Operational Closure and the Reception of Events

One of the central axioms of sociological systems theory is the thesis that systems process events according to their own internal organization. As Luhmann puts it in his magnificent work Social Systems,

The environment receives its unity through the system and only in relation to the system. It is delimited by open horizons, not by boundaries that can be crossed; thus it is not itself a system. It is different for every system, because every system excludes only itself from its environment. Accordingly, the environment has no self-reflection or capacity to act. Attribution to the environment (external attribution) is a strategy of systems. But this does not mean that the environment depends on the system or that the system can comman its environment as it pleases. Instead, the complexity of the system and of the environment-- to which we will later return --excludes any totalizing form of dependence in either directions. (17)

For Luhmann, the fundamental distinction in sociological systems theory is the distinction between system and environment. Systems constitute themselves by distinguishing themselves from an environment. However, the key point is that, to put it in Hegelian terms, the relationship between system and environment is not an "external positing" where the environment is one thing and the system is another thing, but rather the unity of the environment is itself constituted by the system, such that the relation between system and environment is a self-referential relation constituted by the system itself. Any occurance taking place that the system attributes as coming from the environment but which doesn't fit the frame of this distinction is simply coded as noise or chaos.

It is for this reason that systems are characterized by "operational closure", such that events are processed according to the organization of the system in such a way that what an event is is always-already predelineated by the organization of the system. As Luhmann writes a bit further on,

Information occurs whenever a selective event (of an external or internal kind) works selectively within the system, namely, can select the system's states. This presupposes a capacity for being oriented to (simultaneous or successive) differences that appear to be bound to a self-referential operational mode of the system. "A 'bit' of information," as Bateson says, "is definable as a difference which makes a difference." This means that the difference as such begins to work if and insofar as it can be treated as information in self-referential systems.

Therein lies an immense extension of possible causalities and a discplacement of the structural problematics under their control. the extension goes in two directions. On the one hand, given the capacity to process information, things that are not present can also have an effect; mistakes, null values, and disappointments acquire causality insofar as they can be grasped via the schema of a difference. On the other, not just events but facts, structures, and continuities stimulate causalities insofar as they can be experienced as differences. Remaining unchanged can thus become a cause of change. Structural causality makes self-determination possible. Systems can store up possibilities of affecting themselves and, with the help of schemata that employ differences, can retrieve these at need. It should be noted, however, that structure does not operate as such, on the basis of a force dwelling within it. It merely enters into the experience of difference, which makes information possible, without necessarily determination what will take place there. Thus a system creates its own past as its own causal basis, which enables it to gain distances from the causal pressure of the environment without already determining through internal causality what will occur in confrontations with external events...

As a result of all this, the operational mode of self-referential systems changes into forms of causality that to a large extent reliably prevent it from being steered from outside. All the effects that one wishes to acheive ab extra either in the system or with it assume that the system can perceive impulses from without as information-- which is to say, as the experience of difference --and can in this way bring about an effect. Such systems, which procure causality for themselves, can no longer be "causally explained" (except in the reductive schema of an observer), not because their complexity is impenetrable, but on logical grounds. (40-41)

In short, systems do not function according to linear relations of cause and effect such as the transfer of motion that takes place in one billiard ball hitting another, but rather function according to a system specific causality that governs how events "impinging" on the system are received. What counts as information for a system, will depend on codes and programs belonging to the system. Elsewhere, in his beautiful and very accessible work, The Reality of the Mass Media, Luhmann explains that these codes are binary distinctions that determine how events are to be sorted as information. Programs then define how information is to be put to use by the system in question. Thus, for instance, the legal system perhaps organizes all events into information according to the code of legal/illegal, whereas the news media system processes all events according to the code information/non-information, and so on.

One of the key implications of this understanding of operational closure is that information cannot be transferred from one system to another. As Luhman puts it in The Reality of the Mass Media,

If, in addition, one starts out from the theory of operationally closed systems of information processing, the generation of information processing, the generation of information and the processing of information must be going on within the same system boundaries, and both differences to which Bateson's definition is geared must be distinctions in the same system. Accordingly, there are no information transfers from system to system. Having said that, systems can generate items of information which circulate between their subsystems. So one must always name the system reference upon which any use of the concept of information is based. (19)

The reason for this is immediately clear: If there are no transfers of information from system to system, then this is because information is only information for a specific system by virtue of the distinctions employed by that system. Insofar as different systems employ different distinctions to sort information, it follows that the event sorted according to the operative distinctions produces different information in both cases. It is for this reason that systems are not susceptible to "steering" from the outside, as the manner in which the system receives these events will be governed by the distinctions employed by that system. In this regard, Luhmann has a number of very pessimistic things to say about Marxist ambitions to steer the social system through either the economic or social system.

It seems to me that all of this is highly revelant in the context of Badiou's theory of the event. Very briefly, for Badiou an event is an occurance that fits none of the predicative categories governing what he calls a situation. In the lexicon or encyclopedia of the situation, there simply is no name for the event. Put in Luhmann-speak, an event is that which evades the binary codes governing how events are to be transformed into information. According to Badiou we can never demonstrate that an event has truly taken place precisely because there are no categories in the situation for counting the occurance. Consequently, the event is little more than chaos or noise. For Badiou, a subject is that agent that emerges in the wake of the event that resolves to count the event as belonging to the situation and to re-evaluate all elements of the situation in light of the implications this event has for the structure of the situation. There is thus a distinction, for Badiou, between subjects and individuals. Prior to nominating and becoming agents of an event, all of us are individuals. However, in being siezed by an event I become a subject by bearing active fidelity to the event, sustaining it through this fidelity, and seeking to transform the situation in light of the event.

In light of Luhmann, two serious concerns arise in relation to this theory of the event: First, if all systems process events in terms of system specific distinctions or codes, how is it possible for individuals to be open to events at all? Individuals are either their own systems or are iterations of the broader systems to which they belong through interpellation (Althusser's ISO's). It would seem that an individual must already be prepared to receive an event in order to be capable of discerning an event as an event rather than as mere noise or chaos. Consequently we can ask, "what are the conditions for the possibility of being receptive to an event in Badiou's sense of the word?" Second, is Badiou, perhaps, overly optimistic about the transformative possibilities of events? If subsystems of a system-- society --process events according to their own codes, there is a serious question as to how these subsystems could be open to the re-interpretations undertaken by the subject of an event. I don't have answers to these questions and am not offering these observations as a way of demolishing Badiou. Rather, these are questions posed for further work and thought.

Rough Theory-- The Surly Edition

N.Pepperell over at Rough Theory has written a very sensitive post responding to my recent post on individuation. N.P. writes,

Sinthome’s thought on these questions is subtle and sophisticated, and I wish to be very clear that I am not trying to criticise any substantive points put forward in Sinthome’s posts. What I wish to ask, though, is whether the kind of reflection Sinthome carries out here might in its own practice remain bound to a subject-object divide: whether the practice of thinking through this issue, as carried out in these posts, is consistent with the express goal of the posts, which is to develop a system that transcends subject-object dualism.

And a little further on,

In drawing attention to these common means of explaining the rise of new concepts, I am obviously not seeking to criticise precise reasoning, or to argue against philosophical reflection on the natural world. I am, though, asking whether the form that philosophical argument takes, when it appeals to subjective error or objective empirical novelty, can be understood to be adequate when the content or purpose of philosophical reflection strives to overturn the subject-object dualism. Perhaps we need to be seeking a form of philosophical exposition that is more adequate to the content it seeks to express. I regard this as an epistemological task - where epistemology is understood as, to borrow a phrase from Sinthome, a “theory of learning”, rather than as itself a project grounded in the subject-object divide. And I think that Hegel - and, for that matter, Marx - by focussing their attention on self-reflexivity, have highlighted the need to find a philosophical path through this labyrinth.

Unfortunately I'm in the midsts of marking for the end of the semester so I'm unable to give a detailed response. First, I want to express gratitude to N.Pepperell for so thoughtfully and earnestly thinking with me in both a spirit of friendship and critical questioning, aimed, I think, at producing something or collaboratively developing something rather than simply opposing positions to one another. In a former post, N.Pepperell expressed worries that I took him/her to be criticizing or dismissing me (with regard to my claim that "the One is not") which I did not, nor do I take these remarks to be presented in this spirit. The worries I expressed about the thesis that the One is not are my own worries (here and here and here), namely that I sometimes recoil from this thesis and its implications, finding myself concerned that it is absurd or incoherent. Rather, I take N.Pepperell's comments as working notes revolving about a shared set of questions and concerns.

It seems to me that what N.Pepperell is groping for is the expression "performative contradiction". That is, in suggesting that there is a conflict between the content of my post and the form of my post, the suggestion seems to be that at the level of content, the ontological claims being advanced say one thing, while the form in which these claims are advanced say quite another. It would be here that all the issues of self-reflexivity emerge, for if my claims about individuation hit the mark, then 1) an onto-epistemological theory of individuation must account for how it itself came to be individuated. To put this point a bit differently, my meditations on these issues perhaps suffer the old joke of a man alone in a room asked by a passing traveller whether anyone is there and responding "no", thereby missing the obvious fact that he is there. I am "counting myself out" of the very thing I am talking about, and thus suggesting a transcendence that the content of my post forbids. 2) The nature of critique with regard to other epistemologies and ontologies is significantly transformed as one can no longer say that they are simply mistaken-- which would simply be another variant of the subject/object divide, i.e., the thesis that the world has been erroneously represented --but must instead tell some sort of story as to how these onto-epistemologies came to be individuated.

N.Pepperell remarks that,

I should note that I am being very sloppy with my language here - this is not how Sinthome would express this problematic - I’ll ask forebearance on this issue because my “target” in this analysis is not actually how we can best understand individuation, but instead something more abstract: I’m trying to illustrate something about the habits of thought into which most of us - including myself - tend to fall when we seek to resolve this kind of philosophical dichotomy.

If I am understanding N.P. correctly, then s/he is referring to the habit of thought that continues to evaluate things other than itself in terms of the subject/object divide, while nonetheless having purported to reject this representational conception of the world. Thus, for instance, Deleuze argues that we must shift from a theory of knowledge to a theory of learning throughout Difference and Repetition, and must examine things in terms of how they come to be individuated or produced rather than how they are to be truly represented, and then proceeds to denounce Hegel, Kant, Plato, and others as getting it wrong without applying these very principles to their thought.

It seems to me that there are a couple of thinkers that would be very fruitful in helping to address these sorts of questions. The German philosopher-sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, develops a good deal of his systems theoretical sociology around the theme of self-reflexivity and "observing the observer". These themes are developed very explicitly in texts such as Theories of Distinction and Essays on Self-Reference, but also in his magnificent and dense work Social Systems, where he argues, among other things, that a theory of society must also self-reflexively account for its own claims. Following the obscurantist mathematician Spencer-Brown, Luhmann argues that we can't observe anything prior to drawing a distinction. For instance, we might draw a circle on a piece of paper, thereby distinguishing an outside and an inside. Once a distinction has been drawn, it becomes possible to indicate things on the basis of the distinction (I can now say something is inside or outside). The key point is that the distinction is on the side of the observer, not the thing itself. From this Luhmann draws the conclusion that we can only have system-specific knowledge and can never know the world as such. I follow Luhmann part of the way, however, my criticism has been that the conclusion he draws from this line of reasoning repeats the representationalist tradition in epistemology, assuming that there's a world "out there" in itself that can never be known-- he often draws skeptical conclusions from his sociological work --and that Hegel's critique of the ding-an-sich or thing in itself shows why there is no thing in itself. Nonetheless, Luhmann provides a number of readily available tools for handling these issues of self-reference.

On the other side of the spectrum, it seems to me that this discussion can be profitably situated by taking a page from the Marxo-Hegelian playbook. Marx argues that each age develops a specific epistemology and ontology on the basis of its economics. I am not sure that I'm ready to follow Marx all the way with his economic determinism, but what makes Marx of interest here is that he doesn't simply argue that an epistemology or ontology is wrong or mistaken, but shows how these philosophies are individuated as solutions to a problem (here and here) within a particular socio-historical field. For instance, when an analyst approaches the fantasy of an analysand, he does not do so by showing how it is a distorted representation of reality or falsehood. After all, for Lacan reality is framed by fantasy and thus functions like a Luhmannian distinction or a window through which the subject selects between what is relevant and mere noise where desire is concerned. Rather, analysis proceeds as the analysand comes to discover the manner in which the fantasy (which very well might never be discussed as a fantasy) resolves a certain deadlock with regard to the desire of the Other or solves a particular problem of desire for the analysand. In short, fantasy is not treated as an error. Similarly, the philosophical and theoretical formations of history could productively be approached not in terms of the error/non-error distinction, but as a series of individuations responding to particular sets of problems. Hopefully I have heard some of what is in N.Pepperell's marvellous posts.