Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

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

Monday, November 1, 2021

EcoCiv Korea Conference Invite - November 4/5 & 11/12, 2021




A Decade to Make a Difference:
Making A Difference by Changing the Way 
We Think & Teach

It is our conviction, and that of our partners, that society needs to change at a level far deeper than most people realize. Solar panels, electric cars, and carbon taxes get nowhere close to addressing the underlying causes of our complex social-environmental challenges. The interconnection of our world’s biggest problems requires a paradigm shift—a transformation of our social and economic organization that is guided by a change in values and worldviews. As reports from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate, time is running short…we only have a decade to make a difference.

EcoCiv Korea is launching “A Decade to Make a Difference” conference series on the urgent need for civilizational change. This year, our two-day international conference will focus on making a different through religion and education. The event will be fully online via Zoom with simultaneous translation. The first day will focus on “Religions and Higher Education for Ecological Civilization,” while the second day will focus on “Ecological Transition Education and Food.”

Below is a schedule outline. Details on speakers and panelists forthcoming.

All times listed are Seoul Time. Simultaneous translation (English and Korean) will be provided unless otherwise noted.



November 5: Making A Difference Through Religious Education

9:00-9:20 Keynote: John B. Cobb, Jr. “A Decade to Make a Difference: The Urgent Need for Civilizational Change”

9:20-9:30 Audience Q&A

9:30-10:20 Morning Dialogue Part 1 What Can Religions Do to Make a Difference?

10:20-10:40 Audience Q&A

10:40-10:50 Break

10:50-11:40 Morning Dialogue Part 2 Religious Education: Uniting University and Church for Civilizational Change

11:40-12:00 Audience Q&A

Day 1 Concludes

* * * * * * *

November 12: Ecological Transition Education and Food

9:00-9:20 Keynote: A Decade to Make a Difference

9:20-9:30 Audience Q&A

9:30-10:20 Morning Dialogue Part 1 Education for Ecological Civilization

10:20-10:40 Audience Q&A

10:40-10:50 Break

10:50-11:40 Morning Dialogue Part 2 Climate, Food, and Education for Sustainable Development

11:40-12:00 Audience Q&A

12:00-2:00 Lunch Break

Afternoon Sessions: Korean Language Only (No Translation)

2:00-2:20 Plenary Talk Heeyeon Cho, Superintendent for Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

Afternoon Dialogue Part 1 From Organic Free School Lunch to Climate School Lunch

3:00-3:30 Audience Q&A

3:30-3:40 Break

3:40-4:40 Afternoon Dialogue Part 2 Round Table with Students

4:30-4:50 Audience Q&A

4:50-5:00 Concluding Remarks for Day 2


REGISTER HEREclick here



* * * * * * *


SPEAKERS

Welcome and Intro


Philip Clayton, President, Institute for Ecological Civilization


Sungyoung Kang, President, Hanshin University


Keynote Speaker - John B. Cobb Jr.
Professor Emeritus of the Claremont School of Theology, theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist

Morning Dialogue Part 1 - What Can Religions Do to Make a Difference?


Moderator - Dr. Andrew Schwartz
Executive Director, Center for Process Studies & 
Assistant Professor of Process and Comparative Theology

Panelists


Audrey Kitagawa
President/Founder of the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation, the President of the Light of Awareness International Spiritual Family


The Rev. Dr. Sooil Chai
Senior Pastor at Kyungdong Presbyterian Church, Seoul, South Korea


Mary Evelyn Tucker
Founder of the field of "religion and ecology." Professor at Yale University

Morning Dialogue Part 2 - Religious Education: Uniting University and Church for Civilizational Change


Moderator - The Rev. Dongwoo Lee, Ph.D. Candidate
Director of Ecological Civilization Korea

Panelists


Dr. Jeffery Kuan
President, Claremont School of Theology


The Rev. Dr. Chul Chun
Dean of School of Theology at Hanshin University


Laurel Kearns
Founder of Green Seminaries Initiative, Associate Professor of Sociology and Religion and Environmental Studies, Drew Theological School


Event Co-Sponsors:

· Institute for Ecological Civilization

· Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education

· Korea Green Foundation

· Hanshin University

· Center for Process Studies


REGISTER HERE - click here









Sunday, October 31, 2021

‘The Internet Remains Undefeated’ Must Be Defeated


PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: SAM WHITNEY; GETTY IMAGES; SECRET LAB INSTITUTE



“The internet remains undefeated” glorifies
the removal of context, nuance, and thought.


‘The Internet Remains Undefeated’ 
Must Be Defeated

by Zak Jason
September 24, 2021


The classic comment and caption has become a meme in its own right.
Harmless as it may seem, a close study reveals dark undertones.


THE BIG BOAT stuck in the Suez Canal, Oprah waving off Meghan and Harry with her “Stop it” hands, all the Teletubbies boinking one another blue as the sun baby watches approvingly, a photo bashing trans athletes shared by Donald Trump Jr. These memes are unified not only in encapsulating the lunacy of 2021, but in the four words that have consistently appeared beside them and countless others, in captions as well as comments: “The internet remains undefeated.”

Surely you’ve seen these words, but maybe you haven’t read them. (Congratulations on your sanity.) An apolitical, amoral stand-in equally for lol, and thank you, used for both schadenfreude and firgun, “The internet remains undefeated” is the internet of phrases about the internet, existing everywhere and nowhere, meaning everything and nothing. A seemingly benign expression—until you say it back.

The internet remains undefeated.
The internet remains undefeated.
The internet remains undefeated.

The more I encounter these words, the more they pierce me with mortal dread. It’s not just the rotten onion of their ambiguity: When did the internet’s winning streak begin? What, or who, is it undefeated against? Ourselves, maybe. But then why are so many of us so jubilant about reminding ourselves that we’ve defeated ourselves? And what would, could, should defeating the internet look like? But my disdain for the saying is also because of its underlying sentiment. The true terror of “The internet remains undefeated” is that it’s most often used in lighthearted contexts, yet exposes the deepest darkness of our lives online, a darkness that we’ve become either blind to or numb to.

SEARCHES ON THE term “undefeated internet” suggest that the oldest extant usage of the ghastly phrase might belong to Timothy Hall (@peoplescrtic), a film critic and meme lord from Seattle. On the morning of August 12, 2013, he posted on Instagram a meme of a scowling Russell Westbrook, the mercurial NBA dynamo, photoshopped into a character selection screen from the arcade classic Mortal Kombat, with the caption “The internet remains undefeated.” It’s a textbook usage, the kind Hall says he’s been deploying on social media and in group chats in the years since. To him, the saying epitomizes the internet as the world’s great equalizer. “You can be POTUS,” he says, “or you can be a soccer mom yelling at a game, not knowing you’re being filmed. Everyone is fair game to become a meme. Maybe it’s POTUS who makes you into a meme, or maybe it’s my 14-year-old nephew. You may not know it’s your day, you just have to ride the wave and let the internet defeat you until it’s someone else’s turn.”

But Hall can’t take credit for coining the phrase; he says he must’ve picked it up from someone on the internet along the way. “If someone ever claimed to have invented it,” he adds, “the internet would defeat them. That’s the beauty of it.”

To a wide-ranging group of social media users like Hall, “The internet remains undefeated” is, on its face, a simple expression of joy, or nostalgia for a more joyous era of the internet. Ryan Milner, a professor of internet culture at the College of Charleston and author of The World Made Meme, says the phrase harkens back to a time, between roughly 2003 and 2013, when the internet was “still kind of this other place that didn’t operate by and could maybe transcend real-world rules.” This was the heyday of early YouTube and message boards like Something Awful, 4chan, and Reddit, “when you saw a flurry of subcultural activity and content creation that became kind of a tone setter for people who are still extremely online.” So in 2021, people comment “The internet remains undefeated” to a flourishing of memes about Bernie Sanders and his mittens or the discord between your fall plans and the Delta variant, because it recalls when life online seemed less about livestreamed mass murders and the algorithmically driven death of democracy and more about rickrolling and lolcats. At the surface level, says Milner, the phrase “is a way to kind of appreciate when the early spirit of collective creativity online resurfaces.”

People also use the phrase, Milner adds, as a way of “reacting to the randomness of what they encounter online.” Every piece of content “is made by a real person at the other end of the tubes. But we just see the funny picture. So instead of saying ‘Tim from Madison, Wisconsin, remains undefeated,’ we tend to collapse everything from everyone as being from ‘the internet,’ as if it’s this singular mystical being.” In that sense, the saying is a collectivist antivenom to unhinged individualism online.

“The internet remains undefeated” glorifies the removal of context, nuance, and thought.

But exuberant and egalitarian as the expression may appear, its undertones are much darker. For one thing, “The internet remains undefeated” is also a symptom of what Milner and fellow internet culture scholar Whitney Phillips call fetishistic flattening. This is the tendency for internet users to fixate on a meme or tweet itself, and not consider how or why it was created, the backstory of who or what’s being depicted and shared, or who may be harmed in the process. (The “Hide your kids, hide your wife” song, which belittles the man in the original clip, and deepfaked drunk Nancy Pelosi are all standard examples of fetishization.) In this way, “The internet remains undefeated” glorifies the removal of context, nuance, and thought. “Undefeated” in particular also captures how on social media, context is subsumed by combativeness. Beneath the surface, says Milner, the phrase is often “antagonistic and barbed,” and of “an atmosphere where how funny you are about what you produce and say, and how many people respond no matter what you say, is seen as a competition.”

Of course, context removal and ruthless competitiveness are embedded in dozens of other popular memes and replies to memes: Distracted Boyfriend, Galaxy Brain, Swole Doge vs. Meek Doge, so and so “woke up and chose violence.” But whereas those all celebrate the defeat of a single common enemy or idea lampooned in the meme itself, what makes “The internet remains undefeated” so deflating is that it celebrates our own collective defeat of ourselves. The internet’s unstated, vanquished opponent is us, the users who both consume and are the butts of the memes that phrase is often a response to. But deep down we all understand that we are also the internet, as the ones who populate it, generate its content, and created it in the first place. As Jeffrey Bloechl, a philosophy professor and phenomenologist at Boston College, told me, any problems that appear on the internet “can be traced back to things we human beings either did or failed to do when we made the thing.” After all, he adds, humans designed the internet to be boundless. “If the internet, strictly as internet, is fundamentally mathematical, it cannot itself be the source of any limits.” By that logic, “there is no way not to wonder whether in unleashing a power that is undefeated,” one that can transcend the limits of our own bodies and minds, we’ve also unleashed “a power to change what we are,” a power to defeat the human condition.

That is the horrifying economy of Those Four Words: There is no more haunting a distillation of the unstoppable seepage of technology into every fabric of our being than “The internet remains undefeated.” These words are a glaring reminder that the internet, of which I am a part, is defeating me. That in the moment I am reading them, I am devoting my attention not to my wife, infant daughter, friends, family, colleagues, wind rattling the window pane, or my breathing, but to what faceless strangers are saying about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friends’ balls, and to what quippy things I should be saying to faceless strangers about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friends balls. That gif of the Teletubbies having tantric sex? It exists only in my smooth, broken brain, a brain the internet broke so that I think in the way the internet wants me to think.

THE SUBTEXT OF “The internet remains undefeated” is a vaguely Zen koan: “We remain undefeated against ourselves.” Yes, it speaks to humanity’s ability to harness the internet to conquer individuals with collective humor. But it also speaks to how we’ve been harnessed by the internet’s power—a power we bestowed— and feel powerless to do anything about. Saying those four words only seems to perpetuate that unfortunate reality.

But recognizing this can also be a first step in taking power back. It’s telling that we often use these words in the silliest of circumstances—that even when we can all seem to set aside our many polarized differences and come together to laugh about someone hiding a testicle-swelling STD with fake symptoms of the Covid vaccine, someone still says “The internet remains undefeated” as a reminder that we are constantly fraying our humanity online. In that sense, the act of saying that “the internet remains undefeated” is an act of condemning what the saying itself celebrates. A human typed those words, words that can attune fellow humans to just how very online we are, but can also remind us that we have a choice. We can either fall right back into the unthinking slipstream and let the internet remain undefeated, or take our raised awareness and step away.

---

Zak Jason runs WIRED's research team, overseeing the fact-checking of stories for print, web, and video. He also edits WIRED's op-eds. He has written about everything from terrorism to Kidz Bop for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. Before WIRED, he was a writer and fact-checker for... Read more


Index - Process Sciences: Biology, Physics, Computing




Index to Process Sciences:
Biology, Physics, Computing
(listed in chronological order)






Quantum Eras of a Very Early Universe





Quantum Physics and Questions of Time












Process Quantum Physics
by Tim Eastman, Plasma Physicist

Alfred North Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism










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






Process Quantum Computing

x

Matt Segall & John Cobb - Whither Science? - unpublished

x

















The Evolution of the Earth's Atmosphere


x



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

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
Aug 9, 2021



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



* * * * * * * * *

Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot - Session 1
Jun 18, 2021



THE COBB INSTITUTE
In this session Tim Eastman, provides an introduction to the book and the first chapter, and Mikhail Epstein and Jude Jones offer a response.

00:00:00 - 00:06:27 - Introduction

00:06:28 - 00:13:50 - Welcome from John Cobb

00:16:27 - 00:41:14 - Presentation by Tim Eastman

00:42:16 - 00:52:14 - Response by Mikhail Epstein

00:53:35 - 01:07:01 - Response by Jude Jones

01:07:02 - 01:18:05 - Conversation between Tim and respondents

01:18:06 - Open Conversation Meeting Chat Text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KDjr...
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

00:44:08 Angela于思群: 来啦

00:51:44 George Lucas: Tim, your approach distinguishes actuality from possibility (potentiality).  But what about probability?  All things are (in principle) possible, but not all are equally probable.  Shouldn't you use probability as your contrast with actuality, giving credence to those states of matter/energy that are "likely alternatives" to what is actual?

00:52:34 Matt Segall: Good question, George. We’ll return to this later.

00:52:44 Matt Segall: To everyone: please do continue to populate the chat with your questions!

01:02:42 Rick Doherty QUUF Port Townsend: How do the concepts of the criticality of TIME, which is eliminated in much of current physics,  Lee Smolin in his recent book Time Reborn relate to your current thoughts, Dr. Eastman?

01:04:29 Wolfgang Leidhold: Tim: do I unterstand you correctly: you always equate experience and sensory, right? Or are there other forms of experience, e.g. imagination? And might these various forms, if they exist, go through a process of development as well?

01:16:15 Gary Herstein: Or Whitehead's own poetic reflections on his childhood in the Kentish countryside.

01:16:34 Farzad Mahootian: Building on George’s question, Tim, you bring in probability when you mention the “unravelling of every kind of necessity” (p.8)— the “new” kind of reasoning introduced powerfully in the 19th century with the population and statistical thinking as it is applied in thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, genetics etc) by Darwinian theory and statistical mechanics. So my question is (with tongue in cheek)  which is more important: possibility of probability, or the possibility of probability? In other words, which if either, is more fundamental?

01:27:49 Farzad Mahootian: Loving Judith’s comparison of Tim’s approach with the Alexandrian way of attacking the knot, and evolving it into a Wordsorthian inspiration.  Knots as answers! Subduers of imagination and understanding!  Celtic knottingly-repetitive, but not obscure. Never resist a good metaphor! Knotty metaphors as living building materials. Thanks Jude!

01:28:15 John Fahey / Cobb Institute / Claremont CA: Thank you Jude!

01:30:21 Benjamin Snyder: I'm interested in the questions about possibility and probability since it also then seems to involve distinguishing Peirce's categories of firstness and thirndess ("may-be" and "would-be").

01:30:35 Randall Auxier: I love the poetry but I worry it invites people on the fence to dismiss us as a bunch of dreamers.

01:30:42 Alexei: Continueing the narrative by Jude Jones, I would like to peronalize the "knots" that get propagated in nature, and they can be called "agency", more precisely "semiotic agency". This is the topic of a new interdisciplinary area of biosemiotics which assumes that semiotic agency and semiosis are coextensive with life. In addition to input, output, and context, we need to consider agency that integrates these three. Charles Morris proposed that agency or interpreter is a key component of semiotic process.

01:32:48 George Lucas: I have to pick up grandkids for afternoon babysitting in a few minutes.  Sorry to depart, b/c this was a great opening session.  Thanks Tim, Jude and Mikhail, and to John, Matt and Richard for sponsoring and organizing.  Great to see everyone.

01:34:46 Matt Segall: On Boolean Logic (the logic of actuality, as Tim suggests) for those note familiar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra

01:36:43 Jude Jones: Farzad your summary is so much more perspicuous than my verbiage lol! Thank you!

01:38:05 Gary Nelson: Also see Wikipedia Intuitionist Logic

01:38:27 Farzad Mahootian: Thanks! Just riffing on your tune!

01:38:46 Kevin Clark: "To be", "to know", AND "potentiology" ! I like it!

01:38:47 jonmeyer: Isn’t probability theory a specialized technique / high abstraction within the field of mathematics, and not a metaphysical distinction related to possible/actual?

01:42:02 Guadalupe: probability accounts for the actual possibility or potentiality

01:42:36 Guadalupe: Agree

01:42:45 Jude Jones: Maybe looking at probability’s metaphysical bite via Peirce’s ideas of “habit” in nature would be appropriate?

01:44:17 Randall Auxier: An observation: logically we are not obliged to start with actuality in a coordinate analysis. So long as we are not proposing to divide what is indivisible, we can analyze actual and possible and relational entities starting with any of these. This is the value of coordinate analysis. Thus we can begin with what is possible and follow its train to the actual (what Kant called a hypothetical logic), or begin with what is actual and follow its implications for what may be actual (what Kant called assertoric logic, and this includes probability theories), or we can begin with what is actual abstracted from its actuality and follow it to the possible (what Kant called problematic logic).

01:45:06 Randall Auxier: Pdeirce’s triads derive from Kant’s logic.

01:46:13 Gary Nelson: According to Robert Goldblatt in his book Topoi, the natural logic of SET theory is propositional, whereas Heyting’s intuitionist logic is appropriate for Category theory

01:48:32 Gary Herstein: Dummett also viewed Heyting logic as the base logic of metaphysics. I've argued for applying the categorical approach over the set theoretic one to ideas of basic metaphysical thinking.

01:53:16 Gary Nelson: Heating logic omits the Excluded Middle and Double Negation.

01:53:27 Gary Nelson: Heyting

01:55:46 Randall Auxier: Whitehead is in no way committed to non-contradiction and/or excluded middle, That is a very narrow ideology he always rejected.

01:56:48 Jude Jones: I’m intrigued by the possibility of defending Einstein’s Spinozism

02:01:25 Randall Auxier: I agree with Tim —leave General Relativity to its well-earned actuals grave.

02:01:36 Randall Auxier: actualist

02:02:46 Matt Switzer: To the esteemed Jungian scholar next to Tim: how do you see this Peircean and Whiteheadian framework as benefitting from or contributing to C. G. Jung’s cosmology and the relevance of dreams, especially in terms of the dreams for social transformation and the integration or repression of these dreams from or back into the personal and collective unconscious?

02:07:48 Jude Jones: That’s what I was suggesting with the reference to Levy Bruhl, who saw the spirit of “magic” in culture as a participatory comportment toward the cosmos

02:08:05 Jude Jones: Not toward, ‘in’!

02:10:09 Farzad Mahootian: @Jude and @Wolfgang. It is also the missing fourth that follows from the triadic view: it is matter (hyle) and magic.

02:10:13 Guadalupe: Is there a relationship between potentiality and final cause?

02:14:39 Farzad Mahootian: @Alexei: not just i/o not just input but agency; output is construction, context is [all other actualities]; acting anticipatorily… syymbolization is what agents do and this creates “the future”

02:15:06 Anderson Weekes: please include the chat in the recording that you post

02:17:03 Farzad Mahootian: Tim on Plato and Socrates: Socratic pointing to the good, Plato’s symbolization of Socrates pointing to the good life.

02:19:31 Jude Jones: I’m comfortable with panpsychism ;)

02:20:01 Farzad Mahootian: @TIm: I agree with  potential agency all the way down