Complex Systems Summer School

Found a neat four-week annual program offered in Santa Fe and Beijing for post-doc and graduate students interested in 'complex behavior in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems.' The program's website has more details.

Here's some more about what they're offering:

Each school consists of an intensive series of lectures, laboratories, and discussion sessions focusing on foundational ideas, tools, and current topics in complex systems research. These include nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation, scaling theory, information theory and computation theory, adaptation and evolution, network structure and dynamics, adaptive computation techniques, computer modeling tools, and specific applications of these core topics to various disciplines. In addition, participants will formulate and carry out team projects related to topics covered in the school.

Agency and Chaos

(Source: NASA deep space photo)

Agency demands a problem-space exactly as motion demands regulated (observed) space. Motion is distinguished from space by an observer: space is energy. Thus the discovery that space-time (energy) is at once both a pure sea of light waves folding and crashing in infinite variations as well as a discrete, orderly series of predefined, probabilistic signals, is one of the two great conceptual leaps of this century. The discovery that energy in its very essence is fractured (theoretically, i.e., philosophically) due to this 'fundamental' particle/wave duality is the other, as it accounts for the fact that space (energy) is organized by mutual observation. That is, since time (or energy) is 'broken' (theoretically,) space (practically) has a fractalized topology, and this can be thought of as due to the (unmediated) presence of an observer. The observer converges the subject and the object within a deterministic though dimensionally-problematic space (a 'broken' singularity--no longer merely particles or waves...)

An observer can observe himself. Thus if the nature of the universe depends (in a cosmic sense) on our way of looking at it, then the observer can be expected to introduce not only a sort of polyvocity to objects and a recursive circularity to ideas about reality, but furthermore, the observer can even be expected to produce the universe, by 'breaking' space apart. Thus the observer multiply compounds (through infinite reflections) an inexplicable singularity: he or she produces a meta-mapping of the entire universe into an observed image, and accomplishes the image’s re-projection as the coordinating engine for the entire (real!) universe--all this as though the single observer him or herself contained a bounded though actual infinity. This is how a mirror brings about the fundamental meta-problem of science, that is, the infinite ontological difference between truth and knowledge. The irreducible multiplicity of reflection in observation is a reflection of an irreducible ontological rupture: the habitation of the 'broken space' between image and object, the word and the thing, the map and the territory.

There’s a shift: it is rather as though we had been handed a script not with some fictional scenario traced upon it, but in fact a complete list of all the scenes in which we ourselves as individuals would take part, a final list of all the sentences we would ever utter within those scenes, for the rest of our lives. The fractal twist here would be that some outside observer (in this case me!) is handing you the story: thus in observation we find always a broken co-narrative space, a bi-univocal mutual observation which leads to a curious paradoxical reciprocity: I exist in your 'dream' because you exist (to 'dream me') in mine, and vice versa. Thus we become real only through the reading of each others’ dreams.

But our stories or dreams might still be identical even if identity as such were not cosmically or historically stable, that is, whether we are speaking of the integrity of things, or again, our ideas about things. This is our first evidence that the fundamental unpredictability of the observer’s perspective is an indication of a learning intelligence.

With autopoesis, the scientist must truly turn around to look at himself: moreover, we realize we can only make this turn, as it were, when we have been called. Someone shouts your name: neurons fire, the connection is made, your head turns. The programming in this case is generally so complete we can and often do say we are “turning without thinking.” Yet thinking of a sort is certainly occurring: it is not merely as though we consult a dictionary of syllables to determine if the sound uttered matches our name, but certainly at some level some analogous operation must logically be taking place.

While we would like to say we have free will--and though admittedly this is a biased (but revealing) example-- it is obvious the issue of power and will only apply marginally to this extraordinary 'turning' event. What power indeed do I have (within or against) the encounter with the other; what certainty could falsify the hailing from afar of the same? These sorts of considerations lead us to assert that identity is only brought about through a vigorous process of self-questioning, of a certain uncertainty. Our highly-structured interior 'reality' collapses upon itself in the face of the other, though it remains absolute relative to the encounter. But at some level we know our entire (practico-theoretical) 'house of cards' was constructed in vain the moment he opens his mouth in addressing me--and this only by his or her offering of an alternate reality, through his story, which radically splits my universe in twain, into tiny pieces with crooked and uneven edges. The observer who observers another observer splits a splitted universe: into an image I wish the Other to fall neatly back into, which contrasts with and is unsettled by the jagged, chaotic real space in which nothing sticks and everything flows, regardless of the complexity of the (manual, visual or vocal) dialectics we have constructed to balance all the potential opposing forces.

The Other is the problem par excellence, as well as the enigma in a solution, a riddle whose answer is written upon his or her very face. Our blind spot is always ourselves, but this is the scientists’ positivist abyss: we burn a hole in the universe, and thus of our map of the universe, by our very observation of it--we tear our perceptions apart, into pieces, when we decode them; our affections are untrustworthy, subjective, perilous. But isn’t it here that Nietzsche tells us it is most important to trust our senses, that indeed all the great advances in science have resulted from paying careful attention, to the only thing we can pay attention to--the world around us, as it appears to us, including all the potential distortions and disorganizing chaos?

In fact it is in the chaos of fractal space and the turbulence of flowing photons that we shall seek a more or less final resolution of the central difficulty of computer vision, that is, the reconcilation of the visual and the manual. And even perhaps, after a time, we shall finally be able to learn again that special trust which thousands of years of religion and 'civilization' have all but made extinct... how radical, Nietzsche’s thesis on trusting one’s senses! And how much more troubling, when we realize our senses are always sensed for another, that it is only in mutual observation we observe anything at all!

Space and Time

'A universe comes into being when a space is severed into two.'
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela



(Spacetime ripples from a binary star)

Consider an observer in regular space. The observer induces a coordinate plane (or metric) to be imposed, as though from the exterior of the system in question. As soon as this coordinate plane is imposed, a regular geometry of space can be developed. Space can be distinguished from motion abstractly and precisely. Now suppose the observer positions a mark somewhere in this space. Based on an arbitrary origin-point (the ‘blind spot,’) a coordinate can be determined. A moving mark ‘carves out’ shapes, just as shapes triangulate inner spaces: motion obeys intuitive geometrical principles. All space remains ‘exterior’ due to the fact that shape is dependent upon the coordinate plane (even in higher dimensions,) that is, the coordinate plane is hyper-regulated: a transformation of coordinates results in a re-parameterization, or at worst, deformation. In regular space, then, all motion is abstract, superficial; all durations are qualitatively indistinct.

Now, let’s consider an observer in a fractal space, that is, a space with a self-constructing metric scale. As opposed to a regular or regulated space, we can say such a space (or collection of spaces) is organizing rather than organized, that is to say, it has no ‘origin’: such a space is essentially autopoetic rather than purely theoretical. In a fractal space, positions represent topological structures, and paths or movements represent ways of breaking apart and ways of forming unities. The situation on the hinge, or threshold, where one fractal subspace folds in upon itself, would be a contradiction in regular space, and an overdetermination of coordinate maps. In other words, regular space is too ‘brittle’ to handle such extreme ‘torsion,’ and this sort of infinite spatial intensity between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ would amount to a fracturing of a well-ordered space into an infinitely-ordered fractal subspace/superspace.

Therefore, in a fractal system, where the coordinate system is self-induced, the 'break' which would disrupt the metric order is continuously realized and, as it were, externalized from an inner space which has no dimension. In a fractal ordering, a dimensional break exhibits rather an unintegrated, intimate spatiality. That is to say, the dimension of a fractal system is that quality of space which is aroused by motion. More simply, movement is the evolution (and so coordination) of a self-organizing system. As a position is translated through subspaces, it passes through an infinite number of origins, it attains countless numbers of possible coordinate (dis)locations: space radiates from a motion, time radiates through a space. Space and time are not abstract, distinct quantities, but waves which determinstically interfere, overlap, intertwine and unfold. Fractal space is not just knotted; it is broken, a differential transversal, 'sublimely' interconnected. Every position is an infinite sum of partial spaces; every motion is the arising of a new coordination: have we finally arrived at the observer, as the autogenesis of self-organizing space, or perhaps more vividly, of an autometric time? At any rate, the observer can only be appropriately considered in the context of a fractal space, as constituting a severance of ordering-rules, or as a bursting of the structural integrity of dimensionality.

Sense and Simulation

(an outline of metaproblematics)



1 Problems are objects, or things which block our way.

1.1 A problem is a barrier to the composition of forces in time, and thus a revelation.

1.1.1 Problems do not only impede our abilities, but also allow for their full exercise.

1.1.2 Similarly, objects do not just cover part of the visual field but accomplish the depth and coherence of space.

1.2 A problem accomplishes the disruption and potential (sometimes painful) renewal of a flow of desire.

1.2.3 A problem allows a solemn moment of authentic reconnection whence desire regains the courage to resurrect itself.

1.2.4 So the "real" problem is always what to do to cut the chains of machinic obedience, of the "...and again and again and..."

1.2.4.1 Our desire is in every particular case to make desire-gratification automatic.

1.3 The simplest figure of the solution is the use of a minor object-problem to solve a major object-problem.

1.3.1 Such a prioritization is an arbitrary ordering: solutions always approach (but never encounter) and retreat (but not completely) from a sort of fundamental solutional discontinuity between different degrees of problematic dimensionality.

1.3.2 Solutions decode problems by encoding an infinite rupture, by a breaking or fracturing of the problem space.

1.4 Solutions accomplish a retroactive collapse of the problem space into a singular multiplicity, a ‘patching’ or mapping between problem-spaces (or shapes of objects) of differential problematicity.

1.4.1 Consider the difference between a database of “possible solutions” before and after the solution of (for example) a search query.

1.4.1.1 Prior to the performance of the solution-operation encoded but ‘hidden’ within the problem space, the list has many possible entries: the problem space has a depth and shape characterized by the formulation of the problem.

1.4.1.2 After the solution, however, the problem space collapses to a single point (or set of points, etc.)

1.5 The problem encodes a solution by decoding a secret message, a problem ensnares the infinite/singular solution without revealing it, that is, within a formal figure (of desire, i.e., the solution.)

1.5.1 The solution thus provides a relation resolving the dichotomous break in dimensionality between problem-spaces.

1.5.2 Problems are a cosmically ironic opportunity, because they expose an unforeseen vulnerability.

1.5.2.1 We are always looking in the wrong direction at the right time: this (infinitely coincidental) chaotic violence is in fact the potency and momentum of objective reality.

2 The physical world presents itself as an objective, problematic reality demanding solutions.

2.1 The problem of ‘finding a solution to a problem’ is an implicit and trivial first-order form of self-reference.

2.2 The problem-space, at any dimension, is always infinite even if there is but a single solution.

2.2.1 The extreme case for “single-solutionarity” is identical structurally to the transcendence experienced in religion (or mathematics,) both transcendences which are ultimately impossible to present directly--not for lack of trying, but for the simple reason that desire has absurdly infinite problematicity.

3 A metaproblem is a second-order, non-trivial, form of referential problematicity, and therefore must be considered as part of the solution to all (zero-order) problems.

3.1 In order to avoid Zeno’s paradox, it is necessary to presuppose that, in order for us to be able to find a sensible solution for every, some or any problem, that every dimension of problematicitiy is continuous through infinity.

3.1.1 Any sensible solution must also provide a semblance or template of a fractally-infinite solution.

3.1.2 Thus a solution seamlessly encircles boundless collections of solutions to the same sort of system, the same problem-shapes at infinitely different scales and rotations.

3.1.2.1 While such solutions are indeed ‘finite’ and ‘singular,’ as they are bounded under an n-dimensional perimeter, they also exceed their dimensionality and break it in such a way as to provide a mapping to another problem space entirely (the source possibly not resembling the destination in the slightest!)

3.1.3 A solution’s infinite mapping of dimensionally differential problem-spaces flood and fill the spaces and the interstices so deeply and completely they begin to exhibit a differential quality relative to their strictly topological
dimension.

3.2 Thus the solution can be said to ‘break itself’ open in an infinite flood of awareness and understanding. It is a decoding of the metaproblem; a cut across which ‘separates the wheat from the chaff.’

4 Sense is an agreeable decoding, which always implies that the “meta-decision” (disambiguating dimensionality) has been solved completely, that is, infinitely.

4.1 Sense is genealogically geometric: any solution to any problem must also encircle a (perhaps fuzzy!) solution to the infinite-degree “macro-problem”--the infinite series of all metaproblems which collapses into the unity of the fundamental metaproblematic of disambiguating dimensionality.

4.2 This kind of fractal meta-symmetry is associated with any even the tiniest, most insignificant problems in the field of objective reality.

4.3 Dimensionality also implies a differential quality, and not only an integral quantity.

4.3.1 Dimensions are not hierarchized. This can also be understood as: all problem-spaces are fractal.

4.3.1.1 Thus all mappings between problems spaces exhibit a hypersymmetry which composes sensibly.

4.3.2 All problem-spaces have partial dimension(s), whose shape(s) are encoded within the form of the problem.

5 Sense is not different in kind than nonsense. The difference is rather, quantitative and subjective.

5.1 Sense is a kind of mapping between dimensions which are not hierarchized.

5.1.1 Sensicality is a special case of solutionality.

5.2 Therefore the question of sense presents us with the fundamental metaproblem.

5.2.1 But sense is not a solution like any other where the correctness depends solely on whichever dimensional transcoding the observer is expected to discover between problem spaces.

5.2.2 Indeed, it is clear sense adds another set of second-order fractal mappings ‘onto’ and weaving through our original ones.

5.3 This is because sense is first a marking of bodies.

5.3.1 Thus the establishment of sense is the first (and only) ethical operation of society: i.e., to decide what ‘makes sense’ for ‘everyone’ to do.

5.4 The ambiguity relevant to the sense (not accuracy) of a statement is always a political ambiguity (i.e., “but what side are you on?”)

5.4.1 This is particularly clear, for example, in humor, perhaps especially in the case of seemingly apolitical humor: what possible sense could toilet humor have to an alien rational species without anuses (or even waste, for that matter)?

5.4.2 In other words, we have to make a radical transcoding across objective worlds to ‘get it’: the aliens, for example, could eventually make sense of many or even most human jokes, provided they learned enough about humankind-- that is, developed the appropriate fractal mapping across unique and topologically complex problem spaces.

5.5 The solution of any problem always demands the prior resolution of abstractional ambiguity. Thus only a truly objective reality in its very problematicity allows for the depth and flowing poetry of space.

5.5.1 Expressing poetically involves an intimate connection, which is only accomplished in the fractal transcendence of an infinite collapse of 'total' spaces.

5.5.2 Poetry stuffs partial worlds-within-worlds into a form.

5.5.3 Expression produces sense not as a surface but as a depth.

5.6 The question of clarity in expression is always then an ethical question: “Do you really mean what you said?”

5.6.1 Avoidance, hysteria, neurosis, psychosis: these cannot merely be described in dimenisonal isolation, or simply analysing desire as displaced, naked or otherwise incomplete, an impotent, defractalized, ‘whole’ desire.

5.6.2 We have to address the fact that desire completes an infinite and fractal mapping across discrete universes of reference and thus even the purest ‘non-sense’ has a sort of sense to it in other dimensions; perhaps sometimes we even desire a dimension in which a particular form would ‘make sense.’

5.6.3 If dimensions are non-hierarchizable, then ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ in terms of the quantity of dimension are irrelevant to the question of sense, and indeed more generally to the fundamental question of solution.

5.6.3.1 For the quantitative resolution of any problem is always an approximation of an infinite series of decisions; but the actual pre-solution situation is constructing a fractal mapping between dimensionally differential problem-spaces such that these spaces collapse upon themselves in a unity of self-relationity.

5.7 In this way we could say that non-sense is autopoetic in that it is not created by anyone, but exists merely as a sort of observational coincidence (once again: the right place at the wrong time.)

5.7.1 Our dimensional expectation doesn’t map cleanly to the space in question whether words or states of affairs in pure nonsense--in other words, nonsense breaks the problem space in a non-fractalized way, without a possible immanent reconciliation.

5.7.1.1 Non-sense is therefore like death: the seemingly endless potential for reconnection is aborted forever, at least at a certain dimension of observation--whence comes the objective brutality and and problematic rupture of the death-event, when subjectivity is silenced without the spark of hope for reconnection.

5.7.2 We need look no further than death for non-sense itself, endlessly observed and so ever reconnected to sense on other dimensions, but at the one level--the level of ‘original connection’--death is the intervention of the unavoidable face, the face of the corpse, the face of the abyss, of the void, whose austere countenance radiates an unbearable and haunting sense of an absolute future.

Minds, Brains and Catalysis

Christopher Davia has published an absolutely wild e-book which expands on the systems-cybernetic model of Maturana and Varela. The paper covers autopoesis, fractal catalysis and the ontology of consciousness, and has been made available through Carnegie-Mellon's psychology department.

An Argument Against Psychodynamism

If we reduce psychoanalysis to a study of the mind as a closed system of forces tending towards rest through discharge, do we not lose sight of the ultimate object of our inquiry?

Do we not thereby abandon the abyssal depths of the unconscious, ceaselessly channelling consciousness into a collection of psychological AND physiological processes (and how much antiquity still breathes in our age in that tiny article 'and'!) Consciousness is reduced to a dynamic image of self-reflection, equivalent to flows of energy through the brain, and is no longer comprehensible as light illuminating a world. After all, we must learn how to see even in the depths of the "under-mind." Absent phenomenology, "losing sight," we discover the psyche as its energy, as the intensity and flow of desire, which by an analogy to thermodynamics is bracketed and transformed into a mechanical and closed system where the total energy is invariant.

Hence: emotional intensity consists only in displacement, and persists only through discharge--which is also taken retroactively as evidence that, indeed, the mind-system tends towards a rest-position. But this doesn’t further confirm the initial and flawed hypothesis that the psyche is a closed system; wail, yes, fling all the paradoxes of subjectivity you wish against me, but listen closely: we are not talking simply about being open to the outside but about the unstructured-mind, which is open to infinity as idea.

Once opened, this door can never be closed: the mind is the flow of energy from the infinite-source, which is always and in every case identical to the relative source, whichever machine we’re connected to, extracting relative surplus energy, joy, value... and thus this question of desire which is Puritanically left merely at the sexual question is taken to be a book which is forever closed once the discovery that the unconscious had a structure was made.

But the truth is that this discovery is among a unique class of events in history, those which open a sort of Pandora’s box which, like a door to an unknown place, once opened could never be closed--an irreversible though immediately felt transformation.

It would not be completely wrong to say Freud discovered that desire is an allopoetic machine; but psychodynamic considerations led him to attempt to repress this fundamental insight and reinscribe triangulations into the social and psychic body. The untraceable fourth dimension in which the Other would unfold “it”-self, the spacetime of an Event, is ultimately repressed in the name of Society, but mysteriously reinscribed into the reality of individual neurosis, in other words, this same discovery was re-cognized as meaning: neurosis has the truth as its cause.

This fiery kernel of the Freudian discovery is, anyway, in disrepute and all but forgotten about. But as the essence of his discovery lies in the nature of social and psychic repression, it could almost be predicted from the discovery itself that the discovery itself would be misrepresented, perhaps especially by its discoverer! The status of the real is the critical ambiguity in Freud's text, since it seems that all our perceptions (and not just our dreams) are distorted by repressive forces within ourselves; but then again, that these repressive psychic forces merely mimic or internalize oppressive social power structures. The power of social fantasy is in fact the creation of the human universe; atheist as he was, this thought was perhaps too religious for Freud...

Bergson (Theory of Laughter)

As contrary electricities attract each other and accumulate between the two plates of the condenser from which the spark will presently flash, so, by simply bringing people together, strong attractions and repulsions take place, followed by an utter loss of balance, in a word, by that electrification of the soul known as passion. Were man to give way to the impulse of his natural feelings, were there neither social nor moral law, these outbursts of violent feeling would be the ordinary rule in life. But utility demands that these outbursts should be foreseen and averted. Man must live in society, and consequently submit to rules. And what interest advises, reason commands: duty calls, and we have to obey the summons. Under this dual influence has perforce been formed an outward layer of feelings and ideas which make for permanence, aim at becoming common to all men, and cover, when they are not strong enough to extinguish it, the inner fire of individual passions. The slow progress of mankind in the direction of an increasingly peaceful social life has gradually consolidated this layer, just as the life of our planet itself has been one long effort to cover over with a cool and solid crust the fiery mass of seething metals. But volcanic eruptions occur. And if the earth were a living being, as mythology has feigned, most likely when in repose it would take delight in dreaming of these sudden explosions, whereby it suddenly resumes possession of its innermost nature. Such is just the kind of pleasure that is provided for us by drama.

Henri Bergson (Laughter)

Flusser Studies Call for Papers

Was surfing around the 'net and found an interesting call for papers by the Flusser Studies group. Strangely enough, though the call for papers and website is in English, their last online issue seems to have been published entirely in Spanish. They claim this 'multi-lingual' approach is itself Flusserian, as he himself translated and retranslated his work into several languages--is there something here close to Deleuze's idea that the unconscious is not structured like one language, but as many languages? At any rate, here's the statement:

Call for Papers

Contributions in English, German, French, Brazilian and Czech must be submitted to rainer.guldin@lu.unisi.ch

All papers are thoroughly double-blind peer-reviewed for originality, soundness, significance and relevance. Authors will be notified of the status of their papers within two months of submission. The journal publishes papers up to 8500 words, as well as shorter texts up to 3000 (event reports, reviews of books, comments on papers etc.).

Flusser Studies is published twice a year (November and May).


Here's the journal description provided on their website.

Flusser Studies is an international e-journal for academic research dedicated to the thought of Vilém Flusser (1920-1991). In addition to publishing articles about Flusser’s work, the journal seeks to promote scholarship on different aspects of specifically interdisciplinary and multilingual approaches Flusser himself developed in the course of his career as a writer and philosopher. These approaches range from Communication Theory to Translation Studies, Cultural Anthropology to the New Media.

Flusser wrote his texts in different languages, translating himself over and over again, moving from English, to Portuguese, German, French and back again. Similarly he worked by juxtaposing and contaminating different discourses: philosophy, anthropology, communication theory, art and design, zoology to mention only a few.

Among his most original contributions in this context are his philosophical fictions - above all Vampyroteuthis infernalis - scientific fables on the borderline of literature, science and philosophy.

The Four Freedoms

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of worship. That is, freedom of every person to worship whomever (be it God, or any other deity/deities) in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941

Artifical Linguistic Competence

What does it take to make a machine linguistically competent? This is perhaps the extreme case of where we do not want solutions that make the problems simply disappear. For instance, consider any algorithm which boils down to a “pattern-matching” script, even one which is self-improving or evolving in some ways. It’s clear it won’t achieve anything near a critical degree of linguistic competency to pass for a human. Oh yes, it may work for specific problem domains. But the explicit movement of abstraction involved in all learning processes is absent.

The easiest way of conceptualizing this kind of problem is as a sort of theoretical void. We find ourselves in the surprising situation of having to identify concretely the appropriate level of abstraction. We are being asked to describe specifically the meta-linguistic mechanisms of communication. Not only by analogy, this void can be seen perhaps most intriguingly as an inverted reflection of the practical void of identifying the position of consciousness. But of course that’s absurd, right? I mean, first off, we’d have to decide at what scale we’re going to look for it! At any rate, assuming we make the error of actually trying to look for some positional self-consciousness, the mistake we’re making is analogous to looking for language-understanding in an algorithm that at the lowest level of abstraction still blindly matches this information-cluster to that information-cluster, and never actually approaching the linguistic code as code--never performing the sense-founding conjunctive mapping between the signs and the things signified. A rather curiously revealing error, which it seems not a few ("structuralists"!) have been fairly quick to do.

Curious because that confusing and strange question still remains, again that question which would seem to reduce this quest to absurdity: at what scale do we search for the psyche? Do we search for “self-awareness” at the microscopic or the quantum level, for instance? But we must move beyond the Cartesian theater of the mind, and we must even at this point separate consciousness from linguistic competence. We don't need an algorithm which somehow becomes (positionally!) self-aware; on the contrary, we need an algorithm capable of rigorous meta-linguistic abstraction, of linguistic computation. To answer practically the question of what we need to build a linguistically competent artificial intelligence-- the project consists of a single step:

(1) We need an account of language-understanding that includes an explicit account of meta-linguistic (semantic) knowledge.

I will offer an alternative statement of this same principle to motivate the question: how can we encode axioms into an abstract theoretical space? In order to offer an alternative foundation, we need to produce a simulation where everything flows--without this, we are merely pattern matching. In order to accomplish this, I think we actually do need to creatively but judiciously introduce some "exotic” mathematical concepts, like fractals, as models and “unusual” philosophical concepts, like desiring-machines, as analogies-- In fact, I believe we have to experimentally inject these kinds of theoretical advances into computer science, because the real practico-theoretic problem here cannot be solved by technology alone, we have to teach it enough for it to be able to teach itself. In other words, we have to continue to build a real theory of practical linguistic agency. Which would in fact (if "finally" accomplished in practice) amount to some kind of return of the repressed, wouldn't it? Artificial intelligence represents something of an always desired reconnection, a final psychic merging of technology and mankind. This sentiment is no accident: the human-machine relation is our first clue. Desire must be made to literally connect to the machine. This will eventually lead us to our second axiom, which we shall go ahead and state:

(2) Machine-learning must be self-organizing.

This means: algorithmicity without structure, or rather, with a fractal superstructure, although with no "foundational" layer, as the first step is recursive and differentiation can never be said to have finally stopped. In other words, self-organization allows us to tackle the problem of desire as a code, and it is precisely this “strange” kind of anti-organizational scheme which will become of increasing interest to us. This is partly because it is only once we abandon structure as the abstract “bottom level” will we be prepared to tackle authentic linguistic competency. Knowing we are still not in a position to support this next assertion, for the purposes of elucidating a future path, let’s state our third principle:

(3) Meaning is a flow of intensities, which can be considered as molecular assemblages and modeled accordingly. Meta-language is about the partial shapes and partial dimensions of actual language use. Atomic semantic units are thus completely described by their shape and (ir-referential) dimensionality.

The critical point here is that dimensionality is not only allowed to be integral; that is, we allow for partial, or fractal dimensions. A shape requires space but no structure; and we can determine operationality by mapping images to shapes of thoughts, shapes of codes, etc. The fractality of meta-linguistic processes accounts for the elusive [that is, as long as you look at it through a static dimensional framework] property of meaning, a connection which we shall attempt gradually develop with the appropriate theoretical and mathematical framework.