The Democracy of Objects by Levi R. Bryant

Author:Levi R. Bryant [Bryant, Levi R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027232178
Publisher: Studium Publishing
Published: 2017-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

4.3. Autopoietic and Allopoietic Objects

Returning to the themes of the last chapter, we can now situate the functioning of systems with respect to how they produce and respond to information in terms of virtual proper being and local manifestation. As I observed in 4.1, Maturana and Varela distinguish between autopoietic and allopoietic machines. Autopoietic machines are machines or objects that produce their own elements and “strive” to maintain their organization across time. Our bodies, for example, heal when they are cut. The key feature of autopoietic machines is that they produce themselves. Not only do autopoietic machines constitute their own elements, but they paradoxically constitute their own elements through interactions among their elements. By contrast, allopoietic machines are machines produced by something else. Generally the domain of allopoietic machines refers to inanimate objects. Here it’s worth noting that the distinction between autopoietic objects and allopoietic objects is not a hard and fast or absolute distinction, but is probably a distinction that involves a variety of gradations or intermediaries.

Despite the differences between allopoietic machines and autopoietic machines, I want to argue that both undergo actualizations through information and both involve system/environment distinctions that constitute their relations to other objects. Here a major difference between autopoietic machines and allopoietic machines would be that allopoietic machines can only undergo actualization through information, whereas autopoietic machines can both be actualized in a particular way through information and can actualize themselves in particular ways through ongoing operations internal to their being. Here it might appear strange to speak of information in relation to allopoietic or inanimate objects. However, we must recall that information is neither meaning, nor is information a message exchanged between objects. Rather, as we have seen, information is a difference that makes the difference or an event that selects a system state. In this regard, there is no reason to restrict information to autopoietic objects, for such events take place within allopoietic objects as well.

Before proceeding to discuss the differences between how these two types of objects relate to information, it is important to make some points regarding the system/environment distinction as it is deployed in autopoietic theory. Maturana, Varela, and Luhmann tend to speak of the distinction between system and environment as a distinction that systems draw such that this distinction allows systems to obser ve their environment. In my view, these are conventions that should be abandoned, or rather, that should be evoked in highly system-specific contexts. Rather than claiming that systems draw distinctions between themselves and their environment— implying that there’s a homunculus that does the drawing—we should instead say that systems are their distinction or form. Here it will be recalled that “form”, as Spencer-Brown understands it, is the unity of the marked and unmarked space produced by a distinction. The distinction that generates the marked and unmarked space is, of course, self-referential in the sense that it belongs to one side of the distinction: the system. Insofar as objects are autonomous and independent, they are necessarily self- referential in that their separation from the environment is produced by the object itself.

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