Mark,

Sorry for how long this email is. I got carried away. I should make this email a blog post.

Nowhere in Kevin Kelly's book The Inevitable does he say that we are becoming the borg or anything like becoming subservient to a queen or becoming drone-like as the Borg appear. He just calls the technium One machine and that there will be a global matrix eventually. It's more akin to the Gaia hypothesis, that we are becoming the earth's nervous system. It's very much like Teilhard's Noosphere. I think there's a major difference between the borg and the Noosphere. Yes, both are sort of the psychic unity of consciousness, but the borg clearly seem like they've lost some crucial aspect of being a person. With the Noosphere, we may develop psychic unity, but it's more likely an extrapolation of the unity that already exists. We are already one consciousness, in my view. And the Noosphere will be an awakening to this truth to become something greater than we are now. All the data that consists of who we are will be conserved but we'll just become greater, rather than a loss of personhood. When we upload into the matrix or merge into a collective consciousness, I think we'll retain every aspect of ourselves but become more. It's the American motto: "Out of Many, One"

There is another view: The Absolute Self, a theory by Josiah Royce. The Absolute Self can be described below, taken from one of the best papers I've ever read: https://jetpress.org/v20/steinhart.htm

Teilhard has argued for an increase in self-reference (involution) and self-representation (interiority) at every stage of evolution. Thus, we can interpret the Omega Point as the maximum of self-representation. It is a perfectly self-representative system. Such a perfectly self-representative system was described by Josiah Royce, who referred to it as the Absolute Self. If this is right, then Teilhard’s Omega Point is Royce’s Absolute Self.

To motivate his theory of the Absolute Self, Royce uses the notion of a perfect map of England, located within England (1899: 502-507). Suppose there is a perfect map of England inscribed on the surface of England. Since this map is located at a place P in England, there must be a place P* on the map that represents P. The map must contain a representation of itself. There is a part of the map that is a perfect copy of the whole map. And of course, since this copy is perfect, there is a part of the copy that is a perfect copy of itself. The map contains an endlessly nested series of self-copies. It is infinitely complex. The infinite self-nesting of copies is analogous to a perfect self-consciousness. For a perfectly self-conscious mind contains an exact internal representation of its own self; and that exact internal representation contains a further exact internal representation of its own self; and so on endlessly. So the Absolute Self is a self-representative system.

A self-representative system can contain more than one self-map. For instance, there can be many perfect maps of England on the surface of England. Each one maps England from a different perspective. Each contains a copy of itself, but it also contains a copy of every other map. Thus each different perspective perfectly mirrors every other perspective. And there is only one maximal whole (namely, England itself) that contains all these maps. The Absolute Self is analogous to an England that contains many perfect self-maps. Each different self-map is a different lesser self within the Absolute Self (Royce, 1899: 546). Each lesser self has a perspective on every other lesser self. There is exactly one maximal Self that contains every lesser self. We can link Royce with my computational interpretation of Teilhard by equating Royce’s perfect self-representative system with the Omega Point. The final state of the pleroma, in which every body perfectly simulates every other body, has the structure of the Roycean Absolute Self. Each resurrection body is a perspective on the whole. Hence Royce’s Absolute Self is a model for Teilhard’s notion that at the Omega Point (1) God is all in all and (2) God is all in everyone.

The reason I'm not religious is that I think religion, as it is understood today, is intellectually dishonest and lacks integrity. I can't stand talking to most religious people when they're not actually seeking the truth. Some of them are, and they believe there is some deeper explanation to there beliefs that is compatible with science and reason. But most of them just want anchors. I don't want anchors. I want the truth. if the truth does indeed absolutely lead to Zapffe'esque doom and despair, then I'll just do drugs to obliterate my consciousness. But I don't think Zapffe is the end of the line.

I think we need to update religion to a modern understanding. The separation of science and the humanities creates part of the problem, and Gregg is helping with consilience. It's generally that science ignores the subjective, and religion is part of our experience of meaning. It's understandable in my view that religious people think Satan is in control of secularists because it steers people away from faith in justice and meaning.

In my understanding, both secularists and fundamentalists misinterpret the Bible and Jesus for their face value. There is a deeper understanding contained within the Bible that correlates with how God is Nature, and all of us are in God and God is in all of us. It correlated with Buddhist and Hindu teachings, such as the Bhagavad Gita. I think the bible was written straight out of the depths of the unconscious psyche, (not the id) possibly going all the way down to the ground of Being itself, containing patterns of evolution very old; and that is really as if God is speaking to them from their unconscious. I'm not sure, but I think Jordan Peterson is right that if you silent your mind and are prepared to accept anything, and you ask what you're generally doing wrong, you'll get the right answer. Or at least in meditation, you can get flashes of insight that are very profound.

I think an understanding of cultural evolution and the evolution of consciousness can explain the meaning of religion, and it would help a lot of people who struggle to have faith in justice or meaning in that everything is part of something much greater, that all sufferings will be redeemed. And the evolution of culture reveals a patterns indicative of this possibility. It really boils down to the correct theory of consciousness, might be revealed very soon.

The final cause is intentionality. All intentions should (and generally do) move towards greater integrated complexity. In that,

I think everyone's intentions are part of God's intentions or our movement towards God/Omega and the unity of our intentions. (But I think innumerable intentions will be part of this one intention. More intentions and purposes will be possible once we have this intention. It's the same idea of super-memes: memes which create space for other memes that can't exist in brutal or intolerant or ignorant environments)

That is tied to the purpose of life. The good is when one's intentions move towards integration, and the bad is when one's intentions move towards disintegration, although whatever that is is hard to explain. Sometimes destruction is to remove the obstacles to greater integration.

Isn't it interesting that integrated information is what causes the unity of consciousness? Why should integrated complexity create unity?? It seems to me that the unity is transcendent. And that as we move towards greater and more complex integration, we move higher into consciousness.

Here is a great Ted talk by the consciousness researcher Christof Koch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHRbnNwIg1g
Here's a TED talk on the evolution of consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUxsOgXjqUs

if you extrapolate evolution it points to an asymptote of complexity and integrated information. So we may discover a higher consciousness as the Web envolopes us into greater integrated complexity. I'm still agnostic in a sense that I don't know everything, but I'm inclined to believe that we are One consciousness and that there will be a revelation of this truth when we begin to asymptote into the Web. I don't know how it will look or feel except:
1) that it will generally be a movement towards integrated information and complexity

2) that the web will take over the media and connect to everything

3) The Web will suck up information about the world and all of us

4) there will be a revelation of meaning, justice, knowledge, redemption, liberation, etc

5) This will all take much longer than it sounds, and possibly get worse before it gets better

...and a few other things but I forget what they are.

This process need not have any 'final cause' such that the future directly causes the past... but the movement towards integration can come from intentions developed by evolution. Intelligence could be a 'crane' as Daniel Dennett puts it. We can learn new intentions and that changes our relationship to the future. Intelligence makes it so future possibilities increasingly determine the present...and that's what life is moving towards.

Without life, it would just be entropy. Life / Intelligence selects from the increasing future possibilities afforded by entropy to make increasing integrated complexity.

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 3:15 AM, Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jamie:

We'll have to wait for Gregg to return to discuss his "Justification System" (and whether it is, in fact, "global," as has been raised by my questions about China) but I will agree with you that his choice of the term "justification" is an echo of the use of that term to mean *salvation* in the Protestant Reformation . . . !!

Have you ever had the chance to read the decrees of the 6th session of the Council of Trent on this topic . . . ??

ON JUSTIFICATION
FIRST DECREE

Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.

CHAPTER I.

On the Inability of Nature and of the Law to justify man.

The holy Synod declares first, that, for the correct and sound understanding of the doctrine of Justification, it is necessary that each one recognise and confess, that, whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam-having become unclean, and, as the apostle says, by nature children of wrath, as (this Synod) has set forth in the decree on original sin,-they were so far the servants of sin, and under the power of the devil and of death, that not the Gentiles only by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, therefrom; although free will, attenuated as it was in its powers, and bent down, was by no means extinguished in them . . .

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.thecounciloftrent.com_ch6.htm&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=JG_r0HEUubEE09b-3CPvQUeTEQV0JQiXCUXHr10kGaI&s=aH_efMzZk6IBIzBQc8O_Wn-k0CwHYBlpaiKQxmcSHxQ&e=

Which brings us to the topic of religion. You have said a couple of things about this. Recently you have said, "I've been around many religious people and one common feature of the religious mind is a disinterest in what's true according to reason and evidence." And, in your "About Me" on your blog site, "At the age of eight, I became disturbed about the conflict between science and religion. I was disturbed from learning that the adults didn’t know what was true. I lost trust in what most people believe and began my own, independent search for comprehension."

What sorts of "religious people" have you been around and what have you been saying to them? You might also be interested in how "science" (or "Just the facts, Ma'am!") was actually designed by people who wanted to eliminate everyday Christianity as an "anchor" and to replace it with a "justified world." Sometimes they were called the "Illuminati" and sometimes the "Rosicrucians." Unable to live in a "corrupt" world, they called themselves the "Perfectibilists." Theology calls them *gnostics* . . . !!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Perfectibilists-2DCentury-2DBavarian-2DOrder-2DIlluminati_dp_0977795381&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=JG_r0HEUubEE09b-3CPvQUeTEQV0JQiXCUXHr10kGaI&s=9yu981DZj20X-lFAGcMxk8WG1lA1uUfL4d1VphcdNCs&e=

Mark

P.S. I have had the chance to discuss Aristotle's *four* causes with Gregg a little but we will have to wait for his return to focus on this topic. As a quick reminder, in the context of this discussion, perhaps this will help:

Efficient Cause: The primary concern of 17th-19th-century "science," particularly when it is trying to accomplish engineering (i.e. making a better world.) This was replaced with "probability" in the early-20th century (under a new "paradigm," as discussed on this list), leaving science utterly without any answer to the question "why?" (as also previously discussed on this list.)

Material Cause: This has become the study of "chaos" (and "self-organization" or "emergence") and graduated from astro-physics to nuclear bombs to what is now called "complexity science" (ala the Santa Fe Institute &al.) As best I can tell, this is *not* the same as "dimensions of complexity" in Gregg's system but he can clarify when he returns.

Final Cause: This is the topic of "end-times" (as in "culmination of history" or "judgment day") and the subject of the Bible's last chapter, "The Book of Revelation." Modern biology has rejected any *teleology* for "evolution" and the social sciences never adopted such a scheme (indeed, now it seems to have even rejected the notion that Homo Sapiens is a "superior" species, and asks if, indeed, the whole idea of species isn't "anthropocentric.") So, if the Christian version isn't what you want (or, its even more dramatic Islamic embellishment, in which Jesus comes back to convert all the Jews to Islam), then you're pretty much on your own to make-believe whatever you'd like. Many have done exactly that.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Islamic-5Feschatology&d=DwIDaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=JG_r0HEUubEE09b-3CPvQUeTEQV0JQiXCUXHr10kGaI&s=-imEzhv_BM6kd93s9Fn4D-tOGlXOfEyagmxaDDAE3XQ&e=

Formal Cause: This was the focus of Marshall McLuhan and, now, the Center for the Study of Digital Life (which I run.) Kevin Kelly made McLuhan the "Patron Saint" of Wired but never understood what he was saying (alas, Kevin is self-taught and "born-again.") The "technium" is his version of *formal* cause (taken from McLuhan) but he turned it into the "Borg," which is always the risk in these sorts of things. Yes, "resistance is futile" (which returns us to "final cause," as typically happens for people of the "rose cross.")

Quoting Mathew Jamie Dunbaugh <[log in to unmask]>:

One might wonder how the Moral Apex differs from Gregg's Global
Justification System. If Gregg already emphasizes these components then I'd
like to know because then what I call the Moral Apex is just his Global
Justification System.

The Moral Apex is composed of:
1) Unified Knowledge
2) Unified Ethics
3) Unified Purpose
4) All shared by an integrated population

I argue that this is the only logical culmination of the trend towards
integration and cooperation at increasingly large scales.

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