Generalized inner capacity substitutes for certainty about the environment

Evidence

The complexity of the world cannot be mapped within the system, for the system itself is not sufficiently complex to do so. The response must take the form of a generalizing problem-solving capacity which is able to operate in terms of time and actual circumstance, so that, within certain limits, the system can remain indifferent to differences in time and circumstance. It must therefore be a question of a capacity applicable to circumstantially heterogeneous and individually unforeseeable problems. It then makes such foresight dispensable. Because of this generalizing of circumstance, moreover, the capacity must be generalized in terms of time, in the sense that it appears already assured, although it will only be put into action when it is needed in the future, at some as yet undetermined time. The inner knowledge that such resources are available then serves as an equivalent for certainty based on information about the environment. It makes foresight within the bounds to which it extends unnecessary, since it affords certainty that, whenever and however they appear, problems can be solved. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 286

Categorization

• DEFINE: The key move: inner knowledge of available resources serves as an equivalent for environmental information-certainty — this is precisely what lets someone like Stevens defer moral judgment and skip environmental scrutiny.
• XREF: Connects directly to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — confidence in expert systems replaces facework-environment scrutiny. The inner generalized capacity is what makes faceless commitment livable.