#teleodynamics

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Intro to Terry Deacon's Teleodynamics | Jeremy Sherman

Intro to Terry Deacon’s Teleodynamics | Jeremy Sherman

 

Intro to Terry Deacon's Teleodynamics

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How Teleodynamics Creates “Self”

(Source)    Teleodynamics necessarily constitutes an individuated (i.e. closed & integrated) unit system because it is organized to reconstitute this same system-disposition if perturbed (whether from outside or from spontaneous internal thermodynamic decay). It produces…

A (re)active maintenance of system integrity,

 A logic of repair by synthesis and reintegration,

 A disposition to initiate self-reconstituting dynamics whenever system integration is degraded.

 The dynamical creation and maintenance of an intrinsic self/non-self distinction.

Multiple Realizability of Self

The higher-order synergy-constraint that constitutes autogenesis can persist across changes of the underlying substrates and specific dynamics.

It is therefore not vested in any particular component substrate or physico-chemical process.

It is substrate-transferrable; multiply realizable; and formal even though physically embodied.

It constitutes the continuity of an individual over time, and the information that gets reproduced and transmitted down a lineage of individuals.

The self/other distinction creates an Umwelt and functional closure constituting system interiority.

Teleodynamics Provides…

Self/other (interiority, beneficiary)

Individuation (finite locus)

Function (in order to…)

End-directedness (telos)

Autonomous agency (causal origin)

Normativity (persist/perish, success/failure, truth/falsity, good/bad)

And the foundation for Intentionality

Deacon’s Claims:

1. Teleodynamic organization is sufficient to:

Produce autonomous agency

Produce a functional self/other distinction

2. Teleodynamic organization is necessary to:

Produce functional interiority

Assign reference and value to extrinsic events or conditions

3. Teleodynamics can emerge in many different substrates and at different levels of scale.

4. Teleodynamic systems can also be components in higher order homeodynamic, morphodynamic, and teleodynamic processes.

See also:

TELEODYNAMICS

Teleodynamic Work

[artofthemindblog]

  Terrence Deacon on how his conception of Teleodynamics provides a theory of The Self consummate with both the Natural Sciences and a more “Metaphysical” Philosophy of Mind.

[artofthemindblog]

Michael S. Roth on Foucault’s conception of society as a system without an author. - Source.

Perhaps, too, we should abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist only where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its injunctions, its demands, and its interests... We should admit, rather, that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.

What Foucault’s articulating here is the way in which every discourse presupposes and contributes to the dispersal, but more often the concentration of power, that is; the capacity to produce even more effects. People wanted to know “For whom? For what purpose? Who’s the bad-guy?”... but Foucault really avoids that trope, because I think for Foucault it’s so important that this is a system without an author. And that comes out of the language oriented theory of which he is a part; there is no subject behind this development. Which is it’s own uncanny thing, because you don’t know who to attack or who to ally yourself with to change it.

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Terrence Deacon on Teleodynamic Social Processes. Source.

There is no aspect, in the way I would think about it, of neuronal sentience contributing to my sentience or your sentience. Even though my entire brain is made up of billions of sentient creatures, these little neurones, interacting with each other the point I want to make is; it’s not the sum of their sentiences, as tiny and minuscule as it might be, that is any wit of yours and mine. It is their dynamics, and the dynamics that they create collectively, that creates a new level of teleodynamics… Self of a higher order built on self of a lower order…

And so what I’m suggesting is that your consciousness and my consciousness is a new kind of sentience; it’s a sentience built of sentiences, in which no part of that sentience is ours. If there are teleodynamic social processes, which I have no doubt are possible, our sentiences will be no part of it’s sentience, but it will be sentient.

[artofthemindblog]

TELEODYNAMICS

  In his book Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon defines three hierarchically nested levels of thermodynamic systems: Homeodynamic systems combine to produce morphodynamic systems which combine to produce teleodynamic systems. Teleodynamic systems can be further combined to produce higher orders of self organization.

Homeodynamics   Homeodynamic systems are essentially equivalent to classical thermodynamic systems like a gas under pressure or solute in solution, but the term serves to emphasize that homeodynamics is an abstract process that can be realized in forms beyond the scope of classic thermodynamics.  In general, a homeodynamic system is any collection of components that will spontaneously eliminate constraints by rearranging the parts until a maximum entropy state (disorderliness) is achieved.

Morphodynamics   A morphodynamic system consists of a coupling of two homeodynamic systems such that the constraint dissipation of each complements the other, producing macroscopic order out of microscopic interactions. Morphodynamic systems require constant perturbation to maintain their structure, so they are relatively rare in nature. The paradigm example of a morphodynamic system is a Rayleigh–Bénard cell. Other common examples are snowflake formation, whirlpools and the stimulated emission of laser light. The organized structure of a morphodynamic system forms to facilitate maximal entropy production; i.e., what is notable about morphodynamic processes is that order spontaneously emerges explicitly because the ordered system that results is more efficient at increasing entropy than a chaotic one. They are self organizing, but also self undermining.

Teleodynamics   A teleodynamic system consists of coupling two morphodynamic systems such that the self undermining quality of each is constrained by the other. Each system prevents the other from dissipating all of the energy available, and so long term organizational stability is obtained.

Unlike an isolated morphodynamic process whose organization rapidly eliminates the energy gradient necessary to maintain its structure, a teleodynamic process is self-limiting and self preserving. The two reactions complement each other, and ensure that neither ever runs to equilibrium - that is completion, cessation, and death. 

So, in a teleodynamic system there will be structures that embody a preliminary sketch of a biological function. Deacon claims that we should pinpoint the moment when two morphodynamic systems reciprocally constrain each other as the point when ententional qualities like function, purpose and normativity emerge.

- Wikipedia

See also:

Teleodynamic Work

How Teleodynamics Creates “Self”

[artofthemindblog]

Teleodynamic Work  In his book How Mind Emerged From Matter, Terrence Deacon seeks to generalize the Newtonian conception of work such that the term can be used to describe and differentiate mental phenomena: Work is generally defined to be the interaction of two orthograde changing systems such that contragrade change is produced.

A thermodynamic systems capacity to do work depends less upon the total energy of the system and more upon the geometric distribution of its components. Microscopic work is necessary but not sufficient for macroscopic work. A global property of asymmetric distribution is also required.

 By recognizing that asymmetry is a general property of work - that work is done as asymmetric systems spontaneously tend towards symmetry, Deacon abstracts the concept of work and applies it to systems whose symmetries are vastly more complex than those covered by classical thermodynamics.

In a morphodynamic system, the tendency towards symmetry produces not global equilibrium, but a complex geometric form like a hexagonal Benard cell or the resonant frequency of a flute. This tendency towards convolutedly symmetric forms can be harnessed to do work on other morphodynamic systems, if the systems are properly coupled.

 In teleodynamic systems, the spontaneous orthograde tendency is not to equilibriate (as in homeodynamic systems), nor to self simplify (as in morphodynamic systems) but rather to tend towards self-preservation. Living organisms spontaneously tend to heal, to reproduce and to pursue resources towards these ends. Teleodynamic work like evolution acts on these tendencies and pushes them in a contragrade, non-spontaneous direction.

Mental problem solving can also be considered teleodynamic work: Interpretive systems are teleodynamic - the interpretive process is designed to perpetuate itself. Deacon makes the link between evolution as teleodynamic work and thought as teleodynamic work explicit: "The experience of being sentient is what it feels like to be evolution."

- Wikipedia

See also:

TELEODYNAMICS

How Teleodynamics Creates “Self”

[adeltaintegral]

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that within the last 200 years our understanding of the universe has been modified more radically than in all of the three preceding millennia considered together. Within a handful of generations, a roughly circumscribed method of enquiry known as “science” has opened vistas that could not even have been imagined just a few centuries before. Today every school child learns that the universe is unimaginably old and large, that the stuff we call matter is made of unimaginable tiny atoms that are themselves made of even tinier particles, that texts, sounds, and moving images can be transmitted from place to place via imperceptible waves of electricity and magnetism, and that life itself depends on the information embodied in molecules, such as DNA. With its handmaiden, technology, science has transformed the human predicament beyond recognition, and has done so at such a pace that each succeeding generation in the industrial West enters a world dramatically different from what its parents could have imagined. The challenge this poses for theological and spiritual traditions is enormous.

Steps to a metaphysics of incompleteness Terry Deacon & Ty Cashman