Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, November 8, 2021

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 5


The Alexandrian Solution


Untying the Gordian Knot:
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



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 5
Jun 18, 2021



THE COBB INSTITUTE

In this session Tim Eastman provides an summary of the fifth chapter, after which George Strawn and Mikhail Epstein offer a response.

00:00:07 - 00:01:20 - Welcome from Matt Segall

00:01:22 - 00:17:40 - Presentation by Tim Eastman

00:18:03 - 00:32:15 - Response by Mikhail Epstein

00:32:42 - 00:51:15 - Response by George Strawn

00:51:20 - 01:00:00 - Conversation between Tim and respondents

01:00:02 - Open Conversation Meeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-KX...
Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
This series is provided by the Cobb Institute. Please consider supporting this program and others like it by giving. https://cobb.institute/donate/


CHAT TEXT

00:17:18 Weston McMillan: Good morning all - once again - im listen only from phone for first bit - good to see you / be here


00:19:49 Kevin Clark: I will have to leave in about 1 hr to go build 8'x8' raised garden beds 3' high...IN BETWEEN unusually rainy fall weather!

00:26:23 jonmeyer: Anyone have a reference for the second book that Tim mentioned?

00:26:45 Matt Segall: https://www.sunypress.edu/p-3682-process-and-analysis.aspx

00:26:55 jonmeyer: Thx


00:28:04 Matt Segall: ^ Tim’s Summary of Ch. 5

00:33:03 Douglas Tooley: Is perception of time, at the human level and lower, a 'semiotic' function?

00:47:40 Mikhail Epstein: Yury Lotman. Semiosphere.

00:49:12 Farzad Mahootian: Mikhail’s last point on God’s auto-communication  through cosmic and material sign is very neoplatonc!

00:50:03 Mikhail Epstein: Vassily Nalimov. In the Labyrinths of Language

00:51:54 Mikhail Epstein: Mikhail Epstein. A Philosophy of the Possible: Modalities in Thought and Culture.  Boston, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2019.

01:08:26 jonmeyer: The term information is frequently used as a concrete entity - yet the notion already presupposes concepts of imminence (“in”), forms, and processual activity(“ation”). What Whitehead (and also Bradley) does so beautifully is show how notions such as information are already high abstractions that can easily lead us into fallacies of misplaced concreteness.  I like that George points out that information is a technology and not a science…

01:16:25 Lynn De Jonghe: When George Strawn finishes his paper, we would like to have a reference to it!

01:16:47 Farzad Mahootian: 1. isn’t capitalism an inevitable outcome of evolution via complex system dynamics and manipulation of information flows? and given 2. capitalism’s inherent instability (of “growth” economies), the fact that it causes instabilities which it then benefits from its (growth), then, 3.  if 1 & 2 are true, is capitalism ever surmountable?

01:17:26 Gary Herstein: Theories will involve "recipes" because of the need for testability requires a robust method of constructing said test(s). However, I don't see it necessarily running the other way. One can literally prepare a food recipe w/o having a deep understanding of food preparation.

01:19:10 Gary Nelson: Can we ask Michael Heather to comment on the role of Heyting Logic, Category Theory and our discussion of non-Boolean logics

01:19:55 Gary Herstein: Alternatively, one can construct an effective computer program w/o having much (if any) underlying grasp of the theory of computability, or issues of complexity such as P<>NP? or PH.

01:20:02 Matt Segall: Right, Gary. So in the case of quantum physics, there are a baker’s dozen interpretations of what is being pulled out of the experimental oven!

01:21:00 michael Heather: The logic of potentiæ is just the free functor

01:25:22 Douglas Tooley: This may be too tangential, a question for George Strawn - Are you familiar with the work of Terrence Sejnowski and others combining 'technologist' AI and Neuroscience?

This is a quick summary of his most recent thinking:

By way of introduction I've heard Mr. Sejnowski, as I have Dr. Segall.  I've just listened to your first two Gordian Knot sessions this morning.

01:25:38 Douglas Tooley: Speak in Telluride

01:27:13 Gary Herstein: Google labs has made some extravagant claims, but they've carefully avoided sharing any peer-reviewed evidence to substantiate their claims

01:28:06 Gary Herstein: QC essentially renders the P<>NP? puzzle moot, which also makes all forms of encryption formally ineffective.

01:28:13 Kevin Clark: LOTS here I do not understand yet...gotta go build 3D triadic raised beds w/ drainage 'context'!

01:34:07 John Buchanan: Love the Sorcerer’s Apprentice metaphor.

01:35:31 Anderson Weekes: Could Mikhail say a little bit about "modality as basis of historical development"? Eg, what is a quick outline of the proposed periodization?

01:38:35 Spyridon Koutroufinis: Question on p. 178 of Ch. 5: anticipatory systems "counteract the second-law of thermodynamics and maintain order through the minimization of outstanding parameters" Could you please explain what the "outstanding parameters" are and how they can be minimized?

01:38:37 Gary Herstein: (Actually, I don't believe Darwin ever used the term "survival of the fittest.")

01:38:54 Gary Herstein: (That might have been Thomas Huxley.)

01:39:03 jonmeyer: “Context denialism” is a somewhat less geeky way of saying “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”

01:39:58 Douglas Tooley: A corporation is a hybrid of the public and private, the public's portion is exactly the land it utilizes???

01:40:06 Monica DeRaspe-Bolles: And isn't it "survival of the fit"?

01:40:13 Gary Herstein: Context denialism in economics (and business specifically) translates into refusal to take "externalities" into account.

01:41:39 Gary Herstein: By the bye, "market system" is independent of "Capitalism." We've seen command system forms of capitalism (Nazi Germany, S. Korea under the military junta) and market system forms of Socialism (Hungary before the fall of the wall, Sweden.)

01:43:01 Gary Nelson: Structured Analysis and Design Technique (SADT) conceives functional block with input==>output subject to context (mechanism) and constraints (controls)

01:44:15 Gary Herstein: An ecology as a community of interpretation a la Peirce?

01:45:32 Matt Segall: Farzad, are you familiar with “social threefolding” developed by Rudolf Steiner? He’s a, erm, complicated figure, but his ideas about disentangling the political, economic, and cultural spheres is quite original and bypasses all the usual ideological positions while still incorporating insights from capitalism, socialism, and anarchism.

01:47:13 Gary Nelson: The IMF has recently done a report about subsidies to Fossil Fuel industries—about $6T in2021 as I recall. Nancy Reagan wisdom— just say no!

01:48:31 Farzad Mahootian: John Cobb’s symbiosis of American and Chinese Capitalism could be GREAT!

01:54:43 Gary Herstein: The "Beaver Colony" theory of time? (One dam thing after another.)

01:55:42 Farzad Mahootian: @Matt - I hadn’t and “bypasses all the usual ideological positions while still incorporating insights from capitalism, socialism, and anarchism.” sounds very promising.  Thanks!

01:59:44 matt switzer: Contextualized by extensive mining no doubt!

02:03:13 Gary Herstein: Van Fraassen has argued that laws in physical science all come back to symmetry of some form. (Mathematically, this means that they are represented by Group Theoretic techniques.)

02:11:20 Matt Segall: which invites a conflation between “fit” as in fitting into a niche and “fit” as in “strong” etc

02:12:28 Matt Segall: oops, that above comment was meant for Gary H. not the whole group : )

02:13:30 jonmeyer: Bruno Latours Down to Earth is a super essay on the ecological crisis we face from an outlook that resonates from a process philosophy standpoint.

02:15:26 Gary Nelson: As I recall, Robert Rosen posits that Anticipation is present in all living entities.

02:15:50 jonmeyer: On Michael Heathers point. Whitehead (in Harvard Lectures as captured by Bell) writes `This comes down to problem of Inductive Logic… How can one fact be relevant to another fact which is not contained in t? Science collapses if you assume an independent atomic of facts. 2) You don't get out of the difficulty by introducing "probabilities". (3) you don't get out of the difficulty by saying "nobody doubts it." (4) no help to be got by basing your trust on past Experience.` — asserting there is only symmetry doesn’t get out of the difficulty either

02:17:12 Gary Nelson: I sent Matt a paper Amoebae Anticipate Periodic Events.

02:17:25 Douglas Tooley: Any single cell epistemology would be chemical, as would any plant epistemology?


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