Objectivity and Responsibility

"I mentioned objectivity before, and I mention it here again as a popular device for avoiding responsibility. As you may remember, objectivity requires that the properties of the observer be left out of any descriptions of his observations. With the essence of observing (namely the processes of cognition) having been removed, the observer is reduced to a copying machine with the notion of responsibility successfully juggled away. Objectivity, Pontius Pilate, hierarchies, and other devices are all derivations of a choice between a pair of in principle undecidable questions which are, “Am I apart from the universe?” Meaning whenever I look, I’m looking as if through a peephole upon an unfolding universe; or, “Am I part of the universe?” Meaning whenever I act, I’m changing myself and the universe as well." (von Foerster, 2003, p. 293).

Discovers and Inventors coexist in piece

"I was once asked how the inhabitants of such different worlds as I sketched before, (the inhabitants of the world they discover, and the inhabitants of a world they invent) can ever live together. Answering that is not a problem. The discovers will most likely become astronomers, physicists and engineers; the inventors family therapists, poets, and biologists. And living together won’t be a problem either, as long as the discoverers discover inventors, and the inventors invent discoverers. Should difficulties develop, fortunately we have this full house of family therapists who may help to bring sanity to the human family." (von Foerster, 2003, p. 294).

Autopoiesis

"the two fundamentally different epistemological, even ethical, positions where one considers oneself: on the one hand, as an independent observer who watches the world go by; or on the other hand, as a participant actor in the circularity of human relations. When taking the latter position, (the position I believe taken by systemic family therapists) one develops notions like “closure,” “self-organization,” “self-reference,” “self,” “auto-poiesis,” “autonomy,” “responsibility,”" (von Foerster, 2003, p. 303).

Epistemology: An ontological turn

To Discover or to Invent? That is the question

Echoing Heinz von Foerster’s epistemology: “Tell them they should always try to act so as to increase the number of choices.” Predictability is a hoax as far as complex living systems are sensitive dependent on their initial conditions (Chaos Theory and Butterfly effect) (Feldman, 2012; Mitchell, 2009).

In the end, it is not about prediction. It is about creating the future we want to.

To achieve this, “we will have to resist the idea of methodology itself, which will prevent us from producing the new that is everywhere, immanent and inexhaustible, that we might actualize.” (St. Pierre, 2016, p. 34).

Reflexivity is necessary for scientists as far as the observer is part of the observed system. This is a matter of epistemology. To pretend that somebody can be a distanced objective observer is hypocritic, maybe a reason for the reproducibility crisis in Psychology.

Second-order Cybernetics

"It may be argued that over the centuries since Aristotle, physicians and philosophers again and again developed theories of the brain. So, what’s new of today’s cyberneticians? What is new is the profound insight that a brain is required to write a theory of a brain. From this follows that a theory of the brain, that has any aspirations for completeness, has to account for the writing of this theory. And even more fascinating, the writer of this theory has to account for her or himself. Translated into the domain of cybernetics; the cybernetician, by entering his own domain, has to account for his or her own activity. Cybernetics then becomes cybernetics of cybernetics, or second-order cybernetics." (von Foerster, 2003, p. 289).

Because vs In-order-to: Causes in the future

"In his Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguished four different kinds of causes or, as I would say, four different excuses; two of which have temporal character,“causa efficientis”and “causa finalis.”Physicists love the former, where causes in the past determine the effects in the present:“Because she did turn the switch, the lights go on now.” Psychologists prefer the latter:“In order to have the lights on, she turns the switch now.” Causes in the future, “to have the room lit,” determine actions in the present, “turn the switch now.” ... In the early cybernetic literature you will find again and again reference to the notion of “goal,”“purpose,”“end,” etc. Since the Greek word for “end” is “telos,” our pre-cyberneticians used “teleology” for identifying their activity" (von Foerster, 2003, p. 298).

Being a Discover of an Inventor, it is a matter of Decision

"Whenever I reflect on these two alternatives, I’m surprised by the depth
of the abyss that separates the two fundamentally different worlds that can
be created by such a choice. That is to see myself as a citizen of an independent universe, whose regulations, rules and customs I may eventually discover; or to see myself as a participant in a conspiracy, whose customs, rules, and regulations we are now inventing. Whenever I speak to those who have made their decision to be either discovers or inventors, I’m impressed by the fact that neither of them realizes that they have ever made that decision." (von Foerster, 2003, p. 294).

The Researcher as Actor in the Drama

"One may see this fundamental epistemological change if one first considers oneself to be an independent observer who watches the world go by; as opposed to a person who considers oneself to be a participant actor in the drama of mutual interaction of the give and take in the circularity of human relations. In the case of the first example, as a result of my independence, I can tell others how to think and act, “Thou shalt . . .” “Thou shalt not . . .” This is the origin of moral codes. In the case of the second example, because of my interdependence, I can only tell myself how to think and act, “I shall . . .” “I shall not . . .” This is the origin of ethics." (von Foerster, 2003, p. 289).

Ontological Turn: Decentered becoming and islands of stability

"The switch to the performative idiom and the ontology of decentered becoming, accompanied by the concept of islands of stability, help us to appreciate this in a non-skeptical fashion, to take it seriously. That the world is such as to support a multiplicity of constellations is indeed something we should wonder at. But in the performative idiom we can grasp how it might be: different worlds no longer appear as a contradiction in terms as they do in the representational idiom... The impulse to find these islands must be quite general. At some level, we all need to find and maintain human-nonhuman configurations that are relatively predictable and dualistic, where we can more or less rely on causes and effects. Even birds and ants build nests. But we could entertain the thought that the telos of finding stability can vary to some extent" (Pickering, 2017, pp. 140-141).

Ontological Turn: The performative idiom

"My work in the history of science convinced me that we can never get satisfactorily to grips with scientific research practice in the representational idiom. Instead, we need, in a performative idiom, to think about practice, performance, and agency—doing things—and I want to sketch out briefly how the analysis goes before returning to the question of different worlds. Scientists, I argue, are lively agents in a lively world (Pickering 1995b). We act in the world, and the world acts on us, to and fro, in a dynamic process I call the ‘dance of agency’, in which all the partners are unpredictably and emergently transformed. This is how scientists genuinely find out about the world. There is nothing mysterious about this. It is just how things go in science and, indeed, everywhere else." (Pickering, 2017, p. 136).

Ontological Turn: The representational idiom

"The representational idiom is our usual way of thinking about science, namely, as a set of representations of nature, and this is the way of thinking that makes the idea of different worlds hard to swallow. Representations are sharpedged things that evoke a sharp-edged nature to go with them. Either our representations are true to nature or they are not; either nature more or less matches our descriptions of it or it does not. Is the world built out of quarks, or have the physicists got it wrong? Different representations cannot all be right, so the idea that different worlds are genuinely to be found in the history of science must be at best an illusion. This line of thought is at the heart of the philosophical rejection of Kuhn’s different worlds. Or, of course, at the other extreme, perhaps nature is not really sharp-edged. Maybe it is foggy and amorphous, so the sharpness of our representations comes not from nature but from culture—in which case we arrive back at social constructionism and cultural relativism." (Pickering, 2017, p. 136).