Recursivity and Contingency (Media Philosophy)

it is at the core of Kant’s political philosophy, since nature is “the great artist . . . the eventual ‘guarantee of perpetual peace.’”

we are not talking about a philosophy of the organism but rather arguing that the organic imposes on philosophy a new condition and new method of thinking.

The concept of the organic being consists in the reciprocal relations between parts and the whole and the capacity of reproduction.

The clearest definition of the organic form can be found in §64, where Kant defines the organic being as follows: “a thing exists as a natural end if it is (though in a double sense) both cause and effect of itself.”

autopoiesis, which we want to call recursivity.

recursion—is both operation and structure

For the Greeks, the verb cause, αἴτιον, means in the legal sense to be responsible, but also in some cases in guilt or in debt.

Information, as “difference which makes a difference,” is operational and self-referential.

In this sense, Simondon’s concept of information is closer to that of Gregory Bateson, for whom information is “the difference which makes a difference.”

Simondon’s approach to information is to turn it into a more general concept, which means signification. When an incoming signal produces signification to the system, it carries information.