<nettime> Varela, experience, and Martin Jay - outline of a new something

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

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Very interesting conversation happening all, very much appreciated.

I've been a fan of Francisco Varela for some time -- say 8 years or so.  Not an expert mind you.  Yet I was interested to see him cited in a recent Quanta article about AI being conscious, sentient, evil, super, or what have you, or not.  Autopoesis was the theme.

I didn't realize till today he was a cyberneticist too; but since he returned to Chile in 1980 perhaps he was accommodationist?  I hope not; but perhaps it is absurdly uninformed of me to ask if he might have been.  Checking his book, or for it rather, on my shelf -- couldn't find.  What falls from the cart is lost.  In any case per Wikipedia Varela may have influenced Beer; so there's at least a potential connection to current topics.

As to the meaning of Varela, one relevance to what's at hand is his phenomenology, the category of experience in his manner of understanding how systems organize and brains work and so forth.  There's embodiment in experience, that has to do with life perhaps and consciousness, but it's not a closed system or homunculus.  Our experience is partly "made of" our environment too, fundamentally.

But I venture past my intelligence level and education there.  Back to basics: experience might be a relevant term and heuristic anyway, in the context of Varela and cybernetics.

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Martin Jay is a potentially very helpful source if we are looking for, in 2026, "something new" for European philosophy and that which it influences.  His 2025 book "Magical Nominalism" is new I'd say, but the idea entitling it is certainly new.  It's a remix of "nominalism," the philosophy of Europe since oh say 1277, which empowered an arbitrary Deity and of course their servants on earth (both crown and clergy) without any restriction.  Sounds familiar!  The other ingredient is "magical realism," an offshoot of Realism, which Nominalism replaced.  So why not consider "Magical Nominalism"?

The question is worthwhile imco.  In his 2005 "Songs of Experience" (SoE) Jay surveyed almost every European and Euro-derived thinker's view of the concept of Experientia, a vast array, and all that work led in a meaningful way to M.N.  Summed up crudely, M.N. differs from "conventional nominalism" (C.N.) around the idea of control.  The "other" is allowed a voice; indeed, as Jay states, "a response" even prior to inquiry and the naming process.  Certainty and domination are de-emphasized by design and for tangible benefits, as well as to avoid foreseeable disasters.  

I think this fairly pertains to what we are talking about on list and see afoot in the world of late.  In fact, like in Varela, the Other's voice in M.N. isn't wholly separate (from what, the Self's?).  "Magical" nominalism also isn't just "new." The kind of thought and expression for which Jay coins the term goes back in a sense even before the birth of "conventional" nominalism, being part do-unto-others (literally) and even part nature-worship.  That matters I think.  M.N. has a history -- it has history -- and that history is still very much as present as other histories with less to recommend them.  What makes conventional nominalism strong also makes it brittle, and too heavy -- a risky combination, which makes it insecure like every bully and autocrat.  

Jay doesn't discuss Anders, or much cybernetics that I can detect (though I might be missing it), but he certainly writes about control-by-naming, instrumental rationality, and Adorno, Benjamin, Habermas, Agamben, folks related on that level.  I'm not capable of proving his book is good, not to a tough crowd, but I'm curious what others might think and whether it's even on anyone's radar.  It could perhaps even be a new sociotechnological imaginary -- think "Downcast Eyes" say -- or a glimpse, or some hope for a clue in aid of search.  To me it is anyway.  

(Full disclosure, I completed a long-form written interview with Jay last year, about M.N. and SoE, so if anyone knows of a publication that might be interested please feel free to contact me offlist.)

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Wiener does write in "Cybernetics" that humans have to learn by experience, moreso, now, and not so much by genetics and generational mutation.  He mentions G.D. Santillana in his book, and Santillana has written about a lot of old writers interestingly.  But the more direct influence for me has been Calvino (a friend of GDS), whose "Six Memos for the Next Millennium," I'm wondering today while the dogs bark at the neighbors in their backyard, might be about Six Characteristics of experience per se: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, and Consistency.  Of course they might be traits of literature (as explicitly stated by C), or technology, or all the above mixed in a kind of brew together.

If "cyber" means "rudder" hence "control," not "computer" or "cipher" i.e. "code" (which may be the source of the problem because they rhyme), if cyber-space should be read as "control-space" not "virtual space," then there's a rather giant cluster or blunder in play which could be contributing to our current massive errors of distortion.  It's another valid reason to ponder the counter-phrase "network-time."  "Cybernetic organism" might also be a linguistic step in something unpleasant, from which all our shoes continue to suffer.  Steerage and non-steerage apply, as ever.  

I must apologize for these whirling words!  I mention this kind of thing, such antiquarian roots, because maybe the first and second millennia struggled philosophically for reasons that still plague us.  Calvino said the second millennium was the millennium of the book, of what one might call Reason (or rationality, law, algorithm).  The other chief basis for knowledge in philosophical circles Europe-wide has been Authority (power, the crown, tradition, coercion) so its millennium must be the first.  So the third is what's?  What else is there?  Anything?  Nothing?  

I'd venture to propose Experience (oft-mentioned since antiquity alongside Reason and Authority, if a little hesitantly).  This means consciousness per se, which is prior to and originator of both Reason and Authority, Law and Power, Algorithm and Force, but supplanted by them for causes not unlike Anders' Promethean Shame, or Adorno's Introversion of the Sacrifice, or Wiener's example of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.  (Plus statues of Law and Power are easier to carve than ones of Experience.)  This would make, by only an incredibly rough equivalency of course, the first K years crown, the second scripture, and the third -- letdown impending -- art and science; the latter not as supplanting the first two but just, finally one hopes, joining them as an equal peer to reset the balance and break the cycle of dysfunctional gridlock, morass, and frying-pan-to-fire miscues.  Experience in Latin, and throughout European history including Goethe's fable aforementioned by Wiener, means art and 
 science as well as lived consciousness.  Just to hazard a wild guess.  

Jay in M.N. also mentions Leo XIII who attempted circa 1879 to protect human experience, and humans' experience, from the ravages of early industrialization.  Leo XIV's first encyclical might be a similar effort of protection from industrialized information, with comparable military tensions surrounding it, and he adds a quite meaningful apology for contributing to slavery based on military expedience (which doesn't make it any less an atrocity).  

Experience might be a gray enough area to build a coalition around, or improvise a sense of one.

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Postscript -- 

I found Varela's "The Embodied Mind" finally, in the last place to look in the house ironically, under my library copy of Teskey's "Spenserian Moments" (a fair juxtaposition).  The spine I thought was mango was more papaya.  

My old copy of "Cybernetics" talks about learning machines designing learning machines, in the last 2 chapters, which relates to yesterday's headlines well enough; and Varela closes his book with a call for allowing the Other "a response," in addition to his call for science-based meditation as a coping strategy for a "groundlessness" that avoids regressive reversion a la 1926.  So cybernetics if not a solution has relevance to the day I would agree.  (The feedback loop whereby having customer data allows aggressive market-distorting effects for first achievers, turning an online yearbook into trillions that squelch better competitors, matches Bill Janeway and tech-libs arguably.  SocMed feeds study how to push buttons and deliver White Houses all on autopilot, and that is feedback management, push-pull, all 100% automated now.  GPT's are trained using feedback, though of a "baked-in" inorganic, one-and-done type of course; so it is kind of like air -- for every action....)

One last tangent to add is "False Economy," 2009, by Alan Beattie.  Pros and cons I suppose and not exactly up to date.  (It's thanks to my ever-effervescent book club this weekend, and not my pick.)  He quotes Shakespeare to end, "Our remedies oft within ourselves do lie," and his last sentence asserts that "The experience of history" should incline us to hope not despair.  Irony!  

One crit I'd make of Beattie is he praises Machiavelli as the "necessary evil" attending the smart bankers and fine artists of the Renaissance.  That view of a "benevolent Machiavelli" was in Van Middelaar's famous book too.  However I sincerely believe Shakespeare was not a Machiavellian but rather championed "the things of an imaginary prince" which M expressly forbids in the Principe.  Shakespeare wanted Right Makes Might to win, so that the field wouldn't fall to Might Makes Right and wreak the tragedy of the commons.  All's well that ends well.

Conventional nominalism is more about control by force and the frankly regressive coercion of chance, what I'd call Machiavelli, whereas the magical kind is more like a compassionate or sympathetic approach akin to say Don Quixote or Prospero predicated on imaginative rescue reminiscent of Benjamin.  (Big nuances here for sure, and fine lines regarding agency and determinism, with few if any pure heroes to follow, but can we really afford to punt on such questions?)  And per Varela, "In Buddhism we have a case study showing that when groundlessness is embraced and followed through to its ultimate conclusions, the outcome is an unconditional sense of of intrinsic goodness that manifests itself in the world as spontaneous compassion."  

Personally, when I meditate, or view art, or make some, or appreciate nature or other beings, I do get this experience of good and compassion, maybe just in dribs and drabs but that is infinitely far from not at all.  


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