On Constructing a Reality - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 216

Harmlessly enough, computing (from com-putare ) literally means to reflect,
to contemplate ( putare ) things in concert ( com ), without any explicit
reference to numerical quantities. Indeed, I shall use this term in this most
general sense to indicate any operation (not necessarily numerical) that
transforms, modifies, rearranges, orders, and so on, observed physical en-
tities (“objects”) or their representations (“symbols”). For instance, the
simple permutation of the three letters A , B , C , in which the last letter now
goes first— C , A , B —I shall call a computation; similarly the operation that
obliterates the commas between the letters— CAB —and likewise the
semantic transformation that changes CAB into taxi , and so on.
I shall now turn to the defense of my use of the indefinite article in the
noun phrase a reality . I could, of course, shield myself behind the logical
argument that solving for the general case, implied by the a , I would also
have solved any specific case denoted by the use of the . However, my moti-
vation lies much deeper. In fact, there is a deep hiatus that separates the
the school of thought from the a school of thought in which, respectively,
the distinct concepts of “confirmation” and “correlation” are taken as
explanatory paradigms for perceptions. The the school: My sensation of
touch is confirmation for my visual sensation that here is a table. The a
school: My sensation of touch in correlation with my visual sensation gen-
erate an experience that I may describe by “here is a table.”
I am rejecting the the position on epistemological grounds, for in this way
the whole problem of cognition is safely put away in one's own cognitive
blind spot: Even its absence can no longer be seen.
Finally one may rightly argue that cognitive processes do not compute
wristwatches or galaxies, but compute at best descriptions of such entities.
Thus I am yielding to this objection and replace my former paraphrase
by

cognition

Æ computing descriptions of a reality

Neurophysiologists, however, will tell us 4 that a description computed on
one level of neural activity, say, a projected image on the retina, will be oper-
ated on again on higher levels, and so on, whereby some motor activity may
be taken by an observer as a “terminal description,” for instance, the utter-
ance, “Here is a table.” Consequently, I have to modify this paraphrase again
to read

cognition Æ computing descriptions of

where the arrow turning back suggests this infinite recursion of descriptions
of descriptions, etc. This formulation has the advantage that one unknown,
namely, “reality,” is successfully eliminated. Reality appears only implicit as
the operation of recursive descriptions. Moreover, we may take advantage
of the notion that computing descriptions is nothing else but computations.