Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 254

4.3 This shows that the concepts “objects,” “event,” “name,” “time,” “abstraction,”
“memory,” “invariance,” “change,” generate each other.
From this follows the next proposition:

5. Objects and events are not primitive experiences. “Objects” and “Events” are
representations of relations.
5.1 A possible graphic metaphor for the complementarity of “object” and “event”
is an orthogonal grid that is mutually supported by both (Fig. 1).
5.2 “Environment” is the representation of relations between “objects” and
“events”

Env Obj, Eve

( )

5.3 Since the computation of equivalence relations is not unique, the results of
these computations, namely, “objects” and “events” are likewise not unique.
5.31 This explains the possibility of an arbitrary number of different, but internally
consistent (language determined) taxonomies.
5.32 This explains the possibility of an arbitrary number of different, but internally
consistent (culturally determined) realities.
5.4 Since the computation of equivalence relations is performed on primitive
experiences, an external environment is not a necessary prerequisite of the compu-
tation of a reality.
6. Operationally, the computation Cmp (Rel) of a specific relation is a represen-
tation of this relation.

R

= Cmp

(

Rel

)

6.1 A possible mathematical metaphor for the equivalence of a computation with
a representation is, for instance, Wallis' computational algorithm for the infinite
product:

FIGURE 1. “Objects” creating “Events” and vice versa .