Notes on an Epistemology for Living Things - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 257

8.45 In this formalism the reflexive personal pronoun “I” appears as the indefi-
nitely applied) recursive operator

[

( )

(

() ()

) ]

Equ

WWW

n1 n

,

n

or in words:

“I am the observed relation between myself and observing myself.”

8.46 “I” is a relator ( and representor) of infinite order.

9. Terminal representations (descriptions) made by an organism are manifest in
its movements; consequently, the logical structure of descriptions arises from the
logical structure of movements.
9.1 It is known that the presence of a perceptible agent of weak concentration
may cause an organism to move toward it (approach). However, the presence of
the same agent in strong concentration may cause this organism to move away from
it (withdrawal).
9.11 That is “approach” and “withdrawal” are the precursors for “yes” or “no.”
9.12 The two phases of elementary behavior, “approach” and “withdrawal,” estab-
lish the operational origin of the two fundamental axioms of two-valued logic,
namely, the “law of the excluded contradiction:”

x&x,

in words: “not: x and not-x;”
and the law of the excluded middle:

x , ⁄

in words: “x or not-x;” (see Fig. 2).
9.2 We have from Wittgenstein's Tractatus [3], proposition 6.0621: “. . . it is impor-
tant that the signs “p” and non-p” can say the same thing. For it shows that nothing
in reality corresponds to the sign “non.”
The occurence of negation is a proposition is not enough to characterize its sense
(non-non-p = p).”
9.21 Since nothing in the environment corresponds to negation, negation as well
as all other “logical particles” (inclusion, alternation, implication, etc.) must arise
within the organism itself.
9.3

Beyond being logical affirmative or negative, descriptions can be true or false.

9.31 We have from Susan Langer, Philosophy in a New Key [4]:

“The use of signs in the very first-manifestation of mind. It arises as early in bio-
logical history as the famous 'conditioned reflex,' by which a concomitant of a stim-
ulus takes over the stimulus-function. The concomitant becomes a sign of the
condition to which the reaction is really appropriate. This is the real beginning of
mentality, for here is the birthplace of error , and herewith of truth .”
9.32 Thus, not only the sense (yes or no) of descriptions but also their truth values
(true or false) are coupled to movement (behavior).
9.4 Let D* be the terminal representation made by an organism W*, and let it be
observed by an organism W; let W's internal representation of this description
be D (W, D*); and, finally, let W's internal representation of his environment be
E (W, E). Then we have: