THE DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES OF ACTION. (DRAFT).

1. ACTION AND OBSERVATION.

How can human action be so opaque in some respects? And yet, how can it be so transparent in many everyday situations? The consideration of this apparent contradiction might be a good starting point to tackle the important theoretical issue posed by the relationship between action and observation. On the one hand, action is characteristically opaque because it overrides all observational frames that we can postulate in order to explain it. On the other hand, action is usually transparent in many contexts of everyday life because we can understand it by means of a peculiar insight, which seems specifically designed to comprehend action 'from the inside'.

On closer inspection, the resistance that action puts up to observation comes from a very basic fact: observation, as it is understood by modern science, presupposes the objectivity of the observed. And action is not an 'objective' phenomenon, but the place in which any objectivity originates. Action is not, primarily, a sort of external behaviour that produces 'objective' changes in an 'objective' world -this is just the 'outward' aspect of action: the interface through which action shows itself to an external observer. Action is something previous to, and presupposed by, any conscious external behaviour: it is, first and foremost, a process of generating a world through an interpretation. A world in which action can make sense for a given subject, and be implemented by means of adequate indications, whose possible executions would certainly occur -in the eyes of a perceptive observer- in 'the objective world' -which in turn would be a creation of this observer's interpretive capabilities.

'Interpretations' and 'indications' are the fundamental steps of any process of action -in the sense of human action, conscious action, agency. The 'execution' of action -its physical implementation by means of sensorimotor processes- does not belong to the sphere of agency proper, but to the domain of physical circumstances -including the human body- which agency is usually coupled to.

An 'interpretation' moulds a given circumstance according to some intention. This moulding of the circumstance as it is focused by the intentionality of some subject brings forth a situation. Any situation is defined by two poles or aspects, related by the intentional link sustaining the situation: a subjective pole -what the subject is doing in the situation: hating, promising, observing...- and an objective pole -the object or configuration of objects which the subject's intention points to.

The 'objective aspect' of a situation entails several possibilities, any of which can be actualised by an indication of the subject. If my situation is 'choosing my meal in a restaurant', I can indicate any of the dishes supplied in the menu -or any combination of them. A situation must always offer a plurality of possibilities that the subject can indicate -at least imaginarily, and including the possibility to abandon the situation. Otherwise, the situation would be irrelevant from an agential point of view.

Different interpretations entail distinct sets of indications, and the actualisation of an indication -be it real or imaginary- changes the situation into another one. Thus situations produce new situations through successive interpretations and indications.

When assuming this perspective on agency, observation appears as a specific mode of action: Observation would be a sort of action in which the subject -the agent- lets the objective aspect of the situation -an aspect defined through a specific interpretation- self-indicate itself. This process of self-indication of the situation's object, however, does not mean that the observer adopts a passive attitude. In order to let the object self-indicate itself, the subject must actively create an observational fixed point. This fixed point allowing observation generates an object endowed with the features of classical objectivity. But this happens at a price: this observational fixed point 'freezes' the subject as an intentional agent, in such a way that he cannot comprehend that object in agential terms -this would mean the destruction of the observational fixed point.

In other words: observation is only possible from a unique point of view -from a unique interpretation. The objective reality observed self-indicates itself within this interpretation. But in so far as the observer is 'frozen' as an intentional agent by having to keep that interpretation, he cannot understand that object -that is to say: he cannot reflectively imagine the object in the process, not only of self-indicating itself, but of self-interpreting itself as well.

According to this viewpoint, observation is a mode of action. More precisely, it is a restricted mode of action in which the agent restrict his capabilities to interpret reality -by assuming a unique 'official interpretation'-, and also restricts the ability of such reality to self-interpret itself, and to enter in a process of intentional exchanges with that agent -in a process of ontological, not only linguistic, conversation.

2. THE INTENTIONAL LIMITS OF ACTION.

I have already suggested that all action presupposes an intention which links the subjective aspect of such an action to its objective aspect, and in fact constitutes the latter. To stress this constitutive role of intention is essential for my argument. We humans do not have access to reality 'in itself', but to the shadows that our intentional focus forces reality to project. Objects inevitably are such shadows, which are always different, depending on the intentional projection point that we define as agents, as conscious subjects. Intentional points of view are infinite in number, for all practical purposes, and reality has so many nooks and cracks that its projections are always different.

The same reality 'in itself' produces very different objects (different 'shadows') as a result of being projected from diverse intentional foci. That is why any object constituted by a certain intentionality is an evanescent reality. In the first place, the 'reality in itself' corresponding to that object is going to show and/or develop features unexpected and unintended for the intentional subject constituting it. For instance, we are going to discover that the orbits of the planets are not circles, after all; or we are likely to realise that our car is getting older quicker than we thought.

In the second place, an intentional object 'loses information'-blurs or, better, changes its definition- when it goes through an 'intentional boundary'. That is to say, when it is adopted as intentional object by another agent -by another intentionality. I can have a very distinct concept of a chair, but if I try to communicate that concept to some other person, it is not going to be exactly reproduced by that person. This loss of information does not occur just as a consequence of the inevitable inefficiencies of any process of communication -of 'transmission of a message'. It is an ontological problem, not (just) a communicational one: different subjects cannot constitute identical objects.

This evanescent nature of intentional objects imposes strong limitations to the efficacy of human action. Agential objects are in a way like Aristotelian 'matter': they easily yield to the intention of the subject -which would be equivalent to Aristotle's 'form'-, but they are also prepared to betray that intention, putting on the 'form' required by other intentional subjects.

3. THE INTENTIONAL DISSIPATION OF ACTION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS.

In an environment of (human) social interaction, the actions of different agents necessarily interfere with each other, and mutually refract and degrade the individual intentionalities these actions represent. Therefore, in the domain of social interaction, human action -and human intentionality- inevitably undergoes a process of dissipation, similar to the processes of dissipation of energy in physical systems.

The process of intentional dissipation of action is an inevitable outcome of human agency even when this agency is considered at an individual level. But only when human agency is viewed as a social process, involving a plurality of individuals, the phenomenon of intentional dissipation of action shows its real importance as an organisational resource.

At an individual level, the processes of intentional dissipation of action only appear as a negative factor, as an inevitable loss which the agent can only counterbalance by means of new intentional processes. The errors, insufficiencies and perverse effects of individual human action can only be rectified through new actions (although agential dissipation can also generate serendipitous effects, which come as a pleasing surprise to the agent; but unfortunately this outcome is pretty rare).

In a way, we do have a biography because life forces us to navigate through this process of intentional dissipation of our action, and hence we must replace our intentional losses (which can be conceived as 'information' abandoning our intentional system) by means of new intentional interpretations.

Now, when considered at an individual level, those interpretations, whatever different and distinct in time, are connected by our consciousness ("I thought that... now I see that..."). The main task of an individual consciousness is, in point of fact, to constantly reconstruct its intentional losses, keeping the connectivity of its mental space intact. So, at the individual level the processes of intentional dissipation of action are counterbalanced by means of the connectivity of human consciousness.

At the social level this internal connectivity disappears. We have no direct, internal access to other people's minds and consequently we can only infer the conscious processes of those people, but always from our own domain of consciousness. Human social space is not consciously connected: there is no 'conscience collective'. However, this space is reflectively connected: it is connected through the putative reflection, in each individual consciousness, of other conscious minds.

This is the reason why human society may be viewed as an outcome of human action, but certainly not as the result of human intention. In this respect, a comparison with the individual level of agency -which actually do not exists in reality, but only as an analytic tool- might be revealing. An individual's biography is to a great extent the result of this individual's actions; but it is not so clear that such biography be the outcome of his intentions. In the case of human society, this distinction is much more marked. Because human intention, when considered at a social level, dissipates itself without the possibility of being reconstructed by a unitary intentionality -by a unified space of consciousness.

Now, if any social environment is, to some extent, a domain of intentional dissipation of action, how can social life be so regular and predictable? How can society be generated as an fairly organised reality through the actions of the individuals, when those actions do not have a common intentional frame?

In a way, human society becomes a 'sui generis' reality through this gap between human action and human intention. If human action were not affected by the phenomenon of intentional dissipation, and the reflective capabilities of human minds were unrestricted, we would all inhabit a common, perfectly intersubjective social reality, equally grasped by our conscious minds, which would identically reflect each other. Then, human society would be a transparent medium, in which perfect intersubjectivity would amount to full objectivity. Each individual would be able to understand completely his own processes of action and those of others. In other words, human society would be fully defined and synchronised by human consciousness.

On the other hand, if the fact of intentional dissipation would not be present, and the reflective capabilities of human minds would not exist either, human societies would be something similar to trivial cellular automata, 'objectively' (and unconsciously) generating a 'social order' completely beyond their knowledge.

Human social agency performs a very remarkable feat: to synchronise human action by means of idiosyncratic, complex mental processes which partially, but decisively reflect each other, and none of which exhausts the resulting social totality, neither 'subjectively' (by means of consciousness) nor 'objectively' (taking into account all the material processes involved). Human society can be conceived as a set of 'conscious modules' -each individual- in interaction (physical interaction), which through that interaction consciously reflect each other (generate conscious images of each other) and on the basis of this conscious information synchronise their behaviour in the physical world.

Those modules are the 'visible universe' of each individual, on the basis of which individuals act. The unintentional products that are an agential outcome of each module or 'visible universe of actions' may be partially recycled by the others according to their own intentional focus. In this way, a network of unintentional (better, trans-intentional) production and reproduction of objective components of human action can emerge.

This network has potential points of stability, but it would only comply with the notion of autopoiesis in a very loose, degraded sense. Its conditions of stability would frequently be changed by the conscious redefinition of the modules (the visible universes of action) composing it. Hence, the network's components are intrinsically unstable, and yet this network of unintentional outcomes, constituted as a result of the process of intentional dissipation of each module selects stable transintentional interfaces between them which, under some circumstances, are remarkable resistant.

Thus, the organisational stability of human societies is neither fully 'objective' nor totally 'subjective'. It is just the interplay between these two levels that makes room for the peculiar kind of complexity, and the immense potential for the emergence of new structures, which are peculiar of human societies.

How can these structures arise? Human societies are systems always kept in far from equilibrium conditions, from a physical, biological, and psychological point of view. Under such circumstances, the process of intentional dissipation of (human) social action can bring forth not just disorder, but elaborate structures. Human action is driven by some sort of psychological energy, and this is the reason why the dissipation of action cannot lead to inactivity -which would be equivalent to thermal equilibrium. Rather, the dissipation of action is a resource for new agential processes. The important fact, in this respect, is that this resource is not made up of intentional objects, but of the unintentional consequences of the production of such objects, which can furnish the basis for new intentions and new objects. These 'intentional dissipative structures' are equivalent to the dissipative structures that can emerge in physical systems which remain in far from equilibrium conditions as well.

4. THE EMERGENCE OF DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES OF ACTION IN COMPLEX SOCIETIES.

The process of intentional dissipation of action in a social environment plays a fundamental role in the constitution of social structures -those invisible but effective constraints which seem to exist beyond the reach of the individual's will, and constitute the reified aspect of social life, specially present in complex societies. There are many ways in which concurrent action generates objective circumstances that were not aimed at by any agent, but constitute a prerequisite for the further intentional action of any agent acting under those circumstances.

The dissipation of action brings about reified circumstances just because those circumstances are not the product of any agent's intention. This is why such circumstances cannot be intentionally reached and changed by the agents involved, unless they dramatically redefine their interpretations of those circumstances: you can ask somebody to change his action with respect to what he is in a position to perceive, but not regarding what he is unable to grasp. In general, circumstances which are a consequence of processes of intentional dissipation are not directly reconstructible by the subjects who originate them.

While human action keeps an intentional link with its products, social life may be viewed in conversational terms: the consequences of action can be discussed and negotiated with the agents originating them. In other words, social life can be understood adopting a purely interactionist stance. In this intentionally controllable situations, social interaction may be viewed as a process of permanent construction and reconstruction of a dynamic social hologram which would map once and again the conscious mind of each agent into the conscious minds of each agent, thus providing the basis of intentionally coherent interactions among them.

So far as interaction occurs according to the format of natural human interaction, that is to say, as 'face to face interaction', the emergence of intentional dissipative structures -of reified 'objective' social constraints, caused by human action but beyond the reach of human intention- is pretty shallow and unstable. We can consider a simple case of this emergence of dissipative social structures, in a context of purely 'face to face interaction', by looking into the patterns of distribution of students in a classroom along a course as an example. There is no apparent regulation of that distribution, and yet we can observe the emergence of some pretty stable patterns, which usually form very rapidly and keep their general configuration over long periods of time.

The emergence of such patterns is obviously an outcome of the actions performed by the individuals involved, but certainly does not correspond to any of their intentions. Nevertheless, once the pattern has emerged, each individual must face it as an 'objective' constraint which is going to mould his further action -unless he tries to change that constraint by intentional means. This can be done, basically, in two ways: 'objectively' -say, blocking one of the two doors of the classroom-, or 'subjectively' -by mooting the issue and discussing it with all the students concerned. In any case, the attempt to change of the constraint entails a substantial intentional -and psychological- effort.

Usually, we try to change favourably the constraints generated by processes of intentional dissipation of social action, by means of 'objective' or 'subjective' intentional reconstructions of them. However, some of those constraints are the result of very complex processes of intentional dissipation -processes involving many agents, located at a long 'intentional distance' regarding some of the consequences of their actions. In these cases, the costs of reconstructing such structural constraints rise, and it is increasingly unlikely that we are prepared to face it.

The intentional inaccessibility of the structural constraints generated by social interaction grows as this interaction adopts new formats, different from the format of interaction original and basic for our species -face to face interaction. Take the case of writing. The relationship between writer and reader through text certainly is a form of interaction. But it defines an interactive format very different from face to face interaction. Whereas this latter form of interaction presupposes a common context -defined by the physical coexistence of each agent in a given space and time-, writing allows 'interactions at a distance' -interaction which can connect very distant places and times, and hence very different interactive contexts. This fact furthers the 'intentional inaccessibility' of interactions mediated by means of writing: In general, agents related through writing may not be mutually accessible to their reciprocal requests and consequently they may have no channel to negotiate their respective intentions.

Writing is a clear example of what might be called a 'device of virtual interaction'. In a way, the history of civilisation is the history of the invention and diffusion of 'virtual interaction devices'. These are all sort of artefacts which set up a medium of interaction different and, in some aspects, more powerful than face to face interaction.

There are other devices of virtual interaction that are in some aspects even more powerful. For instance, money. Through the use of money in a market economy, we can interact with people we have never seen, people whose existence we do not even know, and who do not know about our own existence either. The relationship between the individuals interacting in a market usually is a relationship of almost complete intentional opacity. When I sell, say, steel, I do not know who is going to use, eventually, that iron, and whether it is going to be used to make ploughs or cannons. To some extent, the market is an intentional black box. I just know that a given supply of some commodity is met by a specific demand of it. I do not know, in general, the intentional meaning -the kind of use- this commodity is going to acquire on the other side of the exchange process.

Money is at the same time the instrument, the medium and the symbol of this intentional opacity. At the beginning of the capitalist era, Columbus expressed in enthusiastic terms this magic of money: "gold is most excellent: from gold you can make bullion, and with it, whoever has it does anything he wants in the world, up to the point of throwing souls into paradise". The point is that this general utility of money would not be possible without the intentional blur -the intentional dissipation or loss- that goods undergo when exchanged in a market. The separation between the context of production and the context of use of those goods -between the respective intentional universes of producers and consumers- is a prerequisite for the emergence of a generalised market of goods, and for the appearance of money as a general measure of value and a means of exchange in that market.

This loss of intentional communication between the individual agents interacting in a developed market becomes evident when we compare their situation to another corresponding to a stage which is previous in the course of economic development: bargaining. A bargaining process in an attempt to communicate -or, rather, for strategic reasons, to disguise; but disguising your own intentions in front of somebody else is a form of communication- the intentional meaning of some good for the buyer -and the intentional meaning for the seller of the corresponding amount of money to be paid for that good. Thus, the buyer tries to show that his interest in that good is minimal, whereas the seller shows off handfuls of banknotes, indicating that he is not in urgent need of money. They both try to probe -to reproduce mentally- the intentional universe of each other.

The situation is very different in a developed market, in which the relationships between the economic agents are anonymous and even difficult to trace. The reciprocal, reflective reproduction of the intentional universes of those agents becomes impossible. But this impossibility forces the agents to act on the basis of 'objective' information, information that transforms the 'objective' results of some accumulation of intentional actions as an indicator of their own opportunities as economic agents. For instance, a shopkeeper can observe the amount of clients that some other shop in the neighbourhood has on Sundays in order to decide to open these days as well. The coincidence of that substantial number of people going to that shop on Sundays is an entirely unintentional effect of those people's actions. And yet, it provides information on the basis of which an economic agent can make useful decisions.

When an agent is capable to transform processes of intentional dissipation of other people's actions -the processes producing unintended, 'objective' effects of those actions- into 'objective indicators' of such actions, this agent is capable to transform an intentional dissipative process into an informational process (a process of production of agential information) steered by his own intentionality.

The capability to observe those processes of intentional dissipation, and to act according to the information generated through this observation is of paramount importance in the process of constitution of human society. Because human society not only produces, as a consequence of the processes of intentional dissipation that originate the actions of its individuals, emergent structures. The important fact is that those structures are at least partially visible for at least some of those individuals, who define their action on the basis of their knowledge of such structures. In this way, the dissipative structures of action re-enter the agential domain and make a decisive contribution to the increase of social complexity.

This is the reason why the complexity of modern societies is, to a large extent, the result of the emergence of such 'intentional dissipative structures', which are not the intended product of action, but on the contrary, the involuntary outcome of the dissipation of the intentionality embodied in human action.

Pablo Navarro, página personal