Observing the Observer: Exploring a Cybernetic Epistemological Recursion

Observing the Observer: Exploring a Cybernetic Epistemological Recursion

All epistemologies are observer-dependent; i.e. there is no single epistemology that applies to all possible observers, because every observer is unique in some way.  The necessary inclusion of the observer in any description of the world is a deeply obvious and yet profound principle.  It was neatly expressed in Heinz von Foerster’s article Cybernetics...

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observing the observer

So then to begin in the middle I have many questions:     What constitutes an observer? How do we think about what an observer is/does? Is it as simply complex as the recursive: “An observer creates distinctions; distinctions create observers.”?     What is a distinction? In order for it to occur, does it require...

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