Hello, Cy, hello, OMF II

First topic message reminder :

Testing.......

Yes, it is working.

Congratulations to Cyrellys & Co.!

I will be continuing the BPWH blog from Compass Morainn, which was a continuation from the original OMF site on ProBoards, which is in the process of being re-archived from that site.



(cont.)

Truth slippery.....?

Yes and no......

There are just two 'theories' of Truth......

1.) the Correspondence theory

2.) the Coherence theory

My simple thesis, and the thesis of the BPWH, is that everything that everyone has ever held dear, hangs in the balance between the two, diametrically opposed theories of truth.

Has life ever been simpler?



(cont.)

Welll...

For me the concept of "qualia" invalidates the correspondence theory, because it implies that there may be no universal, objective "world" against which to judge any given statement.

That leaves coherence, I guess.

Actually I tend to ignore the concept of truth altogether, because it feels to me like an epistemological trap.

Paul,

Ignore truth...?

If truth is not sacred, then, please, tell me just one thing that is sacred.

.

Well, for me consciousness is sacred. I think truth is just a concept, with no actual existence. On the other hand I think consciousness is the vessel for all reality, and thus beyond conception entirely.

But that's just me... Most people will agree that truth is sacred. That's their truth, though, not mine.

Paul,

Yes, consciousness is sacred, but......

What are we to do about it?

Is not Consciousness also a numbers game? If Cs is sacred, then the more the better. No?

.....rhetorical pause......

What does the phrase "more consciousness" mean to you, Dan?

For me consciousness as I have experienced it has many of the hallmarks of a "universal qualia" - a "thing beyond thingness". It either is or it isn't. It may be obscured in some people, or not fully expressed, but there's no question of there being more or less of it. In a sense, I see Consciousness as the Source that's discussed in various forms of the Perennial Philosophy.

I dunno, is this a useful discussion or not?

Cs = Universal qualia.......?

There is a pregnant thought...! But.....

Is there not a Noosphere/Commons of Consciousness? May we refer to it as the cosmic mind?

How may the CM best be re-presented to the Noosphere? And to what End, pray tell?


FWIW, this has been one of my more memorable days wrt electronic communication......

There are two conversations unfolding, and both of them involve Paul C, here and on the population email list.

This conversation is about ends and means. IMHO, we have the means, ie the Internet/Noosphere, but we have yet to agree on the ends.



(cont.)

I've seen you ask "To what end?" several times now here and in the email thread. I don't think it's a useful question, because I don't think there is an "End" - simply a continuous unfolding. "End" is one of those concepts like "truth" that is highly context-sensitive.

Paul,

There is no End.......?

Yes, this question is even more important than the truth question, or they may be seen as One!

True.... if there is no End, then there is no Truth. But.....

If there is an End, then there must also be a Truth, IMHO.

To say that there is no end is to see Time as an absolute.

Is Time absolute. Most physicists are willing to suspend judgment wrt the absoluteness of Time.

Are you also willing to do that, Paul?


And this question/issue works both ways..... If there is a Truth, then there must also be a commensurate End. If there is a universal Truth, then there must also be a universal End.

How so......?

It has to do with Craig's Simplicity.......



(cont.)

Absolute in what sense? I suppose time must end when the universe within which it operates is closed down. But from my point of view time only operates in the moment, past and future being illusions. So since the present moment is infinitely small, then time is absolute within that singularity. (WTF?)

But I don't know if such Advaitin hair-splitting is useful either. We either deal with the world in prosaic, dualistic terms, as most of the world does, or we deal with it in esoteric, nondualist terms as I tend to do.

Within my framework a lot of commonly accepted notions seem to evaporate, coalesce as unexpected absolutes or to exist as superpositions of quantum states - both yes and no at the same time. It makes communicating about the ideas themselves very hard, because I've departed from the "normal" underlying set of consensual definitions.

Paul,

You know what..... You and I need to have a conversation... I will send you, via PM, my phone #.


7:45-------

Paul and I had a lengthy convo about human motivation, and why we do not live by bread alone, and why we must factor that important fact into human salvation.

It has everything to do with the Noumenon/Numinous/Simple(!), and how it provides us with our bootstrap/leverage to save ourselves, with the help of the cosmic Noumenon, whatever that may turn out to be.


8:40--------

Before the convo with Paul, Jack and I had a conversation, ~ 5pm. Progress is being made, albeit one step/convo at a time.....




(cont.)

My conversations with Jack and Paul on Friday were helpful. Steve Salmony left a message on Saturday. The SfA meeting on Sunday did nothing to deflect my sense of a possible opening into the evangelical community.

Somehow, putting it all together, Grace&Green, using the MoAPS is going to happen. It's just a question of how soon it should happen. ASAP? That's my thought.

I spent a good part of the weekend continuing my struggle with atoms, and how best to bridge the Omega >> Alpha 'spark' gap. In neither case was there a definitive answer. I periodically rehash my struggle with atoms (and gaps) to keep them at bay, in their place. Their proper place is to been seen as logically emgent entities.

Does the Earth get restored, across the Gap? Not necessarily. There is an eternal aspect both to the pristine Earth and to the depleted Earth. We have no problem explaining the DE, given the PE and human activity. As much as possible, we wish to appeal to the DE to explain the PE. We can, up to a point, but no need to put too much burden upon a magical rebooting of every resource and wilderness. We simply strive for the path of least ontological resistance, whatever that may turn out to be. A time-traveling Noah's Ark is certainly going to be part of that picture.

A seemingly alternative view of Creation was presented several years ago on my BPW site. This was the Pokatok scenario, wherein Creation emerges out of a a virtual reality being entertained and entrained by a zodiacal Olympiad, if you will.

On that view, Creation begins as a virtual reality that is gradually substantiated, mainly through habituation. In that case, the gods were trapped in their virtual 'avatars', thus becoming real Avatars. Metabolism gradually took over, and the rest is, well, history!

As you see, on the BPW site, the Pokatok scenario was combined with the Jurassic Parc notion. Admittedly, neither scenario was terribly coherent, and neither was the combination. With the Noah's Ark/spark-gap notion, I'm adding a third scenario. Quite frankly, I'm doing little more than covering my bets, and patching the gaps with chewing-gum and tape. Should I be more worried that the whole BPWH contraption will disintegrate?

What, me worry?!

I'd rather build my castles in the metaphysical 'clouds', any day, than on the shifting sands of atomism. Atoms are just metaphysics for beggars. Atoms rock us to sleep, in our slumber of materialism. Waking up can be hard to do..... just hit that snooze alarm...... it's Groundhog Day.

Which is harder..... getting the oil out of the ground, or putting it back in?! At one point, I was entertaining carbon sequestration as a step in that direction. No reason not to. As beggars, we can't be choosy. As metaphysicians, we can be. We make the best of both worlds..... that's what the BPWH is about.

With the Pokatok model, the New Jerusalems of the future, become the Pokatok courts of the past. Those 12 megalopolises, housing our final 144 million, 'segue' into our initial megalithic temples, housing 144 thousand, using some traditional numbers, for the heck of it. The motherships become the Noah's arks. Sequestration? It certainly doesn't hurt for us to prime that metaphysical pump, should we so choose. But I can only spend one night a month worrying about it. Those pesky atoms? If we don't bother them, they won't bother us!



Are we any closer to getting anyone else on the MoAPS//BPWH page?

That may depend on Steve S, or someone similarly situated. Wrt the coherent truth, a little synergy will go a long way, but every journey has to begin with a first step. Eventually, the BPWH will be crowd-sourced, but that crowd has to begin somewhere. It all has to do with the Grace&Green effect.

Both the evangelicals and the greens need to grasp the severity of our situation. To a degree, they both do...... but there is a limit to what anyone can grasp of a problem, without also seeing a solution. And, yet, there are also fear mongers, amongst both groups. Is it possible to overstate the problem? It is certainly possible to overstate aspects of the resource crisis. The resistance of the mass media and the general public to dealing with any systemic bad news, just serves to provoke individuals to point in specific directions, and cry wolf. I don't fault them for trying. Even the cacophony of such ones does make a general and wider impression.

By the same token, there will also be resistance to seeing a solution, given that this is just the other side of the same difficult coin.

The initial focus of any wider sense of crisis will be on the limits to growth, setting aside questions of degrowth. Unlimited growth and progress has been the escape valve for scientific materialism and it's concomittant consumerism. It is the modern version of bread and circuses.

As the actuality of Limits is absorbed in the popular mind, folks will begin a serious reassessment of hope and inspiration. Can just a handful of us find a way to prime that pump? I can't imagine that it won't be tried, more than once.

So far, TBMK, it has not been tried. Certainly not in any coherent fashion. And I've just been apologizing for the lack of coherence on the part of the BPWH. As long as there are no alternatives that are more coherent, then we need have no great reservations on that score. A mere taste of coherence, a whiff of it, can take us all the way to the next level of it, that we know is lurking around the corner.

Coherence is always going to be a work-in-progress.

Keep in mind that our path back into coherence will release a psychic energy of 'condensation', completing this Carnot circuit of the ouroboros. What then was the Big Bang that fueled our 'expansion' out of the initial divine inspiration? There is a sense in which nature abhors the vacuum nonbeing. But why then just this finite BPW of being? Is there not an infinite vacuum to be filled with our infinite spirit? But those quantitative infinities are, by definition, incoherent. The eternally incompleted circuit is incoherent. Self-realizing being is necessarily self-contained. That is the logic of the Alpha & Omega.



(cont.)

Late yesterday and into the wee hours, I resumed my struggle with atoms.......

What am I trying to do with atoms? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Generally I'm just working by analogy...... analogy hopping, if you will, from one to the other, and back again.

Perhaps this is my own version of an object oriented ontology (OOO). But instead of eliminating the human orientation, I'm simply putting that orientation in brackets.

My point of departure seems to have been with fungi, as in.... there is a fungus among us.

This led me to the notion of a swarm (flash mob?), which, let us suppose, is the prototypical object. See? I'm just returning the favor to the OOO boys....... You don't wish to privilege people. Wonderful! But, by the same token, we should also not privilege atoms, either! And, actually, they don't, but they just don't want to make a federal case out that neglect.

But I do! So, now, watch me (try to!) do it...........

Part of this OOO* agenda/game is that every object must have some sort of psychic charge. IOW there is a psychic Ether, of which every thing with any pretensions to thinghood, including us, is ultimately composed. Technically speaking, we are all solitons in the psychic ether. An even more technical term might be that of the 'topological charge'. IMHO, the integers are the solitons in the field of the reals.

Am I not playing fast and loose with ontology? Well, was there ever any other way to play ontology?

How does the (etheric?) field of the reals relate to the psychic Ether? Should we ask the Pythagoreans? What would they say? Hmmm..........

IMHO, the Mandelbrot must have something to do with it, in the concomitant complex/imaginary field.

I'm also saying that thought forms are solitons in the psychic ether. Language is what pins down those forms, albeit with a degree of arbitrariness.

Then we have the 'physical' fields, all four of the known ones...... weak, electric, strong and gravitational, which, according to Unified Field Theory, are all manifestations of one underlying field. The 'elementary' particles are a manifestation of the E8 group, embedded(?) in that unified field.

So now we have 3 fields...... psychic, physical and numerical, and we're looking for their logical union. Note that the physical field assumes a background space-time manifold, which is dynamically associated with the gravitational field, having emerged from the space-time singularity of the big bang.

One way that objects emerge from the physical field/manifold is via the Quantum, via first and second quantization.

Outside of its mathematical representation, we have virtually no concept of a field or of its quantization. No one really noticed the gravitational field until, with the development of military ballistics, we were able to attach numbers to it. Call that the zeroth quantization!

Now we come back to the concept of the swarm, which applies across most fields, including, possibly, mathematics and physics, if we are allowed sufficient license.

Biologically speaking, you and I are cellular colonies, which may be viewed as glorified swarms. Phenomenologically speaking, you and I are swarms of thoughts, which we also like to think of as somehow being ensouled. What is a soul, other than a psychic swarm.....?

Dunno what, but I suspect there is a cosmic superswarm, also known as the Monad. Everything is a chip off of that Block. But.......

But only we are capable of egoic development. Is the Monad also egoic? Maybe not.

The only egoic soul is the human soul. So what does that make us? Hmmm..... it makes us God's little helper clowns/clones/spawn. How's that?

We are God's clowns, she is our Tinkerbell...... we have to clap to keep her alive. In the Apokatastasis, we lose our identity and our egos. Do we lose consciousness? The only thing we don't lose is love, of which there is nothing left to lose. That is our freedom.

Love is the cosmic swarm/glue. It is the ultimate gluon. All objecthood is comprised of solitons or glueballs of love.

That is the Ether. Get over it.

There may be a cosmic id, but probably not an ego. That Id is the Omnipotency, also the OmniPresence, that we also think of as the shining Present.

How am I doing, so far? Have I left anything out?

So, then, what is that rocking chair in the other corner of the room? Is it a glueball of love?

Of course. It is a direct manifestation of that, and that is just how I'm able to perceive it, directly, and relate to it, directly. What about the chair's photons hitting my retina? Hmmm......

Be careful here, smitty, this could be a trap......

I'd like to say that they are an abstraction, if not a distraction, but then so is everything else, besides our quasi-monadic souls. BTW, for those who may be tuning in late, there is only one sapient soul, which is being recirculated, 10^10 times. You and I have nearly as much claim upon it as does Tinkerbell.

There are also totemic souls, which derive from the zodiacal/olympic manifestation of the Monad. See the Jurassic Parc link of the BPW. Where were we......?

Photons (chair-wise).......?

I'm inclined to suggest that that they are atoms (metabolic-wise).

Such (-wise) atoms and photons are glueballs of logic....? Well..... not quite......

There is also, ontologically speaking, yet another (fundamental?) field....... This is the blind-spot, which (may) happen to operate like the uCs, wrt Ned Block's concern about the panpsychic catastrophe.

Yes, of course, the psychic Ether is that which figures into pantheism and panpsychism.

(2:43--------)

KIM, that the PP catastrophe is not 'unrelated' (dts/sr) to the IR and UV catastrophes, ontologically speaking.

God has no blindspots. Nor do you and I. We do have a collective uCs (CuCs), which will be surfacing during our prospectively foreshortened Millennium. That's when the chickens (little) come home to roost. I'm wont to think of myself as the prototypical such chicken, as in a quasi-beSoTted such.

So, yes, the chair-wise photons are logical glueballs, as are the integers. God gave us the integers, all the rest is the work of humankind. Or was is the other way around?

So, yes, closely allied with the (Pythagorean) quantitative field is the logic field, so beloved of our Geek Squad and of Boole, Whitehead and Turing, not to mention the (viciously reductive) Circle of Vienna..... rendered toothless by WVO Quine.

I believe in numerology, which is derivative of the zodiacal/astrological (and later) (duodecimal) system, taken up by the Babylonians. I have recounted, before, the original fickle-finger-of-fate gesture, the five-finger salute to the Egyptians by the departing (Exodus) Israelis. There remains the tension between the metric and the English system of mensuration, as particularly adumbrated in the BPWH....... (see day 8/12/03).

So, the chair-wise photons are part of our logical blindspot, filled in by science, and not unrelated to the fiberoptic photons that bring these words to you. Logic holds the world together, and love makes it go around. Would there be any logic w/o love? What do you think?

But, in the end, all that we truly know is the Monad. Everything else is for show.... and tell. Getting there is half the fun, if you are willing to call this 'fun'.


4:30--------

So, yes, it's all about the Ether and the Monad. Which comes first? The potent or the potentia? Logically, it would be the field of potentia. But it may be more a question of semantics.

Well, maybe I need to get back to my SfA homework, concerning the Resurrection...... What is the ontology of the Rapture?

And what, pray tell, is the difference between logic and semantics?


5:35----------

This may be the best link for watching the Transit of Venus.......

http://www.livescience.com/20747-venus-transit-webcasts-watch-live.html

It is connected to several observatories. The transit should start shortly after 6pm EDT.

Should we wonder if this was part of the Mayan/Venusian calendar?

Or of the Birth of Venus/Athena.......?




(cont.)

It follows from the OOO* that Creation has been crowd sourced. This has been a central tenet of the teleology of the BPWH, all along. This is where our sapience comes in. Sapience is the backbone of Coherence, which is the glue of Creation.

Does this render God otiose? In whose image are we created, if not in God's? If we are a chrysalis, then who will be the butterfly, if not God? In our very narrow, very temporal sense, the butterfly will have a very brief existence. However, needless to say, sub specie aeternitas, the butterfly is eternal..... so are you and I, and so is the shining present of its presence.

Closely related to the notion of crowd-sourcing, in the OOO*/BPWH, is the fact of its fundamental employment of Social Constructionism, or Soc/Con, if you will. This is an intersubjective idealism, wherein the panpsychic Ether is ground, and unified field, of all being. The Sacred Canopy is another worthy concept, herein.

The modern minded would be inclined to see Peter B as being a reductionist wrt religion. However, the cocoon of the chrysalis is our canopy, and that cosmic shell is about to crack. There is a strong sense in which scientific materialism is also our ersatz canopy.

And, thus, are we being setup to experience the Crack in the Cosmic Egg. They don't call me Chicken Little, for nothing.

Above all else, the Force is with us...... and in us. We shall prevail. The outcome has been written in the stars from day one. That this is not totally obvious to everyone yet, is just because God is a drama queen, and, so, is always inclined to brinksmanship. So, please, don't begrudge her of this little endgame!
---------------


The above outline of the OOO* is, unfortunately, just for my own reflective equilibrium. There is no audience ready for it, just now, and I don't know what it would take to put together such a group. Neither Grace nor Green are ready. They each have their own comfortable niches, and they not inclined to go out and do battle, other than in the quasi-ritualized manners to which they are each accustomed.

How long would it take to show them another way? It seems that it would take longer than any known one of them would presently be willing to devote to that task. What might change that circumstance? Not anything over which I have control. Patience and insight are all that I can bring to this table. The timing of it all is well above my pay grade, but that will not prevent me from speculating.

Paul C comes closer to being in the right place for the BPWH, than anyone on either side, and that is why he is also an outsider, and much more comfortable with pantheism than with theism. He has my number and is a new member, here. That is about as much as I can do or hope for, for the time being.

It could well be that there is a conceptual breakthrough that is waiting to happen. It would be a breakthrough that would lead to a tangible new result that could be communicated to interested outsiders. I remain open to this, and try to keep vigilant, as well. Am I sufficiently vigilant..... could I not be more so? God knows!

My main insights have come spontaneously. Perseverance is great, but it seldom bears a direct connection to inspiration.


11am------------

In the meantime, am I any closer to understanding perception? I have to admit that the idea of indirect perception (IP) seems virtually unassailable. It lies at the core of the correspondence theory of truth. That, and its attendant atomism, are the central pillars of that entire worldview. How do we punch our way out of that paper bag? We don't. One has to be clever. Have I been sufficiently so? Obviously, not!

IP is always there, right in our faces! All we have to do is blink, and the world goes away..... or does it? Turn off the light, and stumble around the room, looking for the chair. If that doesn't prove IP, what could disprove it?

IP is cut of the same cloth as space-time and atomism. We'd sure look foolish without either one. But that doesn't mean that reality has to stop with those appearances, those constructs. Saving those appearances is not an end in itself. Saving them has been the means to our mastery of them, up to a very significant point. Now that we have arrived, to what do we turn next?

Now, with the knowledge explosion of the Correspondence theory, we can only imagine an impending knowledge implosion, brought on by the Coherence theory...... a theory that will, very decisively, look the gift-horse of IP in the mouth. Does the OOO* even begin to do this? Hardly..... at best it gives a few broad hints. The glare of the IP is so bright that when we turn it off, we seem only able to stumble around, knocking over the bric-a-brac. Bruised shins are our only reward.

IP makes so much sense, it is so coherent, it explains so many details....... all the way up to our poor little, epiphenomenal minds. Sitting inside that little ivory tower of consciousness, only a few overweened philosophers can seriously question its basic premise of objective facticity. And what have they gotten us, in return? Just something that we can scratch our heads and smile about.

The irony of IP, however, is that it leaves us with a perfect objectivity, but without any 'real' objects. It is to the task or restoring objecthood that the original OOO turns its attention. In doing so, it has to jump through several metaphysical hoop. Restoring objecthood is no mean feat, and there is precious little agreement about where even to begin.

What I'm saying is that IP is not something that can just be patched up. It will require a much more radical surgery. It is a castle built on sand.

But, hey, my castle is built on a cloud, so who am I to kick sand in anyone's face....?!

And, wait....... our modern world is filled with all sorts of wonderful technological objects, just like this fine little iPad. Who is to question the objecthood, the objectivity of this fine little machine? Surely, I jest. Surely, there is a screw loose. Hmmm...... tell me about it!

I ask only, where is the soul of my machine? Tell me that it's something more than a collection of transistors and logic gates. Ask Steve J and his former marketing department. They'll tell you a thing or two about Soul. It's all in the package? Is the OOO(*) just about marketing?

What is a package? Aren't you and I packages? Which is to say, as I pointed out several days ago....... where is the Object, without the Subject? Way out in left field....?!

Intuitively, every marketer knows more about Soul than does your local preacher. But they are smart enough not to make a federal case of it. They're only looking for a few more coins in the collection plate.

So, yes, my iPad is a social construct that happens to be useful, in keeping me off the street and off the campuses. This is a pragmatic theory of objecthood, but where does the cosmology come in? It comes in if we concern ourselves with the best possible world, wherein iPads may or may not have a place, from the PoV of the super-Swarm (of subjects) that some of us refer to as God..... just a slight emendation of Plato's heaven!

How does an iPad differ from a tree, object-wise? Is it not the birds who construct the trees? In many cases, according to Darwin, it was the birds who made possible the fruiting trees, albeit unwittingly. And, quite evidently, the birds did not need our help. The both got along just fine without us, and they would thank us not to cut down their forests.


2:30-----------

Trees do not exist outside of ecosystems, nor we, outside of societies. But we seem determined to exist beyond nature, transcendentalists that we tend to be. And would we be missed? Not by the birds and the bees, bless their little hearts! We can just take all our sapient coherence, and put it where the Sun don't shine, beSoTed that we are!

The anthropic principle is great, say the birds and the bees, but, next time, just hold the Anthropos, thank you very much!

If the birds, bees and atoms are inhabiting our blindspot, who inhabits theirs? Surely, it's not us!

Where is the vitalism without the Vitalis? Where is the quantum without 'Wigner's friend'? Vitalis? Perhaps I meant to say Telos....... just a typo! How else may the circle of life be unbroken, if not at the cosmic level, pray tell? Aren't we the missing link? Golly, if we're not, then we'd better kiss our little hineys, goodbye!

You see how I have to struggle with the ontology, on a daily basis. Another day older, and I still owe my soul to the company store. When do I wise up?

The buck has to stop somewhere, and we thought it stopped with God. But, evidently, God had another thing in store for us. And I'm the sucker who volunteered to be the little messenger boy.

No system, Eco or otherwise, can be a system, if it's not self-contained. Well, except for the energy input. And that's why we have this cosmic Carnot circuit, called the Ouroboros..... well, by me anyway. And that's why God is mostly the cheerleader. Task master? Kinder & Gentler? Why couldn't she have left well-enough, alone? Does something always have to be better than nothing? Ask the Buddhists..... stop the world.... I want to get off! Ok, then, just 200 more years..... I promise.... scout's honor....


Yes, it's that simple, and it's been staring us in the face, all along...... the Circle of Life (CoL).

If it ain't Cosmic, it ain't nothing. There you have the OOO*. I just never quite had the fortitude to push it over the edge.... well, yes, over the top! That is the logical beginning and and End of all ontology. It's the Alpha & Omega, and it weren't invented here! Trust me, on that score, at least.


4pm-------------

And, here, we thought that evolution was..... what......? A random walk in a dark park? A long walk off a short pier....??

Who'd a thunk it was a Circuit? Well, the Buddhists thought it was a cycle? Pretty close...... but no cigar?!

It's all about the big Bootstrap in the Sky. And, sports fans, we're the buckle...... wouldn't you know it......

What the heck is ontology, if it's not bootstrapped? Is it bits of logic swerving in the dark?

Is it Six billion Characters in search of an Author?

Why......? Why a sacred bootstrap? Does it have to do with the sacred Swarm? Is this the Lord of the Flies? Hmmm.......... Is there a Fungus among us?

And here we thought we were all dressed up, with nowhere to go...... except home!!



Does this explain the birds and the bees? Are they going to be nice to us, after all we've done 'to' them? Will they begrudge us the buckle spot? The blindspot?

Atoms....? What do they owe us? Is it all about Wigner's friend? Or what about Schroedinger's Cat, or....... What is Life?

Somebody's gonna have to nail this Sucker..... said PP, washing his hands.


I really should get back to the resurrection.... a-la SfA homework...... What are we to make of this? A Federal case?


5pm-------- The power went off, so I've switched to 3G.........



(cont.)

The CoL, circle/circuit of life, was my little breakthrough, yesterday. That is how ontology is bootstrapped. Bonafide objects require bonafide subjects. If evolution is to include subjects, it must have a Telos, wherein the Alpha = the Omega. It must be a circuit.

Of course, within the BPWH/OOO*, I am treating evolution as the Chain of Being. The deep time of it is what...... ex post facto.....? We are here to save that appearance.

This is how the (vital) force is with us. Causation works as much backward as it does forward. Final causation is the mechanism behind the CoL.

Creation is a (vortex?) soliton within the psychic ether. That was the original singularity, the 'primoridal' Thomian catastrophe. A Mandelbrot-type singularity is another possibility.

I believe that Graham Harman's Quadruple version of OOO does implicitly include the subject, but he chooses to not make a cosmogonic case out of that, not so minor, detail. I do make such a case. That is what the BPWH/OOO* is about.

But does this take care of the birds and the bees........?

My argument is that our conventional notion of an ecosystem is not a system at all, because it is not self-contained. And nothing can be self-contained w/o a bonafide Self. Am I playing semantics here, or am I just trying not to kiss my hiney, goodbye?

It is very hard for us, moderns, to get over our infatuation with deep time and deep space. Only if we are lost in space, can our egos feel truly free.


So, now, where does the BPWH/OOO* sit wrt theism v pantheism? Hasn't the notion of the almighty Swarm put me over the top wrt theism? Well, the best possible Creation must have the best possible Creator. If that Creator wishes to maximize creaturely participation in the Creation, then swarm it is. Get over it.

And do keep in mind that the Ouroboric circuit is also a 'quantum' observational loop, analogically speaking, anyway. Yes, something quantum-like provides the logical foundation of our time-loop or closed time-like curve (CTC).

(11am.....)

We, humans, readily succumb to stagefright. We truly do not cotton to the cosmic spotlight. We cherish our anonymity, in almost every case. Yet, here we are, nonetheless, ready or not.


Platonic Forms are so neat and clean, in contrast to the BPWH Swarms. This seems like a reversion to the Humean notion of the Associationism of ideas, which also led to Behaviorism. How do we avoid atomism and sense data, wherein bits of almost anything rule the roost? Quine's holism of meaning is our primary line/circle of defense, wherein all definitions are necessarily circular. This is also the hermeneutic circle.

But what does semantics have to do with slime molds......? Slime molds are a striking manifestation of vitalism. But are there not perfectly adequate reductive explanations for sliming, you know..... chemotaxis, and the like....?

Sure, up to a point...... and a rather seductive point it is..... Rather like the indirect theory of perception (IP), no? Virtually overwhelming......

If I were in the field of molecular biology, I think I would find it rough going. But, then, what about Omics? I love omics. But how can this love be requited?

What about developmental biology......you know..... all that Chrysalis stuff that sends poets into rhapsodic fits?

Are we going to allow the bacterial slime molds to defeat poetry? Where is Gaston Bachelard, when we need him? The Poetics of Slime.... it must be sublime.... Vitalism/animism has to start somewhere. Did you know that the (slime) bacteria invented the Crazy Ivan?

I find this tripartite classification interesting. And then see the LUA. This is how us poets have to operate. We have to surround our target, to find a weakness. The close relation of the unikont to the LUA suggests that we appeal to the very significant problem of abiogenesis. If we're gonna play God of the Gaps, we had better choose our gaps carefully.

Note bene, that there are currently, at the very least, a couple of dozen models for abiognesis. That's a lot of plaster to cover that MoAG in the CoL. I particularly like the ET models.... from exobiogenesis to directed panspermia.

But, no, the real MoAG is the mind gap..... as in the mind-body problem.


5pm----------

A favorite target for the ID/IrC set is the evolution of flagella. And see the Panda's Thumb site, for a compilation of critiques of ID/IrC. It does seem the the molecular biologists are managing to hold the ID crowd at-bay. But what would victory look like, on either side?




(cont.)

I'm now reading...... Uprooting the Tree of Life, SciAm 2000. Instead of an LUA, last universal ancestor, we now have an ancestral (proto-procaryote) community, all sharing bioactive material, by hook and by crook......

What does this do to the problem of abiogenesis? Is it still a MoAG, or has it been sufficiently fragmented to undermine the whole idea of ID/IrC? I suspect the latter. This is why the GoG argument has been flimsy from the beginning.

This major revisioning of evolution is the result of the rapidly expanding database of the molecular sequences of a vast array of bioactive materials across all phyla, and this includes the recent discovery of a third domain of evolution..... the archaea. But there lay the evolutionary hitch, as noted in the Uprooting article........ It has been determined that eucaryotes evolved from archaea, not directly from bacteria. Nonetheless, many individual molecular sequences found in the eucaryotes appear to have been transferred directly from the bacterial domain, after the major branching episode from the archaeal line. Thus has horizontal gene transfer been determined to play a crucial role in all (pre-germcell dependent?) evolutionary stages, going back, almost certainly to a protobiotic community, rather than just to some hypothetical LUA.

The point is that Complexity, per se, is not irreducible, not in any specific sense. Rather, I would certainly argue, instead of gaps and saltations, we are finding a process of 'infilling'. Obviously I'll need to elaborate on this notion of infilling.

Thus, it is just in the last decade, or so, that evolution has been found to be essentially non-linear. How does this translate to an immaterialist PoV?

At first blush, it seems to put even more emphasis on the atomic/molecular PoV. But let's be more careful.......

And, now, according to the article, at least a fourth evolutionary domain, probably now extinct, may be needed to explain various 'orphan' genes that have been discovered, scattered about, in the other three, extant, domains.

Then there is this article....... Is the evolutionary tree turning into a creationist orchard?......

When we look at our smaller cousins, the ones we need microscopes to observe, we notice that they do not reproduce as we do. Bacteria freely swap clusters of genes between each other. Scientists call this sexual transmission, but it is nothing like sexual reproduction in the animal and plant kingdoms. Bacteria even swap these gene clusters between individuals of completely different orders. Unlike mammals, who can only spread their genes into the next generation and only by mating with mammals of the same species, bacteria live in a massive orgy of DNA-mixing that makes the 1970s look like a church fundraiser (unless, that is, your local church is a pentecostalist megachurch). Some biologists even question whether we should use the term “species” when describing bacteria.

Don't you love it when Creationists talk dirty........!

So, yes, we've gone from a tree of life to a web of life. We've gone from a biological big-bang, to something a lot fuzzier. It still doesn't solve the problem of abiogenesis, it just makes it a lot muddier. A lot more relational?? For someone as skeptical of the Big Bang, as am I, this looks like a new opening. A sucker hole, or a succor hole?


4pm-----------------

I've spent the last several hours doing a wikipedia tour (self-guided, random) of micro and molecular biology, particularly from an evolutionary and symbiotic PoV. E.g. take a look at the google images associated with plastids. Just those can be mind boggling. And so are the images associated with the bacterial phage viruses, even much simpler, supposedly.

As with physics, as one goes down in scale, the complexity only seems to increase. This is also true, in biology, of going back in time, although not in physics, necessarily. But, wrt physics, that may be an illusion, since we are, in time, going back to a purely quantum, pre-geometric domain, from which the simplicity of space-time emerged.

The proto-biotic regime of the common ancestral community may have been vastly more complex the today's ecosystem.

Read up on the lambda phage. Up to 70% of the total number of bacteria are infected by phages, at any given time. I get the strong impression that this relation must also be strongly symbiotic, although I have not seen it spelled out, yet.

With both physics and biology, the deployment of the complexity seems to signal that there is a simplicity lurking, just off the screen.


In a couple of hours, I'll be heading to Cosmos&Creation at Loyola. It looks good, and check out Martin Nowak, next year's speaker, while you're at it, and especially his Supercooperators, as linked. My only question is this....... is it evolution that explains altruism, or is it the other way around...... taking a more pantheist perspective?!

Are we not just witnessing more manifestations of the panpsychic catastrophe?

We tend to think of genes as the super-competitors, but, as Martin points out, genes are also super-cooperators, otherwise they wouldn't be living together on chromosomes! It is Omics that is pointing us to the greater Simplicity. Omics is everywhere, especially on the internet.



(cont.)

This year's C&C speaker is Celia Deane-Drummond, a British academic theologian, with a background in biology. Her talk last evening was entitled 'Christ and Evolution as Theodrama'. She specializes in Ecotheology, i.e. sustainability. This next year she will 'lead a research team of theologians' at the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton University on the topic of Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature, funded by Templeton. Currently she is a professor of theology at Notre Dame University, IN.

And, yes, Celia does prove the point of the MoAPS......... Theology looks very funny without it. They are left with the very short end of a very long stick, and they try to grin and bear it. What else can they do, pray tell, without storming the mighty fortress of Scientific Materialism? Fools must rush in, where angels and Cecelia fear to tread.

Then I read Templeton's 'Humble Approach Initiative'. I can't help but think of Churchill's quip...... “Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.” Rome is burning, and the theologians are pouring their teacups on the fire.

Celia's talk today is "Christ and Ecology as Deep Incarnation". I would like to ask if she has read Thomas Torrance's Space, Time and Incarnation. She does not mention Thomas in her recent book, Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom.

She does mention Moltman's view of space as God's kenosis. The other side of the coin is space as God's pleroma/plerosis.

Now I have do decide about attending her 10:30 lecture. If I go to that, I may have to stay for Greg's afternoon talk on Complementarity and Complexity.


10:45---------------

Well, I'm back,,,,,,,, @C&C, for CCD's second talk 'Christ and Ecology as Deep Incarnation'...... based, in part, on her book Christ and Evolution.

She will be using the notion of the DI to avoid both pantheism and monism.

Theodrama comes from Balthasar, HUV.

John......... Logos.... the sarx comes the doxa. Logos kyriou..... Verb....

Life giving, illumination, creative...... dabar in prologue?

These were closely related with the Hebrew notion of Wisdom, etc.

She says that the Logos relates to ecology thru contingency.

Word and Sopia........ causes division and rejection..... appeared on Earth and lived with us.

BUT only Jesus became flesh.

Sergii Bulgakov..... Sophiology, more Greek influence.

Passion...... creaturely mortality.....

Christ/Humanity as Microcosm.... Colosians..... wisdom reinterpreted wrt Cross/blood..... grounding of wisdom. Pushes aside other creatures?

Balthasar seems to restrict the Theodrama to the Cross.

DI >>>> goes beyond the Cross. Could be Trinity w/o the Cross.....

DI >>>>> Pneumatology

Old view of ecology as a stable, closed system,.... But now we have a more dynamic view, that includes a human interaction, and this opens the door to the Spirit & Theodrama. Agency in other creatures?

What is the distinct role of humans? Did religion evolve? Our religious capacity may have a biological basis, while emphasizing human freedom. Creatures may respond to Divine, but probably w/o a personal focus.

Transformative movement, but not a spatial descent or extension. Christ is not merely emergent, but is with Creation.

Theodrama requires Stewardship (not her word). Calling for a holistic approach to our role.

Dabar is Hebrew for word, but has an historical dimension, unlike Logos

Sophia connects universal to particular.


Q&A........

Passion of her approach.... More intuitive..... still has passion for science

New Creation...?? Something new and definite is coming in....



1:30----------

Complementarity and Complexity........ Greg Derry..... Prof of Physics @Loyola U (Balt)

Complexity theory...... Stuart Kaufman...... At Home in the Universe

Clayton, Morowitz, E Jantsch, Nancy Murphy.

Simplicity emerges from complexity..... strong or weak emerg.?

Nonlinear dynamics..... Strange attractor appears in phase space. Fractal geom.

Chaos in the menstrual cycle...... Paula Derry....

Bohr's philosophical mentor..... Harald Hoffding... inherent limits to knowledge, beyond QM.

Mind/body problem...... Science/myth wrt cosmos.... sacred v secular view of nature...



6:40-----------

Craig D and Sam have been having some difficulty finding my many references to Craig's Simplicity, here at the (partially) resurrected OM. They will be calling me tomorrow on Skype.

In the meantime I have finished with the C&C conference at Loyola U. I'm glad I went. It shows how far the academics are out of the loop. I am still able to suppose that Craig and I are in that loop, but we shall see.

Also, in the meantime, my sister, Deborah, and I are preparing for our time in MT, starting Friday, to pay homage to Louise. This evening she, Deborah, is taking some friends over to Nancy B. Ellis' place, to celebrate the visit of the USS GWHB to Walker Pt. The family will be taken on a brief cruise, tomorrow. It is the last of the Nimitz class.

I had a brief convo with Aliyah. I'm sure that this will be begrudged.



(cont.)

I'm reviewing my advance copy of Craig Dilworth's Simplicity, expecting a possible call from him and Sam, in Sweden.

My main concern is whether Simplicity can speak to our resource crisis that was outlined in Craig's earlier book, Too Smart.

Is not the Telos an essential aspect of the Simple, in as much as simplicity is allowed to have aspects.

Does the Simple emerge from the Complex, or does it go the other way?

What is the necessity of the Complex? Is the Simple not self-sufficient?

In both Buddhism and Xianity, it could be said that complexity/Maya is the result sin or karma. But only in X can those appearances be saved. Without sin, there can be no Jesus..... felix culpa!!

But only in X, is Creation essentially valuable, sin or no sin. It is just that Creation has been burdened by sin. 'Be fruitful and multiply' only makes sense in that positive context.

Primordial being is analytically simple, while evolution is synth. simple.


3:40-------------

Just had a convo with Craig...... clarifying a major oversight, on my part...... in Simplicity he is doing, as he clearly states, a meta-metaphysics, which is only supposed to be epistemological rather than ontological. This is still hard for me to fully appreciate, in that, as a gnostic, I seldom bother to make that distinction.

An important, related point is that epistemological simplicity is strongly dependent on one's PoV. But does this mean that there is no direct relevance of the one to the other? That's what is difficult for me to grasp. I don't have the patience to spend so much energy on the philosophical preliminaries. I would always be reaching for the ontological payoff.



(cont.)

Craig was not about to cut me any slack on my ontological interpretation of Simplicity.

Has he overly relativized the notion by seeming to entirely subjectivize it? Can there be no such thing as objective simplicity? Is this not the whole point of immaterialism? Is Craig not trying to subvert our metaphysical aspirations by imposing his meta-metaphysics on top of it?

This strategy seems to have a strong postmodern bias in its implied undermining of the metanarrative aspect of any robust metaphysics. Is the strategy entirely neutral, as Craig repeatedly insists, or is it a defeater for any sort of monism?

Is there no way to turn this sword around, to repurpose it to a nobler, metaphysical cause?

So, yes, I'm inclined to suppose that, with his meta-metaphysics, Craig is using this legerdemain to deconstruct all of metaphysics, and take us back to the good old days of logical positivism, with just a little frosting of simplicity on that inedible infrastructure.

I think I should focus on his chapter 7, on the mind-body problem.


10:20----------

I have asked Craig for his, Meta-metaphysical take on Object Oriented Ontology, especially as outlined by Graham Harman in his Quadruple Object.



2:15-----------

I'm continuing an exchange with Craig D....... Chronologically below is my side of the exchange.......

Craig,

I would be very interested to get your take on OOO, especially as outlined by Graham Harman in his Quadruple Object.......

Dan

Not truncated..... just brief.  

Here is the link...... http://www.amazon.com/The-Quadruple-Object-Graham-Harman/dp/1846947006 

And a review.......

 In this book we again encounter Harman's voice and the extraordinary force of his theses. Starting from an initial simplicity, they ultimately attain a degree of complexity and fascinating depth- but always step by step, in such a way that the reader is never distracted. (Quentin Meillassoux, Ecole normale superieure, author of After Finitude) 

 

Then see these two wiki entries...... 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Harman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_Realism 

Graham is also also considered a subjective idealist, panpsychist, and anti-anthropocentric.  

I'm not sure that the SI and AA designations are not contradictory. 

Did you and I ever discuss the so called Panpsychic Catastrophe that is the bogeyman of neuro-philosophy?  Ned Block blurted out this subversive phrase in a talk at Hopkins, also attended by Sam.  

Craig,

And here is another thought wrt Simplicity/M-M.........

Is there any passion in philosophy, if we are not striving for an ultimate PoV?  Can there ever be a love of wisdom without this transcendental objective....... of a divine Apokatastasis?  

It does seem that your take on Simplicity helps us to construct a scorecard for all the previous failures to achieve this goal.  Thus do these re-positioned failures become our launching pad toward the singularity of the apokatastatic/panpsychic catastrophe, also known as the apocalypse.  

Are we then Too Smart, or just barely smart enough?  

Technology was a partial means to achieving the Noosphere.  But now we have to be willing to kick aside that step-ladder.  Yes?

Dan

Craig, 

Superior alternative?  Is there any alternative.....? 

Ok, then, are you not, with Simplicity & Too Smart, 90% of the way to constructing the meta-historical PoV that will be necessary for us to complete our Errand into the Wilderness.......? 

http://www.amazon.com/Errand-into-Wilderness-Perry-Miller/dp/0674261550 

Do we have an alternative, at this late hour?  Does humanity not deserve a break?  Have we not paid our dues, down here?   

Dan 

4:10---------

Well, the USS GHWB did have to get permission from Leon P to take its little jaunt up to Walker Pt, in case you were wondering. And 50 of the crew did get a free lunch, on the point.


I have received only brief but polite responses from Craig. I surmise that he does not wish to jeopardize his newly found, intellectual respectability, by associating with someone who is even further from the intellectual mainstream than is he.

That, of course, will not prevent me from making use of his hard-won philosophical insights.



(cont.)

Allow me, please, to struggle with Simplicity and OOO.......

Both of these programs are sympathetic with non-reductionism, which generally implies some form of panpsychism and/or immaterialism. Quite naturally, they tend to gloss over the physicalist explanations of phenomena.

It is true that there is no reductive explanation of irreversibility, in general, since all basic physical theories are time-reversal invariant. The laws of thermodynamics/entropy are derived through coarse-graining, a mathematical artifice. The situation is only exacerbated with the introduction of quantum physics and retarded potentials. For instance, we have no physical explanation for the seemingly irreversible nature of the 'collapse' of the quantum wave function, which is, at best, attributed to an 'observer effect'.

Irreversibility and entropy are the bane of us immaterialists, especially, it seems, when removed from a biological context.

Is it possible or necessary to treat entropic phenomena differently in the organic vs the inorganic contexts, and, in that latter case, the particular concern will be with artifacts. Is there an ontological distinction between death and destruction, even though the phenomena often overlap?

The tree limb that fell on the rear window of my Corolla provides a concrete example. There are still bits of glass scattered in the driveway, and the new window still leaks, despite a couple of trips to the garage. Organisms and artifacts both undergo aging, but the phenomena tend to be rather different, although we both may end up being recycled, in our respective fashions....... store up your riches not on the Earth.....

There is nothing like a broken machine to incline us to the view of physicalism and reductionism. We value our technologists to design and maintain our artifacts in working order. I'm not aiming to put anyone out of work...... not especially our physicians. Lawyers.....? Let me think about that.....

God is sometimes pictured as a cobbler, in a cabin in the woods, but will there be cobblers in heaven?

And speaking of reductionism, I seldom respond to Jack Sarfatti's list, but there was a question about whether electrons should be treated as point particles wrt gravity.......

From: Dan Smith 
Date: June 12, 2012 2:43:16 PM GMT-04:00
To: "Bailey, Paul S" , JACK SARFATTI 
Cc: Ron Stahl ...........
Subject: Re: To: Paul et al.... Daigle- An Introduction to Gravity Modification by Benjamin T. Solomon

Strictly speaking, and to my understanding, elementary particles are treated as mathematical entities, rather than as geometrical points or shapes.  

Am I right Jack?  Particles belong to group representations, and appear in interactions, only in that guise.  In that sense, in theoretical physics, Pythagoras has precedence over Plato.  

Wrt renormalization..... this has more to do with the conformal group, and with scale invariance, and so is a deliberate attempt to render (metric) geometry irrelevant.  Counter-intuitive?  I would say so.  

The holographic theory of elementary particles and gravity is another blatant manifestation of this anti-metric bias in QFT.  


On Jun 12, 2012, at 1:18 PM, "Bailey, Paul S"  wrote:

Ron,

It’s not merely treating the particles as points. I haven’t been keeping up (SHAME on me!), but the last I knew, every attempt to measure the diameter of the electron, and they were some pretty good attempts, came back that the diameter was entirely consistent with zero, that the electron as far as anybody can tell, is a point. Experimentally. Within the experimental error which was very small. 

As for space being infinitely divisible and Zeno, that’s what the calculus and limits are all about.

Now, everyone please pardon me if I don’t fuss more about this, because I’m at work and they really expect me to work on the things they pay me for, not other, far more fun and interesting things 

One suggestion, though, it should be possible to run Solomon’s model “backwards” and predict a diameter for the electron, knowing its mass. If that comes out anything larger than what has already been determined is the upper limit (which would be the experimental error on the measurements of the diameter of the electron), then Solomon must be wrong.

Cheers!

Paul S. Bailey, Ph.D.

And now there is this....... Clinton Says Russia Sending Attack Helicopters to Syrian Government.


4:50----------

Throop and I will be seeing Prometheus in 3D, this evening. Ridley S is an atheist, I take it. And Noomi is supposed to become one. Somehow, I think there is a catch, in there.


So, yes, in the BPW, there should be room for broken machines. But does that mean that we have to be reductionists/atheists?

If Eve hadn't offered the apple to Adam, perhaps we wouldn't need cobblers or physicians, or metaphysicians, for that matter. Would we then be better off? Or would we all be Peter Pans, stuck in eternal innocence. Is God innocent? Am I the only theist who is skeptical, on that score? Did God forget to eat of the tree of knowledge? Of life? Am I reducing God by pointing to trinity flats? Oppie...... I am become Death......

So what about the glass shards in the driveway? Do they prove that Ridley is right? That atoms rule? Could there be rain w/o atoms? Does the rain not fall on the sinners and the righteous?

I love atoms, but that doesn't mean that I have to give up my humanity. Does it?

And I have cried/cursed over spilt milk, but...... does that make me an atheist?



(cont.)

I think the question is whether God can love atoms w/o becoming a dualist.

Death and decay have gotten a bad press. But more recently, with our greater appreciation of ecological matters, we have come around to a more balanced view of nature.

Our errand into the wilderness has afforded us a greater estimation of that wilderness, especially in retrospect. Distance makes the heart grow fonder.

But can we have our organic cake and eat it, too? That is a question I would pose to God.

I like the idea of atoms and metabolism. I also like the idea of spirit. But ne're the twain shall meet? Is there some good reason why God shouldn't be able to work that out?

Why need we suppose that God is a dualist? That's what theists and deists typically believe....... a strong demarcation between Creator and Creation. They have a definite aversion to pantheism, in any guise. I can't claim to fully understand that mindset. It comes with an antipathy to gnosticism, despite the latter's peculiar affinity to theism, and its opposition to mysticism. Keeping a lid on the holy spirit is a major preoccupation, even amongst the most liberal of charismatics, wherein the spirit is handled in a strongly ritualized fashion.

But, OTOH, why should God abjure dualism......?

To my mind, this abjuration emerges from the importance of theism relative to deism, even wrt to the highly constrained version of theism amongst evangelicals, wherein divine intervention, outside of private prayer, is limited to the first and second comings.

The self-concealment of God need not be extended to a metaphysical dualism.

The crux of my concern, here, lies in the notion of participation...... That we are creatures in the image of the Creator is not meant to be a superficial likeness. It must, IMHO, speak to the essence of the divine and human. No?

Is this not simply the idea of the Eucharist taken to its logical fulfillment? We eat God... God eats us. Isn't this having our cake and eating it, too?

This comes back to the provenance of the soul.......

But it particularly has to do with mind over matter....... and with the self-containment of God and Creation. It is precisely here, that the pantheists get themselves into a world of trouble.

And, before I forget it again, there is this issue........

Can God create an immovable object? I would say..... obviously not..... and, therefore, God cannot be a dualist. But does this mean that God cannot, thereby, create atoms?

IOW, it is logically impossible for God to be a dualist. God can hold Creation at arms-length, but only for so long! Even Atlas has to shrug. God loves heroic materialists. They are to her, a nearly endless source of amusement, even pride! They confirm to her that she is not mollycoddling her beloved creatures. I like a cuddly God, but not a coddling one. She lets us do the cuddling. She does the eating. She likes her meat to be free-range.

So how does she pull-off the atomic trick? Or the trinity-flats trick? Through logic?

Yes, but this is a kinder/gentler logic, a logic that is informed by quantum logic, for instance. And informed by organicity, as is the Mandelbrot.

Her logic is not set in concrete, and neither are her atoms. We know that they are susceptible to observation, in the strong sense. Atomic physics is participatory, in a strong sense.

She uses us, as much as possible, and this has to do with her OOO..... object oriented ontology. She gives us a whiff of (free-range) metabolism, and we have to fill in the details, teleologically. We positively love complexification, and we do it, almost endlessly...... some might even say.... ad nauseum.

The Speculative Realist crowd believe that they are giving Kant his comeuppance. I'm less than certain of that. Kant was rather too cagey for that. He kept his ontological powder rather dry, IMHO. And, he shaved, regularly. Rather unlike many of his metaphysical colleagues.

Very certainly, the Speculatives love to disown his anthropocentrism, using panpsychism as their weapon of choice.

But, wait, I love my leaky Corolla, but do I ascribe to it a soul? Is that not anthropomorphism?

I am a firm believer in EVP, and such, but that is not anthropomorphism. It is simply the effulgence of the cosmic psyche, obviously!?

Ants don't have chairs. They don't even have meals. They are darned impressive survival machines, and I don't mean that mechanistically. You program a computer to be as smart as an ant, and I'll eat my hat. Ants don't have hats, but I have seen them carry umbrellas.

Humans have objects. We love our objects. We are object oriented. Chimpanzees? I'm not so sure that they have objects.

They do participate in mourning, which is object oriented, in a special way. It is OO, only after the fact. An object is, de jure, an abstraction. Chimps are not big on abstraction. They don't get distracted by concepts, the way we do, notoriously. What then are we to make of OOO?

I'm somewhat reminded of SK's reaction to a presentation on the amazing fact that, although there are double negatives, there are no double positives, and, then, from the back of the room comes...... Yeah, yeah...... I think that the OOO crowd needs something like that.

The leak in my Corolla...... Is it objective or subjective? And should we care? Corolla, heal thyself, and sin no more! Felix culpa?

Gosh, here is another point....... Heaven? Half the fun is getting there! Am I wrong about that?

IOW, the BPW is not the perfect world, it is the almost perfectible world. Almost? Yes, there is a distinction between heaven and utopia. And it's not a very subtle one.

It has a lot to do with the metabolic eucharist. Theophagy comes to mind. That, too, is rather less than subtle, one would think.

Dualism? Whither dualism? But, still, those pesky atoms do stick in the craw.

Or is it, in the final analysis, the shards of the Corolla that haunt our metaphysics? Where is Plato, when we need him? He would only damn us to his very sublunar Cave. We have nothing to lose, but our chains?

This is the lament of the Gnostics...... blame it on the Archons. This is the premise of Prometheus. Noomi did get her cross back, however. Blame it on the Demiurge. The Monad would never stoop to press the flesh.

The monads had no windows. With no windows, how could they cry? The crying of lot 49.... MM 5:8..... peter campbell, or so I'm told.


2:10----------

How does a relationalist cotton to objects? How does she cotton to chimps?

Are chimps the relations or the relata? What are we? I suppose that Corolla shards remain in the driveway, but I'm too lazy to pursue them. Does that make me an idealist? An armchair metaphysician? Are there any other kind? Chimps don't have armchairs. They do have nests, but...... are those nests ontological, or are they natural?

Can there possibly exist a non-subjective object? Where does Mt Everest go, when it's not being observed, or imagined?

Can chimps ever know Everest? I sincerely doubt it. Does that mean that we created that heap of rocks? Which heap are you pointing to? Which heap do you intend? What is a heap? What is a sorites? Can a chimp understand a sorites? Can objects exist beyond the pale of Sorites? I sincerely doubt it.

This has a lot to do with Being and Nothingness. Can a non-human grok on nothingness? Can we understand Presence w/o understanding Absence? Chimps may be haunted by their dear departed. But, for them, that absence may not otherwise be abstracted, IMHO.

Do heaps exist, objectively? Whatever heaps may do, it is not totally obvious, is it?


7:20----------

We can point to other organisms, and suppose that they possess objectivity. Is it true?


8:20---------

BTW, tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner, and the battle of Ft. McHenry. A bunch of tall ships are visiting.



(cont)

An outspoken group of young philosophers brought up in continental phenomenology, are embracing what they call speculative realism, which prominently includes Harman's OOO. This is a deliberate attempt to move beyond the subjectivism of that tradition. They also claim to abjure aspects of the analytic tradition, but, in both instances, there is much that is recognizable. In any case, the metaphysical aspirations seem crucial, varied though they may be.

I find those aspirations heartening, and they cannot help but provide new openings for the BPWH.

Any attempt at objectivity cannot fail to be grounded in the subjective. Can it ever then aspire to a total objectivity? The only route to that end has been reductive science. Philosophy has had precious little to contribute, on that score, nor is that likely to change.

There is a caveate, and it is to be found in the title of 'speculative'. Science is not about speculation or metaphysics, not even about 'realism', per se. That has always been the province of philosophy. Does this mean that philosophy can never aspire to truth? That remains to be seen, I believe.


Now I need to get ready for the trip to Montana, where Deborah and I will commemorate Louise, along with Ben and her friends in Livingston.


I'll still have a bit of time to make some further observations about objectivity.......

An obvious place to start is with 'naive' realism...... WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get.

Everyone complains about WYSIWYG, but nobody knows what to do about it, at least not to the satifaction of anyone else. Science has been the history of our most prolonged attempt to transcend WYSIWYG, but with mixed results. Yes, for the most part, we love its technological pay outs, but tend to resist its various dehumanizing aspects. Get over it...... say its more vociferous proponents.

Especially in this country, the debate has polarized into creationism v atheism, leaving virtually no room for either speculation or dialog. Only on the continent is even a modicum of metaphysical discussion able to survive. One would hardly call it thriving.


Despite itself, science has opened some doors to metaphysics. This is particularly true of cosmology and quantum theory, and especially in regard to their overlap.

Let me put this to any straggling/struggling naive realists....... what is the status of other worlds? The notion of a big-bang invites a plethora of speculation, particularly wrt other worlds/universes. This speculation is further motivated by the anthropic problem, wherein it is noted that our particular universe is unusually suitable for fostering life. To avoid the prospect of intelligent design, an idea that had been dormant since Darwin, we must suppose the existence of a virtual infinity of alternate big-bangs, with other constants and initial conditions, the vast preponderance of which would have been lifeless.

To avoid the Charybdis of design and teleology, science has steered right into the Scylla of a very naive realism. What does a universe look like, that has no lookers? So we resort to a bird's eye or god's eye PoV, which is what we were trying to avoid.

But we can speculate further........ No reason not to suppose that in one such universe, a quantum fluctuation gave rise to an observer, complete with an hour's supply of oxygen. Would this make any difference in our metaphysical calculus? How would anyone else know it ever happened, and how would the happenstance observer know that she was observing a 'real' world, rather than a virtual reality, of some concoction?

Already, we have descended into a dense metaphysical jungle.

Such as...... what about our own status as observers? Suppose that Earth is, indeed, rare, to the degree that we are the only sentient beings, in this universe. And suppose that this life were permanently extinguished by an asteroid, tomorrow, along with every trace thereof. How would this universe then differ from all of the infinity of other uninhabited ones, or from one with the accidental observer. Are we not almost equally accidental, by the lights of our reductive science?

The tree falling in the woods..... at least it leaves a (potentially observable?) trace.

To say that something is real, in the naive sense, is to be able to locate it in time and space. Ideas and mathematics are notoriously non-localizable, and so their 'ontos' is widely suspect, amongst neuro-philosophers, at least, if not occasionally by all the rest of us. But where is that universe next door? Through which door do we access it?

When technology rules the global roost, all such speculations may be dismissed as entirely idle. But our entanglement with technology is, more subtly, but no less significantly, wrapped up with our notions of progress as being inevitable and perpetual. That notion is much more fragile than we wish to suppose. We could wake up tomorrow to find that this notion has been severely subverted.

Then will our eschatological/teleological chickens will be coming 'home'. We may then begin to wonder about our own provenance, in a more than idle fashion.


4pm---------

The question of timing remains moot. Given a teleologically informed cosmic intelligence, brinksmanship is perfectly understandable. But what then is the nature of the control over human action? Are there any of us in that loop, or are we being manipulated unwittingly? Time will tell. Rogue action is not recommended.

If I were the CI, I'd be keeping a close watch on the financials. It is still the fulcrum for the world.

Back to objects........

If the existence of universes may be problematic, what about for mountains and atoms?

For all non-sapient beings, reality is very local. There is a similar caveat for holographic physicists..... whereby we live in only a projected world. With our postmodern physics, ontology is very much up for grabs. Is this going to have an impact on naive realism? Only in an eschatological extremis.

Is there any chance that our MoAPS could be precipitated conceptually, without some very provocative phenomena to provide us with a swift kick in the butt? It does seem unlikely, either way, and it is above my pay grade. Only rarely do I venture beyond my rather limited comfort zone.

But is reality about semantics? Well, if it's not about meaning, what is it about? And is there any non-human meaning? If there is, it is being reclusive.

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Fri, June 15 - 9:15am  -  2012

Enroute from Baltimore to Denver..... 

Fabrication requires parts and molding.  What can be constructed can also be deconstructed.  This is not the way idealism is supposed to work.  It is supposed to be more holistic.  

Attaching one idea to another idea can be difficult.  So can cutting an idea in two.  I'd like six ounces of goodness, please, with a cherry on the top.  There won't be any ice-cream sundaes in heaven, or so I'm told.  

Think of eating ice-cream.  The very idea of it.  It's just not the same thing.  The idea of water does not quench the thirst.   In the desert, you need to carry it with you.  And we have bottles for that, fortunately.  With space and time, things need to be compartmented, segregated.  Ideas need to be kept in their place..... proper places, usually..... until they need to be welded or recycled.  

Bricks are great for building, until an earthquake comes along.  They are not easy to rationalize.  

Organisms manage to combine fabrication with holism.  It is no mean feat.  Which is the greater conceptual challenge..... developmental biology or idealism?  

Space and time are a challenge for both camps.   Does general relativity explain them?  Does physics explain s&t, or do s&t explain physics?  Will pre-geometry do the trick, or pass the buck?  

In its day, GR was supposed to have been the defeater for idealism.  Then came the quantum, and the physicists are not laughing so much.  

Atoms are amazing bricks.  But are they more magical or physical?  The jury may still be out on that one.  

When it comes to atoms, we are all thumbs.  

Our psychokinetic powers need to be self-limiting, and they are.... almost to a T.  Atoms are likely to be part of that limitation.  They rule by consensus, bless their little hearts.  But whose consensus is it?  Is there a temporal component?  That's a tough one.  I've struggled with it, to little or no effect.  Mamas, don't let your sons grow up to be metaphysicians!  Girls are lucky that way.  


1:30 pm mdt---------  enroute to Bozeman 

Life is poised on a knife edge of instability.  Our unwitting atomic consensus, like the roulette wheels in LV, are a delicate balance of many forces.  Hey, you look after your wheel, I'll look after mine.  Hmmm...... 

What is pk about, if it's not directed?  But what do the atoms know?  This is where the panpsychism may come in.  Can it be shared?  Can it not be?  Is evaporation purely statistical?  A group effect?  One may defeat the other.  Protection in numbers.  But do I really want to go down that route?  How can it ever be turned around?  Does it require an alternate dimension?  Or can we stop feeding their egos?  Or we have to get our numbers together.  Invariance is the basis of physics.  What is the salvation of atoms?  Or are they stuck in the Noah loop?  What about the chimps and dinos?  Cosmic soul.  

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Hey Dan!
Good to see you here! Have been busy with things on the home front for the past several weeks ... just found out last night that this forum is up and running now. Will read over your posts here to get up to date. Talk later!

99,

Yes, I have been wondering where you were. Thanks for checking in. As you can see, it has been pretty quiet here, so I've mostly just been talking to myself.

Out in Montana with one sister to commemorate the passing of the other, Louise, who is in the current photo, here. Deborah and I drove over the 11,000' Beartooth Pass, today, just open since a week ago.

As you can see, I'm still struggling with the most basic of ontological issues. Whoever is the first to get them right will, quite possibly, change the ballgame.

But I will be pretty busy until I return to Baltimore on the 27th.


OOO is the most important development in philosophy in the last decade or so. But, IMHO, it is fundamentally misconceived as being anti-anthropic. No object has ever been designated without the use of language, which is, TBMK, irreducibly anthropic.

How could the best minds in philosophy be missing such an important and obvious point? It beats the heck out of me.

Are mountains and atoms fundamentally anthropic? That's what I'm suggesting. What about a pile of rocks? What about the dinosaur fossils? Are they anthropic?

So, now, watch me eat my words....... yes, organisms are objects, and most organisms are not anthropic. And this is my biggest ontological problem.

Most sentient organisms are able to distinguish other sentient organisms, by way of treating them as agents, i.e. by internalizing their agenthood.

What does Anthropos bring to this table? We bring God. Whooptee do! I.e., we bring the Logos. And what does the Logos bring? The Logos is Reason. And......? Nay...... the logos is coherence. Coherence is what holds the world together and makes it go around, in concert with love, which is not unrelated to coherence, obviously.

Are we the only organisms which conceive of coherence?

Is coherence fundamentally conceptual? Well, it is the basis of felt meaning, and meaning is nothing, if not felt. We are the only organisms which conceive, conception being the basis of sapience, which is the basis of language.

We are the only organisms which can transcend our sentient egos, by means of our sapience.

Other organisms may be altruistic by instinct, and so are we to a degree. But, by employing our sapience we can transcend both ego and instinct. Yes? Am I right about this. If I am, I may have been the first person to have stated this definition of the Anthropos, quite so succinctly. Whooptee do.

When, on occasion, we manage to transcend instinct and ego, we are invincible. We thereby become gods/God. No?

By being able to conceive of non-sentient objects, we are able to use our opposable thumbs to fabricate artifacts, ad infinitum. Nearer our God to thee!? Oh? Why is manufacture essential? Only through manufacture are we able to transcend Nature. Only God and we are able to pull this off. No mean feat. Manufacture is the ring-pass-not. And what does this have to do with the trinity? Well, the cross was such. That X is the essential fulcrum.

Ok, enough........

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