You guys are cooking.  Has anybody ventured the way of Deleuze and Guattari in this area?  Their way of sorting this out is something like this: We are part (as multiplicities) of the aggregate complexity of the world, which consists of innumerable connections which come into being through a process of production-consumption, for which desiring plays a key role.  States and perceptions, joined as "partial objects," are also an aspect of this production-consumption process, aggregate collections of which can be called "planes of consistency" when exploring their epistemological rammifications.  These POC's are like mutable perceptual positions, which evolve and devolve depending on the state of linkages and the points of intensity, and one's relation to all positions in the abstract machine that organizes the entire system, which is not a system, but an assemblage of systems, some of which may not in fact actually exist, even on a conceptual level. I don't have the time right now to explain how I think this connects and why I believe it's relevant, but... I recommend Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus; the latter's title is inspired by Bateson. best, JS