Re: Eco-VEMS

From: Bob Artigiani <[email protected]>
Date: Wed 14 Oct 1998 - 15:36:15 CEST

Morris--Thanks for the response. If this does not get to the rest of the mailing list and you can forward it easily, please do.

You have my scheme down properly and you are debating it on solid grounds. Thank you for taking the time to articulate and think about it.

However, I will stick with the position taken. It seems to me that the difference in stature you mention reflects biological information. It does not much address the jacks-of-all-trades issue, save for the noted inability of males to have children. Wh
at I am talking about in terms of trades is feeding activities, perhaps tool making, food distributing, raiding, etc. What anthropologists say is that these sorts of jobs are carried on by all members of bands indiscriminately; they are not specialized.
 So I would see these activities as relating to individual survival. Thus a band is essentially an aggregation of individuals, a sum of its parts.

I introduce VEMs when there is a reason for them. To me, there is no need for VEMs--evaluations of the effects of actions on their contexts--when the band is an aggregation rather than a system. VEMs "emerge" when a whole greater than the sum of its pa
rts self-organizes--when there is a set of mutually-interdependent relations upon which all depend. VEMs relate to constructed reality, but the reality constructed is the society VEMs map. I am not saying that the natural world itself is socially constr
ucted--although our shared knowledge of it is. But I am saying that there is a constructed social reality and that VEMs appear after this new level of reality emerges.

The important thing for me here is that we have a science able to track the creation of new levels of reality, which require new languages to describe them.
I am, otherwise, afraid we need to reduce VEMs to biology, which I oppose as much as I oppose reducing biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, and physics to particles.

If you look at many ancient myths, such as the Adam and Eve story, you can see a sense of the symmetry-breaking discontinuity associated with the emergence of VEMs being captured. VERY CRUDELY: The Garden = Nature; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
 = the creation of VEMs; the serpent = the symbol of agriculture; and Eve = the women who invented agriculture. The alienation from the Garden = an irreversible because thermodynamic process--there is more entropy produced by the organization of coercive
 cooperation via specialization, agriculture, or whatever.

There shold be a reason for this qualitative change occurring: The complex System that an organized society is has a map of itself, which is J.N. Nicholis's definition of complexity, and operating complex systems requires distributing processing up to a
point, at least--VEMs are the symbols which can be present in the minds pf all and which allow them to anticipate how different actions will affect the whole.

The important thing here is that VEMs map the MEANING--the system-level effects--of actions. Thus, VEMs transcend individuals and should only emerge with the self-organization of a system. VEMs are how social systems store knowledge of themselves in the
mselves. External symbolic storage systems, VEMs are new ways to store information because they record the reduced uncertainty of a new observer--the integrated social whole.

Now once such a level exists it will both develop its own logic and co-evolve with the people whose behaviors constitute a society and its environment. The ability to track how VEMs change over time through experience is also very important to any comple
te treatment of history, so it is valuable on those grounds. But just as importantly, if VEMs and people co-evolve--and people and other things co-evolve, like plants and animals--then why should the VEMs not influence the people? It is even possible, I
 propose, that the logical implications of a VEM system could develop behavioral propensities which stress people and from which they turn away. The Self is an example of this, and there is, again, good evidence that people in historical time developed a
 sense of Self, which was not present from the beginning or from nature. My favorite examples are Augustine and Cellini.

I need not fall on my sword over the specifics, but I am perplexed about how we can respect the differences between the natural and human sciences if we, in fact, do not recognize that there is something present in social realities that cannot be explaine
d by biology, chemistry, physics.

Bob Artigiani

>>> Morris Villarroel by way of marijuan@posta.unizar.es <morris@posta.unizar.es> 10/13 8:54 AM >>>
Dear Bob,

First I would like to express that I generally agree with your idea of VEMS
and its role in complex societies. As you have pointed out yourself
however, the situation gets complicated when we refer to the evolution of
VEMS and the creation of social information from archaic human groups. From
my background in evolutionary biology I would emphasize the importance of
mating systems on the emergence on social networks. From this point of view
"jack of all trades" are unnecessary and we may hypothesize that organized
groups have been around since the inception of anisogamy (the creation of
disproportionately different sized gametes, i.e. females and males). Not to
mention the organization automatically derived from stages in the life
cycle (age classes: child, adolescent, warrior, wisewoman).

So, I would not agree that there is LESS social information in the archaic
bands. A social network can probably be found in any primitive "natural"
group (probably a hierarchy) which exerts a top down effect on individuals
(i.e. "coercive cooperation") based on mating priority/choices and personal
accumulation of knowledge about the world.

On another point, in your recent emails, as well as you recent publication
in the Biosystems Special Issue (Vienna conference) I notice a bit of a
social information paradox. If I understand correctly, Step 1. is that the
individuals interact somehow (either by hunting together or raids.. as in
your last email) and form a social network. Step 2. this network advances
in communicating information by rituals and rites and eventually to VEMS.
Step 3. (here is the confusing part) the VEMS in turn may force the
individual to become more self-conscious and in turn affect the VEM. If I
erase step 1. (by my first point of mating systems) VEMS are ubiquitous and
natural and have not been "created" per se.

Yours,
Morris

P.S. Pedro, sorry about the confusion with my present second address. It
actually had posta.unizar.es on it for a reason though, since I have been
collaborating with some biochem. people from the University of Zaragoza. In
fact, I may even move my post-doc there quite soon so I can visit you and
discuss this personally!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
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Received on Wed Oct 14 12:52:19 1998

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