Cybernetics And Human Knowing. Vol. 13, nos. 3-4, pp. 74-86

Cybernetic Self and Self-Observationin Email

Anis Pervez1

Cybernetics provides one fundamental understanding of the way the self is marked and observed.Second-order cybernetics, complemented with the theory of the form of law and autopoiesis, is usedin this paper by arguing that the self is the creation of making distinction, which is humanperformance; and that the self is observed by others as well as self-referentially observed by the self.Concepts of orienting behavior and externalization of knowledge are used while a section is devotedto an understanding of performance. Humans’ marking over email is a corpus that shows how theself-observation of self is actually possible.

Introduction

Revealing the mystery of self, what is self and how the self is constructed, has beenthe focus of human thinking since humans began to think reflexively on their ownconstructions and actions, and seeing others observing them. Metaphysic’scontribution in understanding self has probably made the mystery even more complex,which does not shade light on a definite path of thinking. Sociologists G. H. Mead andothers, offer a context to understand the self from a social perspective whilepsychology endeavors to investigate the deep down psychic domain of self. Most ofthe disciplines are self-contained within their own disciplinary boundary and theyonly provide a partial understanding. Second-order cybernetics offers a moreencompassing but basic comprehension of self. Cybernetics considers self as anautopoietic system that comes into being by observing others observing the self andby observing self-performance. This paper will argue that both self and other areobservers of each others actions or performance. Their relationship is recursivelyorganized that causes the construction and evolution of self. Maturana’s autopoiesistogether with Spencer-Brown’s theory of the laws of form will be used as the coretheoretical support to develop a cybernetic or self-observing understanding of self.Later, a section will be developed to see the way performance in email facilitates self-observation and a clue for a cybernetic understanding of self.

Self: A Dispute

There are disputes and controversies about whether the idea of self is fictional oractual. According to Canfield (1990), the self as a fiction holds that self is a phantasyby-product of man’s life in society. This idea was prominent in the writings of Mead

1. Indiana University Bloomington, 800 N Union, Apt 704, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA Email: anispervez@gmail.com

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(1934) and Cooley (1968) and in the works of Wittgenstein who treated self asillusory. It is a causal explanation that makes self exists only in reference to a contextthat is society. Society does not merely construct self; it also works as the mirror forself to be viewed. Self is thus understood as a relationship between self and other,which means the self becomes the idea one has of one’s relationships with others whocontinue to sustain, support and satisfy the self. In other words, this view of self positsan interaction between self and other that involves rules for internalization and formsfor externalization. Contrary to this society-centric understanding of self is thesolipsistic understanding of self, which holds that I am the world. This is an idea thatis predominant in the Hindu philosophy where one claims a selfless self (i.e., aunification of self and the universe). It denies the world and the self. A champion indeveloping a solipsistic theory of self is Bharathari, an Indian philosopher of languageof the fifth century AD, who claims that our thought is structureless. He says, “We donot investigate the real nature of that [the word-meaning] which [obviously] has aform of its own. It is only when a thing [the meaning of sentence] does not have sucha form that we seek for its essential nature” (Davis, 1988, p. 32). By denying form,Bharathari also denies structure and as such any reference which is a prerequisite fordeveloping a fictional concept of self. For Hindus, language is a hindrance thatdevelops obstacles to our evolution and thus imprisons us in a concept of self that hasbeen developed by the Western philosophers.

Self as fiction serves the becomingness of a person, while the solipsistic notion ofself deconstructs the society centric evolution of a person into a formless essence. Theformer view takes the presence of the other as the prerequisite for self to beconstructed, the latter denies the existence of the other in order for the self to existwithout any form and content. Solipsism does not need any expression and neitherdoes it have any need for observation.

For self to be expressed and to be observed, it needs a metamorphosis from ametaphysical idea to a semiotic and linguistic expression. Here lies the clue for self tobecome a performer and an observer. Semiotic understanding of self is indexed in thelinguistic form of I. I denotes self for whom You is an other. I is open to You forobservation as I represents itself in a web of signs. Performance is a marking of selfthat comes into being by a semiotic process: gesture, sound, speech and writings.Thus, as an externalizing being, self is a sign.

Self understood as sign, as a physical body making gestures and as an extendedrepresentation in a form of audio and visual signs, is open for observation. Whereasfirst-order observation sees self as system observed by others, second-orderobservation emphasizes the fact that self observes the other as an observing system.An example is the paper I am writing now. My writing is a proof and extension ofmyself through which I will be observed by those who will be reading this paper: afirst order observation. I am conscious about my target audience, their expectationsthat sets a boundary around the content and form of what I am writing. In other words,in my way of becoming myself I am aware of being observed. My consciousness ofbeing observed is actually my act of observing an observing system observing me,

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which is a second-order observation. Two modes of observation, the cybernetics ofobserved system and the cybernetics of observing system, weave a relationshipwithout which self cannot come into being. The self’s becomingness in this crossroadof observation is what constitutes the essence of performance.

Performance

Even in silence we are not silent. We cannot bracket off our thought; we still think andtalk to ourselves. So long as we are awake, a world composed of audio and visualsigns seem to frame our consciousness, actions and communication. We communicatewith the world external to our mind and body, but we also interact with our body andour mind. Mediated by signs, our communication does not cease even when we areasleep. Signs help us enter into a world when we dream; even when we do not dream,our brain, the center of the nervous system, coordinates our physical functions bysending signals to different parts and organs of our body. Living is the continuousprocess of internalizing the world and externalizing ourselves. In other words, humanbeings are always in a flow of exchanging the signs and signals that make livingpossible. We reflect the world we live in while simultaneously representing our selvesto that world and to ourselves. The whole process is a process of performanceactualized by signs. So, living is performance that requires signs to producemeaningful effects.

Some performance theories focus on practice and competence, while others limitattention to the poetics of human actions. A Goffmanian perspective reduces humanityto an act of performance. To be human is to perform, like an actor, before audienceswhom we con into accepting us as being what we try to appear to be. For Goffman(1982), humanity is the costume we wear, the stage on which we perform, and the waywe read whatever script we are handed. For this reason, people cannot be understoodapart from the greater social context in which they are situated. Human activities arenot simple manifestations of personality or “inner” character. Rather, real socialaction, which is performance, is a complex exchange of symbols and meaningsbetween people. A Goffmanian perspective on performance shows what makes societypossible while making us tempted to feel how involuntary a life one may have to liveby performing in this way.

According to Bauman and Briggs (1997), performance is the enactment of poeticfunction, which is a highly reflexive mode of communication. Criticizing the falseobjectivity of text, something similar to the criticism of the metaphysics of presence ascriticized by deconstructive philosophers like Derrida and others, they shift a one-steprelationship of text to context to a multiple and multidirectional relationship thatadvances the progression from text to context to entextualization anddecontextualization. According to them,

Performance puts the act of speaking on display—objectifies it, lifts it to a degree from its internalsetting and opens it to scrutiny by an audience. Performance heightens awareness of the act ofspeaking and licenses the audience to evaluate the skill and effectiveness of the performer’s

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accomplishment. By its very nature, then, performance potentates decontextualization. (Bauman &Briggs, 1997, p. 243)

This is an agent-centered view of performance. Text produced in a given context maybe encontextualized in a different frame of reference, which may, again, entail theemergent structure of a new context. Bauman and Briggs see six categories of contextof which individual context and context of situation are important to generate andregenerate different frames that shape and reshape the context of meaning andmeaning itself. Thus, changes in context lead to further encontextualization that makesthe space for an emerging horizon. Performance as an emerging horizon is an infiniteprocess. Therefore, the meaning of Mahabharata is not framed in a rigid Vedantichorizon of Indian society of 5000 BC. With a change in social context, or the differentways in which individuals comprehend text, different meanings may be sparked fromMahabharata, resulting in significantly different entextualization. The emerginghorizon of performance makes performance reflexive and as such an artful act. Seen inthis way performance makes us situated and existential, while simultaneouslyreflexive and becoming.

Despite a number of contradictory approaches to the understanding ofperformance, it is clear that the fundamental point in performance is its beingobservable. Simply, performance is an act done by someone that is observed by others.Performing is actually marking and indicating humans and their actions.Comprehending performance in this simple and fundamental way nests our thinkingto a cybernetic approach, and this way of thinking will, as an output, clear theobscurity that veils the understanding of self.

Cybernetics and Self

Classical cybernetics, the first-order cybernetics, developed by Weiner (1954) soughtto understand the way a system gauges its effect and makes necessary adjustments.Primary emphasis of classical cybernetics was focused on regulation and control in asystem. A cybernetic device would be composed of a sensor, a comparator, and anactivator. The sensor’s task is to provide feedback, positive or negative, to thecomparator to help determine whether the machine is deviating from its own norms. Asystem in its gradual evolution develops a complex network of subsystems andcontinues to interact with different environments. Developing this way, a systembecomes circular and recursive in its regulation and self-maintenance. Thus, acybernetic thinking is a circular way of thinking that challenges the conventional ideathat one thing causes another in a linear way. “Cybernetics, most simply defined, is apart of a general science of pattern and organization. To adopt a cybernetic view is toenter a radically different world of description” (Keeney, 1983, p. 6). By recognizingthe patterns and organizational structure, cybernetics unravels the way a system, inthis case humans, come to construct and maintain their system. Von Foerster (1981)offers the concept of second-order cybernetics that tries to understand how

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observation itself is a cybernetic mechanism with feedback loops between theobserver and observed.2 His view differs from the first-order or the classicalcybernetics that denies any objective observation and hence objective knowledgecould be possible as an observed system that effects and is affected by the observer.This is analogous to the theory of autopoiesis developed by Maturana and Varela(1980) that is built up on a fundamental premise that what we see in another system orin an environment is actually determined by our own makeup and biography.

Autopoietic epistemology defines observation as primarily a self-observation thatfunctions in combination with referring to something else different from the observerherself. According to autopoiesis, the observer defines himself as an entity byspecifying his own domain of interactions and is able to always remain an observer ofthese interactions. Thus, all living systems can observe their own observation anddescribe their own descriptions in a recursive loop. The epistemological implicationsof autopoietic self-reference have revolutionized the classical epistemology ofsubject-object and as the way to synthesize the new circular categories emerging inphysics, biology and social sciences. It is further claimed that autopoiesis presentsitself as the new paradigm of postmodern knowledge, valid for natural and socialsciences (Zolo, 1991).

A cybernetics approach to examining narratives leads to an individual perspective,where the individual is seen as the starting point for relationships. It further argues thatany person should become the author of her own story. The story, thus authored byindividuals themselves, brings us to the self and to an inner experience. Authoringone’s own story or narrative is an inner dialogical experience where one talks tooneself (Bertrando, 2000). In authoring one’s own story, one develops texts. Text is apowerful determinant of our identity. Therefore, text can be considered to have thepotential to articulate the way one represents herself.

According to a second-order cybernetic, which is also the case for autopoiesis, theprocess of construction and knowing is understood at a double layer: first, recognizingan organism as an observing system that observes itself being observed by anothersystem or an environment; second, a system’s observation is always self-referential.

An observer observes by drawing distinction. To put it another way, what weperceive always follows from an act of making distinction. Spencer-Brown, in hisrevolutionary work Laws of Form (1972), improvises on George Bool’s algebra andgives it an arithmetical notation to introduce the basic and fundamental human act ofmaking distinction. Spencer-Brown uses

2. A third-order cybernetics has also been proposed. With the realization that a new order is necessary as the importance of diversity of human behavior is increasingly being felt by scholars working in the field. The existing cybernetics explains how the world works and how an individual constructs reality. But none seems to properly answer how people create meaning. Third-order cybernetics will seek to address the question of meaning especially by understanding the way people organize concepts while they are also framed in a social system. He calls it the cybernetics of conceptual systems.

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for a marked and an empty space for an unmarked universe. Making distinction isfundamental, as this is how something is marked, indicated and created. Marking anunmarked world is also the way something emerges from the unconscious intoconscious, for “consciousness itself is the progressive emergence of a self-reflective,recursive cycle of ever more subtle distinctions” (Robertson, 1999, p. 51).

By making distinction, which means marking an unknown whole into a knownand an unknown, form arises that unfolds through different tokens. Engstrom (1999)develops the following sequence to express the process of unfoldment:

Level 0: formless void (wholeness)Level 1: distinctionLevel 2: indication (token) regarding the distinctionLevel 3: arrangements of tokensLevel 4: archetypes (patterns in these arrangements)Level 5: infinity, time, feedback, memoryLevel 6: concrete existence (matter, energy)

Emergence of form, by making distinction that serves as indication, constructs aworld by arranging a set of tokens that we as a social system make sense of by ourobservation. The tokens of indications, the markers, are actually signs according toour popular vocabulary. Luhmann (1999) asserts that signs per se do not exist; ratherthey exist only as forms within the operations of a system that uses them. Signs, in thisline of thought, are prerequisites to make second-order observation possible.

Language works as sign when it mediates our orienting behavior. Orientingbehavior is a term developed by Maturana and Varela (1987) to denote a mode ofcommunication or action through which an organism orients another organism tosome other interaction that both the organisms have in common. “Orienting behavioris thus symbolic; its significance lies not in itself, but in what it connotes” (Mingers,1995, p. 74). Orienting behavior indicates the indication or marks the marking, whichmeans that through orienting behavior humans describe and also describe theirdescriptions. This in turn forms the basis of language. Mingers further says, “As aresult of this process and a concomitant development of the neocortex, organisms havearisen that can make complex and recursive descriptions of descriptions, and thus theybecome observer” (p.74). By repeatedly sharing the distinction and description ofindication, humans become structurally coupled and that is how one can meaningfullyobserve another’s observations.

Kenney (1983) recognizes how close is Spencer-Brown’s idea of indication to theconcept of punctuation developed by Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967).Punctuation when ordered in a sequence actually creates distinctions among a numberof situations, and thus a particular form is developed that indicates a particular modeof reality. Korzybski (1973), working within the domain of general linguistics, arguedhow language as a tool imposes distinction upon our reality. Use of language and theway people punctuate their experience give us an observable corpus to investigate the

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way people observe. This, when recorded, also becomes a resource of the observingpeople to observe themselves. Larsen (1987) calls action or performance recorded onto an external device the externalization of knowledge. He attempts to develop ananthropology of information technology where the concept of externalization ofknowledge plays the pivotal role as a historical process. Larsen shows how knowledge(i.e., humans themselves) is externalized through a semiotic process. It is an ongoingprocess that develops tools and artifacts—language, numbers, printing technology,radio, TV, computer—for humans to externalize themselves over a socially sharedplatform.

Larsen argues that with the process of externalization we externalize the structureand process of knowledge. He elaborates the way language helps us externalizeourselves. For him, “It [language] is a way of living in the world. We try to make ourworld intelligible through making it readable. In fact, we transform our environmentmore and more according to our linguistic vision of the world, so most of our livingbecomes a reading of our own texts” (p. 130). Larsen’s concept of externalization ofknowledge may well be read as analogous to the concept of orienting behavior. Bothemphasize the role of signs, markers, in human interactions or observations ofthemselves.

Roberts (1992) uses Spencer-Brown’s theory of laws of form to examine thequestion of self-reference in literary texts. Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and theobservation of first-, second- and third-order have been elaborately discussed. “Re-entry of form” has also been discussed with examples. It argues that observationmakes the world marked or visible and in first-order observation an observer remainsinvisible or unmarked to himself. But second-order observation, like an author readingher own writing, makes the observer visible to herself. This means that second orderobservation is self-reflection as it involves the difference between observation ofobservation from outside and self-observation from inside. In other words, self-reference and self-observation is defined by the difference between self-reference andexternal-reference. This is conceptualized as the re-entry of form. The second part hisarticle tries to apply laws of form and observation of self in literature. It examinesromantic irony and the self-reference in drama and novel. It shows how the play,which is contained and framed within the play, contains and frames at the same timethe play which contains it.

Any observation is self-referential and that is how a system (an organism or anindividual) by observing itself being observed may ultimately observe a world of itsown. Thus, a self observes itself being distinguished and indicated. Varela (1979), byusing the myth of Uroborus, the snake that swallows its own tail, emphasizes on self-reference’s role in the creation of form that endlessly reaffirms identity. Like theUroborus, all observations recursively make the system reenter itself. Therefore, at theend there exists only one distinction though it may have an unending number ofdistinctions nested in it. Spencer-Brown explains it with a pair principle called Thelaw of condensation and the law of cancellation.

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The law of condensation states that the multiple distinctions of the same typecondense into a single distinction. This is shown as the following mark:

The law of cancellation states that nested distinctions are erased to form a singledistinction, and it can be marked as:

In the context of this paper, we can say that human actions, recorded and not-recorded, are performances that act as orienting behavior. Orienting behavior in itssimplest and fundamental understanding is making indication of the self by creatingdistinctions that is observed by others. Observation of others is, again, observed by theself in a completely self-referential way. Moreover, the self’s indication of self, whenexternalized by tokens and recorded as in the form of writings or videos, are also aclue for self for self-observation. Either way, self observes itself. That means, alldistinctions are cancelled or merged into one distinction that indicates primarily theself. For self other is an environment that observes self. By means of others’observation of self the self self-referentially makes observation of the self.Nevertheless, signs developed by orienting behavior and by virtue of externalizingknowledge, the self enables to make a self-observation of the self. In other words,either the way the self reenters the form (i.e., the fundamental one, which marks andcreates self as a unique system). However, this process that creates self alsoreciprocally creates the other. Therefore, without distinguishing an indication therewon’t be any self nor any other.

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Figure 1: Self-referential observation

The above diagram shows how self observes other’s observation of self. Importanthere is to notice that self does not end its observation on the other’s observation, ratherobservation proceeds further by transcending other’s observation to finally focus onthe self. All in all, the observation is self-referential; it starts and ends on the self. In acase of computer-mediated communication, especially in the case of email, we have abetter clue to understand how the self observes itself.

Computer Mediated Communication

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a different medium for humanperformance and observation of self and other. The most comprehensive idea evokedby the computer concerning reality is suggested by David Bolter’s book Turing’s Man(1986). He argues that the computer is the dominant metaphor of our age thatredefines the human as an information processor and nature itself as information to beprocessed. In a similar tone, Turkle (1984) considers the computer to have become amedium through which the individual may rediscover her personal identity. A Rape inCyberspace by Dibbell (1993) is a canonical article that shows how a textual andpurely virtual rape in cyberspace may raise a feeling of trauma in human minds in thesame way one reacts in a situation of an actual rape. This is evidence of the waytraditional forms of identity may change to a different form where the boundarybetween actual and virtual may be blurred and the line of demarcation between insideand outside is either obscure or, to an extent, deleted. Both arguments—humans asinformation processors and the rediscovery of personal identity—bring forth the needto investigate and understand CMC as a different way of marking and indicatinghumans and their orienting behavior.

Scholarly work on CMC indirectly addresses the nature of performance ordistinguishing indications taking place in this medium. There is work done thatfocuses on the structure of communication taking place in the medium (Jackson,

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1997); linguistic aspects such as turn-taking, coherence, and adjacency (Freenberg,1991; Herring, 1991; Sørensen, 1991); and the psychological aspect (Wallace, 1999).

Freenberg (1991) claims that the most important feature of CMC is its lively andrapid iterations that can be almost as rapid as spoken conversation. He further arguesthat writing has become more like speech in that it is less formal and more personal, asspeech is. Freenberg finds personal presence in writing in CMC. He addresses issuessuch as communication anxiety, the management of identity, and the relationship ofdiscourse that one comes across in computer conferencing. He applies ErvingGoffman’s concept of absorption to analyze the participant’s feeling of involvement incomputer conferencing. He also uses the concept of retrievable forms of discourse,and the notion of written discourse fostering the corresponding spread of a newsubjectivity, developed in the work of McLuhan and Ong. Herring’s (1991)investigation of synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communicationshows a high degree of disrupted adjacency and topic decay in CMC, while anopportunity for heightened interactivity and language play seems present here. Sheclaims that incoherence in the messages may be an attraction for users as it enhancestheir enjoyment of the communication. Her most relevant finding, in the context ofthis paper, is that CMC seems to support hyperpersonal interaction, which is madepossible by reduced feedback and loosened adjacency. Because participants havemore liberty for language play, CMC facilitates a heightened meta-linguisticawareness that is not usually possible in spoken language. Language play and meta-linguistic awareness can be two important tools to investigate the way CMC may helpachieve self-reflexivity. Sørensen (1991) reports on a comparative evaluation ofcomputer mediated-communication as it takes place in a computer conferencingsituation. Sørensen’s main claim is that the interlocutor may control the image onewishes to convey. The written subject, the I, does not necessarily match the identitythat one holds up in face-to-face communication. In other words, CMC provides aspace for different kinds or magnitudes of language games. In this particular situation,Wittgenstein’s theory of language games appears in synchrony with Heidegger’sontology, the phenomenological representation of the world.

While most scholars are focusing on issues of structure of WWW and ofsynchronous communication, a few are directing their attention to emailcommunication. Two of the most thought-provoking works in this field have beendone by Baron (2000) and Crystal (2001). Baron shows how forms of writtenlanguage gradually take a different shape to the way they are now practiced in emailcommunication. The physical parameter of email communication is as durable aswriting, but it is typically unedited as is the case in speech. But Baron argues thatemail helps develop a level of a conversational playing field that encourages personaldisclosure. Crystal sees email users as continually searching for vocabulary todescribe their experiences. In the process, there has developed a new form of languagegame, netspeak, which has a different format and an emerging style.

There is currently no research that has taken into consideration the wayperformance in email may facilitate the performer’s self-observation. Perhaps because

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current research into email communication is dominated by researchers who may notbe willing to transcend traditional disciplinary analysis of format, grammar and style,they do not go beyond text. However, a number of writings turn our attention todifferent issues. The most important perspectives that these new fashions invoke are adialogical understanding of CMC and a cybernetic projection of the field. Martinenez(1999), referring to Bakhtin’s dialogism, examines the issues of identity and body incyberspace, whereas Hayles (1999), from a cybernetic perspective, examines the waycyberspace holds an embodied virtuality. Hayles’ project is to uncover virtual bodiesin cybernetics, literature and informatics, which are not explicit in the way CMCespecially the performance of self and self observation, can be understood from acybernetic perspective.

In the existing literature, the wider corpus of communication and performancecomposed of text, performer, context and situation remains unrevealed andundervalued. An understanding of performance may remain incomplete if it is notreferenced by an understanding of self, for without self there will be no performance.

Email is a visual mode of marking or performance that records our indications inwriting. It is a visual semiotic resource created by humans over a diachronic span oftime. It is not a natural property and differs from gesture—a significant element ofvisual performance with semiotic resources that contribute to meaning—in the waywritten texts are distanced from the human body. Writing’s closest relative is speech.In spite of this closeness, written communication differs from oral communication in anumber of significant ways.

Oral communication is constructive because of its actual or synchronic character:indication takes place in a shared time and shared space, although oral conversationsconducted through electronic media, like telephones and radio sets, are exceptionssince they take place over a distance with no shared space. Indication as action/dialogue is closely interrelated with the immediate context, which consists in part ofthe background knowledge shared between speaker and listener and in part of thephysical and social conditions in which the indication is embedded. Unlike oralcommunication, written communication involves neither shared time nor shared spacebetween the writer (self) and the reader (other). As a result, a written message lacks animmediate context. Contrary to the situation of oral communication, where thespeaker in the communicative act makes use of verbal and non-verbal elements todirect the listener’s thoughts and feelings, the producer of a written text can onlycommunicate via the written language. Written language is usually produced by asingle individual in isolation. The difference between speech and writing is whatmakes written performance significantly different from oral performance. Asdiscussed, being recorded on an external device, written marks are open for extendedand delayed observation. It can be observed by others as well as the self.

It is almost a ritual for email communication to reply to a mail by quoting the text,or part of it, that one received. It makes it possible for one to observe how other(s) areobserving him. One also observes one’s own performance or the way one hasindicated oneself. This is purely a second-order observation. Here the self observes the

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tokens and their arrangements that have made distinction that eventually makes theself possible. Following is an example of an email exchange between my nephew,Tomal and me. I replied to his mail that informed me of his father’s death.

D/ Tomal,It is time to be patient and learn one more time that our lives are totally determined be the will ofnature. Death is the only truth in our life. The body of your abbu [father] has disappeared but he will continue to be with us as a golden part of our memory and source of inspiration to be right when everything else seems wrong. Be his soul in peace. ///mama [uncle]------------------- > mama [uncle] > > a very bad news. i don't know how i writing the mail, abba [father] is also not with us any more.

tomal

Lately our family has suffered from a series of deaths and Tomal’s father was the fifthperson to die. I replied to Tomal’s mail informing me of his father’s death. Receivingthis mail, Tomal should be able to observe how I observed him (i.e., the way I markedsome indication through my choice of words). He is also able to observe how he, asthe initiator of this email exchange, marked his being with particular words of hischoice. He is the self who distinguished his state of being, a part of his self, that I haveobserved as an other, which he is observing. Here Tomal is able to do first-order andsecond-order observation: observing himself being observed and also observing hisown self.

Conclusion

Spencer-Brown offers a simple line of thought in understanding the being by a simplecalculus of marked and unmarked world, which in combination of the theory ofautopoiesis of Maturana and Varela provides a cybernetic approach to unveil themystery of the self. According to this approach, the self comes into being when it ismarked and thus becomes observable. The self is an observing system that observesself-referentially. The self is constructed and evolved by distinction that involvesindication and arrangement of tokens, which in turn aids others to meaningfullyobserve the self. What we observe is a form—patterns and organizations—in thelanguage of cybernetics, but this can also be understood as human actions orperformance.

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Bible, 2004 (detail). Cow 2nd Stomach. 200 x 100 mm.