The Radical New Reality of Systems Science

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

Becoming the '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
• ​Identification thus requires agentic selection among options
• It manifests as agency in network context: this or that? me or we or social system it?

• Yet, given that all phenomena are, in some sense, composed as networked elements, these are 'pluralistic entities'

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

• but what is 'doing' this detection snd discrimination of data among relatuional fields /

• These differentiations require selective agency to assess, compare, and contrast criteria, then represent an 'identification'
• Specifying identity is a selective 'agentic act' performed as discriminations among and between relational fields​
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• 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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• 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 ang 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'
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• The conceptual aspect of identification in humans adds greater complexity to potential identifications
• identity as selective association of those impluses both internal and external
• A notion of 'free will' implies an agentic ability to perform identification as overtly reflective deliberation
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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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• Non reflective identification might indicate a more reflexive process, thus  less 'free will' even though agency manifests
• liberty as capacity to discern agentic impulses and constraints upon these then act in some deliberating manner
• ​thus "I" is both a conscious and unconscious dynamnic composition of contrasting/conflicting agentic impulses
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• The 'act of self-identification'
• That implies some 'sense of self'  configured around criteria for internal and external relational fields/networks

• reflexive emergent agency of system self assertion to agency of differentiating agentic impulses​

• Identification as agentic act of selective differentiation among relational fields

• of relational network patterns in relation to archetypal relational fields  as particular configurations of associations of diverse elements, even conflicting factors composing spedific identities that are 'same with self' yet identified in relaiton to others as like/not like. Inherently paradoxical and provisional

• requires agency but that can be in mode of deference to agency from 'ouside' as in identification through deferral of personal agency to agency of others or social systems

• to 'have agency' is to be overtly aware of capacity to identify and act selectively rather than 'act in deference to' agency of others or systems

• Sense of Self exists in relation to plurality of internal relational nets and to external relational fields

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• egoic function as capacity for these differentiations and self-awareness of that functions ability to differentiate its selective agency from other agentic impulses.

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

• We find our selves purposeful actors in a purposeful world that requires our devotion to sustain it's viable self-ordering

• , even genetic evolution as the basis for such CAS.

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• from 'me' to 'we' and back outside social hierarchy

• '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.

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