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Dear All,

I have been closely following the online exchange since our get together in April, and especially in the last couple of weeks. I have not chimed in because many of the particulars under discussion are well outside my expertise and, to some extent, at the margins of my general knowledge. Natural enough with a group like this, and I have benefited from the stretch to follow the tread of interconnection. At same time, something in Gregg's invite for others to get involved, " Would love to hear others thoughts about communication, values, responsibility and so forth," crystallized a feeling I have had lurking in the background - something along the lines of, Ok, so one more time, what's the task here? what is our primary goal and how will we recognize progress toward it?

I don't mean at all to imply that the chains of discussion since the meeting have not been intensely relevant and fruitful. Rather, at least speaking for myself, what initially sparked my interest in this group was the fact that Gregg's (et.al.) massive accomplishment in the TOK/UTA presents so useful and challenging a down payment toward a goal that seems urgently important, that I am , well, impatient I guess to see more structured and explicit engagement with the pragmatic task of cobbling together a working prototype of something that could eventually "go public," if not to a completely general audience but certainly to a much broader audience than those who could even begin to follow our discussions, let alone have any least interest in doing so. To put it differently, whatever other interests and opinions I carry with me, I identify myself first and foremost as a classroom college/university, undergad and graduate teacher, with almost 40 years of experience in talking to students about what it means to take responsibility for themselves intellectually/philosophically, socially and as human persons. I am pretty committed to that challenge as the one professional contribution I can make that is likely to have any significant impact at all, so what I am most eager to see emerge here is .... Ta da!.....an intellectually fully defensible way of explaining what constitutes universal Human Dignity, in what sense HD can and must be said to demand absolute respect, what is the nature of the responsibility which respect for human dignity imposes on each and everyone of us, and what concretely can be done to promote responsible human behavior.

So a couple of thoughts in regard to some current themes in our conversations that I would like to see engaged more directly with an eye toward that goal:

Is the primary goal we are pursuing actually the integration of human knowledge? It is not straightforwardly apparent to that it is, or at least should be, because, whether or not it is ultimately possible, Human Dignity, as an absolute value and the most basic form of responsibility, cannot be contingent on its possibility, and certainly cannot be subject to any timetable of progress toward that goal. It is absolutely urgent here and now, as it has been for at least a very long time or it will be for sometime at least into the future.
What is our position on the Human Freedom as the non-negotiable presumption of human dignity, as distinct from liberty of choice which is socially, psychologically and physically conditioned in myriad ways. In my view, one cannot claim dignity, absolute or otherwise, for human personal existence as its universal condition, without the presumption of an equally universal responsibility, which in turn is based on a universal human capacity "to make a difference" which could be meaningfully valued as "positive or negative," or in other words - freedom. (I do not wish to tarnish John Torday's position by associating myself with it, but I took note of his assertion that the traceable link back to the Big Bang/Singularity was the necessity for structural differentiation, also known as the irreducible ambiguity of the One and Many.)
Related to the unity of knowledge question, independent of whether or not it should be focal or thematically fundamental, I am convinced that the reality of freedom as the universal and fundamental capacity to make difference, implies that there will always be genuine incommensurability between and among cultural frameworks used to express knowledge, value and therefore personal identity. Ambiguity and paradox are not problems to be solved; they are the expression of the reality of the mystery of the human condition, embedded as it is within the Mystery (singularity as origin) of the existence of the Universe as a whole. I would suggest distinguishing clearly among at least these categories: Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom. They are coherently interrelated but not reducible one to the others.

So I am suggesting these as possible talking points if anyone is interested in pursuing them. I am well aware that they contain several dozen implications which are certainly open to question, would require clarification and further explanation, and finally, will be unacceptable to some. Viva la differance! My intention and hope is that they will move us forward in a direction I think we all want to go.

all good wishes,

Frank

Francis J. Ambrosio, PhD

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Georgetown University

202-687-7441

On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 4:06 PM JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Gregg, I welcome the opportunity to comment on communication, values, responsibility, etc, etc and language. In my way of cobbling life and matter together, starting from the Singularity/Big Bang, the cell as the first Niche Construction, cell-cell communication, cell-environment communication (epigenetics), 'First there were bacteria, now there is New York!', it would only make sense that language- body, oral- emerged to perpetuate the interrelationship between the inorganic and the organic. In the spirit of parsimony, it would make sense to consider the relationship between cell-cell communication and language as a continuum, in contrast to language as a human 'invention', which is anthropocentric and counter-productive IMHO. Suffice it to say that we now have a 'Tower of Babel', which we ToKers are trying to level in order to be able to find a common meta-language- a noble effort which I support wholeheartedly. Minimally, we will have solved C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' problem.

On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 6:39 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Mark,
I like your comments about communication. In terms of human communication, it jumps me into the concept of language games. I think we can build better language games that are more effective at fostering wisdom. That is the essence of the ToK/UTUA mission. Concepts like justification, influence and investments are, IMO, useful tools for understanding human behavior. And we need new, better and wiser tools to dance with the changes in the new paradigm that we find ourselves in.

Would love to hear others thoughts about communication, values, responsibility and so forth.

Best,
Gregg

-----Original Message-----
From: tree of knowledge system discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Stahlman
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2018 4:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On the possibility Integrating Human Knowledge

Gregg:

Welcome back and I like "the message is the medium" . . . !!

When McLuhan decided to use that term, among the many things he had in mind was the "medium" used in laboratories for growing colonies of organisms -- or what we used to call "agar" when I was wearing a lab-coat.

The challenge that everyone who has attempted to *integrate* Human
Knowledge has had, of course, is dealing with the one-and-the-many.
We know that both must simultaneously be "true" but how are they to be reconciled?

What is it that "unifies" and what is it that "separates" (and is it the same thing)? How do we deal with the "universal" and the "particular" all under the same umbrella?

The notion that it is *communications* which unifies and separates -- from cell-to-cell to culture-to-culture -- seems to be where we're heading and I like that path.

"Communication" is a word based on "in common," which it shares with "community" &c. Within this etymology, there is both the recognition of the "one" and the "many." It also carries the meaning that there are many "mechanisms" for communications and what cells perform is not identical to the communications that cultures are founded upon (thus my interest in Semiotics &c).

All of which begs the important question of how are we going to
*communicate* in our "new paradigm" and what will this new approach mean for our "community"?

Mark

P.S. Under previous communications conditions, we tried to build "one world." That is over now, because those conditions have changed. In particular, I have been deeply engaged with China for the past 20 years. China will never be a part of the Western attempts to make our
lives "global" (and we will never be a part of what they are doing.)
Two radically different *communications* approaches -- the Alphabet and Ideo/pictographics -- developed in these two places 2500+ years ago (in the Axial Age) and, as a result, two very different "cultures"
were produced. And, yes there are others . . . <g>

Quoting "Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx" <[log in to unmask]>:

> Hi All,
>
> It is good to be back at my home computer after 12 days of "gluttony
> and sloth." I have been thrilled by all the insightful contributions
> to the list.
>
> Corinne, thanks much both for your artwork and for the recent post
> about plants. Plant behavior became a point of fascination for me in
> figuring out psychology's language game. I also think the article
> highlights many of the things that John has been trying to say about
> how physiology and cell-cell communication is foundational to
> understanding our essences. At the same time, the nervous system is a
> "game changer" when it comes to the "fast" behavior of animals.
> Whereas plant behavior is complex, responsive to stimuli, and highly
> functional, I don't think we should call it "mental," and I think that
> we should be careful in using terms like 'see' and 'hear,' as in the
> title of the article. For us human primates, the term "see"
> is intimately tied to our subjective experience of vision. There is no
> evidence that plants have a subjective experience (AKA perceptual
> consciousness) of vision. They are clearly physiologically aware of
> light stimuli and respond accordingly. The relationship between
> functional behavior and the subjective experience of being, is, as
> Steve's review of William James will likely point out, crucial in
> trying to solve the language game of psychology. As slide 11 in the
> BIT key idea ppt highlights, consciousness does not equal
> behavior<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.greg
> ghenriques.com_bit.html&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5
> nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=uHKAWFaAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=7zOkydjiK47pYS4hoKM-38Lw7Z4O0O153QWaV-8u0ec&e=>, although we can use the ToK System to understand how perceptual consciousness is a subset of behavior.
>
> Thanks much to Nancy for her articulation of the development of human
> cognitive abilities and her evolutionary/Piagetian analyses.
> Nancy, I think both of your assumptions about evolutionary lineage and
> about lining up phylogeny with ontogeny in the way that you to
> understand the evolution of human thought highly valuable. I am glad
> to hear your connection to Merlin Donald. We have not spoken about
> that previously. Early in his book, Merlin Donald makes a central
> point: During the relatively short time of human emergence, the
> structure of the primate mind was radically altered; or rather was
> gradually surrounded by new representational systems and absorbed into
> a larger cognitive apparatus. (p. 4) In the language of the ToK, what
> we became surrounded by were both the technological and linguistic
> environments that resulted in a dramatic shift in the flow of
> energy-information. The linguistic networks that formed were
> justification systems; narratives that provided the structure for our
> social lives and labeled Culture as the fourth dimension of behavioral
> complexity.
>
> Mark, I have been very much enjoying reading up on the Center for
> Digital Life and Marshal McLuhan's work on media. I have found his
> analysis of mediums fascinating. In what might be an odd association,
> it reminded me a bit of Richard Dawkins' The Extended
> Phenotype<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wiki
> pedia.org_wiki_The-5FExtended-5FPhenotype&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7
> vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4
> -A&m=uHKAWFaAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=dfNfUeDnjiTyyZYuh8x
> a4IXqvSBvXL3D4oWAmVhr5LI&e=> (and John's notions of Niche
> Construction). Certainly, as we radically alter our environment, we radically alter ourselves. On the ride home from the beach yesterday, I found myself inverting is his motto (the medium is the message) to "the message is the medium." The inverted motto lines up directly with the key insight of the ToK.
> That is, the mediums of cell-cell communication/genetic info (Life),
> neuro-mental-subjectivity (Mind), and
> linguistic-person-society-intersubjectivity (Culture) are the
> "conglomerates" that allow us to unweave the rainbow of behavior and
> see the dimensions that make us what and who we are.
>
> Ultimately, it seems to me that these are the kinds of
> interdisciplinary conversations that should be going on as we search
> for ways to integrate knowledge. As Joe commented, none of us has all
> the answers. But together we might be able to fashion a reasonable
> picture of the whole. I am reminded of the philosopher Oliver Reiser's
> opening call in his book The Integration of Human Knowledge (which I
> found had remarkable parallels to the ToK version of reality), which
> seems perhaps even more appropriate today as it was when he wrote 60
> years ago:
>
> In this time of divisive tendencies within and between the nations,
> races, religions, sciences and humanities, synthesis must become the
> great magnet which orients us all...[Yet] scientists have not done
> what is possible toward integrating bodies of knowledge created by
> science into a unified interpretation of man, his place in nature, and
> his potentialities for creating the good society. Instead, they are
> entombing us in dark and meaningless catacombs of learning (Reiser,
> 1958, p. 2-3, italics in original).
>
> Am happy to be back in the flow.
>
> Best,
> Gregg
> ___________________________________________
> Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
> Professor
> Department of Graduate Psychology
> 216 Johnston Hall
> MSC 7401
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, VA 22807
> (540) 568-7857 (phone)
> (540) 568-4747 (fax)
>
> Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
> Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytod
> ay.com_blog_theory-2Dknowledge&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9R
> SjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=uHKAWF
> aAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=iyFRFA9RrDTde63r0NoDqF9Q4vP1aP
> Gsb8-0WN1FbRs&e=
>
>
>
>
>
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