Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес
оригинального документа
: http://www.philol.msu.ru/~lex/melnikov/meln_en/part_2.htm
Дата изменения: Unknown Дата индексирования: Fri Feb 28 16:30:58 2014 Кодировка: Windows-1251 Поисковые слова: propulsion |
| << back | | continuation |
Part II
Adaptivity and Reflection
2.1 Reflection as a Property of Adaptive Systems
The Topicality of the problem of the nature of reflection.
"In fact research-and still more research- remains to be carried out into how matter is linked, seemingly without this being sensed, with matter formed from the same atoms (or electrons) and possessing at the same time a clearly expressed capacity for sensation" [2, vol.18, p.40]........It is logical to presume that all matter possesses a property related in essence to sensation" [2, vol.16, p.91].
These well-known statements
of V.I. Lenin are used as a guide-line for working out problems not just of
general philosophical character. They are also deeply important in the
practical engineering involved during research into linguistic problems of
cybernetics; this is because it is Impossible to be engaged in a search for
ways to realise technically the transmission of thought content through
conventional signs and symbols, if it has not been proved that even lower
levels of reflecting processes, as, for example, the specific reaction to
various physical characteristics of objects, or the ability to be trained to
recognise these objects etc, can be supported by technical mechanisms
"related to sensation".
At the present time, many
arguments have been adduced suggesting that there is no impregnable barrier
between living and non-living matter, between matter on the one hand and
sensation and consciousness on the other". [6,
p.4].
Having defined our concept of
the system as the dialectical category "the crux of the matter",
having considered ontologically a number of other philosophical categories,
and having put forward propositions about the adaptation process as a
"material agreement", as a solution of ontological contradictions in
the system, we can now examine the problem of the nature of reflection from
several angles and can move on, first of all to general semiotic, and then to
strictly linguistic aspects of cybernetics. Here, in purely chemical and other
objective processes of non-organic matter, we shall try to perceive the
presence of those prerequisites and sub-strata phenomena without which higher
forms of reflection could not develop. It is rather like the fact that an
adult animal cannot appear without first passing through a stage of embryonic
development.
The Nature of Deformations as bases of reflection.
From the fact that an
object's current state as a combination of its properties determining the set
of interaction valencies depends on the local conditions, it follows that
objects of close or identical essences in the same local conditions have a
close or identical valency division into extentials, intentials and
potentials. This is especially obvious when such objects form mutual local
conditions for themselves. Molecules in crystals can serve as an example of
such a state of affairs, where the homogeneity of the molecules gives rise to
the homogeneity of the ways in which their mutual links are brought about
(extentials), and the homogeneity of their predispositions towards other types
of links (intentials and potentials).
When we examine the problem
of the nature of reflection we shall first of all take systems which have
arisen on the basis of links of more or less homogeneous components. In this
case it is obvious that if any external cause brings about a change in the
structure of established, extential links between the components of a given
system, the result of this can be that the upper-tier changed extentials
influence the structure of the currents. This also changes the correlation of
the intentials and potentials of the given system's deeper-tier components.
This can lead to deeper-tier components beginning to adapt to a new structure
of higher-tier extentials.
However, as we saw,
adaptation does not occur instantaneously, in that it is connected with
internal re-structuring. Therefore if an external cause, having changed the
local conditions between homogeneous objects of a meta-object, disappears
before visible depth adaptations, new distributions of link currents between
components of the system's higher-tiers occur ; this disappearance of the
external cause can be accompanied by a revival of the initial local conditions
between these components, i.e. a revival of the Initial structure of their
extential valencies.
However if the external cause
supports from outside a change of local conditions between components of a
given system for such a long time that in the deep-tiers of these components
an adaptation of the elements to a new higher-tier structure manages to occur,
the disappearance of this cause can prove to be insufficient grounds for the
initial extentials structure between the meta-objects to be fully restored.
The re-structuring of depth elements of the system's components under
examination will lead in this case to a valency change of these components
themselves and the set of their intentials and extentials can be
different. But if a new structure of extential links between components now
appears the elements of these components will no longer be placed in the
initial conditions in relation to their link currents at higher-tiers, and the
consequences of adaptation, although caused by the temporary but nevertheless
lengthy, influence of the external cause on the combination of objects, to a
greater or lesser extent remain and are consolidated as a new state of the
reflecting object expressed in the appearance of a trace of the Influence.
It would seem that the
picture of the trace or imprint which we have seen is an illustration of
essential aspects of those changes in complex object states under the effect
of external influences; they correspond in mechanics to the concepts of
resilient and non-resilient (residual) deformation. Let us call the process of
change in any states of an object e.g. II (Fig.5), as the effect of the
influence on it of another object, for example A, the reflection; the result of
reflection is the imprint; the object which has experienced the Influence
which appears in the form of the imprint from this influence we shall call the
reflecting object. The object with which the interaction served as a
cause of the imprint we shall call the reflected object.
Thus the occurrence of
resilient or non-resilient deformations must now be seen as one of the forms
of occurrence of an imprint of the Influence of one object on the body of
another, i.e. as one of the results of reflection.
Objects in the reflection
process can mutually influence each other, and deform each other, so that
after interaction imprints remain on both objects. However, for an analysis of
reflection mechanisms the very first task is to examine the Interactions
between objects where we can deem one object to be noticeably influencing
another though the influence of the second on the first can be ignored. In
this case the reflecting object (II on Fig.5) can also be called passive and
the reflected object can be called active. Moreover, the following will be
called the active part of the reflected object: that part of the active
reflected object which is either in contact with the passive object or which
Influences the passive object through the substance of the link currents, i.e.
that part of the active object which with its extential currents directly
changes the link currents' structure of the reflecting object's components.
Then the part of the reflecting object in which some or other types of
deformation have occurred directly under the influence of the active part of
the reflected object we shall call primary deformation or a direct
imprint. (Fig.5).
With such an interpretation
imprints as resilient and non-resilient deformations can be considered as
primary. But they can be interpreted in other ways apart from in terms of
mechanics. It is quite clear that certain higher psychic types of reflection,
while they are certainly not by the interaction mechanisms and their results,
cannot nevertheless help being supported by these interactions as their
initial essential moments. So that it is quits clear that in the memory an
anomalous print of some pattern or other relentlessly persecuting a man is
linked with a non-resilient residual deformation of certain areas of the brain
which bring about memorisation as an effect of strong stimulation, while
momentary forgetfulness of external influences, for example ones seen or
heard, can be a result of the impressions which have been gained acting on
corresponding areas of the brain as the reflecting object only in a purely
resilient manner; that is to say, without leaving any notable primary imprints
after its influence has ceased.
If we take as a starting
point the current characteristics of the interactions of actual objects and
the mechanisms of their adaptation, we can not only explain in a new way the
processes where Imprints of resilient and non-resilient deformations occur as
the conditions for the development of imprints of the reflected object on the
reflecting object: we can also reveal the potential of those effects of the
interactions of these objects which can no longer be correlated with customary
concepts of mechanics, but which have prime significance for showing the
nature of finer types of reflection.
Factors involved when a
reflecting object is similar to the reflected object and to itself.
Let us now turn our attention
to a number of facts which, although obvious, require some emphasis.
First, it is clear that a
direct imprint, being the immediate result of the influence of the active part
of the reflected object on the reflecting object A is bound to have certain
properties which coincide with the properties of the reflected object's active
part. Even if a primary imprint Is a simple mechanical Indentation, certain
features of the structure of the reflected object's active part will in this event have been imposed on the imprint, and the imprint will become to a
greater or lesser extent likened to the active part. Therefore we can
justifiably accept that the reflecting object will to a certain extent be
similar to the reflected object.
Generally the occurrence of a
direct imprint will lead to a change of not only the extentials but
also the intentials of the reflecting object II's components in the place
where the imprint was. But this change of intentials can lead to this rise
of new extentials beyond the boundaries of the primary imprint.
Hence a further conclusion
can be drawn: if a primary imprint is the deformation of the reflecting object
under the influence of an external factor, for example, the effect of
the reflected object's active part, then, after a primary imprint has
developed in the body of the reflecting object, it can itself change into an
active internal factor in the succeeding, secondary deformation of the
reflecting object; after this secondary deformation has affected a greater or
lesser zone beyond the boundaries of the primary one, i.e. beyond the
boundaries of the direct imprint, it can be correlated with a particular zone
of the reflected object's active part.
The properties of the
secondary deformation zone which has come into being around the direct imprint
may have nothing in common with the properties of the corresponding zone
around the reflected object's active part, as their imposition Is occasioned
by the nature of the components not of the reflected object but of the
reflecting object; here the degree of similarity between the reflected and
reflecting objects will remain as it was before the development of the
secondary deformation in the reflecting object.
"The interference"
of the secondary deformation will be expressed in this case only in the degree
of change of similarity of the reflected object to itself: without secondly
deformation this degree of change would be less than it is with it. In
particular, as secondary deformation can also Prove to be an active internal
factor etc. so primary deformation must be seen as a "trigger
influence" for a chain (including the "avalanche" type) of
changes of the reflecting, object's properties.
Multi-stage and
avalanche-type deformations are only possible when there are reserves of
internal energy, which make for secondary deformations of the reflecting
object. And as in our view all links and interactions (and consequently the
modification of an object's structure) can be explained in terms of links'
substance currents, the accumulation of internal energy should be
understood as the accumulation of link substance (for example, in the
form of the circulation of internal closed currents) while the freeing of
internal energy should be seen as a severance or disconnection, of such
internal currents, their involvement in other link currents, and in particular
a change of structure of these other currents.
Both primary Interacting
objects, and their change and interaction factors are seen (when the currents
are examined) to be corporeal. Thus the well-known physical laws concerning
the change of mass into energy, and of energy into mass, the release of energy
because of a defect in the mass etc. take on quite real features of change of
form in the existence of matter, as long as it is indestructible.
From the energy point of
view, resilient deformation of the reflecting object ensures the direct
imprint being similar to the reflected object's active part characteristics
and after the reflected object's influence has stopped, the imprint not only
disappears but also returns the energy expended on the influence; with a
non-resilient deformation the imprint is preserved for a long time and by this
fact preserves the similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object
(caused by the influence) - and here the energy of the deformation is not
returned. With secondary deformations this transferred energy itself serves as
a factor at the beginning of the process of the reflecting object's Internal
release of energies and of its secondary deformations, and in those cases
where the internal structure of these deformations will not itself concern us
but the fact of the onset of deformations will alone be important, the primary
Influence and its primary imprint will be named the trigger influence and
imprint, i.e. in relation to the secondary deformation processes.
It will be natural to call
the results of secondary deformation the indirect imprint.
Natural
Adaptation.
Let us now examine the case
when the indirect imprint occurs as an effect of influences which cannot be
called trigger influences.
Let us imagine that both the
reflecting and reflected object (II and A in Fig.5) are deeply adapted systems
formed from similar bases and material reserves. It is clear that the essences
of such objects and their components will also be extremely close. It is easy
to guess how this closeness affects the features of the secondary deformation
after the occurrence of the direct imprint of the reflected object's influence
on the reflecting object.
The reflecting object's
components will prove to be subject to the same laws of valencies change, and
to the same internal dependencies for the change of intentials into
extentials, and of potentials into intentials etc. as the components of the
reflected active object, and in-so-far as the direct Imprint is bound to be -
as we have established - in a certain measure similar (in its properties) to
the reflected object's active part, the secondary consequences of this
similarity must be themselves alike to some extent. In other words, the
secondary deformation zone around the direct imprint on the reflecting object
II will also be to a certain degree similar in its properties to the
corresponding zone around the reflected object A's active part; the greater
the degree, the more similar is the substance of the objects, the closer have
been the foundations forming the essence of the components of this substance,
and more alike has been the "experience" of the matter which served
as a substratum for forming the substance - in spite of the fact that the
secondary deformation zone around the imprint has not experienced a direct
influence from the corresponding zone of the reflected object.
Obviously the secondary
deformation, i.e. the indirect imprint (Fig.5), increases the degree of
similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object in this case, and
it is also clear the varieties of reflection, which we have examined above and
which clearly go beyond the framework of concepts of mechanical deformations,
have nevertheless a universal character. This is because in nature there
cannot in general be objects with substantive characteristics which contain
absolutely nothing in common. It is also clear that the degree of unity of
substance can vary within a wide spectrum, and therefore the similarity of
interacting objects caused by the occurrence of a secondary, indirect Imprint
around a primary one can be one which gives an impetus to the similarity
caused by the occurrence of the primary imprint; it can also be one which is
in reality totally insignificant by comparison with the similarity produced by
the first deformation.
Clearly mechanics are
involved with interactions of the second type (resilient, non-resilient and
trigger interactions), but an analysis of the nature of reflection should be
concerned with an examination of the Interactions of the first type which,
because of the secondary deformation, maintains or increases the level of
similarity of the reflecting object to the reflection obtained at the stage of
primary deformation, namely, the similarity of the characteristics of the
direct imprint to the characteristics of the active part of the reflected object.
In-so-far as this additional
similarity of the indirect imprint in fact anticipates what would be the case
with the reflecting object's direct imprint if the zone were widened and the
boundaries of the active part of the reflected object moved further apart,
i.e. what would be the case if the effect of the active object on the passive
were in some or other respect more pronounced, we can call this type of
reflection a secondary (though not a trigger) deformation by anticipation:
that is to say, any advance or "moving ahead" of what would be bound
to occur under certain conditions only in the future. In such a way an
indirect, secondary imprint can be anticipatory.
It would seem the possibility
of the occurrence of anticipations, i.e. anticipatory types of reflection on a
corporeal, physical and chemical level in real actual objects must also be
regarded as that property of matter which "in essence Is related to
sensation" or is at least an essential condition for the existence of the
ability to feel and for there to be other higher forms of reflection at a
certain level of complexity of systems.
Anticipation is similar to
Indirect deformation when there are trigger effects in this respect: first,
being also secondary, it occurs on the basis of energy supplied by the
reflecting object before the act of interaction with the reflected object;
then, second, the similarity of the state of the reflecting object to its
initial state decreased as a consequence of secondary deformation. But with a
trigger effect the relationship between the reflecting and the reflected
object is limited, and with anticipation the degree of their similarity
increases, owing to the occurrence of an indirect imprint.
It seems it would be
difficult to arrive at a concept of an indirect imprint as a capacity of all
corporeal objects for some particular level of anticipation if we had not got
at our disposal concrete definitions of materialist dialectic categories which
allow us to interpret the concept of the system as a corporeal analogue of the
dialectical concept of what we called the "crux of the matter".
Now, continuing to
"extract" the important consequences from the system of categories
examined, let us pass to the question of the most important types of
anticipations themselves, and the varieties of indirect anticipatory imprints.
Types of Anticipations, Patterns, and Mapping
Anticipation can be
realised repeatedly or one time only, depending on the type of
deformation of the reflecting object which has led to the occurrence of an
imprint: -resilient or non-resilient.
Moreover in some cases we have seen universal anticipation - if we mean by
"universal" the absence of any restrictions as to whether
interaction of the reflecting object with a given reflected (or with a given
active part of a reflected) object has been realised or not. The effectiveness
of anticipation, which can be evaluated according to the increase in
similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object after anticipation
in relation to the similarity which only results from the occurrence of a
direct imprint, depends only, if it is universal, on, first, the degree of
closeness of "internal experience" the components of the reflecting
and reflected objects have; second, the degree of closeness of valency
peculiarities of these components; and third, the depth of the tiers on which
the components of interacting objects remain the bearers of close essences.
Given that the concept of
anticipation is based on ideas concerning the increase in similarity of a
reflecting object to a reflected object as a result of the occurrence of a
secondary, indirect imprint on the body of the reflecting object, and given
also that the similarity is characterised by the closeness of the objects'
properties, it would seem natural to distinguish types of anticipation also on
the basis of what type of properties produces the largest increase of
similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object after the
occurrence of an anticipatory imprint. So we are able to classify
anticipations according to the type of reflected properties as either static
(or spatial), or dynamic (or temporal); these are the two most
important types.
If with regard to the time
during which the process of anticipation occurs the reflected object remains
more or less unchanged, static, and displaying variety only in spatial
co-ordinates, the indirect anticipatory deformation spreading beyond the
boundaries of the direct imprint can increase the degree of the reflecting
object's similarity to the reflected in any way only: the zone of secondary
deformation around the imprint comes to be similar to the corresponding zone
around the active part of the reflected object in both substance and
structural static characteristics. In other words, secondary deformation as a
manifestation of anticipation will be in this case what it could be if the
active part of the reflected object had simply Increased, for example, if the
contact surface of the objects had increased. Consequently, a full (i.e.
direct and indirect) deformation with static spatial anticipation fills up and
enriches the reflected "picture" of the features of the reflected
object, and shows up those properties which at the current moment were not
stamped on the direct imprint, although they are present in the reflected
object, i.e. as a result of primary deformation.
Anticipation plays a somewhat
different role in those cases when the reflected object, over a period of time
comparable to the time of the adaptation process, manages to change its
properties and in this sense is dynamic.
To the extent that new states
of the reflected object are conditioned by the essence characteristics of its
components, the substantial closeness of the reflecting object to the
reflected object becomes a factor in the transfer of the primary imprint
(insofar as it reflected within itself certain features of the state of the
reflected object's active part) to a new state, or a secondary imprint which
already corresponds to some particular extent to the state which the active
part of the reflected object still has to enter into. And as the
similarity of the reflecting object's substance to that of the reflected
object is not complete, among the anticipations of the type under examination
ones can be found where less time is required for the change of a direct
Imprint into a new state (i.e. into an Indirect Imprint) than for a change of
the active part of the reflected object into a new state. In other words, the
dynamic anticipation, temporal anticipation contains the embryo of that
particular process which in its most developed form is called prognosis,
although we are not going to discuss any subjects which are perceptive or can
predict: we are examining properties of physical, corporeal objects, which are
universal -though they are finer and more precise than purely mechanical
properties.
With spatial anticipation one
can also say that a result of reflection is an Increase in the degree of
similarity between a deforming subject and the result of
secondary deformation; while with temporal anticipation a result of reflection
is an increase in the degree of similarity between the deforming process
and the process of secondary deformation. And finally we can divide
anticipation into two types from the one Indicator by distinguishing between
external and internal anticipation.
In the case of spatial
anticipation the distinction according to this "external/internal"
Indicator is expressed in the following; with internal spatial anticipation
the indirect imprint is obtained from the direct imprint through the boundary
of the direct Imprint advancing into deep tiers; this means the degree of
similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected increases, because of the
deformation characteristics Increasingly co-inciding with the characteristics
of the reflected object in ever greater detail with external spatial
anticipation, deformation boundaries increase in area, so that the detail of
the correspondence of the resulting deformation to the properties of the
|
|
reflected object does not
increase and in return the number of fragments of the reflected object, which
correspond to the anticipatory imprint, increases.
Such is the nature of the
distinction between temporal types of anticipation and external temporal
types: in the one case the process is detailed but it remains in the same
interval of time, and in the other the detail remains unchanged, though the
interval of the reflected process is increased.
It is important to note also
that there is not necessarily a need for full identity of the substance of the
reflecting and reflected object. All that is necessary is that the sets of
valencies of the components of interacting systems and the laws of their
mutual change into extentials, intentials, and potentials should be
sufficiently similar on a certain number of tiers. Then by whatever method the
reflected active object imposes certain of the characteristics of its
extential structure on the reflecting meta-object, after the occurrence of a
direct Imprint in the reflecting object further processes making its
properties similar to the properties of the reflected object can begin, and
consequently so can processes involving the anticipation of these properties.
The limited number of gradations of substance similarity is seen only in the
depth of the possible detail of reflection.
That the substance of the
reflecting and reflected objects does not have to be identical is very
important for cybernetics, because it means that the most varied processes can
be imitated. Including those occurring in biological substances, non-organic
substrata in technical structures.
Let us conclude this section
with some new terminological definitions. As we have to mention more and more
often the term "direct Imprint" referring to primary deformation,
and the term "indirect imprint" for secondary deformation, not only
as such but also to distinguish the results of trigger and anticipatory
secondary deformations, we shall call the indirect Imprint of a trigger
influence the consequence, and the summary result of a direct and anticipatory
deformation the pattern, we shall call that part of the reflected
object, to whose characteristics the pattern has become similar, the original
pattern, emphasising by the use of the word "original" the initial
role of this pattern in the reflection process which leads to the making of an
imprint.
So the pattern appears to
consist of two components: the direct and indirect anticipatory Imprint, we
shall call the anticipatory pattern the pro-pattern, emphasising by the choice
of the prefix pro- the anticipatory meaning it can suggest as in Greek words
of the type, "prognosis" and "prophylactic".
In a case of need one may
speak of the original pattern of a direct imprint as distinct
from the original pattern of an indirect imprint.
The process of reflection
Itself can be called mapping, if its result is a pattern. Consequently, in our
terminological system mapping is one of the types of reflection.
The Intential
Imprint and the Stimulation of Form.
As has already been
emphasised, we have so far examined types of anticipation arising from the
most common case of reflection where a pattern develops on the strength of the
natural substance closeness
of the reflecting and reflected objects. Here the level of anticipation can be
quite low but such mapping appears to be the most universal, having important
reinforcement potentials for particular mapping properties, although at the
price of losing a degree of universality. Now let us move to the most
important specialised types of mapping when we shall see that apart from being
specialised they do not differ in any way from universal types, i.e. they fall
into spatial and temporal, internal and external types etc.
The specialisation of these
types of mapping is found in the following: as the object functions in the
reflecting role its mapping abilities increase in speed of action and
sensitivity, but decrease in the variety of permissible original forms. A
basis for specialisation is provided by the possibility of there being
deformations which lie on the border between resilient and non-resilient
(trigger and non-trigger) deformations, and because of this properties of
single and repeated mapping and dependence properties of the reflecting
object's internal deformations (properties which are conditioned by the
reflected object's characteristics) are uniquely combined in them.
We can surely accept that in
adaptive systems such intermediate types of deformation (i.e. Indeterminate,
borderline cases) are possible.
Indeed, if the reflected object
has had an effect on the reflecting object, and the time of the
influence was such that the deep adaptation of components of the reflecting
object has begun but has not reached the level which Is sufficient for an
extential direct imprint on the upper levels to remain constant after the
influence has stopped, it is then. in a certain
sense, a matter of resilient deformation. But if a deep adaptation to recent
imprint extentials has still not completely disappeared! (i.e. if deep
components have still not adapted to the fact of the disappearance of the
imprint), and the reflecting object was again subjected by the active object to the same Influences, then because of deep residual adaptedness the
reflecting object will be predisposed, to a larger extent than with the first
influence, to anticipation; this is because now either a lesser
intensity of the influence is required for it to occur, or a smaller size of
the original pattern of the Imprint with the same size or depth of the
pattern. And this heightened faculty for mapping will from time to time and up
to a certain limit be reinforced, but only for the same or sufficiently
similar original patterns.
We can explain this fact as
the farming of not only an extential but also an intential Imprint during
interaction with the original pattern. If after a certain direct influence
these intentials lead to anticipation and the development of a pattern, some
internal energy and the substance of the reflecting object will be expended on
this. Consequently, depending on whether this pattern will change into a
residual deformation or, because of a current of energy and expended
substance, the reflecting object will be able to resurrect its initial state,
such anticipation will occur once or repeatedly.
In future we shall be
interested primarily in intential imprints, providing repeated anticipation of
the reflecting object's properties. In this case the pattern will exist in two
forms: in the form of intentials before the reflecting object's Interaction
with the active part of the reflected object, and in the form of
extentials for a certain amount of time after the appearance of a direct
Imprint of this part. With regard to the direct imprint such a pro-pattern
reminds us of a secondary deformation from a "trigger influence",
since the development of a secondary part of a pattern is the result of the
reflecting object's internal energy. But this secondary part increases the
degree of the reflecting object's similarity to the reflected object, and in
this respect intential anticipation comes near to being universal.
It is easy to see that
intential imprints are in a certain sense unstable. As in the intervals
between the interactions of the reflecting and reflected object the direct
extential imprint disappears and there begins a process of re-adaptation of
deep elements, so with a lower frequency of these interactions the intential
imprint will begin to reduce, or to " fade", though on the other hand
with an increase of frequency it can be revived.
It would appear there are
many grounds for linking the fact of the change of an intential deformation,
"dormant" in the reflecting object, into an extential deformation
(e.g. under the influence of a corresponding external cause) with the concept
of the stimulation or Initiation of this preceding deformation, while the
opposite change of an initiated extential deformation into a closed intential
deformation can be linked with a fading of the result of the
semi-resilient Indirect reflection, already examined.
Repeated "surfacing in
the memory" of any impressions, and their subsequent being forgotten for
a short time, while not by "semi-resilient" reflection mechanisms,
cannot help being supported by them as their material corporeal base.
2.2. ANTICIPATION AND
ADVANCED REFLECTION.
Advanced Reflection. Let us now examine in somewhat
greater detail the methods of forming an intential imprint, first with spatial
anticipation and then with temporal anticipation.
If a small group of a
reflecting objects' components has been subjected to a direct external
influence, e.g. Group A in Fig.6, but during the time when the intential
deformation had still not disappeared in the elements of this group, and when
another group (Group B), whose elements are among the surroundings conditions
of Group A's elements and then Group C, "surrounding" in relation to
Group B etc., were subjected to the Influence, then, owing to the residual intential
deformations a, b, c, etc, there would form, in this whole complex of groups
under the influence of the direct imprints A, B, C, an integral combined intential
deformation, an integral intential imprint, consisting of indirect
deformations a, b, c, etc, as its components. Consequently, to change an
intential deformation into the extential intensity of the influence on
the reflecting object (consisting of the group complex A, B, C etc), a lesser
intensity than the sum of the primary influences (exerted initially on the
whole group complex, and having left the primary influences A, B, C) is
required. This lessening of intensity can be expressed as follows: if only a
part or even one of the complex groups, e.g. group A which has left the
primary imprint A, is subjected to the influence, then the indirect intential
deformation a, changing to an extential deformation, will initiate an analogous
change in intential deformations b, c, etc., although groups B and C have not
been subjected to the Influence of the reflected object. In other words, the
stimulation of just the component, a, of the integral intential imprint
in the reflecting object leads to the stimulation of the remaining components
of this imprint. This is especially obvious if in the formation process of the
Integrally whole intential deformation a, b, c etc., the influences A, B, C, etc
have followed each other repeatedly in exactly the order stated. Then it is clear that after an integrally whole combined
intential deformation
has formed from the components a, b, c, etc., the stimulation, i.e. the change
of the components of the intential structure b, c, etc.. Into an extential
structure after the direct influence of the reflected object on group A, is
nothing else than an anticipation once again of the fact of the Influence of
the reflected object (more accurately of the same active part of this object)
on group B, C, etc, which has still not occurred.
In other words, the
development process of the stimulation in the components of the intential
structure is capable of overtaking that course, or process, stimulation of
which corresponds to the law of the sequence of external influences on the
reflecting object, if this law is (being) repeated.
However, the need for the law
of the sequence of Influences to be repeated is not absolute. The combined
closed intential deformation, i.e. the intential imprint, can also appear when
influences on various groups of elements of the reflecting object are produced
in a fortuitous manner and not in a strict time sequence. Here the imposed
intential structure i.e. the intential imprint, will also develop, but in
those of its components on which the average frequency of the influences does
not go below a certain threshold value. In object components which are rarely
stimulated "readaption" processes of deep tier elements will occur.
Consequently, what is common
to all these types of anticipation is the fact that after an active object has
had a repeated, complex, but homogeneous, direct influence on the reflecting
object, there will form in the reflecting object an intential indirect
Imprint, e.g. a, b, c, In Fig.6. Owing to this, the reflecting object, under the
influence no longer of a full, but just a partial, direct standard influence,
e.g. owing to the imposed direct imprint A, receives the extential indirect
deformation a, b, c, which with primary direct influences occurred in conditions
where the active object had a full direct standard influence in the form of
deformation A, B, C, on the reflecting object - and not a partial one.
Such anticipation is based on
the use of the results of the preceding adaptation of material not only as a
substratum of substance, but also as the result of the restructuring of the
object's substance itself under the influence of standard effects of the
environment; this reminds us, by external analogy, of the individual
"training" of an object to identify a whole from a small number of
the characteristics of the whole (that is if this whole has been met a
sufficient number of times and therefore is known to the reflecting object).
We emphasise that it is a
question of only an external analogy of training. In the light of the analogy
the non-intential anticipations examined earlier could be described
metaphorically as the "intuition" of the reflecting object, its
"enlightenment outside its experience", but we must not lose sight
of the fact that without such natural processes biological mechanisms of
training proper, conjectures, and other higher forms of reflection could
hardly develop.
It must also be noted that
processes of "full" indirect deformation (of the type A, B, C) of the
reflecting object under the influence of a direct partial standard influence
(e.g. A) from the active object have been widely discussed in the literature of
cybernetics. Since the work of P.K. Anokhin, who named object influence of
this type the "advanced reflection of actuality" [8-10]. we shall
also name this type of "trained" anticipation advanced reflection,
fallowing Anokhin's example. Let us note however that the anticipation process
which we have examined includes not only anticipation of the direct influences
(B, C), which lie ahead after the partial Influence (A), but the anticipation
also of deep restructurings of the reflecting object, which ought to occur in
it, if the active object could act on the passive with that part which in
Fig.5 is called the original pattern of the secondary trace or imprint.
And so we see that with the
formation of an intential imprint, e.g. a, b, c, in Fig.6, as a
"dormant", fading imprint but one which has not disappeared before
the moment of the original pattern (e.g. A's) regular direct influence on the
reflecting object and of the stimulation of its pattern, we are again
concerned with mapping, and with anticipation. But this is specific
anticipation, requiring in advance some "training" of the reflecting
object, so that, on the basis of the experience of not only the material, but
of its own, individual, experience, there can develop a pre-disposition
for the pattern of the given (not just any) original pattern to be stimulated.
This type of mapping assumes a significantly larger sensitivity and a greater
speed of action than does the universal type, but with a loss of universality;
the stimulation of a pattern owing to the presence of an intential
imprint leads however to spatial anticipation, although this contrasts weakly
with temporal anticipation. And, finally, it is evident that contemporary
cybernetics and philosophy are only acquainted with a biological variant pf
this particular variety of anticipation and it is called "advance
reflection". This term fully conforms in principle with the meaning of
the term "anticipation", but it will be advantageous for us to use
both terms, understanding advance reflection to mean only a fairly definite
type of anticipation with anticipation itself being a phenomenon of a more
general nature.
At the same time, in order to
emphasise the presence of both features, but the non-identity of advance
reflection with the result of a trigger influence, let us call a direct
imprint (e.g. A), which is sufficient for "keying-in" the process of
stimulating an intential pro-pattern (a, b, c), a launching imprint (or
influence). After "launching" there begins an autonomous - though
structured and complex -process of anticipatory deformation in the reflecting
object.
Resonance Advance Reflection
of Dynamic Objects
Although we have established
that with advance reflection (in our wider sense) the boundaries between
spatial and temporal anticipation are not sufficiently clear, the
relationships in the example we have examined between spatial and temporal
characteristics of the reflection process are nevertheless fully determined:
the intential imprint, being a spatial deformation, helped to stimulate the
pattern which characterised the complete Interaction of the reflecting object
with the original pattern, which in itself can be the subject.
Now let us examine the case
where the original pattern is a process, so that the dynamic aspects of
reflection play a predominant role.
The original pattern with
which the reflecting object interacts can be dynamic in the sense that
the interlinks between its components do not represent established uniform
currents but change according to a certain (though quite established) law. For
example, the local components of the original pattern change their states
periodically so that the group of intentials change to extentials and the
group of extentials changes into intentials, and then vice-versa and so on.
Consequently, if even the spatial disposition of the original pattern's
components remains unchanged, a periodic change of local conditions does in
actual fact occur, because the valencies of the partner-components in the
original pattern change.
But as any interaction
between objects is, to our understanding, substantial, the dynamic original
pattern which we have examined can have a dynamic influence on the other
reflecting object, not necessarily through currents of the substance of the
interaction between its components, but indirectly through "leaks"
and periodic "splashes" from these currents.
It is absolutely clear that
the periodic influences of the reflected object under examination can
stimulate in certain cases non-resilient residual deformations. In this sense
the dynamic nature of the external influence can be simply reduced to a
repeated influence, and there will not be anything specifically dynamic in its
results.
As far as resilient
influences are concerned, the fact of their dynamism makes two evident types
of results possible.
First, the resilience already
seen for a static case: at those moments of time when there is a direct influence, the
state of the reflecting object changes. But if during the period
from one "flow" of periodic direct influence to another a
re-adaptation of deep elements of the reflecting object successfully occurs,
then after this periodic influence of the reflected object on the reflecting object
has ceased, the state of the reflecting object is fully re-established
and the reflecting object does not acquire any individual
"experience".
Secondly, if it is a question
of a certain law of change in the strength of the direct influence, e.g. a
periodic law, then it is necessary to take into account that the object which
experiences the influence can remain dynamic and consequently the valencies of
the link between its components can also be subjected to a certain law of
change in time; and if these dynamic laws of change of component links between
both objects are similar, or the same, then resonance phenomena can occur.
For example, the dynamic
intentials of a reflecting object under the influence of resonance external
influences can change into dynamic extentials. Here it is important to
emphasise that in the case of resonance influence comparatively weak current
intensities of the direct interlink between objects can lead to notable
Indirect influences on the reflecting object's dynamic state.
And, finally, it is clear
that adaptation of a reflecting object's deep elements can occur as a change
of their dynamic characteristics, and consequently the reflecting object, which
is experiencing a sufficiently long dynamic external direct Influence of the
reflected object, can change its properties at deep levels; this is in such a
way that it will be intentially predisposed towards dynamic reactions to
influences with a certain law of change, i.e. it will resonate more easily on
direct influences which occur according to this law. This "case" can
be expressed not only in that a lesser intensity of the influence on the
reflecting object (already adapted intentially to the given law of change of a
direct influence) will be required.
A no less important
manifestation of dynamic adaptedness is the ability of the reflecting object
to be stimulated according to the initial character of the change of influence
and to change its dynamic extential characteristics so that they start to
correspond to the continuation of this law of change in the reflected object,
if even the direct dynamic influence of the reflected object was interrupted.
In other words the adaptive dynamic object is predisposed, as far as the
dynamic structure of the direct influence of the original pattern is
concerned, to showing indirectly a continuation of this structure; that is to
say, to stimulating a continuation of the law of change of the original
pattern, in certain circumstances, in the course of a briefer interval of time
than the corresponding process in the original pattern; and through this fact
to anticipating this process in the pattern.
But anticipation can be
observed also in the case where the speed of development of the process in the
pattern is no higher than in the original pattern. Such anticipation happens when what started as
a direct interaction of the reflecting object with the reflected object
finishes before the finishing process in the original pattern, and therefore a
continuation of the course of this process in the pattern anticipates what
would happen in it if the interaction with the reflected object had not been
broken off.
Resonance anticipation is
notable for yet another peculiarity.
If an intential pattern of
any influence has formed at a certain point of a reflecting object, what will
happen with this pattern if the reflected object has begun a similar direct
influence on another area of the reflected object?
It is natural that in this
new area a direct imprint of the active part of the reflected object will
start to form. It is also clear that with such a unique single influence on
this new area an intential imprint will hardly be able to form and therefore
the degree of anticipation of the indirect imprint around the direct one will
soon be insignificant.
But let us turn our attention
to the case where the forming of a direct imprint by the active part of the
reflected object occurs according to the same law; under this influence an
intential pattern is shaped in another part of the reflecting object. In fact
this is equivalent to the structuring of the imprint, the switching of the
interaction currents of the reflecting object's components where the imprint is, this
being a process which is external (in relation to the intential
imprint in another area of the reflecting object), and whose parameters are
very close to the parameters of the process which formed the intential
imprint. It follows from this that the intential imprint can set off a
resonance, an indirect stimulation, because in another area of the reflecting object
a normal, direct, primary deformation is occurring, reflecting the
characteristics of the same active part of the reflected object which led
earlier to the forming of an imprint.
In such a way repeated
stimulation, consolidation and support of an imprint can be helped by the
repeated occurrence of unique direct imprints in various areas of the body of
a reflecting object, so that a "concentration of experience" is
possible in one place (although it is imposed on various areas of the
reflecting object).
The size of direct imprints
required for stimulating an imprint can decrease according to the formation of
the imprint on the basis of resonance interactions with unique direct
imprints, with resonance stimulation the degree of anticipation and advance
can also increase in such a way.
Consequently in all the new
cases examined, we are also concerned with advanced reflection in the sense
defined earlier, but of the type included among those temporal anticipations
which anticipate not the subject, but the course of the process reflected by
the pattern. And again we see that with advance reflection, because of the use
of "experience" already accumulated by the substance of the
reflected object in the functioning process and the process of repeated
interaction with the given dynamic original pattern, the degree of
anticipation, its speed and sensitivity to the influence of the original
pattern, can be significantly higher than with universal anticipation based on
that small area where the characteristics of the reflected and reflecting
objects' substance come close; this closeness has been inherited by the
substance from the material and does not include the "experience" of
standard preceding interactions of the object whose substance is incorporated
into that material.
Before moving on to other
more specific forms of reflection based on anticipation as its material
physical basis, let us now try and demonstrate the continuous link between
other well-known conceptions of reflection and our own.
Anticipation for Advanced
Reflection as a Genetic Prequisite for Higher Forms of Reflection.
Let us first of all be
certain that the types of object interactions which we have examined can be
classified as "reflections" in philosophical literature.
"Reflection" is a
category indicating a special product of the action of one material system on
another, a product representing the reproduction in a different form at the
particular features of the first system in the particular features of the
second".
The variants of the
interactions of the two objects we have examined conform fully with the
general definition of reflection quoted above which was provided by B.S.
Ukraintsev [175, p.65], a well-known specialist in this field.
Certain other conceptions of
reflection. It also follows from the above analysis of schemes of interaction
that the "form of the process of the original is transformed into a
strictly defined form of change of the macroprocess of the reflecting or
mapping, object; in other words, into a strictly defined form of elementary
form of reflection or mapping" (175 P.107). But at the same time the
schemes of the process of "reflection or mapping" we have examined
enable us to reveal not just one but several variants of both the course and
the results of this process.
Only one of the variants
proved to be resilient reflection, which certain philosophers (e.g. N.V. Medvedev) consider
to be the only one, maintaining that after the influence
or the effect of the original on the reflecting object ceases, the reflecting
object's "former state is basically re-established" [85,
p.6].
B.S. Ukraintsev correctly notes that this requirement is fulfilled only in
particular varieties of reflection and, by introducing the concept of
"elementary reflection", he reduces it in essence to this particular
case: "When there is repetition of a specific, concrete process of
reflection in like conditions, the form of the process change of the
reflecting, or mapping, object and the size of this change (elementary
reflection or mapping) will be basically the same [174,
p.107].
As we have seen,
"semi-resilient" intential reflection proves to be varied when there
is varied frequency or intensity of the original's influence, while direct
non-resilient reflection is in general possible only once and does not permit
of any represitions. Consequently B.S. Ukraintsev's definition of
"elementary reflection or mapping" is in this respect little
different from N.V. Medvedev's definition of reflection which he criticised.
But in our scheme this argument becomes irrelevant since there is in it a
place for Ukraintsev's reflections on the basis of intential imprint.
Analyses of dynamic
interaction processes also do not contradict modern views of the nature of reflection. B.S. Ukraintsev notes in this respect: "the alternating
strengthening and weakening in intensity in the original's process flow
stimulates a corresponding strengthening and weakening of the reproducing
object's change of process. The order of the original's changes of intensity
of the process in space with a certain interaction of comparatively complex
objects can be reproduced in the alternations in intensity of the change of
processes in space of the reproducing object" [175,
p.74].
It is obvious that our
schemes of reflection do not contradict this interpretation of the nature of
this phenomenon, but at the same time they are fuller, since they enable, by
using concepts of the mechanisms of multi-level adaptation as a universal
property of objects of both organic and non-organic nature, a number of
specific aspects of the flow, or course, of anticipation processes in general
in any object to be revealed, and the development in the reflecting object of
a strengthened, or heightened, capacity for anticipating standard
external influences, i.e. the capacity for advance reflection in the form of
the intential imprint.
Let us note once again at
this point that the principle of advance reflection is demonstrated by Anokhin
with the example of chemical processes in a living cell [8].
It is in this biological way
that L. Abramyan interprets the principle of advance reflection. In a
reference to Anokhin he categorically asserts that "non-organic nature is
deprived..." of the capacity for advance reflection [3,
p.56].
Anokhin is also understood in
this way by the authors of an interesting monograph on the theory of
adaptation: "One of the particular features of reflection in living nature, as
distinct from reflection in non-living nature, is the advance character
of the reactions to external influence..." [160,
p.128] Anokhin's important
service to science was reflected by the fact that "the concept of advance
reflection of the external world was expanded beyond the limits of its
psycho-physiological nature" [160,
p.129].
A somewhat different approach
in interpreting the principle of advance reflection can be observed in
Ukraintsev's monograph already mentioned, "Reflection in non-organic
nature". He writes that Anokhin sketched in the contours of one of the
possible "mechanisms" of advance reflection, namely the chemical
one". [175, p.261].
Consequently it is the case
that in Anokhin's hypothesis the concept of advance reflection of the external
world spreads beyond the limits not only of psychophysiological nature but
also of organic nature in general. However in a later work Ukraintsev stresses
quite unambiguously that the principle of advance reflection is correct only
"with regard to a live organism" [176,
p.149], while the concepts of
the flow nature of adaptation give us grounds to presume that both advance
reflection and universal anticipation are found in embryo in any corporeal
objects and are a property of all that is material.
Ideas concerning advance
reflection as a process also capable of developing in the substratum of
non-living nature are in fact found in the writings of Descartes when he
considers the mechanisms of the interaction of "spiritual substance"
with "corporeal substance" in man. Impressions from an interaction
with the external world are for Descartes pricks on the surface of the brain
through which "living spirits" filter through. Where the pricks form
clots, the "living spirits" pass not only with great ease, but they
also increase the diameter of the openings from weak pricks, this has the
result that the most typical sequences of impressions appear to be linked in
association. [201, p.121].
Another variant of a purely
mechanical explanation of anticipation in consciousness was offered in his
time by Thomas Hobbes. Influences of impressions repeated most often are
summarised by Hobbes simply as one-directional blows on inert mass and that
which had a close intensity of impressions was united by the closeness of
accumulated movement [201, p.121].
The least mechanistic views
in this respect were held by Spinoza who considered that "order and the
connection of ideas are the same as the order and the connection of
things" on the strength of the deep natural unity of all matter, dead,
live and cognitative, "on the strength of their involvement in one and
the same natural order".
The concepts defined within
the framework of systemology concerning adaptation processes as a universal
mechanism for the occurrence and existence of objects in reality, or as the
realisation of ideas of the self-propulsion of matter which has been developed
by dialectical materialism are an attempt to formulate more clearly this
general "order of nature", and through it to explain in particular
the genetic material pre-requisites of anticipation in general and advance
reflection in particular. It is important to emphasise here that all these
attempts to explain anticipation on the basis of mechanical, chemical, and
bio-chemical interactions of the reflection substratum claim without exception
only to explain the anticipation of those phenomena which have repeatedly had
an influence on a given reflecting object, while our universal anticipation
mechanism introduces the possibility in principle of anticipating unique
phenomena simply on the strength of the body of the reflected object and that
of the reflecting object being included "in one and the same order of
nature". And types of advance reflection in Anokhin's sense, like those
of the great thinkers of last century, appear to be only a particular -
although, in a number of respects, also the most important - form of
anticipation.
An indirect confirmation of
advance reflection (but not of universal anticipation) on non-organic objects
is the fact that the process of creating the capability (in the reflecting
object) of anticipating the continuation of standard direct influences, e.g. B
and C after A, can be imitated fairly simply on an electronic computer. In
1959 the author gave a lecture on this topic, showing ways of using advance
reflection (in fact this term was not known then) for showing automatically
the link structure of units of a printed text. Symbols of the text serve in
this case as influences on the reflecting object (the machine), and
immediately the influences are a stimulus for the machine's memory cells,
which correspond to these symbols, while the stimulation of a group of such
cells-before the moment when the full chains of the corresponding combination
of symbols (representing for example a word of the text) has arrived at the
input of the machine-serves as the advance reflection.
"If some combination of memory cells is often and regularly stimulated, while other cells and combinations are stimulated more rarely, in this combination a sufficiently strong mutual link is established". Then "each word newly entering the machine is already for-seen to a significant extent". [86, p.46-47].
In this project for realising advance reflection, multistage forecasting, from the first word, of the continuation of the word combination elements is taken into account. [86, p.147].
Let us note in conclusion
that all types of anticipation which have been examined, including
advance reflection, must be understood in our schemes only as non-purposeful
in the sense that the anticipation of properties of the reflected object in
the reflecting object remains simply a deformation, although an advance one,
because the advance itself does not lead to any further results either in the
internal re-structuring of the reflecting object, or in the external
re-structuring of interactions between the active and reflected object,
whatever the degree of anticipation.
In deformation, including
anticipatory, although" experience" or the history of the formation
of the material, or even of the substance of the system becomes apparent, it
nevertheless remains completely unrealised, although it does provide the
possibility, in principle, of some type of realisation. And this conclusion is
in full accord with the clear and wide-ranging formulation of V.S. Tyukhtin, namely, that "the property of reflection in non-organic nature
serves as a genetic prerequisite and a functional basis of all the forms of
reflection in living nature, in society, and in the technology of link and
control. It exists objectively, but does not use bodies as a factor in
"their self-preservation and development". [171,
p.13].
Directing Influence and
Intential Variety as Prerequisites of
Control and Information Mechanisms.
The concept of reflection and
types of reflection provide great interest for cyberneticians not only in
themselves but in connection with the fact that this concept is closely
interwoven with the concept of information; it, in its turn, is an
indispensible component of control processes, which is the main object of
cybernetic research. Therefore information-defined by A.D. Ursul as
"reflected variety" [177, p.25] or elevated by B.S. Ukraintsev to
the rank of one of the concrete manifestations of the category of cause, which
"could be characterised as a controlling cause" [176,
p.65] - must
naturally come within our field of investigation, especially if we take into
account that we are interested firstly in semiotic (which means information)
aspects, and secondly in cybernetics itself.
Apart from the need to
examine relationships between concepts of reflection, control and information,
we have the opportunity to do this without the usual listing of the many
points of view, where the choice of the most valuable, or the working-out of a
new one which does not have the weaknesses of one of those listed, is left to
the reader himself. These opportunties stem from the definition of the concept
of reflection which is based on a definition of the concepts of the
system and adaptation.
We shall pass to concepts of
control and information -which will be placed in the category of reflection as
a form of their occurrence - not directly but through an intermediary concept
of directing influence.
Let us turn our attention to
the fact that any reflection includes at least two phases of development and
consequently two types of result: primary deformation imposed by the reflected
object and secondary deformation developing under the influence of the primary
but occurring without the interference of the reflected object. With the
simplest resilient or non-resilient deformation the brief second phase can
seem negligible in comparison with the full deformation. But it is this second
phase which is the basis for all remaining deformations; in particular it can
occur as universal anticipation supported by the material's experience.
Moreover, as the primary imprint is more or less always similar to the
properties of the active part of the reflected object, then because of this it
makes the whole reflecting object similar to the reflected object and
universal anticipation increases this similarity if the reflected object's
properties are reflected in the material's experience.
If the occurrence of a direct
imprint in some way or other frees the reflecting object's accumulated
deforming energy and in this connection is a trigger or launching influence,
them, as already noted, the degree of change in the reflecting object's state
becomes essentially higher, but the degree of similarity of the reflecting
object with the reflected object either does not increase in general (with a
starting influence), or it Increases very strongly but only when the primary
(launching) imprint is the beginning of an influence which has occurred
previously many times, and is therefore consolidated as the reflecting
object's experience. But in all types of secondary deformation its
characteristics are not a reflection of the reflected object's actual
characteristics present by the moment of the direct influence - as happens
with the formation of a primary imprint, when we can speak of the occurrence
of a "direct cause" (as distinct from an "indirect cause"
with secondary deformation).
The degree of deformation of
the reflecting object with direct cause i.e. with the direct influence of the
reflected object, is determined by the energy and the substance expended by
the reflected active object. Although the change of the reflecting object,
stimulated by this influence, to a new state is determined by the field of its
potentials, it is forced or imposed only from outside; this is a change of
possibility into reality, without Internal necessity, without an intential for
such a change, and without a predisposition towards it. In other words this is
purely a passive subjection.
However, after the primary
imprint has become a reality, secondary deformation from indirect cause occurs
according to inner causes and under the influence of the change of intentials
into extentials (that is to say, the change not simply of potential
possibility, but of material necessity, into reality). With this. if the
primary deformation is related to trigger or launching deformation, the energy
and substance expended on the resulting deformation of the reflecting object
is straightaway greater than that expended by the reflected active object on
the primary deformation. This energy and substance of the secondary
deformation is derived from sources which are external in relation to the
active object. The internal accumulations of the reflecting object itself or
accumulations capable of flowing across from somewhere or other into the
reflecting object serve as such a source. Consequently the reflecting object,
when there is a trigger or launching external influence, is itself already
predisposed to a change to another state; it does not have to be imposed, it
is sufficient to give the reflecting object a little help, to "give it a
little push", to give the initial direction, and then the process of
change into such a state develops on its own, needing no energy, nor the
substance of the reflected object, nor in general even its presence.
There are only two such
predispositions in the reflected object in the simplest case: the initial and
the stimulated state; while in the more general case there can be several of
these states. But the reflecting object is predisposed to all of these states.
Irrespective of how many there are; as soon as they enter the narrow sub-field
of its intentials from the wide field of potentials, they represent a series
of matured, developed necessities, and therefore a trigger or launching
influence changes not just a possibility, but also one of the reflecting
object's necessities, into reality. In this connection let us call the trigger
and launching influences directing influences.
In cybernetics, one of the
most important concepts - in control and information theory - is that of
"diversity". But until the time when people understand by this word
any non-uniformity in general, or any of the possible states of the objects
examined, the concepts of control and information remain so general and
indeterminate that their scientific usefulness is subject to doubt. [177] In
this respect our scheme is more specific. We have not yet analysed concepts of
control and information, and in general we are for the moment examining only
genetic prerequisites of corresponding types of interaction in
self-controlling systems which are manifest in non-living nature in the form
of directing influences and their consequence only; but the propositions we
have put forward on potentials, intentials and extentials, which can be
correlated with notions of possible, necessary and actual object links, allow
us to define the cybernetic concept of diversity. Diversity must also be
divided into three types: potential, intential and extential; so that when the
effect of directing influences on the reflecting object is being examined it
is a question only of the diversity of intential, necessary states (not in
general potential, possible states) and of the change into an extential state
(into reality) of just one of the intentials.
An example of the use of
potential diversity for changing one of the potential states into an extential, into reality, is the appearance of a primary imprint on the body of
the reflecting object, i.e. the imposition of the properties of the reflecting
object's active part on the reflected object, and in this case there are no
grounds for speaking of directing influences.
Naturally the concept of the
directing influence with any requirements for the final result of the
influence - since the directing influence cannot be identified with the
concept of "controlling influence". But at the same time it is clear
that it will hardly be possible to effect even the simplest acts of control if
directing influences are not employed.
Ukraintsev, in viewing
advance reflection as Anokhin does, i.e. as a property of exclusively
biological objects [176], recognises as forms of reflection in non-living
nature only those types of interactions which we have called direct (primary)
and trigger interactions (the latter being named by Ukraintsev "starting
interactions") [176, p.35]. But our conception does accord with this one
in that the impossibility of identifying the concept of the trigger ("starting") influence with the controlling one is
emphasised. The division of cause into two types, direct and indirect, also
does not contradict the modern tendency to re-examine and develop Aristotle's
ideas on the existence of several types of causes [30;
176], but it does
introduce several additional grounds for putting the types of cause into
hierarchical order; we shall have to return to this on occasion.
Alienated
properties,
Informing and types of Informing
As has been noted, with
indirect cause occurring because of the reflected object's direct directing
influence, there occur a large number of deformations which lead to the
appearance of a pattern in the reflecting object without the immediate
participation of the reflected object as the original pattern of that pattern.
This circumstance allows the reflected object's non-participation in the
reflection process to be increased.
The properties of just the
active part of the reflected object have to be imposed in order that a primary
imprint be formed (as a trigger or launching influence); this can also be done
through an intermediary object, if the active part's properties are first of
all imposed on this intermediary, so that it can then, as a bearer of these alienated
properties of the reflected object, act in the role of the functional
representative of the reflected object's active part; that is, in the final
analysis it imposes alienated properties on the reflecting object. And if the
number of the reflected object's alienated properties is small in relation to
the total number of its properties reflected in the pattern, so the
intermediary object which transfers these properties from the reflected
object's active part to the reflecting object can have significantly less
potential diversity than the reflected object; nevertheless it must be, in
acts of indirect reflection, fully equivalent to the reflected object (while
of course the reflected object's real properties do not come into
confrontation with the properties printed in the intential imprint of the
reflecting object).
In other words, the
occurrence of indirect reflection also is possible if the alienated properties
of the reflected object's active part, which are brought to the reflecting
object with the help of the intermediary object, act as a directing influence.
The intermediary can be very much simpler (in potential diversity, mass, store
of energy, etc.) than the reflected object.
We shall name such a process
of directing influence through an intermediary an informing process -
for want of a ready term - on the basis of the properties of the reflected
object's active part.
Naturally we are concerned
with the physical prerequisite of that phenomenon which is linked with the
concept of information, and not with information itself; this is because
"informing" is only a particular form of directing influence which,
as we have already noted, is also only a physical pre-requisite for effecting
a control process - though not the control itself.
But, nevertheless, in
introducing the concept of informing, together with concepts of reflection and
directing influence, we gain an idea of the internal connections between these
concepts and we prepare a basis for establishing connections between the
general philosophical concept of reflection and the semiotic and cybernetic
concepts of diversity, information and control. Moreover, before we try to do
this let us turn our attention to certain important features of the conditions
for the occurrence of directing influences (and consequently for the event of
informing).
As a directing influence in
the act of indirect reflection requires the imposition of the properties of
the reflected object's active part on the body of the reflecting object, it is
clear that this influence is only possible when the reflecting object has, in
relation to the reflected object, not just any, but quite particular and
limited substance characteristics, even if the extent of these boundaries is
reasonably large. It cannot be otherwise if, as we understand it, any
influence is in the end corporeal and consequently requires even the minimum
affinity at least on the level of the link currents' substance.
Only when there is substance
agreement between the characteristics of the directing influence and of the
reflecting object, is the imposition of the reflected object's properties on
the reflecting object possible.
These properties can be for
example boundary ones (i.e. they can represent the structural features of the
reflected object's active part), and then the imposition of these properties
on the reflecting object must be expressed in the structuralisation of its
substance in accordance with the structural features of the active part.
Moreover the particular
nature of the active part's properties can be expressed not in the specific
character of the structure but in the presence of some chemical admixtures in
the active part. Then the imposition of the properties of the reflected
object's active part on the reflecting object will be embodied simply in the
transfer of this specific substance from the body of the reflected object to
the body of the reflecting object.
All that has been said
remains true for informing, and consequently the intermediary object cannot,
in order to fulfill its function, have just any substance, though the property
which is alienated from the reflected object and imposed on the reflecting one
can be both structural (boundary) and substantial (qualitative).
We were bound to mention this
especially because in cybernetic and philosophical literature when the problem
of information, reflection and control is discussed, the fact is emphasised in
every possible way that a particular feature of the structure of the
reflected object is imposed on the reflecting object, while the definite
limited character of the diapason of substance conditions in the flow (or
course) of the observable reflective processes, and, even more, the
possibility that properties of the reflected object, which though structureless
are specific in their substance parameters, might be imposed on the reflecting
object, is generally left aside [172; 173;
177]: it is not of course denied that
what we called the intermediary object (the mediator) in information processes
must be physically capable of transferring the "structural beginning of
the productive information cause" [172,
p.86] - but it is only the structural
beginning that is mentioned.
Types of Diversity with
Informing.
Leaving information aside for
the moment, we can now fully accept that in the forming process, we are
concerned in fact with "reflected diversity" [177]; however, in the
light of what has been said earlier such an interpretation acquires a more
concrete sense, since there are grounds for speaking of the diversity of
the diversities themselves and the methods of comparing them.
First, as we have just seen,
not only structural but also substance variations of the properties of real
objects and phenomena can be the substratum of diversity.
Second, as will be shown,
diversities-which must be taken into account in informing acts-can be compared
on the basis of the specific features of their localisation, and only a specific correlation between
the diversities of the various types guarantees the occurrence of informing.
So it is especially necessary to distinguish the diversity of the variants of
actual extential states of the reflected object's active part: only they must
be regarded as the direct cause of the diversities and alienated properties of
the reflected object and of the directions of development of the reflecting
object's intentials along a certain specific path of change (from among the
whole diversity of necessary paths) into a stimulated state. These diversities
must not differ greatly in size (in the simplest case equal to one bit) in
either the reflected, the reflecting, or the intermediary object, and it is
strictly a question of these varieties alone, when we are talking about
measuring the amount of information in the Shannon sense.
It is clear that although the
diversity under examination is linked at its source with the particular
features of the reflected object's active part, it is significant for the
information process only insofar as the diversities of the reflecting object's
intential states correspond to it. However the states of the reflected
object's active part change, the number of variants of stimulated patterns in
the reflecting object cannot prove to be greater than that which has been
determined by the foregoing experience of the interaction of these objects.
This type of diversity
manifests itself in the diversity of the reflected object's alienated states
and will be called the selecting type; this is because in the end the variance
within the boundaries of this diversity determines which of the intential
patterns will be chosen, i.e. will in actual fact be stimulated in the
reflecting object.
Now let us turn our attention
to the fact that each of these patterns represents a fully determined
diversity of actual, available properties which reflect the diversity of the
original-pattern's properties, i.e. the properties of the basic part (and not
of just one active part) of the reflected object.
This diversity, although it
is also reflected, cannot have anything in common with the diversity of the
alienated properties of the reflected object either in its properties or its
size. It is necessary, in order to evaluate this second type of diversity, to
take into account the pre-history of the interactions between the reflecting
and the reflected object, and the experience of their interactions;
observation of the intermediary object alone in acts of informing will not
tell us anything about this experience nor, consequently, about the second
type of diversity. Each diversity of this type we can call a selected
diversity.
And, finally, it is possible
to distinguish at least one important type of diversity, the power of which
(in the theoretical, "set" sense) is apparently least restricted,
because it is limited only by the time it takes for the information to pass
through. In this connection Ashby even provides a special theorem: "By
acting for a sufficiently long time, any transformer can convey or transmit
any amount of diversity" [196, p.220]; however, he does not link this
with any need to classify the types of diversity.
We shall examine the nature
of this type of diversity first of all with the simplest example, when the
directing influence is reduced to a trigger Influence and, consequently, the
selecting and selected diversity is equal to only one bit: it is stimulated,
or not stimulated, so that the results of the trigger influence are not
comparable with the properties of the active object and do not reflect its
actual characteristics. But let us imagine that such influences are repeated
and are effected with a variable period or with a variable average frequency,
while the reflecting object, after each trigger reaction, manages to restore
its state and, by the same token, the ability to react to each trigger
influence. In this case a number of the characteristics of the secondary
deformation (for example, the average intensity of the in-flow of energy for
the restoration of the reflecting object's initial state) will prove to be
proportional to the average intensity (e.g. the average frequency) of the
reflected object's influence on the reflected object.
As this average intensity is
already an actual characteristic of the reflected object, like the first one
it proves to be capable, in spite of the trigger character of the secondary
deformation, of perceiving and reflecting the reflected object's properties;
in this case the degree of possible changes of the reflected object's
properties appears to be very much greater than when the reflected object's
actual properties are reflected only on account of the primary and single
secondary deformation. Consequently we can speak in this case of the
reflection of a new type of diversity, which is farmed from all the variants of
the intervals (which are sequential in time) of the trigger influences on the
reflecting object, i.e. from the combinations of these intervals, if these
combinations are indeed specific for the reflected object's states, i.e. they
are its properties. What is also important here is that such combinations can
be easily alienated from the reflected object and can be transferred to the
reflecting object with the help of the intermediary object.
Let us name this type of
diversity, reflected in the informing process, combinative. It is not
difficult to see that it is on the reflection of precisely this diversity that
modulating and intensifying mechanisms in the regulating links of automatic
equipment and living beings are based. It is clear that a combinative
diversity can be reflected with both a trigger influence and also a launching
influence on the reflecting object. If the diversity selected represents a
combination of intential forms, the original patterns of which are the
reflected object's states, and each of the states has its own active part,
then all possible combinations of alternation of these states with diverse
variants of the intervals between changes from one state to another can serve
as elements of combinative diversity; each of these combinative elements will
be reflected in the form of a natural alternation of launches of the
reflecting object's corresponding intential patterns.
It is clear that in order for
such a combinative diversity in an informing process to be reflected, the
intermediary object (in the capacity of the reflected object's alienated
properties) must only transfer units of the selecting diversity i.e. the
properties of the active parts of each of the selected states. Varying the law
of alternation of units of a selecting diversity allows us to reproduce the
most complex resulting reflected diversities consisting of combinations of
units of selected diversities, i.e. combinations of intential patterns.
It is also important to note
that with the reflection of any three types of diversity and their
combinations by means of informing, a holding back of the reflection process
in relation to the time of the actual course of the reflected process can be easily
effected.
A comparison of concepts of reflection processes so far introduced
with certain concepts of ancient Greek philosophy.
By turning to adaptation mechanisms when analysing various types of reflection
and by recognising the corporeal nature of any interactions between objects,
we are able to shed a certain lighten to the ancient philosophical argument as
to what is the essence of the similarity of reflection (or mapping) to being
reflected.
As Aristotle shows [16],
Plato and Empedocles believed that reflection is possible only because
"the similar is recognised as the similar". However Empedocles
interpretation of similarity differed from Plata's. The main thing for
Empedocles was to be able to see a closeness in the reflecting and the
reflected objects on the basis of the substance of the objects being traceable
to the same "roots" (earth, water, air and fire); while for Plato a
more important consideration was the structural isomorphisms resulting from
the closeness of the "ideas" which the compared objects embody
materially.
Similarity on the basis of
substance is a feature of Democritus' and Epicurus' conception. The principle
of the general "outflow" of material objects and the ability of the
casings or "shells", resulting from the outflow of the surface of
objects, to preserve and bear properties of these objects makes the
development of similarity between reflecting and reflected object absolutely
natural in a physical sense. Moreover any minimal unit of outflow is
understood here as an "idol" or "image" which, although in
miniature, is In itself close to the object from which the outflow has taken
place; the reflecting object proves therefore to be at the same time an
"absorber" of the reflected object's property insofar as it
apprehends or interprets these "idols".
Aristotle understood the need
for the reflecting object to be similar to the reflected as the physical
ability of the reflecting object to preserve in itself traces of the influence
of the reflected object, and in this sense his teaching takes no account of
Democritus' direct-line substantial-ism, nor Plato's one-sided formalism. This
average or "median" point of view is developed in the systemic
approach. There would be no possibility of the simplest direct or secondary
deformations leading to universal anticipation and advance reflection based on
the forming of an intential trace, if the substance flows or currents of the
interactions did not maintain in themselves certain "external"
parameters of the launching bodies; that is to say, if they did not transfer
into space certain of the features-far example, the structure of the
non-homogeneous characteristics of the reflected object's qualitative
properties-and did not print the correlations (though not the substances) of
these non-homogeneous characteristics on the body of the reflecting object.
But this "Platonic" feature in Aristotle's theory can just as easily
be considered "Democritecian", since a corporeal, substance basis is
necessary for both the retention of form by the reflected object and the
transfer of form to the reflecting object.
The flow conception of
interaction, based on the concept of substance outflow, differs from
Democritus' and Epicurus' teaching in another way: in the opinion of the
latter, any outflow as a substratum of the "idols" must within a
limit he reduced to a current in a void of atoms which are further
indivisible; to our way of thinking, however, outflow is characteristic of
objects of any level or tier (the number of which is limitless). The genetic
prerequisites for reflection are therefore inherent in any form of the
manifestat ion of matter, including "atoms" themselves and
"atoms of atoms".
In this respect the flow
conception of the nature of reflection which we propose is closer net to the
initial ideas of Democritus and Epicurus, but to a more deeply considered
variation of them put forward by P. Hassendi: for him the indivisibility of
atoms is not the principle of their structure, not a result of "an
absence of parts in them", but a manifestation of the limited nature of
our purely technical possibilities for recognising these parts, because
"there is no force in nature by means of which they could be cut up and
separated" [29;
104]. But the principles of the systemic approach enable
us not only to understand why the classic thinkers of materialist dialectics,
who shared the idea of the limitlessness of the levels of divisibility in
"atoms", also saw in Hassendi's conception a mechanistic
one-sided-ness which is evident in particular in the reduction of any movement
to just a "transfer from place to place", we believe that a unit of
any level is capable of adaptation and consequently of change and movement in
a wide sense, which Aristotle hints at but which for Pierre Hassendi is
"extremely dark" [29, p.112].
The substance, corporeal
interpretation of outflows and interactions allows us to understand the fact
that with a change of conditions of the interaction of objects, the degree of
accuracy with which the properties of one object are reflected on those of
another can also change, and it is necessary in specific circumstances to
estimate or evaluate how favourable conditions are for effective reflection.
In particular the line of development of higher forms of reflection in
biological and psychic systems is towards any sort of stabilisation and
support of the most favourable conditions for the occurrence of reflection
processes, but since there can be no ideally favourable conditions,
direct influence and direct traces of the reflected object on the reflecting object
can never be a fully objective reflection of the properties of this
reflected object. It is not objective in the sense that in the surface
outflows of the reflected object which are accessible to the reflecting
object, the essence of the reflected object becomes apparent only Indirectly,
through a multi-stage cause-and-effect transformation .
2.3
Adaptive Intensification of Reflective Properties.
Conditions for Facilitating
Adaptive Processes through a Material's Reflective Potentials.
When we examined lower forms
of reflection, we started with the fact that the reflecting object,
interacting either once or repeatedly with one particular reflected object or
with several, and becoming deformed either resiliently or non-resiliently,
effects within itself anticipation of a particular depth, but only because
such is the internal structuring of the object's substance the fact of
anticipation has in its turn no effect on the external environment or on the
influencing object.
In order to measure this
reverse influence of the results of reflection on the reflected objects
themselves, we have to recall the ideas previously advanced on the adaptation
of a system at a vacant junction of a meta-meta-system. So that such a
calculation should be as effective and reliable as possible, it would be
preferable to have another look first of all at the mechanisms of adaptation
and the formation of the systems themselves, availing ourselves of those new
concepts which we established in the first stages of our analysis of
reflection processes and types of reflected diversities, and, above all, the
concepts of intential imprints. anticipations, and directing influences. This
will enable us to make our ideas even clearer on the nature of such categories
as necessity, cause, condition, and consequence, and also to discuss the
prerequisites for those phenomena which are linked in their developed form
with concepts of requirement and purpose.
It was shown previously that
if in a meta-system a vacant junction arose, this would mean that internal
contradictions in this meta-system had led to the appearance in this junction
of an intersection of interaction currents which is transformed into a basis
for the formation and adaptation of a new system within it; this new system is
capable of regulating and simplifying the intersection of currents, and of
re-establishing the required structure of interactions with other systems,
which, in relation to the given vacancy, are local systems. The only important
thing is that the meta-system's essence has a high level of development; this
essence guarantees its stability during the absence, and formation, of a new
system at the vacant junction; otherwise the presence of unsolved
contradications would threaten the meta-system with destruction. Moreover,
there must naturally also be conditions for the formation of a new
system-conditions consisting primarily of the availability of a material
reserve from which the substance of a new system could form.
But material, as we
understand it, is also systemised in the sense that it represents components,
fragments and subsystems of previously existing systems which had at some time
a certain level of adaptiveness, and a consequence of this adaptiveness was
that these components, fragments and sub-systems functioned for a sufficiently
long time in comparatively uniform conditions in groupings of systems which
have adapted them in standard interactions with other subsystems of
meta-systems. Consequently in these systems, subsystems and parts of systems,
the experience of their standard interactions in the form of available
intentials and a particular level of ability to anticipate (including a
capacity for trigger influences and advance reflection) cannot be put aside.
Now let us turn our attention
to the following: when such material enters the local conditions of a
meta-system's vacant junction it proves to be at an intersection of not just
any interaction currents, but only of ones which are specific for the given,
adapted meta-system. But this means that the substance and structure of
currents at a vacant junction will also act on the material which has arrived
there by a certain primary method and not randomly; and those components of
the material for which these influences will prove to be the most suitable
since they have adapted these components in the past, have a greater
probability of reacting to the new influences as to directing influences. But
then the intentials and secondary deformation of precisely these components
will prove to be the most suitable ones for their place at the new vacant
junction without great expenditure of energy and substance from the
meta-system. The properties of other components of the material however,
adapted in conditions which little resemble those at the vacant junction of
the meta-meta-system (which is new for them), will experience only a primary
direct deformation and will contradict to the maximum extent the Influences
extended on them; this increases the probability of these components being
destroyed or of their being expelled from the vacant junction.
This stage of the first
natural filtering of the components of material which is most suitable for the
appearance of a new system at the vacant junction, increases the concentration
of intentials and extentials of a particular type only. Thus there is a
heightened probability of the intercoordination of the properties of
components which have remained at the junction, and of their entering into
separate links ; this in its turn leads to the rise of blocks of components,
with properties which are new, but are again not fortuitous for the given
vacant conditions, and to the rise of variants in the structure of blocks, and
to a secondary filtration already on the level of these blocks. All this
increases the stability of the interactions which have developed between the
components and the blocks, and by the same token it facilitates the formation
of new intential imprints which are significant for the meta-meta-system; it
also leads to an increase in the share of interactions which are linked not
with the direct, "force" deformation, but with the indirect
deformation which uses intentials and directing influences; a basis for
informing is thus prepared. But now the anticipation is supported by the
material's preceding experience and also, in connection with the first stages
of stabilisation at types of interactions between the forming subsystems and
the system's blocks, it already also starts to develop as the experience of
this new system, as the consequence of its adaptation to conditions which are
to some particular extent new.
As we know, there have been
several attempts to explain the process of components linking into complex and
stable aggregates on the basis of pure chance: the properties of these
aggregates accord with their place in a certain meta-meta-system, and, by the
same token, assist their stability. The probability of such chance is
extremely low, and then we have to accept that nature "waits" for
such cases for millions of years. If, however, we take the infinity of matter
in space, in time, and in the number of tiers as our premise, then there
naturally fallows from the concept of adaptedness and
"preformedness" of material an "improbably" high degree of
predisposition in the matter towards self-mobility and acquiring new forms.
And then many new facts (for example, the high concentration of organic
substances in inter-stellar space) cease to be surprising.
Necessity, Condition, Cause
and Motive
Our distinctions between
potentials, intentials and extentials and the corresponding distinctions
between possibility, necessity and reality, where one has to distinguish
between reality conditioned by possibility, and reality modified by necessity,
enable us to regard the rise in a meta-meta-system of contradications and,
further, of a vacant junction as a foundation for a new system, as one of the
forms of necessity, a heightened probability of the start of the formation of
a new system at a vacant junction. In relation to this system, the
meta-meta-system, with the foundation which has developed in it, can be seen
as an external necessity, and the forming system then will be in
relation to the meta-meta-system-an internal necessity of the
meta-meta-system.
As the change of this
internal necessity into reality is linked to the conditions for maintaining
the high level of adaptedness available in the meta-meta-system, and,
consequently, to the conditions of its existence, such a type of internal
necessity of the meta-meta-system can naturally be regarded as a physical
prerequisite for the phenomenon which in living systems we understand as
"requirement". Thus requirement is one of forms of internal
necessity as a physical, if not inevitability, then at least high intential
towards types of interactions which are different from those which are
presented as extentials, i.e. real, present interaction currents.
But then we can speak also of
the prerequisites of requirement, as an internal necessity also, in relation
to the material; this is because the material represents the splinters and
components of the systems which had previously a high degree of integral
wholeness and adaptedness, and because of this these splinters and components,
outside their integral wholenesses, are included in interactions currents
which are not in sufficient agreement with the intentials. Without the
presence of the material's intentials there could not be any development of
predispositions of certain of its components for entering those types of link
which are set by intentials, i.e. by the internal necessity to solve the
contradictions at a vacant junction of the meta-meta-system. Consequently the
presence of not simply material but, within that material, of components which
have internal necessities ("requirements") close to the internal necessities ("requirement") of the meta-meta-system, is an essential
condition for the conception, formation and adaptation of the system with the
necessary properties at the vacant junction of the meta-meta-system.
Here the need is apparent for
the material to be not absolutely amorphous, or passive, matter is "pure
potential" as Foma Akvinsky interpreted the ideas of Aristotle [25,
p.64]
but for there to exist in it "pre-forms" and "pro-forms"
as in the most "creative" form - the meta-meta-system which is forming
a system, i.e. the foundation which has developed at the meta-meta-system's
vacant junction. This discrepancy within the boundaries of the
meta-meta-system and discrepancy among the material's components leads to
"anti-discrepancy, to the appearance of accord between the Internal
necessities of foundation and material, so that both these features, in
Hegel's accurate phrase, "shine a reflection onto each other". [43,
vol.2, p.102].
The non-symmetry of such
"shining" leads to a lack of balance in the degree of the partner's
activity. It is not so much the material which shows the active start but to a
large extent the meta-meta-system. This is explained by the fact that in it
(the meta-meta-system) the discrepancy level is lower: the meta-meta-system's
discrepancy is concentrated at the vacant junction only, while the material,
representing a chance conglomerate of splinters and components of past
systems, is almost a "continuous discrepancy". This makes a
concentration of material components at the vacant junction almost physically
inevitable - components "which", - as Karl Marx said, explaining why
it was that precious metals started to be used in financial deals -" by
their very nature are especially suitable for carrying out the function".
[1, vol.23, p.99]. In this sense we can say that a more active internal necessity
appears in relation to the more passive one as an "external active
necessity", or cause, while a passive internal necessity proves to be, in
relation to an active one, "an external passive necessity", or
condition. So we have again arrived at the conclusion that "condition is
condition", but on the way to producing this tautology we have discovered
that the category of foundation is correlated with the category of cause as
one of its forms.
With this interpretation of
the relationships between cause and the appearance of an adaptive system as
its effect, the impossibility of an effect without there being any
corresponding conditions remains obvious; at the same time the appearance of
these conditions as a first, more or less chance, amount of material cannot be
explained as cause, but it must be compared to the Hegelian category of motive
("the external stimulation of the inner spirit"), i.e. to the active
internal necessity of the meta-meta-system which has led to the rise of a
foundation. Hegel's assertion that "only by this inner spirit of the
event itself was something, in itself minor and accidental, determined as its
motive" [43, vol.2, P.213], becomes very clear.
In the light of what has been
said, B.S. Ukralntsev's claim that Hegel deals with the category of cause very
narrowly, only as mechanical cause, "as a result of which nothing is
embraced that would not be embraced in the cause itself", [176,
p.109]
appears justified. Obviously the ideas presented above on direct primary
deformation as the result of direct influences must be related to the category
of cause in this narrow Hegelian sense. However, it is hardly right to
conclude from an analysis of Hegel's views on the category of cause that the
arsenal of Hegelian categories of cause is more depleted than the
Aristotelian. The distinction here is, rather, terminological: Hegel
introduces special terms for concepts of foundation, motive, "inner
spirit", purpose, although he could call them all "causes" with
some or other "epithet", as Aristotle does. (lb).
Let us further note that the
distinction we have drawn between progressions to reality from possibility or
progressions to reality from necessity allow us to see that when only
possibilities, only the deep potentials of material are examined, the degree
of its self-propulsion is minimal, and its formation is based above all on
"forceful" primary deforming influences. In this case the material
is as passive as possible towards external cause, while the number of
properties which can be imposed on the material (or, more exactly, can be
taken from the spectrum of its potentials) is in fact limitless. It is these
types of influences on the material which have been closely studied in
contemporary science and technology, and this has led to the narrowing of the
concept of cause and determinedness, and to a re-evaluation of the role of a
material's passiveness.
As we saw, the progression to
reality not from possibility but from necessity shows incomparably less
diversity of forms of the necessary by comparison with the diversity of forms
of the possible, but shows at the same time a power of necessity just as
incomparably greater in comparison with the power of possibility (as the
degree of its non-prevent-ability and, consequently, probability). Now we can
say that when the diversity of the necessary is close to the unit, the diversity of the conditions variants
increases, establishing the start of the
progression from the necessary to the real.
These variants must also be
regarded as more or less equally valid motives, like the variants of trigger
influences which lead in fact to the same reality: this reality can be called equifinal.
But necessity can have
diversity (albeit a small one in comparison with possibility) for example, a
certain spectrum of variants. In this case, an external active necessity as a
cause takes the role not of the motive but of the directing influence on the polyvinyl
process, and the variation in the parameters of the cause, in spite
of their low energy power, can influence exactly which variant of the several
necessities will prove to be the reality, so that the principle of "small
causes" is in this sense justified.
But both polyfinality and equlfinality
are possible with directing influences, if the cause turns out to
be just one-variation. A consecutive chain of equifinal processes of this
type, directed by the meta-meta-system, "leads" the system to a
fully determined final state of maximum adaptedness, i.e. to a perfected
state; in this case external cause, in relation to the material's intentials
as the conditions of the process, proves to be the physical prerequisite of
that particular phenomenon which changes, in its highest forms, into a purposeful
activity in creating objects with required properties. If the directing
influences here are not directly set as the foundation, but are effected
through informing, then only in this case do conditions arise for the
requirements to be fixed in the form of a true goal (or purpose).
The Simplest Substance
Properties of the System under Adaptation. Reception Zones.
In the simplest case when
contradictions at a meta-meta system's vacant junction are expressed only when
there is no "dispatcher" of currents more or less stable in
intensity, direction and substance, and which flow between surrounding systems
consolidated in space, the system which is forming and being adapted at this
junction is transformed in the end into a substantially fixed network of
channels for these currents and by this fact aids the unhindered flow of
currents in certain directions towards the necessary local systems. This
prevents impermissible mixings of the substance of currents. In a system with
such a function all interactions are stablised and conditions for developing
complex reflective properties are minimal.
But let us imagine that a
system must function at a vacant junction of this type, where the places of
the local systems are weakly fixed, and exchange currents are not
uninterrupted but are effected in the form of concentrated discrete portions
of the relay or transmission of link substance elements and, apart from this,
in an irregular manner in time. Moreover let us imagine that in this
particular space between local systems the substance of certain
"alien" currents appears, also irregularly, and it is not possible to allow their mixing with local systems interaction currents.
Since in such circumstances
it is necessary, if the meta-meta-system is to be stable, that the system
under adaptation has the ability to dispatch links currents at the
meta-meta-system's vacant junction, that via its channels it allows through
currents of one type, and that it prevents links when currents of an alien
substance appear, then such a system must at least have the power to
distinguish certain varieties of substances, and have a heightened sensitivity
towards its "own" and to the most inadmissible alien varieties. Only
by adapting and developing such sensitivity can a system have a chance of
being consolidated at a meta-meta-system's vacant junction.
Thus It is clear that the
result of the system's adaptation at such a vacant junction will be an
increased predisposition towards trigger deformation in response to
interaction with certain types of substance. And since substance, as we
understand it, represents a set of elements with certain properties, and in
the substance flow the individuality of each of its elements has no
importance, identification of the substance itself is in the end based on an
identification of its elements which requires no distinctions as to where a
similar element has been discovered or where the same element is.
If we link the above with
concepts of set theory, identification of a certain type of substance is based
on the ability of the system under adaptation to relate, by means of physical
and chemical interaction, certain corporeal foundations to one and the same
universal class, the universum; that is, to effect the initial non-formal
procedure of including the elements in a universal set, to be an
"indicator of the belonging" of an element to a class [117,
p.12]
where it is not necessarily an indicator of the individual-isation of elements
in this set, or even an indicator of belonging to a sub-set of a universal
set.
Belonging to a sub-set or to
a smaller unit of a hierarchical division in a universum can be a result of
additional physical and chemical interactions with the substance elements of
currents by means of revealing their qualitative properties or establishing
differences in the currents boundary properties, for example in the law of
modification of their intensity. The adaptive system can show these changes
when the time of the consequences of trigger deformation Is essentially less
than the average frequency of the appearance of the currents substance
elements, leading to the trigger deformation. In this case, the adaptive
system, taking the role of the reflecting object, is capable of distinguishing
the intensity of the currents according to the average frequency of the
trigger influences and to react not only to their qualitative but also to
their quantitative properties.
So within the system areas
with heightened sensitivity towards either qualitative or boundary properties
of links substance elements can start to be fixed, i.e. areas can form which
in technical structures are called receivers or transducers, and in biological
structures receptor organs or receptors.
Here it must be emphasised
once again that if the substance of currents regulated by the system is
unstable both in composition and intensity and location, indications by the
receptors of the qualitative properties without regard to the boundary
characteristics are as useless as indications of boundary properties when
these are not correlated with the existance of reactions to the qualitative
characteristics. In other words, given our theories on adaptation there is no
foundation for regarding either qualitative or boundary properties of the
external environment as the more objective. And so the long-standing argument
of whether primary or secondary properties are more important is negated.
Let us call the reception
zone those external spatial and temporal boundaries in the limits of which
the receptive area of a forming system reacts to those properties of the
external environment which are necessary far a system to function and for
which this receptor was formed in the system's adaptation process in order to
reveal them. It is important to emphasise here once again that receptors form
in an adaptive system because, first, the material is predisposed towards this
and, second, they are necessary for the normal functioning of the
meta-meta-system, and as a result of this for the adaptive system itself as
well; the greater the extent, the deeper the system adapts to a given
functional grouping, and the more reliably the functionally significant
properties are supported in it owing to the formation of this system's new
essence.
Let us note in conclusion
that Insofar as not only the currents of interaction but also the local
systems can dispense certain elements of the substance of outflows at the
vacant junction, the system under adaptation can, when there is a sufficiently
large property distinction of these outflows in the various local systems,
distinguish not only the link currents per se but also the local systems and
also "alien" systems which have appeared in the reception zone by
means of even the simplest type of receptors we have seen.
Even richer are the
possibilities of substance distinction of local systems, when these systems
are distinguished by the law of Intensity change of outflowing substance.
However, Identification of these systems from such signs is only possible when
in the system being adapted as the reflecting system, as a result of foregoing
experience, development mechanisms have formed of processes resonating to
certain types of internal combinations of trigger influences. The substance
elements themselves, emitted by the local conditions in this case fulfil the
role of the reflected systems' directing influences on the reflecting object
under adaptation; the trigger influence from each perceived outflow element is
a primary imprint, and the combination of them launches, stimulates and leads
the intential secondary imprint to resonate - the law of change of intensity
characteristic of the local object's identification.
In this case as well, the law
of change itself reflecting certain of the object's boundary properties must
be seen as a "primary property", but it would not be possible to
identify it without there being a reaction to the substance of a fully defined
property, i.e. to "secondary properties of this external object".
Usual
and Occasional combinative Intential forms; Formation and Functioning of
Adaptation.
The more complex the elements
of that substance which must be despatched by the system under adaptation, and
which must provide at the vacant junction its systems, interaction exchange
currents required for the meta-meta-system, and the more diverse these
functional substance elements are, and the less regular they are, the fewer
chances the system has of providing the required function merely by revealing
certain of their qualitative and boundary properties, specific for these
elements and local systems. This is connected to the fact that the small
number of situations is Increased where in the system's reception field these
prove to be elements and objects which, although among their characteristics
they have the named qualitative and boundary properties, are distinguished
from the substance elements of the links' functional flows and the local
systems' functional flows by the particular feature of the correlation of the
compositional properties, and by the structure of their combination.
Consequently adaptive systems which form at such functional junctions can no
longer function satisfactorily by revealing through their indicators on the
currents' substance elements, and those of local systems, being part of a
certain type of universum. The breaking down of such a universal set into
sub-sets on the basis of consideration of the distinctions in the chahge laws
of substance current's intensities can also be insufficient for this purpose.
Then a deeper detailing both of the types of substances and the sub-classes of
local systems can be achieved by means of revealing those characteristics
which in set theory are described in terms of setting a network of
relationships, "a structure on set elements". For this the system
under adaptation must develop within Itself another level of reflection:
reflection of the change structure in the reactions of various receptors,
which leads to structures being revealed which are only in "their"
local systems, and also in the substance elements only of "their"
functionally important link currents. Here it is advantageous to identify such
structures of the chain of reactions when there is a minimum number of
Interactions between the reflecting adaptive system and the local environment.
The separate reactions of
each receptor can be purely trigger reactions, but the reactions' change
structures themselves must exist in the reflecting adaptive system in the
shape of intential patterns stimulated - for example -by the resonance method.
Then the separate interactions with the surrounding environment, which lead to
the stimulation of such patterns have to be regarded as directing trigger
Influences, leading to the simplest combinative reflection of no longer just
intervals but now of the composition of the receptors. With this type of
reflection as with a combination of single receptor stimulation intervals the
new combination, not represented among the intential patterns of the changes
structure of the receptors' reactions, i.e. no longer having the usual
intential pattern regularly utilised beforehand, cannot be recognised in any
way.
But if the receptors'
reactions themselves are launching ones and accordingly the consequences of
the launches prove to be the stimulation of secondary intential imprints,
correlatable with the characteristics of reflected objects and their
components which have not participated in the launching influences, then the
combinative stimulation of such intential patterns is essentially distinct
from the combinative stimulation of trigger influences. This distinction is
expressed in the fact that if, even among the patterns of change structures of
receptors' reactions which have farmed and are being used, i.e. among the
usual, intential patterns of these change structures, - if among these there
is no pattern which coincides with the structure of a given combination of
reactions, the launch of a group of intential patterns is nevertheless more or
less certain to be amalgamated into an integrally whole network of
interactions. Thus there develops a complex, joint, stimulated pattern. All of
its components have a sufficiently complex structure and, thus, individual
types of link intentials with other patterns which can form a resonance
link with an available receptor's reactions' flow change structure, in spite
of the fact that such a structure is created only in a given specific case,
and previously it had no influence on the reflecting object and was in this
sense occasional for it.
Thus combinative stimulation
can provide the action of advance reflection not only in Anokhin's sense, but
also in the sense of universal anticipation. At the same time acts of advance
reflection can take the role of its components. However, so that they be
possible and so that there exist intential imprints, the directing stimulation
of which leads to the rise of a complex occasional combinative pattern,
it is necessary to form these intential imprints in advance as the usual
components of occasional patterns. For this the reflecting system under
adaptation must in some way or other obtain the interaction experience with
corresponding original patterns, local systems and the substance elements of
their links.
As we have seen, the
prerequisite for gaining this experience for any given system is that its
material has had certain analogous experience. After this, by adapting at a
certain vacant junction of the meta-meta-system, it develops the power of
increasing the size of the intential imprint in relation to the primary,
launching one, and in the functioning process it makes do with perceiving or
receiving just the minimal directing influences on the part of the local
environment. This increases the speed of its functional reactions, and
prevents a closing-up with systems whose Influences threaten the wholeness or
integrality of the system under adaptation and its functioning; and all this
comes to be favourable for the wholeness of the adapting meta-meta-system.
Here we must not mix up the process of the system's acquiring power to reflect
and anticipate in advance, i.e. the stage of the system's adaptation which
corresponds to the required function of the meta-meta-system or the stage of
the formation of the adaptive system, with the process of using
this power in order to preserve the meta-meta-system's integral wholeness,
i.e. with the functioning stage of the adaptive system which has already
formed. However the need itself for the rise of an adaptive system functioning
at the meta-system's vacant junction, is connected to the fact that the
meta-meta-system must have the ability to reconstruct its properties when
there is a change of external conditions, and accordingly to adjust and to
adapt itself to these changing conditions.
Thus the functioning of the
adaptive system is at the same time a process of adaptation, although it is
absolutely clear that it is not at all the same adaptation which has occurred
during the formation of the system. Therefore in order not to mix up these two
types of adaptation we can speak, when necessary, of formation adaptation (and
up to now this is what we have been examining) and of functioning adaptation.
It is clear for example that the results of formation adaptation change into a
necessary condition for functioning adaptation. Formation adaptation leads in
particular to stamping, in the form of intential imprints, the experience of
an extremely close interaction of the adaptive system with other systems,
while functioning adaptation requires only the stimulation of these imprints
under the influence of directing (trigger or launching) influences on the part
of these local systems.
Finally we must turn our
attention to the following case. In order to support a system's functionally
important properties requirements can develop for a system to interact with
the environment where the interactions are not predetermined by the actual
formation of the given system. But they must nevertheless be consolidated in
the system, for otherwise it cannot realise functional processes. We see such
forms of interaction as the satisfaction of the system's pure,
"egocentric" requirements; however, as is seen from an analysis of
the sources of these requirements, they too are conditioned in the end by the
meta-meta-system's requirements and they are therefore not just utilitarian
for the system.
Let us recall that we are
concerned with the development mechanisms of the highest forms of reflection
in systems which are adaptive not only in the sense that their substance uses
as its basis material which bears the results of past adaptations but also in
the sense of the deep adaptation of the given system itself to carrying out
certain functions in the meta-meta-system. Therefore it would be better for us
to start from these internal requirements of this system, and not always to
concentrate on the meta-meta-systemic origin of not only the system's
receptors but also of its "egocentric" functioning requirements; the
more so in that they do Indeed became these when the adapted system, capable
of carrying out complex functions in the meta-meta-system, comes to be for
some reason or other "dislodged" from the meta-meta-system which
adapted it.
Functional States, Control, Information Transmission.
When we examined the most
important aspects of reflection processes we paid most attention to the
imprints of the reflected object's influence on the reflecting object: to the
direct (primary) and the indirect (secondary) imprints. Here it was obvious
that the imprint represents only a partial, local change on the body of the
reflecting object, coinciding exactly with the place of contact or the link of
the reflecting object with the reflected object when a primary imprint is
formed; or a local change spreading in a certain zone around the primary
imprint when a trigger, launching or universal anticipatoryimprint is formed.
The question of the changes beyond the boundaries has not been examined,
although certain of such changes were borne in mind when we said that after
the stimulation of some imprint or other an adaptive system must effect a
certain function at the meta-meta-system's vacant junction.
It is obvious that for even a
few of the functional reactions to changes of the external environment to
occur, the adaptive system must change its properties; first, not only within
the boundaries of the imprint, and second, these changes can be not just
narrowly local, but more or less widespread, integral, and leading to notable
reconstruction of qualitative properties of almost all parts of the adaptive
system's body. If the adaptive system consists of hierarchically organised
elements and links between them the reconstruction of the system can be
expressed in a structural change of these elements' links. But whether this is
so or not, if a system functions in the meta-meta-system, then just so that
its function can be effected, it must change into various states which we can
quite naturally call functional states. By changing its functional
states a system changes its properties, which in a given case ought also to be
called functional. By having various functional properties it acquires
the faculty of engaging in Interactions with local objects which correspond to
these properties, i.e. engaging in those interactions which also form the
function of this system in the meta-system.
Functional states are
different from the changes of states linked with the reflection process not
only in that they are normally integral and the others are always localised:
A more important difference
is that the reflection process and the change of state of a reflecting object is similar in some of its properties to the reflected object. The degree of
this becoming similar increases in accordance with the perfection of the
reflection mechanisms (right up to the likening of the reflecting object to
the foregoing state of the reflected object, for example when there is
occasional combinative reflection), while the functional reconstruction must
be based, to a certain extent, on a calculation of the parameters of external
cause (for example, the characteristics of a new object which has appeared in
the reflecting object's reception zone) which has produced the change to a new
funtional state; however, in the end, its functional reconstruction is
frequently directed towards the imposition of certain properties on this cause
(e.g. at giving the external object properties which it has not had
previously, or which it has expended and must acquire once again.
But there are certain general
features among the functional states of a reflecting object and the states of
reflection imprints.
If the object's functioning
conditions embrace a large number of standard frequently repetitive
situations, the object's functioning will be more effective if the object has
an increased readiness for change to precisely these most probable states. For
this the object must contain not only those components in its structure
without which it is impossible or difficult to realise these functional
states, but also intentials for the corresponding Internal inter-linkings
between its components.
Accordingly we must speak in
this case of possible intential functional states, and, in order to bring a
particular one of these into an actual extential functional state, a directing
influence is all that is necessary.
Clearly we must see the
directing Influences which bring an adaptive system into a certain functional
state from a number of possible intential functional states as a controlling
influence; and we can regard the process of combining this system's intential
functional states by combining the controlling influences as a control
process.
It is clear that in
Intentials' mechanisms, that is, in the particular features of the diversity
of possibilities and methods whereby one of them changes to reality when the
adaptive system progresses from one intential functional state to another,
there is a lot in common with the mechanisms for stimulating some intential
pattern within it.
Like an intential pattern, an
intential functional state must contain only a minimal component, the
stimulation of which leads to the stimulation of the whole, i.e. a component
which is an analogy of a direct imprint when there is stimulation in a trigger
or launching reflection regime. As with the stimulation of patterns, when
there is a launching regime of progession to a certain extential functional
state, the launching component is the starting phase of this state itself as
an integrally whole process, and with a trigger pattern it is linked
with the state being stimulated only in adjacence: it is not its actual
component, but it is one of the links in the consecutive chain.
We shall call that phase of
trigger or launching stimulation of the intential functional state, after
which the object is bound to progress to that state, the initial functional
phase of that state. It is clear that as with the trigger or launching
stimulation of patterns, the smaller the size of the initial functional phase,
similar to the size of the necessary primary imprint, in a secondary imprint,
the more standard, frequently repeating, usual states the system accepts.
It is exactly in this way
that the concept of combinative stimulation is applicable not only with
regard to patterns but also to functional states. Here there can be both
standard usual sets of formative states and the structures of their
links, and unique, irrepeatable, occasional sets. Therefore even with a
limited set of intential functional states the number of possible, usual,
combinative functional states can be very large, while the number of
occasional functional states hardly lends itself to limitation if we are
thinking of the chains of transfers to these states with the varying of time
intervals between them.
Functional states, like
patterns, can be launched either through direct interaction with objects of
the environment (original patterns), or by means of informing, i.e. through
intermediary objects bearing only those properties of the original pattern
objects which can stimulate the Initial phase of an object's functional state.
This will hardly contradict
those cybernetic Ideas on the nature of Information, to which an ever
increasing number of scientists are coming round, where the process of
information transmission is defined as control on the basis of
informing (in the sense defined previously). In particular it follows from
such a definition that processes of informmation transmission can occur also
inside an adaptive functioning system; here the forms of external reality
which have come together owing to the interaction of this system with local
objects can play an active role in these processes.
And finally it is clear that
we can speak of the patterns of functional states themselves and even
more so, of the link structure patterns of these states in an
integrally whole combinative function.
The Objectivity and
Subjectivity of Reflection; the a priori Gestalt; Philogenesis; Ontogenesis;
and Embryogenesis.
The scheme
outlined above for fixing functionally significant reflective properties in
the adaptation process of an object in a meta-meta-system is highly
reminiscent of the scheme of the biological formation of species, or
biological adaptation, the basic laws of which were first formulated by
Charles Darwin (though guesses as to the mechanism of the development of
living beings on Earth were hazarded even by Empedocles).
This way of explaining the
formation of reflecting functions is not new: after Darwin published his
findings, G. Spenser explained things in this way. But Spenser's conception,
though shared in many of its propositions by leading scientists, for example, I.N. Schenov, is seen as being very mechanistic. Spenser asserts ultimately
that reflection of only the most frequently encountered events which are
adjacent in time can be the result of adaptation, and in fact he denies
penetration into the essence of phenomena and into the simplest laws of cause
and effect.
Such conclusions are quite
natural if by reflection is meant only the first stages of advance reflection,
only forming as a result of extential traces of external events and objects.
But if one starts from our concept of the nature not only of reflection but
also of adaptation as properties of corporeal objects in general (and not
simply biological objects), then we are not at all obliged to draw from
assertions concerning the inevitability of the complexity of objects'
reflective possibilities, if reflection is functional, the positivist
conclusions Spenser arrives at concerning the maximum possibilities of
reflection.
As we have seen, even with
non-living objects we have to recognise a predisposition for universal
anticipation. A strengthening of live organisms' reflective capabilities
during their evolution must consequently fundamentally strengthen the
mechanisms of not only purely static anticipations, but also of essence ones
as well.
The embryo of such a process
should be seen as early as in the combinative stimulation of a complex pattern
on the basis of the launch of several intential patterns, where a links scheme
between these patterns is capable of developing under the influence of both
links imposed previously from outside and intentials which explicate
the properties of original patterns of the components of an integrally whole
original form through the reflection of these properties in the
characteristics of such original forms' intential forms. Through the
accumulated "subjective" experience, established in the reflecting
system in the form of intential imprints, objective properties of the external
environment, not yet given in this subjective experience, can be revealed, and
as intential imprints are formed as a result of foregoing physical
interactions with the environment - as a sort of "groping" of this
environment - in this way the materialist position, concerning the primacy of direct sensation over
deduced knowledge and also the objectivity of this deduced knowledge, is
substantiated in concrete terms.
The picture we have seen of
the forming of reflective capabilities does not make the objectivity of
patterns of the reflected external environment absolute, nor does it
require us to "regard feelings as some sort of supreme tribunal and
highest criterion"; P. Hassendi also wrote against this [29,
p.69]. The
degree of correspondence of evident, explicated properties of reality to the
properties of this same reality can be determined by the accuracy which is
needed for the meta-meta-system to exist, by the volume of the experience
already accumilated, and by the choice of the receptors which developed in the
formation adaptation process, and therefore any "exact" reflection
is only a "subjective form of the objective world" [2,
vol.16, p.120]. However, since the system functions successfully and maintains the
stability of the adaptive meta-meta-system, the "success of the
actions" of this system [1, vol.22,
p.304] confirms that its intential
patterns are a "true copy of this subjective reality" [2,
vol.18, p.130], and If in some respect they are not, then the "non-success of the
actions" become a reason for the start of adaptatory processes and for
the correction of "untrue copies".
If we distinguish a
material's experience and the experience of a substance forming from it, and
also if we distinguish the formation experience (which has included the
material's experience) and the experience accumulated already in the adaptive
system's functioning process (and supported by the formation experience) we
are able to make the following conclusion. This is that if a sufficiently
deeply adapted system, the functioning of which is supported by reflection
mechanisms, is in some way or other reproduced in new specimens (by
reproduction in biological objects and by repeated manufacture of such an
automatic device in cybernetic objects), formation adaptation does not have to
be fully repeated in these new specimens. All those properties of the new
system which correspond to its function at the new meta-system's vacant
junction, to whatever extent its presence there is brought about by analogous
causes, must where possible be reproduced in the new system, and not be formed
again, in the lengthy formation adaptation process. In particular, in
biological systems they must be inborn, and only under this condition can the
time of the system's adaptation exceed the time of the existence of its
separate specimens. With each new reproduction the experience of the type
will not be lost (it will even increase), if the degree of its adaptation to
the function has not reached completion or if the completion has ceased to be
such in connection with some reconstruction of the characteristics of the
contradictions at the meta-meta-system's junction in which the system must
function.
This fact seems trivial while
it is a question of the external features of the system being reproduced, and
in particular when it is a question of the features and the group of those
receptors which it inherits from experience of the type on reproduction. But
our arguments mean that the opinions of those scientists are justified who
accept not only the inheritance of the means, but also of the most important
results of reflection, and who explain the concept of "a priori
knowledge" not in Kant's sense, i.e. not as a denial of the experienced
origin of this knowledge, but only as knowledge individually outside
experience, relayed to new Individuals or specimens of the type as ready,
intential patterns of those aspects of the environment whose identification is
absolutely essential to any representative of the type. The presence of such a
priori knowledge is revealed not only in the form of so-called
instincts, but also in the ability of new individuals to Identify quite
complex situations and objects. So for example it has .been established that
chickens which have just hatched in an incubator distinguish the silhouette of
a duck from that of a kite by its outline and the direction of its movements; the chickens look quite
calmly at the first but try to run away from the second. [134,
p.248].
That internal intential
pattern, which is inborn (or built into the automatic device) and which allows
certain external objects to be Identified without preliminary instruction
thanks only to the correct working of the receptors we shall call "a
priori gestalt". As we shall see further on, the presence of a
priori gestalt will allow not only the relating of external reflected
objects to a certain universal set to be assured but also the working-out
process of new Intential patterns for distinguishing sub-sets of this set and
even of its individual representatives to be speeded up. We can call these
patterns "a posteriori gestalts" [161,
p.45-50].
And let us note finally that
if adaptive systems which allow reproduction are to be examined, the stage of
their formation adaptation ought to be broken down into two more particular
varieties: into formation adaptation of the type (philogenesis,
evolution of the type) and formation adaptation of the individual
(ontogenesis); and in the latter we can distinguish embryogenesis
and, indeed, training.