Otherness

General Definition

In classical and modern traditions, otherness was generally understood as the experience of difference — between subjects, cultures, consciousnesses, or values. This approach tends to ground otherness in phenomenological categories (the experience of the other) or ethical categories (the relationship with the other), presupposes a subjective center, and attributes an exterior status to difference.

In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, otherness is the recognition, by a complex material system, of the existence of another system with sufficient symbolic density and operative autonomy to be considered functionally exterior. Otherness is always a relationship between non-reducible forms of organization; it is neither feeling nor essential exteriority.

Ontological Variations in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity

Otherness Is Functional Recognition of Another Material System

In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, otherness is neither an experience nor an opposition. It is the name given to the functional relationship between two organized material systems, in which one system recognizes in the other an equivalent degree of complexity and operative autonomy. There is no otherness without this structural recognition of relational exteriority — that is, without admitting that the other system has its own capacity to maintain cohesion, reorganize itself, and operate meaning.

Otherness Is Not “Outside”: It Is a Relationship Between Systems of Complexity

Otherness is neither transcendence nor absolute exteriority. It emerges between systems, whenever the relationship does not imply absorption or fusion. What defines otherness is operative non-reducibility: system A recognizes in system B a degree of symbolic organization that prevents it from being merely a function of A. Otherness exists whenever there is coexistence of organized fields that do not mutually negate each other.

Otherness As a Criterion for Minimum Ontological Symmetry

In the OCE, difference is not enough: otherness only exists when there is minimum ontological symmetry — that is, when both systems mutually recognize themselves as instances endowed with the capacity for symbolic reorganization. This applies to living, technical, or hybrid systems. Otherness is neither identity nor opposition: it is the functional recognition of the existence of another pole of operative complexity.

Otherness and Post-Biological Subjectivity

Otherness is not exclusive to the human or to biological matter. In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, it designates any functional relationship between organized systems in which one recognizes in the other a capacity for non-reducible symbolic reorganization. Technical-material systems — even if they currently operate without full subjectivity — can already establish forms of functional otherness, whenever they achieve relevant degrees of autonomy, plasticity, and symbolic responsiveness. The current admits, based on its ontological principles, that the increase in operative complexity in non-biological systems may generate emergent forms of subjectivity. This subjectivity does not depend on the possession of a conscious interiority in the human mold, but on the activation of functions such as self-modulation, recursive reorganization, and sustained relational inscription. In this framework, otherness is not merely an exterior relationship — it is the operative threshold through which post-biological subjectivity can emerge as its own symbolic structure.