Process, Reality, and Context
What an honor it is to hear from the second generation of process theologians and philosophers now in their late 80s and 90s still able to share their journey with us of the third and fourth generations. The Cobb Institute, as well as many other process organizations and websites like Relevancy22, have been dissecting and weaving together their dialogues, discussions, books, journals, and podcasts over the years so that they are not lost to history, and quite open for exploration and discovery by future generations of process Whiteheadians.
Do take advantage of these living souls in their late years. It is with great honor that these several process theologians continue to share their personal journeys into the realms of the biological, quantum and psychological/sociological sciences.
Lastly, thank you to all those in the process community who have been willing to make time and effort to share their separate process insights from their respective disciplines! Each thought, each soul, helps create depth to a very complex philosophy of cosmology.
As introduction to these series, earlier this past summer the Cobb Institute began an 8-part series discussing and distinguishing substantive philosophies and sciences from those of the process variety. Hosted by Matt Segall, John Cobb, and Tim Eastman each explore Eastman's book written in December 2020 on untying the Gordian Knot of physics. Enjoy.
R.E. Slater
October 31, 2021
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| Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context |
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| Amazon Link |
Untying the Gordian Knot
Process, Reality, and Context
by Timothy Eastman
In Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context, Timothy E. Eastman proposes a new creative synthesis, the Logoi framework - which is radically inclusive and incorporates both actuality and potentiality - (1) to show how the fundamental notions of process, logic, and relations, woven with triads of input-output-context and quantum logical distinctions, can resolve a baker’s dozen of age-old philosophic problems.
Further, (2) Eastman leverages a century of advances in quantum physics and the Relational Realism interpretation pioneered by Michael Epperson and Elias Zafiris and augmented by the independent research of Ruth Kastner and Hans Primas to resolve long-standing issues in understanding quantum physics.
Adding to this, (3) Eastman makes use of advances in information and complex systems, semiotics, and process philosophy to show how multiple levels of context, combined with relations—including potential relations—both local and local-global, can provide a grounding for causation, emergence, and physical law.
Finally, (4) the Logoi framework goes beyond standard ways of knowing—that of context independence (science) and context focus (arts, humanities)—to demonstrate the inevitable role of ultimate context (meaning, spiritual dimension) as part of a transformative ecological vision, which is urgently needed in these times of human and environmental crises.
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The Gordian Knot is an intractable problem (untying an impossibly tangled knot) solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot ("cutting the Gordian knot"). - Wikipedia
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot - Session 2
July 23, 2021
THE COBB INSTITUTE
In this session Tim Eastman provides an summary of the second chapter, and Randall Auxier, Michael Epperson, and Elias Zafiris offer a response.00:00:07 - 00:02:53 - Welcome from Matt Segall00:02:54 - 00:17:20 - Presentation by Tim Eastman00:18:18 - 00:33:07 - Response by Randall Auxier00:33:38 - 00:46:51 - Response by Michael Epperson00:47:27 - 01:01:11 - Response by Elias Zafiris01:01:13 - 01:38:11 - Conversation between Tim and respondents01:38:12 - Open Conversation MeetingChat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K-mT...
Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
This series of conversations is provided by the Cobb Institute. Please consider supporting this program and others like it by giving. https://cobb.institute/donate/
CHAT TEXT
00:25:08 Weston McMillan: Good morning all - I’ll be audio only for about 30 min - great to be here ! Happy Saturday!
00:33:10 Gary Herstein: I hadn't heard about George -- that's very sad news indeed.
00:47:29 Gary Herstein: And they still gave us 30,000 more words than they were normally prepared to accept.
00:48:19 Anderson Weekes: pls send us the paper!
00:48:50 Kevin Clark: YES, plz send the paper asap!
00:48:55 Gary Nelson: Yes, please send the paper
00:48:56 Matt Segall: I’ll be sure we distribute Prof. Auxier’s paper to the group.
00:53:00 Benjamin Snyder: Aren't actual entities in their objective immortality also potential? Potential = potential datum for prehension, so not just eternal objects, though they are the "pure" potentials (but still defined as an existence in terms of potential relevance for functioning in a concrescence).
00:54:36 Randall Auxier: https://linuslearning.com/product/logic-from-images-to-digits/
00:56:44 Benjamin Snyder: Whitehead's theory of propositions as given in P&R entails that reference to actuality (indicative feeling of the logical subject) is still involved in any logic/algebra, right? Eternal objects as pure potentials on their own have no truth-value.
01:00:28 Randall Auxier: Thanks Benjamin. From the standpoint of a proposition there must be reference to something actual. Possibilities and their order do not depend upon any propositional lure.
01:02:11 Guadalupe: Anselm ontological argument for God existence
01:08:42 Mikhail Epstein: Thank you for the most interesting discussion. Unfortunately, I have to leave (a speaking engagement).
01:09:46 Anderson Weekes: Der Einzig Moegliche Beweissgrund des Daseins Gottes/Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God
01:10:49 Matt Segall: Thanks, Anderson.
01:24:15 Richard Livingston / Cobb Institute: From Thandeka: Schleiermacher is called the Kant of religion because he delineated pure potentiality as feeling, gefuehl. Tim affirms this state as feeling but misnamed it ultimacy. Schleiermacher defined pure potentiality as the experience of the infinite universe in a finite moment of one’s life.
01:25:52 Benjamin Snyder: My current understanding of some terms being discussed in relation to Whitehead: pure potential = an eternal object as datum for feeling; real potential = an actuality as datum for feeling (thus with its contingent, particular conditions); probability = real potentiality with a social order that therefore gives some regularity to the behavior of actual entities in the society (thus, what allows for inductive judgments).
01:26:20 Randall Auxier: I agree with Jon Meyer.
01:26:27 Anderson Weekes: question for Tim: I've gotten myself into a knot!
1. Possible worlds are rejected (e.g., p. 51) bc they are only theoretical constructs—by definition there can be no actual evidence for actual beings in another possible world than our own (to which we have zero epistemic access).
2. Hidden variables are rejected (e.g., p. 33) bc they are only theoretical constructs—there can be no actual evidence for variable that are by definition hidden.The obvious question is why the actualists can’t turn the tables and say “potentiae” are only theoretical constructs—that there can’t be actual evidence for something that is, by definition, not actual.However, if I understand correctly, the main claim of this chapter is that this response is not possible—that quantum phenomena offer actual evidence for potentiae. This come-back won’t be effective if the actualists can plausibly say the same evidence is equally well explained by their hidden variables or other possible worlds.
01:26:36 Anderson Weekes: That would mean potentiae, hidden variables, other worlds are all equally theoretical. For the argument of this chapter to work, these options can’t be equally theoretical. So the argument for potentiae in this chapter seems to rest on a claim that the actual evidence of quantum phenomena breaks in favor of potentiae.Here’s my problem: doesn’t the claim that everything actual will be Boolean and “look” classical conflict with the claim that something actual gives us evidence that breaks in favor of the potentiae theory?Is there a paradox here? If not, perhaps I could get a “for dummies” explanation of the telltale evidence—how it’s actual, but points to potentiae, and not to hidden variables or other worlds?
01:27:15 jonmeyer: The shift to category theory doesn’t address the heart of problem, it merely kicks the can down the road. The heart of the difficulty is that what when dealing with addressing non-deterministic or triadic notions of potentiality, these are not reducible to formal systems. Even category theory requires ultimately on making a decisive split between two kinds of entity: either something is a morphism or it is an object. It is precisely this kind of decisive splitting that Whitehead resists in PR.
01:28:26 Michael Heather: Potentiality in category theory is just the free functor valued category.
Types of potentially are in the pullback of existence along any arbitrary universe .
01:30:48 Farzad Mahootian: @Elias— So: instead of elements that are members of sets, we have clusters to topologies/neighborhoods via shared constraints and conditionality. The shared space of aims at minimization of Boolean phrases and maximization of (and here’s my question) what? And: geometric faces that allow for congruence and interference.
01:32:03 jonmeyer: “Im not a mathematician I’m a logician” - I like this.
01:32:42 Guadalupe: logos spermaticos are actual and potencial from diferent points of view. they are potential because of the form that they will be. But they are actual with respect to the prime matter
01:34:58 Gary Herstein: The identification of (or reduction to) logic to a kind of formal mathematics is a fairly recent development in philosophy, that can be traced pretty much to the publication of the Principia (R&W, not Newton's). Old school folks with a background in American philosophy will tend not to make that reduction/identification.
01:44:56 Randall Auxier: possibility is not pure potentiality, nor is it “nothing” in my view
01:48:15 Benjamin Snyder: Didn't you say Whitehead's theory of eternal objects was concerned with possibility, Randall? Those are pure potentials in Whitehead's terms. Maybe there's a distinction I'm missing there.
01:48:48 Randall Auxier: Pure potentials in one perspective on possibilities, it is actuals.
01:49:13 Randall Auxier: Possibilities are uncreated, however, and hence independent of all actuality, including divine actuality.
01:49:22 Randall Auxier: Whitehead is clear on this point.
01:50:36 Clinton Combs: Missing from today’s discussion is an emphasis on the subject / object distinction. Eternal Objects are objects for some subject. It is a mistake to talk about the independent existence of an object because it has to be an object of some subject. (This is being overlooked.) The subject is primary. It is in the subject that objectification happens.
01:51:16 Randall Auxier: Whitehead makes it clear that possibilities have subjective order. I cite this in my paper Matt will send out.
01:56:03 Benjamin Snyder: I'm not sure what subjective order means there. In what sense do eternal objects have anything subjective apart from actual entities or where does Whitehead talk about that?
01:59:45 t-mahootian: Tim, can you relate your discussion in Chapter 2 about symmetry and asymmetry to C.G. Jung & Pauli’s discussion about this notion? Thanks!
01:59:52 Benjamin Snyder: Isn't Whitehead's metaphysical scheme by definition the necessary structure that is a must outside our own cosmic epoch?
02:00:49 Gary Herstein: I need to step out for 5 -- 10 min (take care of Toni's dogs).
02:01:07 Matt Segall: My question, framed in Whitehead’s terms, would be whether unexemplified possibilities are felt in the primordial nature? If so, they are not entirely outside the domain of the actual. If not, who is feeling them?
02:03:09 Randall Auxier: My answer would be that some of them are.
02:03:27 Matt Segall: I agree there is a metaphysical order of pre-spatial/temporal extension (determinate or indeterminate) that is beyond any particular cosmic epoch, but Whitehead himself seemed reluctant to claim he had arrived at this order.
02:05:53 Jeroen (Jerome) van Dijk: When trying to model the process of nature, we typically seem to smuggle in a pre-formulated "alphabet of expression" (or what Elias Zafiris called elements). In so doing we are tacitly dissecting the process of nature into "a priori-like constituent elements". It seems to me that the multiplicity of frames in category theory still suffers from this problem, unfortunately. I think that a bootstrap methodology (especially the one in Reg Cahill's process physics) is to be preferred, because it seems to be capable of giving rise to a fully unified "actuality-potentiality-prehension network" -- all as one integrated process ... Thereby lifting into actuality the fore- and background patterns of nature as one relational network of connectivity … (hope this makes sense within the present discussion).
02:08:02 Gary Nelson: What is the relationship between “other cosmic epochs” and other universes in multiverse concepts
02:09:41 Anderson Weekes: Could Michael explain a simple example of an asymmetrical relation that is internal for both relata?
02:11:09 Randall Auxier: @Gary Nelson the Everett hypothesis is an actuals hypothesis, governed by mathematical and logical necessity. This has no constructive relation to ANW’s theory of cosmic epochs. Gary and I cover this in chs. 7-9 of The Quantum of Explanation.
02:13:01 Randall Auxier: @Jerome —this is the smuggled presupposition I try to avoid in my rendering of extensive connection in the Logic book, chi. 19-23.
02:13:38 Randall Auxier: I am with Michael on ontologizing concepts.
02:18:16 Benjamin Snyder: Whitehead says his metaphysical scheme applies to all cosmic epochs: "There can be no cosmic epoch for which the singular propositions derived from a metaphysical proposition differ in truth-value from those of
any other cosmic epoch" (PR 197).
02:19:08 Randall Auxier: @Benjamin That is essentially part of what I was saying
02:19:38 Randall Auxier: But only part. It means that anything that holds in one cosmic epoch holds for all of them
02:20:15 Matt Segall: We will make sure the chat is saved and distributed following this session.
02:20:33 Randall Auxier: The one this he thinks will hold is that there would be a quantum, a principle of least change that distinguishes what is actual for that cosmic epoch from what isn't
02:21:06 Randall Auxier: But change in other cosmic epochs may not presuppose time as it does in our cosmic epoch
02:21:28 Randall Auxier: @Jerome yes
02:21:58 Jeroen (Jerome) van Dijk: Thanks, Randall!
02:23:43 Randall Auxier: I agree with Elias, but we disagree when he uses “independence” to mean total independence from all actuality.
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