From Cartesian Dualism 2 Quasi Objects Sustainability
Randy Naylor www.randynaylor.com rnaylor@online.no

19th/20th Century Dualism 21st Century Self-Org-Stigmergy

Randy Naylor Cartesian Dualism

QUASI OBJECTS: Tracers of Intersubjectivity relations in a group. (Michel Serres)
INTERSUBJECTIVITY:It means that some things are shared between subjects:
Causality is how things become entangled in one another. (Morton)
INTEROBJECTIVITY:It means that something fresh can happen at any moment.
Another way to say this is that causality is inter-objective. (Morton)
QUASI SUBJECTS: Envelops and integrates communication routes, unifying
time&space.(Serres)
ASSEMBLAGE: Assemblage Theory supplies the framework where the voices come
together to form a chorus that does not harmonize its different components, but
interlocks them while respecting their heterogeneity. (Delanda) Free Music
Improvisation
Causality: Causality is how things become entangle. Causality is Intersubjective,
Causality is distributed. (Morton)
Clinaman: ”A break in the Message” A Drop in the Sea of Order. (Michel Serres)
Phase Space: Quasi-Casual distribution that structures a space of possibilities.
Wasp to Orchid. (Biosom attempts to synchronize the times, ,complex and crisscrosses space-time of the entirety of this worlds living beings.) Serres
Multiplicity: Multiplicities specify the structure of spaces of possibilities. A form
generation and morphogenesis process. ”Multiplicities give form to processes, not to
the final product.” Delanda
Pluralism: A Fluctuating web of relations. ” The world is formed from an infinity of
shimmering realities.” Serres (Allegory of the Cave.
New Materialism A material world that exists independently of our minds.” Delanda
ex. Climate processes that are autonomous.
Realism: Facts that are Important and Relevant. The rejection of human hubris and
our earth destroying fantasy of conquest and consumption.
Totipotent: having unlimited capacity. Self-Organization of a cell that can divide and
produce a complete organism.
Complexity: ”The study of phenomena no longer in analytic isolation but embedded
within a rich and unstable milieu of multiple communication forces.”
New Mapping: Traces out unpredictable. Vagrant itineraries through landscapes not
given in advance. The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions, it is
detachable. reversible, susceptible to constant modifications. It can be reworked by an
individual, group or social function.
Algorithm: Complex functions for producing an infinite variety of outputs from
infinite possibilities of inputs.
Algorithmic is procedural, (avails itself of procedures step by step and disperses itself
into a thousand tiny problems. 2. Is Practical, conventional, and plural.3.Is not
Abstract, pulling parts from Whole.4. Opposition to Cartesian concept, includes the
Connection..(Serres)
Template: Decentralization processes. The major challenge for designer, educators,
and artists is to create tools and environments that engage learners in construction,
invention, and experimentation. ” A good designer makes a design that makes you a
good designer.” Mitchel Resnick
Parts vs. Wholes: The whole is always less than the sum of its parts. The experience is
Quantum. T. Morton Von Bertalanffy found that wholes, be they animal or
vegetable, cell, organ or organism, could best be described as systems. A System is
less a thing than a pattern. It is a pattern of events, its existence and character deriving
less from the nature of its components than from their organization. It consists of
dynamic flows of interactions. It is non-summative and irreducible; a living system
typifies its relation with its environment.
BWO: BWO creates a vision of the world where Geology, Biology and Linguistics
are not seen as three separate spheres, but as co-existing and interacting flows were
one stratum can serve directly as a substratum for another. ( Delanda) The earth A
Body Without Organs (BWO), permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in
all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory
particles.” Receiving, Processing, Creating, Distributing, Storing Information
Deleuze
Conscious Purpose. In cybernetics how one plots to travel from A to Z as effective as
possible regardless of the collateral damage incurred on the way. (IDF “sweeping”
Gaza) (Bateson) The Purpose decides what premise and concept are needed to reach
an End Game.
Totalitarian: An attempt tom simplify and dominate the complex. Is everything
Military or Militant, everything is religious or dogmatic, everything is economic,
everything is media friendly and Spectacle. (Serres)
Three types of Conscious Purpose: 1. Algorithms 2. Military Industrial Complex

  1. Monopolies
    MALTHUSAN CURVE. Monkeying with the system and disturbing the Echo
    system. With an improper disturbance a system the Exponential Curve Appears.
    Double Bind: A situation in which either choice results in a contradictory message.
    DOUBLE BIND PROJECTION: When one creates the error of Purpose Thinking and
    disregards the Systemic Nature of the World. (Distributed Consciousness, i.e.. nonCartesian)
    Cybernetic Feedback Loops: 1. Behavior Steering Mechanisms 2. Self-Corrective
    Systems 3. Status Quo Redundancy 4.People are Self-Correcting Systems and Seek
    Status Quo Homeostasis.
    DOUBLE BIND: The End Game creates a Double Bind. The Double Bind triggers
    Schizophrenia (a failure to read and understand the message) (IDF vs. Gaza vs.
    University Protest Tent demonstrations.)
    Wisdom: The knowledge of a larger Interactive System. Recognition of guidance by
    the total systemic creature. (Bateson)
    Art, Architecture, and Creativity: (Humility) the artist may have to have a Conscious
    Purpose to make an Art Work. However, in making the Art the artist disregards the
    arrogance in favor of the creative experience where the Conscious plays a small part.
    (Bateson)
    Ethics, Grace, Aesthetics: Ethics as defined as the pursuit of Affirmation Values and
    Relations. “There is a power Greater than yourself.” Something is Tuning into you
    while you are tuning into it. (Morton)
    Neo-Cartesian : AI quest to replace the mind with the computer (mind) A new
    Double Bind Dualism
    Stigmergy: Is a path toward complexity. Stigmergy can sometimes get started using
    Templates in the form of environmental physical and chemical heterogeneities. A
    morphogenetic process. Sematecronic Communication where a termite nest building
    is coordinated not by individual workers, but by the nest itself. Each action performed
    by a termite modifies the stimulating configuration of the nest, triggering further
    action by another termite. ex ART Node Randy Naylor
    Emergence: is an essential component of swarm intelligence and self-organization.
    Swarm Intelligence points to a new form of thinking, which may help us in our
    current crisis, our becoming Insect, river, star. ”Insect societies are organized in a way
    that departs from anthropocentric models.” Bonabeau
    Francis Kere: Pritzker Prize Architecture 2022. Swarm and Community architecture.
    Felt Humanism. Kere`s architecture does not suggest a multi-tasking assembly linear
    practice. But rather a slow evolution in a private history, cast carefully as pieces of art
    from a family kiln.”
    Chaos Theory: Chaos theory shows us paradoxically that chaos is far from the
    opposite of ordered structure. Chaos is essential in self-organization as it involves
    amplification through positive feedback loops and fluctuations. Randomness and
    fluctuations in individual behavior may in fact greatly enhance the systems ability to
    explore new behaviors and find new solutions.” Bonabeau/Bateson
    Framing. Dualistic Framing. This Choice or that Choice (Harari)
    Anthropocentric Framing or Scaling. ”One Size Fits All” ex. GMO Foods. Is this an
    upgrade or a downgrade of complexity? (Monsanto)
    GMO. Genetically Modified Organisms. Monocultures. Multi-drug resistant
    pathogens. (Vandana Shiva)
    Data Atuism. ”Declares that the universe consists of data flows and the value of any
    phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to Data.” Harari
    (Morton) “ That nothing can be grasped or accessed, all at once in its entirety.” The
    world is teeming. Anything could happen (J. Cage) “ This means that the nonhuman
    world has the right to exist and regenerate. OOO argues that Thought is not the only
    access mode. OOO tries to let go of anthropocentrism, which holds that humans are
    the center of meaning and power.”
    Post-Humanism: The Deconstruction of the Human (white Man), Post
    Anthropocentrism, and Post Dualism: Advent of Techno/Zoe/Bio/Geo/ Eco. Find the
    Missing Things, Mind the Gaps, Tran disciplinary Respect. Action & Invention.
    ChatGPT:”how physics was alienated from nature, how epistemology was alienated
    from ethics, and how man was alienated from the world.” Serres
    p.4
    The challenge is to create the Multiplicity. Or, How the Multiplicity creates itself
    through Template and Phase Space Action and Invention.
    Participation vs False Participation. (Sand-Box Effect)
    False Participation. Negative Feedback where the knower modified the known
    through Projection maintaining a Status Quo. Real Participation is The recognition
    that learning represents a reorganization of the system and its components).
    Double Bind Theory: “A situation in which what a person does, he cannot win. Do
    not do so and so, or I will punish you. If you do not do so and so, I will punish you.
    Cybernetics Systems Theory-Information Theory
    Difference & Filters:” Any ongoing ensemble of events, and objects that has an
    appropriate complexity of casual circuit and the appropriate energy relations will
    show mental characteristics. It will be responsive to Differences, Causes (forces,
    impact) It will process Information and will be self-corrective toward the
    maximization of certain variables.”(Bateson p. 315)
    system. New nets and assemblages occur, loops form, alternative pathways develop.
    The viewed world is different and so is the viewer. P 126 Jonna Macy
    “Life depends upon interlocking circuts of contingency.” Perception is tbe interaction
    of organism plus environment.” Bateson
    MODAL Logic: Replaces ontology to modal logic, which studies relations of
    possibility, necessity and intention. Action & Invention, from contemplation to
    responsibility. “no longer abstract, but, multi-colored, actual, and having real effect.”
    ”p.142The Immanent Mind. All Self-Organized systems are Immanent. “Brain plus
    Body, Man plus Environment. “
    Positive Feedback Mapping.: When codes reveal their inadequacy to process the
    stream of experiences, the cognative system searches for new ones by which novel
    and confusing percepts can be made intelligible. In positive feedback the world in
    turn affects the viewer , mapping itself in new ways in the internal organization of the
    .142 Serres (HOMINSCENE)
    “Lenz has projected himself back to a time before the man and nature dichotomy,
    before all the co-ordinates based on this fundamental dichotomy have been laid down.
    does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing
    as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other
    and couples the machine together.” (Deleuze and Guattari)
    Summary:
    “If we continue to operate in the terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter,
    we shall probably also continue to see the world in terms of God verses man, elite
    verses people, chosen race verses others, nation verses nation, and man verses
    environment. It is doubtful weather a species having both an advanced technology and
    this strange way of looking at its world can endure,” (Bateson p. 337)

Book Bibliography

Manual DeLanda:


1. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

  1. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History
  2. Assemblage Theory
  3. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy
    Timothy Morton: 1. All Art is Ecological
  4. Dark Ecology
  5. Human Kind
    Michel Serres : 1. The Five Senses
  6. The Incandescent
  7. Hominescene
  8. The Parasite
    Gregory Bateson: Steps to an Ecology of Mind
    Joan Macy : Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory
    Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    Vandana Shiva: 1. Seed: The Untold Story
  9. Who Really Feeds the World
    Maria L. Assad: Reading With Michel Serres
    Delauze/ Guattari : A Thousand Plateaus
    Rosi Braidotti.: Post Human Knowledge