Terminology Ego/Alter

First of all, the improbability problem must be brought into the social form of "Double Contingency", which we designate with the positional terms ego and alter. Why? The normal answer is that Ego and Alter exist anyway, that they are different people who communicate with each other from time to time.

Those who only mean this should avoid the terminology Ego/Alter, which wants to express that every person is always both if (and only if) they participate in communication. But why, more precisely, the Doubling?

Our answer is that the self-reference of social systems requires an immanent Duality in order for a Circle to emerge, the interruption of which then gives rise to structures.

Ranulph Glanville postulates this principle, inspired by the Thermostat, which can only control because it can be controlled, for objects per se. We can leave that undecided here. For social systems it is evident that they need a self-constituted duality in order to be structurally determined systems; and that this cannot be a substantially given Duality (Zweiheit) imported from outside (qua human being). For the problem at hand of the improbable assumption of selections, this means that every selection has to take into account that it has to reckon with other (conforming or adverse) selections. Otherwise a specifically social solution to the problem cannot be found.

Furthermore, it must be made clear where the responsibility for the selection lies, the conditioning of which should then motivate. This means that selection must be attributed. Attributions never concern the internal events (the Autopoiesis) of the systems involved, but always only their behavior as seen by an observer and related to the environment.