Part Two: The Body

Introduction

To link a discussion of new music to a discussion of an ``objectivity-subjectivity conditioned language" is to make a leap--not a step, nor a logical conclusion, but a leap. This leap requires an understanding of the company it keeps: other leaps, which bolster it and whose connections with it and with one another suggest the beginning of a paradigmatic shift concerning cognitive notions.

Both describing and listening are cognitive acts: moments of a subject wanting to know about an object. What's said about describing and listening is based on certain established models of cognition. Here I will present a cognitive model recently proposed by Humberto Maturana, a cybernetician and neurophysiologist. The model breaks with past models and presents an entirely different story of the moment of subject meeting object. I'll speak of the model in five statements and comments about the statements, and then open onto a grand discussion of the model (pages -). Using this model as point of departure, I'll make a tip-toed path through notions about objectivity-subjectivity, language, and listening. This path structurally snowballs: the first section on objectivity-subjectivity is built after the model (pages -); the section on language is built according to what has been said about objectivity-subjectivity and the model (pages -); the third section on listening is built on what has been said about language, objectivity-subjectivity, and the model (pages -).

I cannot, in the following, claim scientific knowledge or self-referential language. All I claim is that my reports and investigations should contribute to a fresh clarification of the issues.

Model to inform the discussion: statements, comments, and discussion

Statement 1:

Living systems, of which cognitive systems are one example, can be described as open to energy, and closed to information and control.

Statement 2:

Studying the organization of a system ``closed to information and control, open to energy" (a closed system) is studying the nature of its self-reference.

Statement 3:

Living systems are autopoietic systems.

Statement 4:

A system that is closed to information and control is not closed to interaction.

Statement 5:

Cognition is a subject-dependent phenomenon: as a process it is constitutively bound to the organization and structure of the knower, because all the states and interactions in which the knower can enter are determined by her organization and structure.

Statement 1: Living systems, of which cognitive systems are one example, can be described as open to energy, and closed to information and control.

Comment: A description which states that a living system is ``closed to information and control" is a description which is positing a new notion of a living system. This living system is one whose parts are organized in a circular form, that is, every part interacts with every other part. Intuitively, we understand such mutual interactions in a whole system: for example, if I try to understand how my brain interacts with my liver, I know right away that it is not that my brain acts on my liver in hierarchical form but also that my liver acts simultaneously on my brain. However, beyond this intuitive understanding, the statement of the closure of a system has radical consequences. It enables us to understand our nervous system not as an input-output information processing device (as is the current understanding in neurophysiology), but rather as a closed unit of perception and action maintaining internally generated levels. The idea is that the organization's stability (its ``homeostasis") produces certain levels to be maintained, with the nervous system compensating to maintain those internally generated levels in the face of perturbations. We speak of homeostasis when we speak of the first command of a living system, which is to refer to itself. Behavior becomes the compensation for those perturbations. ``Perception", in this context, means the organism's view of whatever impinges on it. And its view is precisely dependent upon the reference levels it is set up to maintain, rather than on an externally defined ``stimulus" that is to be ``processed" as defined by an external agent. Perturbation can be external or can arise internally from the organism itself.

Within the vocabulary of a closed system, the terms ``perturbation" and ``compensation" are used rather than the terms ``input" and ``output". Input and output, terms that are used in the stimulus-response model, carry the connotation of something arising in the design of a system. When I put my coin into the Coke machine, I know that it is designed to receive that input, and no other input. But if I call my dog ``Fido" and he comes to me, it is not because he was designed for me to call him ``Fido" or anything else--he was not designed, he just ``does his thing". The basic difference between input-output and perturbation-compensation is that one puts emphasis on the design for a thing, and the other puts emphasis on the stability arising from the closure of its organization.

Statement 2: Studying the organization of a system ``closed to information and control, open to energy" (a closed system) is studying the nature of its self-reference.

Comment: The concept of self-reference is best understood if we imagine that a system is stable when all its parts react to all its parts to either maintain or restore a balance between its parts. The balance of a system is monitored by its self-reference. A perturbation, either from the inside or the outside, generates nothing else but this attempt to restore stability.

A self-referential system is distinct from an allo-referential system in that the allo-referential system is designed to respond to the perturbation, to ``rise to the occasion", to react under the input: which is equivalent to information processing.

Statement 3: Living systems are autopoietic systems.

Comment: ``Autopoiesis" is a special case of homeostasis in which the system's critical variable that is held constant is that system's own organization. An autopoietic system is defined as a unity by a network of productions. The production network produces the components; the components, through their interactions, constitute the system as a unity in the space in which they exist, and make the network possible by defining and realizing its topology. Thus the phenomenology of autopoiesis is the phenomenology of autonomy insofar as the result of the system's dynamics is the system itself.

Statement 4: A system that is closed to information and control is not closed to interaction.

Comment: Having established the closure of a living system, we may now ask: how does a closed system interact with other closed systems? We can say that two closed systems undergo a process of ``coupling". What we do with the closure of a system is actually what we do all the time, i.e., we interact with a system by poking at it, throwing sticks at it, shouting at it, etc., in various degrees of sophistication. That is a perturbation of the stability of a system, for which it will compensate or will not compensate. If it does compensate, then we can sense in it a stability for that interaction. So if each time I say ``Fido" my dog comes around, that ``Fido" is a perturbation in its organization that produces a compensation, i.e., the locomotion of coming to me.

A system interacting with another system is ``system dependent" in that its behavior will depend on its organization; the system is ``observer dependent" in that it will respond to the kind of perturbation that the other system throws at it. Therefore, if I am interacting with another closed system, my ability to see what its properties are is limited by what kinds of interactions I can have with it. As we will see later, one of the kinds of interactions I can have is the language I speak.

Statement 5: Cognition is a subject-dependent phenomenon: as a process it is constitutively bound to the organization and structure of the knower, because all the states and interactions in which the knower can enter are determined by her organization and structure.

In lieu of commenting on this important statement, I will open the floor to a grand discussion of what has been said so far.

Discussion of model

(homage and godspeed to the retreating backs and reproachful faces of an objectivity-ridden subjectivity)

Cognition is the story of subject meeting object.

Any discussion of ``to know" needs must raise the question of what characterizes and constitutes the domain of the knower (the subject) and the domain of the to-be-known (the object)--the answers to be told in a vocabulary that traces the society's current state of knowledge and of self-consciousness.

While most of us seem not to actively participate in these answers and questions, we do actively participate in the vocabulary, the metaphors, and imagery, which both produce and reproduce our society's ``state of the art" in relation to these answers and questions.

Maturana's radical point of departure from traditional models lies in the the characterization of a living system as being closed--closed to information and control, open to energy. The workings of a closed system--the inter-activity between parts, its self-referentiality, its autopoiesis--give us an image of how the system maintains itself.

The story we tell of our observations--of the dog who comes when its name is called, of the person who moves in order to get out of the way of a car--is only the story of our observations. Maturana proposes that the first command of a living system is to refer to self in order to maintain itself (its homeostasis), and is a command whose consequences we observe. To be consistent with Maturana, we must re-see what we see, and tell to our eyes a newer image: of the dog who comes when we call in order to maintain its homeostasis, and not because we called. Thus, if we reflect on the old vocabulary and imagery of our notions of a living system responding to its environment, we can observe their implication: movements of a living system are considered effects of which something in the environment is the cause. Contrary to this, under Maturana's model, it is the living system which causes its own effect--it is the living system's response to itself that we have, up to now, called its response to the environment.

Objectivity-Subjectivity and links with cognitive model

Maturana's characterization of a living system affects our discussion of new music's treatment under a subjectivity-objectivity conditioned language in three ways: in our understanding of the notions of objectivity-subjectivity; language; and music listening (as an instance of cognition).

While cognition is the story told of subject meeting object, it also taps the same pool of imagery, vocabulary, and concepts as does the story of objectivity-subjectivity: they each tell the other's story.

In the traditional model, the objectivity-subjectivity dualism (that which existed prior to Maturana's model) is both a notion and a dynamic active in the old paradigm of cognition. The notion's neurophysiological statement is:

We obtain knowledge through our sense organs by a process of mapping the objective external reality onto our nervous system, accommodating our behavior to the structure of the world revealed through this mapping.

A more general statement of this notion of objectivity is:

We exist in an objective world that can be known and about which we can make cognitive statements that reveal it as an independent reality whose validity is, therefore, independent from us as observers.

In the imagery which reproduces this old concept of cognition and the role played in it by objectivity-subjectivity, perceiver and perceived are each given a particular place: the perceived (reality, truth) dominates, while the perceiver is a vessel, a receptacle, a repository that either adequately or inadequately receives the perceived. ``Reality" plays the dominant role, and must be pursued; the perceiver plays a passive role. In this picture, reality stands firm, regardless of description, and the importance of language is passed over, language being considered depictional, and not consequential. Language is either taken for granted and is, thus, invisible; or is mentioned, but only as an interference, a smudge on the windowpane between perceiver and perceived: ``but for the words getting in the way, I would have been able to finally see truth, reality."

Under Maturana's model, cognition is returned to the subject. The model criticizes the notion that we can have cognitive access to an objective reality independent of us as observers, and rather posits cognition as ``a process that is constitutively bound to the organization and structure of the knower because all the states and interactions in which the knower can enter are determined by her organization and structure".

In Maturana's picture, perceiver and perceived are given dynamically different places. The perceived becomes dependent on the perceiver, the profile of the perceiver is raised, and cognizance is given to the perceiver's mode of interacting with the perceived: her language.

Cognition, we have said, is the story of subject meeting object. And who tells the story? Under Maturana's model, we can answer: the story is told by a subject and is told by the telling. The knower's ability to see and speak of an ``it" is limited to the kinds of interactions she can have with it, and dominant amongst these interactions is her language.

Philosophers, psychologists, and biologists have on many diverse occasions argued that the act of cognition is somehow bound to the knower--so a criticism of the notion that we have cognitive access to an objective reality is not new. Unfortunately, philosophers and scientists generally fear that recognizing cognition as a subject dependent phenomenon leads to idealism and solipsism. I think that this should not be the case and that there are two basic sources to this fear:

1. It is difficult for us as Western thinkers to imagine cognition as a subject dependent phenomenon because we live immersed in a denotative linguistic domain in which even subjective notions are expressed denotatively, as if their existence were independent of us as observers;
2. It seems that a biological mechanism that gives rise to an observer with a subject dependent cognitive domain in which he uses a denotative language with manipulative success is a paradox, and hence, impossible.

Humberto Maturana

Cognitive Strategies

Maturana's model questions the objectivity-subjectivity imagery of a real world which sends waves over us, marks us so that we utter it, sprays us until we see it, hides itself so that we must look for it, masks itself so that we are tricked into making false statements about it, and reveals itself so that we come, at last, nearer to the truth. As Maturana's model is new, we do not yet have sufficient imagery and language for it; but, as a first attempt, the poetry of the old objectivity-bound imagery might be tumbled around: we might imagine a subject who sends waves over the reality, who marks it so that what it tells is an utterance of herself, and who sprays reality until it sees her.

The shift of paradigm--the leap--moves from ``The observer shall not enter into the description" to ``The description shall reveal the properties of the observer."

Thus it should be mentioned here that in this paper the terms objectivity and subjectivity do not denote opposites, but rather differently emphasized aspects of one relation, namely the relation between subject and object. I indicate this link between objectivity and subjectivity by means of a hyphen: for example, I speak of the ``objectivity-subjectivity conditioning of language," or ``objectivity-subjectivity imagery".

Language, and links with objectivity-subjectivity and cognitive model

When linguists became able to examine critically and scientifically a large number of languages of widely different patterns, their base of reference was expanded; they experienced an interruption of phenomena hitherto held universal, and a whole new order of significances came into their ken. It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of this mental stock in trade. Formulation of ideas is not an independent process, strictly rational in the old sense, but is part of a particular grammar, and differs, from slightly to greatly, between different grammars. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way--an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language... And it will be found that it is not possible to define ``event, thing, object, relationship" and so on, from nature, but that to define them always involves a circuitous return to the grammatical categories of the definer's language.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Language, Thought, and Reality

To paraphrase Roland Barthes: there is no primary, naive, phenomenal understanding of the field data which we afterwards have to explicate or intellectualize. No ethnographer is innocent. We begin with the narrative in our head which structures our initial observations in the field.

In the process of production of ethnography we are continually oriented toward the dominant narrative structure. We go to the reservation with a story already in mind, and that story is foregrounded in the final professional product, the published article, chapter, or monograph. If we depart too far from the dominant story in the literature, if we overlook a key reference or fail to mention the work of an important scholar, we are politely corrected by such institutional monitors as the thesis committee, the foundation review panel, the editors of our journals, or the sometimes heavy hand of the program committee at our annual meetings. At the beginning and at the end, the production of ethnography is framed by the dominant story. Most of the time there is a balance to research innovation; the study is new enough to be interesting but familiar enough so that the story remains recognizable. There are geniuses--Bateson did publish Naven in 1936--but usually, we define research with reference to the current narrative and report back our particular variation of that narrative to our colleagues, most of whom already know the plot structure in advance. The process is self-reinforcing and confirms everyone's view of the world.

Edward Bruner

Ethnography as Narrative

Language is prepared for so and so many registrerings. You may perceive everything but the preference for what you register is guided by what language you have. This in turn suggests that by rejuvenating the language, the registering selected from the perceived will be guided by new preferences.

Herbert Brün

Seminar in Experimental Composition

A recurrent phenomenon in language is a phenomenon that could be described as the ``inertia of language": this means that what present language stores and sends as messages, it learned from many a previous, now obsolete, knowledge. Language argues paradigms, both those paradigms we now recognize as paradigms, and those we have yet to recognize as paradigms. Dynamically, its greatest power is held by a paradigm not while it is called ``paradigm" but called facts, data, truth, nature, ethics, proper procedures, etc. As soon as a paradigm is called a ``paradigm" (usually then referred to as a ``mere" paradigm), its power collapses. Thus, a speaker may find her language at odds with her intentions, particularly if she is intending to add to the present store of knowledge, or attempting to negate some accepted idea, or trying to proceed along with neglected thoughts: for there will be a time lag, and a paradigm lag, between the intentions of the speaker, and the intentions of the language.

... it will be impossible to reason him out of these beliefs. He will assert them as plain, hard-headed common sense, which means that they satisfy him because they are completely adequate as a system of communication between him and his fellow men. That is, they are adequate linguistically to his social needs, and will remain so until an additional group of needs is felt and worked out in language.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Language, Thought, and Reality

The inertia of language can also be termed its ``closure". Those characteristics of living systems as described by Maturana can be used to characterize language, characterizing the relations between describer, description, and described. These relations exhibit interactivity, self-referentiality, and autopoiesis. A speaker will speak about what she sees; what she sees will be determined by what she can speak about: this is an instance of interactivity and self-referentiality between describer, described, and description. The autopoiesis of language--when a dynamic of a system becomes a component of it--occurs in the above descriptive instance when a description will so orient the process of describing as to create the description.

In the third statement quoted above, Brün has made a useful distinction--the distinction between perceiving and registering enables him to refer to that moment which our present language can barely express: the moment when an I meets an it. In answer to the querulous ``then if language determines so much, is what's out there only what I describe it to be??" Brün ascribes to the it, its moment: the moment of perceiving; and ascribes to the I, I's moment: the moment of registering. We perceive a phenomenon; what we register of it is dependent on the capabilities of the language used. The registrations of our language (its capabilities), are socially informed and are produced by, and are reproducing, paradigms. We may speak of the relationship between language and paradigm autopoietically: paradigms orient the describing process and become themselves components of that process; by becoming components of that process, they orient the describing process; and so on.

The phenomenon of describing, invisible under the notions of objectivity and subjectivity, becomes visible under Maturana's cognitive model and the above statements. Thus to the statement that a description reveals the properties of the describer, we can add: that a description also reveals the properties of the describing language.

To the degree that a speaker is unaware of the power of her describing language, to that degree will language exercise its greatest power over her.

Listening process, linked with language, objectivity-subjectivity, and the cognitive model

I propose the following description of the listening process:

while a composer makes the music composition, it is the listener who makes the effect of the music. The composer provides the listener with an offer--the musical composition. The listener creates an image of the music, and responds to the created image, creating its effect. To use the old vocabulary of cause and effect: it is then the listener who creates the cause and the listener who creates the effect.

We can break down the listening process into these states:

1. the composer makes a musical composition which reaches the listener's ear; at this point the listener is on the job, and the composer can do no more;
2. now the listener makes her ``experience" of the music--this consists of the listener finding or inventing those wishes and questions for which this music means fulfillment and answer;
3. the listener then looks at the wishes and questions which she had to contribute in order to make the composition a fulfillment and an answer. She now decides whether she likes her new acquirements or whether she dislikes them. This is what produces the effect which listening to music has on the listener.

Listening is an instance of the cognitive process. The vocabulary generally used to characterize and to explain the listening experience stems from a well-known and frequently exploited store of more or less metaphorical expressions: people speak of being moved by the music, affected by the music; people say that the music did or didn't reach them, that the music left them cold or made chills go up their spine. These expressions subscribe to the notion of objectivity presented on page : ``We obtain knowledge through our sense organs by a process of mapping the objective knowledge onto our nervous system, accomodating our behavior to the structure of the world revealed through this mapping."

It is this objectivity orientation which is the point of address and attack in the above description of the listening process. Objectivity wishes to characterize the listener as ``open"--open to music--and as a vessel, into whom the music pours and who may then comment on the agreeability or disagreeability of that which was poured. Objectivity once again makes no mention of language or of the descriptive relations between listener, her language, and music. The listener's language, in the objectivity-oriented notions about the listening process, happens only after the experience: the music descends, the listener can only say whether she likes or dislikes it.

From appearances, we observe that music seems to ``affect" listeners--so far, the objectivity notion accounts for this appearance. However, as in the context of the remarks about closure, we find that the situation that reaches the observer's eye--that of a dog coming in response to a call, or the listener being moved in response to the music--is only the situation that reaches the observer's eye.

In my description of the listening process, I reject this objectivity-oriented description of the listening process and characterize the listener as ``closed". What goes on within that closure (steps 2 and 3 of the listening process presented on page ) does not tell the story of music affecting listener, but rather does tell of an active listener affecting the story of music.

In addition to asserting the closure of the listener I also claim there is a closure of the description process. The listener actively produces her experience of the music by bringing in her wishes and desires. Through the articulation of these wishes and desires she is setting the stage for her interaction with the music, and thus with this particular set of wishes and desires she will hear something and will react to what she hears within the context of those staked out wishes and desires. If she says she is in quest of ``beautiful music", then the music she hears will appear as an applicant for the fulfillment of that wish. The listener will then react to that wish and to the appropriateness of the applicant appearing as the fulfillment of that wish. The suitability of the applicant for the position will cause the listener's emotional response to the music she hears and will condition her statements of like and dislike. Under this picture we can see that the capabilities of her registering language, socially conditioned to the degree that she is unaware of this conditioning, will ``interview" what she is perceiving and act as a measuring standard to the perceived.

This picture of the listener is consistent with the statements from Maturana's model of cognition, objectivity-subjectivity, and language: a listener is not ``open" to an objective reality called ``the music"; the listener's language is not ``open" to the music, serving as a mapping vehicle for it. Rather, both listener and language can ``respond to the music" only via a subroutine: the closure of listener and language.

The poetry for this picture of a listener is one of the listener who affects the music, who reaches the music, who sends chills up its spine, who moves the music.

At present our society abounds in images and vocabulary surrounding the word ``to affect" in which all but the listener is dominant and active. The field of psycho-acoustics, which intends to study the relations between sound and listeners, ends up describing itself as the study of the effects of sound on listeners, and not the study of the effects of listeners on sound. The notion of cause and effect is a particular locus around which notions of objectivity swarm: it causes, I am affected.