This thread [in the newsgroup I frequent] was always just meant to be really chatty, and it's in that sense that I can see where others have come from not only in protest of my bullshit writing, but I also would agree that I haven't demonstrated much comprehension here overall. There was always just one short paragraph earlier in the thread that had any relevance to what interests me in my more formal approaches, and it's understandable that that's been made mincemeat of too. I've a lot more reading to do on causality, and have just started refreshing myself by exploring Hempel and his critics. Am struggling through getting my head around modern vicariance biogeography as well, toying with what general laws are considered to be.

Regardless -

Like another in our midst has, lemme just briefly mention some of what led me to my qualms that I believe can be related to my disillusionment with functionalist biology. If others call it postmodern, I just let 'em. Others here will recall me reneging at various stages "back" to how to use observations and data produced from research firmly within the functionalist paradigm.

<Quick and rough note form again, bugger it>

Pg 61 of Maturana and Varela's 'Autopoiesis and Cognition' (1981) was a bit of a eureka for me - saying how a cause is a trigger which activates a change in how organized components of a biological system relate to each other in a way that doesn't (or does) compromise the self-producing ability of such organization. It is the stuff of biology that should be focusing in on how that self-organization is retained though various configurations. Causes themselves are incidental. I should look up up the definitions of some of the terminology to give here. An autopoietic unity is one that self-produces it's constituent parts, I think the story went. I know I haven't got that in the most elegant way like I've seen it before[1].

Varela went on to espouse a milder formulation, I believe.

It seems Maturana and Varela had a great big barnie and split. Maturana went ahead and while concerned, Maturana's camp said he didn't worry as much as Varela did about how others would ascertain between what actually was a self-organizing system, and what wasn't. This was especially when considering self-organizational unities of higher order - was a popn self-organizing? Maturana was verging very much on the edge here. A communication system between individuals perhaps could be entertained [more on that later], but I've seen that higher unities could be much more than that to some real idealists who could take autopoesis as outlining some instructional way to live. Among other issues, it seems Varela had some ethical concerns which I think is also shown in terms of how this stuff can (and should not) be applied to society. Put simply, this included the ramification that those who didn't seem to fit in to whatever others decided to define what society constituted, had no bearing on anything. Varela still focused in comprehensively on how limited it is in scope to rely on causality to explain what that cause will trigger off in terms of the cognitive and biological processes of an individual. Later on, I found matters to be far more involved.

(External) causes are essential to evaluate as a conservation biologist, say, but not in understanding the biological processes through which changes are made manifest. For that matter, natural selection happens after, and as a result of such changes. That is, when these do have an effect of differential reproductive success in a popn, and which would indeed be revealed as changes in gene frequencies amenable to all sorts of popn analyses (at least in popularist theory where the influence of stablising selection is hardly expected, and yet the even less likely influence of directional selection is!).

I don't think there is much to argue over about this attempting to draw attention to how outside causes do not in themselves specify the changes these instigate in an individual organism. Such pedanticism just does not matter in a lot of biology as it is being practised currently. Without even saying, of course a lot of biological mechanisms do end up being nutted out. I'm not sure though, if the very necessary research methodology and modelling used in ecology is recognized enough as just yielding a preliminary pattern at populational level. The results are in accordance with not only those statistical parameters found, but also in accordance with the capabilities of the organisms involved in reference to their physiology and behaviour.

Statistical sampling, manipulation and analysis at a populational level of course is crucial, and vitally provides insight, but does not necessarily show how changes are in accordance with the organism's biology and the way it takes in the world. Sometimes this detail is worked out, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it just isn't possible to acquire the understanding sought.

Knowing 'how an organism takes in the world' should not be relegated as just an academic exercise too expensive to pursue, but alongside the populational statistical patterns, I think a better picture on how behaviour can change and vary would prove invaluable and entails so much more than just, incidentally, how reproductive success is attained. Such detail could be rendered as a fait accomple, yet may be the very features possible to manipulate/monitor/protect etc depending on what may be desirable. This actually sounds very glib as I write. I should be using examples.

This may have to be viewed in light of also Elliott Sober's mid 1980s influence upon me (not his more recent guff). Without it, I don't think my beef with causality stands up. Through him, I learnt how contingent causality can be. Similarly, how contingent a recourse to resource utility is.

The extent to which I may be postmodern is pretty unrecognizable sometimes. I feel pretty deadpan in providing such monotony in showing whatever it is that I initially intended... I've forgotten now. Anyway, I'm leaving a few refs, and I think I've shown that the more detail I give, isn't really going to prove any case of mine at all, but yeah, whatever. It'd be nice if I could remember why this lead me into speaking about intersubjectivity[2]. I think I just realised one day that it doesn't preclude the ability to speak of a certain configuration of relationships at a certain time and space. I'm nowhere near the speed of light, I guess.

[1] fyi

I've been utterly simplistic -

As I said above, Varela subsumed much of this into the background in his later work.

C. S. White, B. Michaux, D. M. Lambert 1990. Species and Neo-Darwinism. Systematic Zoology. 39(4): 399-413 managed to suggest a version of autopoiesis very successfully in expounding the specific mate recognition system concept and the setting up of communicative domains which either ensue, or do not.

Lambert, D.M.; B. Michaux & C.S. White 1987. Are Species self-defining? Syst. Zool. 36(2): 196-205

The SMRS concept gets rid of clunky isolation mechanisms as explaining how species keep separate. This and a whole slew of other ramifications explored alongside other much wider ways of considering what ecology could be like is effectively in

Walter and Hengeveld (2000). The structure of the two ecological paradigms. Acta Biotheoretica 48(1): 15-46

... and ...

Hengeveld and Walter (1999). The two coexisting ecological paradigms. Acta Biotheoretica 47(2):141-170

In ecology, the effects of what we observers see and measure as relating to competition and predation, are what Hengeveld and Walter go on about.

[2] With respect to my loose and conversational comments on 'intersubjectivity' -

I was just rambling on about communicative domains as well, actually. Autopoiesis may be outmoded, but was a great tool that got me thinking once again of what has indeed been put in so many different ways - in animal behaviour, and just as an individual in recognizing how we don't just take info in as if our own experience doesn't affect it. Understanding this, as well as what a third party would see, has validity in itself. Simplistic and glib as this is, millions have wanked away similarly and still our politics and advocacy movements currently, for instance, aren't respecting our individuality and the individual ways in which each of us may choose to respond. Different ways of responding, many times gets taken as misunderstanding. OK, that's glib, I know. How the hell I manage to always end up in such tedium, fucks me off too. [With regards to upcoming local body elections, I sure wish our councillors were much more concerned with stormwater than pissing around with cultural festivals, concerts and 'beautification' schemes, by the way.]

I guess the part which excites me more than what just sounds wankerish, is the recursive feedback and continual defining in communicative domains. There can be rewards in exploring how this sets up realities, and going from there, rather than outright complaining.

This is just breaking into conversation even more plainly -

Conceptual rigidity has left me and the world is still not caving in yet. Furthermore, I no longer end up with other constructs too rigidly-held in my attempt to thwart old ways of seeing. This is, of course, only insofar as I'm aware and am familiar with how this used to happen.

This is what I've been after, and I can see how it's taken all the embarrassment that it did, so am going a bit more gently on myself than I thought I would, for what it's worth. That is, I was writing about the more personal ramifications years later, of yes, a loss of modernity - if it's OK to loosely refer to it as that.

Loosely, it's a pretty common idea that as one matures, one loses a rigidity in their ideas. I mean I used to still get pretty reactive even since looking past objectivity, as evidenced on this newsgroup - when someone spouted something about how great it was to be unquestionably "pragmatic", when "independence" was too narrowly defined, when "ethnicity" was equated with "culture" and a set personal identity was considered a virtue - I'd strongly react to such until pretty recently. Those are simplistic examples, but, I think I've got more confidence knowing that hell, a lot of the time, one can often see where people are coming from and why - and so I have to ask myself, indeed, what is the fukn threat that I tend to take too personally?!

I think I arrived at similar diminished reactivity before when I had utter faith in 'being objective'. But, God, did I recoil again whilst still accepting that my so-called beloved objectivity, simply was not.

It's like I've done that initiation more soundly into wherever I am, all over again....

Well, maybe it's not a full-circling so as to pick up all the good stuff strewn out with the bad, it maybe a spiraling back on itself - but not exactly rejoining as if all sorts of forays haven't had effects that will last.

Note that this sounds like I'm using a pretty traditional structural language to quickly explain, in that, I almost speak of 'a turning back' and allude to some inherent organizational framework essentially plucked from nowhere.

As well as the discipline involved, I've found that some feel really threatened by the suggestion that we're all living and creating our own reality, and it made me forget, totally, about the beauty I think there is in helping each other open up a bit of shared space.

THIS IS ACTUALLY VERY VERY OLD NEWS. It is just that these same words and arguments just don't feel as academic as these once were where I can afford to just let these be as part of my experience. Shit, does that sound coherent at all?