The Singularity is an infinite density and temperature that existed ~ 13.8 billion years ago. I had hypothesized that it gave rise to homeostasis as a result of Newton's Third Law of Motion as way of providing a mechanistic basis for that Principle of Physiology since there was precedent for the other two (Schrodinger and Mitchell). I was looking for what may have given rise to homeostasis as a way of explaining why matter exists. There may be 'no need for pre-programmed determination' but I was trying to see what the serial pre-determination approach that got me back to the unicell would predict occurred previously to explain the First Principles of Physiology. So for example, in his book "Emergence Everywhere' Harold Morowitz explains how the electron balances the energy of the proton in a hydrogen atom.....where does that derive from. I took the opportunity to exploit the serial pre-adaptation approach to find the source of that property of physics using the biologic model of evolution. I think that other such properties of physics might similarly be discovered using that approach. With the Best of intentions (WBI), John 



On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 5:02 AM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear John

Wait wait... What is the difference between The Singularity and The Big Bang here?
And why would homeostasis - which is temporary and local and certainly not permanent and universal - have anything to do with The Big Bang per se?
If anything is the opposite of The Big Bang and "was bound to happen" as its result it would be The Big Crunch or The Big Rip.
Matter is energy is information. No need for any pre-programmed determination within The Big Bang for that to be the case.
You can just light a fire and observe it to discover that this is the case.

Best
Alexander

Den tors 31 jan. 2019 kl 07:12 skrev JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:
The way that I got to the question of why those micelles formed in the first place was by extention of the serial pre-adaptation premise I had followed beginning with the lung (my area of expertise and research, so I had a sense of how that 'arc' might have formed). So the question was 'what pre-adaptation would have been the 'template' for the unicell? It seemed that the Singularity was a logical answer, so then I started thinking about the forward progression from the Singularity to the Big Bang, etc, etc. Then the question arose as to why homeostasis came about because I had never thought about or read anywhere about its origins. And it occurred to me that since homeostasis acts to maintain biological systems, and can be thought of in the context of balanced chemical equations, that homeostasis arose as the 'equal and opposite reaction' to the Big Bang, because without such a reaction there would be no matter, only energy. I know that's highly speculative, but my sense is that the biology may offer a model for that hypothetical if in fact it is derivative of the Singularity/Big Bang. With the best of intentions....jst

On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 4:53 PM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear John
Yes, I see your (brilliant) point indeed.
And since my philosophy starts with the sociont (or "the tribe" as I'm neither an individualist nor a collectivist), the sociont has a far far longer lifespan than a mere (in)dividual.
Quick question though: In what way does homeostasis represent the opposite of The Big Bang? I would think The Big Crunch to be the (possible) opposite of The Big Bang.
Is homeostasis rather not an emergence coming out of The Big Bang?
Best intentions
Alexander

Den tors 31 jan. 2019 kl 00:09 skrev JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:
So my definition of the First Principles of Physiology came out of my reverse-engineering of gas-exchange/lung evolution. Based on the close fit between lipids and oxygenation, from lung surfactant being necessary at birth for survival all the way back to cholesterol in the phospholipid bilayer of the cell membrane in early eukaryotic evolution in vertebrates. The three Principles are negative entropy (stolen from Schrodinger), chemiosmosis (the most primitive form of bioenergy), and homeostasis (as the manifestation of the equal and opposite reaction to the Big Bang, without which there would be no matter in the Cosmos). Honestly, I prefer to base my thoughts on biologic principles on such an experimental reduction in order to avoid teleology/tautology. The answers seem to be 'cleaner' that way. Do libido and mortido apply to all organisms? Libido references reproduction, but I'm not sure that that's as important as epigenetic inheritance, which is contingent on offspring acting as phenotypic agents. But there are organisms like Turitopsis dorneii, a jelly fish, that is thought to be immortal because under stress it reverts to its juvenile phenotype......I think that that's an anthropomorphism because the organism has figured out another way of gaining epigenetic marks from its environment, if you see my point. 

With the Best of Intentions, John

On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 2:49 PM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Well, John, you would love to hear that our philosophy is actually a dialectics between libido and mortido. Yes, yang and yin as a Freudian cosmology if anything.
So in that deeper sense the word will always be out on whether libido or mortido wins. But to the living organism itself is unthinkable that libido will not prevail. That is essentially what "will" is.
And for full logical closure we have simply made birth the great trauma which as such must be denied (you can not get back into the womb any more than you can relive the past) which turns into the first and beautiful denial in life. Wanting to die becomes I want to live and libido is the result. Constantly driven by mortido as its motor. Libido as consciousness and mortido as subconsciousness. Freud's death drive (and will to life) put in their proper places.
Any chance you can summarize your take on The First Principles of Physiology? Where do you place contingency, ironically the only thing that truly seems necessary.
Best intentions
Alexander

Den tis 29 jan. 2019 kl 16:05 skrev JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:
I will reply in [brackets] as if we were conversing.....

Absolutely, yes!
Which is why philosophers are preoccupied with will (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) and not with choice (which is a banality except for ethical implications).

[Yea, I don't see 'choice' as commensurate with 'fight or flight', for example. And I get the part about choice and ethics]

Evolution within an environment of limited resources (such as a planet) will foster will since that which wants to die dies out and that which wants to live makes the effort to survive and becomes more abundant.

[Well I go back to my pet hypothesis that there is a set of First Principles of Physiology that set life in motion, like 'ab urbe condita' founding of life. In that sense, the time delay for 'choice' seems inconsistent, if you get my meaning....Will seems in keeping with that sense of existentialism]

Psychoanalysis then enriches the philosophy of will into drives and desires and that is where ambiguity and deception (or seduction and manipulation) comes into the picture. You now also successfully see the same thing in non-human nature too. Makes perfect sense.

[I think that Consciousness is pervasive among living organisms. Helmut Platner studies paramecia. In one of his papers he shows that if you put a drop of glucose in the water, the paramecium will go towards the sugar, it's calcium fluxes increasing within it just like a calcium flux would when I see 'sugar'. Consciousness is the organification of Cosmology, and all life complies with that Principle of Principles IMHO. A paramecium doesn't have to know that it knows- that's left to us, and we shouldn't abuse the privilege. The paramecium's consciousness is suited for its Niche, but don't think less of it...sounds to me like Wm Blake's 'The Lamb'

                     The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

 But paramecium instead of lamb, and Nature instead of God.....]

We even work with instinct (the animalistic), drive (the mechanical), desire (the human) and transcendence (the sacred) in our work in what we call a dialectics of libido and mortido (essentially a psychoanalytical approach to yang and yin).

[And I think that those aspects of our psyche are clearer once you strip away the 'deceptions' that we've formulated to cope with our ambiguous existence]

 But freedom has very little or nothing to do with this. Awareness does though. So psychoanalysis works only with awareness and never with freedom.

[I've come to a different conclusion, based on the homologies between Quantum Mechanics and The First Principles of Physiology. In that frame, both the physics and the physiology are both deterministic and probabilistic, and it's the latter that confers 'freedom'. I think that aspect of our being comes into play as we evolve away from David Bohm's Explicate Order (closer to the ambiguity) towards the Implicate Order ('Truth'), which is what science provides us, if we have the Will to do so. In my own case, 50 years of chasing my intellectual tail led me to this sentence through science. So for example, I think we have to 'control' an experiment because we intuitively understand what Bohm says about our subjective senses filtering out the Implicate Order....if we were to exist in the Implicate Order, we wouldn't have to control experiments, if that makes sense. I deliberately chose science over philosophy because I wanted to have the opportunity to test ideas using technology, rather than making stuff up whole cloth, which seems rather self-servingly narcissistic. But here I am, 50 years hence, philosophizing! But with the 'lens' of my science to guide me to you and have this discussion.... I personally think I am closer to the Implicate as a result of that experience...do you?]


Freedom stays with choice but has no role connected to will, unless you still base your idea of justice on Christian moralism and good versus evil. I don't. I'm definitely beyond and evil. Out ethics is an existential approach to smartness versus stupidity, prolonging and extending libido over mortido since mortido finally wins anyway (death). We like survival, not immortality.

[I assume that all of the above is the consequence of cellular cooperativity. In the battle between bacteria and us, when the prokaryotes devised biofilms and Quorum Sensing, pseudo-multicellular traits, our forebears the eukaryotes copes by cooperating with one another, to this day. So good/evil are manifestations of that cooperativity that has allowed us to exist and florish....it's in our DNA. The 'evil' of doing otherwise has largely been winnowed down to a few bad players like Ebola and Hitler, but in IMHO they are outliers that will be dealt with by the prevailing understanding that cooperation with one another and with the environment are necessary. Unless we cave in to our narcissistic ways and follow the hawkers of AI and CRISPR, in which case I firmly believe we are screwed because that's not how we got to this stage of evolution. As I said in the 'Central Theory of Biology' paper (see attached), it was the selection pressure for adaptation to land, evolving lungs from swim bladders as a derivative of skeletal calcification by Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein that set the wheels of endothermy in motion. The upshot was bipedalism, freeing the forelimbs for flight in birds and tool making and texting in hominins. That, in turn put selection pressure on the CNS to further evolve in order to coordinate all of the new fangled special effects derivative of standing up-right and chucking spears (to cut to the chase). But that also entailed the neuroticism that we are burdened with, IMHO. When I wrote that Central Theory paper the thing that compelled me to publish it was the realization that meditation is the flip side of endothermy, etc etc. And when I extrapolate from meditation, I can 'see' why body temperature drops as a 'reverse evolution', and that perhaps we become more in touch with our gut-brain, which was the pre-adaptation of the brain-brain (see Nicholas Holland's paper on the skin-brain if you care to (Holland ND. Early central nervous system evolution: an era of skin brains? Nat Rev Neurosci. 2003 Aug;4(8):617-27.) and btw, the interrelationship between skin and brain is why, for example, all neurodegenerative diseases have skin homologues. These insights to skin as the source of all physiologic traits as the homologue of the cell membrane was the impetus for "Evolution, the Logic of Biology" (see attached). 

[And I don't think that mortido 'wins out'. That's how we see the life cycle from the perspective of the adult phenotype as the be-all and end-all. But from the epigenetic inheritance perspective, it is the zygote that is the primary selection pressure, generating offspring to collect epigenetic marks, which are brought back to the parent organism by the 'phenotype as agent', the epigenetic marks changing the DNA of the egg and sperm, aided by meiosis for the selection of marks relevant to the 'history' of the organism, modifying the development of the embryo to detect the future (changed) environment accordingly in order to survive and thrive. That on-going productive relationship between the organism and its environment is our immortality. Moreover, our microbiome may also be immortal in the sense that when we die it returns to the ground, enters the aquafer, is assimilated by plants and animals and is thus passed on to other organisms within our respective ecosystems. BTW, there is evidence that our microbiome remains intact after we are buried...it's called the necrobiome. This way of thinking about means and ends is, IMHO, helpful because it acts as a foil to the prevailing attitude in society that we recognize our mortality, and the fear of death compels us to engulf our surroundings in order to be 'too big to fail'....facetiousness notwithstanding. And of course that's fueled by the Physicists telling us that we're only here by chance based on Anthropic Principle, when in reality we are not 'in' this place, we are 'of' this place, literally. So instead of the Big Chill, it should be the Big Thrill! If only...... ]

I'll stop so you can respond, if you wish....

On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 5:01 AM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Absolutely, yes!
Which is why philosophers are preoccupied with will (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) and not with choice (which is a banality except for ethical implications).
Evolution within an environment of limited resources (such as a planet) will foster will since that which wants to die dies out and that which wants to live makes the effort to survive and becomes more abundant.
Psychoanalysis then enriches the philosophy of will into drives and desires and that is where ambiguity and deception (or seduction and manipulation) comes into the picture. You now also successfully see the same thing in non-human nature too. Makes perfect sense.
We even work with instinct (the animalistic), drive (the mechanical), desire (the human) and transcendence (the sacred) in our work in what we call a dialectics of libido and mortido (essentially a psychoanalytical approach to yang and yin). But freedom has very little or nothing to do with this. Awareness does though. So psychoanalysis works only with awareness and never with freedom.
Freedom stays with choice but has no role connected to will, unless you still base your idea of justice on Christian moralism and good versus evil. I don't. I'm definitely beyond and evil. Out ethics is an existential approach to smartness versus stupidity, prolonging and extending libido over mortido since mortido finally wins anyway (death). We like survival, not immortality.
Best intentions
Alexander

Den mån 28 jan. 2019 kl 15:32 skrev JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]>:
I understand the argument/logic. But with all due respect, my concern is that by starting after the fact with cultural norms and practices, the ontology and epistemology of 'Free Will' gets distorted by the fact that life exists within the boundaries of ambiguity and deception, as I have expressed the human condition from my perspective as a scientist. That is to say, there are homologies between Quantum Mechanics and The First Principles of Physiology, perhaps the most significant being the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which assigns the 4 variables for electron spin. The first three are deterministic, whereas the fourth is probabilistic. In that sense, there are 'degrees of freedom', so is that Will or Choice? For me, Will connotes a force of nature that is more consistent with physics than Choice does.Your thoughts?

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 5:49 AM Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Yes!
Will is will. Or rather will is libido (the will to live in Latin) and its opposite is mortido (the will to will nothing, or the will to live as if dead).
But we are not free from this will and this will can not un-will itself. So the whole concept of "free will" was just logical nonsense from the very beginning.
But it has served the Abrahamic religions well since each person can be accused of willing freedom too much instead of willing submission.
So it is a religio-judicial concept to be able to judge people both for intentions and behaviors.
But choice can certainly be free which is why what we do and its consequences become an integrated part of our self-identity. Flashes of self-moments in different near-worlds chained together to constitute our historicized selves.
So we should speak of free choice and not of free will.
Best
Alexander

Den sön 27 jan. 2019 kl 18:49 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>:

Brilliantly articulated, Alexander. The more I learn of your language system and vision the more I am loving it and seeing its beauty and depth.

 

Re Free Will, clearly no philosophically libertarian  free will for me. But there is a self-consciousness system that regulates and legitimizes choices that I identify as my “named personhood,” i.e., “Gregg decided to reply to this email, because he deemed it justifiable.”

 

With warmth,
G

 

 

 

From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2019 12:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Matter, Life, Mind, Culture, Meta-Culture (was: The Inner Senses of the Human Psyche)

 

Dear Gregg

 

My approach was to go back and check when factuality actually served a purpose in language (language was certainly more poetry, power and manipulation than factuallty at first (yes "shit-testing"is way older and much more widespread than "fact-checking"). And there are two areas where factuality has a value that gives it an excuse to require its extra needed energy and effort, and those areas are the social orientation through an unknown landscape (hunting and warfare being the two most obvious) plus as the wisdom of the elders (what is a rite of passage in front on the elders if not one huge goodbye to childhood fantasies and fairytales and a brutal existential acceptance of hardcore reality).

 

The proper justification of values must then develop from either of these two sources, certainly not from fantasies and fairytales (as today's confused and paranoid social justice warriors with their narcissistic over-emotionality claim). The right values are then simply the offspring of fully understanding factuality and its value and then allowing for humanness and not perfection to color that understanding (otherwise all laws would be zero tolerance, and death penalties galore whenever that zero tolerance is broken, like a North Korean Platonism). As for digital I call such a development of ethics "the ethics of interactivity" and refer to it back as life-stage development application toward "a contributive role with an existential experience" within "the sociont" (or the original nomadic tribe in all its contemporary expressions). Meaning I add "strategy" to your call for a "wisdom" of "ethics".

 

Needless to add perhaps, there is no Christian-style "free will" in our model. But why should there be? Freedom and will have after all nothing to do with each other (unless you desperately want to keep a balancing karma or judgment day in your moralism). But there are choices recognized as such. Which means the sociont can agree on policies that with some creative plasticity fosters the sociont in certain directions (like makes it move as a whole when food is scarce or enemies get closer). Values built on human archetypes and the communication in between them. There you go, the ethics if interactivity can then both "make socio-biological sense" to people and also be applicable on an increasingly digital future. But forget about pacifism if you go for it.

 

Best intentions

Alexander

 

Den fre 25 jan. 2019 kl 16:45 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>:

Dear Alexander,

   Wonderful reflections. I completely agree with your point about “ideology” being (large scale) systems of justification and very much equivalent to my meaning of Culture on the ToK. And it is the emergence of systems of justification in particular socio-historical contexts with particular symbols and identities and histories of investment and influence that give rise to both the ideological explicit content, and the subconscious collective backdrop that implicitly frames and shapes it.   

 

  Furthermore, yes, the digital wave is upon us and the issues of how we deal are key. The ToK System is a map of science and a natural philosophy theory of scientific knowledge as behavior writ large. Behavior in the ontological sense refers to change in object field relations. And behavior in the epistemological scientific sense meaning that which can be (directly or indirectly) observed and measured. Indeed, the ToK it gives rise to a Periodic Table of Behavior (attached) that allows us to map out the “objective behavioral facticity” of nature.  

 

  But questions of the justifiability of facts are different than the justifiability of values. The ToK System is not a full synthetic philosophy, nor is it a guide to moral well-being. However, the ToK is a natural philosophy that can set the ground work for a humanistic approach to ethics and aesthetics. Indeed, that is what my next venture is about. The playful “Garden of UTUA” is a first draft to a more complete synthetic philosophy that sets the stage for practical wisdom.

 

  Indeed, it is crucial to realize here my own personal journey. I was training to be a clinical/health service psychologist. I was (and do) making moral decisions about the nature of the good life all the time in that work. I craved a knowledge system that made both facts and values clear. Indeed, the fact-value entanglement problem was primary in my shift from the question of “What is psychotherapy and how might it be better integrated?” (which has, by its very nature, a fact-value fusion) to the question: “What is psychology?” The latter being much more fact/descriptive explanatory and humanistic values are secondary (although I learned that everything is complicated). My point is that the ToK System solves the problem of (American) psychology. It does not solve the problem of value (either ethical values or aesthetics).

 

  The full philosophy (i.e., natural, synthetic and practical) that I am now working on (with others) tackles the issue of value directly, and offers a vision of the future in which the two are holistically synthesized. I think progress is being made toward a value-based algorithm for the future. I will offer a teaser here and not that there is much more to discuss.

 

  First, let me be clear that I am committed to an “integrated pluralism,” meaning that there needs to be and will always be many meaning making systems. Thus, I am certainly not claiming that what I offer is the right or only way. But what is emerging as a clear and clean synthesis in my language game, and something I believe could be part of our collective ideology that would help us ensure the digital transformation ultimately fosters wisdom.

 

  In terms of the algorithm…here is an early version: The outline of an “adaptive living equation”: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201605/the-adaptive-living-equation

 

  In terms of values, here are what I call my “big three” values that provide macro-level society guides toward “the good”:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201201/finding-our-moral-compass

 

  In terms of building our future, I have recently become enamored with the “philosophy of design” as articulated by the architect Harold Nelson and computer scientist Eric Stolterman called The Design Way, which provides a way to think about developing desired change in an unpredictable world.

 

Looking forward to our continued dialogue about this,
Gregg

 

 

 

 

From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2019 6:17 AM
To: Intellectual Deep Web <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Matter, Life, Mind, Culture, Meta-Culture (was: The Inner Senses of the Human Psyche)

 

Dear Gregg

 

The ToK chain of emergences makes a lot of sense, I'm especially happy that consciousness/subconsciousness are not part of your definitions and that each emergence is indeed properly grounded in formal causations.

 

Your term "justification system" is what we European phenomenologists refer to as "ideology" (Jordan Peterson uses the word "ideology" wrongly, mistaking all ideology for being authoritarian-political, not realizing that his own social-conservative Petersonism is very much an ideology in itself) meaning a system of ideas (or at least a chaos perceived as an orderly worldview, psychotics for example have no other worldview then their own narcissism).

 

"Ideology" is then the basis for "models" which we either obey or disobey which in term forms "identities". Where the benefit of our systems is that it can be used on humans both dividually and socially. "Subconsciousness" then operates according to an "ideology" that we are not aware of, or that at least is not transparent to us, therefore the Jungian terms "shadow" and "collective subconsciousness" also apply to our social philosophy.

 

The question is then how we deal with epistemology (truth), ethics (smart versus stupid) and aesthetics (The Beautiful) when The Digital comes crushing in, absorbs culture and generates a Mind drenched in and obsessed with Meta-Culture. Memory should mean a renaissance for Factuality that makes most of value relativism obsolete (and should generate a religious and spiritual awakening in itself; no more imaginary trips but truly factual transformations at the core).

 

But what is the core for ethics and aesthetics here? We have already applied mass democracy on both as soon as billions of users entered the Internet and ended up with a bland chaotic mess, from My Space to Instagram. All built on the ideology of infantilism that was the result of the absent phallus syndrome following the paradigm shift itself.

 

I firmly believe that the problem here is that we are constantly left with grading or degrading accumulations of past experiences. How many more movie or selfie sequels can we muster before we just puke? So for the grand narrative to work, it has to be both audacious like hell and truly challenging, why otherwise even speak of ethics and aesthetics?

 

Could perhaps the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg as an augmented space co-created by architectural genius and algorithm point the way forward? https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/en/ At least for aesthetics? Gaming stills merely seems like animation to me by comparison.

 

Best intentions

Alexander

 

Den tors 24 jan. 2019 kl 13:46 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>:

Dear Alexander,

 

Thanks much for the question. It is indeed crucial to be clear regarding the language games we are using. Before answering directly, let me share a brief description of my background with IDWers.

 

My language system emerged over the last twenty years, starting with the Tree of Knowledge System (which first appeared in my head in 1997), which is a new approach to natural philosophy/science writ large. The ToK System resulted from my realization that modern scientific psychology was hopelessly fragmented and confused, in part because philosophy never got the matter and mind relationship quite right. I came to call the hopeless fragmentation of psychology “The Problem of  Psychology,” and ultimately the ToK System emerged as a novel solution. In 2003, I produced the first outline of the system, in  The Tree of Knowledge System and the Theoretical Unification of Psychology. A few years later I examined the system’s capacity to serve as a new consilient approach to nature philosophy/science via comparing it to E. O. Wilson’s in this paper
The Problem of Psychology and the Integration of Human Knowledge: Contrasting Wilson’s Consilience with the Tree of Knowledge System. I then provided a book length treatment of the system in A New Unified Theory of Psychology. I have since been working out the practical philosophical implications of the system, both for professional psychologists, and for everyday living and psychosocial well-being.

 

The central insight of the Tree of Knowledge is that the universe (from our scientific point of view) is an unfolding wave of behavior (much as Whitehead’s process philosophy and Lee Smolin’s version of reality), that pops into existence at the Big Bang, and unfolds as four strongly emergent dimensions of behavioral complexity, which are labeled Matter (the behavior of and on the energy-matter-space-time grid); Life (the behavior of organisms); Mind (the behavior of animals w/brains); and Culture (the behavior of human persons). The reason that, following Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture are strongly emergent (as opposed to weakly emergent properties, which is how I conceive of the relationship between physics and chemistry and other “within” dimension emergences) is because each is associated with the appearance of a novel and functional information processing and communication system. Genetics serves that for “Life”; the nervous system for “Mind”; and human language for “Culture”.

 

Between each dimension of complexity is a “joint point,” which refers to the conceptual structure that provide explanations for the emergence of the higher order dimension of behavioral complexity.  

The ToK posits Behavioral Investment Theory as the joint point for the emergence of Mind.  The Justification Hypothesis (now referred to as Justification Systems Theory) is the joint point for Culture. It is a framework that allows for a clear understanding of the functional organization of the human self-consciousness system and the socially constructed systems that coordinate/mediate the behavior of human persons. Capital “C” Culture on the ToK refers to the large scale systems of justification (i.e., linguistic meaning making) that emerged between 200 and 50K ago, and lines up with Donald’s mythic culture. Our laws, politics, scientific theories and the reasons we give when we are late, are all “justifications or justification systems” in the language game of the ToK. As is this narrative.

 

MetaCulture has its primary origins in writing, which also represents the shift from pre-modern to “modern history” (as opposed to Big History). I am using “Meta” to mean above and beyond. So, I am referring to a theoretical conception of behavior that transcends modern Culture. On the Tree of Knowledge, MetaCulture emerges as “The Fifth Joint Point.”

 

Let’s ask: Why is it happening now, what is driving it, and how might it be guided? It is happening now because we are seeing the emergence of a new form of information processing, communication and memory systems, in the form of “digital.” That is, digital becomes akin to genes, neurons, and human language, and is the driving force. It my hope that its emergence will be fused with the emergence of coherent integrative wise knowledge systems that enable a synthesis of human nature, the nature of our planet and cosmos, and technology with a valued based vision of the future toward the True, Good, and Beautiful. That is, I conceive of the 5th Joint Point as a “transcendental beacon” to serve as a call for wisdom that coalesces and coincides with the digital revolution and provides a path to a higher or meta form of cultural consciousness. In other words, a post, postmodern grand meta-narrative.

 

Attached is a visual that attempts to capture this graphically.

 

Thanks for the opportunity to share my version of reality.

 

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://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge

 

Check out my webpage at:

www.gregghenriques.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 6:40 AM
To: Intellectual Deep Web <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Inner Senses of the Human Psyche (was: Humanity: The Fourth Stage)

 

Dear Gregg

 

How do you define "meta-culture"?

Historically the term has been used to define culture that deals with previous culture, for example as the artistic form of culture studies.

Culture that refers to previous culture through "research" and "conversation". Almost a standard for say late 20th century art.

Just so that we acknowledge where we are at so far in terms of understanding the digital onslaught.

How do memory and imagination relate to your "meta-culture" concept? How is it different from previous human-techne relationships?

 

Best intentions

Alexander

 

Den tis 22 jan. 2019 kl 15:21 skrev Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>:

I agree with Alexander—Mark this essay was very well done.

 

I am completely in line with the Merlin Donald vision of mimetic to mythic (which I call “mythic”---as you know, Culture on the ToK represents shared systems of justification). Then formal symbolic written language changed everything and set the stage for modern Civilization and modern self-consciousness

 

And, indeed, digital is setting up what I call “MetaCulture,” and the transformation is happening before our eyes. The fourth stage is indeed upon us.

 

Best,
Gregg

 

From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Alexander Bard
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 8:26 AM
To: Intellectual Deep Web <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The Inner Senses of the Human Psyche (was: Humanity: The Fourth Stage)

 

Dear Mark

 

This text is a philosophical and spiritual goldmine. So I prefer we keep it i bold letters.

However can we please sort the ideas one by one?

To begin with, how are the Aristotelian inner senses different from Freud's triad of superego, ego and id?

What would a proper Neo-Aristotelian Phenomenology look like? Can we map it for a better understanding? And will Franz Brentano's own work be of any help, as a go-between to Aristotle and Freud?

 

Best intentions

Alexander

 

Den tors 17 jan. 2019 kl 18:45 skrev <[log in to unmask]>:

Humanity: The Fourth Stage

 

We have entered the "fourth stage" of humanity's "cultural and cognitive evolution" and it is formally caused by *digital* technology.  We are becoming wise once again.

The previous three stages were detailed by evolutionary neuro-psychologist Merlin Donald in his 1992 "Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition."  He named them "mimetic," "mythic" and "symbolic" and they each described steps in the development of human communications.  Tribal learning based on mimicry in "techne."  Culture based on mythology (rooted in spoken language.) Civilization based on symbolic abstraction (rooted in written language.)  Three evolutionary stages -- now replaced by a fourth.

Humans are uniquely social animals and that sociability is built on our unique capability to communicate with each other.  While remaining biologically roughly the same, over the past 200,000 (or so) years, our species Homo Sapiens has constantly evolved new "forms" of communications with profound psychological and social implications.  No other animal can do that.  As a result, humanity has evolved its cultures and cognitive abilities, and digital technology is driving the next stage.

Many mistakenly think of digital in terms of "artificial intelligence," presuming that this intelligence is potentially an improvement on human reason.  Alas, that is not what digital does.  Instead, following the work of Marshall McLuhan on the "extensions of man," what digital technology actually does is extend human memory, rather than its "intelligence."  The "alchemical" quest for machine-like "homunculi," as described by Goethe's Faust, was misplaced and, indeed, diabolic from the get-go.  Just ask Mephistopheles.

The current profound human enhancement has no historic equivalent other than the development of literacy in what Karl Jaspers called the "Axial Age" (c. 500BC) -- during which Plato lived and famously worried what effect writing would have on our ability to memorize the mythic "stories," such as Homer's Odyssey, that had previously organized society.  At the same time, Plato would have banned these "poets" from his Republic, hoping that humanity would move on to what we now call the "third stage" in its evolution.  It did -- changing us irreversibly ever since.

It was Plato's student, Aristotle, however, who explained the crucial metaphysical relationships behind such transformations.  It is his *formal* cause, anchoring his "four causes" (Formal, Material, Efficient and Final), that has been largely forgotten today, which best helps us to understand what we are now going through.  Breaking with his mentor, for whom "forms" were supra-real ideals, Aristotle's forms are very real -- beginning with the "psyche" (or what we translate as "soul") that animates all living things.

Aristotle's "hylomorphism" describes a world in which matter and form join in action to make our world what it is -- not what we'd like it "ideally" to be, as Plato's epigoni would have it.  Plato and, indeed, the many Platonists through the ages have not understood this.  Perhaps they have been mistaken on purpose.  Many have instead hypothesized that humans contain a "spark of the divine," forcing an unstable/unequal pairing between "corrupt" matter and "pure" spirit.  Nothing could be further from reality, as Aristotle correctly understood.  And nothing has provoked more havoc in this world as a result.  Just ask Lucifer (or Mick Jagger.)

The human *psyche* (aka soul) is unlike any others.  Plants and animals also have psyches, which are also their "forms."  Aristotle coined the term "entelechy" to describe all these entities, recently translated by Joe Sachs as "being-at-work-staying-itself."  But those other psyches aren't capable of the understanding what makes us humans "sapiens," and, crucially, those psyches don't invent new technologies, nor do they change their "form" radically as a result.  Formal causes cause forms.  And the human form is constantly morphing, as its technological formal causes change each one of us.

Psychology is the study of the human form; our psyche.  This science was built on the work of Aristotle's "On the Soul" (c. 350BC, as it has recently been titled in English translation, perhaps more commonly known as "De Anima" in its Latin translation.)  But our 2000+ year-long understanding of psychology was hijacked as a result of one of the "morphological" changes in the late-19th century, in that case as a result of electricity-as-formal-cause.  This shift, which Max Weber described as the "disenchantment of the world," is now being reversed as a result of digital technology and a new "faculty" psychology is being born.

This new psychology (i.e. study of the "soul") takes the Aristotelian approach, which was substantially enhanced in the middle-ages by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, and further enriches it with modern neuroscience &c.  Like "classic" and medieval psychology, it revolves around faculties (or "powers") of the psyche.  In the process of "forming" humans, the most important of those faculties are what are known as the "internal senses," operating just outside of our waking awareness.  Perhaps the best modern term for this would be the "subconscious."  Those struggling to explain "consciousness" are, as the cartoon puts it, "like the drunk looking for their car-keys under the streetlamp."  They are simply looking in the wrong place.  No wonder it's a "hard problem."

Freud's "discovery of the unconscious" was little more than an attempt to update this earlier "faculty" understanding, which he had absorbed at the University of Vienna from his 'psychology professor," Franz Brentano -- himself once a Catholic Dominican priest and a modern-day student of Aquinas.  Freud's theories kept on being "experimentally" invalidated, forcing him into a final formulation in his 1923 "The Ego and the Id," which reflected his attempt to retrieve what Brentano had taught him about the psyche's internal faculties.  Ego roughly corresponds to "Cogitative Reason," superego to Memory and the Id to Imagination.

The structure of the internal senses (or what many Anglophones have called "inner wits") are fourfold: Sensus Communis (or "common sense"), Imagination, Memory and what is known as "Cogitative Reason."  It is this final cogitative faculty which, based on how it is informed by our Imagination and Memory, is the one that provides our perception of the world. Freud's "ego" misses much of what is involved.  This pivotal faculty is poorly understood today, indeed completely ignored by "cognitive psychology," but has recently become the focus of intense research.  If our perception is distorted, then our other faculties, including our "appetites" and, crucially, our "intellect" cannot properly function.  As Aquinas suggested, malformed internal senses render us "amentibus" (which is Latin for "out of our minds.")

Previous communications technologies -- particularly the *electric* ones which have dominated since the mid-1800s with the rise of telegraphy -- have done exactly this to everyone of us.  Humanity has collectively been driven insane.  No, the problem didn't start with Facebook.  Thomas Edison and his "Black Maria" were already doing this to us in the 1890s.  All of the horrors we have recently inflicted on ourselves and our planet have been formally caused by the psychological damage done to us by our own technologies -- culminating in television and its current diabolical spawn of "social media."  Under these conditions, human Imagination has been driven into a chronic state of terminal Fantasy.  This cannot continue and digital technology is already putting it to rest.  For instance, if you want to address "climate change" (clearly a result of insane behavior), this psychological shift -- already underway -- is our only hope.

Instead of over-driving the Imagination, digital communications technologies dramatically extend our Memory.  Instead of make-believe, which has often taken Plato as its champion, digital technologies are constructing a psycho-technological environment that dramatically extends our Memory -- relying on Aristotle's principles of formal causality.  New causes; new forms.  This shift in the internal senses has no historic precedent.  In the span of one generation, the entire world's population is being forced through a psychological transformation that can only be described as the "fourth stage" in human evolution.  Not surprisingly, much turmoil and strife is the inevitable result.

The effects of this massive causal technological shift on our cultures/psychologies are abundant and increasingly difficult to ignore.  The Kissingerian "world order" constructed under *television* conditions (c. 1950-2000) has already collapsed; never to be rebuilt (and Kissinger knows it.)  "Globalism" is dead and no amount of protesting about "Trump's Wall" will bring it back.  China has itself become a "global" Sphere and has retrieved its medieval "Silk Road" in the sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (complete with extensive digitization) and, in parallel is teaching its "classic" Yi Jing to its leadership.  As Dorothy once said, responding to the effects of radio on rural America in the 1930s, "Toto, I don't believe we're in Kansas anymore."

"Sapiens" is typically translated as "wise," not intelligent.  Yes, it is the present participle of the Latin "sapere" or "be wise."  So far, no one appears to be designing "artificial wisdom"; clearly recognized as beyond even the much-hyped (and ill-conceived) "singularity."  This difference is crucial for our futures.  Wisdom is based on Memory, not Imagination.  As Alfred Korzybski would have put it, that is "a difference that makes a difference."  Fantasy may drive "innovation" (the meaning of which shifted from negative to positive under "Gutenberg Galaxy" conditions) but it is our remembering that makes us human.  Human memory, extended first by literacy and now by digital technologies -- far beyond what was previously possible -- is forming the basis of a radically new human "wisdom."  And, in turn, that is the basis of the Fourth Stage of human cultural and cognitive evolution.

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