KARL JASPERS FORUM FOR TARGET ARTICLES
Commentary 1
on TA5 (From Simplicity to Hypercomplexity:
the G, Q, C Factors, by Varadaraja V Raman)

18 December 1997

(Conventions and abbreviations: TA Target Article;
C Commentary; R Response; N Short Note;
numbers in brackets refer to paragraphs :
square brackets [1] in articles and responses,
pointed brackets <1> in commentaries and notes.
Round brackets (1) point to the list of references.)


ON CARTESIAN FORMALISM
by Joel E Henkel


<1>
It seems to me that Raman's levels are levels in a hierarchy of mathematical formalism, or law, but all appear within one Cartesian, objective, external reality. From an extra-Cartesian view, the code/symbolic abstract categorical representation of the world is the only reality. The representations-in-kind that associate realities with organism experience is missing. It is in this experiential context that levels of a biological, evolutionary hierarchy of realities appear. In contrast, Raman explicitly draws on a hierarchy of conceptual laws to frame his conceptual levels within one reality.

<2>
[3] 'The significance of [2,above] is to be seen in this: that there are LEVELS OF REALITY in which different KINDS OF LAWS operate. 'Raman's remarks about determinism and free will deserve a comment. In the extra-Cartesian view, experiential feedback loops generate particular organism realities. What happens depends on the organism's response to perceptions in a circulation of elementary Batesonian ideas as differences. The determinism and causality of the conventional physics of closed mechanical systems does not appear.

<3>
The extra-Cartesian experiential process is described as follows. The unobserved universe is taken as bare, with a perfect symmetry and no properties. Experiential phenomena happen through a spontaneous symmetry breaking process from the top (whole universe) down, in the open system of organism in its environment. This generates properties as experience. The Cartesian laws of physics that divide the universe into closed isolated systems do not adequately describe open living systems. The organism interacts with the universe as a whole--not through causal laws that deterministically prescribe limits to what can happen. What happens depends entirely on how the organism decides to respond to the particular conditions that an organism encounters in its environment. This is the basis for organism freewill.

Joel E Henkel
jhenkel@juno.com

[Identifying information about the commentator: Joel Henkel, born 1930, physicist, Ph.D. in nuclear physics. Unaffiliated proponent of interdisciplinary study of the problem of the physical basis of consciousness. Interested in promoting new interdisciplinary scientific approaches to the problem, such as extra-Cartesian philosophy, nonunitary quantum theory, quantum biology and a generalized information theory of Donald MacKay.]