Reflexivity as a paradoxical requisite of integrative comprehension

Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through Playful Elegance (Part #12)

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Of potentially more challenging significance is consideration of the adequacy of the spherical form to hold insights relating to the paradoxical self-reflexivity by which global civilization is challenged. Hilary Lawson (Reflexivity: the post-modern predicament, 1986) has clarified the dilemmas it implies for the future arguingd that self-reference is central to contemporary philosophy.

George Soros has argued strongly for the relevance of reflexivity to any understanding of the credit crisis of 2008 (The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, 2008) -- a theory he had developed in an earlier work (The Alchemy of Finance, 1987). He argues that the theory is not confined to the financial markets alone but deals with the relationship between thinking and reality, claiming that misconceptions and misinterpretations play a major role in shaping the course of history:

My starting point is that our understanding of the world in which we live is inherently imperfect because we are part of the world we seek to understand... People with imperfect understanding interact with reality in two ways. On the one hand they seek to understand the world in which they live. I call this the cognitive function. On the other, people seek to to make an impact on the world and change their situation to their advantage. I used to call this the participating function, but for some purposes I now consider it more appropriate to call it the manipulative function.... When both functions are in operation at the same time they may interfere with each other.... In reflexive situations each function deprives the other of the independent variable which it would need to produce determinate results.... Reflexive situations are characterized by a lack of correspondence between the participants' views and the actual state of affairs.... As a result outcomes are liable to diverge from expectations. Economic theory has gone to great lengths to exclude reflexivity from its subject matter (p. 3-5).

In a recent interview, Soros framed these insights succinctly: Markets don't reflect the facts very well, partly because they create the facts themselves. Trends in the real world reinforce a bias in market participants' minds, which in turn reinforces those trends in a double feedback, reflexive connection. Realities create expectations, but expectations also create realities (Timothy Garton Ash, Listen to the financial Wizards of Oz and prepare for another disaster, The Guardian, 24 June 2010). Given the theme here of playful elegance, there is a degree of irony to the recognition of this skill in the common metaphor of "playing" the stockmarkets -- as demonstrated by Soros himself. More fundamentally is the role of confidence in coherence, whether taking the form of financial investment or of cognitive investment in some integrative framework.

The challenge for any integrative initiative is therefore how to incorporate elegantly this dimension of reflexivity into its endeavours and outcomes, as emphasized by Bateson's: we are our own metaphor. The argument has been otherwise made, and metaphorically framed, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought, 1999).

Approached differently, Michael Schiltz discusses the fundamental assumptions associated with presentation of information (written text) on a flat surface (as with this document), arguing for the merits of a torus (Form and Medium: a mathematical reconstruction, Image [&] Narrative, 6, 2003). The torus is effectively a geometric complexification of a sphere and the argument may be associated with the tendency to present taxonomies in matrix form (Comprehension of Requisite Variety for Sustainable Psychosocial Dynamics: transforming a matrix classification onto intertwined tori, 2006). With respect to paradox, the geometric argument can be extended further with consideration of the cognitive implications of the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle, addressing the illusions of an "underside" and of "inside vs outside" (Intercourse with Globality through Enacting a Klein bottle, 2009). What then is the surface with which integrative discourse can be fruitfully associated and how is this to be rendered comprehensible?

Given the argument for "mothering spaces" for the requisite cognitive integration, the polyhedral forms indeed constitute a form of enfolding spherical "matrix". Clearly the nature of the requisite dynamics between the "sides" is of vital importance -- as held in collective memory by the narrated dynamics between the deities of a Dodekatheon. But of greater importance is how more complex forms, like the Klein bottle, provide a mothering space more appropriate to the cognitive challenge of emergent integration -- as separately discussed (Engaging with Globality through Knowing Thyself, 2009).

Provocatively, given use of the alchemical metaphor by Soros in relation to global finance, and the discussion above regarding the design of a container for "cognitive fusion", it is useful to recall, as a metaphor, the nature of alkahest -- as characterizing the human creative capacity to dissolve any containing framework, however integrative and encompassing. Of related relevance, in the quest for sustainability, is the "philosophical furnance" or athanor -- a self-feeding furnace for alchemical digestion. More intriguing is the sense in which global finance is based on confidence, presumably fundamental to any (collective) cognitive engagement with reality.

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