El caso resuelto por la Sentencia del Consejo de estado de 19 de octubre de 2004

Bateson’s final version of his criteria for mental systems is given in Mind and Nature and repeated in Angels Fear:

1. A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components.

2. The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference and differ-ence is a nonsubstantial phenomenon not located in space or time;

difference is related to negentropy and entropy rather than to energy.

3. Mental process requires collateral energy.

4. Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.

5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e., coded versions of events which preceded them). The rules of such transformation must be comparatively stable (i.e., more stable than the content) but are themselves subject to transformation.

6. The description and classification of these processes of transformation dis-close a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena. (1979a, 92, Bateson’s emphases)

Few readers find this list, or Bateson’s subsequent discussion, self-explanatory. After careful reading and consideration I offer the following as a more accessible paraphrase.

• The system will be one of relationships between any sufficient complexity of material components in the living world.

• The systemic interactions must, using energy available within the system, pass information around circular (or more complex) path-ways. Such information is always “news of difference,” a version of a previous event, coded in ways appropriate to the ability of the path-ways to carry it and the material entities to respond.

• Such mental systems are to be understood as particular beings, enti-ties, and processes that are related by membership of larger and more general classes. Such minds are “nested” within larger mental systems.

• Interaction within and between minds promotes learning in the system, involves memory and results in knowing. All of these are defined in much broader terms than those in which we normally think of such processes.

• These are necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of mind.

Bateson, in referring to his own list of the requirements for mind (1979a, 91), says that “if any aggregate of phenomena, any system, satis-fies all the criteria listed, I shall unhesitatingly say that the aggregate is a mind.” Hence, this is a set of sufficient criteria. Any system displaying all these characteristics must be regarded as a mind.

It will be useful if we now examine my paraphrase, considering each of the above requirements. I have concluded, after scrutiny of Bateson’s own accounts of his theory, that the following explanation of each of the above criteria is consonant with his mature thinking.

The system will be one of relationships between any sufficient complexity of mate-rial components in the living world. Bateson’s claim is that minds exist and function only as the relating between material parts. He is emphatic that there must be some complexity in the system for mental process to take place. The parts must be differentiated and linked by the system. The material components are essential but the interactive relating between them is the mind or mental process. This relating may take the form of information transfer, response to “news of difference,”the self-correction of systems (negative feedback), their tendency to amplify the results of communication so as to produce “runaway” or “regenerative feedback”

(positive feedback), or the selection, from the possible alternatives, of one course of action or development (1979a, 93).⁸

Examples of such mental systems would include a growing plant, seen as a system in itself. A larger mind would include the plant’s relating with its environment: soil, nutrients, temperature, sunlight, air, water, and other plants nearby. The relating of a wolf to fellow members of her

pack, to her cubs and mate, to available sources of food, temperature and climate, and her own processes of health and aging would be a mental system too. At a larger scale, the relating between the wolf pack and other animals, hunters, or preservationist human groups would be a more com-plex mind. The interrelating between global climate change, rising levels of carbon dioxide, more than four hundred million petrol-driven vehi-cles (Campbell, 2002, 38), government policies, multinational corpora-tions, the oil industry, and international politics form a “mind” operating between material components of vastly greater complexity than Bateson’s definition requires. In this context it is worth remembering that he sees mental systems as capable of being infected by the insanity of other mental systems such as our societal processes: “There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds. . . . When you narrow down your epistemology and act on the premise ‘What interests me is me, or my organization, or my species,’ you chop off consideration of other loops or the loop structure. You decide that you want to get rid of the by-products of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place to put them. You forget that the eco-mental system called Lake Erie is part of your wider eco-mental system—and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experi-ence” (2000, 492).

The implications of this view of mind, as being the active constituent in every scale of process in the natural world, are immense. Not least, it suggests a radical revision of our understanding of human “self” and a revised approach to corporate and individual human “responsibility.” It is possible that a general acceptance of Bateson’s view would produce a new and essentially “religious” worldview in which our present concep-tual separations between self/other, human/nature, and culture/envi-ronment would disappear. These important potential changes are discussed in subsequent chapters.

The systemic interactions must, using energy available within the system, pass

“information” around circular (or more complex) pathways. Such information is always “news of difference,”a version of a previous event, coded in ways appro-priate to the ability of the pathways to carry it and the material entities to respond.

Bateson’s mental systems are cybernetic systems, as described in chapter 2. They are recursive circular or more complex systems in which the recirculation of a signal or item of information will indicate, or cause, change within the system. Such signals or coded items of information are not to be seen as being, themselves, pulses or forms of energy. Their arrival may trigger energetic responses that use energy already available

within the system. The clenched fist is a coded signal of threatened violence but the muscular capability used to make the sign, deliver the punch, or run away on receipt of the signal must be already available as stored energy in the body. The Internet carries very large amounts of information around the Earth with great speed but must utilize electricity generated elsewhere to do this. Information can be any sort of indica-tion of change or “difference” that can inform the system that something has happened. It might be a chemical change in the environment of a cell, a nervous impulse within an organism, symptoms of illness or recovery in a human or other animal, the temperature changes and diminution of daylight that signal the onset of winter to a forest ecosystem, or news of an attack on a nation.

The “coding” of signals means that the form in which the item of information travels through the system is adapted to the receptive ability of the those parts that need to receive it. A hormonal change in the body can act as a coded signal releasing emotions (and actions) of love or anger. A recognizable warning call from one bird may alert the whole flock. Identifying the scent of fox may enable the grazing rabbit to take appropriate action. A folksong may carry coded words that, to those who know the code, indicate rejection of an oppressive regime. The black and yellow stripes of a wasp are a code that communicates “this insect stings”

to those with experience of other wasps.

This criterion implies a significant widening of our concept of per-ception. It suggests that “awareness” (defined as the capacity to register and respond to information) is common to all mental systems and that consciousness or self-consciousness is not a requirement for this. It also implies a profound revision of our understanding of “infor-mation.” Subsequent sections and chapters of this book will explore these matters.

Such mental systems are to be understood as particular beings, entities, and processes that are related by membership of larger and more general classes. Such minds are “nested” within larger mental systems. Bateson repeatedly relates his mental systems to Bertrand Russell’s theory of Logical Types (Russell 1956; Whitehead and Russell 1910, 1913), which is concerned with distinguishing between and ordering hierarchies of the members of classes, classes, classes of classes, and so on. In many areas of mental process (including learning, play, humor, dream, artistic engagement, and religion) Bateson’s thought is fundamentally influenced by Russell’s logical theory.