Tag Archives: Wittgenstein

When Does a System Exist? The Myth of the Given System:

In today’s post, I want to look at a question that seems almost too simple to ask: when does a system exist? For this I will be drawing on ideas from Wilfrid Sellars, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Heinz von Foerster, and Martin Heidegger.

We talk about “systems” all the time. The healthcare system. The education system. The traffic system. We speak as though these are objects sitting in the world, waiting to be observed, measured, and fixed.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Reach out your hand and try to touch the healthcare system. You can touch a hospital bed. You can hear a monitor beeping. You can speak to a nurse. You can shake a doctor’s hands. But where is the system? You cannot knock on it. You cannot hold it in your palm.

And yet we speak about it as if it were an object in front of us. We say things like “The system is broken” or “The system needs fixing.” The language gives it a kind of independent standing, as if it were a malfunctioning engine sitting somewhere, waiting for a repair technician.

This way of speaking rests on a hidden assumption, the assumption that there are structures in the world simply waiting to be perceived and described. The philosopher Wilfrid Sellars called this the “Myth of the Given”.

Wilfrid Sellars:

The “Myth of the Given” is the idea that the world presents itself to us in raw, pre-interpreted form. That before language, before concepts, before any act of distinction-making, there are simply facts delivered to the mind. Knowledge, on this view, is built upward from this unmediated foundation.

Sellars argued that this is a fallacy. He noted that sensing is not the same as knowing. A sensation may trigger a belief, but it does not justify one. Knowledge belongs to what he called the space of reasons. This is a shared space where claims can be offered, challenged, and revised.

He used the example of a tie shop clerk to make this point. Under the store’s electric lighting, the clerk says “This tie is blue.” Later, when another clerk points out the effect of the lighting, he revises his claim to “It looks blue.” The sensation itself has not changed. What has changed is his understanding of the norms governing correct description. There is no raw, unmediated given beneath our experience. There is already a learned practice of making and correcting distinctions.

This matters for how we talk about “systems”. When someone says “The system is broken,” that statement is not a neutral observation. It presupposes standards. It implies that something is failing relative to shared expectations. The claim invites agreement, disagreement, and justification. It is a normative claim, not a factual report.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:

Ludwig Wittgenstein made a related point in his reflections on rule-following and meaning. He asked whether meaning could be grounded in something purely private, such as an inner sensation. His answer was that it cannot. Without shared, public criteria for correctness, there would be no way to distinguish between actually following a rule and merely believing one is doing so.

Meaning lives in shared forms of life, not in private inner episodes. When we describe something as a system, we are not reporting a neutral fact. We are placing ourselves within a shared field of expectations and norms. The word “system” already carries commitments about what ought to be happening.

Heinz von Foerster:

Heinz von Foerster made a parallel observation about cognition. He pointed to what he called “undifferentiated encoding”. The interpretative framework does not encode categories like red or green directly. It encodes differences in stimulation. The differentiation into meaningful categories happens inside the organism itself.

This is due to what cybernetics calls “operational closure”. An entity responds according to its own structure, not according to instructions delivered from the outside. Von Foerster noted that the environment contains no information as such. Information arises only through the distinctions the organism is capable of making.

Sellars shows there is no raw knowledge. Wittgenstein shows there is no private anchor for meaning. Von Foerster shows there is no raw information. Each, in a different register, removes the idea of a pre-given foundation beneath our experience of the world.

But even together, they leave something unaddressed. Even if knowledge and information are constructed, we might still imagine ourselves as observers standing outside the world, organizing it from a neutral distance. This is where Martin Heidegger becomes essential.

Martin Heidegger:

Heidegger does not begin with perception or information. He begins with care.

For Heidegger, we do not encounter the world as neutral spectators. We are already involved. We are embedded in projects, concerns, and purposes. The world shows up in relation to what matters to us.

His example of the hammer is well known and I have written about it before. When you are skillfully hammering a nail, the hammer withdraws into the activity. It is ready-to-hand, transparent to your purpose. So is the nail, and the wood. None of them present themselves as objects. You are simply absorbed in the task.

The hammer only becomes visible as an object when something goes wrong. It breaks. It slips. It is missing. At that moment it becomes present-at-hand. You step back and look at it.

The object appears through breakdown.

The Myth of the Given System:

Now consider: what if systems work in exactly the same way?

You do not experience the healthcare system while care flows smoothly. You experience patients, conversations, treatments, and nurses. The coordination is ongoing and transparent. The practices are simply happening. Nobody says “the system.”

Now imagine a bed is unavailable. Or an insurance policy blocks a treatment. Or a drug is out of stock. Suddenly someone says: “The system is broken.”

Notice what has happened. A concern has been frustrated. And from that frustration, a boundary is drawn. A pattern of practices is gathered together and named. What was ready-to-hand, invisible in its smooth functioning, has become present-at-hand. The system has appeared.

The system is not given. It is disclosed through breakdown.

The traffic jam is another good illustration of this. Physically, there are cars and asphalt. But the system only appears relative to care. To the commuter, it is a failure of punctuality. To a vendor walking between the vehicles, it is an opportunity. To a city planner, it may be evidence of demand exceeding capacity. The cars are real. The asphalt is real. But the system is not the same kind of thing as the cars. It is a configuration that becomes visible when care encounters resistance.

To speak of the system as though it were an independently existing object, like the cars or the asphalt, is to extend the Myth of the Given into organizational life itself.

Once we see this, the ethical implications are hard to avoid. If systems arise through care, then system boundaries reflect what we care about. When we define healthcare in terms of efficiency, we foreground throughput. When we define it in terms of community wellbeing, we foreground relationships and continuity. Every articulation reveals some concerns and conceals others.

Second Order Cybernetics:

Second order cybernetics has always insisted on this point. The observer cannot be separated from the observed. When we define a system, we are not pointing at something that already existed independently of us. We are making a distinction. And as George Spencer-Brown noted, to draw a distinction is to create a world.

This is the shift that second order thinking invites. We do not ask “What is the system?”

but:

“What do I care about such that this shows up as a system at all?”

That is not a technical question. It is an existential one. Every system in this regard is a human system.

Final Words:

When we draw a boundary and call it the “system”, we are not pointing to a thing that exists independently of our distinctions. We are organizing experience around what matters to us. We chose to draw the boundary there, instead of here. We chose include that, instead of this. And we do so because our care was interrupted at that point, and not somewhere else.

This does not mean the consequences are unreal. When care is blocked, when treatment is denied, when livelihoods are threatened, when exhaustion becomes chronic, viability is genuinely at stake. To say that systems are articulated through concern is not to dismiss suffering. It is to take it more seriously.

If one’s care is endangered, one cannot remain in abstraction. Action then becomes necessary. But what kind of action?

If we treat the system as an external machine, we search for mechanical fixes. We adjust policies, change incentives, replace personnel. These may be necessary. Yet they often operate within the same set of distinctions that produced the difficulty in the first place.

Second order thinking asks a question in a deeper dimension. What distinctions are we relying on that make this outcome appear inevitable? What counts as success in this configuration? What has been excluded from the circle of relevance?

Instead of saying “The system is broken,” we might say “The current way we are coordinating our practices is undermining viability.” That wording does not place us outside the problem. It acknowledges participation without assigning simplistic blame.

Participation does not mean individual control. Many structures are vast and historically sedimented. But even within constraint, we contribute through compliance, resistance, redesign, conversation, refusal, and collaboration.

Ethics enters precisely here. Not as a moral add-on, but at the level of boundary drawing itself. Every time we define what the system is, we define what matters. Every time we measure performance, we privilege certain forms of viability over others.

Second order cybernetics does not provide a formula for what to do when care is threatened. It does not eliminate conflict between competing concerns. What it does is remove the illusion that responsibility lies elsewhere.

If viability is at risk, the task is not simply to repair an external object. It is to examine, collectively, how we are distinguishing, organizing, and sustaining the patterns that shape our shared world.

That work is slower. It is less dramatic. It requires conversation rather than diagnosis.

It keeps us inside the picture.

Stay Curious and Always keep on learning…

If you liked what you have read, please consider my book “Second Order Cybernetics,” available in hard copy and e book formats. https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/products/soc-book

Note:

In referencing the work of Martin Heidegger, I want to acknowledge the deeply troubling fact of his affiliation with the Nazi party. This aspect of his life casts a long and painful shadow over his legacy. While I draw on specific philosophical ideas that I find thought-provoking or useful, this is not an endorsement of the man or his actions. Engaging with his work requires ethical vigilance, and I remain mindful of the responsibility to not separate ideas from the broader context in which they were formed.

References:

  1. Heidegger, M. Being and Time (1927)
  2. Sellars, W. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956)
  3. Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations (1953)
  4. von Foerster, H. Understanding Understanding (2003)
  5. Spencer-Brown, G. Laws of Form (1969)

Wittgenstein’s Ladder in Complexity: Why We Need Tools We Must Abandon

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them as steps to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractus Logico-Philosophicus

In my recent post on the two dogmas of complexity science, I talked about ontological complexity realism and epistemological representationalism. These are the beliefs that complexity exists ‘out there’ to be measured and that our task is to create neutral representations of it. Today, I want to explore why these dogmas persist and why overcoming them requires something that seems paradoxical. We need conceptual tools that we must eventually abandon.

This is where Wittgenstein’s ladder becomes particularly relevant for complexity work. When reentry per Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form is needed to achieve second-order understanding, the ladder offers a path through what might otherwise be an intractable problem.

The Reentry Problem in Complexity:
When talking about complexity, we often overlook the point that the observer cannot be separated from what they observe. Every attempt to map or measure complexity changes the observer-system relationship, which changes the ‘complexity’ itself. This creates what George Spencer-Brown called reentry: when a distinction folds back on itself.

Consider the Ashby Space framework I critiqued earlier. The moment we try to plot an organization on its coordinates, we encounter reentry. Who determines where the organization sits on the ‘variety of stimuli’ axis? The organization itself, through its own distinction-making processes. What counts as ‘variety of responses’? Again, this depends entirely on the distinctions the observer can make about meaningful action.

The framework cannot escape this recursion. It treats as measurable quantities what are actually dynamic processes of distinction-making between observer and observed. This recursion is not a bug to be fixed but a feature of complexity itself.

As I explored in my post on the form of decency, reentry reveals contradictions in systems that try to maintain rigid boundaries. When xenophobic ideologies apply their own criteria to themselves, when the form folds back, they collapse under their internal logic. The same dynamic occurs when complexity frameworks attempt to map the very processes of distinction-making that generate complexity.

Why Reentry Creates a Need for Ladders:
If our tools for understanding complexity are themselves subject to reentry effects, how do we develop more sophisticated ways of thinking about complex systems? We cannot simply abandon all conceptual tools, yet we cannot treat them as neutral representations either.

This is where we need to recognize a crucial distinction about when ladder consciousness becomes necessary. When we engage with situations in ways that generate significant recursive coupling between observer and observed (when our distinction-making substantially shapes what we are trying to understand, when our interventions change the system which changes us which changes our interventions), then treating our models as stable representations becomes counterproductive.

Consider the difference between using a roadmap to navigate familiar streets versus using a systems model to understand organizational dynamics. The roadmap engages with relatively stable relationships such as the streets that rarely change position because we are looking at the map. But organizational systems modeling involves high degrees of recursive coupling. The very process of creating models changes how participants see their organization, which changes how they behave, which changes the organizational dynamics, which requires updating the models.

When we are complexifying our relationship with a situation through high degrees of recursive engagement, our models must become ladders. They cannot remain permanent reference tools because both we and the situation are co-evolving through the modeling process itself.

This is where Wittgenstein’s ladder becomes relevant. The ladder offers a way to use conceptual tools while remaining aware of their provisional nature. We need frameworks to help us think about complexity, but we also need mechanisms for transcending the limitations of those same frameworks.

The ladder works through what might seem like a contradiction: we use conceptual distinctions to develop awareness of the limitations of conceptual distinctions. We employ frameworks like Ashby Space not because they represent reality accurately, but because they can help us recognize how our own distinction-making processes shape what appears as ‘complex’.

This creates what Heinz von Foerster called second-order cybernetics, observing observation. First-order thinking assumes we can step outside the system and create objective maps. Second-order thinking recognizes that we are always already participants in the systems we are trying to understand.

The Ladder in Practice: From Tools to Meta-Awareness:
Consider how this works in organizational consulting. When we facilitate a systems mapping exercise, we might begin by treating the resulting diagram as if it represents the ‘real’ organizational structure. This first-order approach focuses on improving the accuracy of the map.

But when we are engaged in recursive coupling with the organization (when the mapping process itself changes how participants understand and enact their organizational reality), ladder consciousness suggests a different approach. The map becomes valuable not when it accurately represents the organization, but when the mapping process helps participants recognize how their own distinction-making participates in creating organizational dynamics. We use the tool to develop meta-awareness of how we collectively complexify organizational life.

This shift points to the very needed meta-awareness. Instead of asking ‘Is our systems map accurate?’ we ask ‘How does the process of creating this map reveal and reshape our current ways of making distinctions about organizational life?’ The tool serves its purpose when it points beyond itself toward the processes that we participate in creating organizational reality, then becomes disposable once we have developed more direct awareness of our participation.

This principle applies across complexity frameworks. When we use any analytical tool, ladder consciousness means recognizing that we are not discovering objective properties but enacting particular ways of making sense that bring certain possibilities into view while obscuring others. The framework becomes useful when we can use it to examine our own sense-making, then let it go.

Beyond Tools: What Emerges After the Ladder:
This raises an important question. What happens after we kick away the ladder? What replaces our conceptual tools once we have transcended their limitations?

The answer is not the absence of structure but a different relationship to structure. After using and abandoning frameworks, what can emerge is what John Dewey called ‘inquiry’, a more fluid, responsive way of engaging with situations that draws on conceptual resources without being constrained by them.

Dewey’s conception of inquiry is particularly relevant here because it transcends the subject-object dualism that creates many of our analytical problems. Instead of treating thinking as something that happens inside our heads while we observe an external world, Dewey understood inquiry as a transactional process between organism and environment. The inquirer and the situation inquired into are parts of a single unfolding transaction.

This means inquiry is not about representing a pre-existing reality but about transforming problematic situations into more settled ones. When we encounter what we call a ‘complex situation’, inquiry suggests we are not discovering complexity ‘out there’ but participating in an ongoing transaction that we might call ‘complexifying’. The situation becomes complex through our engagement with it, just as we become complex through our engagement with the situation.

For Dewey, genuine inquiry involves what he called ‘learning by doing’ coupled with reflection on that doing. We act, observe the consequences, and adjust our future actions based on what we learn. This creates a recursive cycle where our understanding evolves through engagement rather than through detached observation. The goal is not to achieve final truth but to develop more intelligent ways of acting within ongoing situations.

This approach naturally incorporates ladder consciousness. We use conceptual tools as hypotheses for action rather than as final descriptions of reality. We test these tools against their consequences in lived experience, keeping those that prove helpful and abandoning those that constrain effective action. The tools serve inquiry rather than replacing it.

This post-ladder engagement is characterized by several qualities. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. Just like the ladder, this should serve as an intuition pump.

• Responsiveness over methodology: Instead of applying predetermined frameworks, we develop sensitivity to what each situation calls for. We maintain access to various conceptual tools while remaining free to abandon them when they no longer serve.
• Process awareness: We become more conscious of how our own sense-making participates in creating the realities we encounter. This is not relativism but what Donna Haraway called ‘situated knowledge’: knowledge that acknowledges its own positioning.
• Provisional commitment: We can act decisively based on our current understanding while remaining open to revision. This allows for second order approach to wisdom, intuitive knowledge of the limits of knowledge.

The Ethics of Temporary Tools:
There is an ethical dimension to ladder consciousness that connects to my earlier post on reentry and xenophobia. When we hold our conceptual tools too tightly, we risk treating our provisional distinctions as absolute truths, our temporary boundaries as permanent walls. This is one of the main reasons why we must discard the ladder rather than hold onto it.

The ladder teaches a different relationship to our beliefs and frameworks, firm enough to guide action, light enough to avoid becoming weapons. This balance is crucial and deserves deeper exploration.

What does it mean to hold beliefs firmly enough to guide action? It means we must be able to act decisively based on our current understanding, even while acknowledging that understanding is provisional. Without some degree of commitment to our frameworks, we become paralyzed by infinite doubt. We need enough conviction to move forward, to make choices, to take responsibility for our actions.

But what does it mean to hold these same beliefs lightly enough to avoid weaponizing them? It means maintaining what Keats called ‘negative capability’. This is the ability to remain in uncertainty and doubt without irritably reaching after fact and reason. It means recognizing that our strongest convictions might be wrong, our clearest insights might be partial, our most cherished frameworks might be limiting us in ways we cannot yet see.

This creates a paradoxical situation that the ladder helps us navigate. We must act as if our current understanding is enough to work with, while remaining open to its revision. We must commit without clinging. We must form strong opinions, but hold them lightly.

This becomes particularly crucial when working with others who hold different frameworks. Instead of engaging in battles over whose map is more accurate, ladder consciousness invites us to explore how different ways of making sense might serve different purposes. It asks us to treat our frameworks as offerings to collective inquiry rather than as territories to defend.

The ethical imperative here connects to von Foerster’s principle: ‘Act always so as to increase the number of choices’. When we hold our tools lightly, we create space for others to contribute their own sense-making resources. When we avoid weaponizing our frameworks, we keep possibilities open rather than shutting them down.

Our role becomes less about providing definitive maps and more about helping develop capacities for making better distinctions in the face of uncertainty. This suggests designing interventions that increase what von Foerster called ‘the number of choices’ rather than narrowing them down to predetermined solutions.

Climbing Toward Participatory Knowing:
This brings us back to my critique of complexity science’s foundational dogmas, but with an additional insight that shifts how we use language itself. We typically use complexity as a noun (‘this system has complexity’) or an adjective (‘this is a complex situation’). But it may be time to recognize complexity as a verb, something we do rather than something we encounter.

When we complexify a situation, we are not discovering pre-existing complexity but participating in an ongoing process of distinction-making and sense-making that brings complexity into being. The situation becomes complex through our engagement with it, just as we become complex through our engagement with the situation. Complexity emerges from what I have called epistemic coupling: the recursive interaction between knowing systems and their environments.

This verb-oriented understanding aligns with Dewey’s transactional thinking and Spencer-Brown’s emphasis on the observer’s role in creating distinctions. It suggests that when we say a situation is ‘complex’, we might more accurately say we are ‘complexifying’ our relationship with that situation through the particular ways we choose to engage with it.

This reframing has practical implications. Instead of asking ‘How can we manage this complex system?’ we might ask ‘How are we complexifying this situation, and how might we complexify it differently?’ Instead of treating complexity as a problem to be solved, we recognize complexifying as an ongoing process we participate in creating.

This perspective naturally leads to ladder consciousness. If complexity emerges from observer-system interactions, then studying complexity must include studying how we study. We cannot step outside the epistemic coupling that generates complexity in the first place.

The ladder provides a way to work with this recursion constructively. It allows us to use conceptual tools to bootstrap ourselves into meta-cognitive awareness, then abandon those tools once they have served their purpose of revealing our own participation in constructing what we take to be reality.

Final Words:
Wittgenstein’s ladder offers more than a philosophical metaphor for complexity work. It suggests a practical approach to navigating situations where traditional analytical tools reach their limits. In a world facing unprecedented challenges that resist conventional problem-solving approaches, we may need frameworks that can help us think more clearly while remaining open to possibilities we cannot yet imagine.

The ladder teaches us that sometimes the most sophisticated response to complexity is paradoxical, using our best analytical tools while remaining prepared to abandon them in favor of more direct engagement with emerging situations. Sometimes deeper understanding comes not from having better maps, but from developing better capacities for navigation in unmapped territory.

This suggests a form of wisdom that seems well-suited to our current historical moment: recursive and reflective, provisional and purposeful. Each of these qualities that represent a cybernetic Constructivist approach deserves elaboration.

Recursive wisdom acknowledges that we are always inside the systems we are trying to understand. It recognizes that our attempts to make sense of complexity are themselves part of the complexity we are trying to navigate. This leads to what we might call ‘meta-learning’: learning about how we learn, thinking about how we think. Recursive wisdom asks us to include ourselves in our analyses, to observe our own observing.

Reflective wisdom suggests that effective action in complex situations requires ongoing consideration of our own assumptions, biases, and blind spots. But this is not the paralysis of infinite self-doubt. Rather, it is the cultivation of the ability to think about what we are doing while we are doing it, to adjust our approach based on emerging feedback from the situation itself.

Provisional wisdom means holding our current understanding as our best guess given available information, while remaining genuinely open to revision. It means acting with conviction while maintaining epistemic humility. This is what we can call as ‘fallibilism’, the recognition that any particular perspective, no matter how well-supported, might be incomplete or mistaken.

Purposeful wisdom suggests that this openness to revision is not aimless but directed toward some vision of beneficial outcomes. It means using our provisional understanding to work toward flourishing, justice, and expanded possibilities for all participants in the situation. Purposeful wisdom asks us to take responsibility for the worlds our actions help create.

Together, these aspects suggest an approach to complexity that is both humble and decisive, both open and committed. It invites us to use our best tools while holding them lightly, to think systematically while remaining open to surprise, to act decisively while staying curious about the consequences of our actions.

Perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that we are not outside observers of complex systems but participants within them. The ladder helps us climb to a perspective from which we can see this participation more clearly. And then, if we choose wisely, we can kick it away and engage more consciously with the complexity we help create.

Stay curious and Always keep on learning…

The Patron Saint of Complexity:

In today’s post, I am looking at the notion of a patron saint of complexity. I have had the question posed to me – why I am a fan of Ludwig Wittgenstein? In fact, I think that today’s post might get some responses similar to how overrated Wittgenstein is. The answer is simple – I have come to see Wittgenstein as the patron saint of complexity. He stands as philosophy’s patron saint of complexity, reminding us that all systems are fundamentally human constructions. While the world simply is, it’s our minds that weave the intricate web of meanings and patterns we call complexity.

I am of the school that complexity is something that we, humans, attribute to the world around us. It is a form of perspective, a form of expression. As Heinz von Foerster, a distant relative of Wittgenstein and the Socrates of Cybernetics, said – the environment as we perceive it is our invention. Wittgenstein’s point is that our understanding of the world is something we construct socially, and it is unique to our ‘human’ understanding. He sought to use philosophy as a means of therapy to find our way around the world.

Complexity emerges not as an inherent property of a ‘system’ but through how an observer interacts with and frames it. Wittgenstein’s insights suggest that the ‘complexity’ of a situation depends on the observer’s language games and forms of life. This perspective aligns with several key ideas from his later work. I encourage the reader to explore these ideas here.

Language games emphasize that meaning arises from context and use within specific activities. Just as words mean different things in different contexts, a situation’s complexity depends on the framing and engagement of the observer. These meanings are tied to the practices and ‘forms of life’ of a community – our background, values, and experiences shape how we perceive and interpret complexity. Wittgenstein’s rejection of fixed structures supports the idea that ‘systems’, and therefore, complexity, are emergent and non-linear, defying reductionist interpretations. His shift to examining ordinary language and everyday practices focuses on the dynamics of interaction. There is no universal viewpoint – only perspectives grounded in specific contexts.

A Thought Experiment:
I invite the reader to engage in a thought experiment – Imagine a world without language. How would that impact the complexity around us?

Without language, much of our socially constructed complexity would disappear. ‘Systems’ like economics, politics, and science – built on linguistic frameworks – would dissolve, leaving only direct, lived experience. A ‘market’ as we understand it, with its web of transactions, expectations, and regulations, would reduce to immediate barter or interaction, lacking the social conceptual scaffolding of ‘value’ or ‘profit’.

Yet paradoxically, individual perception of complexity might increase because the interpretive burden would shift entirely to the individual. Every interaction or phenomenon would need to be understood in real-time, without the benefit of shared categories or explanations. Consider how a pre-linguistic human might experience a tree – they would see its shape, feel its bark, notice its movement in the wind, and understand functionally that it provides shelter and fruit. But they couldn’t categorize it within abstract concepts like ‘ecosystem’ or ‘life cycle’.

This suggests something interesting – Language does not just describe complexity, it also generates complexity. Through language, we create nested layers of abstraction, build shared conceptual frameworks, accumulate and transmit knowledge across generations.

Without language, the world would be both simpler and more ineffable – but not necessarily less complex. We wouldn’t experience this as “simplicity” because the very concept of “simple vs. complex” is itself a linguistic construct. Like a wolf in the forest, we would simply experience raw reality without the mediating layer of linguistic abstraction.

We can see that language is both a magnifier and a creator of complexity. It allows us to construct shared realities that vastly exceed the sum of our individual experiences. Without it, the world would likely feel simpler in its structure but more intricate in its immediacy. This reminds us that complexity is not just ‘out there’, but also deeply entangled with how we communicate and make sense of the world.

The world would continue in all its intricate interactions – weather patterns would still form, ecosystems would still function, quantum particles would still behave in their strange and mysterious ways. We just wouldn’t have the linguistic frameworks to model and discuss these phenomena. Perhaps this reveals our linguistic bias – the assumption that the world must be either ‘more complex’ or ‘more simple’. Without language, such distinctions wouldn’t exist. The world would just be.

I will finish with an apt quote from Wittgenstein:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.

Always Keep Learning…

The Ghost in the System:

In today’s post, I am looking at the idea of ‘category mistake’ by the eminent British philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Ryle was an ardent opponent of Rene Descartes’ view of mind-body dualism. Ryle also came up with the phrase ‘the ghost in the machine’ to mock the idea of dualism. Cartesian dualism is the idea that mind and body are two separate entities. Descartes was perhaps influenced by his religious beliefs. Our bodies are physical entities that will wither away when we die. But our minds, Descartes concluded are immaterial and can “live on” after we die. Descartes noted:

There is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible… the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the body.

Ryle called this idea the official doctrine:

The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this. With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind. Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function.

Ryle referred to the idea of Cartesian dualism as the dogma of the ghost in the machine – the physical body being the machine, and the mind being the ghost. Ryle pointed out that Descartes was engaging in a category mistake by saying that mind and body are separate things. A category mistake happens when we operate with an idea as if it belongs to a particular category. Loosely put, it is like comparing apples to oranges, or even better, comparing apples to hammers. The two items do not belong to the same category and hence, a comparison between the two is a futile and incorrect attempt. The mind is not separate from the body. In fact, the two are interconnected and influence each other in a profound manner. Ryle talked about the idea of dualism as the absurdity of the official doctrine:

I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’. I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is, namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of types or categories), when they actually belong to another. The dogma is therefore a philosopher’s myth.

Ryle explained the category mistake with some examples. One of the examples was that of a foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge:

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks ‘But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your ‘University’. It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if ‘the University’ stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

The foreigner committed the category mistake by assuming that the university is a material entity just like different buildings he saw. He could not understand that the university is a collective whole made up of the different buildings, the students, the staff etc. I will discuss one more example that Ryle gave:

The same mistake would be made by a child witnessing the march-past of a division, who, having had pointed out to him such and such battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc., asked when the division was going to appear. He would be supposing that a division was a counterpart to the units already seen, partly similar to them and partly unlike them. He would be shown his mistake by being told that in watching the battalions, batteries and squadrons marching past he had been watching the division marching past. The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division.

Similar to the foreigner, the child was looking for a separate entity called “the division”. He could not understand that the division is what he is seeing. It was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division.

Ryle also gave another example of a visitor who was getting an explanation of the game of Cricket. He saw and understood the different players in the field such as the batsman, the bowler, the fielder etc. After he looked at each one of the players, he asked who is in charge of the team spirit. “But there is no one left on the field to contribute the famous element of team-spirit. I see who does the bowling, the batting and the wicket-keeping; but I do not see whose role it is to exercise esprit de corps.” Ryles explained:

Once more, it would have to be explained that he was looking for the wrong type of thing. Team-spirit is not another cricketing-operation supplementary to all of the other special tasks. It is, roughly, the keenness with which each of the special tasks is performed, and performing a task keenly is not performing two tasks. Certainly exhibiting team-spirit is not the same thing as bowling or catching, but nor is it a third thing such that we can say that the bowler first bowls and then exhibits team-spirit or that a fielder is at a given moment either catching or displaying esprit de corps.

The reader would have noticed that I titled the post – The Ghost in the System. I am alluding to the category mistakes we make in systems thinking. Most often we commit the category mistake of assuming that the system is a standalone objective entity. This is an ontological error. We talk of a hospital system or a transportation system as if it is a physical entity that is visible for everyone to see and understand. We talk about optimizing the system or changing the system as if it is a machine that we can repair by changing out a faulty part with another. In actuality, the system we refer to is a mental construct of how we imagine the different chosen components interact with each other producing specific outcomes we are interested. When we talk of the issues haunting the hospital system, we might be meaning the long waits we have to endure, or the expensive tests that we had to go through. Each one of us construct a version of a “system” and yet we use the same term “system” to talk about different aspects. It is a category mistake to assume that we know what the others are saying. Coming back to the example of the hospital system, when we speak of a hospital system, we point to the hospital buildings, the equipment in the hospitals, the waiting rooms, the doctors, the staff, or the patients. But that is not a hospital system, not really because a system is mental construct that is entirely dependent on who is doing the observing. The observer has a specific thing in mind when they use that word. It is a category mistake to assume that you know what was said. The artifacts are not the system. 

Ryle viewed category mistakes occurring due to problems in vocabulary. He wrote:

These illustrations of category-mistakes have a common feature which must be noticed. The mistakes were made by people who did not know how to wield the concepts University, division and team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items in the English vocabulary.

Wittgenstein famously wrote – The limits of language are the limits of my world. Our use of language limits what we can know or tell about the world. To go further with this idea, I am looking at the idea of systems from West Churchman’s viewpoint. Churchman advised us that a systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes of another. We live in a social realm and by social realm, I mean that we live in a world where “reality” is co-constructed with the other inhabitants of the realm. We define and redefine reality on an ongoing basis through continual interactions with the other cocreators. We should have a model or an image of what we are trying to manage. But if social realm is cocreated, we need to be aware of others in the realm and treat it as a cocreation rather than an objective reality that we have access to. Systems do not have an objective existence. Each one of us view and construct systems from our viewpoint. Thus, how we define a system is entirely dependent on us, the observers. What we have to do is to seek understanding before we rush in to change or optimize a system. The first step is to be aware of the others in the realm. The next step is to seek understanding and see how each one of them views the world. We have to better our vocabulary so that we can speak their language.

There is no ghost in the machine. There is only the machine.

I will finish with a wonderful reflexive nugget from Ryle:

In searching for the self, one cannot be the hunter and the hunted.

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Please take vaccination, if able. Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was The Cybernetics of Complexity:

This post is also available as a podcast – https://anchor.fm/harish-jose/episodes/The-Ghost-in-the-System-e169men

Wittgenstein and Autopoiesis:

In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein wrote the following:

“The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.”

He also noted that, if a lion could talk, we would not understand him.

As a person very interested in cybernetics, I am looking at what Wittgenstein said in the light of autopoiesis. Autopoiesis is the brainchild of mainly two Chilean biologist cyberneticians Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela. Autopoiesis was put forth as the joining of two Greek words, “auto” meaning self, and “poiesis” meaning creating. I have talked about autopoiesis here.  I am most interested in the autopoiesis’ idea of “organizational closure” for this post. An entity is organizationally closed when it is informationally tight. In other words, autopoietic entities maintain their identities by remaining informationally closed to their surroundings. We, human beings are autopoietic entities. We cannot take in information as a commodity. We generate meaning within ourselves based on experiencing external perturbations. Information does not enter from outside into our brain.

Let’s take the example of me looking at a blue light bulb. I interpret the presence of the blue light as being blue when my eyes are hit with the light. The light does not inform my brain, but rather my brain interprets the light as blue based on all my previous similar interactions I have had. There is no qualitative information coming to my brain saying that it is a blue light, but rather my brain interprets it as a blue light. It is “informative” rather than being a commodity piece of information. As cybernetician Bernard Scott noted:

…an organism does not receive “information” as something transmitted to it, rather, as a circularly organized system it interprets perturbations as being informative.

All of my previous interactions/perturbations with the light, and others explaining those interactions as being “blue light” generated a structural coupling so that my brain perceives a new similar perturbation as being “blue light”. This also brings up another interesting idea from Wittgenstein. We cannot have a private language. One person alone cannot invent a private language. All we have is public language, one that is reinterpreted and reinforced with repeat interactions. The sensation that we call “blue light” is a unique experience that is 100% unique to me as the interpreter. This supports the concept of autopoiesis as well. We cannot “open” ourselves to others so that they can see what is going on inside our head/mind.

Our interpretive framework, which we use to make sense of perturbations hitting us, is a result of all our past experiences and reinforcements. Our interpretive framework is unique to us homo sapiens. We share a similar interpretive framework, but the actual results from our interpretive framework is unique to each one of us. It is because of this that even if a lion could talk to us, we would not be able to understand it, at least not at the start. We lack the interpretive framework to understand it. The uniqueness of our interpretive framework is also the reason we feel differently regarding the same experiences. This is the reason, as a happy person, we cannot understand the world of a sad person, and vice versa.

Our brain makes sense based on the sensory perturbation and the interpretive framework it already has. A good example to think about this is the images that fall on our retina. The images are upside down, but we are able to “see” right side up. This is possible due to our structural coupling. What happens if there is a new sensory perturbation? We can only make sense of what we know. If we face a brand-new perturbation, we can make sense of it only in terms of what we know. The more we know, the more we are further able to know. As we face the same perturbation repeatedly, we are able to “better” experience it, and describe it to ourselves in a richer manner. With enough repeat interactions, we are finally able to experience it in our own unique manner. From this standpoint, there is no mind-body separation. The “mind” and “body” are both part of the same interpretive framework.

I will leave with another thought experiment to spark these ideas in the reader’s mind. There has always been talk about aliens. From what Wittgenstein taught us, when we meet the aliens, will we be able to understand each other?

I recommend the following posts to the reader expand upon this post:

If a Lion Could Talk:

The System in the Box:

A Study of “Organizational Closure” and Autopoiesis:

Please maintain social distance and wear masks. Stay safe and Always keep on learning… In case you missed it, my last post was When is a Model Not a Model?

The System in the Box:

W

In today’s post, I am looking at the brilliant philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “The Beetle in the Box” analogy.

Wittgenstein rose to fame with his first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he proposed the idea of a picture theory for words. Very loosely put, words correspond to objects in the real world, and any statement should be a picture of these objects in relation to one another. For example, “the cat is on the mat.” However, in his later years Wittgenstein turned away from his ideas. He came to see the meaning of words in how they are used. The meaning is in its use by the public. He came to realize that private language is not possible. To provide a simple explanation, we need an external reference to calibrate meanings to our words. If you are experiencing pain, all you can say is that you experience pain. While the experience of pain is private, all we have is a public language to explain it in. For example, if we experience a severe pain on Monday and decided to call it “X”. A week from that day, if you have some pain and you decide to call it “Y”, one cannot be sure if “X” was the same as “Y”.

The beetle in the box analogy is detailed in his second book released posthumously, Philosophical Investigations:

Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a ‘beetle’. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is by looking at his beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But suppose the word ‘beetle’ had a use in these people’s language? If so, it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. No one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

The beetle in the box is a thought experiment to show that private language is not possible. The beetle in my box is visible to only me, and I cannot see the beetle in anybody else’s box. All I can see is the box. The way that I understand the beetle or the word “beetle” is by interacting with others. I learn about the meaning only through the use of the word in conversations with others and how others use that word. This is true, even if they cannot see my beetle or if I cannot see their beetle. I can never experience and thus know their pain or any other private sensations. But we all use the same words to explain how each of us experience the world. The word beetle becomes whatever is in the box, even if the beetles are of different colors, sizes, types etc. Sometimes, the beetles could even be absent. The box in this case is the public language we use to explain the beetle which is the private experience. The meaning of the word beetle then is not what it refers to, but the meaning is determined by how it is used by all of us. It is an emergent phenomenon. And sometimes, the meaning itself changes over time. There is no way for me to know what your beetle looks like. The box comes to represent the beetle.

I love this thought experiment because we all assume that we can tell what others feel like. We talk as if we are all talking about the same world. We talk about the beetle as if everybody has the same beetle in their boxes. Everyone’s world is different, and their worlds are constructed based on their worldviews, mental models, schemas, biases etc. The construction is a dynamic and ongoing process. The construction is a recursive process in the sense, our construction influences how we interact in the world, which in turn influences the ongoing construction of the world. From this standpoint, we can see that reality is multidimensional and that there are as many realities as the number of participants. There is no one reality, and we cannot assume that our reality is the correct one. What exists is a cocreated reality with others, and this co-constructing activity is on a delicate balance. Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something. Nobody has access to a true reality. To paraphrase Heinz von Foerster, we do not see it as it is, it is as we see it.

We all talk about systems as if we all know what they mean. We say that we need to think about the purpose of the system or that it is the system, not the people. Systems are mental constructs we create based on our worldviews to make sense of phenomena around us. Most of the time when we talk about systems, we are speaking about a “part”. For example, when we talk about the “transportation system”, we are actually meaning the bus that is running late. Similar to the beetle in the box, my system is not the same as your system. My view of the healthcare system changes when I become sick versus when I am healthy. The same system has a different meaning and purpose if you are a healthcare worker versus if you are on the board of the hospital. We cannot stipulate a purpose for the system because systems do not have an ontological status. We cannot also stipulate a purpose for a co-creator. To do so will be to assume that we can see the beetle in their box. The great Systems Thinker West Churchman said that systems approach starts when one sees the world through another person’s eyes. Wittgenstein would say that this is impossible. But I think what Churchman was getting at is to realize that our “system” is not the only system. What we need is to seek understanding. With this view, Churchman also said that, there are no experts in the systems approach. Werner Ulrich, who built upon the ideas of Churchman said the following:

The systems idea, provided we take it seriously, urges us to recognize our constant failure to think and act rationally in a comprehensive sense. Mainstream systems literature somehow always manages to have us forget the fact that a lack of comprehensive rationality is inevitably part of the conditio humana. Most authors seek to demonstrate how and why their systems approaches extend the bounds of rational explanation or design accepted in their fields. West Churchman never does. To him, the systems idea poses a challenge to critical self-reflection. It compels him to raise fundamental epistemological and ethical issues concerning the systems planner’s claim to rationality. He never pretends to have the answers; instead, he asks himself and his readers a lot of thoroughly puzzling questions.

Even though systems are not real, we still use the word to further explain our thoughts and ideas. Ulrich continues:

What matters is ultimately not that we achieve comprehensive knowledge about the system in question (an impossible feat) but rather, that we understand the reasons and implications of our inevitable lack of comprehensive knowledge.

 The crucial issue, then, is no longer “What do we know?” but rather “How do we deal with the fact that we don’t know enough?” In particular, uncertainty about the whole systems implications of our actions does not dispense us from moral responsibility; hence, “the problem of systems improvement is the problem of the ‘ethics of the whole system’.”

 A book on morals is not moral. We cannot assume full access to the real world and stipulate purposes for our fellow cocreators. The purpose of language is to not expose our thoughts, but to make them presentable. In today’s world where complexity is ever increasing due to increasing connections, the beetle in the box analogy is important to remember.

 Similar to the famous credit card ad, I ask, “What is in your box?”

Stay safe and Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was The Map at the Gemba:

Wittgenstein’s Ladder at the Gemba:

ladder

In today’s post, I am looking at Wittgenstein’s ladder at the gemba. Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most profound philosophers of the 20th century. His first book was Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he came up with the picture theory of language. He defined how language and reality relate to each other, and how limits of language corresponded to limits of knowledge to some extent.

Loosely put, the Tractatus explained how language can be used to directly depict reality. Language should mirror exactly the arrangement of objects, and their relationships to each other in the real world. Wittgenstein proposed that what can be said about the world makes sense only if there is a correspondence to the real world out there. Everything else is nonsense. This idea puts limits to how we use language. The real use of language is to describe reality. Anthony Quinton, the late British philosopher, explained the main concepts of Tractatus as:

Tractatus is a theory of declarative sentences, a theory of what can be put in a proposition and what cannot. Anything that can be said can be said clearly or not at all.

The world is all that is the case. The state of affairs around us, the simple facts, are the world for us. Wittgenstein is talking about what we can and cannot sensibly  talk about.

The world consists of facts. Facts are arrangement of objects. Objects must be simple. These ideas appear as dogmatic assertions. Language has to have a definite sense and it can have a definite sense only if it is of a certain structure. And therefore the world must be of that certain structure in order to be capable of being represented in the language.

One of the metaphors, Wittgenstein used in the Tractatus is the idea of a ladder. This has come to be known as “Wittgenstein’s Ladder.”

Wittgenstein said:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.   

This is a fascinating idea because Wittgenstein is cautioning against doctrines as the eternal rules to abide by. If the concepts that Wittgenstein explained in the Tractatus are true, then the assertion of his ideas being true would contradict the ideas themselves. Wittgenstein uses the metaphor of a ladder to have the reader climb to a higher level of understanding and then asks the reader to kick the ladder away.

Let’s see how Wittgenstein’s ladder relates to Lean/Toyota Production System. Taiichi Ohno developed TPS as a production system through decades of trial and error methods. The solutions Ohno came up with were specific to the problems Toyota had at that time. We should learn about these different tools and understand the problems they are trying to solve. We should not exactly copy the tools that Toyota uses just because Toyota is using them. Even within Toyota, each plant is unique and doesn’t use a specific set of tools. As one Toyota veteran put it, Toyota Production System and Toyota’s Production System are different. What each plant does is unique and based on the complexity of problems it has.

There are several doctrines that are set forth by the experts. Let’s look at two examples – zero inventories and one-piece flow. Taiichi Ohno himself tried to correct these two misrepresentations/misunderstandings.

Ohno called the Zero Inventory idea nonsense:

To be sure, if we completely eliminate inventories, we will have shortages of goods and other problems. In fact, reducing inventories to zero is nonsense.

The goal of Toyota Production System is to level the flows of production and goods… In every plant and retail outlet, we strive to have the needed goods arrive in the needed quantities in the needed time. In no way is the Toyota Production System a zero-inventory system.

Similarly, Ohno also cautioned about implementing one-piece flow without thinking and looking at your production system.

The essence of Toyota Production System is found in the saying, “Can we realistically reduce one more?” and then after that “one more?”

The removal of parts or operators is about identifying waste and ways to improve human capital through problem solving. The idea is to develop people and not think only about developing parts. Kaizen is a philosophy of personal improvement (improving oneself) through process improvements. Kaizen begets more kaizen.

Final Words:

The problem with doctrines is that we build a religion out of them. 

Ask yourself – What is the problem that I am trying to solve? Toyota’s solutions work for Toyota’s problems. We should climb the TPS/Lean ladder (understand the ideas) and then throw away the ladder of doctrines. We should solve our problems using solutions that match our problems.

Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Drawing at the Gemba:

If a Lion Could Talk:

EPSON MFP image

In today’s post, I am continuing with the theme of being inspired by philosophy. This post is inspired by the famous Austrian/British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein [1]. In his posthumously published book “Philosophical Investigations” [2], Wittgenstein wrote;

“If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”

One of the interpretations of this statement is that a lion has a totally different worldview than us, thus his values would be entirely different. Even though, we may have a common language, the intentions and interpretations would be completely different. A lion does not share a common frame of reference with us. The mutual understanding also depends upon whether we are interested in actively listening. Another aspect to think about is the non-verbal communication. The majority of human communication is non-verbal so simply talking does not convey the entire meaning. The meaning of a word depends upon the use of it within the context of a shared understanding.

When I was pondering about this, I started wondering whether we would understand if our process or gemba is “talking” to us. In some regards, they do talk to us through the visual controls we have in place. The visual controls lets us know how the process is going – but do we understand it?

The purpose of a visual control is to immediately make any abnormality, waste, or deviation visible so that we can immediately take action. Notice that I used “immediately” twice. This is how we should understand it. This sets the tone for how gemba talks to us. There are several ways that we fail to understand what the gemba is saying to us. A great resource for Visual controls is a collection of articles compiled from NKS Factory Management Journal, available in the form of the book “Visual Control Systems.” [3] Some of the ways Visual Controls can fail are;

1) A failure to understand what the visual controls are for:

One of the examples given of inadequate implementation of visual controls is to treat visual controls as a mere extension of 5S. The purpose of visual controls is, as noted above, to make abnormalities immediately visible. Additionally, action must be taken to address the problem.

2) Low problem consciousness among the employees:

If the employee is failing to make the abnormality visible, or if the supervisor / group leader or management is failing to take action immediately, the purpose of visual controls is being defeated. This leads to “business-as-usual” thinking.

3) Inadequate Visual Control Tools:

If there is no daily production board used, then any metric tracked is going to lead only to a delayed response. No timely action that can be taken. In a similar note, if the daily production board is located in a place that is not easy to see, the operators will not use it because of the inconvenience.

4) Lack of established standards for the visual controls:

In order to have the visual controls operate successfully, the establishment and dissemination of the rules of the visual controls must be performed. Everybody should know how to understand the visual control – what is the norm, what is good versus bad, signs something is abnormal etc.

I will finish off with a great Zen story that relates to the lack of understanding.

Provided he makes and wins an argument about Buddhism with those who live there, any wandering monk can remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on. In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brother monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye. A wandering monk came and asked for lodging, properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teaching. The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the younger one to take his place. “Go and request the dialogue in silence,” he cautioned.

So the young monk and the stranger went to the shrine and sat down. Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: “Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me.”
“Relate the dialogue to me,” said the elder one.
“Well,” explained the traveler, “first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here.” With this, the traveler left.

“Where is that fellow?” asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother.
“I understand you won the debate.”
“Won nothing. I’m going to beat him up.”
“Tell me the subject of the debate,” asked the elder one.
“Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and got ready to punch him, but he ran out and that ended it!”

Always keep on learning…

In case you missed it, my last post was Ehipassiko – Come and See:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-Ludwig-Wittgenstein/dp/1405159286

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Control-Systems-Innovations-Advanced-Companie/dp/1563271435

[4] Lion drawing by Audrey Jose