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| Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context |
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| Amazon Link |
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.
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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In this session Tim Eastman provides a summary of chapter six, after which Randall Auxier, Gary Herstein, and Brian Swimme offer a response.
01:30:30 - Open ConversationMeeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zeaM...
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/
00:47:58 Jude Jones: Also philosophers are trained to disagree, as if disagreement is the only way to produce intellectual insight
00:54:24 Gary Herstein: Oh, I'm not sure I agree with that, Jude. 😉
00:55:16 Jude Jones: 😂
00:55:18 Matt Segall: I held back so someone else could make that joke. You’re welcome, Gary!
00:55:32 Gary Herstein: 👍
00:55:51 Matt Segall: (just trying to exemplify a more congenial approach😉)
00:58:32 Brian Thomas Swimme: Does anyone know where in Whitehead Rankdall is quoting?
01:00:19 Matt Segall: page 24 of Adventures of Ideas, I thnk
01:00:44 josh hogins: Thank you Matt
01:01:35 Carol Richardson - she/her - Miwok Territory: Confirming it is p 24 of Adventure of Ideas
01:03:20 Matt Segall: Sorry, that was my attempt to share the Google books link, but it did not work
01:07:12 Jude Jones: My favorite label for infinitesimals was Berkeley’s calling them “ghosts of departed quantities”
01:07:38 Randall Auxier: 😀
01:10:38 Jude Jones: “And what are these Fluxions? The Velocities of evanescent Increments? And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the Ghosts of departed Quantities?
XXXVI. Men too often impose on themselves and others, as if they conceived and understood things expressed by Signs, when in truth they have no Idea, save only of the very Signs themselves. And there are some grounds to apprehend that this may be the present Case.” Berkeley’s Analyst
01:26:40 George Strawn: Wolfram seems to agree that complexity is (only) in our theories and that reality requires “a new kind of science.” Do I have that right?
01:30:21 jonmeyer: With some of the AI models coming along, the kinds of relational structures that networked digital systems produce may constitute a new class of complexity, not really equivalent to classic “brute force” algorithms.
01:34:52 jonmeyer: I sensed pragmatism in the backdrop of Gary and Randalls comments. I’d love to hear Randall describe how he squares his interest in Rorty with Whitehead.
01:37:15 Randall Auxier: You realize Rorty wrote his MA thesis on Whitehead —under Hartshorne?
01:38:27 Matt Segall: Richard I cant unmute myself
01:38:42 Jude Jones: Rorty’s paper on Whitehead, “Matter and Event” is very good, even if there is much in it to disagree with
01:39:50 Matt Segall: audio is working, I hope?
01:40:07 Weston McMillan: Yes
01:40:09 Jude Jones: Yes Matt!
01:47:13 Randall Auxier: I was asked to choose seven of the best papers on Whitehead for translation into Polish, and that was one I chose, Jude.
01:48:14 Randall Auxier: And I disagree with much in it as well.
01:56:15 Jude Jones: Excellent Randy!
01:58:24 Gary Herstein: Persons looking for texts on Category Theory might start at the link below. You'll likely want to get a working facility with basic abstract algebra prior to tackling it: https://www.sciencebooksonline.info/mathematics/category-theory.html
01:58:42 Gary Nelson: Robert Goldblatt in his book Topoi says that Category Theory is replacing Set Theory as foundation of mathematics
01:59:51 Gary Herstein: Some overlap here, but some new ones as well: https://www.freetechbooks.com/category-theory-f71.html
02:00:46 Gary Herstein: Goldblatt still stays pretty solidly in the set theoretic frame, but his book is one of the better ones out there.
02:11:30 Douglas Tooley: Thank you all for another great dialogue.
02:12:49 Gary Herstein: Robert Reid's book "Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment" is a very scientifically rigorous challenge to the idea of natural selection as the driver of evolution, as opposed to a conservator of existing species.
02:16:32 Gary Herstein: One way of entering mathematical ideas that I highly approve of is via history. Leo Corry's "Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures" starting in the early 19th C. takes us up to the emergence of Category Theory.
02:16:46 Matt Segall: Thanks for saying a few minutes longer, everyone. We started a few minutes late so I wanted to give Wolfgang a chance to raise this important point.
02:16:56 George Strawn: When I studied category theory decades ago, it was promoted as having its basic concept of morphism being closer to our concepts of interest. Set theory starts with sets and elements and has to build functions on top of them
02:17:15 Jude Jones: Wolfgang do you have a copy of your paper on “History and Experience” handy? I can get it through the library I hope but if you have it at hand that would be great!
02:18:29 Douglas Tooley: If you go faster than the speed of light time flows backwards?
02:18:50 Randall Auxier: Light doesn’t have a “speed.”
02:19:33 Gary Herstein: Well, if you go faster than the speed of light, the first thing you'll have is a sharply worded letter for Einstein.
02:19:55 Randall Auxier: You wrote that letter and published it in 2006.
02:20:21 Douglas Tooley: If it’s not in anti-matter I won’t be able to read it!
02:20:29 Jude Jones: 🤣
02:21:03 Weston McMillan: Thank you all - great session today (as always)!
02:21:08 Mario-Seth Morales: Thank you Tim and everyone.
02:21:23 Carol Richardson - she/her - Miwok Territory: Thank you all!
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Tim Eastman's chapter summary notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d6yN...
Untying the Gordian Knot (UGK)
Summary of chapter 6 on the "Complex Whole"
by Tim Eastman
Nov 13, 2021
(UGK 183-4) Here I build on central elements of the Logoi framework (process, logic, relations), combined with local-global relations and the actuality-potentiae distinction (corresponding to Boolean and non-Boolean logics, respectively). I have built on this framework (ch 1–3) to address various aspects of causation, emergence, and complex systems (ch 4) and information and semiotics (ch 5). Further, I apply the Logoi framework to a set of topics and concepts that are pointers to a fully integrative scheme.
Beginning in a rather human-centric manner, I set up story lines that are both personal, broadly human, and cosmic. I briefly survey the current geologic transition from the Holocene era to the anthropocene era, of which the latter is partly driven by global impacts of Homo sapiens. By some accounts, such as standard materialism and epiphenomenalism, humans have no responsibility because the very concepts of meaning and ethics lack a substantive basis. In contrast, I argue in a section on transformative thinking and ethics that the Logoi framework can provide the needed substantive basis. However, the underlying context for such discourse requires a grounding; for this, I address the need for a systematic philosophical framework (whether the Logoi framework or some other equivalent framework), and an unrestricted universe of discourse. Key elements (both ontological and epistemological factors) of such a systematic framework are summarized. Scales and hierarchies of the natural world are then surveyed, both synchronic and diachronic. Standard “big histories” (or equivalent) typically presume some form of particularism (or substance philosophy). Here I focus on how process-oriented ontologies can provide realistic interpretations without particularism. This is followed by a section on a theory of relations based on category theory, which is an algebra of relations.
The Logoi framework is based on recent scientific and philosophic developments, primarily since the turn of the millennium; in turn, these have exceptional resonances with key insights articulated by Alfred North Whitehead almost a century ago. Many books that attempt to cover the “whole shebang” often focus on physical cosmology and/or “particle” physics. After summarizing the measurement problem at extremes of scale, I conclude that available scientific knowledge of the universe as a whole is not sufficiently mature for philosophical work. Fortunately, all of my philosophical objectives can be achieved without resolving unsettled questions of physical cosmology. After that, I note some open questions in contemporary biology and evolutionary theory, and call attention to recent progress toward a new semiotic biology, followed by a brief review of complex systems and anticipatory systems. I end the chapter by reviewing multiple perspectives on the whole and call attention to how the Logoi framework responds to a call for a new dialogic (multivoice, inclusive) grand narrative.
(UGK 189) Clearly any object can be part of some value proposition (e.g., the value of trees in the forest as part of my affirmation of a park’s value); however, only high-level biological creatures, having passed the semiotic threshold, can participate in meaningful semiotic choices (sign-meaning-code). For example, dogs and many other animals share information, through signed behaviors, about impending danger. In most cases, what we mean by human choice goes beyond the epistemic threshold, which includes interpretive semiosis. Reference to psyche (mind) typically indicates a capability that goes beyond the semiotic threshold if not also the epistemic threshold. For this reason, the Logoi framework is not a pan-psychism in that it does not require
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reference to lower-level mind-like capabilities although the Logoi framework is arguably pan experiential in that it affirms some elemental selective processes as pervasive.
(UGK, 191-2) As humankind embarks on this new anthropocene era, with something like the Logoi framework in mind, we need to evaluate the full range of history and context, both local and global, and then decide collaboratively on the best possibilities (given the full range of given facts and constraints) for responsible action toward the common good. Because such choices and action are imbedded in reality, both the actual and the possible, they are not just epiphenomena, but have a certain reality. Insofar as such choices and action reflect ethical considerations and options, then ethics itself is “real,” not just some disembodied universal, but as a framework of specific potentia—relations concerning real alternatives in ethical choice and action.
(UGK, 191) By envisioning various levels of the complex whole, in no way do I claim to achieve some God’s eye view from outside that complex whole; after all, in that case the whole would fail to be inclusive because it would not include the hypothetical observer. In a very fundamental way, this problem cannot be addressed by science alone (being the way of numbers, context independent models, and actualized (Boolean) measurement results) and is, at least in significant measure, a philosophical problem, or even a metaphysics problem involving ultimate context. (192) In addition to problems with substance frameworks, so-called Theories of Everything, promoted by certain scientists based on scientific tools alone, are doomed to failure because they are working with a restricted universe of discourse (sometimes limited further to that subset of discourse called scientism)—indeed, besides often presuming a substance framework, these more limited frameworks are often working with only the actualist hypothesis, which fails to acknowledge the non-Boolean order and landscapes of potentiae, and thus are incomplete even as science.
In summary, there are both fundamental ontological and epistemological factors within an unrestricted universe of discourse, as follows:
Fundamental ontological factors
• Mode of being/becoming - contingent and non-contingent;
• Logical orders - non-Boolean and Boolean; potentiae and actualizations;
• Extensive connection (prior to metrical relations) - local-global, category theory;
• Quantum process - diachronic focus - prehension, succession, symmetry breaking, causation/actualization;
• Emergence - synchronic focus - multiple levels with grounding, semiosis/triadicity;
• Modes of perception - presentational immediacy/causal efficacy; physics/ semiotics;• Ways of Knowing - numbers/science, context/semiosis, ultimate context/spirit.
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A more Peircean way to conceive of the above fundamental factors is to incorporate both the contingent and non-contingent, and the Boolean and non-Boolean orders, with three levels of reality, vis-à-vis the Peircean triad. For examples, levels tentatively deployed for the Logoi framework are as follows: (1) (non-Boolean) order of potentiae (modally “present in process, and future”)—Peirce’s first; (2) (Boolean) order of actualization (modally past and actualized present) —Peirce’s second; (3) ordering principles—Peirce’s third—fundamental relationships; some contingent, some non-contingent. With this framing, meaning is enabled through multiple levels of context, and the interrelated combination of three basic questions framed by Bradley: the nature of origin, difference, and order. These questions and their answers, respectively, are associated primarily with (1) the concepts of potentiae, the non-contingent and ultimates; (2) succession, quantum process, and actualization (diachronic) along with extension and multilevel emergence (synchronic); and (3) multilevel constraints on potentiae to yield physical relations (law), including local-global relations, and ultimate context.
(UGK 197) Any proposed grand synthesis requires a highly multidisciplinary approach. The ways of knowing to be incorporated need to go beyond just the way of numbers (focus on context independence, and quantitative representation) as with some claimed theories of everything (most often presuming a science-only approach). A more inclusive framing would be to include the way of context that, in turn, includes the way of signs (semiotics). Finally, to truly incorporate an unrestricted domain of discourse, the way of spirit is needed to incorporate the reality of ultimate boundaries, ultimacies, and spiritual experience.
(UGK 198) Combining the results of modern science with Peircean biosemiotics, Søren Brier has shown how a combined information and semiotic (cybersemiotic) framework operates with five levels of reality, which are adapted here for the Logoi framework.
1. potentia—non-Boolean: “A primary chaotic level of continuity, quality and potentiality with a tendency to take habits (Firstness). This goes beyond the physical conception of vacuum fields that are still purely materialistic, but may be included as an aspect.”
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2. actualizations—Boolean: “A ‘causal’ level of matter, energy and causality by natural forces. This is Secondness that has, as its inner aspect, will and mental force.”
3. “An informational cybernetic system level of informational signals, which encompasses the goal-oriented mechanical systems described by first order classical cybernetics.”
4. “The semiotic level belonging to all living systems (biosemiotics), which are so far the only systems capable of true triadic semiosis (producing signification spheres in sign games).”
5. “The level of conscious languaging systems (language games, arguments), to our knowledge so far only occupied by humans.
Sign-making is thus immanent in nature, but only manifest in full triadic semiosis in living systems.” [quatos from Søren Brier's Cybersemiotics (2013) and Brier (2010)].
(UGK 202) Our given world exhibits a hierarchical framework in both temporal and spatial scales as detailed especially by Salthe in his hierarchy theory (Stanley Salthe, Evolving Hierarchical Systems, 1985). The primary difference between the above more unitary perspectives [i.e., Buchler, Ross, Wimsatt] and Salthe's hierarchy is that of a focus on diachronic process, which enables univocity in the quanta of explanation (à la Auxier and Herstein's The Quantum of Explanation), thus a reduction in ontology, versus a focus on synchronic process whereby multiple temporal and spatial scales are considered as basic, thus a hierarchy. The Logoi framework works with both of these perspectives, involving both monistic and pluralistic framings, which can be both unitary in fundamental quantum process (diachronic, including link- age to highly interrelated non-Boolean potentiae) and radically plural in the realms of Boolean actualizations, indeed plural in both specific actualizations and unbounded hierarchies of such.
(UGK 203) Although hierarchies of order are discussed in essentially all works about the universe at large, Salthe’s emphasis on the fact of both extensional and intensional hierarchies is critical because it shows how all such frameworks (when fully fleshed out) necessarily incorporate both bottom-up and top-down causation, as argued by George Ellis (How Can Physics Underlie the Mind?: Top-Down Causation in the Human Context, 2016), due to the inevitable entry of initial conditions, boundary conditions, and context or environment.
(UGK 209) A complementary systematic philosophy and theory of relations was formulated by the Charles S. Peirce, which emphasized semiotics but overlaps Whiteheadian process thought in many ways. I envision the Logoi framework as being a synthesis of Whiteheadian process thought, Peircean semiotics, Hartshorne’s neoclassical metaphysics, quantum field theory, ecological and systems analysis, and several other strands of contemporary scholarship in science and philosophy.
(UGK 210) Much of modern astrophysics, at less than cosmological scale (i.e., low or moderate red shift), has made major advances over the past century and is generally based on reliable research. For my own readings in space physics and astrophysics, I depend on works that build on evidence-based research that complements any model-driven speculations with independent observations, both remote sensing and in situ observations. (UGK 211) However, given some
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serious methodological and observational limitations at extreme red shifts, such as those articulated by Auxier and Herstein (The Quantum of Explanation, 2017), I conclude that the current state of knowledge in physical cosmology is not adequately mature to provide a reliable basis for philosophical speculation. Further, for essentially all objectives of the current work, including inferences needed for the Logoi framework, we can set aside questions about physical cosmology.
(UGK 214) A new semiotic biology or biological neo-naturalism, building on the best of biological and biosemiotics research and moving to a new stage of development that sheds any dependence on the mechanistic reductionism of classical metaphysics, opens up new approaches in understanding complex systems, ententional phenomena, emergence and anticipatory systems. Such a new non-reductionist scientific biophilosophy has been articulated, for example, by Spyridon Koutroufinis (Life and Process: Towards a New Biophilosophy, 2014).
(UGK 218) Our radical finiteness, however enhanced by scientific means, will forever remain outstripped by the limitless depths of both the contingent and the non-contingent, both actualizations and potentiae. (UGK 219) I recommend that we remain skeptical of the entire genre of monological narratives and, with Arran Gare (The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization, 2017), encourage a dialogic (multivoice, inclusive) grand narrative.
(UGK 219) My Logoi framework is a contribution to such a dialogic grand narrative, which is clearly important at both individual and social levels to offset several human tendencies toward hubris and control. Such narratives also need to be grounded in ever wider contexts and human meaning, which is the focus of my concluding chapter.
