Hi TOK,
Thought folks might be interested to see the note I wrote to the intellectual deep web about the ToK in discussions with Alexander Bard and Alexander Elung.
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 7:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Zurak and Quantum Darwinism
Bard and Elung,
I would love to hang with you guys. Let’s see how things unfold and we will make something happen. Bard, looking forward to a zoom.
I think we are in basic agreement, especially with Elung’s last point about Hartmann.
The basic deal is this from my perspective (welcome thoughts):
There is a difference between pure/depth ontology [and foundational metaphysics—what I see you guys doing] and descriptive/systematic metaphysics and ontology as theories of the ontic reality. As I noted, I think [mainstream academic] psychology is knee deep in the epistemological fallacy, so much so that it defines its subject matter as behavior and mental processes and completely confuses epistemological claims (i.e., we can observe behavior and infer mind, which is a claim defined by basic epistemological processes) with ontological/ontic referent claims (what is the thing in reality our psychological theories correspond to? Is it behavior mediated by neurocognition, is it subjective phenomenology, is it human self-conscious narrative reflection and reason giving? These are very different ontic/ontological reference points! It is why we aren’t a science. We can’t even freakin define our primary subject matter with any degree of coherence and consensus).
For the first 15 years or so of the ToK, I was looking through the glasses of epistemology and organizing how we knew what we knew and treating it like a metatheory of psychology that organized other theories. But I am convinced it is more than that. Indeed, since the god damn thing popped out of my head in 1997 I have always known it is more than that.
At its bottom, the ToK is a new theory of scientific knowledge (TOK) that sets the stage for wisdom. Not in any kind of bible sense, for the love of god. But in the sense that it offers a new descriptive metaphysics of the ontic reality that corresponds with modern scientific onto-epistemology, from quantum mechanics to sociology. In so doing, it resolves two HUGE gaps in the Enlightenment. Namely, what is meant by mind and how does it exist in relation to matter? And, what is special and what is not about scientific knowledge relative to human sociocultural pragmatic knowledge more generally?
The ToK and its parts, BIT, Matrix, JUST answer these questions with precision, and do so with novel ideas that have not been offered before.
Alexander, if you don’t think the ToK is about metaphysics in at least in some meanings of the term, check out the attached Orders of Nature (which, as you likely recall, I shared before). Larry Cahoone is the current president of the Metaphysical Society of America, for the love of god. The book is an integrative philosophical attempt at moving from a “bipolar disordered” conception of matter versus mind to a descriptive/systematic metaphysics that consists of five “orders in nature”: the physical, material, biological, mental and cultural. The ToK was offered to solve the problem of psychology and argues we need to go from a matter v. mind dualism to an unfolding wave of Energy, Matter, Life, Mind and Culture. In other words, you have a metaphysician by training offering a solution in 2013 that is almost identical to the ToK, which was first published ten years earlier. Indeed, what is missing from his formulation is clarity that Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture are dimensions of behavioral complexity that evolve from Energy, which is the ultimate [ontological/ontic] common denominator. In addition, the ToK clearly depicts, in a way that Cahoone does not, how Live, Mind, and Culture emerge from complicated matter as complex adaptive behavior patterns coordinated by novel information processing and communication systems. This is a direct claim about the nature of reality and our theories of it. Epistemology sure as hell does not hold the full nature of this claim. Rather, it advances his descriptive metaphysics, which, BTW, overlaps DIRECTLY with Hartmann’s “categorical ontology”. Is this ontology? Yes [and, as Elung notes “no” in that it is not the full answer from the ontological base]
You link this all this shit up and one can see clearly, IMO, that this ‘ToK thing’ I constructed is about what the pomos said can’t be done. It is a new approach to synthetic philosophy that eluded folks in the Enlightenment. It is not the whole puzzle by any stretch. But it is crucial and it sure as hell is not just about psychology. We are talking about a metaphysical map of philosophy that organizes our scientific knowledge across the natural-into-human sciences. It is the proper solution to what E. O . Wilson called consilience. It draws together the ontological and the epistemological into a descriptive, systematic metaphysical picture of the ontic reality and our scientific knowledge of it.
Peace,
G
From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 6:37 AM
To: Intellectual Deep Web <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Re: Zurak and Quantum Darwinism
Dear Elung
I agree.
Gregg is heralding a long overdue revolution in psychology. But eventually we have to go all the way into ontology proper if we make claims about providing a complete worldview.
This is where you go after Gregg on "ontology" and I go after Gregg on "metaphysics" basically making the claim that the ToK does not have to be a new bible of everything any more than say Bard & Söderqvist's two trilogies need to make any such claim. It's just that the ToK does not present answers to pertinent questions of ontology slash metaphysics so if the ToK then claims to be a bible of everything then it takes axioms for granted that actually really do need to be explored and explained.
I believe we all three agree that we want to go after "mysticism" in any way whatsoever wherever it rears its ugly head. Therefore your attack on "jumps". Let's continue that track together and then keep on digging deeper into ontology and metaphysics. What exactly do we mean with a neutral monism and an emergence vector theory built on top if it? What exactly is an emergence and what makes one emergence vector different from another one in both a general and a distinct sense? What is its mode of being?
This said, I'm thrilled to dig deeper into Gregg's theories on information and communication and how they literally relate to differences between emergence vectors. Even Smolin's systemic perspectivism would find that incredibly interesting. What if there are more similarities between Bard & Söderqvist's paradigm theory and our here developed emergence vector theory than we have previously thought?
Gregg, if our tentatively planned get-togethers in North America in May are not happening, pop over to Europe and hang out with me and Elung and our friends here instead. On and off camera.
Certainly look forward intensely to our next private zoom, brother!
Big brotherly love to you all
Alexander
Den tis 10 mars 2020 kl 23:11 skrev Alexander W.E <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>:
After rereading Hartmann it has become more clear to me where the confusion really lies. Hartmann has a concept called categorical ontology, where he talks about the division between different stratas and their respective knowledge systems and how they relate to each other, through dependence and independence. Hartmann for instance makes the argument that we cannot use materialism to explain life, since we would miss the importance of metabolism, The same goes for using biology to explain mind and many other similar arguments which aligns very well with emergence vectors and how different knowledge systems interact.
Is this ontology ? yes and no.
It is definitely a meta-ontology of sorts - or a way to see the relations between different ontologies into a combined knowledge-system. This is what I have been insisting should be called epistemology, since categorical-ontology doesn't actually investigate the nature of being, but rather how the knowledge of them relate to each other. However, I can now see that there is some backing for using ontology in this capacity, and I shouldn't have been as dismissive - but i did specify what i meant a bunch of times - so i still do not feel like i was being careless.
best
Elung
tirsdag den 10. marts 2020 kl. 13.00.56 UTC+1 skrev Alexander W.E:
Gregg.
I wasn't being careless at all. I think I was being very clear and I actually explained my argument in several different ways, just to avoid misunderstandings. " Pure or depth ontology" is not normally something which have to be specified. But i did actually specify what i meant by given several different examples of what the subject-matter of ontology usually is. What you are doing has a basis in ontology, but is mainly epistemological. This is not a critique, it's just a matter of fact statement - and it seems like you agree now. Good.
It did feel like you were getting annoyed and weren't listening. I wasn't trying to treat you as a student. I treat everybody the same regardless of their qualifications and if something seems incorrect to me, I address and correct it.
If you read Hartmanns work on pure ontology for instance, you will see that it's very different from the work that Bhaskar does in his critical realism, because the goals are entirely different. What you and Bhaskar are doing is closer to philosophy of science and epistemology, than ontology, even if it is based in ontology - but everything is based on ontology on some level or another - so that really doesn't mean anything. The entire thing you just posted is pure epistemology - there is not a trace of ontological inquiry there. And yes, it's nice that you acknowledge the epistemological fallacy - however, that doesn't mean that your focus is ontology.
Anyway, I think we are in agreement.
best
Elung
tirsdag den 10. marts 2020 kl. 12.14.41 UTC+1 skrev Gregg Henriques:
Mikael and Elung,
First, I agree with the final sentence in Elung’s note, highlighted below. The primary frame for the ToK (Tree of Knowledge) TOK (Theory OF Knowledge--spelled out here because there as been some inconsistent usage) is focused primarily on epistemology. That was my way “in” to knowledge as psychologist. I have since realized that mainstream psychology academic psychology is framed by a “scientific empirical epistemology” that actually completely eschews frames for both ontology (theory of reality/being) and ontic reality (the actual substance/existence) in deeply problematic ways. That is, modern academic psychology commits what Bhaskar called the epistemological fallacy, thinking that ontological questions can be reduced to epistemological ones. That is a grave error that the Tree of Knowledge theory of knowledge addresses. However, because I was “raised” as a psychologist, I used to think almost exclusively in terms of epistemology, rather than how I now think, which is about the (1) ontic/actual relative and a (2) scientific ontology that maps the real/actual/empirical using a (3) scientific epistemology.
Consider that in my 2003 primary paper, I note that psychology has a problem with epistemology (see here<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.gregghenriques.com_uploads_2_4_3_6_24368778_unifiedtheory.pdf&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=49TqMRxn6GjglQkn9Yg3-oDDIHeBbr8ilFq1LR6f0h4&s=B1sZjyfMP47q_bP04AlAvuHCiR1CasxnqQJ-0o3oeQ4&e=>, p. 151). I now realize that the problem is with epistemology (how psychologists know things and justify their knowledge) and its ontology (i.e., its theory of reality) and its actual ontic referent (the things the word psychology refers in the world). In my current book, I am articulating how this “epistemology, ontology, ontic reality” problem is at the core of the problem of psychology. For example, I am showing how there are very different meanings of the word “mind” that have different reference points and different epistemological considerations. See this table:
Ontic
Referent
Interior
Epistemological View
Exterior
Epistemological View
Mind1
Neurocognitive functional analysis of overt (mental) behaviors
X
Mind2
Subjective Phenomenology
X
Mind3
Self-Conscious Narrative Reflection
X
X
Language is complicated. I agree Elung, that you are Bard are focused on “pure” or “depth” ontology. However, let’s be clear that those adjectives change the meaning of the term and shift the nature of our discussion. If we start at Wiki, we can see that the word ontology<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Ontology&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=49TqMRxn6GjglQkn9Yg3-oDDIHeBbr8ilFq1LR6f0h4&s=5K-zb-U3_rcyaxmHkpgItjpT99KAMT0WjKejqb2iQgo&e=> itself has many different meanings and reference points. If you meant depth/pure ontology, then we could have cleared things up. However, you failed to specify. And, frankly, it was annoying to be told what I meant, as was the fact that you seemed to be trying to educate me as if I were your student you were using the terms carelessly and not being clear.
Peace,
Gregg
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