Hi Gregg, Alexander and TOK listers, perhaps as a foil to this wonderful
discussion about ontology and the primacy of experience, I offer the
perspective of David Bohm, author of "Wholeness and the Implicate Order",
predicated on the idea that our subjectively evolved senses have given us
the Explicate Order, but that there is an absolute Implicate Order that
exists beyond the Explicate Order. I have suggested that the way we
effectively transcend the Explicate, moving toward the Implicate Order as
we evolve is through experimentation, either formally or as the result of
the 'phenotype as agent', which I have described in a publication as the
way that the unicellular zygote gleans information from the environment.
But more to the point of Wheeler's way of thinking about human eyes and
consciousness 'having originated at the beginning of the Universe', I have
proffered that our physiology has evolved from matter, and that the
vestiges of that origin are still embedded in cell physiology as the
homologies between Quantum Mechanics and The First Principles of
Physiology. For example, we are able to conceive of Heisenberg's
"Uncertainty Principle" because we ourselves evolved from the ambiguous
difference between the Free Energy within the cell and in the Cosmos,
enabling us to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And
parenthetically, I think that the underlying basis for life is not
'information' but 'communication' because information is matter, whereas
the process of evolution is all about energy. As Whitehead expressed this
in his 'Process Theory', matter is an artifact produced by the collision of
energies. Like Arnold de Loof, who states that evolution is a 'verb' not a
noun, I think that the basis for evolution is as a process, not a thing.
The focus on Information is a consequence of descriptive biology, oriented
to matter, whereas evolution is a process by which energy is constrained,
combined and permutted to perpetuate negentropy (Schrodinger, 'What is
Life'). I have arrived at this conclusion by superimposing the mechanism of
embryonic development as cell-cell communication on phylogeny. The
communication mechanism is constituted by energy exchange between one cell
and another mediated by high energy phosphate compounds such as cyclic AMP
and Inositol Phosphates. In closing, I would like to reiterate that all I
have stated is based on deductive experimental evidence, in the spirit of
Logical Positivism, not inductive conjecture. I see experimental hypothesis
testing/refutation as the way forward IMHO.

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 8:26 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hi TOK List,
>
>   Over on Alexander Bard’s Intellectual Deep Web, there has been an
> interesting discussion about ontology, and the primacy of experience. For
> example, in what way does a cup of porridge exist independent of human
> knowers? What about photosynthesis or the Big Bang? I jumped in and offered
> a ToK viewpoint:
>
> >>>
>
>   The way I understand the basic dispute here pertains to the Kantian
> distinction between phenomena and noumena. That is, there is the world
> independent of human knowledge (noumena, the thing in itself) and they way
> the world appears to us as human knowers in our subjective perception of it
> (phenomenology), and we can only really “know” the latter. A. Elung is
> embracing this distinction (at least key parts of it), whereas A. Bard is
> rejecting it (at least in part).
>
>
>
> For me, although the Kantian insight is crucial at one level, it also is
> unclear. For example, I know this table in front of me is made of atoms.
> That is a conceptual analysis and an ontological claim of the “thing in
> itself” that is actually completely separate from my perceptual experience
> (phenomenology). I shared this simply as an example to clarify why the
> Kantian distinction has some conceptual problems with it, at least at a
> simplified level. That said, it is also the case that my knowledge of atoms
> comes from my participation in a human community of knowers who developed
> knowledge of the world via the assumptions and methods of science. In
> short, all human knowledge does require a human knower, at least in some
> ways.
>
>
>
>   To sort out the issues, I think we need to be working from a holistic
> metaphysics that includes (a) the ontic (the idea of reality as completely
> independent of human knowledge, starting with the infinite void at Time =
> 0); (b) the ontological (human knowledge about reality); (c) the
> phenomenological (human subjective experience of being-in-the-world); (d)
> the intersubjective/ideological/social construction of reality and (e)
> scientific epistemology (systematic knowledge derived from experiment and
> data collection) that shows how they exist in relation on a map. That is
> what the ToK language system tries to do. See attached to show how I map
> ontic, ontology, and phenomenology. It also includes a depiction that is
> used to illustrate John Wheeler’s
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_John-5FArchibald-5FWheeler&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=AXSkez7IKa9NQxc6cKme-Ub8DjVUFD-rsRCDVOC8o4w&s=zsW3_AMV5E1DiI3ji2OSSKWGqSfxATD04eJfoYQ7mSI&e=>
> notion of a participatory universe. I should note here that over the course
> of his career, his metaphysics evolved from physical objects to fields to
> information. With its “behavioral metaphysics,” the ToK language system
> adopts an “object-field change measured via information” view of both
> scientific ontology and epistemology.
>
>
>
>   Perhaps this map could be of some use in the context of the present
> discussion?
>
>
>
> Best,
> Gregg
>
>
>
>
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