Objects: Tokens for (Eigen-)Behaviors - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 267

Apparently, only when a subject, S 1 , stipulates the existence of another
subject, S 2 , not unlike himself, who, in turn, stipulates the existence of still
another subject, not unlike himself, who may well be S 1 .
In this atomical social context each subject's (observer's) experience of
his own sensori-motor coordination can now be referred to by a token of
this experience, the “object,” which, at the same time, may be taken as a
token for the externality of communal space.
With this I have returned to the topology of closure

S 1

Obs i

Obs j

S 2

where equilibrium is obtained when the Eigenbehaviors of one participant
generate (recursively) those for the other (see, for instance, Appendix
Example A 2); where one snake eats the tail of the other as if it were its
own, and where cognition computes its own cognitions through those of the
other: here is the origin of ethics.