we may live forth. And it is because we are aware of what we can do as self-conscious languaging beings that we not only can choose but also have to choose what to do. We live a culture that pressures us to do whatever we imagine under the argument of creativity. But, do we have to do so? The fact that as a consequence of our being self-conscious beings we can always become aware of the possible implications of whatever we do, makes every human act an explicit or implicit choice of a domain of existence. In this manner we may conserve or destroy our own existence as the kind of living beings we are. We may live in the conservation or destruction of ourselves as Homo sapiens amans, or in the conservation or destruction of Homo sapiens arrogans. We modern human beings are the present of a history of neotenic expansion into adulthood of our loving childhood. Self-consciousness arose as a result of the neotenic expansion of the mother/child relation of mutual care in play. Self-consciousness, as the possibility of seeing ourselves in our reflections and doings, is a gift of the biology of love that allows us to escape from any trap in which we may happen to fall: self-consciousness is the opening for reflective autonomy and freedom. If we indeed understand our existence as self-conscious languaging beings that continuously bring forth the world and worlds that we live, (because that is the nature of languaging as living in coordinations of coordinations of consensual doings), and if we indeed want to generate well-being in the human and animal world in which we live, we must continuously create such a world with a network of languaging and emotioning that we as adults live so that our children grow generating the same network of languaging and emotioning in which they grew in well-being. Language cannot be understood as a biological phenomenon if we do not take seriously our operation as structure determined systems. If we do not do so we remain trapped in the belief that language is a system of communication and thinking with representations (symbolisations) of an independent reality that contains us as its primary constitutive feature. And if we do not understand language as a biological phenomenon we shall remain in the mystery of self-consciousness through believing that this somehow reveals an intrinsic cosmic duality, and we shall not be able to understand ourselves as the self-conscious transitory beings that we are.

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