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 3
August 29, 2021
THE COBB INSTITUTE
In this session Tim Eastman provides an summary of the third chapter, and Ruth Kastner and Michael Epperson offer a response.
01:13:54 - Open Conversation Meeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rdCj...
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
08:01:51 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Richard I feel an urge to put some of my overflow books into the shelf behind you lol
08:02:30 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
oh I didn’t realize that was virtual!
08:04:13 From Weston McMillan to Everyone:
Good morning all - I’m on audio only for first 30-60min and will join video as soon as I’m able - great to see ya / be here
08:06:16 From randallauxier to Everyone:
Jude, you could put your e-bppks there :)
08:06:23 From randallauxier to Everyone:
books
08:07:01 From María Guadalupe Llanes to Everyone:
good morning
08:25:34 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
Can you give us the citation for Kastner Epperson article you just mentioned?
08:27:25 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.03595
08:27:37 From David Milliern to Everyone:
Thanks, Matt.
08:27:45 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
whose? book on affect?
08:27:48 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.03595.pdf
08:27:54 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
that last link is the PDF
08:28:03 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
thx
08:28:41 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
and the affect book?
08:39:41 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
offer waves ad confirmation waves?
08:39:46 From randallauxier to Everyone:
Question for later: the relationship between “emergence” as it is being discussed by Tim and Ruth, as distinct from or compared to ANW’s “creativity.” ANW has no theory of emergence as I read him. (Nor does he need one, I would argue.)
08:40:05 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
I’ve heard from McGilchrist that his new book engages with Whitehead at some length.
08:40:48 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
That’s a great point Randy, I hope we talk about that
08:41:54 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
People who use disparagement/mockery as argument thereby red flag all they say in my book
08:43:00 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
Thanks for that question, Randy. What do you make of Whitehead’s “doctrine of emergent evolution” (PR 229)? I’ve often heard him described by analytic panpsychists as an emergentist (rather than a constitutive panpsychist). In Whitehead’s cosmos, each occasion is “emergent” in the typical sense in which emergence is defined. Curious to hear more when we get to the Q and A!
08:43:43 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
McGilchrist’s new book: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/the-matter-with-things/
08:49:17 From randallauxier to Everyone:
ANW’s point there is logical, not ontological. The term “emergent” is an odd choice, but it has nothing to do with the claim that possibilities are created, which is the way Tim and Ruth are using it. ANW’s point is that a generic contrast is a whole, not a collection of disjunctions, no matter how complex the contrast is.
08:50:06 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
I see. Thanks for clarifying, Randy. That helps me understand your question better.
08:56:18 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
I remember menus….we got food from them before covid right?
08:56:52 From Kevin Clark to Everyone:
Yes, in the OLD days of 2019.
08:58:41 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
Can two different observers make simultaneous independent measurements?
08:59:28 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
I’d like to hear more about the various goods served by trying to formalize the relevance of all local environments to one another
09:02:10 From iPhoneThandeka to Everyone:
Ruth, please further comment on mcgilchrist text The Master and hisEmissary claim that the western emphasis on the left hemisphere of The brain produces fixed, static,isolated, decontextualized. But ultimately lifeless. Findings. Are you going deeper into the parallels with affective neuroscience and the brain as a management system of possibilities to ensure the organisms survival.
09:02:56 From Philip to Everyone:
Yes, I think it may be possible to begin to define how some (particular) distant contexts may be more significant to the local occasion than others.
09:03:29 From Philip to Everyone:
What could the criteria be for such selection.
09:04:51 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
Could Michael say more about how the global non-Boolean character of actualizations fits into his speculative suggestion that all processes might be interrelated (somehow entangled)?
09:14:47 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Aside from ‘coherence’ and the benefits of ‘holism’, a key value to my mind is the ‘envisagement’ value that demands that we actively look beyond the limited findings/observations of any local system so as to strip away the delusion of complete understanding of limited facts. Enacted, visionary fallibilism in other words.
09:15:33 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
William James
09:16:51 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
re: “specious present”
09:16:54 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
could we get clarification of relation between the two kinds of non-Boolean relations: non-Boolean character of potentia and non-Boolean nature of actualizations globally?
09:21:21 From jonmeyer to Everyone:
“non-Boolean” is itself already a boolean framing.
09:23:00 From Gary Herstein to Everyone:
The possible fat man in the door way -- classic Quine
09:24:12 From randallauxier to Everyone:
I have a bunch more questions, but we’ll see if it cycles back to me.
09:25:54 From randallauxier to Everyone:
Uncreated is not the same as pre-given :)
09:26:11 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
for Whitehead possibilities can only become relevant or efficacious if there is "mentality" which just means that something finite/ discontinuous occurs (like a measurement maybe?)
09:26:30 From randallauxier to Everyone:
E.O’s are Non-temporal, hence not “pre” anything.
09:26:58 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Anderson, given the energy of the past as vectoral, isn’t there always ‘mentality’ afoot?
09:27:39 From randallauxier to Everyone:
I get my shot next month on this :)
09:28:23 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
there has to be some discontinuity - a finite set of eos
09:28:53 From randallauxier to Everyone:
Sure, and hence there must be order among e.o.’s that is uncaused.
09:29:56 From randallauxier to Everyone:
I have now ordered all of Ruth’s books :)
09:31:06 From Mikhail Epstein to Everyone:
Entanglement beyond physics: poetry, metaphors, synesthesia, etc. Entanglement of qualia is as real as quanta entanglement, when, for example, “eyes shine like stars”, the qualities of one object are manifested in another object. Our consciousness and the realm of free associations is exactly the entanglement of qualia.
09:32:21 From Gary Herstein to Everyone:
By the bye, replying to a couple msg's up, discontinuity does not require finitude.
09:32:22 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Love that, Mikhail!
09:32:51 From Farzad Mahootian to Everyone:
Agree with Mikhail: semiosis of poetry, and really all language when you scratch the surface of any word.
09:35:13 From Philip to Everyone:
A contemporary outcome is presumably entangled with or informed/influenced by ALL environmental conditions. But does this not also imply it is informed/influenced by all events of the past as well?
09:35:54 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
I'm basing that connection of discontinuity and finite hierarchy of EOs on W's discussion in SMW
09:36:22 From Carol Richardson - she/her - Miwok Territory to Everyone:
Yes, thank you, Mikhail. With qualia, you may be addressing my question, which arises from a psychological perspective on relations: is it possible to move from a transactional view to a transformational view of what is happening at the quantum level? The qualia may be that method.
09:37:17 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Carol, I like that point about the difference between ‘transaction’ and ‘transformation’ vis a vis qualia
09:38:56 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
the poodle seems energized by the discussion of the cat in the box
09:39:03 From randallauxier to Everyone:
I am good with the idea of grouping and hierarchy among e.o.’s for what that’s worth. It is part of what motivates my questions. The sense of the term “discontinuity” may need some sharpening.
09:40:18 From randallauxier to Everyone:
The poodle has become non-local, however.
09:40:29 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
Cats cats cats my dog cresponds
09:42:22 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
poetry as mechanics of qualia…beautiful!
09:44:08 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
I’d like us to be able to think in a non-binary way about qualia and quantity but confess that may be a fantasy
09:46:23 From Farzad Mahootian to Everyone:
Agree with Jude. A fantasy maybe, and difficult certainly, but worth it
09:47:23 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
That’s what fascinates me about ‘intensity’ in Whitehead. It strikes me as an attempt to describe things as both without invoking either explicitly
09:49:56 From Gary Herstein to Everyone:
An article I never got around to writing was titled "The Ways of Mathematical Metaphor." A Hilbert 'space'? Mike's 'fibers'?
09:52:15 From Farzad Mahootian to Everyone:
Yes to Jude! And “Intensity” applies well to metaphor and analogy as well. The term gets across the definiteness importance of an idea without closing off further possibility
09:52:17 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
For Michael and Ruth: did I understand right that you are taking different sides on this? There are two ways ideas from quantum physics have been speculatively generalized. One way says the phenomena studied in quantum physics are absolutely unique to particle physics, but nevertheless (very likely) have implications for how we have to understand all of reality. The other way says from quantum phenomena we learn that things are not as we thought classically, but if we look with enlightened eyes at the world we will very probably see that the peculiarities of quantum phenomena are not unique to particle physics, meaning that we can find the SAME problems and peculiarities in all aspects and levels of experience. Ruth is hewing to the former?
09:52:22 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
The work of George Lakoff and Mark JOhnson on metaphor is also relevant here
09:53:08 From Matt Segall to Everyone:
Jude I think of Pythagorean analogies between music and math as one bridge between the qualitative and quantitative. Also a more archetypal understanding of numbers, each number having its own unique quality and meaning, etc.
09:55:05 From Mikhail Epstein to Everyone:
In Hegel, the unity of quality and quantity is called “measure”.
09:55:36 From Farzad Mahootian to Everyone:
Matt: your musical point is excellent! Color words, musical terms also carry this insight further
09:55:37 From jonmeyer to Everyone:
Agreeing with Tim and Jude — one reason Whitehead adopts mereological whole-part language rather than boolean either-or language is to avoid the problem of the “non”. Saying “Non-binary” is already to inhabit a binary conceptual basis, since the root of boolean logic is “not”, and the primary distinction between A and Not-A. Using whole/part language is a trick to avoids this: To adapt this here: The aim is not to look for a non-binary way of thinking qualia, but to recognize that binary (analytical) thinking is only part of a broad spectrum of modes of thought.
09:55:40 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Mikhail, yes…but ‘feeling’ is (to my mind) absent from that construction
09:55:55 From Carol Richardson - she/her - Miwok Territory to Everyone:
Doesn't meaning include both and join both?
09:56:26 From Ruth Kastner to Everyone:
For Anderson: Actually, TI itself takes no position on non-quantum systems. I do view the extension to more general phenomena as speculative but I’m happy to entertain it
09:56:30 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
The other day I had a dream that involved in part the ‘chewing and tasting’ of music tablets.
09:56:58 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Jonmeyer, great point!
09:58:43 From Monica DeRaspe Bolles to Everyone:
In some sense, if one is in within the transactional interpretation and logoi framework, do analogies become homologies?
10:02:47 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Have a great class Matt!
10:02:53 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
thanks!
10:02:56 From Ruth Kastner to Everyone:
I’ll have to leave soon for my road trip, it’s been great to chat with all of you!
10:03:05 From Gary Herstein to Everyone:
I need to run as well. Thanks everyone!
10:04:14 From randallauxier to Everyone:
I also have a noon meeting. Thanks Tim and all.
10:04:26 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
That goes back to my first question about the value of the formalization to meet a “way we WANT the universe to be"
10:05:12 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
sorry, I used Michael’s phrase just now to embellish the earlier convo, to be clear. It’s about WANTING (the feeling of importance)
10:06:18 From María Guadalupe Llanes to Everyone:
Thank you all very much for this fantastic session. See you next month
10:06:54 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
We should also interrogate ‘authority’ and ‘formalism’ as much as we interrogate ‘speculation'
10:07:51 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
At another time I would love to hear you push back against authorities speaking out unchecked.
10:08:53 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
a virtue of ‘possibility’ is that it can undo ‘authority'
10:09:15 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
‘possibilism’ (autocorrect stinks lol)
10:10:20 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
I was impressed by the papers of Harold Pattee who wants to say that that there is complementarity at all levels and it's not a metaphor or loose analogy. that's the first time I took this kind of speculative extension seriously. his arguments in biology are impressive.
10:12:10 From Farzad Mahootian to Everyone:
Yes to Thandeka: emotional grounding for intellectual speculation!
10:12:32 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
the abstraction of disciplinary separation is so problematic (tho of course it helps with depth of exploration)
10:12:49 From Ruth Kastner to Everyone:
Gary Goldberg MD brought Iain’s McGilchrist’s work to my attention
10:13:21 From Kent Bye to Everyone:
Every neuroscientist I've ever met are staunch reductive materialists
10:13:50 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Kent I got some to admit that the reason for that is because “they want it to be that way for efficient research” lol
10:14:00 From Kent Bye to Everyone:
Although embodied cognition & predictive coding theory of neuroscience are both very contextual and process-relational
10:14:23 From Lynn De Jonghe to Everyone:
Thanks everyone for a wonderful discussion!
10:14:47 From Anderson Weekes to Everyone:
thanks everybody!
10:14:49 From Weston McMillan to Everyone:
Thanks all ! Appreciate the time !
10:14:54 From Ruth Kastner to Everyone:
thanks Tim
10:14:59 From Jude Jones to Everyone:
Thanks everyone!
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