Eric Ross
Steve Wolfram’s program “Mathematica” is used by members of the physics community to perform calculations. Brian Greene said while interviewing Wolfram it was indispensable in calculating the Calabi–Yau manifolds which are important in superstring theory.
However his work in the “Physics Project”, has not garnered much respect. He postulates using a “computational model”, he can re-create the laws of physics and possibly resolve some of the current conundrums within physics, like reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics.
One interesting aspect to his work is rethinking the notation of time. Time is “computationally irreducible”. If hypothetically, you knew the rules which govern the universe, and it’s initial state, could you accurately predict the state at any point in the future?
In the end, though, one needs to reproduce not just the rule, but also the initial condition for the universe. But once one has that, one will in principle know the exact evolution of the universe. So does that mean one would immediately be able to figure out everything about the universe? Absolutely not. Because of the phenomenon I call “computational irreducibility”—which implies that even though one may know the rule and initial condition for a system, it can still require an irreducible amount of computational work to trace through every step in the behavior of the system to find out what it does. – Stephen Wolfram
To me, computational irreducibility sounds a lot like Whitehead’s Process. It will be interesting if the idea gains any traction within the physics community.
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right
Interior-Individual Exterior Individual
(Intentional) (Behavioral)prehension atoms and molecules
irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells without and with a nucleus)
sensation neuronal organisms
perception neural cord
impulse reptilian brain stem
emotion limbic system
symbols neocortex (triune brain)
concepts complex neocortex(Higher levels of human consciousness)
concrete operational structural function 1
formal operational structural function 2
vision-logic structural function 3A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. The full diagram is shown here:
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I watched a terrific PBS program on N. Scott Momaday, a Native American who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “House of Dawn”. It’s about a young Native American, Abel, who has come home from a foreign war and has found himself caught between his traditional native culture, and the American industrial culture. I should make a point to read it.
Watching the program I realized how much we can learn from the Native American community about living harmoniously with nature and the world around us. There was a marvelous section during the program describing how free and powerful the Kiowa people felt when they found the horse, how easily they could hunt buffalo or travel long distances. There is still a great longing in the community for that kind of freedom. I can see Native Americans at the forefront of a deep ecology movement in the United States. Perhaps they would manage a series of interconnected National Parks, where buffalo would roam freely in the thousands.
I see this connection between Albert White Hat’s and Whitehead’s thinking about Spirit(s) and God. I believe Whitehead’s thinking about God evolved over time, from atheism, to a kind of pantheism similar to Spinoza’s, to a more fully formed set of ideas about God’s roles and functions. The phrase “philosophy of organism” actually sounds pantheistic. That early God of Whitehead I think is more compatible with Earth centered spirituality, deep ecology, and academic pan-psychism. Reminds me Arne Naess, the founder of deep ecology was a fan of Spinoza.
His later concept of God was more theistic, formed the basis for process theology, and opened the door for open theism. It provided a way to connect to the traditional western faiths of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
My point is Whitehead thought differently about God at different stages in his career, and by doing so, has provided connection points for people with a wide range of spiritual views.
Thanks Jay for the response. I found parallels between my questions of how structural interpretations such as Marxism, and Ryan White’s question of how sin and temptation fit in Whitehead’s system. I emphasize societal forces and Ryan individual responsibility in a Christian context. But we’re both looking to reconcile the failure and suffering we see in the world, with the possibility for good that Whitehead reveals. And as you suggest, the key may be in the freedom creatures have. With freedom comes responsibility. The failure to live up to that responsibility has consequences.
The story you referenced, Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk away from Omelas” is frightening. The premise is what if utopia was dependent on one individual suffering? In some ways American life is utopian, with our standard of living, and opportunity for creative work. But what if the blessings of our way of life was actually dependent on the steady stream of bad news coming in from around the world? The news that we hear on our evening newscasts? I find that analogous to the looking in the story.
Le Guin wrote speculative fiction in a similar manner to how Whitehead did speculative philosophy. For both the ideal was important. We should ask ourselves, what would an ideal society look like? What are we aiming for? LeGuin wasn’t a Marxist, but she did make the statement, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Or John Lennon’s lyrics “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion, too.” If these are not to your taste or liking, what does your utopia look like?
Whitehead, in his day, was a social liberal, who advocated societal reforms that softened the individualism of traditional “liberal” capitalism. I feel Whitehead lived in a more optimistic time than the present. At least in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a better world was in view. Nuclear destruction and catastrophic climate change were not yet envisaged. The Doomsday Clock was not at 90 seconds till midnight. The challenge for us today is to remain optimistic, despite these possibilities.
I agree the fallacy of composition can come into play here. A group does not necessarily display the characteristics of each of its members. A diamond has different properties than the individual carbon atoms that comprise it.
A way around this issue is by classifying the entities we wish to consider. We are interested in the question, “Does experience go all the way down?”. What kind of entities experience? Beings. How do we recognize a being? It is self-active, animated, and responds creatively to changes in its environment. Everything alive is considered to be a being.
What kind of entities do not experience? Things. How do we recognize things? They are inactive and inert. They respond to external forces only. They may also be a collection of beings. An organization might be considered a thing, even if it is a collection of human beings. A rock is considered a thing, even if it is a collection of lively atoms or modules. Neither example is disqualified by the fallacy of composition.
So as we go down the scale from a living animal to a cell to a molecule to an atom, where do we see beings and where do we see things? A panpsychist would probably see beings all the way down. A physicalist or materialist would probably see animals and cells as beings, and molecules and atoms as things. But as several YouTube videos show, atoms and molecules appear to be self active and animated. A chemical reaction may be considered to be a creative response to environmental change. So atoms and molecules could be considered to be beings with primitive experience.
There is a lot that is unknown about the origins of life. Although it has been shown in the lab that organic molecules can be produced from basic elements, we are a long way from creating life from scratch through chemistry. Perhaps as that process is further understood, living beings and lively elements will be seen to be on the same continuum. Until then, the proposition “experience extends all the way down” does require a certain amount of faith, a faith that things unlike us in many ways, may be like us in a few, sharing the characteristics of beings.
I missed that psyche (Greek, soul, mind, breath, breath of life, spirit, life) is synonymous to soul. In a process context psyche or soul refers to that which is experienced by an entity, the actual occasions that make up an entity’s subjective experience. And psyche is referred to in process thinking, most notably in ideas like panpsychism, the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual feeling.
The word psychology also contains psyche. The latter part of the word is derived from logia, which means study or research. Process Philosophy, Process Theology, and Process Thought seem more prominent movements than Process Psychology. But if process thought is therapeutic, there may be room for further exploration.
I found the upcoming discussion in Mesle on presentational immediacy versus causal efficacy applicable. Hume found from his sense impressions, he could not derive causes. Kant took that to mean causation is constructed by the mind from an unknowable world. Whitehead said sense perception is rooted in a deeper perception in the mode of causal efficacy. We experience each moment arising causally out of preceding moments. We are wired genetically and socially to respond to causes, mostly in an unconscious manner. If I stand on one foot, how do I keep my balance? Why do I go to work Monday to Friday? Much of my behavior is driven by causes I have a limited awareness of.
It’s a large enough “leap of faith” for moderns to accept there are “prehending entities” all the way down. For most there is just “stuff”. Happy enough Whitehead postulated creativity, endless activity imbued with touches of novelty, as his first metaphysical principal. Whether the structures that come forth from all this are entirely self generated, or whether they require the touch of a higher power to coax them into existence is an open question.
Quoting – “The concern I have about “the future does not exist” implies, to some degree, that therefore planning for the future is irrelevant.”
But the future is coming! And planning for the future is a creative act. Don’t think process thought would dispute that.
Years ago I did a program called the Landmark Forum. Amazing things happen when you put around 100 people in a room with a facilitator, and keep them together for three days. Follow up seminars encouraged people to create the future through making commitments that were “out there”, and then doing “what ever it takes” (ethically, of course) to make it happen. The analogy was “throwing your hat over the fence”. Once you do that, you’re committed to climbing over the fence to get your hat, and move on.
This approach can be useful. There was a danger of making a commitment that you weren’t truly emotionally aligned with. Then you might face a difficult choice between keeping your word and doing what was really best for yourself.
Hey, if we don’t plan and create the future, are we even going to take that great vacation to a special place?
Hi Hayden,
I appreciate your beautiful musings on being and becoming flowing into one another.
Your choice of topic inspired my thoughts which follow and are in a somewhat different spirit. For that I apologize.
I’m relatively new to online learning and I recently did the Tripp Fuller and Dan Koch course “An Existentialist Road Trip”. Tripp stood in for the theologian Paul Tillich, and Dan for the psychologist Irvin Yalom. Tillich and Yalom agreed on their analysis of existentialist themes of isolation, meaninglessness, morality, and freedom. Here is where they disagreed. Yalom said for humans that was it, just deal with it. Tillich said these were over and against a “Ground of Being”. We were on the edge of our seats waiting for Tripp to give a adequate definition. In the “Courage to Be” Tillich suggests the ground of being is the courage to be. Else where he says, “The name of the infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God”. I found this to be beautiful, mysterious, and unsatisfying.
I like Jay’s comment that philosophers of Being, like Heidegger, Tillich, and Aquinas, tend to regard being as that which “is”, immutable and unchanging. Mutability, or change is a negative attribute of being. This stands in opposition to philosophers of flow like Whitehead, Buddha, Heraclities. Beings arise out of the flux, have their hour in the sun, and perish. Being itself might be said to arise a from a being’s own experience of things.
The issue I have with beings and Being, is conceptually, it all seems too concrete: God, self, this, that, the other. I have a stack of old psychology books sitting by my bedside I’m browsing. “Man’s Search for Himself”, “Undiscovered Self”, “The Pursuit of Loneliness”, “The Discovery of Being”. Although I’m sure these are helpful to some, from the nature of the titles I say, “Good luck with that!”.
I will say this. If we think as Parmenides that all reality is one, and change is impossible, and the world of appearances is deceitful, instead of thinking on Being, we could consider the Buddhist concept of Emptiness. Emptiness refers to the reality that nothing is permanent, everything comes and goes in a flash, and hence everything and everyone is “empty of self-nature,” that is, any abiding, substantial essence. Perhaps Emptiness is truly the “Ground of being” Tillich speaks of.