Emergent Constructions

Chapter 7. Emergent Constructions

A point of view that acquires a will

[ INSERT FIGURE: emergent constructions ]

Emergent Constructions.

7. 1. The Third Level

The previous chapters passed through four transformations, and each built a new floor over the one before. But everything built had a common feature: all activity was closed within a single subject. Object, route, symbol, concept, will — each has its own “hardware” and its own content, and all of it belongs to one organism. The floors stood one upon another, materially continuing the one below.

Now let us take a step of a different kind. Take not one subject but many — and let the state of each take into account the states of the others. Then within this multitude one can single out information that participates in a common architecture. The information physically remains in the individual objects, but it acquires a meaning that is present in none of them separately. This meaning is the emergent construction.

It must be established at once that this is not an object. An emergent construction has no hardware of its own, no carrier of its own, no place where it would lie. All the information is physically located on the second level — in the individual subjects. The third level is not a thing but a point of view on the multitude of second-level objects, a point of view that has a meaning of its own.

The model example is language. Language belongs to no particular person; one cannot point to where it is stored. And yet it exists — it can be studied, used, transmitted. It is the common thing that is singled out from the coordinated states of many carriers. Remove all the speakers and language vanishes; but as long as they are many and coordinated, language exists, and exists as something separate from each of them.

7. 2. Why There Are No Transitions Here

This immediately sets the third level apart from everything that came before. Each previous transformation carried information into a new space: the object was convolved into a symbol, the symbol into a concept, and each time the new space had its own dimensionality, its own axes. Convolution and splice are precisely transitions between spaces.

Here there is no transition. The third level lies in the same space as the second, on the same coordinate axes. The common space does not arise as a new dimension over the individual one — it is formed by the union of individual spaces of the same level. The coordinates are the same; all that changes is that they are now common to many. Hence there is neither convolution nor splice here: there is nowhere to cross to, we remain in the same space.

No ontological leap occurs. And yet a new quality arises — one that was not present in the individual space: a quality that works as an organ no longer of a separate subject but of a large group. The emergent construction is not built over the second level as a new floor — it is singled out in the unified space as a common quality. Language does not lie a floor above individual speech; it is the common thing that is singled out when the individual speech-spaces of many are united into one.

Therefore the chapter on emergent constructions is arranged differently from the chapters on transformations: here there will be no new transitions, maps, or splices. There will be a description of the qualities that are singled out in the common space when the individual spaces of the second level are united.

Immateriality should be pictured precisely. On the diagram the emergent layer does not stand flush against the second level — a gap is left between them. The gap means not that the third level is in some other place, but that it has no hardware of its own: the common quality is not a material floor lying on the one below. It is in the same space as the second level but has no carrier of its own — all the matter has remained below, in the individual objects. The gap is a sign of the absence of a separate substrate, not of a separate space.

7. 3. Two Streams

From where does an emergent construction get its content? Here two streams are distinguished, and this distinction is the main thing in the arrangement of the third level.

The vertical stream comes from below: an emergent object is singled out from its second-level objects. Shared symbols are singled out from the individual symbols of many subjects, shared concepts — from individual concepts. This is the basic stream; every emergent construction has it; by it the construction is born.

The horizontal stream goes sideways, along the third level itself: one emergent construction flows out of another. Shared contradictions flow out of shared concepts — for a contradiction is the vector of distance between two concepts, and if the concepts are shared, then the vector between them is shared too. The shared personality flows out of the shared contradictions. There is a subtlety here that must be held firmly: physically the information still comes from below, from the second level, because there is nowhere else for it to come from. But logically the connection runs along the third level — from neighbor to neighbor. The emergent can arise from the emergent.

And this second thing is the key to everything. If only the vertical stream existed, the third level would be a mirror: a passive reflection of the second, without any life of its own. But the horizontal stream means that on the third level there are connections that do not exist on the second — a structure closed within the third level itself. And an own, closed structure is exactly what subjectness was on the lower floors. The GTR3 subject was a subject not because it had a special substance — the substance is everywhere one and the same, cells — but because it had its own operational structure of wills and contradictions. The emergent subject is by the same measure: it is a subject to the degree to which it possesses horizontal connectedness.

7. 4. Eight Constructions

The emergent layer is built over each cube of the second level — over all eight of them. Let us go through them from left to right.

a) Shared Behavior

Over the GTR1 behavioral map. The most ancient emergent construction, and the only one that is fully pre-symbolic. The model is the hunt of a wolf pack: the plan and the execution of the hunt lie in the pack and are understood by all the participants, but no single wolf holds it whole. The hunt exists as the common property of the group, belonging to none of its members.

b) Shared Schemas

Over the GTR1 event schema. Over shared behavior are built shared event scenarios — stable sequences that the group executes in coordination, as a pack executes a hunt by a familiar schema.

c) Shared Symbols

Over the GTR2 symbols. Language as a vocabulary: shared symbols that belong to no one but are common to all. A word exists as long as many use it.

d) Shared Constructs

Over the GTR2 constructs. Symbols are only words; how to connect, conjugate, and decline them — that is construction. Shared constructs are grammar: the common rules for assembling symbols. Shared symbols give the vocabulary, shared constructs the syntax.

e) Shared Narratives

Over the GTR2 narratives. Myths. And history, which is also a myth — a shared story that many carry and that exists over all its carriers, coinciding with no one’s memory in particular.

f) Shared Concepts

Over the GTR3 concepts. The Greeks liked to discuss good and evil as though they existed in themselves and people merely came to know them. This is precisely the shared concept: a meaning carried beyond any individual. There is a simpler one too — “red”: everyone knows what it is, and yet it hardly exists as a material object. A concept is shared precisely because it is bound neither to a carrier nor to a thing.

g) Shared Contradictions

Over the GTR3 contradictions. Splices around the vector of distance between two shared concepts. If the concepts are shared, then the vector of the difference between them is shared too; how to traverse this vector depends on the particularities of the subjects and the kind of objects. Here the horizontal stream is distinct for the first time: a shared contradiction takes its poles from shared concepts, that is, from its neighbor on the third level.

h) The Shared Personality

Over the GTR3 personality. The summit of the series, and of it — separately, below.

7. 5. The Gradient of Subjectness

The arrangement of the constructions from left to right is not an enumeration but a gradient. The horizontal stream grows along the series.

At the leftmost construction, shared behavior, there is no horizontal stream at all: to its left there is no neighbor, nothing to refer to. Shared behavior is wholly determined from below — the pack does exactly what the wolves do, and it has no autonomy from the participants whatever. This is a pure point of view without a structure of its own.

Toward the right edge the horizontal stream grows. Shared concepts rest on shared narratives, shared contradictions on shared concepts, the shared personality on shared contradictions. The further to the right, the denser the connections within the third level and the less the construction is determined from below. At the shared personality the horizontal stream is maximal.

This means that subjectness on the third level does not switch on by a leap — it grows. On the left the emergent is obedient to its substrate, on the right it is almost autonomous from it. The same gradient can be read as a gradient of independence: on the left the emergent construction is subordinate to the individuals through whom it is executed, on the right it rules them. The growth of horizontal connectedness is the growth of the autonomy of the emergent subject from those through whom it physically exists.

7. 6. Evolution as a Condition

This gradient has a price, and it explains why it is precisely a gradient and not a ready-made shelf.

The horizontal connection logically belongs to the third level but is physically realized on the second — because there is nowhere else for the information to be. For a connection between two emergent constructions to exist at all, a structure capable of carrying this connection must arise in the physical systems of the second level, in a multitude of subjects. Initially there is no such structure — it has to be built. The building and rebuilding of the physical systems of the second level — and, where necessary, of the cellular tissue of the first — for the realization of horizontal connections is the work of evolution, and it takes time.

Hence the series reads as a historical sequence. On the left is the ancient: shared behavior arises early, it is carried by simple systems, it requires no horizontal connectedness. On the right is the later: the shared personality requires a developed carrier, language, grammar, accumulated concepts, and culture. The emergent layer is not built all at once as a floor — it grows over the second level gradually, from left to right, as the lower levels acquire the capacity to carry its connections. The horizontal axis of the diagram is, in essence, the axis of evolutionary time.

7. 7. The Shared Personality

At the right edge stands the shared personality, and it requires a careful definition, because the one that suggests itself is wrong.

It is tempting to say that the shared personality is the union of individual personalities, their sum or average. But if it were the sum of individuals, it would be governed by individuals — and the opposite is observed. The shared personality is formed by shared contradictions, and formed more strongly than by individual impulses. Even a very educated and trained individual cannot noticeably influence the shared personality. Yet the tasks that stand in the shared contradictions — the survival of peoples, great ideological turns — change the shared personality considerably. Causality flows from above, from the shared contradictions, and not from below, from individuals. This is a direct consequence of the maximal horizontal stream: the shared personality rests on shared contradictions and is not assembled from second-level personalities.

Hence a sign by which the shared personality can be discerned in the facts. Where the individually irrational turns out to be collectively logical, the push of a shared contradiction is visible. When a country shuts down working power plants, from the standpoint of an individual calculation it looks illogical — but from the standpoint of the shared personality, driven by the shared contradiction between the industrial and the ecological agenda, the move is consistent. An individual would not have chosen so; the community chose. When a historical figure recarves the personality of a whole continent without gaining personal peace from it, he acts not as an optimizing individual but as a conductor of the shared contradiction of his epoch, and the result is measured by the shift of the shared personality, not by his own benefit. The divergence between individual rationality and collective logic is the trace of the emergent subject: where they diverge, it is the shared personality that acts, not the separate person.

Thus the gradient closes. At the left edge the emergent construction is obedient to those who carry it; at the right it rules them. The point of view that began as a passive gaze upon a multitude, by the right edge acquires a will of its own — a will executed through individuals but not subject to them.