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

 * * * * * * * * *

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.

 * * * * * * * * *

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

 * * * * * * * * *

List of Related References

Index - Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe

Index - Process Sciences: Biology, Physics, Computing

Process Christianity, the History of Computer Languages, and Quantum Computing

• Tim Eastman - Untying The Gordian Knot

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 1

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 2

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 3

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 4

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

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 6

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 7

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 8

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 9

* * * * * * * * *

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

00:19:31 Matt Segall: James Bradley’s collected essays: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-collected-essays-in-speculative-philosophy.html

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

00:27:07 Cobb Institute: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Charles-Hartshorne-Critical-Examination/dp/1940447445

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:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielasilva/2021/09/29/thinkers-and-innovators-what-it-will-take-to-figure-out-the-brain-from-a-neuroscience-and-ai-pioneer/

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?

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 4

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

 * * * * * * * * *

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.

 * * * * * * * * *

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

 * * * * * * * * *

List of Related References

Index - Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe

Index - Process Sciences: Biology, Physics, Computing

Process Christianity, the History of Computer Languages, and Quantum Computing

• Tim Eastman - Untying The Gordian Knot

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 1

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 2

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 3

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 4

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

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 6

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 7

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 8

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 9

* * * * * * * * *

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot - Session 4

September 20, 2021

THE COBB INSTITUTE

In this session Tim Eastman provides an summary of the fourth chapter, after which Alex Gomez-Marin, George Lucas, and Anderson Weekes offer a response.

00:00:07 - 00:01:44 - Welcome from Matt Segall

00:01:55 - 00:18:36 - Presentation by Tim Eastman

00:18:47 - 00:28:39 - Response by Alex Gomez-Marin

00:29:22 - 00:45:15 - Response by George Lucas

00:45:19 - 01:00:12 - Response by Anderson Weekes

01:00:23 - 01:11:03 - Conversation between Tim and respondents

01:11:08 - Open Conversation

Meeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18xBZ...

Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman

Response by Anderson Weekes

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

00:19:06 Gary Herstein: We need to know where to RSVP.

00:19:42 Weston McMillan: Good morning all - good to see you all - I’ll be joining video in about 30-40 min

00:20:48 Richard Livingston / Cobb Institute: Gary, I will send email reminders to everyone with the links to RSVP. But the main link is always: https://cobb.institute/events/

00:48:25 Gary Herstein: Obviously Randy and myself had a few words to say about reducing Whitehead's metaphysics to QM.

00:50:03 Lynn De Jonghe: I wonder if Whitehead “abandoned” physics for biology or expanded his vision to include biological processes.

00:51:22 Matt Segall: Seems more like Whitehead extended the understanding of organisms as self-organizing to the rest of Nature (just as Schelling had done before him)

00:52:01 Matt Segall: Robert Rosen makes an even more rigorous case for this sort of extension (biology as more generic than physics, etc.)

00:52:38 Jude Jones: I agree Matt; perhaps the replacement or abandonment is really a reversal: biology is the more comprehensive model, rather than physics

00:53:45 Jude Jones: Precisely because it manifests the activity of com-prehending in the most evident way (i.e. concrescence)

00:54:10 Lynn De Jonghe: Perhaps Tim’s work should be described as a “theory of everything and its possibilities.”

00:54:32 Jude Jones: A Theory of Everything & Everything Else?

00:56:02 Gary Herstein: It is worth recalling that Whitehead came up not only before GR and QM, but before the atomic theory itself. The major early influence on his thinking was Clerk-Maxwell's electromagnetic *field* theory. A field is a pretty holistic way of approaching matters, and lends itself fairly naturally to that kind of holism we call "organic."

00:56:43 Timothy Eastman: I agree with Gary’s point here - thanks Gary!

00:57:12 Gary Herstein: 👍

01:00:43 Ben Snyder: If I recall correctly, when Whitehead was working on something more like a philosophical underpinning for physics earlier in his philosophy, he was already aware he was engaged in only a limited project that in some sense bracketed mind and left questions out, so I'd think he was already aware there was a wider framework that wouldn't necessarily be based on physics, though maybe not that it would be the kind of panbiologism he came to. So I'm not sure he abandoned or reversed a position so much as fleshed it out.

01:03:43 Jude Jones: But Ben, wasn’t part of that work an intense awareness that the act of conception had to be accounted for in understanding the physical world, hence there was an implicit presence of concern for mind?

01:04:49 Matt Segall: Agreed, Ben. I’m reminded of a comment he makes in “Function of Reason” about reversing the typical mode of explanation in science in light of the cosmic extent of evolution. Why explain the later more complex forms by reduction to the earlier less complex forms? Why not reverse the order, looking at e.g. life and mind to see how they amplify aspects of the physical that would otherwise slip our notice?

01:07:31 George Lucas: Well put observations, Matt, Jude, Ben and Gary. The Hersein/Auxier book, itself quite challenging, does a superb job of developing these points in terms of the quantum of explanation.

01:12:58 Ben Snyder: Jude, I had in mind Whitehead's claim in Concept of Nature that he was limiting himself to nature as what is disclosed in sense-perception and leaving to metaphysics the synthesis of knower and known. There may be other context and history to Whitehead's thought I'm leaving out though.

01:16:38 Jude Jones: Fair enough Ben, but the perspectivalism that already starts to emerge in that context prefigures things that the full metaphysics of knower and known will play out

01:19:04 Ben Snyder: I agree, it already has strong implications for his later metaphysics

01:21:37 Matt Segall: it’s hard to read “Concept of Nature” and not be left with the impression that Whitehead had every intention of blowing up the powder keg he carefully avoided for the purposes of scientific epistemology. You can definitely see he was already on his way to bringing mind back into nature in a more generic metaphysical scheme. But he wanted to make sure the special sciences were unburdened by such metaphysics (and make sure that philosophy was unburdened by confused bifurcated scientism!)

01:22:42 Ben Snyder: On the point of comparing Whitehead and Kant as Anderson brought up: there's a solid logical parallel to Whitehead's physical prehensions and Kant's intuitions too, in that they provide the indexical reference (for Whitehead, the "indicative feeling" of the "logical subject") in the propositional content of a judgment. The conceptual pole that provides the predication is, as the subjective aim, perhaps in some ways similar in function to Kant's synthetic unity of apperception.

01:25:18 Matt Segall: I like that comparison, Ben. Though despite his critique of Descartes substantial subject, Kant still seems to imply that the transcendental ego is there in advance, a priori to experience; whereas I read Whitehead as offering a picture of subjectivity as emergent from its feelings.

01:28:32 Ben Snyder: I think the subject exists first as its initial aim (i.e., its feeling of God's proposition for it) which then partially constitutes what feelings it will have (and then from there the subjective aim is, at least in some instances, further freely developed).

01:28:33 Philip: Alex asked how description of fruitfly would be different than a rock. One difference is that a fruitfly has an (individual( agenda it tries to impose on the physical world. Why is there no discussion of the agenda of one that experiences and thus participates in the coming into being of form?

01:28:58 George Lucas: Famously, "For Kant, the World emerges from the (synthesis of experiences of the transcendental) Subject, while for the Phil of Organism, the subject emerges from the (flux of experience which IS) the World."

01:31:18 George Strawn: Could Tim say a little more about the relation between emergence and causation

01:31:34 Jude Jones: The future evokes itself into being as provoked by the actualized past

01:33:32 Jude Jones: I agree with Thandeka—the future is the creative realization of what has become possibly actualized because it was not actualized in the past—the energy of creative, intensive vibration

01:35:01 Jude Jones: But new DIVISIONS of the past are possible, and the ground of possible novelty

01:35:14 Matt Segall: Whitehead talks about this in terms of an occasion’s hybrid prehension of God’s initial aim, I think? The past is totalized in each occasion but also includes the potential of the divine ideal yet to be realized. ?

01:35:46 Jude Jones: The present is the past evoking the future through it

01:37:21 Farzad Mahootian: Wonderful. Thank you, Thandeka! Assimilate, determine, i.e., you must and do REFRAME the past. The therapeutic consciousness is a good model for this.

01:39:42 Lynn De Jonghe: Years ago Imre Lakatos in “Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge described a process in which anomalous information leads to rexesmanination of “known understanding” and finding lacunae and then asking new questions based on these gaps. I believe Thandeka has described a similar process.

01:41:19 Farzad Mahootian: Agreeing also with Jude. I think of it as affirming (rendering positive, and making ”visible”) old negative pretensions.

01:41:30 Kevin Clark: Could we get Tim's response to all this via UGK?

01:41:44 Monica DeRaspe-Bolles: He said, "Becoming happens because potentiality is a real force... I impending future pressing in."

01:42:39 Ben Snyder: I think Matt was right with one of his suggestions, within Whitehead's scheme it's God's primordial nature that allows potentiality beyond the determinacy of the actual world to be real. All novelty in forms of definiteness beyond the conformal physical prehensions of the actual world occurs through conceptual prehensions of eternal objects derived from the initial prehension of God.

01:44:05 Matt Segall: Thanks, Ben. If the primordial nature of God is a “fiction,” then so are the rest of Whitehead’s categories!

01:44:57 Matt Segall: Of course it could be possible, in some alternative scheme, to account for what Thandeka is saying without a God function. But in Whitehead’s scheme, this is the role of God’s primordial nature

01:45:12 Jude Jones: I see the consequent nature as the more “fictional”. Primordial is a necessary posit for the logic of possibility, or something like it

01:45:18 Ben Snyder: Yes, and I suppose they inevitably are a fiction to some extent, which he would've been comfortable admitting. Just hopefully not entirely haha

01:45:23 Jeroen (Jerome) van Dijk: Question: Does the distinction between the Boolean and the non-Boolean (between actuality and potentiality) perhaps impose the language of actuality to what we think of as the realm of potentiality? Could there be a risk of 'historical inversion' between the actual and the potential? A historical inversion in that we may presuppose the alphabet of expression that relates to 'the Actual' as being applicable to a prior realm of potentiality as well?

01:53:27 Kevin Clark: Adjointness: <=>

01:57:59 Matt Segall: I wonder if Jerome’s question has something to do with the difference between Possibility and Potentiality. The latter has an essential relation to Actuality, while the former is untouched by the actual and so cannot be accessed without immediately collapsing its purity. Is this getting close, Jerome?

02:00:04 Jude Jones: Matt, got the link for that?

02:00:15 Jeroen (Jerome) van Dijk: You could be right with your observation, Matt. I need to look into the subtle difference between the concepts of possibility and potentiality. Thanks for noting!

02:00:56 Matt Segall: https://youtu.be/17jymDn0W6U

02:01:25 Matt Segall: That’s one example of the sort of “cosmic map” I’m talking about. The map is not the territory!

02:01:29 Gary Nelson: I think we often conceptualize the “past actual world” (PAW) as only physical stuff. If the PAW retains physical and mental poles, then It is plausible that we can affect our mental future by reinterpretation of our personal past.

02:01:39 Gary Herstein: Orders of Ten -- there was a book in the "Scientific American Library" many years ago.

02:02:00 Lynn De Jonghe: Eames “Powers of Ten” we now see one limited perspective

02:02:29 Gary Herstein: "Powers" not "orders"

02:03:54 Gary Nelson: Spatialization of the PAW assumes physical only.

02:05:05 George Lucas: Thanks to all for great questions and wonderful discussion, and to Tim and Matt for hosting a splendid discussion. Grateful to have been able to join in! Farewell for now,

02:05:11 Farzad Mahootian: Powers of Ten view of cosmos is incomplete, not false… unless it claims completeness. PS: truth and falsity as tools are highly over-rated ;)

02:05:22 Anderson Weekes: Thandeka: Is this your point? The possibility of totalizing the past as the set of all the things I experience, although this was in some sense already a possibility in the past (as a future event), is itself the possibility that transcends the past and changes what possible?

02:06:29 Lynn De Jonghe: Perhaps we do not need a new symbol but a realization and respect for the limitations of all symbols and metaphors, “Metaphors do not run on all fours!”

02:06:46 Gary Nelson: I think of the PAW as the habits of the organic universe.

02:09:00 Jude Jones: Anderson, I like that as an abstract description, curious what Thandeka will say. What needs to be added to the description is the active, feeling/affective dimension of it

02:09:52 Jude Jones: One difference between a fruitfly and a rock is that a fruit fly dies

02:10:12 Farzad Mahootian: “Strategies” of a fruit fly = Whiteheadian Propositions of a fruit fly ?

02:11:06 Jude Jones: The experience that ticks have are fascinating to consider

02:12:58 Jude Jones: Is life anything besides constant transformation? Memory is inherently reconstructive

02:12:58 Farzad Mahootian: Tick: I suck, mostly.

02:14:14 Anderson Weekes: Gary: Do we want to say there were possibilities in the past that we were not aware of, or that the possibilities of the past changed after the fact?

02:16:29 Matt Segall: https://cobb.institute/events/

Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 3

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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List of Related References

Index - Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe

Index - Process Sciences: Biology, Physics, Computing

Process Christianity, the History of Computer Languages, and Quantum Computing

• Tim Eastman - Untying The Gordian Knot

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 1

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 2

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 3

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 4

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

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 6

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 7

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 8

• Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context - Session 9

* * * * * * * * *

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. 

00:00:07 - 00:03:04 - Welcome from Matt Segall

00:03:06 - 00:24:34 - Presentation by Tim Eastman

00:24:40 - 00:42:02 - Response by Ruth Kastner

00:42:10 - 00:57:08 - Response by Michael Epperson

00:57:36 - 01:13:53 - Conversation between Tim and respondents

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!