The claim is frequently made that, as cities become loaded up with information and communications technology and a resultant profusion of data, so they are becoming sentient. But what might this mean? This paper offers some insights into this claim by, first of all, reworking the notion of the social as a spatial complex of ‘outstincts’. That makes it possible, secondly, to reconsider what a city which is aware of itself might look like, both by examining what kinds of technological (...) practices are becoming commonplace and by considering the particular case of spatial awareness. In turn, this leads to a third rumination on how cities might become aware as different kinds of sprite, channelling outstincts in spatially variable ways. Whatever the case, it is clear that new technical-artistic interventions are required if these sprites are not to become simply servants of the security–entertainment complex. Some of these interventions are examined in the fourth part of the paper. (shrink)

My thinking in this essay, written in 1977, reflects the 1968 Wenner-Gren Conference on Conscious Purpose and Human Adaptation, organized by Gregory, about which I wrote Our Own Metaphor, as well as later conversations, but I had not yet worked with Gregory on Mind and Nature. Here, I explore Gregory’s idiosyncratic definitions of evocative terms like “love”, “mind”, and “wisdom” in terms of a cybernetically-based epistemology. The style and context are reflective of his Father-Daughter “metalogues”, composed to explore concepts he (...) was not yet ready to define fully, one of which is quoted as an introduction. Most of the sub-headings have been added. (shrink)

The question has long confounded philosophers and scientists, and it is this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness that Evan ...

A re-issue of Gregory Bateson's classic work. It summarizes Bateson's thinking on the subject of the patterns that connect living beings to each other and to their environment.

Reclaiming the humanistic role of architecture in the age of technology: an examination of architecture's indispensable role as a cultural force throughout history.

This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances.

_The Phenomenological Mind_ is the first book to properly introduce fundamental questions about the mind from the perspective of phenomenology. Key questions and topics covered include: • what is phenomenology? • naturalizing phenomenology and the cognitive sciences • phenomenology and consciousness • consciousness and self-consciousness • time and consciousness • intentionality • the embodied mind • action • knowledge of other minds • situated and extended minds • phenomenology and personal identity. This second edition includes a new preface, and revised (...) and improved chapters. Also included are helpful features such as chapter summaries, guides to further reading, and a glossary, making _The Phenomenological Mind_ an ideal introduction to key concepts in phenomenology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

While the relationship between ethics and design is usually thought of in terms of the application of the former to the latter, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can authoritatively guide design practice. Depending which theories or ideas we refer to we receive different guidance as to what to do. Indeed, design may have as much to contribute to ethical theory as vice versa. This essay builds connections between design and ethics, looking to (...) the similarities of structure between wicked problems in design and those dilemmas that are of central concern in normative ethical theory. Understanding design and ethics in mutual terms, ethical questions in design need not be understood in terms of external limitations or trade offs between competing priorities. Moreover, the way designers cope with the ethical challenges presented by wicked problems may inform how we approach complex ethical challenges in other contexts, including some of those that arise within ethical discourse itself. (shrink)

Context: Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana worked closely together for several short episodes and wrote joint publications during the 1970s and 1980s. After that their respective paths in life diverged. Problem: What is the common ground and what are the differences between these two authors with respect to their lives and aims? Method: The author reconstructs their common history in the form of personal reflections and conversations with Varela. Results: The personal reflections reveal the intellectual path Maturana took to develop (...) his way of thinking, in particular his fascination with explanatory processes and the phenomenon of life. The conversations with Varela portray him as a man of great “cognitive autonomy,” whose career started with the intention to study “psychism in the universe.” For Varela it seemed possible, through meditation, to reach transcendental reality as something that exists externally to the living of human beings and that can be known as such. Maturana, by contrast, claims that there is no way to refer to such a universal truth. Rather, human beings generate all the worlds they live in. Implications: While the two men collaborated in both teaching and writing, they eventually created two different constructivist approaches driven by a different set of questions. Constructivist content: Both Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela have decisively contributed to constructivist approaches. (shrink)

The answers to these two questions would have been obvious years ago: Human beings, of course, machines are instruments of human design! But now days when we speak so much of progress, science and technology as if progress, science and technology were in themselves values to be venerated, there are many people that think that machines as they become more and more complex and intelligent through human design, may in fact become alive so that they may supplant us as a (...) natural outcome of that very venerated progress and expansion of intelligence. Also many people seems to think that evolution is changing its nature so that technology is becoming the guiding force in the flow of the cosmic change in relation to us. I do not hold this view. I do not look at progress, science or technology as if they were values in themselves, nor do I think that biological or cosmic evolution is changing its nature or character. I think that the question that we human beings must face is that of what do we want to happen to us, not a question of knowledge or progress. The question that we must face is not about the relation of biology with technology, or about the relation between art and technology, nor about the relation between knowledge and reality, nor even about whether or not metadesign shapes our brains. I think that the question that we must face at this moment of our history is about our desires and about whether we want or not to be responsible of our desires. (shrink)