3. The Morphogenetic Paradigm: Conceptualising the Human in the Social

As inner conversations are relational properties, three residual problems figure in the relation between mind and world. These three problems pertain to the temporal phases of active deliberations (internal dialogues) in which the self adapts its personal identity:

1. The generic problem of ‘how can the self be both subject and object at the same time?’ (Archer 2003: 94).
2. The analytical problem of who is speaking to whom when considering the temporal question of personal emergence, that is, the inner dialogue and the personal morphogenesis between past, present, and future selves.
3. The explanatory problem pertains to how the societal gets into the internal conversation. It explores the necessity of PEP and how the societal, as an order, is then mediated by these powers.

First, I will explore the foundational question of irreducible interiority as a prerequisite for transformative subjective powers. Afterwards, I will examine the implications of the fundamental question of how the three residual problems noted above are conceptualised. I will argue that the idea of reflexivity does not prepare us for our social becoming. Instead, the trajectory of personal morphogenesis in developmental terms — the unique way the indexical ‘I’ is individually sensed as a socially indexed device (Archer 2003: 91) — is what gives internal deliberations their irreducible transformative powers.

The Powers of Internal Deliberation: The Middle Ground between Meanings and Molecules

The practical order’s pivotal role does not disappear with the emergence of the propositional. Instead, the practical order continuously sustains society’s conversational meanings via human properties and powers. The sense of self, emergent from embodied practical engagement, is a necessary precursor that sustains an emergent self-concept capable of transforming society’s conversational meanings. Continuity of the sense of self is substantiated by the presence of procedural and eidetic memory that remains beyond the development of self-concept and whose recall is non-discursive. The non-linguistic recall relates directly to a sense of self engaged in its environment — it is through this engagement that there is a self/otherness distinction and a referential detachment inseparable from an understanding of space, time, and causality that are derived from sense data. The continuity of consciousness in both eidetic and procedural memory recalls the sedimentation of accomplished practical acts that form the basis of the ‘habitual body’ and self-identity. The habitual body conveys a past-tense practical accomplishment that enables human beings to contemplate the future. Declarative memory and self-knowledge are developmentally dependent and emergent from this prior constitution. Importantly, any declarative memory-activity never replaces the central role of the non-linguistic component:

memory, far from being some intellectualised representation, is the bodily sedimentation of accomplished acts: it is the ‘habitual body’ which gives our past tense and enables us to contemplate a future, even though our embodied expectations have continuously to be reconciled with the dynamic nature of our existence in the world (Archer 2000: 132).

As the capability of hermeneutics is built on the capacities and powers of the human being, propositional knowledge does not exclusively constitute the direction of the semantic capability. The interplay between subject and object takes into account the properties and powers of objects approached as embodied, practical, and discursive knowledge. All three forms of knowledge shape the situations and circumstances that the subject then deliberates upon as part of their personal projects:

All knowledge entails an interplay between properties and powers of the subject and properties and powers of the object — be this what we can learn to do in nature (embodied knowledge), the skills we can acquire in practice (practical knowledge), or the propositional elaborations we can make in the Cultural System (discursive knowledge). Any form of knowledge thus results from a confluence between our human powers (PEPs) and the powers of reality — natural, practical and social. Thus what have been discussed sequentially are the physical powers of the natural order, the material affordances and constraints of material culture, and, lastly, the logical constraining powers of the Cultural System. However, for the three orders equally, the way in which they affect the subject is by shaping the situations in which he or she find themselves, and their supplying constraints or enablements in relation to the subjects’ projects (Archer 2000: 177).

The second residual problem of the internal conversation (the analytical problem) explores the efficacy of the subjective/objective interplay, considering the dialogue between past, present, and future selves. If the generic problem is concerned with the nature of relations between the subjective and objective from the perspective of world-directed internal deliberations — the basis of what Archer states as the self-conscious manipulation of the relation between self and otherness (Archer 2003: 130) — then the second residual problem deals with the enactment of Personal Emergent Properties (PEP) from the perspective of personal morphogenetic outcomes. The efficacy of the enactment of PEP is expressed in the materialisation of subjective alignment between social and personal identities. The analytical problem, associated with the emergence of the personal identity (subjective alignment), investigates how collective contexts interact with PEP to generate system outcomes, that is, the structure and distribution of positions that the Actor takes up.

As subjective alignment is the product of internal deliberations, the question is raised of how this alignment can be traced logically and temporally. The answer lies in PEP, which logically pre-supposes the Agent and the social position of the Actor. Human capacities (PEP) enable the individual’s personification of roles based on reflexive adaptation to the properties and powers of collectives they face. These roles are classed as Primary Agency and Corporate Agency (Archer: 2000). Due to the logical primacy of PEP, the efficacy of internal deliberations is temporally charted to changes in both personal identity and society’s normativity. It starts from the irreducible ‘I’ that encounters and deliberates on the properties of its natal context (Primary Agency (Me)). The natal context (Me) of the ‘I’ generates pre-dispositions and influences concerns relating to resources, life chances, etc. Nevertheless, the logical primacy of PEP means it is subjective deliberations that lead either to the reproduction or an attempt to transform the natal context (see quadrants one and two in Figure 3). As a result, the dedication to transform the natal context (Me) leads to the ‘I’ adopting the transformative role of Corporate Agency (We) that seeks to change both personal identity (You) and society’s normativity (see quadrants three and four in Figure 3).

Fig. 3 Realism’s account of the development of the stratified human being (Archer 2000: 260).

At the point of dedication, the personal identity (You) is subjectively aligned to its social identity (see Figure 4). The logical primacy of the ‘I’ — deliberating on unique concerns generated from its interaction with each relational order — renders social identity a subset of personal identity. Hence without self-identification with the role of Actor, through the properties and powers of Agency, it is not possible for society’s normativity to either reproduce or transform itself. Therefore, the systemic outcomes produced are anchored in the reflexive capacities of persons — their internal conversations — as they become Agents. The explanation of system outcomes follows from the interrelated interaction between personal reflexivity and Agency.

Fig. 4 The emergence of personal and social identity (Archer 2000: 296).

Consequently, the third residual problem — the explanatory problem — looks at the outcomes of interactive dynamics (the second residual problem) in the emergence of social positions and their underlying structures. It aims to explain outcomes vis-à-vis the process of personal morphogenesis and its impact on Agency and Actor. To reiterate, when the ‘I’ is dissatisfied with its initial position — the ‘Me’ — it leads to a commitment to transform the original natal context and, subsequently, society’s normativity. Hence, the co-emergence of the human, Agent, and Actor is examined as part of relational morphogenetic processes that mutually affect each other.

The morphogenesis of Agency is pre-supposed by personal morphogenesis in the personal identity ascribing to itself a social position. In turn, this dedication entails reproductive or transformative social actions that initiate structural or cultural morphostasis/morphogenesis, that is, the reproduction or transformation of the socio-cultural context. In the case of social morphogenesis, Corporate Agents organise to alter the parameters in which collective groups are formed and re-formed. In action, whether to reproduce or transform the social system, the outcome affects the original collective categories. The process in which personal morphogenesis anchors the activities of Agency that, consequently, transforms or sustains the collective categories of Corporate and Primary Agents themselves is termed ‘double morphogenesis’:

This is ‘double morphogenesis’ during which Agency, in its attempt to sustain or transform the social system, is inexorably drawn into sustaining or transforming the categories of Corporate and Primary Agents themselves (Archer 2000: 267).

In an explanatory sense, system outcomes are organically tied to ‘double morphogenesis’ in the interchange between the choices of persons and the actions of Agency. The outcomes produced from this interchange implicate changes in the array of social roles available and the relationship between these roles. Hence, the Actor’s role is anchored in the person vis-à-vis their actions as Agents. The initial role of the Primary Agency is the object of deliberation, which subjects first deliberate upon as part of their constellation of concerns (the first residual problem). The performative enactment of roles is made from this reflexive deliberation and, through Agency, either sustains or transforms society’s normativity:

In living out the initial roles(s), which they have found good reason to occupy, they bring to it or them their singular manner of personifying it or them and this, in turn, has consequences over time. What it does creatively, is to introduce a continuous stream of unscripted role performances, which also over time can cumulatively transform the role expectations. These creative acts are thus transformative of society’s very normativity, which is often most clearly spelt out in the norms attaching to specific roles (Archer 2000: 296).

Therefore, as the process of ‘double morphogenesis’ changes collectives, it also transforms the structure and culture of a society that underpins the roles of social actors. The emergence of social actors is built on the interaction between Primary and Corporate Agents and their outcomes. Consequently, on top of ‘double morphogenesis’, a ‘triple morphogenesis’ can occur in which the social identities of Actors are articulated in relation to the actions of agential collectivities. To restate, the actions of these collectivities are anchored in persons and their reflexive capacities:

In this process, the social identities of individual social actors are forged from agential collectivities in relation to the array of organisational roles which are available in society at that specific time. Both Agents and Actors, however, remain anchored in persons, for neither of the former are constructs or heuristic devices; they concern real people even though they only deal with certain ways of being in society and therefore not with all ways of being human in the world (Archer 1995: 255–256).

As ‘triple morphogenesis’ transforms society’s extant role array (Archer 2000: 295), then the outcomes produced are reflected in systemic parameters that impact the articulation of both Primary and Corporate Agents. Such an increase in the range of roles available means an expanded horizon in which new social movements and interest groups arise (Archer 2000). Hence, the transformation of the socio-structural environment impacts future processes of ‘double morphogenesis’. The morphogenetic explanatory problem views the distinction between Social Agent and Social Actor as analytical and temporal. According to Archer, they are not ‘different people’ but analytically interrelated emergent stratum in which morphogenetic cycles — double and triple morphogenesis — mutually impact each other (Archer 2000). This mutual impact is manifested in the interplay between Agency and socio-cultural context — the outcome produced in this morphogenetic process is observed in the emergent properties and characteristics of active roles that condition future Actors.

Rethinking the Morphogenetic Equation by Extending Reflexivity

Internal deliberations are posited as the anchor of Social Agency. The subsequent emergence of the Social Actor depends on the reflexive reasons of selves that personify roles based on their response to the involuntary ‘Me’. To posit the anchor of morphogenetic processes in persons is based on the need to defend the transcendent and necessary condition of social life in the continuity of consciousness (Archer 2000). This continuity is the foundation of the emergent personal identity and the properties of humanity that recognise and commit themselves to the social. The anchorage of social life in humanity gives the human-in-the-social irreducible powers to internalise and change society’s normativity. As a result, the causal efficacy to change society’s normativity is the implication of putting individual reflexivity as the aprioristic foundation of social concepts.

This section aims to rethink this morphogenetic equation while maintaining and building on its realist starting point, emphasising a stratified conception of the person. Notably, the re-think positions the transcendental reality of the human-in-the-social as both autonomous and dependent on a stratified social reality. At the same time, primacy is not pre-ascribed to the human-in-the-social; instead, it results from the interactive dynamics of the social relation that anchors personal and socio-cultural morphogenesis. As will be discussed in the coming chapters, the rethinking discussed in this section has implications when extending reflexivity to different levels of sociability. Two key points will be proposed as the basis of a rethink of the previously discussed morphogenetic paradigm:

1. Archer neglects the psycho-developmental perspective on reflexivity. While self-regulated practical activity is the foundation and sustains reflexivity, I will argue that reflexive capacity is an emergent stratum of meanings comprised of different developmental selves.
2. Personal reflexivity is not the anchor but an element of social relations. Following the developmental perspective, reflexivity extends to other aspects of social relations and does not need to be ascribed to an individual identity. As collectivities (Agents) can be reflexive in their own right, the Actor can similarly be both individual and collective.

Regarding the first point, continuity of consciousness initiated in practical activity in the material world generates an irreducible trajectory of experiences. The reflexive space between molecules and meanings, according to Archer, generates the earliest concerns navigated by an emergent personal identity. This space makes the enactment of reflexivity irreducible to both the biological bundle of molecules and discursive meanings. The pivotal role of practical world-directed experiences renders speech acts as self-experiences. As reflexivity is made a logical necessity to enact the self-experiences of the individual identity, its developmental dimension is inadvertently neglected.

Indeed, the subjective capacity to reflect on the flow of experiences (the first residual problem) includes practical knowledge of the world. However, this world-directed reflection is an emergent stratum of the initial perspectival ownership of experience — the first personal presence of experience (Zahavi 2013). The perspectival ownership makes the mind/body ‘I’ perceive itself within the ubiquitous first-personal givenness in the multitude of changing experiences. Thus, the minimal self is between a biological bundle of molecules and discursive meanings. Further, it is the sense of self that unites world-awareness and self-experience. According to Zahavi (2009), the minimal self exists in the subjectivity of experience that is, at the same time, world-directed:

The minimal self was tentatively defined as the ubiquitous dimension of first-personal givenness in the multitude of changing experiences. On this reading, there is no pure experience-independent self. The minimal self is the very subjectivity of experience and not something that exists independently of the experiential flow. Moreover, the experiences in question are world-directed experiences. They present the world in a certain way, but at the same time they also involve self-presence and hence a subjective point of view. In short, they are of something other than the subject and they are like something for the subject. Thus, the phenomenology of conscious experience is one that emphasises the unity of world-awareness and self-experience (Zahavi 2009: 556).

It is between world-awareness and the minimal self that the subjective/objective interplay unfolds. The capacity to deliberate on changing experiences requires a semantic awareness that is contingent on the lived circumstances of the collective (Primary and Corporate Agency). At the same time, the experiential flow always returns to the bio-physical consciousness (Donati 2011) that provides self-presence with its non-arbitrary direction in personal deliberations.

The interplay between the non-arbitrary and contingent gives personal identity crucial human properties and powers. Moreover, the interplay emphasises the developmental dimension of personal identity through the subjective integration and appropriation of lived experience. The process of subjective integration considers past experience as the sense of self directs itself towards objects. Due to being emergent from differentiated minds/bodies, the genesis of practices is understood through developmental stages that impact how past experiences are filtered when confronting collectivities. It is the genesis of self-present practice, grounded in the process of subjective integration, that disinters human properties and powers from the logic of practices that inhere in collectivities.

The developmental genesis of reflexivity — with its necessary capacities to deliberate on concerns — comprises a continuum of developmental selves. There are five different stages in the development of the conceptual self that make reflexivity possible (Neisser 1988). First, the ecological self, appearing in the earliest infancy, is a primitive awareness that the self is practically embedded in its environment and consists of self-regulated bodily interaction with external objects. The awareness of the self in the world (biophysical consciousness) leads to the interpersonal self, which extends the ecological self to respond and coordinate its actions with others. Consequently, the self mutually co-perceives objects in its environment. The ecological self and interpersonal self should be viewed as inextricable, since ‘awareness of the interpersonal is almost invariably accompanied by a simultaneous awareness of the ecological self.’ (Neisser 1988: 395)

Later, the private self is the stage in which the infant understands its experiences as demarcated from the world, that is, one acquires a sense of exclusivity of his or her experiences. Subjective interiority is introspective and enables the self-concept (the semantic self) by rendering its dedication independent of external circumstances. The private self represents a shift from extrospection to introspection and becomes the basis of the reflexive capacity to deliberate on the world from the first-person perspective. This deliberation facilitates personal planning to achieve personal goals.

The capacity to mentally approximate (reflexivity) represents a shift to the conceptual self (Rochat 2010). In the conceptual self, subjective interiority self-consciously integrates its experiences — emergent from practical activity in a biophysical environment — referencing world-directed experiences. The self-conscious attempt to integrate experiences represents a shift to the explicit self that is based on the third-person perspective (public mediation of experience). In this stage, emergent from the implicit self, the explicit self is made possible through others. Social roles are socio-cultural emergent properties that make possible reciprocal exchanges between the implicit and explicit self.

Personal deliberations that figure in the subject/object interplay (the second residual problem) are possible after developing the conceptual self. In the integration process between the first-person and third-person perspectives, there is the emergence of personal identity. The developmental stages that lead to the conceptual stage, according to Neisser (1988), mean other forms of self-knowledge — the ecological, interpersonal, and private selves — all are represented in the conceptual self:

The four kinds of self-knowledge are represented in the conceptual self, confirming a stratified conception of personal identity. In each of these selves, distinct variations between individuals impact the development and qualitative enactment of the reflexive capacity and its mental approximations (the conceptual self). Consequently, the unique trajectory of personal morphogenesis is identified in the developmental process — the interplay between the non-arbitrary and contingent — that implicates the logical necessity of an irreducible subjective interiority with its capacity to mentally approximate.

As the temporal interplay between the existential self (the ‘I’) and its collective context is built on and sustained by different kinds of self-knowledge, the explicit sense of self is not just a public matter. In the emergence of subjective alignment, the process in which mental approximations of world-directed experiences are integrated means there is always an element of loss as it is filtered through the collective context (‘Me’ and ‘We’). The continuity of consciousness means novel experiences require a reflexive imperative in which the non-arbitrary dimension of the self can integrate experiences based on past episodes of personal morphogenesis.

It is the process of ‘gain and loss’ of experience — the genesis of subjective alignment between the implicit and explicit self — that potentially transforms the personal identity and the role it subsequently adopts (Gallagher and Zahavi 2012). The ability to form self-concepts is developmentally tied to reflexivity, but it can only operate effectively with the existence of mechanisms described above that enable bodily awareness, practical engagement with others, autobiographical memory that draws on past experiences as it confronts the present and the ability to plan practical activities.