REALITY

    <p class=default>
      
        <b>REALITY</b>
      
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        The word 
      
      
        <i>reality</i>
      
      
         comes from the Latin noun 
      
      
        <i>res</i>
      
      
        , meaning "thing." The fundamental operation that an observer can perform is an operation 
        of distinction, the specification of an entity by operationally cleaving it from a 
        background. Furthermore, that which results from an operation of distinction and can thus 
        be distinguished, is a thing with the properties that the operation of distinction 
        specifies, and which exists in the space that these properties establish. Reality, 
        therefore, is the domain of things, and, in this sense, that which can be distinguished is 
        real. Thus stated, there is no question about what reality is: It is a domain specified by 
        the operations of the observer. The question that remains is a question in the domain of 
        cognition: It is a question about objectivity. In other words, to paraphrase the questions 
        presented at the beginning, "How is it that we, human beings, can talk about things, 
        describe things, and predict events in terms of things to be observed?" 
      
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        After all that I have said throughout this chapter, the answer to this question should be 
        unambiguous. Yet let me recapitulate, as an observer, the essence of what I have said. 
      
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        First, the epistemological analysis of our operation as scientists showed that all 
        scientific statements are necessarily subject-dependent, even these that I am making now 
        as a scientist writing about the problem of objectivity. 
      
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        Second, the analysis of the organization of the living and the nervous systems showed: 
      
      
        <i>(a)</i>
      
      
         both are closed systems and, accordingly, do not offer means for the description of an 
        objective reality; and 
      
      
        <i>(b)</i>
      
      
         that the effective operation of a living system (nervous system included) in the medium 
        in which it is realized (as an autopoietic unity) is the result of its structural coupling 
        to that medium. 
      
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        Third, the analysis of language showed: 
      
      
        <i>(a)</i>
      
      
         that language exists in a consensual domain generated by the interactions of closed 
        systems and not in the domain of states of each individual system; and 
      
      
        <i>(b)</i>
      
      
         that a description always implies an interaction of the system that describes. Let us now 
        as author and reader, adopt the roles of super-observers and answer two questions, which 
        again are reformulations of the questions presented at the beginning: 
      
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        How is it that human beings, being closed autopoietic systems, can talk about things and 
        make descriptions of them? 
      
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        How is it that, if language is behavior in a consensual domain, human beings can use 
        language to predict events to be individually experienced ? 
      
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    </p>