Framing, Framed Mechanisms

Ruyer's own words are sufficient.

A positive reinterpretation of cybernetics free of its mechanistic assumptions.

First and foremost, we must acknowledge that the assembly (in the active sense of the word) of any mechanism is quite different to the assembly (in the passive sense) of the fully constituted and functioning mechanism. Active assembly is the work of consciousness, which creates connections according to a meaning. Passive assembly is the set of connections once they are restored, and automatic assembly can replace con- nections improvised by consciousness.

“But before the assembly was carried out, before the purchase of wires and welding equipment, the connections had to exist already in the constructor’s consciousness. ” What I don't like about this kind of, semi-Platonistic (in the sense of Meno) argument is that it still do not solve the problem of the origin of that “ideal”. The connections had to exist already in the constructor's consciousness, but how did that thing emerged? From learning, maybe. But 

• the outcome of learning seems to involve the ability to recognize something that is universal, while learning itself is wholly particular. This can, maybe, be “explained” by saying that the crude universal that is formed as the outcome of learning is only a blueprint, and when new circumstances arise, the outcome of learning is extrapolated “mechanically”, whatever that means.
• how did the thing that is learned emerged? Inifinite regress. But in this regress there are interesting studies to be made: mythological, anthropological.

But this sort of top-down Platonistic doctrine, of “emanation”, has obvious theological drawbacks (cf. the past chapter of Lovejoy's book). However, at the same time, it seems that it may not really e a problem: while machines continuously “emanate” “lesser consciousness”, what we may call conscious beings generate higher consciousness. This is a philosophical/theological anthropological problem: where to situate conscious beings?

By the way, the whole Platonic system seems to reappear:

the world of meanings and values, the apperception of which is a constituent part of the set, and the world of our space, where it achieves the effect according to the set.

Framing vs Framed#

I seek to achieve an organic state of comfort.

The bold text is the framed part. “I”, the active individuality, and “an organic state of comfort”, its ideal, are the framing part.

The distinction between the active and passive, Aristotelian in its nature, becomes interesting since here what's called active or agent intellect, versus the material or passive intellect, recurs. The agent and the telos that the agent sets for itself constitutes of the active intellect, while the passive intellect - the “auxiliary functioning” - is that of the, say, machine, namely, the framed.

The framing one is not one that “can” achieve, but that “wants to” achieve, voluntarily. Metaphorically people today still wants to reduce all efforts into “a vast set of feedback actions, in which invislble ideals control the already achieved results at every moment”, an classical Laplacian “ideology” that originated from Calvinist doctrine (it is said that Greek materialists and atomicists were already thinking that way but that's a mistake: the concept of law changed).