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Part II

Adaptivity and Reflection

2.1 Reflection as a Property of Adaptive Systems

The Topicality of the problem of the nature of reflection.

"In fact research-and still more research- remains to be carried out into how matter is linked, seemingly without this being sensed, with matter formed from the same atoms (or electrons) and possessing at the same time a clearly expressed capacity for sensation" [2, vol.18, p.40]........It is logical to presume that all matter possesses a property related in essence to sensation" [2, vol.16, p.91].

These well-known statements of V.I. Lenin are used as a guide-line for working out problems not just of general philosophical character. They are also deeply important in the practical engineering involved during research into linguistic problems of cybernetics; this is because it is Impossible to be engaged in a search for ways to realise technically the transmission of thought content through conventional signs and symbols, if it has not been proved that even lower levels of reflecting processes, as, for example, the specific reaction to various physical characteristics of objects, or the ability to be trained to recognise these objects etc, can be supported by technical mechanisms "related to sensation".

At the present time, many arguments have been adduced suggesting that there is no impregnable barrier between living and non-living matter, between matter on the one hand and sensation and consciousness on the other". [6, p.4].

Having defined our concept of the system as the dialectical category "the crux of the matter", having considered ontologically a number of other philosophical categories, and having put forward propositions about the adaptation process as a "material agreement", as a solution of ontological contradictions in the system, we can now examine the problem of the nature of reflection from several angles and can move on, first of all to general semiotic, and then to strictly linguistic aspects of cybernetics. Here, in purely chemical and other objective processes of non-organic matter, we shall try to perceive the presence of those prerequisites and sub-strata phenomena without which higher forms of reflection could not develop. It is rather like the fact that an adult animal cannot appear without first passing through a stage of embryonic development. 

The Nature of Deformations as bases of reflection.

From the fact that an object's current state as a combination of its properties determining the set of interaction valencies depends on the local conditions, it follows that objects of close or identical essences in the same local conditions have a close or identical valency division into extentials, intentials and potentials. This is especially obvious when such objects form mutual local conditions for themselves. Molecules in crystals can serve as an example of such a state of affairs, where the homogeneity of the molecules gives rise to the homogeneity of the ways in which their mutual links are brought about (extentials), and the homogeneity of their predispositions towards other types of links (intentials and potentials).

When we examine the problem of the nature of reflection we shall first of all take systems which have arisen on the basis of links of more or less homogeneous components. In this case it is obvious that if any external cause brings about a change in the structure of established, extential links between the components of a given system, the result of this can be that the upper-tier changed extentials influence the structure of the currents. This also changes the correlation of the intentials and potentials of the given system's deeper-tier components. This can lead to deeper-tier components beginning to adapt to a new structure of higher-tier extentials.

However, as we saw, adaptation does not occur instantaneously, in that it is connected with internal re-structuring. Therefore if an external cause, having changed the local conditions between homogeneous objects of a meta-object, disappears before visible depth adaptations, new distributions of link currents between components of the system's higher-tiers occur ; this disappearance of the external cause can be accompanied by a revival of the initial local conditions between these components, i.e. a revival of the Initial structure of their extential valencies.

However if the external cause supports from outside a change of local conditions between components of a given system for such a long time that in the deep-tiers of these components an adaptation of the elements to a new higher-tier structure manages to occur, the disappearance of this cause can prove to be insufficient grounds for the initial extentials structure between the meta-objects to be fully restored. The re-structuring of depth elements of the system's components under examination will lead in this case to a valency change of these components themselves and the set of their intentials and extentials can be different. But if a new structure of extential links between components now appears the elements of these components will no longer be placed in the initial conditions in relation to their link currents at higher-tiers, and the consequences of adaptation, although caused by the temporary but nevertheless lengthy, influence of the external cause on the combination of objects, to a greater or lesser extent remain and are consolidated as a new state of the reflecting object expressed in the appearance of a trace of the Influence.

It would seem that the picture of the trace or imprint which we have seen is an illustration of essential aspects of those changes in complex object states under the effect of external influences; they correspond in mechanics to the concepts of resilient and non-resilient (residual) deformation. Let us call the process of change in any states of an object e.g. II (Fig.5), as the effect of the influence on it of another object, for example A, the reflection; the result of reflection is the imprint; the object which has experienced the Influence which appears in the form of the imprint from this influence we shall call the reflecting object. The object with which the interaction served as a cause of the imprint we shall call the reflected object.

Thus the occurrence of resilient or non-resilient deformations must now be seen as one of the forms of occurrence of an imprint of the Influence of one object on the body of another, i.e. as one of the results of reflection.

Objects in the reflection process can mutually influence each other, and deform each other, so that after interaction imprints remain on both objects. However, for an analysis of reflection mechanisms the very first task is to examine the Interactions between objects where we can deem one object to be noticeably influencing another though the influence of the second on the first can be ignored. In this case the reflecting object (II on Fig.5) can also be called passive and the reflected object can be called active. Moreover, the following will be called the active part of the reflected object: that part of the active reflected object which is either in contact with the passive object or which Influences the passive object through the substance of the link currents, i.e. that part of the active object which with its extential currents directly changes the link currents' structure of the reflecting object's components. Then the part of the reflecting object in which some or other types of deformation have occurred directly under the influence of the active part of the reflected object we shall call primary deformation or a direct imprint. (Fig.5).

With such an interpretation imprints as resilient and non-resilient deformations can be considered as primary. But they can be interpreted in other ways apart from in terms of mechanics. It is quite clear that certain higher psychic types of reflection, while they are certainly not by the interaction mechanisms and their results, cannot nevertheless help being supported by these interactions as their initial essential moments. So that it is quits clear that in the memory an anomalous print of some pattern or other relentlessly persecuting a man is linked with a non-resilient residual deformation of certain areas of the brain which bring about memorisation as an effect of strong stimulation, while momentary forgetfulness of external influences, for example ones seen or heard, can be a result of the impressions which have been gained acting on corresponding areas of the brain as the reflecting object only in a purely resilient manner; that is to say, without leaving any notable primary imprints after its influence has ceased.

If we take as a starting point the current characteristics of the interactions of actual objects and the mechanisms of their adaptation, we can not only explain in a new way the processes where Imprints of resilient and non-resilient deformations occur as the conditions for the development of imprints of the reflected object on the reflecting object: we can also reveal the potential of those effects of the interactions of these objects which can no longer be correlated with customary concepts of mechanics, but which have prime significance for showing the nature of finer types of reflection.

Factors involved when a reflecting object is similar to the reflected object and to itself.

Let us now turn our attention to a number of facts which, although obvious, require some emphasis.

First, it is clear that a direct imprint, being the immediate result of the influence of the active part of the reflected object on the reflecting object A is bound to have certain properties which coincide with the properties of the reflected object's active part. Even if a primary imprint Is a simple mechanical Indentation, certain features of the structure of the reflected object's active part will in this event have been imposed on the imprint, and the imprint will become to a greater or lesser extent likened to the active part. Therefore we can justifiably accept that the reflecting object will to a certain extent be similar to the reflected object.

Generally the occurrence of a direct imprint will lead to a change of not only the extentials but also the intentials of the reflecting object II's components in the place where the imprint was. But this change of intentials can lead to this rise of new extentials beyond the boundaries of the primary imprint.

Hence a further conclusion can be drawn: if a primary imprint is the deformation of the reflecting object under the influence of an external factor, for example, the effect of the reflected object's active part, then, after a primary imprint has developed in the body of the reflecting object, it can itself change into an active internal factor in the succeeding, secondary deformation of the reflecting object; after this secondary deformation has affected a greater or lesser zone beyond the boundaries of the primary one, i.e. beyond the boundaries of the direct imprint, it can be correlated with a particular zone of the reflected object's active part.

The properties of the secondary deformation zone which has come into being around the direct imprint may have nothing in common with the properties of the corresponding zone around the reflected object's active part, as their imposition Is occasioned by the nature of the components not of the reflected object but of the reflecting object; here the degree of similarity between the reflected and reflecting objects will remain as it was before the development of the secondary deformation in the reflecting object.

"The interference" of the secondary deformation will be expressed in this case only in the degree of change of similarity of the reflected object to itself: without secondly deformation this degree of change would be less than it is with it. In particular, as secondary deformation can also Prove to be an active internal factor etc. so primary deformation must be seen as a "trigger influence" for a chain (including the "avalanche" type) of changes of the reflecting, object's properties.

Multi-stage and avalanche-type deformations are only possible when there are reserves of internal energy, which make for secondary deformations of the reflecting object. And as in our view all links and interactions (and consequently the modification of an object's structure) can be explained in terms of links' substance currents, the accumulation of internal energy should be understood as the accumulation of link substance (for example, in the form of the circulation of internal closed currents) while the freeing of internal energy should be seen as a severance or disconnection, of such internal currents, their involvement in other link currents, and in particular a change of structure of these other currents.

Both primary Interacting objects, and their change and interaction factors are seen (when the currents are examined) to be corporeal. Thus the well-known physical laws concerning the change of mass into energy, and of energy into mass, the release of energy because of a defect in the mass etc. take on quite real features of change of form in the existence of matter, as long as it is indestructible.

From the energy point of view, resilient deformation of the reflecting object ensures the direct imprint being similar to the reflected object's active part characteristics and after the reflected object's influence has stopped, the imprint not only disappears but also returns the energy expended on the influence; with a non-resilient deformation the imprint is preserved for a long time and by this fact preserves the similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object (caused by the influence) - and here the energy of the deformation is not returned. With secondary deformations this transferred energy itself serves as a factor at the beginning of the process of the reflecting object's Internal release of energies and of its secondary deformations, and in those cases where the internal structure of these deformations will not itself concern us but the fact of the onset of deformations will alone be important, the primary Influence and its primary imprint will be named the trigger influence and imprint, i.e. in relation to the secondary deformation processes.

It will be natural to call the results of secondary deformation the indirect imprint. 

Natural Adaptation.

Let us now examine the case when the indirect imprint occurs as an effect of influences which cannot be called trigger influences.

Let us imagine that both the reflecting and reflected object (II and A in Fig.5) are deeply adapted systems formed from similar bases and material reserves. It is clear that the essences of such objects and their components will also be extremely close. It is easy to guess how this closeness affects the features of the secondary deformation after the occurrence of the direct imprint of the reflected object's influence on the reflecting object.

The reflecting object's components will prove to be subject to the same laws of valencies change, and to the same internal dependencies for the change of intentials into extentials, and of potentials into intentials etc. as the components of the reflected active object, and in-so-far as the direct Imprint is bound to be - as we have established - in a certain measure similar (in its properties) to the reflected object's active part, the secondary consequences of this similarity must be themselves alike to some extent. In other words, the secondary deformation zone around the direct imprint on the reflecting object II will also be to a certain degree similar in its properties to the corresponding zone around the reflected object A's active part; the greater the degree, the more similar is the substance of the objects, the closer have been the foundations forming the essence of the components of this substance, and more alike has been the "experience" of the matter which served as a substratum for forming the substance - in spite of the fact that the secondary deformation zone around the imprint has not experienced a direct influence from the corresponding zone of the reflected object.

Obviously the secondary deformation, i.e. the indirect imprint (Fig.5), increases the degree of similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object in this case, and it is also clear the varieties of reflection, which we have examined above and which clearly go beyond the framework of concepts of mechanical deformations, have nevertheless a universal character. This is because in nature there cannot in general be objects with substantive characteristics which contain absolutely nothing in common. It is also clear that the degree of unity of substance can vary within a wide spectrum, and therefore the similarity of interacting objects caused by the occurrence of a secondary, indirect Imprint around a primary one can be one which gives an impetus to the similarity caused by the occurrence of the primary imprint; it can also be one which is in reality totally insignificant by comparison with the similarity produced by the first deformation.

Clearly mechanics are involved with interactions of the second type (resilient, non-resilient and trigger interactions), but an analysis of the nature of reflection should be concerned with an examination of the Interactions of the first type which, because of the secondary deformation, maintains or increases the level of similarity of the reflecting object to the reflection obtained at the stage of primary deformation, namely, the similarity of the characteristics of the direct imprint to the characteristics of the active part of the reflected object.

In-so-far as this additional similarity of the indirect imprint in fact anticipates what would be the case with the reflecting object's direct imprint if the zone were widened and the boundaries of the active part of the reflected object moved further apart, i.e. what would be the case if the effect of the active object on the passive were in some or other respect more pronounced, we can call this type of reflection a secondary (though not a trigger) deformation by anticipation: that is to say, any advance or "moving ahead" of what would be bound to occur under certain conditions only in the future. In such a way an indirect, secondary imprint can be anticipatory.

It would seem the possibility of the occurrence of anticipations, i.e. anticipatory types of reflection on a corporeal, physical and chemical level in real actual objects must also be regarded as that property of matter which "in essence Is related to sensation" or is at least an essential condition for the existence of the ability to feel and for there to be other higher forms of reflection at a certain level of complexity of systems.

Anticipation is similar to Indirect deformation when there are trigger effects in this respect: first, being also secondary, it occurs on the basis of energy supplied by the reflecting object before the act of interaction with the reflected object; then, second, the similarity of the state of the reflecting object to its initial state decreased as a consequence of secondary deformation. But with a trigger effect the relationship between the reflecting and the reflected object is limited, and with anticipation the degree of their similarity increases, owing to the occurrence of an indirect imprint.

It seems it would be difficult to arrive at a concept of an indirect imprint as a capacity of all corporeal objects for some particular level of anticipation if we had not got at our disposal concrete definitions of materialist dialectic categories which allow us to interpret the concept of the system as a corporeal analogue of the dialectical concept of what we called the "crux of the matter".

Now, continuing to "extract" the important consequences from the system of categories examined, let us pass to the question of the most important types of anticipations themselves, and the varieties of indirect anticipatory imprints. 

Types of Anticipations, Patterns, and Mapping 

Anticipation can be realised repeatedly or one time only, depending on the type of deformation of the reflecting object which has led to the occurrence of an imprint: -resilient or non-resilient. Moreover in some cases we have seen universal anticipation - if we mean by "universal" the absence of any restrictions as to whether interaction of the reflecting object with a given reflected (or with a given active part of a reflected) object has been realised or not. The effectiveness of anticipation, which can be evaluated according to the increase in similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object after anticipation in relation to the similarity which only results from the occurrence of a direct imprint, depends only, if it is universal, on, first, the degree of closeness of "internal experience" the components of the reflecting and reflected objects have; second, the degree of closeness of valency peculiarities of these components; and third, the depth of the tiers on which the components of interacting objects remain the bearers of close essences.

Given that the concept of anticipation is based on ideas concerning the increase in similarity of a reflecting object to a reflected object as a result of the occurrence of a secondary, indirect imprint on the body of the reflecting object, and given also that the similarity is characterised by the closeness of the objects' properties, it would seem natural to distinguish types of anticipation also on the basis of what type of properties produces the largest increase of similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected object after the occurrence of an anticipatory imprint. So we are able to classify anticipations according to the type of reflected properties as either static (or spatial), or dynamic (or temporal); these are the two most important types.

If with regard to the time during which the process of anticipation occurs the reflected object remains more or less unchanged, static, and displaying variety only in spatial co-ordinates, the indirect anticipatory deformation spreading beyond the boundaries of the direct imprint can increase the degree of the reflecting object's similarity to the reflected in any way only: the zone of secondary deformation around the imprint comes to be similar to the corresponding zone around the active part of the reflected object in both substance and structural static characteristics. In other words, secondary deformation as a manifestation of anticipation will be in this case what it could be if the active part of the reflected object had simply Increased, for example, if the contact surface of the objects had increased. Consequently, a full (i.e. direct and indirect) deformation with static spatial anticipation fills up and enriches the reflected "picture" of the features of the reflected object, and shows up those properties which at the current moment were not stamped on the direct imprint, although they are present in the reflected object, i.e. as a result of primary deformation.

Anticipation plays a somewhat different role in those cases when the reflected object, over a period of time comparable to the time of the adaptation process, manages to change its properties and in this sense is dynamic.

To the extent that new states of the reflected object are conditioned by the essence characteristics of its components, the substantial closeness of the reflecting object to the reflected object becomes a factor in the transfer of the primary imprint (insofar as it reflected within itself certain features of the state of the reflected object's active part) to a new state, or a secondary imprint which already corresponds to some particular extent to the state which the active part of the reflected object still has to enter into. And as the similarity of the reflecting object's substance to that of the reflected object is not complete, among the anticipations of the type under examination ones can be found where less time is required for the change of a direct Imprint into a new state (i.e. into an Indirect Imprint) than for a change of the active part of the reflected object into a new state. In other words, the dynamic anticipation, temporal anticipation contains the embryo of that particular process which in its most developed form is called prognosis, although we are not going to discuss any subjects which are perceptive or can predict: we are examining properties of physical, corporeal objects, which are universal -though they are finer and more precise than purely mechanical properties.

With spatial anticipation one can also say that a result of reflection is an Increase in the degree of similarity between a deforming subject and the result of secondary deformation; while with temporal anticipation a result of reflection is an increase in the degree of similarity between the deforming process and the process of secondary deformation. And finally we can divide anticipation into two types from the one Indicator by distinguishing between external and internal anticipation.

In the case of spatial anticipation the distinction according to this "external/internal" Indicator is expressed in the following; with internal spatial anticipation the indirect imprint is obtained from the direct imprint through the boundary of the direct Imprint advancing into deep tiers; this means the degree of similarity of the reflecting object to the reflected increases, because of the deformation characteristics Increasingly co-inciding with the characteristics of the reflected object in ever greater detail with external spatial anticipation, deformation boundaries increase in area, so that the detail of the correspondence of the resulting deformation to the properties of the

reflected object does not increase and in return the number of fragments of the reflected object, which correspond to the anticipatory imprint, increases.

Such is the nature of the distinction between temporal types of anticipation and external temporal types: in the one case the process is detailed but it remains in the same interval of time, and in the other the detail remains unchanged, though the interval of the reflected process is increased.

It is important to note also that there is not necessarily a need for full identity of the substance of the reflecting and reflected object. All that is necessary is that the sets of valencies of the components of interacting systems and the laws of their mutual change into extentials, intentials, and potentials should be sufficiently similar on a certain number of tiers. Then by whatever method the reflected active object imposes certain of the characteristics of its extential structure on the reflecting meta-object, after the occurrence of a direct Imprint in the reflecting object further processes making its properties similar to the properties of the reflected object can begin, and consequently so can processes involving the anticipation of these properties. The limited number of gradations of substance similarity is seen only in the depth of the possible detail of reflection.

That the substance of the reflecting and reflected objects does not have to be identical is very important for cybernetics, because it means that the most varied processes can be imitated. Including those occurring in biological substances, non-organic substrata in technical structures.

Let us conclude this section with some new terminological definitions. As we have to mention more and more often the term "direct Imprint" referring to primary deformation, and the term "indirect imprint" for secondary deformation, not only as such but also to distinguish the results of trigger and anticipatory secondary deformations, we shall call the indirect Imprint of a trigger influence the consequence, and the summary result of a direct and anticipatory deformation the pattern, we shall call that part of the reflected object, to whose characteristics the pattern has become similar, the original pattern, emphasising by the use of the word "original" the initial role of this pattern in the reflection process which leads to the making of an imprint.

So the pattern appears to consist of two components: the direct and indirect anticipatory Imprint, we shall call the anticipatory pattern the pro-pattern, emphasising by the choice of the prefix pro- the anticipatory meaning it can suggest as in Greek words of the type, "prognosis" and "prophylactic".

In a case of need one may speak of the original pattern of a direct imprint as distinct from the original pattern of an indirect imprint.

The process of reflection Itself can be called mapping, if its result is a pattern. Consequently, in our terminological system mapping is one of the types of reflection. 

The Intential Imprint and the Stimulation of Form.

As has already been emphasised, we have so far examined types of anticipation arising from the most common case of reflection where a pattern develops on the strength of the natural substance closeness of the reflecting and reflected objects. Here the level of anticipation can be quite low but such mapping appears to be the most universal, having important reinforcement potentials for particular mapping properties, although at the price of losing a degree of universality. Now let us move to the most important specialised types of mapping when we shall see that apart from being specialised they do not differ in any way from universal types, i.e. they fall into spatial and temporal, internal and external types etc.

The specialisation of these types of mapping is found in the following: as the object functions in the reflecting role its mapping abilities increase in speed of action and sensitivity, but decrease in the variety of permissible original forms. A basis for specialisation is provided by the possibility of there being deformations which lie on the border between resilient and non-resilient (trigger and non-trigger) deformations, and because of this properties of single and repeated mapping and dependence properties of the reflecting object's internal deformations (properties which are conditioned by the reflected object's characteristics) are uniquely combined in them.

We can surely accept that in adaptive systems such intermediate types of deformation (i.e. Indeterminate, borderline cases) are possible.

Indeed, if the reflected object has had an effect on the reflecting object, and the time of the influence was such that the deep adaptation of components of the reflecting object has begun but has not reached the level which Is sufficient for an extential direct imprint on the upper levels to remain constant after the influence has stopped, it is then. in a certain sense, a matter of resilient deformation. But if a deep adaptation to recent imprint extentials has still not completely disappeared! (i.e. if deep components have still not adapted to the fact of the disappearance of the imprint), and the reflecting object was again subjected by the active object to the same Influences, then because of deep residual adaptedness the reflecting object will be predisposed, to a larger extent than with the first influence, to anticipation; this is because now either a lesser intensity of the influence is required for it to occur, or a smaller size of the original pattern of the Imprint with the same size or depth of the pattern. And this heightened faculty for mapping will from time to time and up to a certain limit be reinforced, but only for the same or sufficiently similar original patterns.

We can explain this fact as the farming of not only an extential but also an intential Imprint during interaction with the original pattern. If after a certain direct influence these intentials lead to anticipation and the development of a pattern, some internal energy and the substance of the reflecting object will be expended on this. Consequently, depending on whether this pattern will change into a residual deformation or, because of a current of energy and expended substance, the reflecting object will be able to resurrect its initial state, such anticipation will occur once or repeatedly.

In future we shall be interested primarily in intential imprints, providing repeated anticipation of the reflecting object's properties. In this case the pattern will exist in two forms: in the form of intentials before the reflecting object's Interaction with the active part of the reflected object, and in the form of extentials for a certain amount of time after the appearance of a direct Imprint of this part. With regard to the direct imprint such a pro-pattern reminds us of a secondary deformation from a "trigger influence", since the development of a secondary part of a pattern is the result of the reflecting object's internal energy. But this secondary part increases the degree of the reflecting object's similarity to the reflected object, and in this respect intential anticipation comes near to being universal.

It is easy to see that intential imprints are in a certain sense unstable. As in the intervals between the interactions of the reflecting and reflected object the direct extential imprint disappears and there begins a process of re-adaptation of deep elements, so with a lower frequency of these interactions the intential imprint will begin to reduce, or to " fade", though on the other hand with an increase of frequency it can be revived.

It would appear there are many grounds for linking the fact of the change of an intential deformation, "dormant" in the reflecting object, into an extential deformation (e.g. under the influence of a corresponding external cause) with the concept of the stimulation or Initiation of this preceding deformation, while the opposite change of an initiated extential deformation into a closed intential deformation can be linked with a fading of the result of the semi-resilient Indirect reflection, already examined.

Repeated "surfacing in the memory" of any impressions, and their subsequent being forgotten for a short time, while not by "semi-resilient" reflection mechanisms, cannot help being supported by them as their material corporeal base.

2.2. ANTICIPATION AND ADVANCED REFLECTION. 

Advanced Reflection. Let us now examine in somewhat greater detail the methods of forming an intential imprint, first with spatial anticipation and then with temporal anticipation.

If a small group of a reflecting objects' components has been subjected to a direct external influence, e.g. Group A in Fig.6, but during the time when the intential deformation had still not disappeared in the elements of this group, and when another group (Group B), whose elements are among the surroundings conditions of Group A's elements and then Group C, "surrounding" in relation to Group B etc., were subjected to the Influence, then, owing to the residual intential deformations a, b, c, etc, there would form, in this whole complex of groups under the influence of the direct imprints A, B, C, an integral combined intential deformation, an integral intential imprint, consisting of indirect deformations a, b, c, etc, as its components. Consequently, to change an intential deformation into the extential intensity of the influence on the reflecting object (consisting of the group complex A, B, C etc), a lesser intensity than the sum of the primary influences (exerted initially on the whole group complex, and having left the primary influences A, B, C) is required. This lessening of intensity can be expressed as follows: if only a part or even one of the complex groups, e.g. group A which has left the primary imprint A, is subjected to the influence, then the indirect intential deformation a, changing to an extential deformation, will initiate an analogous change in intential deformations b, c, etc., although groups B and C have not been subjected to the Influence of the reflected object. In other words, the stimulation of just the component, a, of the integral intential imprint in the reflecting object leads to the stimulation of the remaining components of this imprint. This is especially obvious if in the formation process of the Integrally whole intential deformation a, b, c etc., the influences A, B, C, etc have followed each other repeatedly in exactly the order stated. Then it is clear that after an integrally whole combined intential deformation has formed from the components a, b, c, etc., the stimulation, i.e. the change of the components of the intential structure b, c, etc.. Into an extential structure after the direct influence of the reflected object on group A, is nothing else than an anticipation once again of the fact of the Influence of the reflected object (more accurately of the same active part of this object) on group B, C, etc, which has still not occurred.

In other words, the development process of the stimulation in the components of the intential structure is capable of overtaking that course, or process, stimulation of which corresponds to the law of the sequence of external influences on the reflecting object, if this law is (being) repeated.

However, the need for the law of the sequence of Influences to be repeated is not absolute. The combined closed intential deformation, i.e. the intential imprint, can also appear when influences on various groups of elements of the reflecting object are produced in a fortuitous manner and not in a strict time sequence. Here the imposed intential structure i.e. the intential imprint, will also develop, but in those of its components on which the average frequency of the influences does not go below a certain threshold value. In object components which are rarely stimulated "readaption" processes of deep tier elements will occur.

Consequently, what is common to all these types of anticipation is the fact that after an active object has had a repeated, complex, but homogeneous, direct influence on the reflecting object, there will form in the reflecting object an intential indirect Imprint, e.g. a, b, c, In Fig.6. Owing to this, the reflecting object, under the influence no longer of a full, but just a partial, direct standard influence, e.g. owing to the imposed direct imprint A, receives the extential indirect deformation a, b, c, which with primary direct influences occurred in conditions where the active object had a full direct standard influence in the form of deformation A, B, C, on the reflecting object - and not a partial one.

Such anticipation is based on the use of the results of the preceding adaptation of material not only as a substratum of substance, but also as the result of the restructuring of the object's substance itself under the influence of standard effects of the environment; this reminds us, by external analogy, of the individual "training" of an object to identify a whole from a small number of the characteristics of the whole (that is if this whole has been met a sufficient number of times and therefore is known to the reflecting object).

We emphasise that it is a question of only an external analogy of training. In the light of the analogy the non-intential anticipations examined earlier could be described metaphorically as the "intuition" of the reflecting object, its "enlightenment outside its experience", but we must not lose sight of the fact that without such natural processes biological mechanisms of training proper, conjectures, and other higher forms of reflection could hardly develop.

It must also be noted that processes of "full" indirect deformation (of the type A, B, C) of the reflecting object under the influence of a direct partial standard influence (e.g. A) from the active object have been widely discussed in the literature of cybernetics. Since the work of P.K. Anokhin, who named object influence of this type the "advanced reflection of actuality" [8-10]. we shall also name this type of "trained" anticipation advanced reflection, fallowing Anokhin's example. Let us note however that the anticipation process which we have examined includes not only anticipation of the direct influences (B, C), which lie ahead after the partial Influence (A), but the anticipation also of deep restructurings of the reflecting object, which ought to occur in it, if the active object could act on the passive with that part which in Fig.5 is called the original pattern of the secondary trace or imprint.

And so we see that with the formation of an intential imprint, e.g. a, b, c, in Fig.6, as a "dormant", fading imprint but one which has not disappeared before the moment of the original pattern (e.g. A's) regular direct influence on the reflecting object and of the stimulation of its pattern, we are again concerned with mapping, and with anticipation. But this is specific anticipation, requiring in advance some "training" of the reflecting object, so that, on the basis of the experience of not only the material, but of its own, individual, experience, there can develop a pre-disposition for the pattern of the given (not just any) original pattern to be stimulated. This type of mapping assumes a significantly larger sensitivity and a greater speed of action than does the universal type, but with a loss of universality; the stimulation of a pattern owing to the presence of an intential imprint leads however to spatial anticipation, although this contrasts weakly with temporal anticipation. And, finally, it is evident that contemporary cybernetics and philosophy are only acquainted with a biological variant pf this particular variety of anticipation and it is called "advance reflection". This term fully conforms in principle with the meaning of the term "anticipation", but it will be advantageous for us to use both terms, understanding advance reflection to mean only a fairly definite type of anticipation with anticipation itself being a phenomenon of a more general nature.

At the same time, in order to emphasise the presence of both features, but the non-identity of advance reflection with the result of a trigger influence, let us call a direct imprint (e.g. A), which is sufficient for "keying-in" the process of stimulating an intential pro-pattern (a, b, c), a launching imprint (or influence). After "launching" there begins an autonomous - though structured and complex -process of anticipatory deformation in the reflecting object.

Resonance Advance Reflection of Dynamic Objects

Although we have established that with advance reflection (in our wider sense) the boundaries between spatial and temporal anticipation are not sufficiently clear, the relationships in the example we have examined between spatial and temporal characteristics of the reflection process are nevertheless fully determined: the intential imprint, being a spatial deformation, helped to stimulate the pattern which characterised the complete Interaction of the reflecting object with the original pattern, which in itself can be the subject.

Now let us examine the case where the original pattern is a process, so that the dynamic aspects of reflection play a predominant role.

The original pattern with which the reflecting object interacts can be dynamic in the sense that the interlinks between its components do not represent established uniform currents but change according to a certain (though quite established) law. For example, the local components of the original pattern change their states periodically so that the group of intentials change to extentials and the group of extentials changes into intentials, and then vice-versa and so on. Consequently, if even the spatial disposition of the original pattern's components remains unchanged, a periodic change of local conditions does in actual fact occur, because the valencies of the partner-components in the original pattern change.

But as any interaction between objects is, to our understanding, substantial, the dynamic original pattern which we have examined can have a dynamic influence on the other reflecting object, not necessarily through currents of the substance of the interaction between its components, but indirectly through "leaks" and periodic "splashes" from these currents.

It is absolutely clear that the periodic influences of the reflected object under examination can stimulate in certain cases non-resilient residual deformations. In this sense the dynamic nature of the external influence can be simply reduced to a repeated influence, and there will not be anything specifically dynamic in its results.

As far as resilient influences are concerned, the fact of their dynamism makes two evident types of results possible.

First, the resilience already seen for a static case: at those moments of time when there is a direct influence, the state of the reflecting object changes. But if during the period from one "flow" of periodic direct influence to another a re-adaptation of deep elements of the reflecting object successfully occurs, then after this periodic influence of the reflected object on the reflecting object has ceased, the state of the reflecting object is fully re-established and the reflecting object does not acquire any individual "experience".

Secondly, if it is a question of a certain law of change in the strength of the direct influence, e.g. a periodic law, then it is necessary to take into account that the object which experiences the influence can remain dynamic and consequently the valencies of the link between its components can also be subjected to a certain law of change in time; and if these dynamic laws of change of component links between both objects are similar, or the same, then resonance phenomena can occur.

For example, the dynamic intentials of a reflecting object under the influence of resonance external influences can change into dynamic extentials. Here it is important to emphasise that in the case of resonance influence comparatively weak current intensities of the direct interlink between objects can lead to notable Indirect influences on the reflecting object's dynamic state.

And, finally, it is clear that adaptation of a reflecting object's deep elements can occur as a change of their dynamic characteristics, and consequently the reflecting object, which is experiencing a sufficiently long dynamic external direct Influence of the reflected object, can change its properties at deep levels; this is in such a way that it will be intentially predisposed towards dynamic reactions to influences with a certain law of change, i.e. it will resonate more easily on direct influences which occur according to this law. This "case" can be expressed not only in that a lesser intensity of the influence on the reflecting object (already adapted intentially to the given law of change of a direct influence) will be required.

A no less important manifestation of dynamic adaptedness is the ability of the reflecting object to be stimulated according to the initial character of the change of influence and to change its dynamic extential characteristics so that they start to correspond to the continuation of this law of change in the reflected object, if even the direct dynamic influence of the reflected object was interrupted. In other words the adaptive dynamic object is predisposed, as far as the dynamic structure of the direct influence of the original pattern is concerned, to showing indirectly a continuation of this structure; that is to say, to stimulating a continuation of the law of change of the original pattern, in certain circumstances, in the course of a briefer interval of time than the corresponding process in the original pattern; and through this fact to anticipating this process in the pattern.

But anticipation can be observed also in the case where the speed of development of the process in the pattern is no higher than in the original pattern. Such anticipation happens when what started as a direct interaction of the reflecting object with the reflected object finishes before the finishing process in the original pattern, and therefore a continuation of the course of this process in the pattern anticipates what would happen in it if the interaction with the reflected object had not been broken off.

Resonance anticipation is notable for yet another peculiarity.

If an intential pattern of any influence has formed at a certain point of a reflecting object, what will happen with this pattern if the reflected object has begun a similar direct influence on another area of the reflected object?

It is natural that in this new area a direct imprint of the active part of the reflected object will start to form. It is also clear that with such a unique single influence on this new area an intential imprint will hardly be able to form and therefore the degree of anticipation of the indirect imprint around the direct one will soon be insignificant.

But let us turn our attention to the case where the forming of a direct imprint by the active part of the reflected object occurs according to the same law; under this influence an intential pattern is shaped in another part of the reflecting object. In fact this is equivalent to the structuring of the imprint, the switching of the interaction currents of the reflecting object's components where the imprint is, this being a process which is external (in relation to the intential imprint in another area of the reflecting object), and whose parameters are very close to the parameters of the process which formed the intential imprint. It follows from this that the intential imprint can set off a resonance, an indirect stimulation, because in another area of the reflecting object a normal, direct, primary deformation is occurring, reflecting the characteristics of the same active part of the reflected object which led earlier to the forming of an imprint.

In such a way repeated stimulation, consolidation and support of an imprint can be helped by the repeated occurrence of unique direct imprints in various areas of the body of a reflecting object, so that a "concentration of experience" is possible in one place (although it is imposed on various areas of the reflecting object).

The size of direct imprints required for stimulating an imprint can decrease according to the formation of the imprint on the basis of resonance interactions with unique direct imprints, with resonance stimulation the degree of anticipation and advance can also increase in such a way.

Consequently in all the new cases examined, we are also concerned with advanced reflection in the sense defined earlier, but of the type included among those temporal anticipations which anticipate not the subject, but the course of the process reflected by the pattern. And again we see that with advance reflection, because of the use of "experience" already accumulated by the substance of the reflected object in the functioning process and the process of repeated interaction with the given dynamic original pattern, the degree of anticipation, its speed and sensitivity to the influence of the original pattern, can be significantly higher than with universal anticipation based on that small area where the characteristics of the reflected and reflecting objects' substance come close; this closeness has been inherited by the substance from the material and does not include the "experience" of standard preceding interactions of the object whose substance is incorporated into that material.

Before moving on to other more specific forms of reflection based on anticipation as its material physical basis, let us now try and demonstrate the continuous link between other well-known conceptions of reflection and our own.

Anticipation for Advanced Reflection as a Genetic Prequisite for Higher Forms of Reflection.

Let us first of all be certain that the types of object interactions which we have examined can be classified as "reflections" in philosophical literature.

"Reflection" is a category indicating a special product of the action of one material system on another, a product representing the reproduction in a different form at the particular features of the first system in the particular features of the second".

The variants of the interactions of the two objects we have examined conform fully with the general definition of reflection quoted above which was provided by B.S. Ukraintsev [175, p.65], a well-known specialist in this field.

Certain other conceptions of reflection. It also follows from the above analysis of schemes of interaction that the "form of the process of the original is transformed into a strictly defined form of change of the macroprocess of the reflecting or mapping, object; in other words, into a strictly defined form of elementary form of reflection or mapping" (175 P.107). But at the same time the schemes of the process of "reflection or mapping" we have examined enable us to reveal not just one but several variants of both the course and the results of this process.

Only one of the variants proved to be resilient reflection, which certain philosophers (e.g. N.V. Medvedev) consider to be the only one, maintaining that after the influence or the effect of the original on the reflecting object ceases, the reflecting object's "former state is basically re-established" [85, p.6]. B.S. Ukraintsev correctly notes that this requirement is fulfilled only in particular varieties of reflection and, by introducing the concept of "elementary reflection", he reduces it in essence to this particular case: "When there is repetition of a specific, concrete process of reflection in like conditions, the form of the process change of the reflecting, or mapping, object and the size of this change (elementary reflection or mapping) will be basically the same [174,  p.107].

As we have seen, "semi-resilient" intential reflection proves to be varied when there is varied frequency or intensity of the original's influence, while direct non-resilient reflection is in general possible only once and does not permit of any represitions. Consequently B.S. Ukraintsev's definition of "elementary reflection or mapping" is in this respect little different from N.V. Medvedev's definition of reflection which he criticised. But in our scheme this argument becomes irrelevant since there is in it a place for Ukraintsev's reflections on the basis of intential imprint.

Analyses of dynamic interaction processes also do not contradict modern views of the nature of reflection. B.S. Ukraintsev notes in this respect: "the alternating strengthening and weakening in intensity in the original's process flow stimulates a corresponding strengthening and weakening of the reproducing object's change of process. The order of the original's changes of intensity of the process in space with a certain interaction of comparatively complex objects can be reproduced in the alternations in intensity of the change of processes in space of the reproducing object" [175, p.74].

It is obvious that our schemes of reflection do not contradict this interpretation of the nature of this phenomenon, but at the same time they are fuller, since they enable, by using concepts of the mechanisms of multi-level adaptation as a universal property of objects of both organic and non-organic nature, a number of specific aspects of the flow, or course, of anticipation processes in general in any object to be revealed, and the development in the reflecting object of a strengthened, or heightened, capacity for anticipating standard external influences, i.e. the capacity for advance reflection in the form of the intential imprint.

Let us note once again at this point that the principle of advance reflection is demonstrated by Anokhin with the example of chemical processes in a living cell [8].

It is in this biological way that L. Abramyan interprets the principle of advance reflection. In a reference to Anokhin he categorically asserts that "non-organic nature is deprived..." of the capacity for advance reflection [3, p.56].

Anokhin is also understood in this way by the authors of an interesting monograph on the theory of adaptation: "One of the particular features of reflection in living nature, as distinct from reflection in non-living nature, is the advance character of the reactions to external influence..." [160, p.128] Anokhin's important service to science was reflected by the fact that "the concept of advance reflection of the external world was expanded beyond the limits of its psycho-physiological nature" [160, p.129].

A somewhat different approach in interpreting the principle of advance reflection can be observed in Ukraintsev's monograph already mentioned, "Reflection in non-organic nature". He writes that Anokhin sketched in the contours of one of the possible "mechanisms" of advance reflection, namely the chemical one". [175, p.261].

Consequently it is the case that in Anokhin's hypothesis the concept of advance reflection of the external world spreads beyond the limits not only of psychophysiological nature but also of organic nature in general. However in a later work Ukraintsev stresses quite unambiguously that the principle of advance reflection is correct only "with regard to a live organism" [176, p.149], while the concepts of the flow nature of adaptation give us grounds to presume that both advance reflection and universal anticipation are found in embryo in any corporeal objects and are a property of all that is material.

Ideas concerning advance reflection as a process also capable of developing in the substratum of non-living nature are in fact found in the writings of Descartes when he considers the mechanisms of the interaction of "spiritual substance" with "corporeal substance" in man. Impressions from an interaction with the external world are for Descartes pricks on the surface of the brain through which "living spirits" filter through. Where the pricks form clots, the "living spirits" pass not only with great ease, but they also increase the diameter of the openings from weak pricks, this has the result that the most typical sequences of impressions appear to be linked in association. [201, p.121].

Another variant of a purely mechanical explanation of anticipation in consciousness was offered in his time by Thomas Hobbes. Influences of impressions repeated most often are summarised by Hobbes simply as one-directional blows on inert mass and that which had a close intensity of impressions was united by the closeness of accumulated movement [201, p.121].

The least mechanistic views in this respect were held by Spinoza who considered that "order and the connection of ideas are the same as the order and the connection of things" on the strength of the deep natural unity of all matter, dead, live and cognitative, "on the strength of their involvement in one and the same natural order".

The concepts defined within the framework of systemology concerning adaptation processes as a universal mechanism for the occurrence and existence of objects in reality, or as the realisation of ideas of the self-propulsion of matter which has been developed by dialectical materialism are an attempt to formulate more clearly this general "order of nature", and through it to explain in particular the genetic material pre-requisites of anticipation in general and advance reflection in particular. It is important to emphasise here that all these attempts to explain anticipation on the basis of mechanical, chemical, and bio-chemical interactions of the reflection substratum claim without exception only to explain the anticipation of those phenomena which have repeatedly had an influence on a given reflecting object, while our universal anticipation mechanism introduces the possibility in principle of anticipating unique phenomena simply on the strength of the body of the reflected object and that of the reflecting object being included "in one and the same order of nature". And types of advance reflection in Anokhin's sense, like those of the great thinkers of last century, appear to be only a particular - although, in a number of respects, also the most important - form of anticipation.

An indirect confirmation of advance reflection (but not of universal anticipation) on non-organic objects is the fact that the process of creating the capability (in the reflecting object) of anticipating the continuation of standard direct influences, e.g. B and C after A, can be imitated fairly simply on an electronic computer. In 1959 the author gave a lecture on this topic, showing ways of using advance reflection (in fact this term was not known then) for showing automatically the link structure of units of a printed text. Symbols of the text serve in this case as influences on the reflecting object (the machine), and immediately the influences are a stimulus for the machine's memory cells, which correspond to these symbols, while the stimulation of a group of such cells-before the moment when the full chains of the corresponding combination of symbols (representing for example a word of the text) has arrived at the input of the machine-serves as the advance reflection.

"If some combination of memory cells is often and regularly stimulated, while other cells and combinations are stimulated more rarely, in this combination a sufficiently strong mutual link is established". Then "each word newly entering the machine is already for-seen to a significant extent". [86, p.46-47].

In this project for realising advance reflection, multistage forecasting, from the first word, of the continuation of the word combination elements is taken into account. [86, p.147].

Let us note in conclusion that all types of anticipation which have been examined, including advance reflection, must be understood in our schemes only as non-purposeful in the sense that the anticipation of properties of the reflected object in the reflecting object remains simply a deformation, although an advance one, because the advance itself does not lead to any further results either in the internal re-structuring of the reflecting object, or in the external re-structuring of interactions between the active and reflected object, whatever the degree of anticipation.

In deformation, including anticipatory, although" experience" or the history of the formation of the material, or even of the substance of the system becomes apparent, it nevertheless remains completely unrealised, although it does provide the possibility, in principle, of some type of realisation. And this conclusion is in full accord with the clear and wide-ranging formulation of V.S. Tyukhtin, namely, that "the property of reflection in non-organic nature serves as a genetic prerequisite and a functional basis of all the forms of reflection in living nature, in society, and in the technology of link and control. It exists objectively, but does not use bodies as a factor in "their self-preservation and development". [171, p.13].

Directing Influence and Intential Variety as Prerequisites of Control and Information Mechanisms.

The concept of reflection and types of reflection provide great interest for cyberneticians not only in themselves but in connection with the fact that this concept is closely interwoven with the concept of information; it, in its turn, is an indispensible component of control processes, which is the main object of cybernetic research. Therefore information-defined by A.D. Ursul as "reflected variety" [177, p.25] or elevated by B.S. Ukraintsev to the rank of one of the concrete manifestations of the category of cause, which "could be characterised as a controlling cause" [176, p.65] - must naturally come within our field of investigation, especially if we take into account that we are interested firstly in semiotic (which means information) aspects, and secondly in cybernetics itself.

Apart from the need to examine relationships between concepts of reflection, control and information, we have the opportunity to do this without the usual listing of the many points of view, where the choice of the most valuable, or the working-out of a new one which does not have the weaknesses of one of those listed, is left to the reader himself. These opportunties stem from the definition of the concept of reflection which is based on a definition of the concepts of the system and adaptation.

We shall pass to concepts of control and information -which will be placed in the category of reflection as a form of their occurrence - not directly but through an intermediary concept of directing influence.

Let us turn our attention to the fact that any reflection includes at least two phases of development and consequently two types of result: primary deformation imposed by the reflected object and secondary deformation developing under the influence of the primary but occurring without the interference of the reflected object. With the simplest resilient or non-resilient deformation the brief second phase can seem negligible in comparison with the full deformation. But it is this second phase which is the basis for all remaining deformations; in particular it can occur as universal anticipation supported by the material's experience. Moreover, as the primary imprint is more or less always similar to the properties of the active part of the reflected object, then because of this it makes the whole reflecting object similar to the reflected object and universal anticipation increases this similarity if the reflected object's properties are reflected in the material's experience.

If the occurrence of a direct imprint in some way or other frees the reflecting object's accumulated deforming energy and in this connection is a trigger or launching influence, them, as already noted, the degree of change in the reflecting object's state becomes essentially higher, but the degree of similarity of the reflecting object with the reflected object either does not increase in general (with a starting influence), or it Increases very strongly but only when the primary (launching) imprint is the beginning of an influence which has occurred previously many times, and is therefore consolidated as the reflecting object's experience. But in all types of secondary deformation its characteristics are not a reflection of the reflected object's actual characteristics present by the moment of the direct influence - as happens with the formation of a primary imprint, when we can speak of the occurrence of a "direct cause" (as distinct from an "indirect cause" with secondary deformation).

The degree of deformation of the reflecting object with direct cause i.e. with the direct influence of the reflected object, is determined by the energy and the substance expended by the reflected active object. Although the change of the reflecting object, stimulated by this influence, to a new state is determined by the field of its potentials, it is forced or imposed only from outside; this is a change of possibility into reality, without Internal necessity, without an intential for such a change, and without a predisposition towards it. In other words this is purely a passive subjection.

However, after the primary imprint has become a reality, secondary deformation from indirect cause occurs according to inner causes and under the influence of the change of intentials into extentials (that is to say, the change not simply of potential possibility, but of material necessity, into reality). With this. if the primary deformation is related to trigger or launching deformation, the energy and substance expended on the resulting deformation of the reflecting object is straightaway greater than that expended by the reflected active object on the primary deformation. This energy and substance of the secondary deformation is derived from sources which are external in relation to the active object. The internal accumulations of the reflecting object itself or accumulations capable of flowing across from somewhere or other into the reflecting object serve as such a source. Consequently the reflecting object, when there is a trigger or launching external influence, is itself already predisposed to a change to another state; it does not have to be imposed, it is sufficient to give the reflecting object a little help, to "give it a little push", to give the initial direction, and then the process of change into such a state develops on its own, needing no energy, nor the substance of the reflected object, nor in general even its presence.

There are only two such predispositions in the reflected object in the simplest case: the initial and the stimulated state; while in the more general case there can be several of these states. But the reflecting object is predisposed to all of these states. Irrespective of how many there are; as soon as they enter the narrow sub-field of its intentials from the wide field of potentials, they represent a series of matured, developed necessities, and therefore a trigger or launching influence changes not just a possibility, but also one of the reflecting object's necessities, into reality. In this connection let us call the trigger and launching influences directing influences.

In cybernetics, one of the most important concepts - in control and information theory - is that of "diversity". But until the time when people understand by this word any non-uniformity in general, or any of the possible states of the objects examined, the concepts of control and information remain so general and indeterminate that their scientific usefulness is subject to doubt. [177] In this respect our scheme is more specific. We have not yet analysed concepts of control and information, and in general we are for the moment examining only genetic prerequisites of corresponding types of interaction in self-controlling systems which are manifest in non-living nature in the form of directing influences and their consequence only; but the propositions we have put forward on potentials, intentials and extentials, which can be correlated with notions of possible, necessary and actual object links, allow us to define the cybernetic concept of diversity. Diversity must also be divided into three types: potential, intential and extential; so that when the effect of directing influences on the reflecting object is being examined it is a question only of the diversity of intential, necessary states (not in general potential, possible states) and of the change into an extential state (into reality) of just one of the intentials.

An example of the use of potential diversity for changing one of the potential states into an extential, into reality, is the appearance of a primary imprint on the body of the reflecting object, i.e. the imposition of the properties of the reflecting object's active part on the reflected object, and in this case there are no grounds for speaking of directing influences.

Naturally the concept of the directing influence with any requirements for the final result of the influence - since the directing influence cannot be identified with the concept of "controlling influence". But at the same time it is clear that it will hardly be possible to effect even the simplest acts of control if directing influences are not employed.

Ukraintsev, in viewing advance reflection as Anokhin does, i.e. as a property of exclusively biological objects [176], recognises as forms of reflection in non-living nature only those types of interactions which we have called direct (primary) and trigger interactions (the latter being named by Ukraintsev "starting interactions") [176, p.35]. But our conception does accord with this one in that the impossibility of identifying the concept of the trigger ("starting") influence with the controlling one is emphasised. The division of cause into two types, direct and indirect, also does not contradict the modern tendency to re-examine and develop Aristotle's ideas on the existence of several types of causes [30; 176], but it does introduce several additional grounds for putting the types of cause into hierarchical order; we shall have to return to this on occasion.

Alienated properties, Informing and types of Informing

As has been noted, with indirect cause occurring because of the reflected object's direct directing influence, there occur a large number of deformations which lead to the appearance of a pattern in the reflecting object without the immediate participation of the reflected object as the original pattern of that pattern. This circumstance allows the reflected object's non-participation in the reflection process to be increased.

The properties of just the active part of the reflected object have to be imposed in order that a primary imprint be formed (as a trigger or launching influence); this can also be done through an intermediary object, if the active part's properties are first of all imposed on this intermediary, so that it can then, as a bearer of these alienated properties of the reflected object, act in the role of the functional representative of the reflected object's active part; that is, in the final analysis it imposes alienated properties on the reflecting object. And if the number of the reflected object's alienated properties is small in relation to the total number of its properties reflected in the pattern, so the intermediary object which transfers these properties from the reflected object's active part to the reflecting object can have significantly less potential diversity than the reflected object; nevertheless it must be, in acts of indirect reflection, fully equivalent to the reflected object (while of course the reflected object's real properties do not come into confrontation with the properties printed in the intential imprint of the reflecting object).

In other words, the occurrence of indirect reflection also is possible if the alienated properties of the reflected object's active part, which are brought to the reflecting object with the help of the intermediary object, act as a directing influence. The intermediary can be very much simpler (in potential diversity, mass, store of energy, etc.) than the reflected object.

We shall name such a process of directing influence through an intermediary an informing process - for want of a ready term - on the basis of the properties of the reflected object's active part.

Naturally we are concerned with the physical prerequisite of that phenomenon which is linked with the concept of information, and not with information itself; this is because "informing" is only a particular form of directing influence which, as we have already noted, is also only a physical pre-requisite for effecting a control process - though not the control itself.

But, nevertheless, in introducing the concept of informing, together with concepts of reflection and directing influence, we gain an idea of the internal connections between these concepts and we prepare a basis for establishing connections between the general philosophical concept of reflection and the semiotic and cybernetic concepts of diversity, information and control. Moreover, before we try to do this let us turn our attention to certain important features of the conditions for the occurrence of directing influences (and consequently for the event of informing).

As a directing influence in the act of indirect reflection requires the imposition of the properties of the reflected object's active part on the body of the reflecting object, it is clear that this influence is only possible when the reflecting object has, in relation to the reflected object, not just any, but quite particular and limited substance characteristics, even if the extent of these boundaries is reasonably large. It cannot be otherwise if, as we understand it, any influence is in the end corporeal and consequently requires even the minimum affinity at least on the level of the link currents' substance.

Only when there is substance agreement between the characteristics of the directing influence and of the reflecting object, is the imposition of the reflected object's properties on the reflecting object possible.

These properties can be for example boundary ones (i.e. they can represent the structural features of the reflected object's active part), and then the imposition of these properties on the reflecting object must be expressed in the structuralisation of its substance in accordance with the structural features of the active part.

Moreover the particular nature of the active part's properties can be expressed not in the specific character of the structure but in the presence of some chemical admixtures in the active part. Then the imposition of the properties of the reflected object's active part on the reflecting object will be embodied simply in the transfer of this specific substance from the body of the reflected object to the body of the reflecting object.

All that has been said remains true for informing, and consequently the intermediary object cannot, in order to fulfill its function, have just any substance, though the property which is alienated from the reflected object and imposed on the reflecting one can be both structural (boundary) and substantial (qualitative).

We were bound to mention this especially because in cybernetic and philosophical literature when the problem of information, reflection and control is discussed, the fact is emphasised in every possible way that a particular feature of the structure of the reflected object is imposed on the reflecting object, while the definite limited character of the diapason of substance conditions in the flow (or course) of the observable reflective processes, and, even more, the possibility that properties of the reflected object, which though structureless are specific in their substance parameters, might be imposed on the reflecting object, is generally left aside [172; 173; 177]: it is not of course denied that what we called the intermediary object (the mediator) in information processes must be physically capable of transferring the "structural beginning of the productive information cause" [172, p.86] - but it is only the structural beginning that is mentioned.

Types of Diversity with Informing.

Leaving information aside for the moment, we can now fully accept that in the forming process, we are concerned in fact with "reflected diversity" [177]; however, in the light of what has been said earlier such an interpretation acquires a more concrete sense, since there are grounds for speaking of the diversity of the diversities themselves and the methods of comparing them.

First, as we have just seen, not only structural but also substance variations of the properties of real objects and phenomena can be the substratum of diversity.

Second, as will be shown, diversities-which must be taken into account in informing acts-can be compared on the basis of the specific features of their localisation, and only a specific correlation between the diversities of the various types guarantees the occurrence of informing. So it is especially necessary to distinguish the diversity of the variants of actual extential states of the reflected object's active part: only they must be regarded as the direct cause of the diversities and alienated properties of the reflected object and of the directions of development of the reflecting object's intentials along a certain specific path of change (from among the whole diversity of necessary paths) into a stimulated state. These diversities must not differ greatly in size (in the simplest case equal to one bit) in either the reflected, the reflecting, or the intermediary object, and it is strictly a question of these varieties alone, when we are talking about measuring the amount of information in the Shannon sense.

It is clear that although the diversity under examination is linked at its source with the particular features of the reflected object's active part, it is significant for the information process only insofar as the diversities of the reflecting object's intential states correspond to it. However the states of the reflected object's active part change, the number of variants of stimulated patterns in the reflecting object cannot prove to be greater than that which has been determined by the foregoing experience of the interaction of these objects.

This type of diversity manifests itself in the diversity of the reflected object's alienated states and will be called the selecting type; this is because in the end the variance within the boundaries of this diversity determines which of the intential patterns will be chosen, i.e. will in actual fact be stimulated in the reflecting object.

Now let us turn our attention to the fact that each of these patterns represents a fully determined diversity of actual, available properties which reflect the diversity of the original-pattern's properties, i.e. the properties of the basic part (and not of just one active part) of the reflected object.

This diversity, although it is also reflected, cannot have anything in common with the diversity of the alienated properties of the reflected object either in its properties or its size. It is necessary, in order to evaluate this second type of diversity, to take into account the pre-history of the interactions between the reflecting and the reflected object, and the experience of their interactions; observation of the intermediary object alone in acts of informing will not tell us anything about this experience nor, consequently, about the second type of diversity. Each diversity of this type we can call a selected diversity.

And, finally, it is possible to distinguish at least one important type of diversity, the power of which (in the theoretical, "set" sense) is apparently least restricted, because it is limited only by the time it takes for the information to pass through. In this connection Ashby even provides a special theorem: "By acting for a sufficiently long time, any transformer can convey or transmit any amount of diversity" [196, p.220]; however, he does not link this with any need to classify the types of diversity.

We shall examine the nature of this type of diversity first of all with the simplest example, when the directing influence is reduced to a trigger Influence and, consequently, the selecting and selected diversity is equal to only one bit: it is stimulated, or not stimulated, so that the results of the trigger influence are not comparable with the properties of the active object and do not reflect its actual characteristics. But let us imagine that such influences are repeated and are effected with a variable period or with a variable average frequency, while the reflecting object, after each trigger reaction, manages to restore its state and, by the same token, the ability to react to each trigger influence. In this case a number of the characteristics of the secondary deformation (for example, the average intensity of the in-flow of energy for the restoration of the reflecting object's initial state) will prove to be proportional to the average intensity (e.g. the average frequency) of the reflected object's influence on the reflected object.

As this average intensity is already an actual characteristic of the reflected object, like the first one it proves to be capable, in spite of the trigger character of the secondary deformation, of perceiving and reflecting the reflected object's properties; in this case the degree of possible changes of the reflected object's properties appears to be very much greater than when the reflected object's actual properties are reflected only on account of the primary and single secondary deformation. Consequently we can speak in this case of the reflection of a new type of diversity, which is farmed from all the variants of the intervals (which are sequential in time) of the trigger influences on the reflecting object, i.e. from the combinations of these intervals, if these combinations are indeed specific for the reflected object's states, i.e. they are its properties. What is also important here is that such combinations can be easily alienated from the reflected object and can be transferred to the reflecting object with the help of the intermediary object.

Let us name this type of diversity, reflected in the informing process, combinative. It is not difficult to see that it is on the reflection of precisely this diversity that modulating and intensifying mechanisms in the regulating links of automatic equipment and living beings are based. It is clear that a combinative diversity can be reflected with both a trigger influence and also a launching influence on the reflecting object. If the diversity selected represents a combination of intential forms, the original patterns of which are the reflected object's states, and each of the states has its own active part, then all possible combinations of alternation of these states with diverse variants of the intervals between changes from one state to another can serve as elements of combinative diversity; each of these combinative elements will be reflected in the form of a natural alternation of launches of the reflecting object's corresponding intential patterns.

It is clear that in order for such a combinative diversity in an informing process to be reflected, the intermediary object (in the capacity of the reflected object's alienated properties) must only transfer units of the selecting diversity i.e. the properties of the active parts of each of the selected states. Varying the law of alternation of units of a selecting diversity allows us to reproduce the most complex resulting reflected diversities consisting of combinations of units of selected diversities, i.e. combinations of intential patterns.

It is also important to note that with the reflection of any three types of diversity and their combinations by means of informing, a holding back of the reflection process in relation to the time of the actual course of the reflected process can be easily effected. 

A comparison of concepts of reflection processes so far introduced with certain concepts of ancient Greek philosophy. By turning to adaptation mechanisms when analysing various types of reflection and by recognising the corporeal nature of any interactions between objects, we are able to shed a certain lighten to the ancient philosophical argument as to what is the essence of the similarity of reflection (or mapping) to being reflected.

As Aristotle shows [16], Plato and Empedocles believed that reflection is possible only because "the similar is recognised as the similar". However Empedocles interpretation of similarity differed from Plata's. The main thing for Empedocles was to be able to see a closeness in the reflecting and the reflected objects on the basis of the substance of the objects being traceable to the same "roots" (earth, water, air and fire); while for Plato a more important consideration was the structural isomorphisms resulting from the closeness of the "ideas" which the compared objects embody materially.

Similarity on the basis of substance is a feature of Democritus' and Epicurus' conception. The principle of the general "outflow" of material objects and the ability of the casings or "shells", resulting from the outflow of the surface of objects, to preserve and bear properties of these objects makes the development of similarity between reflecting and reflected object absolutely natural in a physical sense. Moreover any minimal unit of outflow is understood here as an "idol" or "image" which, although in miniature, is In itself close to the object from which the outflow has taken place; the reflecting object proves therefore to be at the same time an "absorber" of the reflected object's property insofar as it apprehends or interprets these "idols".

Aristotle understood the need for the reflecting object to be similar to the reflected as the physical ability of the reflecting object to preserve in itself traces of the influence of the reflected object, and in this sense his teaching takes no account of Democritus' direct-line substantial-ism, nor Plato's one-sided formalism. This average or "median" point of view is developed in the systemic approach. There would be no possibility of the simplest direct or secondary deformations leading to universal anticipation and advance reflection based on the forming of an intential trace, if the substance flows or currents of the interactions did not maintain in themselves certain "external" parameters of the launching bodies; that is to say, if they did not transfer into space certain of the features-far example, the structure of the non-homogeneous characteristics of the reflected object's qualitative properties-and did not print the correlations (though not the substances) of these non-homogeneous characteristics on the body of the reflecting object. But this "Platonic" feature in Aristotle's theory can just as easily be considered "Democritecian", since a corporeal, substance basis is necessary for both the retention of form by the reflected object and the transfer of form to the reflecting object.

The flow conception of interaction, based on the concept of substance outflow, differs from Democritus' and Epicurus' teaching in another way: in the opinion of the latter, any outflow as a substratum of the "idols" must within a limit he reduced to a current in a void of atoms which are further indivisible; to our way of thinking, however, outflow is characteristic of objects of any level or tier (the number of which is limitless). The genetic prerequisites for reflection are therefore inherent in any form of the manifestat ion of matter, including "atoms" themselves and "atoms of atoms".

In this respect the flow conception of the nature of reflection which we propose is closer net to the initial ideas of Democritus and Epicurus, but to a more deeply considered variation of them put forward by P. Hassendi: for him the indivisibility of atoms is not the principle of their structure, not a result of "an absence of parts in them", but a manifestation of the limited nature of our purely technical possibilities for recognising these parts, because "there is no force in nature by means of which they could be cut up and separated" [29; 104]. But the principles of the systemic approach enable us not only to understand why the classic thinkers of materialist dialectics, who shared the idea of the limitlessness of the levels of divisibility in "atoms", also saw in Hassendi's conception a mechanistic one-sided-ness which is evident in particular in the reduction of any movement to just a "transfer from place to place", we believe that a unit of any level is capable of adaptation and consequently of change and movement in a wide sense, which Aristotle hints at but which for Pierre Hassendi is "extremely dark" [29, p.112].

The substance, corporeal interpretation of outflows and interactions allows us to understand the fact that with a change of conditions of the interaction of objects, the degree of accuracy with which the properties of one object are reflected on those of another can also change, and it is necessary in specific circumstances to estimate or evaluate how favourable conditions are for effective reflection. In particular the line of development of higher forms of reflection in biological and psychic systems is towards any sort of stabilisation and support of the most favourable conditions for the occurrence of reflection processes, but since there can be no ideally favourable conditions, direct influence and direct traces of the reflected object on the reflecting object can never be a fully objective reflection of the properties of this reflected object. It is not objective in the sense that in the surface outflows of the reflected object which are accessible to the reflecting object, the essence of the reflected object becomes apparent only Indirectly, through a multi-stage cause-and-effect transformation .

2.3 Adaptive Intensification of Reflective Properties.

Conditions for Facilitating Adaptive Processes through a Material's Reflective Potentials.

When we examined lower forms of reflection, we started with the fact that the reflecting object, interacting either once or repeatedly with one particular reflected object or with several, and becoming deformed either resiliently or non-resiliently, effects within itself anticipation of a particular depth, but only because such is the internal structuring of the object's substance the fact of anticipation has in its turn no effect on the external environment or on the influencing object.

In order to measure this reverse influence of the results of reflection on the reflected objects themselves, we have to recall the ideas previously advanced on the adaptation of a system at a vacant junction of a meta-meta-system. So that such a calculation should be as effective and reliable as possible, it would be preferable to have another look first of all at the mechanisms of adaptation and the formation of the systems themselves, availing ourselves of those new concepts which we established in the first stages of our analysis of reflection processes and types of reflected diversities, and, above all, the concepts of intential imprints. anticipations, and directing influences. This will enable us to make our ideas even clearer on the nature of such categories as necessity, cause, condition, and consequence, and also to discuss the prerequisites for those phenomena which are linked in their developed form with concepts of requirement and purpose.

It was shown previously that if in a meta-system a vacant junction arose, this would mean that internal contradictions in this meta-system had led to the appearance in this junction of an intersection of interaction currents which is transformed into a basis for the formation and adaptation of a new system within it; this new system is capable of regulating and simplifying the intersection of currents, and of re-establishing the required structure of interactions with other systems, which, in relation to the given vacancy, are local systems. The only important thing is that the meta-system's essence has a high level of development; this essence guarantees its stability during the absence, and formation, of a new system at the vacant junction; otherwise the presence of unsolved contradications would threaten the meta-system with destruction. Moreover, there must naturally also be conditions for the formation of a new system-conditions consisting primarily of the availability of a material reserve from which the substance of a new system could form.

But material, as we understand it, is also systemised in the sense that it represents components, fragments and subsystems of previously existing systems which had at some time a certain level of adaptiveness, and a consequence of this adaptiveness was that these components, fragments and sub-systems functioned for a sufficiently long time in comparatively uniform conditions in groupings of systems which have adapted them in standard interactions with other subsystems of meta-systems. Consequently in these systems, subsystems and parts of systems, the experience of their standard interactions in the form of available intentials and a particular level of ability to anticipate (including a capacity for trigger influences and advance reflection) cannot be put aside.

Now let us turn our attention to the following: when such material enters the local conditions of a meta-system's vacant junction it proves to be at an intersection of not just any interaction currents, but only of ones which are specific for the given, adapted meta-system. But this means that the substance and structure of currents at a vacant junction will also act on the material which has arrived there by a certain primary method and not randomly; and those components of the material for which these influences will prove to be the most suitable since they have adapted these components in the past, have a greater probability of reacting to the new influences as to directing influences. But then the intentials and secondary deformation of precisely these components will prove to be the most suitable ones for their place at the new vacant junction without great expenditure of energy and substance from the meta-system. The properties of other components of the material however, adapted in conditions which little resemble those at the vacant junction of the meta-meta-system (which is new for them), will experience only a primary direct deformation and will contradict to the maximum extent the Influences extended on them; this increases the probability of these components being destroyed or of their being expelled from the vacant junction.

This stage of the first natural filtering of the components of material which is most suitable for the appearance of a new system at the vacant junction, increases the concentration of intentials and extentials of a particular type only. Thus there is a heightened probability of the intercoordination of the properties of components which have remained at the junction, and of their entering into separate links ; this in its turn leads to the rise of blocks of components, with properties which are new, but are again not fortuitous for the given vacant conditions, and to the rise of variants in the structure of blocks, and to a secondary filtration already on the level of these blocks. All this increases the stability of the interactions which have developed between the components and the blocks, and by the same token it facilitates the formation of new intential imprints which are significant for the meta-meta-system; it also leads to an increase in the share of interactions which are linked not with the direct, "force" deformation, but with the indirect deformation which uses intentials and directing influences; a basis for informing is thus prepared. But now the anticipation is supported by the material's preceding experience and also, in connection with the first stages of stabilisation at types of interactions between the forming subsystems and the system's blocks, it already also starts to develop as the experience of this new system, as the consequence of its adaptation to conditions which are to some particular extent new.

As we know, there have been several attempts to explain the process of components linking into complex and stable aggregates on the basis of pure chance: the properties of these aggregates accord with their place in a certain meta-meta-system, and, by the same token, assist their stability. The probability of such chance is extremely low, and then we have to accept that nature "waits" for such cases for millions of years. If, however, we take the infinity of matter in space, in time, and in the number of tiers as our premise, then there naturally fallows from the concept of adaptedness and "preformedness" of material an "improbably" high degree of predisposition in the matter towards self-mobility and acquiring new forms. And then many new facts (for example, the high concentration of organic substances in inter-stellar space) cease to be surprising.

Necessity, Condition, Cause and Motive

Our distinctions between potentials, intentials and extentials and the corresponding distinctions between possibility, necessity and reality, where one has to distinguish between reality conditioned by possibility, and reality modified by necessity, enable us to regard the rise in a meta-meta-system of contradications and, further, of a vacant junction as a foundation for a new system, as one of the forms of necessity, a heightened probability of the start of the formation of a new system at a vacant junction. In relation to this system, the meta-meta-system, with the foundation which has developed in it, can be seen as an external necessity, and the forming system then will be in relation to the meta-meta-system-an internal necessity of the meta-meta-system.

As the change of this internal necessity into reality is linked to the conditions for maintaining the high level of adaptedness available in the meta-meta-system, and, consequently, to the conditions of its existence, such a type of internal necessity of the meta-meta-system can naturally be regarded as a physical prerequisite for the phenomenon which in living systems we understand as "requirement". Thus requirement is one of forms of internal necessity as a physical, if not inevitability, then at least high intential towards types of interactions which are different from those which are presented as extentials, i.e. real, present interaction currents.

But then we can speak also of the prerequisites of requirement, as an internal necessity also, in relation to the material; this is because the material represents the splinters and components of the systems which had previously a high degree of integral wholeness and adaptedness, and because of this these splinters and components, outside their integral wholenesses, are included in interactions currents which are not in sufficient agreement with the intentials. Without the presence of the material's intentials there could not be any development of predispositions of certain of its components for entering those types of link which are set by intentials, i.e. by the internal necessity to solve the contradictions at a vacant junction of the meta-meta-system. Consequently the presence of not simply material but, within that material, of components which have internal necessities ("requirements") close to the internal necessities ("requirement") of the meta-meta-system, is an essential condition for the conception, formation and adaptation of the system with the necessary properties at the vacant junction of the meta-meta-system.

Here the need is apparent for the material to be not absolutely amorphous, or passive, matter is "pure potential" as Foma Akvinsky interpreted the ideas of Aristotle [25, p.64] but for there to exist in it "pre-forms" and "pro-forms" as in the most "creative" form - the meta-meta-system which is forming a system, i.e. the foundation which has developed at the meta-meta-system's vacant junction. This discrepancy within the boundaries of the meta-meta-system and discrepancy among the material's components leads to "anti-discrepancy, to the appearance of accord between the Internal necessities of foundation and material, so that both these features, in Hegel's accurate phrase, "shine a reflection onto each other". [43, vol.2, p.102].

The non-symmetry of such "shining" leads to a lack of balance in the degree of the partner's activity. It is not so much the material which shows the active start but to a large extent the meta-meta-system. This is explained by the fact that in it (the meta-meta-system) the discrepancy level is lower: the meta-meta-system's discrepancy is concentrated at the vacant junction only, while the material, representing a chance conglomerate of splinters and components of past systems, is almost a "continuous discrepancy". This makes a concentration of material components at the vacant junction almost physically inevitable - components "which", - as Karl Marx said, explaining why it was that precious metals started to be used in financial deals -" by their very nature are especially suitable for carrying out the function". [1, vol.23, p.99]. In this sense we can say that a more active internal necessity appears in relation to the more passive one as an "external active necessity", or cause, while a passive internal necessity proves to be, in relation to an active one, "an external passive necessity", or condition. So we have again arrived at the conclusion that "condition is condition", but on the way to producing this tautology we have discovered that the category of foundation is correlated with the category of cause as one of its forms.

With this interpretation of the relationships between cause and the appearance of an adaptive system as its effect, the impossibility of an effect without there being any corresponding conditions remains obvious; at the same time the appearance of these conditions as a first, more or less chance, amount of material cannot be explained as cause, but it must be compared to the Hegelian category of motive ("the external stimulation of the inner spirit"), i.e. to the active internal necessity of the meta-meta-system which has led to the rise of a foundation. Hegel's assertion that "only by this inner spirit of the event itself was something, in itself minor and accidental, determined as its motive" [43, vol.2, P.213], becomes very clear.

In the light of what has been said, B.S. Ukralntsev's claim that Hegel deals with the category of cause very narrowly, only as mechanical cause, "as a result of which nothing is embraced that would not be embraced in the cause itself", [176, p.109] appears justified. Obviously the ideas presented above on direct primary deformation as the result of direct influences must be related to the category of cause in this narrow Hegelian sense. However, it is hardly right to conclude from an analysis of Hegel's views on the category of cause that the arsenal of Hegelian categories of cause is more depleted than the Aristotelian. The distinction here is, rather, terminological: Hegel introduces special terms for concepts of foundation, motive, "inner spirit", purpose, although he could call them all "causes" with some or other "epithet", as Aristotle does. (lb).

Let us further note that the distinction we have drawn between progressions to reality from possibility or progressions to reality from necessity allow us to see that when only possibilities, only the deep potentials of material are examined, the degree of its self-propulsion is minimal, and its formation is based above all on "forceful" primary deforming influences. In this case the material is as passive as possible towards external cause, while the number of properties which can be imposed on the material (or, more exactly, can be taken from the spectrum of its potentials) is in fact limitless. It is these types of influences on the material which have been closely studied in contemporary science and technology, and this has led to the narrowing of the concept of cause and determinedness, and to a re-evaluation of the role of a material's passiveness.

As we saw, the progression to reality not from possibility but from necessity shows incomparably less diversity of forms of the necessary by comparison with the diversity of forms of the possible, but shows at the same time a power of necessity just as incomparably greater in comparison with the power of possibility (as the degree of its non-prevent-ability and, consequently, probability). Now we can say that when the diversity of the necessary is close to the unit, the diversity of the conditions variants increases, establishing the start of the progression from the necessary to the real.

These variants must also be regarded as more or less equally valid motives, like the variants of trigger influences which lead in fact to the same reality: this reality can be called equifinal.

But necessity can have diversity (albeit a small one in comparison with possibility) for example, a certain spectrum of variants. In this case, an external active necessity as a cause takes the role not of the motive but of the directing influence on the polyvinyl process, and the variation in the parameters of the cause, in spite of their low energy power, can influence exactly which variant of the several necessities will prove to be the reality, so that the principle of "small causes" is in this sense justified.

But both polyfinality and equlfinality are possible with directing influences, if the cause turns out to be just one-variation. A consecutive chain of equifinal processes of this type, directed by the meta-meta-system, "leads" the system to a fully determined final state of maximum adaptedness, i.e. to a perfected state; in this case external cause, in relation to the material's intentials as the conditions of the process, proves to be the physical prerequisite of that particular phenomenon which changes, in its highest forms, into a purposeful activity in creating objects with required properties. If the directing influences here are not directly set as the foundation, but are effected through informing, then only in this case do conditions arise for the requirements to be fixed in the form of a true goal (or purpose).

The Simplest Substance Properties of the System under Adaptation. Reception Zones.

In the simplest case when contradictions at a meta-meta system's vacant junction are expressed only when there is no "dispatcher" of currents more or less stable in intensity, direction and substance, and which flow between surrounding systems consolidated in space, the system which is forming and being adapted at this junction is transformed in the end into a substantially fixed network of channels for these currents and by this fact aids the unhindered flow of currents in certain directions towards the necessary local systems. This prevents impermissible mixings of the substance of currents. In a system with such a function all interactions are stablised and conditions for developing complex reflective properties are minimal.

But let us imagine that a system must function at a vacant junction of this type, where the places of the local systems are weakly fixed, and exchange currents are not uninterrupted but are effected in the form of concentrated discrete portions of the relay or transmission of link substance elements and, apart from this, in an irregular manner in time. Moreover let us imagine that in this particular space between local systems the substance of certain "alien" currents appears, also irregularly, and it is not possible to allow their mixing with local systems interaction currents.

Since in such circumstances it is necessary, if the meta-meta-system is to be stable, that the system under adaptation has the ability to dispatch links currents at the meta-meta-system's vacant junction, that via its channels it allows through currents of one type, and that it prevents links when currents of an alien substance appear, then such a system must at least have the power to distinguish certain varieties of substances, and have a heightened sensitivity towards its "own" and to the most inadmissible alien varieties. Only by adapting and developing such sensitivity can a system have a chance of being consolidated at a meta-meta-system's vacant junction.

Thus It is clear that the result of the system's adaptation at such a vacant junction will be an increased predisposition towards trigger deformation in response to interaction with certain types of substance. And since substance, as we understand it, represents a set of elements with certain properties, and in the substance flow the individuality of each of its elements has no importance, identification of the substance itself is in the end based on an identification of its elements which requires no distinctions as to where a similar element has been discovered or where the same element is.

If we link the above with concepts of set theory, identification of a certain type of substance is based on the ability of the system under adaptation to relate, by means of physical and chemical interaction, certain corporeal foundations to one and the same universal class, the universum; that is, to effect the initial non-formal procedure of including the elements in a universal set, to be an "indicator of the belonging" of an element to a class [117, p.12] where it is not necessarily an indicator of the individual-isation of elements in this set, or even an indicator of belonging to a sub-set of a universal set.

Belonging to a sub-set or to a smaller unit of a hierarchical division in a universum can be a result of additional physical and chemical interactions with the substance elements of currents by means of revealing their qualitative properties or establishing differences in the currents boundary properties, for example in the law of modification of their intensity. The adaptive system can show these changes when the time of the consequences of trigger deformation Is essentially less than the average frequency of the appearance of the currents substance elements, leading to the trigger deformation. In this case, the adaptive system, taking the role of the reflecting object, is capable of distinguishing the intensity of the currents according to the average frequency of the trigger influences and to react not only to their qualitative but also to their quantitative properties.

So within the system areas with heightened sensitivity towards either qualitative or boundary properties of links substance elements can start to be fixed, i.e. areas can form which in technical structures are called receivers or transducers, and in biological structures receptor organs or receptors.

Here it must be emphasised once again that if the substance of currents regulated by the system is unstable both in composition and intensity and location, indications by the receptors of the qualitative properties without regard to the boundary characteristics are as useless as indications of boundary properties when these are not correlated with the existance of reactions to the qualitative characteristics. In other words, given our theories on adaptation there is no foundation for regarding either qualitative or boundary properties of the external environment as the more objective. And so the long-standing argument of whether primary or secondary properties are more important is negated.

Let us call the reception zone those external spatial and temporal boundaries in the limits of which the receptive area of a forming system reacts to those properties of the external environment which are necessary far a system to function and for which this receptor was formed in the system's adaptation process in order to reveal them. It is important to emphasise here once again that receptors form in an adaptive system because, first, the material is predisposed towards this and, second, they are necessary for the normal functioning of the meta-meta-system, and as a result of this for the adaptive system itself as well; the greater the extent, the deeper the system adapts to a given functional grouping, and the more reliably the functionally significant properties are supported in it owing to the formation of this system's new essence.

Let us note in conclusion that Insofar as not only the currents of interaction but also the local systems can dispense certain elements of the substance of outflows at the vacant junction, the system under adaptation can, when there is a sufficiently large property distinction of these outflows in the various local systems, distinguish not only the link currents per se but also the local systems and also "alien" systems which have appeared in the reception zone by means of even the simplest type of receptors we have seen.

Even richer are the possibilities of substance distinction of local systems, when these systems are distinguished by the law of Intensity change of outflowing substance. However, Identification of these systems from such signs is only possible when in the system being adapted as the reflecting system, as a result of foregoing experience, development mechanisms have formed of processes resonating to certain types of internal combinations of trigger influences. The substance elements themselves, emitted by the local conditions in this case fulfil the role of the reflected systems' directing influences on the reflecting object under adaptation; the trigger influence from each perceived outflow element is a primary imprint, and the combination of them launches, stimulates and leads the intential secondary imprint to resonate - the law of change of intensity characteristic of the local object's identification.

In this case as well, the law of change itself reflecting certain of the object's boundary properties must be seen as a "primary property", but it would not be possible to identify it without there being a reaction to the substance of a fully defined property, i.e. to "secondary properties of this external object". 

Usual and Occasional combinative Intential forms; Formation and Functioning of Adaptation.

The more complex the elements of that substance which must be despatched by the system under adaptation, and which must provide at the vacant junction its systems, interaction exchange currents required for the meta-meta-system, and the more diverse these functional substance elements are, and the less regular they are, the fewer chances the system has of providing the required function merely by revealing certain of their qualitative and boundary properties, specific for these elements and local systems. This is connected to the fact that the small number of situations is Increased where in the system's reception field these prove to be elements and objects which, although among their characteristics they have the named qualitative and boundary properties, are distinguished from the substance elements of the links' functional flows and the local systems' functional flows by the particular feature of the correlation of the compositional properties, and by the structure of their combination. Consequently adaptive systems which form at such functional junctions can no longer function satisfactorily by revealing through their indicators on the currents' substance elements, and those of local systems, being part of a certain type of universum. The breaking down of such a universal set into sub-sets on the basis of consideration of the distinctions in the chahge laws of substance current's intensities can also be insufficient for this purpose. Then a deeper detailing both of the types of substances and the sub-classes of local systems can be achieved by means of revealing those characteristics which in set theory are described in terms of setting a network of relationships, "a structure on set elements". For this the system under adaptation must develop within Itself another level of reflection: reflection of the change structure in the reactions of various receptors, which leads to structures being revealed which are only in "their" local systems, and also in the substance elements only of "their" functionally important link currents. Here it is advantageous to identify such structures of the chain of reactions when there is a minimum number of Interactions between the reflecting adaptive system and the local environment.

The separate reactions of each receptor can be purely trigger reactions, but the reactions' change structures themselves must exist in the reflecting adaptive system in the shape of intential patterns stimulated - for example -by the resonance method. Then the separate interactions with the surrounding environment, which lead to the stimulation of such patterns have to be regarded as directing trigger Influences, leading to the simplest combinative reflection of no longer just intervals but now of the composition of the receptors. With this type of reflection as with a combination of single receptor stimulation intervals the new combination, not represented among the intential patterns of the changes structure of the receptors' reactions, i.e. no longer having the usual intential pattern regularly utilised beforehand, cannot be recognised in any way.

But if the receptors' reactions themselves are launching ones and accordingly the consequences of the launches prove to be the stimulation of secondary intential imprints, correlatable with the characteristics of reflected objects and their components which have not participated in the launching influences, then the combinative stimulation of such intential patterns is essentially distinct from the combinative stimulation of trigger influences. This distinction is expressed in the fact that if, even among the patterns of change structures of receptors' reactions which have farmed and are being used, i.e. among the usual, intential patterns of these change structures, - if among these there is no pattern which coincides with the structure of a given combination of reactions, the launch of a group of intential patterns is nevertheless more or less certain to be amalgamated into an integrally whole network of interactions. Thus there develops a complex, joint, stimulated pattern. All of its components have a sufficiently complex structure and, thus, individual types of link intentials with other patterns which can form a resonance link with an available receptor's reactions' flow change structure, in spite of the fact that such a structure is created only in a given specific case, and previously it had no influence on the reflecting object and was in this sense occasional for it.

Thus combinative stimulation can provide the action of advance reflection not only in Anokhin's sense, but also in the sense of universal anticipation. At the same time acts of advance reflection can take the role of its components. However, so that they be possible and so that there exist intential imprints, the directing stimulation of which leads to the rise of a complex occasional combinative pattern, it is necessary to form these intential imprints in advance as the usual components of occasional patterns. For this the reflecting system under adaptation must in some way or other obtain the interaction experience with corresponding original patterns, local systems and the substance elements of their links.

As we have seen, the prerequisite for gaining this experience for any given system is that its material has had certain analogous experience. After this, by adapting at a certain vacant junction of the meta-meta-system, it develops the power of increasing the size of the intential imprint in relation to the primary, launching one, and in the functioning process it makes do with perceiving or receiving just the minimal directing influences on the part of the local environment. This increases the speed of its functional reactions, and prevents a closing-up with systems whose Influences threaten the wholeness or integrality of the system under adaptation and its functioning; and all this comes to be favourable for the wholeness of the adapting meta-meta-system. Here we must not mix up the process of the system's acquiring power to reflect and anticipate in advance, i.e. the stage of the system's adaptation which corresponds to the required function of the meta-meta-system or the stage of the formation of the adaptive system, with the process of using this power in order to preserve the meta-meta-system's integral wholeness, i.e. with the functioning stage of the adaptive system which has already formed. However the need itself for the rise of an adaptive system functioning at the meta-system's vacant junction, is connected to the fact that the meta-meta-system must have the ability to reconstruct its properties when there is a change of external conditions, and accordingly to adjust and to adapt itself to these changing conditions.

Thus the functioning of the adaptive system is at the same time a process of adaptation, although it is absolutely clear that it is not at all the same adaptation which has occurred during the formation of the system. Therefore in order not to mix up these two types of adaptation we can speak, when necessary, of formation adaptation (and up to now this is what we have been examining) and of functioning adaptation. It is clear for example that the results of formation adaptation change into a necessary condition for functioning adaptation. Formation adaptation leads in particular to stamping, in the form of intential imprints, the experience of an extremely close interaction of the adaptive system with other systems, while functioning adaptation requires only the stimulation of these imprints under the influence of directing (trigger or launching) influences on the part of these local systems.

Finally we must turn our attention to the following case. In order to support a system's functionally important properties requirements can develop for a system to interact with the environment where the interactions are not predetermined by the actual formation of the given system. But they must nevertheless be consolidated in the system, for otherwise it cannot realise functional processes. We see such forms of interaction as the satisfaction of the system's pure, "egocentric" requirements; however, as is seen from an analysis of the sources of these requirements, they too are conditioned in the end by the meta-meta-system's requirements and they are therefore not just utilitarian for the system.

Let us recall that we are concerned with the development mechanisms of the highest forms of reflection in systems which are adaptive not only in the sense that their substance uses as its basis material which bears the results of past adaptations but also in the sense of the deep adaptation of the given system itself to carrying out certain functions in the meta-meta-system. Therefore it would be better for us to start from these internal requirements of this system, and not always to concentrate on the meta-meta-systemic origin of not only the system's receptors but also of its "egocentric" functioning requirements; the more so in that they do Indeed became these when the adapted system, capable of carrying out complex functions in the meta-meta-system, comes to be for some reason or other "dislodged" from the meta-meta-system which adapted it. 

Functional States, Control, Information Transmission.

When we examined the most important aspects of reflection processes we paid most attention to the imprints of the reflected object's influence on the reflecting object: to the direct (primary) and the indirect (secondary) imprints. Here it was obvious that the imprint represents only a partial, local change on the body of the reflecting object, coinciding exactly with the place of contact or the link of the reflecting object with the reflected object when a primary imprint is formed; or a local change spreading in a certain zone around the primary imprint when a trigger, launching or universal anticipatoryimprint is formed. The question of the changes beyond the boundaries has not been examined, although certain of such changes were borne in mind when we said that after the stimulation of some imprint or other an adaptive system must effect a certain function at the meta-meta-system's vacant junction.

It is obvious that for even a few of the functional reactions to changes of the external environment to occur, the adaptive system must change its properties; first, not only within the boundaries of the imprint, and second, these changes can be not just narrowly local, but more or less widespread, integral, and leading to notable reconstruction of qualitative properties of almost all parts of the adaptive system's body. If the adaptive system consists of hierarchically organised elements and links between them the reconstruction of the system can be expressed in a structural change of these elements' links. But whether this is so or not, if a system functions in the meta-meta-system, then just so that its function can be effected, it must change into various states which we can quite naturally call functional states. By changing its functional states a system changes its properties, which in a given case ought also to be called functional. By having various functional properties it acquires the faculty of engaging in Interactions with local objects which correspond to these properties, i.e. engaging in those interactions which also form the function of this system in the meta-system.

Functional states are different from the changes of states linked with the reflection process not only in that they are normally integral and the others are always localised:

A more important difference is that the reflection process and the change of state of a reflecting object is similar in some of its properties to the reflected object. The degree of this becoming similar increases in accordance with the perfection of the reflection mechanisms (right up to the likening of the reflecting object to the foregoing state of the reflected object, for example when there is occasional combinative reflection), while the functional reconstruction must be based, to a certain extent, on a calculation of the parameters of external cause (for example, the characteristics of a new object which has appeared in the reflecting object's reception zone) which has produced the change to a new funtional state; however, in the end, its functional reconstruction is frequently directed towards the imposition of certain properties on this cause (e.g. at giving the external object properties which it has not had previously, or which it has expended and must acquire once again.

But there are certain general features among the functional states of a reflecting object and the states of reflection imprints.

If the object's functioning conditions embrace a large number of standard frequently repetitive situations, the object's functioning will be more effective if the object has an increased readiness for change to precisely these most probable states. For this the object must contain not only those components in its structure without which it is impossible or difficult to realise these functional states, but also intentials for the corresponding Internal inter-linkings between its components.

Accordingly we must speak in this case of possible intential functional states, and, in order to bring a particular one of these into an actual extential functional state, a directing influence is all that is necessary.

Clearly we must see the directing Influences which bring an adaptive system into a certain functional state from a number of possible intential functional states as a controlling influence; and we can regard the process of combining this system's intential functional states by combining the controlling influences as a control process.

It is clear that in Intentials' mechanisms, that is, in the particular features of the diversity of possibilities and methods whereby one of them changes to reality when the adaptive system progresses from one intential functional state to another, there is a lot in common with the mechanisms for stimulating some intential pattern within it.

Like an intential pattern, an intential functional state must contain only a minimal component, the stimulation of which leads to the stimulation of the whole, i.e. a component which is an analogy of a direct imprint when there is stimulation in a trigger or launching reflection regime. As with the stimulation of patterns, when there is a launching regime of progession to a certain extential functional state, the launching component is the starting phase of this state itself as an integrally whole process, and with a trigger pattern it is linked with the state being stimulated only in adjacence: it is not its actual component, but it is one of the links in the consecutive chain.

We shall call that phase of trigger or launching stimulation of the intential functional state, after which the object is bound to progress to that state, the initial functional phase of that state. It is clear that as with the trigger or launching stimulation of patterns, the smaller the size of the initial functional phase, similar to the size of the necessary primary imprint, in a secondary imprint, the more standard, frequently repeating, usual states the system accepts.

It is exactly in this way that the concept of combinative stimulation is applicable not only with regard to patterns but also to functional states. Here there can be both standard usual sets of formative states and the structures of their links, and unique, irrepeatable, occasional sets. Therefore even with a limited set of intential functional states the number of possible, usual, combinative functional states can be very large, while the number of occasional functional states hardly lends itself to limitation if we are thinking of the chains of transfers to these states with the varying of time intervals between them.

Functional states, like patterns, can be launched either through direct interaction with objects of the environment (original patterns), or by means of informing, i.e. through intermediary objects bearing only those properties of the original pattern objects which can stimulate the Initial phase of an object's functional state.

This will hardly contradict those cybernetic Ideas on the nature of Information, to which an ever increasing number of scientists are coming round, where the process of information transmission is defined as control on the basis of informing (in the sense defined previously). In particular it follows from such a definition that processes of informmation transmission can occur also inside an adaptive functioning system; here the forms of external reality which have come together owing to the interaction of this system with local objects can play an active role in these processes.

And finally it is clear that we can speak of the patterns of functional states themselves and even more so, of the link structure patterns of these states in an integrally whole combinative function.

The Objectivity and Subjectivity of Reflection; the a priori Gestalt; Philogenesis; Ontogenesis; and Embryogenesis.

The scheme outlined above for fixing functionally significant reflective properties in the adaptation process of an object in a meta-meta-system is highly reminiscent of the scheme of the biological formation of species, or biological adaptation, the basic laws of which were first formulated by Charles Darwin (though guesses as to the mechanism of the development of living beings on Earth were hazarded even by Empedocles).

This way of explaining the formation of reflecting functions is not new: after Darwin published his findings, G. Spenser explained things in this way. But Spenser's conception, though shared in many of its propositions by leading scientists, for example, I.N. Schenov, is seen as being very mechanistic. Spenser asserts ultimately that reflection of only the most frequently encountered events which are adjacent in time can be the result of adaptation, and in fact he denies penetration into the essence of phenomena and into the simplest laws of cause and effect.

Such conclusions are quite natural if by reflection is meant only the first stages of advance reflection, only forming as a result of extential traces of external events and objects. But if one starts from our concept of the nature not only of reflection but also of adaptation as properties of corporeal objects in general (and not simply biological objects), then we are not at all obliged to draw from assertions concerning the inevitability of the complexity of objects' reflective possibilities, if reflection is functional, the positivist conclusions Spenser arrives at concerning the maximum possibilities of reflection.

As we have seen, even with non-living objects we have to recognise a predisposition for universal anticipation. A strengthening of live organisms' reflective capabilities during their evolution must consequently fundamentally strengthen the mechanisms of not only purely static anticipations, but also of essence ones as well.

The embryo of such a process should be seen as early as in the combinative stimulation of a complex pattern on the basis of the launch of several intential patterns, where a links scheme between these patterns is capable of developing under the influence of both links imposed previously from outside and intentials which explicate the properties of original patterns of the components of an integrally whole original form through the reflection of these properties in the characteristics of such original forms' intential forms. Through the accumulated "subjective" experience, established in the reflecting system in the form of intential imprints, objective properties of the external environment, not yet given in this subjective experience, can be revealed, and as intential imprints are formed as a result of foregoing physical interactions with the environment - as a sort of "groping" of this environment - in this way the materialist position, concerning the primacy of direct sensation over deduced knowledge and also the objectivity of this deduced knowledge, is substantiated in concrete terms.

The picture we have seen of the forming of reflective capabilities does not make the objectivity of patterns of the reflected external environment absolute, nor does it require us to "regard feelings as some sort of supreme tribunal and highest criterion"; P. Hassendi also wrote against this [29, p.69]. The degree of correspondence of evident, explicated properties of reality to the properties of this same reality can be determined by the accuracy which is needed for the meta-meta-system to exist, by the volume of the experience already accumilated, and by the choice of the receptors which developed in the formation adaptation process, and therefore any "exact" reflection is only a "subjective form of the objective world" [2, vol.16, p.120]. However, since the system functions successfully and maintains the stability of the adaptive meta-meta-system, the "success of the actions" of this system [1, vol.22, p.304] confirms that its intential patterns are a "true copy of this subjective reality" [2, vol.18, p.130], and If in some respect they are not, then the "non-success of the actions" become a reason for the start of adaptatory processes and for the correction of "untrue copies".

If we distinguish a material's experience and the experience of a substance forming from it, and also if we distinguish the formation experience (which has included the material's experience) and the experience accumulated already in the adaptive system's functioning process (and supported by the formation experience) we are able to make the following conclusion. This is that if a sufficiently deeply adapted system, the functioning of which is supported by reflection mechanisms, is in some way or other reproduced in new specimens (by reproduction in biological objects and by repeated manufacture of such an automatic device in cybernetic objects), formation adaptation does not have to be fully repeated in these new specimens. All those properties of the new system which correspond to its function at the new meta-system's vacant junction, to whatever extent its presence there is brought about by analogous causes, must where possible be reproduced in the new system, and not be formed again, in the lengthy formation adaptation process. In particular, in biological systems they must be inborn, and only under this condition can the time of the system's adaptation exceed the time of the existence of its separate specimens. With each new reproduction the experience of the type will not be lost (it will even increase), if the degree of its adaptation to the function has not reached completion or if the completion has ceased to be such in connection with some reconstruction of the characteristics of the contradictions at the meta-meta-system's junction in which the system must function.

This fact seems trivial while it is a question of the external features of the system being reproduced, and in particular when it is a question of the features and the group of those receptors which it inherits from experience of the type on reproduction. But our arguments mean that the opinions of those scientists are justified who accept not only the inheritance of the means, but also of the most important results of reflection, and who explain the concept of "a priori knowledge" not in Kant's sense, i.e. not as a denial of the experienced origin of this knowledge, but only as knowledge individually outside experience, relayed to new Individuals or specimens of the type as ready, intential patterns of those aspects of the environment whose identification is absolutely essential to any representative of the type. The presence of such a priori knowledge is revealed not only in the form of so-called instincts, but also in the ability of new individuals to Identify quite complex situations and objects. So for example it has .been established that chickens which have just hatched in an incubator distinguish the silhouette of a duck from that of a kite by its outline and the direction of its movements; the chickens look quite calmly at the first but try to run away from the second. [134, p.248].

That internal intential pattern, which is inborn (or built into the automatic device) and which allows certain external objects to be Identified without preliminary instruction thanks only to the correct working of the receptors we shall call "a priori gestalt". As we shall see further on, the presence of a priori gestalt will allow not only the relating of external reflected objects to a certain universal set to be assured but also the working-out process of new Intential patterns for distinguishing sub-sets of this set and even of its individual representatives to be speeded up. We can call these patterns "a posteriori gestalts" [161, p.45-50].

And let us note finally that if adaptive systems which allow reproduction are to be examined, the stage of their formation adaptation ought to be broken down into two more particular varieties: into formation adaptation of the type (philogenesis, evolution of the type) and formation adaptation of the individual (ontogenesis); and in the latter we can distinguish embryogenesis and, indeed, training.

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