Meaning of LIPHE4

L = Learning. Self-organizing systems use models to guide their action and can adapt by expanding their purposes, beliefs and contingency associated with their semiotic controls. They can expand the set of meaningful interactions associated with the expression of their identity by adding and/or adjusting codes. The set of codes existing at any given point in time must express and coordinate across scales semantic, syntactic and biophysical processes. Semantic processes refer to those processes verifying and generating useful meanings, syntactic processes refer to those verifying and generating useful formal rules for operating semiotic controls, and biophysical processes refer to those controlling the physical expression of metabolic activities. Complex adaptive systems are tasked with adjusting this integrated set of self-entailing relations while becoming in time.

I = Instances. Although self-organizing systems show systemic properties associated with notional identities and can be characterized in terms of expected patterns and typologies, each system is “special” because of its own peculiar history. System instances are affected by the accumulation of internal “path-dependent” constraints and stochastic biophysical processes. They can only be analyzed by adopting a historic perspective. The established resonance between a notional expression of identity (the “type” of the system) and a tangible expression of identity (the “instance” of the system) is also becoming in time. The historical trajectory of the resonance between type-instance pairings is what “remains the same” in the process of becoming.

P = Producing. Self-organizing systems express physical agency, as determined by semiotic processes expressed as part of the notional definition of identity. Therefore, self-organizing systems are subject to biophysical constraints, as determined by the expression of a metabolic pattern, part of the tangible expression of identity. The production of structural realizations (compatible with upward causation) reflect the definition of expected functions (determined by downward causation) needed for the emergent property of the whole, namely for reproduction and adaptation. In other words, self-organizing systems exhibit dynamic coarse graining. For readers thus inclined, the process of self-organization can be understood thermodynamically by noting its peculiar capability to produce stable autocatalytic loops of useful energy—for establishing a dissipative system.

H = Holarchic. Self-organizing systems are organized in nested “holons”, which are entities having a double nature of part and whole. Depending on how we look at a self-organizing system, we can see either: (1) organized structures (realizations of types) produced to perform a role within a specified associative context; or (2) relational functions that can be played only within a given associative context. Holons provide, simultaneously, structural stability to relatively higher level holons and represent the admissible environment providing functional meaning to relatively lower level holons. In this way, instances of self-organizing systems are capable of preserving a multilevel organization over structural and functional elements across scales—of preserving the meaning of their semiotic control. Self-organizing systems are seen to resonate between notional and tangible identities while enjoying optionality—using contingent choices to determine their course of action.

E4 = The Four “E”s. Viz. the generation and preservation of essences that must be established, expected, and experienced across levels of organization. This congruence across hierarchical levels—both on the notional and tangible side—is required in order to maintain the given identity while becoming something else (adapting). That is, in order to preserve their identity, self-organizing systems must preserve a coherent mapping between “a universe of essences”, being an integrated set of semantic identities used by a population of non-equivalent interacting agents when perceiving and representing their own external world, and “a universe of experiences”, being the various interacting agents confirming the validity of the encoded essences. The coherence between these two universes depends on the correspondence between “expected behaviors”, which are encodings in the information space used by the system of controls of the biosemiotic process across scales, and “established mechanical systems”, which are viable thermodynamic realizations of autocatalytic loops of energy forms across scales. The preservation of these two sets of mappings across a community of interacting system elements represents the “semiotic bond” of the biosemiotic process.

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