The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

Next Worldview Identity
Agency and The 'Selves of Complex Adaptive Systems'

Becoming the 'Pluralistic Self Consciousness'​ of Emergent Agency

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• To 'identify' a thing is to determine its specificity, to represent 'what it is the same as' versus 'what it is not'
• That requires differentiation of traits, boundaries, and behaviors as similar or dissimilar in relation to 'otherness'
• An entity is necessarily specified in relation or non-relation to other entities and categories of their properties
• From a systems science perspective, that means differentiating one relational network, or system, from others
• by first differentiating the internal relational field of one entity, then that from those of other entities
• But, what 'does the identification?'
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• ​Identification thus requires selection among options -- a system capacity to distinguish boundaries or traits
• By some means, a system network must differentiate 'this from that,' or 'me from other'
• But 'what does the identification?'
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• correlating sense of self with sense of enviroment/others for adaptive survival -- inherent internal and external conflict/optionsrequiring agentic deliberation
• con vs un con agentic identifiucatioin
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• Yet, given that all phenomena are, in some sense, composed as networked elements, these are 'pluralistic entities'

• A rock is identifiable as a certain set of physically networked traits and associated properties, 

• an animal is  that plus the differentiated  traits of its emergent self-ordering and agentic self-assertion

• Thus, the 'sameness' of identity is an intrinsically diversified, even 'conflicted' network of 'likeness and non-likeness'

• but what is 'doing' this detection and discrimination of data among networks of relational fields?

• To overtly differentiate, much less represent, identification requires selective agency to assess, compare, and contrast
• Specifying identity is a selective 'agentic act' performed as discriminations among and between relational fields​
• ​For a system to 'self-assert' it must somehow differentiate its 'self' from its environment and other entities
• Complex adaptive systems differentiate 'self from others' and 'others from others' at least at some rudimentary level
• The purposeful self-assertion of such systems depends on 'identifying' 'self from not self,' if only in some reflexive way
• a plant must detect the boundaries of its system from other systems so as to act in ways that promote its existence
• Similarly, it must differentiate chemical compounds and types of insects so as to respond adaptively to these
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• Identifying self from other then others from others​​
• In animals, identification would often seem to involve differentiating types of agency or behavior
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• 'Having agency' in a person means differentiating ones own agentic capacity from that of others

• and having devloped both physical and mental capacities to 'enact' it.

• Rites of Passage are required to enable inclusive/diverse self-identification within appropriate worldview
• ​Social systems and references for identifying status as horizontally primary hubs versus vertically dominant ones
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• Notably, 'miss-identification' of either self aspects or non-self ones is potentially non-adaptive, even 'fatal'
• ​will and willingness, reflexive, reflective.
• Considering animals, identification seems to involve both reflexive and reflective differentiations
• Here, agency can be required to differentiate types of agency and their potential 'behaviors'

• impulses.

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• Here, individuals are unique, continually emerging, mysterious expressions of nature's self-organizing impulse

• egoic function as elaborated differentiation of self from other
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• agency must identify 'its self' as having agency versus the agency of others
• thus the agency of self-identification is not entirely same as general system agency
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