TOKEN
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3583 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
Something that serves as a representation of some registered experience.
H.von FOERSTER thus explained his use of this term: “Objects and events are representations of relations determined by modes of internal computations: hence ”objects“ appear to reside exclusively (sic) in the subject's own experience of his sensory/motor coordination. The externality of communal space is established within the social context of other subjects; also recursively experiencing ”objects“ as tokens of sensory/motor closure. Thus tokens for stable behavior are ”tokens for Eigen-functions“ (1981, p.274).
In this extremist view, objects (or “objects”?) are merely a kind of illusive intersubjective currency. This is acceptable only if one maintains a cautious ontological agnosticism, but should not lead to a radical negation of “outside there” reality, which would carry us back to pure solipsism.
This must be part of what a French humorist called “les dangers de l'auto” (i.e. of auto-poiesis).
R. GLANVILLE saves the point as he writes about the common view of “objects ”in se“with their own description built in” that “this meaning is very different from the notion of ”object“as ”built through the mutually complementary roles of observer and observed“ (in G. KLIR (Ed.): ”Applied General Systems Research, 1978)
In another paper GLANVILLE also stated that a non-observed object “inhabits the universe unknown to others” (1978)