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In my opinion Whitehead’s emphasis on flux is a necessary weakness in his presentation.

There are certainly a large number of very stable entities, societies that ALMOST never change. That would include DNA.

Hi Charlie,

My apologies for the delay on this, it’s a larger topic. Please note that this text was AI generated, not written by me.

The larger subject of observers in quantum mechanics is huge. I take issue with it as interpreted by most. Curiously those interpretations support a psi basis which most proponents would vehemently condemn. Consciousness definitely has a role in creating reality, and psi has not been ruled out. But personally I don’t think it is relevant to the measurement problem save for study design.

I do think our consciousness will influence the evolution of the universe, if we survive long enough!

It is my interpretation that Wheeler’s Anthropic principle is meant to be controversial and thought provoking, relevant to his more conservative early work on nuclear weaponry.

The simplest statement of Wheeler’s I like is “it from bit”.

For more context on Wheeler here is his Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler

Most saliently note that Wheeler taught Hugh Everett and over saw his many worlds doctorate thesis, the multiple universe theory. For what it’s worth Everett never worked as a physicist so the promotion of his theory is from others. In my opinion it helps to intuitively understand the math of quantum mechanics, but is not a really viable theory.

I need to read more on Wheeler, thank you for ‘provoking’ me to do a little bit of that now.

I just heard a long interview with Stanley Robinson, maybe on the BBC World Service. I’ll see if Ministry of the Future is available on interlibrary loan.

Thanks.

I agree on the relevance of holons to whitehead, but if you dive deeper into Wilber substantial flaws appear, including among his followers.

Koestler is the original source, let’s see what Meta’s Llama 3 has to say:

Arthur Koestler’s concept of holons and Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, particularly the notion of ‘societies’, share interesting parallels:

1. Holons as Whiteheadian Societies: In Whitehead’s philosophy, a society is a group of entities that share a common essence or character. Similarly, Koestler’s holons are self-contained, autonomous units that are also part of larger wholes.

2. Nested Holarchies: Both concepts involve nested hierarchies, where smaller holons/societies are part of larger ones, and each level retains its autonomy while contributing to the larger whole.

3. Janus-Faced Holons: Koestler’s holons have a dual nature, facing both upwards (towards the larger whole) and downwards (towards their constituent parts). Similarly, Whitehead’s societies have a dual aspect, being both individual entities and part of a larger, more complex society.

4. Holons and Societies as Processual: Both concepts emphasize the dynamic, processual nature of reality, where holons/societies are constantly evolving and adapting.

5. Integrative Perspective: Both Koestler and Whitehead offer an integrative perspective, dissolving the dichotomies between individual and collective, part and whole, and emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things.

By applying Koestler’s holon concept to Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, we can deepen our understanding of the complex, hierarchical, and dynamic nature of reality, and how individual entities are intertwined with larger wholes.

Mark-

Let’s see what Llama 3 via the Messenger interface has to say about Whitehead and Popper:

Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and Karl Popper’s logic of scientific discovery intersect in several areas:

1. Critique of determinism: Both Whitehead and Popper reject determinism, instead emphasizing the role of novelty, creativity, and unpredictability in the natural world and scientific inquiry.

2. Emphasis on process: Whitehead’s philosophy focuses on processes and relations, while Popper’s logic highlights the iterative process of conjecture, refutation, and revision in scientific discovery.

3. Rejection of positivism: Both thinkers reject positivism’s narrow focus on empirical observation, instead advocating for a more comprehensive understanding that incorporates context, relations, and abstraction.

4. Importance of error and failure: Popper’s concept of “error elimination” and Whitehead’s emphasis on the role of “negative prehensions” (rejections) in the creative process highlight the value of mistakes and failures in learning and growth.

5. Open-endedness and evolution: Whitehead’s philosophy and Popper’s logic share a commitment to open-ended, evolutionary processes, recognizing that knowledge, reality, and the natural world are dynamic and constantly evolving.

These intersections reflect a shared concern with understanding complex, dynamic systems and the processes of growth, discovery, and learning.

Matt-

Wisdom=experience=error(recalled or shared)=useful information?

Chris, Mark-

Certainly architecture itself has evolved to create very livable shelter, so to with computers. That is not what is happening now with big tech social media. Empowering responsibly interdependent individuals is crucial.

I believe so too is having actual nature directly accessible outside the door of the house, physical or mental.

Cooperation is crucial. I am quite fortunate to live in medium density environment friendly housing with national forest very close, I hope the participants in the course can help to build the same ‘mental’ housing.

Donald-

You could say the same about materialist science, spewing garbage that is.

The risk I see from AI is in enforcing conformity with the ‘standards’ of the large language model, thereby limiting creativity. Otherwise the empowerment potential of AI to the individual and societies of mutually respectful is amazing. But of course the same can be said of the original promises made for computers. I recall specifically an Apple Super Bowl ad that referenced Orwell’s 1984 with a dramatic smashing of a large screen.

I was kicked out of grad school in the 93/94 academic year hard enough to end my five year career in Geographic Information Systems, just as Netscape made its appearance on campus.

I’ve been following Llama, the hardware requirements for the 8b version of 3.1 are easily accessible for an individual and 70b possible. 405b however is organization sized. I do not understand the details of these open source offerings. Presumably they do report back to the Meta AI project. I do not want to train an AI from scratch, but I would like to train one to my preferences and priorities. I’d presume this would be some sort of client server setup, hypothetically a processist 405b installation allowing for a personal 8b client could be awesome.

Llama 3.1 Requirements

Regarding Whitehead’s material world perspective, I see this as a necessary flaw in his arrticulation, the process philosophy of organism most certainly creates a (mostly) material world without which we would not exist. Very generally I see some aspect of this in AI Deep Learning.

I see a future for Whitehead and Processism in coordination of related fields with a cogent presentation understandable to a (reformed) college graduate.

Proccessism, a shortened articulation of ‘process thought’ is most certainly an art. I share your opinion Mark that AI can help further individual artistic reach and thereby community function. Part of this benefit arises to the human AI interrogator through expanding his or her own world view with at least partially relevant language sources.

AI citations would however be appropriate.

I’m re-reading Karl Popper, he raises an interesting question on the metaphysics of causality – do we know that causality actually exists.

Whatever process creates, or ‘causes’ the layers of an onion might well go to this.

I’m looking forward to the final production.

I think there may be an entirety of an additional Cobb course here, hopefully we will get to some aspects of these questions in session four of this course.

[Douglas Tooley]

My opinion is that it is crucial to understand how the material world emerges from the whitheadian and not to try to understand whitehead from the material.

A lot of the detail in LLM and deep learning neural networks is not public. I do think there is something interesting there.

One tangential item to consider, ask an AI to perform some sort of interdisciplinary synthesis across two different fields. Those results are worth reflecting on, in my experience.

Lastly, my aging organic brain is helped by the material help provided by meta ai.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Douglas Tooley.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Douglas Tooley.

Ambiguous syntax on my part, I’m agreeing with Matt in that LLMs do not explain all of consciousness – and disagreeing in that I do think deep learning neural networks are worth study.

So to is chat bot use.