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 6

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 6

Dec 3, 2021

THE COBB INSTITUTE

In this session Tim Eastman provides a summary of chapter six, after which Randall Auxier, Gary Herstein, and Brian Swimme offer a response.

00:00:07 - 00:02:07 - Welcome from Matt Segall

00:02:09 - 00:25:21 - Presentation by Tim Eastman

00:25:44 - 00:42:26 - Response by Randall Auxier

00:43:05 - 01:10:23 - Response by Gary Herstein

01:10:44 - 01:28:02 - Response by Brian Swimme

01:30:30 - Open Conversation

Tim Eastman's chapter summary notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d6yN... 

Meeting 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/

CHAT TEXT

000:45:36 Matt Segall: Thanks for that correction, Randy! My mistake.

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

01:02:56 Matt Segall: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Adventures_of_Ideas/UZeJuLvNq80C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Human%20life%20is%20driven%20forward%20by%20its%20dim%20apprehension%20of%20notions%20too%20general%20for%20its%20existing%20language.&pg=PA24&printsec=frontcover&bsq=Human%20life%20is%20driven%20forward%20by%20its%20dim%20apprehension%20of%20notions%20too%20general%20for%20its%20existing%20language.

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!

* * * * * * * * *

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

pg 2

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;

            

        Fundamental epistemological factors

• Modes of perception - presentational immediacy/causal efficacy; physics/ semiotics;

• Ways of Knowing - numbers/science, context/semiosis, ultimate context/spirit.

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        (UGK 192-3) Arguably, the most fundamental ontological orders are that of the contingent and the non-contingent; many standard accounts simply presuppose only the former, but systematic philosophical argument indicates that claim to be false (see Puntel’s Structure and Being, 2008; Dombrowski, 2017, Viney and Shields, The Mind of Charles Hartshorne, 2021). Consequently, I hypothesize, as part of the Logoi framework, that there is necessarily a non-contingent dimension of being/becoming that encompasses the above fundamental ontological factors; that is, the fact of these ontological factors as such are aspects of non-contingent being/becoming and are aspects of reality that could not be fully non-existent.

        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.