Look for an example of how distinctions influence perception and action!

A typical application is the conflict solution, where both parties put on the "glasses" of the other party. Glasses stand for categories or distinctions.

A mother observes how her child finds itself in a - for the child - dangerous situation. For example, the child appears to be about to jump onto a road with cars on it.

The mother runs there and holds the child back, perhaps because she distinguishes a healthy and an injured child. As an observer, I can say that the mother did this for the child, because the child might have been hurt. But I can also say that she did it for herself, because she would have suffered if the child had been harmed. As an observer, I can distinguish the interests of mother and child. If I distinguish the interests, I can put the mother before an embarrassing decision with a question (note 1). However, I can also remove the distinction. If I do not distinguish the interests of mother and child, I cannot meaningfully ask in whose interest she has intervened. Distinctions determine my pro-perception and my actions. The distinctions are not in the matter, I make them.

I think the story behind this example is quite well known - at least in the social sciences. It also fits me historically well here, because it is in the context of the invention of the (behaviorist) black box, which is of great importance for 2nd order systems theory.

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, developed classical conditioning in a well-known experiment with a dog.

In classical conditioning, two stimuli are linked in such a way that they trigger the same reaction in a behavioristic system, because one stimulus is used as a quasi unconscious symbol for the other. In his experiment, I. Pavlov offered meat to a dog, which is an unconditional stimulus for the dog, and the dog responded to this with salivation, i.e. with a specific reaction. During feeding, I. Pavlov presented the dog with a second neutral stimulus, i.e. a stimulus that had not yet produced a specific reaction. He rang a bell. After he had presented the two stimuli, i.e. food and bell together often enough, the formerly neutral stimulus worked on its own, the dog started salivating even without meat supply when he heard the bell. I. Pawlow concluded that the dog had associated the two stimuli in a learning process.

The explanation of I. Pavlov is functional. As a behaviorist, I. Pavlov says that we do not need to know how the dog is constructed, or how it operates internally. We can functionally understand what happens in the black box "dog" by showing how the black box can be manipulated to a certain behavior. The behaviorists invented the black box, only later, in the so-called cognitive turn, the inner workings of the black box were discovered as interesting. I. Pavlow thus gives an operative description, but not a constructive one. He tells what to do if you want to train the dog, but not how the dog works.

You can vary this experiment. Jerzy Konorski made the following experiment: he repeated everything exactly according to the instructions of I. Pawlow. But at the decisive moment he let his assistant, without his knowledge, "ring" a bell without a clapper. The bell remained silent, but the dog still secreted. From this J. Konorski concluded: The ringing of the bell was a conditioned stimulus for I. Pavlov, but not for the dog. The dog may have learned something, but we do not know what. I. Pavlov, on the other hand, could have learned from his research that the dog salivates when the researcher hears the bell in the presence of the dog (note 2).

I. Pavlov, as a researcher, has investigated a connection - under strict rules of experiment. He made hypotheses about conditioning and tested and verified them experimentally. Then he wrote a scientific report about it, in which he presented the method and the findings so that they could be understood and verified by the scientific community. I see this as a typical case of science, such as that described by K. Popper. We can reproduce I. Pavlov's experiment exactly and we will come to the same result. It is an essential aspect of science that results are reproducible. J. Konorski did not repeat the experiment of I. Pavlov, but he did another experiment that also led to a result. The experiment of J. Konorski is also reproducible. However, it does not make any real sense in relation to the dog, because J. Konorski checks whether a specifically taught dog can do something that was not consciously taught.

J. Konorski's experiment only makes sense as a criticism of I. Pavlov. However, the criticism is not based on the fact that he shows that the experiment of I. Pavlov is not repeatable or shows other results. It is therefore - at least in the sense of K. Popper - not a scientific criticism. With K. Popper - and in common sense - it explicitly states that the choice of hypotheses is scientifically arbitrary. Hypotheses must only be falsifiable and of course have practical relevance. This is exactly what I. Pawlow has achieved outstandingly. His theory was and is used and confirmed in the dressage of animals everywhere. So it has great relevance and can be repeated by any number of people. The result of J. Konorski does not disprove the result of I. Pavlov, but simply shows that there are other facts which are also quite interesting. The criticism refers to the distinction that I. Pavlov based his experiment on. I. Pavlov observes his dog. Many of his students also observe the dog. J. Konorski observes I. Pavlov - or more precisely, the distinction that one must use if one wants to see what I. Pavlov saw (note 3).

I. Pavlov - if I look with another distinction - taught a dog. One can also say educated, taught, trained or coached. I. Pawlow had a teaching goal, the dog had to pass an exam. The dog passed the exam, although we do not know which task the dog had actually solved (perhaps he did not pay attention to the ringing of the bell). But I. Pavlov achieved his teaching goal, because the dog behaved as predicted. Had I been in the dog's place, the teaching goal would have had no relevance for me. At best I would have learned how to get to my rewards or quickly out of the experimental cage. My learning goal would have been quite different from I. Pavlov's teaching goal. But perhaps I would have learned to pay attention to the bell anyway.

Re-entry: Observers observe

What the dog of I. Pavlov reacts to lies in the blind spot of I. Pavlov. J. Konorski's experiment makes this blind spot visible. The decisive thing is not that J. Konorski observes the dog-watcher I. Pavlov, but that he observes the distinction of I. Pavlov. Observer observing in this terminological sense does not mean that one observer observes another observer, but that the distinctions underlying an observation are observed. J. Konorski has problematized a distinction of I. Pavlov by taking the clapper out of the bell. His observation is no longer about ringing or not ringing. And so he comes to a different conclusion than I. Pavlov.

It is not a question of whether I. Pavlov is right, but rather under which assumptions (hypotheses) he is right. An unproven hypothesis of I. Pavlov was that the dog reacted to the bell. For example, when I observe a referee watching the players in a football match, I can often very easily see that the referee whistled "wrong", but I cannot so easily see to what extent he whistled correctly because he made other distinctions. The knowledge that I. Pavlov has built up is very often used with great success, in a certain respect it is "right". Before J. Konorski did his experiment, it was not easy to see in which respect the result was "wrong". Instead of right I say viable to express this relativity of correctness. The theory of relativity shows that I. Newton's mechanics is not at all "right", but very viable, because we live at very low speed. If I distinguish different speeds, I can see the blind spot of I. Newton.

The insights I make depend on my distinctions. G. Spencer-Brown says with his "Draw a distinction!", if you don't like something, make another distinction that makes more sense, which he calls re-entry. J. Konorski has made such a re-entry into the research question of I. Pavlov. In the 2nd order I make re-entries regarding my distinctions.

I call re-entry the renewed observation of a phenomenon with other distinctions. The distinctions I choose are arbitrary. Arbitrary here means that everyone can make the distinctions whose consequences he loves. Arbitrariness is thus subjectively the opposite of indifference and lazy compromises, although it may seem arbitrary in a disparaging sense to an outsider. Above all, however, re-entry is of course a creative achievement. I find J. Konorski's experiment creative in the true sense of the word.