Emergence-emanation, Whitehead, Kastrup: a dialectic ontology w/ Matt Segall- Voices with Vervaeke.
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- This dia logos with Matt was in between my two conversations with Bernardo Kastrup and a followup to my previous discussion with Matt. I recommend checking out the video commentary Matt did on my first conversation with Bernardo, • Emanation, Emergence, ... , and check out his excellent book • "Physics of the World-...
This is part of my series Voices with Vervaeke: Science, Spirituality, and the Meaning Crisis. You can support my work on Patreon, with the proceeds going into the research I do at the University of Toronto on the Meaning Crisis and the cultivation of wisdom here: / johnvervaeke
Join the Discord Server to discuss and reflect upon my work: / discord
Vervaeke and Kastrup's bonding over the Meaning Crises and ontological 'recovery' was unexpected, but has quickly become one of my favorite conversations ever
This was absolutely brilliant! Thank you both for this wonderful dialogue.
Bernardo frequently says that dissociation does go all the way because in split personality patients, within their dreams each personality has a unique perspective and memory and they can interact with one another in the same "space". Our personal waking reality is akin to a dream of the dissociated mind at large. He adds that unlike other proposals, we do have strong empirical evidence for dissociation. I was under the impression that John missed that part of Bernardo's argument (and I acknowledge that I am probably wrong :))
1:14:40 the statue is an anthropomorphised rock or a rock afforded meaning. The animals we don't kill versus the ones we do depend on our relationship to them, cows as food vs dogs as pets, dolphins as having awareness versus insects not having.
So it's not necessarily a difference in kind or degree so much as an arbitrary moral judgement based on [human] perspective and relationship to the thing in question.
First, thank you so much for all these wonderful conversations, John! At the end of my comment I have a rather serious question.
You can not imagine how much I appreciate everything you are doing, and to what extent I recognize myself in what you are trying to do with your work. It's so exciting.
Right now I am starting up a non-dogmatic "spiritual" community in my area which will hopefully blossom when the COVID-19 crisis diminishes (yet with the Meaning Crisis still relevant).
But John, a more serious question. My background is in medicine as a MD, but I really, really love the subject of Cognitive Science. This is the discipline which sings to both my mind and soul, even though I still appreciate my medical background. Do you know if there is a possibility to do a Bachelor/Master in Cognitive Science online (I am from Europe), and what Universities would you recommend?!
Hopefully you can point to some paths. Thanks in advance!
1:04:00 I think Bernardo's ontology does recognize a difference, at least in degree, between a living thing and a rock, and that is (varying degrees of, a gradient of) dissociation. A self reflective living creature such as a human is simply fully dissociated. Moral responsibility is an artifact of such reflective nature. So I don't think they are ultimately in disagreement unless John is trying to give ontological status to morality.
did you hear back from Evan Thompson at all? would love to hear that conversation
Yes. Each so self-assembling/self-maintaining increment of solid matter residing here (each proper existent, animate & inanimate alike) ‘knows’ (via its own innate sentience) the difference between that which is ‘good’ for it & will improve its survivability, & that which will not, & each then also by the power innately invested in it acts accordingly; each acts by actively & discriminatively resisting the bad & by actively & discriminatively embracing the good, &, again, each does so act entirely under its own steam.
‘Resisting the bad’ ? Did you ever limp home as a kid after stubbing your toe on a particularly ‘resisting’ roadside rock ?
‘Solid matter’ ?
The properties, features, varieties, distribution & capacities of that which we call solid matter differs from the properties, features, varieties, distribution & capacities of the un-solid, amorphous, background plasma otherwise universally present here in our Universe, albeit from which plasma all solid matter ‘congeals’ itself - albeit from which all solid matter self-assembles itself - each increment thereof doing so courtesy of the self-assembling powers with which its elementary elements are invested.
Note that this self-sufficient modus operandi characterises all crystals .... including grains of salt, rain drops & snow flakes .... not to omit atoms, molecules, & all life forms.
Mind you, these several & various self-organising abilities exist in widely varying - yet fully measurable/verifiable - kinds & amounts, all doing so in direct correspondence to the widely varying kinds of existents which exist here in our Universe. Many existents are broken off bits of previous fully-self-assembling crystalline entities ... or just aggregates thereof, or ‘extended phenotypes’ (that is manufactured tools, artefacts & instruments) etc.).....
No. It turns out we don’t live in a billiard ball universe after all ... sorry Sir Newton ... the very opposite. On the contrary we both are & do live in a quite demonstrably panpyschic, pan-animate, pan-moral one. Indeed, one in which it is quite demonstrably tortoises all the way down. Oh dear.
Measuring consciousness involves simply measuring how much information any lump of matter is first encountering/obtaining from its surrounds, & then using as the means with which it then guides & directs its actions.
Once ‘information’s’ correct ontological identity is properly recognised, measuring how much of it & which particular kinds of it any single lump of matter is using at any one time, is entirely unproblematic. (See my up-coming discourse thereon.)
Courtesy of our own highly variegated in kind & very large in number, of in-built sensory devices (plus all of our recently manufactured sensory devices), we ourselves are able to gather & use a very great deal more information concerning the fitness-impacting things & events in our surrounds than can the rocks & stones beneath our feet - or the little worms slithering between them .... We also gather & use reams & reams of info from inside ourselves too, all of which latter contributes rather especially to our experience of self-consciousness - to our experience of cognitive self-conscious awareness.
And while ‘information’s’ correct ontological identity (not digits) turns out to be the key which unlocks all knowledge of that which both exists here inside our Universe, & also of that which actively occurs among & between all of these fellow material residents of ours here inside our Universe, animate & inanimate alike, unfortunately this ‘info key’ no more helps elucidate any outside knowledge of our Down Home Cosmos than do any of the other worldviews currently on offer - which ‘outside realm’ is presumably that particular domain, sphere or magisteria wher.e the creator of it all (if there is one) resides along with his, hers, theirs or its means, methods & madnesses (reasons !). It’s absolutely-insane-to-us-mere-mortals reasons .....
Darn.
Nevertheless knowing information’s correct ontological identity also allows us to recognise exactly why this particular bucketload of ‘outsider ignorance’ obtains, the reason being, simply enough, due to the fact that owing to information’s most intimate & absolutely inextricable association exclusively with that which is physical - that is, exclusively with solid lumps of matter - absolutely none of it exists outside of our own otherwise altogether physical/material universe. Our altogether material world.
Absolutely none exists by which we might thereby apprise ourselves of that which exists out there in the dark & what it might be doing. Darn. Squared.
Mind you, once all of this info-unlocked-but-strictly-insider-new-knowledge is out in the open, lots of ppl - lots of scientists & philosophers - will be out of work ..... with only dotting the ‘i’s’ & crossing the ‘t’s’ left remaining to be done ....
But you can’t eat off of a spinning plate ......
Yes. Once ‘the answer’ is in, the entirely-forgivable-intellectual-spinning-until-now must cease, as it becomes possible to notice that we’ve got a whole planet to clean up & restore back to its former state of matchless glory .... sans the intellectual spinning ...
I repeat, figuring out mental phenomena - critically including such mind-based phenomena as ‘thought’, ‘mind’, ‘intelligence’, ‘consciousness’, ‘qualia’ & ‘self-consciousness’ - poses no especial difficulty once one has ‘information’s’ correct ontological identity under one’s belt.
Do you know what ‘information’ is ?
I do.
Not that anyone reads these long comments.....
Just saying.
The web like structure of super clusters have a similarity to the web like structure of the brain. The ratio of structure to voids is interesting.
Matt is really wonderful. For a laymen such as myself Whitehead is sort of tough to get my mind around as a casual armchair philosopher and I always find it impressive how Matt can break it down into something more digestible.
The same is true for Bernardo's analytic idealism. He explains it well and it takes root sort of intuitively and I can adopt it as an interim worldview with relative ease for the sake of assessment.
As far as difference in degree becoming a difference in kind I wonder if language is a good analogy in Bernardo's defense? A word after all is language, even a word in a language unknown to you is still language albeit completely indecipherable without knowledge of said language or sufficient context. Art and mythological symbolism is a language, you could argue that it is of a different kind but the fact remains it all falls under the umbrella of language.
Bernardo's position might benefit a bit from Whitehead's musicality. Mind at large becomes language and the dissociation instead is a compartmentalization necessary for intelligibility and representation and not just an excitation in some abstract field (which to me is the more problematic representation of his idea than the D.I.D. type dissociation and use of "alters")
I'm just spit balling here I'm sure this ground has been covered. Thank you very much for having these conversations and sharing them with us. More people should see these talks and participate in the discussion.
Indeed and especially so for Bernardo.
It would be interesting to get Noam Chomsky in on a talk
My take on the agency/difference in degree/ontology dillema is as follows: organic matter has to form sufficiently complex feedback loops that sustain a 'limit cycle' (oscillatory) behaviour on a sufficiently complex manifold, for a sufficient amount of time in order to be considered alive. The most basic function of life is self-preservation and the most basic experience is survival. Survival appears to be inherently mechanistic: it occurs by consuming energy (which is required to maintain the oscillatory behavior) from the environment. Survival may be the most basic form of intentionallity. Feedback loops (together with high gain amplifiers) are known to act as 'filters' - they can selectively pick up signals / reject noise. This is how the most basic form of life is linked with the notion of relevance realization. When reaching a certain degree of complexity, this feedback-loop amalgam can be seen to posses a mini 'personality'.
This is great stuff. It reminds me tangentially of TV shows like Wheeler Dealers and the Repair shop. Have you noticed the huge market there seems to be for shows that use old and new techniques to restore precious things to their original condition?
Really superb articulation and skill. Thank you both. Great coalescence felt in this conversation.. and of active potential for a greater eminence to bear fruit! Good luck!
13:30 doesn't the constriction of information flow(dissociation) between separate minds explain how the "one big mind" becomes "many minds"? The big mind can communicate with itself through all the physical laws of our universe, but small minds(lets use individual people for an example) have very high-bandwith pathways within a single brain to share information within that brain. That single brain can communicate with other brains, but it doesn't have such high information bandwidth, as the info that brains can take in from other brains is limited to what passes through their sensory organs rather than being directly neuronally connected.
I feel it's a matter of fact that everything is one "big mind", and the illusion of separate minds is created by this constriction of information flow caused by the limited sense organs, which in turn leads to the formation of an ego: a piece of the "big mind" that mistakes itself for a separate mind because of it's dissociation from other parts.
This same logic can be applied to separate parts of the mind that have less communication with other parts, or it can be applied to communities or nations. There is no qualitative difference between the different ways of separating mind, the only difference is in magnitude, and that is determined by the degree of information constriction between sections.
( Emanation ( Reduction ( Emergence ) Complexitfication ) Emanation )
all these recent discussions are so nice, it feels like a new or forgoten form of knowing is being discovered. wich all sort of reflects onto all the stuff happening around us.
anyway lots of fun and greatful all of this is accessable so easy.
Matt talks about "find the ways of weaving the world back together", .... which begs the question: the world was weaved in the past and something happened (meaning crisis) so that we need to weave it back together ????
The world was woven together in the past, then the context changed and now the world must be woven together again, the need to do this, or the inability to do it, is the meaning crisis I guess. There's various things that changed the context, population growth for one.
Well exactly!
I'm different than Dr. Vervaeke in this respect: I do try to avoid breaking rocks.
🕵👍🔥
Thanks for the great conversation. Another 'stellar' guest who also has a great YT channel.
1:07:47 "Biological life on planet earth is not out of character when you look at the rest of the universe." Lovely choice of words here :)
that the earth and humanity are just 100 s from dooms day (doomsday clock), proves that scientists have forgotten to return to mother: philosophy (metaphysics and ontology). Scientists have lost their compass, but they are not to blame, for they were never taught that Philosophy is the mother of science.
This is a stimulating and well-grounded discussion of important stuff. Thank you both.
John is interested in 'relevance realization' and how it is a necessary process for a (cognitive) agent to engage in. This makes sense to me. But, upon closer inspection, it appears there must be at least two different modes of such r.r.: The organism or cognitive agent must appreciate the relevant information gleaned from the physical environment. (The bear must recognize and decide what to do about the aroma it smells. In doing so it realizes the relevance of the information it gains access to.)
But there must also be a connection established with a particular set of past occasions (or experienced events) which are most relevant to the present moment. (Are they 'realized'?) These are the aspects of the past that will become most influential to the present moment. So my first question is: What is the criterion for selecting which past events will be most influential and informing of the present moment (beyond the obvious criterion of proximity in time and space)?
I also want to make a comment that reflects on discussions about quantum mechanics, decoherence, and biology.
Facts about the state of the physical world are only established through measurement interactions. When a measurement interaction occurs, the particular facts established about the situation (or state of the system) depend on what measuring apparatus is utilized. In a similar way, particular facts about the environment that are 'measured' (or recognized) depend on what senses are employed in the recognition - the facts produced will depend partially on what the organism needs to, wants to, or can, glean and appreciate. So to say, as Matt suggests as likely, that the universe itself selects from among the possibilities inherent in the moment, it seems more likely that the experiencing agent - the one who 'realizes relevance' to its own aims and liabilities in a particular situation - is a necessary ingredient in any 'selective' quantum collapse (above and beyond whatever experience the universe may be having). This does not necessarily imply any woo woo theories about consciousness creating reality, only that constrained* potentiality comes into actuality when some entity, other than the universe itself, is observing, participating, and caring about what is about to manifest.
*(I mean 'constrained by the laws of Nature' here.)
Finally, Matt speaks about 'putting organisms back at the center of biology.' Yes! I could not agree more. In fact, I think organisms should be at the center of physics as well because their presence as agents who realize relevance and facilitate outcome is required in the course of any measurement interaction. Without the measurer there is no measurement and no facts established, only developing potentiality And this is so in spite of any decoherence effects.
~ 1' 15" Fruits are designed to be eaten. That's how plants propagate their seeds.
Love the content, but really wish Dr. Vervaeke had a better microphone.
Hey, why Whitehead 's metaphysics is eerily close to Kashmir shaivism.
Science and God seem to share similar burdens. They both tend to be resented for their historical success - reports of their death invariably turn out to have been exaggerated.
I THINK THESE CHAPS MIGHT ENJOY taking up, say, a work of speculative fiction like Lem's SOLARIS for discussion in the light of ANW. Those mimoids certainly come to mind. Also that might add some gentle structure to such talk(s).
Amazing conversation! One comment on the temporality bit is that Gibson builds on James' critique of the razor edge present and asks "when does perception become memory?" to which he concludes invariants are revealed through exploration which takes time. Michotte's classic work "The Perception of Causality" also shows very clearly that there is information for perceiving causality.
It looks like the word INFORMATION has been thoroughly misunderstood. Epistemologically, information comes from "In Formation", which ontologically implies that something is in formation. The question then would be: what's in formation ???? As everything can be synthesized as Knowledge (block universe ??) Reality may be fundamentally a structured Knowledge Field (KF), but our awareness (consciousness) of the KF is finite yet growing, expanding, evolving i.e., dynamic. Thus, it can be said that Consciousness is InFormation
~14' 57" Can't this problem be solved by autopoiesis and the naturally emergent subsequent autonomy of the whole? The individual conscious units combine together to firm a single whole which has a single consciousness. Don't we see this at the purely human level with families and clans and tribes and other voluntary social groups? Isn't there such a thing as a group mind?
*tosses a comment to the algorithm*
What a wondrous discourse! It exemplifies such subtle insightfulness together with such cosmic breadth! I love how you both draw on each other’s ideas and then exponentially expound on them.
What intrigued me the most is this ontological orientation of the “emergence / emanation” polarity. This conceptual framework evoked in me a vast epiphany of thoughts...one is indeed left grasping for ways for cogent expression!
This dichotomy evokes other “polar tension” discernments found in philosophy of mind...such as Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the appearance (phenomena) and the thing in itself (noumena). Like the emergence/ emanation symbiotic relationship we see here also a similar “organic unity”....an intelligible coherence despite the apparent dichotomy.
But what I mostly wish to share is this other “dichotomous profundity” that I recently came across in David Bentley Hart’s short essay “Mind Soul World-Consciousness In Nature.”
If you indulge me in these extended quotes I am hopeful that his eloquent words will contribute to this dialogue while also adding some curious similarities to these “di-polar” tensions found in both mind and nature.
“A scrupulous phenomenology of consciousness is enough to show that consciousness is not merely a passive reflection of reality “out there,” but a dynamic movement of the mind toward the real. The world is intelligible to us because we reach out towards it, or reach beyond it, coming to know the endless diversity of particular things within the embrace of a more general and abstract yearning for a knowledge of truth as such, and by way of an aboriginal inclination of the mind towards reality as a comprehensible whole. Knowledge is born out of a natural longing for the ideal intelligibility of all things, a final infinite horizon of knowledge that is nothing less than the whole of being. Even our most ordinary acts of cognition organize and take hold of the world because the intellect has a certain natural compulsion that exceeds the individual objects of awareness. All concretely limited aspirations of the rational will are sustained within formally limitless aspirations: no finite end is ever desirable in itself, but only by reference to that final transcendental end in whose light that finite object can be recognized and judged.
Moreover, this vocation of the mind to absolute ends is no more a simple psychological state than the unity of consciousness is a simple condition of psychological integrity; in both cases, what is at issue is a transcendental condition of thought, which is logically prior to the finite identity and impulses of the ego. The vanishing point of the mind’s inner coherence and simplicity is met by the vanishing point of the world’s highest values; the gaze of the apperceptive “I” within is turned towards a transcendental “that” forever beyond; and mental experience, of the self or of the world, takes shape in the relation between these two “extra-natural” poles. The rational mind is able to know the world as a whole because it has always already, in its intentions, exceeded the world. Consciousness contains nature, as a complete and cogent reality, because it has always gone beyond nature, and can understand and judge because it is obedient to absolute values that appear as concrete realities nowhere within the physical order. By their transcendence of all finite conditions, they give us a world. And even the empirical self, the psychological individual, is itself only part of nature as it occurs in the interval between these transcendental poles.”
So these Hegelian ideas of a “synthesis within a holistic paradigm” carries within it many instances of apparent contradictory polarities...contradictory in so much as seen through the myopic lens of the particular and not through the macro perspective of the whole.
“Traditionally in Western thought, opposites were seen as contradictory and mutually exclusive, but Hegel's breakthrough was in seeing contraries as part of a larger schema. This leap in logic makes it possible to hold contradictory data as equally true, since the acceptance of the paradox leads the thinker onward, through the paradox into the larger reality of which the paradox is only a part. "For Hegel," writes Copleston, "it is precisely the impossibility of being satisfied with a sheer contradiction which forces the mind onwards to a synthesis in which the contradiction is overcome." John R. Mabry “Hegel, Whitehead, & Chardin: Trailblazers of a New Cosmology”
seriously, these scholars are getting out of hand! more power to you! I've been learning more than I could have ever dreamed of
Music and art unravel and unfold themselves in the presence and immanence of relationality between emergence and emanation. To get to a synthesis that I think John wants, the theorising has to always take place in a constant stream of immanence for it to make any sense. Theory is always playing catch up to what is actually emerging and emanating, which the arts manage to capture so much better than theory, music being the purest example. I guess John knows this and thats why his interest in practiced based initiatives are being set up, its the only way to keep up to speed with the emergent emanation.
The fractal scaling of event horizons.
The intentional field of implicate order.
Are you speaking via Bohm?
Simply brilliant. Thank you so much.
“A quantum of fact”
That’s an interesting way to think about it.
Appt'preheneding in the bed of at'tention. 💓1:51:48
This was very rich and well explained!
Thank you gentlemen.
Thank you JP.
Anything with permanence in state space has a harmonic relationship with a stream of energy.
Thanks Matt and John!
Thanks Lee.
creativity from to the verb create
'Creativity' is said to be Whitehead's own, original coinage. You don't happen to know if this could actually be true? I would love to think so but it seems to strike people as farfetched.
3 options:
1, something from nothing.
2, intelligent design.
3, it could be no other way.
11 minutes in John says he thinks Bernardo is wrong because “the disssociation he needs is one that’s going to produce an independent external world”.
What! Produce an external world????
Bernardo believes there is no independent external world, only mind