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Maturana's constitutive ontology of the

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Article in Psychotherapy Theory Research & Practice January 1987

DOI: 10.1037/h0085742

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 Psychotherapy
MATURANA'S CONSTITUTIVE ONTOLOGY
OF THE OBSERVER
PAUL F. DELL
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Maturana makes no metaphysical
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
claims about the nature of a
hypothetical independent reality. His
biology of cognition explains the
constitutive ontology of the observer.
This ontology of the observer directly
implies that the cognitive domain of
human observers is structure-
determined and, therefore, that humans
distinguish a structure-determined
world.
In a well-documented and cogently argued cri-
tique, Held & Pols (1987) have contended that
my recent essay on Gregory Bateson and Humberto
R. Maturana (Dell, 1985) contains a fatal con-
tradiction. Specifically, they note that I, like many
family therapists, advocate an epistemology which
holds that "the act of knowing makes its own
reality" (Held & Pols, 1987, p. 456). Held &
Pols contend that if one adopts such an episte-
mology, then one "cannot . . . argue one way or
the other the merits of any ontology" (p. 460).
Held & Pols are concerned with the traditional
notion of metaphysics. My essay (Dell, 1985) has
led them to believe that I (and Maturana) are
similarly concerned with metaphysics. We are
not. Were we, in fact, speaking of a metaphysical
independent reality, then Held & Pols's highly
articulate critique would be devastatingly correct.
Still, their commentary makes it painfully apparent
that my use of the term "ontology" appears to
refer to a metaphysical or transcendental reality
and, thereby, has rendered my article vulnerable
Reprints may be ordered from Paul F. Dell, Eastern Virginia
Medical School, Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
Eastern VA Family Therapy Inst., 205 Business Park Drive,
Virginia Beach, VA 23462.
462
Volume 24/Fall 1987/Number 3S
to criticism. Accordingly, I shall restate and elab-
orate certain matters in hopes of conveying to the
reader that the validity of Held & Pols's critique
lies in my perhaps ill-advised use of the term
"ontology," rather than in the theory of Maturana.1
Held & Pols have clearly summarized the tra-
ditional understanding of metaphysics: "a meta-
physics/ontology . . . makes a claim about how
things really are independently of the knower's
formative (constructive, ordering, 'punctuating')
power" (p. 457). Maturana, however, has re-
peatedly and explicitly stated that his biology of
cognition can never speak of, nor have access to,
such an independent reality:
Knowledge implies interactions, and we cannot step out of
our domain of interactions which is closed. We live, therefore,
in a domain of subject-dependent reality. . . . In fact, any
knowledge of a transcendental absolute reality is intrinsically
impossible; if a supposed transcendental reality were to become
accessible to description then it would not be transcendental
because a description always implies interactions and, hence,
reveals only a subject-dependent reality. (Maturana, 1978, p.
60)
1
It is at least awkward, if not risky, to defend simultaneously
a) the ideas of Maturana and b) the wording of my previous
portrayal of those ideas. I believe that Held & Pols are primarily
interested in the philosophical adequacy of Maturana's ideas
rather than my perhaps less than adequate rendition of those
ideas. In keeping with this belief, I will stipulate that Held
& Pols's critique constitutes prima facie evidence that my
earlier essay clearly lends itself to being understood to contain
a philosophical contradiction. Rather than laboriously defend
the wording of my earlier essay, I will now describe Maturana's
constitutive ontology in order to show that the philosophical
contradiction, with which Held & Pols have concerned them-
selves, is not, in fact, present. To that end, I shall, as much
as possible, let Maturana speak for himself by quoting ex-
tensively (with his permission) from his most recent and com-
prehensive account of his ideas (Maturana, 1986). I refer the
reader to that manuscript and to Maturana's other major articles
(Maturana, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1970/1980; Maturana &
Guiloff, 1980).

In Maturana's view, we are inescapably bound to
our biological and linguistic functioning. Ac-
cordingly, we can say nothing about a putative
metaphysical reality.
The Constitutive Ontology of the Observer
Maturana has no interest in an independent
metaphysical reality. Nevertheless, he is vitally
concerned with ontology.2 Specifically, Maturana
seeks to analyze the constitutive ontology of the
observer and, then, to specify the implications of
that constitutive ontology for the nature of the
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
existence of everything that we distinguish as ob-
servers. What is an observer? An observer is the
essential and inescapable constitutive condition
of human beings: "An observer is, in general, any
being operating in language, or in particular, any
human being in the understanding that language
defines humanity" (Maturana, 1986).
So, we operate within language. What are the
implications of this constitutive condition of the
observer for the existence of all things? First, the
observer is the necessary constitutive condition
for the existence of anything1:
Without observers nothing can be said, nothing can be explained,
nothing can be claimed . . . in fact, without observers nothing
exists because existence is specified in the operation of dis-
tinction of the observer. (Maturana, 1986)
Second, any attempt to study the world must take
2
The present article addresses itself narrowly to Maturana's
constitutive ontology of the observer and to the ontological
status of structure determinism. This narrow scope is necessitated
by the task of responding to the specific philosophical critique
of Held & Pols. Despite the legitimacy of this task, the author
is well aware that the topic and scope of this article is a bit
odd for this journal. Maturana's theory is, in fact, strikingly
broad both in its explanatory power and in its implications.
The author encourages readers to acquaint themselves with
Maturana's extremely original articles.
3
This contention of Maturana would seem to suggest that
his thinking has much in common with the epistemological
view of Husserl and today's cognitive psychologists. The
philosophically sophisticated reader is cautioned that Maturana's
epistemological thought can only be understood adequately
in light of matters which exceed the scope of this article
namely, his explanation of the constitutively interpersonal
nature of language and the observer: Maturana claims that
language and self-consciousness are biological phenomena
which do not reside in the brain or in the subject, but rather
in the social domain (i.e., in the recursive structural coupling
among men and women that constitutes them as observers)
(Maturana, 1978, 1986).
Maturana's Constitutive Ontology
seriously the constitutive limitations of ourselves
as observers:
In our individual experience as human beings we find ourselves
in language; we do not see ourselves growing into it: we are
already observers by being in language when we begin as
observers to reflect upon language and the condition of being
observers. In other words, whatever takes place in the praxis
of living of the observer takes place as distinctions in language
through languaging, and this is all he or she can do as such.
(Maturana, 1986)
Third, the observer and its phenomena must become
the object of fundamental investigation:
Any reflection or comment about how the praxis of living
comes about is an explanation, a reformulation of what takes
place. If this reformulation does not question the properties
of the observer, if it takes for granted cognition and language,
then it must assume the independent existence of what is
known. If this reformulation questions the properties of the
observer, if it asks about how cognition and language arise,
then it must accept the experiential indistinguishability between
illusion, hallucination and perception, and take as constitutive
that existence is dependent on the biology of the observer.
(Maturana, 1986)
Fourth, all explanation is subject to these con-
stitutive limitations. As such, all explanations occur
within language and within our phenomenal domain
as biological entities. That is, everything that we
distinguish, and everything that we say (i.e., ex-
planations) about the things that we have distin-
guished, occur within the 'experiential situation
in which everything that is, everything that hap-
pens, is and happens in us as part of our praxis
of living" (Maturana, 1986). We may explain our
experience in terms of matter, energy, structure
determinism, spirit, God, or whatever. Never-
theless, these explanations are, and can only be,
just another part of our praxis of livingnot how
things really are independently of the observer.
For these reasons, Maturana refutes the frequent
assumption that science reveals an objective (i.e.,
independent or transcendental) reality. In his view,
the assumption of an objective reality is unnecessary
because that is not what science explains. Instead,
science explains the phenomena which occur in
the praxis of living of the observer:
Scientific explanations do not require the assumption of ob-
jectivity [i.e., objective, transcendental reality] because scientific
explanations do not explain an independent objective reality.
Scientific explanations explain the praxis of living of the ob-
server, and they do so with the operational coherences brought
forth by the observer in his or her praxis of living. It is this
fact that gives science its biological foundations and that makes
science a cognitive domain bound to the biology of the observer
with characteristics that are determined by the ontology of
observing. (Maturana, 1986; italics added)
463
 Paul F. Dell
Maturana is unequivocably clear that "science, as
the domain of scientific statements, does not need
an objective independent reality nor does it reveal
one" (Maturana, 1986).
At this point, we are approaching the aspect of
Maturana's thought that led me to speak so often
of "ontology" in a way that Held & Pols were, I
think, inevitably bound to find problematic. That
is, I can hardly object when Held & Pols believe
that some of my phrasings [e.g., "Maturana's
ontological claim is that the world is structure-
determined" (Dell, 1985, p. 7)] refer to a meta-
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
physical reality that exists "independently of the
knower's . . . formative power." Now, I must
explain why my words do not refer to the meta-
physical reality that they so unambiguously seem
to invoke.
The Ontological Status of Structure
Determinism
Maturana says that observers distinguish two
kinds of unities, simple and composite. A simple
unity is a unity that is constituted and brought
forth in an operation of distinction such that the
unity is "exclusively and completely characterized
by the properties through which it is brought forth
in the praxis of living of the observer that distin-
guishes it, and no further explanation is needed
for the origin of these" (Maturana, 1986). A com-
posite unity, on the other hand, is "a unity dis-
tinguished as a simple unity that through further
operations of compositon is decomposed by the
observer into components that, through their com-
position, would constitute the original simple unity
in the domain in which it is distinguished" (Ma-
turana, 1986). Said briefly, simple unities are those
that we distinguish solely in terms of properties,
and composite unities are those simple unities that
we have further analyzed ("through further op-
erations of distinction") in order to determine the
components and relations that generate the prop-
erties which allowed us to distinguish it as a simple
unity in the first place.
So, what is structure determinism? The structure
of a composite unity is comprised of two things:
the components of the composite unity and the
relations among them. Structure determinism is
Maturana's term for the mechanistic functioning
of composite unities:
Since the structure of a composite unity consists in its com-
ponents and their relations, any change in a composite unity
consists in a structural change, and arises in it at every instant
464
necessarily determined by its structure at that instant through
the operation of the properties of its components. (Maturana,
1986)
Thus, a structure-determined system is one whose
every change is determined by its structure. Which
systems are structure-determined? Those which
science explains:
Since mechanistic systems are structure-determined systems,
and since scientific explanations entail the proposition of
mechanistic systems as the systems that generate the phenomena
to be explained, in scientific explanations we deal, and we
can only deal, with structure-determined systems. (Maturana,
1986)
And what does science explain? Science explains
composite, structure-determined unities so as to
make understandable the properties of simple uni-
ties. In other words, Maturana is saying that a)
the distinguishing of composite unities and b) the
project of science are fundamentally the same.
Namely, both involve the delineation of structure-
determined systems that explain the properties of
the myriad kinds of simple unities that we distin-
guish (e.g., stars, humans, cars, ideologies, en-
meshed families, male chauvinists, etc.).
Maturana is unswerving in his insistence that,
because we are bound to our own cognitive and
linguistic functioning, we can never claim that
the things which we distinguish have an inde-
pendent, objective existence. He calls this view
"putting objectivity in parentheses." In keeping
with this outlook, Maturana states that neither
simple nor composite unities exist independently
of us (as observers); the distinction of these unities
is founded upon the constitutive ontology of the
observer:
By putting objectivity in parentheses we accept that consti-
tutively we cannot claim the independent existence of things
(entities, unities, ideas, etc.), and we recognize that a unity
exists only in its distinction in the praxis of living of the
observer that brings it forth. But we also recognize that the
distinction takes place in the praxis of the observer in an
operation that specifies simultaneously [1] the class identity
[e.g., star, human, enmeshed family, etc.] of the unity dis-
tinguished, either as a simple unity or as a composite one,
and [2] its domain of existence as the domain of the operational
coherences in which its distinction makes sense also as a
feature of his or her praxis of living. (Maturana, 1986; italics
added)
What Maturana is saying here is that each and
every distinction is a) constitutively bound to the
praxis of living of the observer and b) has its own
complementary domain of existence. What is a
domain of existence? It is the domain of operational
validity of the properties that define the unity and

allow it to be distinguished (i.e., to exist) as that
kind of unity:
The operation of distinction that brings forth and specifies a
unity, also brings forth and specifies its domain of existence
as the domain of the operational coherences entailed by the
operation of the properties through which the unity is char-
acterized in its distinction. (Maturana, 1986)
Now, we come to the crucial point regarding the
epistemological and ontological status of structure
determinism. Maturana's concept of domains of
existence is inseparable from his thinking about
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structure determinism. Why? Because the relation
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between a unity and its domain of existence is a
deterministic one:
An operation of distinction that brings forth a simple unity
brings forth its domain of existence as the domain of operational
applicability of its properties, and constitutes the simple unity
and its domain of existence as a deterministic system. (Maturana,
1986; italics added)
Here, the scope of Maturana's views regarding
structure determinism is finally apparent. Structure
determinism is applicable to more than just science
and composite unities; it is applicable to every
unity that is distinguished by an observer!
The distinction of a unity entails its domain of existence as
a composite unity that includes it as a component. Therefore,
there are as many domains of existence as kinds of unities an
observer may bring forth in his or her operations of distinction.
In these circumstances, since the notion of determinism applies
to the operation of the properties of the components of a unity
in its composition . . . all domains of existence, as composite
entities that include the unities that specify them, conform
deterministic systems. (Maturana, 1986; italics added)
In light of this, the reader may be able to see the
following: 1) why I asserted, perhaps in a phil-
osophically misleading way, that "Maturana's on-
tological claim is that the world is structure-de-
termined" (Dell, 1986, p. 7); 2) why Held & Pols
believed that such statements must pertain to a
metaphysical, independent reality; and 3) why
Maturana claims that he is only speaking of a
"subject-dependent reality" (Maturana, 1978, p.
60).
When Maturana says that "all domains of ex-
istence . . . conform deterministic systems," he
is not making a traditional metaphysical "claim
about how things really are independently of the
knower's formative (constructive, ordering,
punctuating) power" (Held & Pols, 1987, p. 457).
Rather, Maturana is saying that the cognitive do-
main of humans is a deterministic one. He has
provided an explanation of cognition which nec-
Maturana's Constitutive Ontology
essarily implies that, for us as observers, living
systems are structure determined.
The only systems that we can explain scientifically are structure-
determined systems, therefore, if I provide a scientific expla-
nation of the phenomenon of cognition in living systems, I
provide a proof that living systems are structure-determined
systems in our praxis of living as standard observers, which
is where we distinguish them. (Maturana, 1986)
In other words, Maturana is saying that the entire
domain of human distinctions (i.e., all that we
distinguish) is a "cognitive domain bound to the
biology of the observer with characteristics that
are determined by the ontology of observing"
(Maturana, 1986). Thus, we distinguish structure-
determined systems everywhere because that is
the nature of the cognitive domain of human ob-
servers. So, in that sense, the world that we dis-
tinguish and live in as human observers is a struc-
ture-determined one. With regard to the question
of whether this constitutes a traditional meta-
physical doctrine, I defer to the professional phi-
losophers such as Pols. Certainly, structure de-
terminism pertains to "the nature of the thing
knowna question that belongs to the field of
metaphysics, or ontology" (Held & Pols, 1987,
p. 455). On the other hand, however, structure
determinism does not refer to "how things really
are independently of the knower's formative . . .
power" (Held & Pols, 1987, p. 457), so, maybe
structure determinism is not a traditional meta-
physical doctrine.
Finally, it may be helpful to conclude this dis-
cussion by quoting Maturana's most definitive
statement about that reality which he calls "tran-
scendental" and which Held & Pols (1987) call
"metaphysics/ontology in the classical and pre-
vailing sense of those terms" (p. 455):
For epistemological reasons we ask for a substratum that could
provide an independent ultimate justification or validation of
distinguishability, b u t . . . such a substratum remains beyond
our reach as observers. All that we can say ontologically about
the substratum . . . is that it permits what it permits, and that
it permits all the operational coherences that we bring forth
in the happening of living as we exist in language. (Maturana,
1986)
References
DELL, P. F. (1985). Understanding Bateson and Maturana:
Toward a biological foundation for the social sciences.
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 11, 1-20.
HELD, B. S. & POLS, E. (1987). Dell on Maturana: A real
foundation for family therapy? Psychotherapy, 24, 455-461.
MATURANA, H. R. (1970). Neurophysiology of cognition. In
P. Garvin (Ed.), Cognition: A Multiple View (pp. 3-22).
New York: Spartan.
465
 Barbara S. Held & Edward Pols
MATURANA, H. R. (1974). Cognitive strategies. MR. Abram-
ovitz et al. (Eds.), Cybernetics of Cybernetics (pp. 457-
469). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
MATURANA, H. R. (1975). The organization of the living. A
theory of the living organization. International Journal of
Man-Machine Studies, 7, 313-332.
MATURANA, H. R. (1978). Biology of language: The epis-
temology of reality. In G. A. Miller and E. Lenneberg
(Eds.), Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought
(pp. 27-63). New York: Academic Press.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DELL AND MATURANA
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
BARBARA S. HELD
EDWARD POLS
Bowdoin College
Our response to Dell's 1985 article (Held &
Pols, 1987) was prompted by the first author's
concern, as a member of the family therapy field,
about the consequences for that field of the views
about knowledge and reality expressed by such
writers as Bateson, Dell, and Maturana, among
others. She perceived that although the article was
written by a knowledgeable family therapist who
was one of the first to demonstrate that he under-
stood the consequences of the misuse of the term
"epistemology" in the family therapy literature
for instance, by pointing out in that article the
contradiction in Bateson's viewsDell had in
the course of the article himself succumbed to
that same contradiction. The contradiction itself
can be expressed in terms that any family therapist
who is unused to the terminology employed by
Bateson, Dell, and Maturanaand by ourselves
in an earlier articlecan readily understand. The
contradiction consists in making, on the one hand,
reality claims about (in this case) the nature of
human cognition/observationperfectly general
claims about how human cognition/observation
functions, no matter where or how it is exer-
cisedand, on the other hand, insisting that this
function is such that it can never in principle do
anything but create its own 'reality'. We have
labored this point sufficiently in our article itself,
and here it need only be said that Dell's reply
simply reiterates the contradiction despite his
Reprints may be ordered from Barbara S. Held, Department
of Psychology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME 04011.
466
View publication stats
MATURANA, H. R. (1970/1980). Biology of cognition. In
H. R. Maturana and F. J. Varela (Eds.), Autopoiesis and
Cognition: The Realization of the Living (pp. 5-58). Boston:
D. Reidel.
MATURANA, H. R. (1986). The biological foundations of self-
consciousness and the physical domains of existence (un-
published manuscript).
MATURANA, H. R. & GUILOFF, G.D. (1980). The quest for
the intelligence of intelligence. Journal of Social and Bi-
ological Structures, 3, 135-148.
avoidance of the term "ontology" in the sense that
made the contradiction leap out at the reader in
his 1985 article.
Dell in his reply concedes that Maturana's pub-
lished work as interpreted in Dell (1985) is open
to this charge of being self-contradictory. The
fault, he generously maintains, is his own, and
not Maturana's. Properly understood, Dell says,
Maturana makes no reality claims, and therefore
he advances no ontology in the sense of a reality
claim, that is, advances no metaphysics/ontology.
In support of this argument Dell (1987) offers, in
his first three paragraphs, some few remarks of
his own and Maturana's in which reality is explicitly
characterized as subject dependent, and in which
he fails to notice that that part of Maturana's own
doctrine which seizes upon our "biological and
linguistic functioning" (p. 4) to account for this
alleged subject dependency is implicitly exempted
from this subject dependency. In short, Dell, pro-
testing that he and Maturana are not explicitly
interested in propounding a reality claim (i.e., a
metaphysics), has failed to notice that lack of an
explicit interest is not sufficient to prevent one
from making a reality claim. Our point is by no
means only a terminological one of the kind that
might interest only professional philosophers: the
contradiction would have been present in Dell's
1985 article even if he had not used the term
"ontology" in the course of it, for one need not
incorporate the term "ontology" itself to make a
reality claim. And we do indeed find the contra-
diction present in his reply despite the fact that
he now avoidsand even repudiatesone of the