KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 34 (to C31, Wood)

AT -- ORIGIN OF MAN ?
by Joseph Johnson
20 February 2004, posted 28 February 2004

{1}
GW <1>. . . Here was manifested a systematic explicit movement of thought with the implicitness of poetry and prose. This while affecting a biosphere like aura which almost seemed designed to preclude analysis and empirical testing, conflict, and thereby sustain the theory. The, or a, good theory has to be testable in some way other than dialectics and emotion, and self-analysis and analysis by others ought not be thought off limits. The empirical ground where this is possible was only hinted at (culture, behavior, decisions).

{2}
JJ: AT is a Theory Of Everything (TOE), therefore quite brittle from any perspective. While inclusive of the physical sciences as dependent content, AT is primarily descriptive of the whole as a process across time. The advantage of AT over any or all of the sciences is that it finds both objective and subjective experience coherent within a unitary natural order, whereas the physical sciences dismiss subjectivity as epiphenomenal. AT makes the following assumptions.

1. The first assumption is that all process, objective and subjective, is purposeful, and all serve the same implicit direction at one level or another, i.e., natural order is unitary and coherent. Nothing is epiphenomenal.

2. The selection of physical laws and forces arise from cosmic choice. Given that science assumes, with no means of proof, that they arise randomly from countless possibilities, it is no less reasonable to assume choice – in the sense of a first-person selection or contrivance that cannot be described in third-person terms.

3. The third assumption is that "the indefinite evolution of system complexity" and consequent emergent properties is the objective "footprint" of this subjective direction. This evolution is assumed an implicit imperative that will endure as long as there is energy to drive it.

4. Where first-person choice arises as an emergent property of a particular level of system complexity, a more durable and creative potential is realized for the indefinite evolution of system complexity, one that does not otherwise exist in biological systems.

5. Evolution gives us eyes, ears, and mental faculties of emotion and intellect. The meaning of choice is that further evolution is entirely dependent upon learning, driven by emotion, but success in this is by no means a given. It is only our own learning from experience, and the choices we make, that even have the chance of melioration.

{3}
The point of AT is not a new technology. Our several sciences serve those needs. To borrow a phrase from GW, the purpose of AT is to "locate the origin of man. AT does this by showing the structure of natural order in terms of process with direction, i.e. subjective ends and objective means, rather than through timeless (meaningless) content of the sciences. Of course, this implies a "first-person" perspective (cosmos as a whole) sustained by third-person processes. Where the human mind is the creation of this process, it means that our own first-person perspective has access, in principle, (through infinite experience) to the implicit imperative of which every cosmic particular is an expression. Thus, AT is intended to rescue mankind from the irrelevance of the epiphenomenal scrap heap of materialism, and to identify every individual as an integral agent of cosmic order and purpose, with boundless creative possibilities.

{4}
GW <2>: There were some stultifying expressions in C25. It did not seem necessary to associate the theory of abstract evolutionism with HM's personalistic and historic fallback symbol, the apeiron of Anaximander.

{5}
JJ: I may be wrong, but HM’s apeiron seems to me the equivalent of my "ground" of dynamic invariant symmetry, a most descriptive term I borrowed from John Mikes. This ground is the realm of subjective process between: 1, the physicists’ notion of infinite energy concentrated at, and emerging from, a dimensionless point, and 2, the realm of objective process manifest at Planck scales and above. In other words, between "zero" and Planck scales, physics has no language other than its own "as-if" mythology (quantum fluctuations, etc.) to describe physical process. What apeiron and ground seem to hold in common is the fundamental subjective reality of featureless (unstructured) infinite potential prior to, as well as embracing all creation; an unmoving mover, as it were.

{6}
GW<3>: JJ's <8>use of the imagined pine forest seemed a little rustic and not very historic. I understand his abstract theory better by reflecting on the Genesis account of the fall. There's an abundance of incommensurable trees in the forest of experience for the mind to digest without directing the decision faculty to one focal point -- even though cosmic in scope -- and then territorially guarding it; it has the effect of putting a shell around an "evolved" one- worldtree decision, a cell for the beholder. There's no need to partake of one tree even if it's a metatree.

{7}
JJ: A better model of "tree," more like what I saw, would be a deciduous tree. Roots (the indefinite potential) in ground hidden from our limited perceptions; the unitary trunk arising and dividing into particulars; boughs, branches, limbs, twigs, leaves. The leaves being all the facts/ experiences I ever knew, and the joinings back toward the trunk having their ineffable implicit relational logic.

{8}
(As an aside here, I am struck by the similarity of this branching structure with the branchings of roots, capillaries, branching of neurons in the brain, etc., that each level of branching holds fractal similarity at every scale. Imagining such a model, there are countless roots (memories, experiences) and branching (potential associations) at every depth and across indefinite breadth, potentially interconnecting all experience as our emotions direct our search. The same branching is manifest as cosmic process from creation; evolving depth of complexities as well as cosmic breadth of particulars, found also in depth and breadth of structures of civil orders that survive.)

{9}
What unifies the structure of this vast complexity, i.e., what makes it one great tree of trees is that the experience we seek and store in that vast forest is always related in one way or another with the implicit imperative; the necessity that the evolution of system complexity shall be sustained indefinitely. This imperative is implicit within our explicit "survival instinct." While all things are interrelated, the set of relationships we as individuals draw (analyze) into abstracts are only those that appear to serve the implicit imperative at our limited level of comprehension.

{10}
GW<3>: . . . The tree JJ is in that judges right from wrong is: "NATURAL ORDER IS FUNDAMENTALLY SUBJECTIVE."(4.4) The only thing I can see correct in that absolute is that we can't think at all without thinking. But the world or cosmos we find ourselves in is objective, and so is the self momentarily objectified during the thinking process.

{11}
JJ: That natural order is fundamentally subjective refers to our "ground" of dynamic invariant symmetry, "before" it is expressed at creation. In other words, where B is an expression of A, I tend to think of A as fundamental and B as dependent, contrived. The business of science is to define A, and it is successful at finite energy levels, i.e. in defining proximate causes. The rub comes at defining the "A" prior to creation: final cause; processes between Planck scales and zero dimensions that have no objective manifestation or description but give rise to creation. This is the realm in which science argues that a random, arbitrary amalgam of physical forces and principles become expressed; that creation and its processes arise from meaningless chance.

{12}
We already know that the selection of forces of nature is certainly not random. "Symmetry principles dictate the very existence of all the known forces of nature." (See {19} below) Symmetry is not only a subjective property, but no less an aesthetic one. Now pay close attention:

{13}
Symmetry as an abstract, has, as its expressed particulars, the entire body of conservation law (Noether’s theorem). It implies total consistency between all these "random forces and laws" that just happen to make our universe. Symmetry is the constraint upon the coherence and integrity of all physical experience that allows us to put an "=" sign in the middle of our equations and so learn to understand natural order and so predict experience. This fundamental coherence of natural order gave specific aim, direction to the carrots and sticks of natural selection that would ultimately evolve a neural system, a logical function that would reflect the structure of natural order as AT describes it. If natural order were other than as described by AT, nature would have selected for some other neural faculty. We are not just the top of the food chain; we split the atom and walk on the moon. Now pay close attention.

{14}
If symmetry as an abstract represents the ultimate "proximate cause," of science, constraining the very forces and so the laws of physics, now AT insists that we consider symmetry as a particular expression of the higher abstracts of "final cause." Notice that the higher abstracts of symmetry are primarily aesthetic and relate to such things as harmony, justice, respect, love, beauty, etc. Now if natural selection gives rise to intellect that gains great power via analytic processes of abstraction, then competition and its conflicts can lead to mutually assured destruction of the species. But we know that nature selected for emotion as well as for analytic faculties. It seems to be emotion that gives human creativity both its energy and direction.

{15}
AT tells us that science has it wrong: the laws of nature are anything but random and meaningless. They are of necessity and without exception the expression of a ground of perfect symmetry; a ground of fundamental integrity and coherence, exquisite harmony and sublime beauty. (The "Covenant of the Rainbow" comes to mind.)

{16}
At creation, by imposing dimensional constraints upon ground to gain the illusion of plurality, the objectivity of the created world, thus limited, can never fully express the natural irrational or subjective order of ground. That can never happen without the added creativity of a subjective "agency." The objective metaphor that demonstrates this fact most directly is that the potential complexity of organic self-replicating systems is without any known limit. In other words, the indefinite evolution of increasing system complexity will never exhaust all the possibilities implicit in natural order. Therefore, because no finite set of processes or finite description can fully express or define natural order, it must follow that natural order is not fundamentally objective. Objectivity is an artifact of limitations, constraints imposed upon natural order by contrived dimensionality. This explains why physics keeps promising its TOE decade after decade, but cannot deliver. The parts do not compose the sum.

{17}
You can say natural order at its fundamental (ground) level is irrational; you can say that it is subjective. It really doesn’t matter which you call it, because it is unitary and coherent, but it is not objective. What is objective is the contrived order of its physical expression. Physics can analyze the creation process back to the Planck scales but no further. The path from Planck scales down to zero dimension and infinite energy is not an objective one, so is beyond the language of physical science.

{18}
There is a test for whether natural order is fundamentally objective. Let physics predict the most complex system and the impossibility of any more complex system. Unfortunately, physics cannot even predict any higher organic complexity than already exists, let alone the whole. The very best it can do is to run experiments on specific system configurations and record what it finds; describe its shadow, so to speak. It cannot predict properties of emergent complexities on organic systems which is why genetic engineering is so dangerous to ecology and so to all of us. In this sense, genetic modification, in its ongoing blunders, will ultimately emerge as the Frankenstein of modern corporate greed and the fundamental incompetence of science in predicting the complexities of organic wholes.

{19}
As mentioned above ({12}), another argument that natural order transcends the objectivity of both quantum theory and mathematics is in the fact that at each level up the energy scale where a force of nature is subsumed, QM and math offered many different possibilities for the new simpler order of nature at the higher level. Objective science had no answer. It was found that symmetry constraints predict all the known forces of nature. Natural order is at least as subjective as symmetry – and the abstracts of symmetry, as it turns out. While symmetry does not sound very subjective, it is all AT needs to explain all of subjectivity.

{20}
In other words, natural order is ineffable, subjective; the several sciences merely quantify the objective footprints of its creative processes in the sand, along the path of its implicit necessity.

{21}
GW<4> There's some really good stuff in C25. Some of it has the force of prayer -- to evolutionism.

{22}
JJ: Prayer to evolutionism? Evolution is simply the objective metaphor, the footprint describing the arrival of mental faculties as a potential means of indefinitely sustaining that objective process. In this essay, I narrate the assumptions, the testable objective path rather than the subjective meaning of it. No one does anything explicitly to "sustain the evolution of system complexity." We work to save ourselves in the fear of death. We work to the benefit of others for the joy of love and giving. It is an empirical testable fact that such labors generally involve the evolution of system complexity; more refined means to serve our/others’ needs as through more complex social relations, or perhaps science and technology.

{23}
GW<5>. . . JJ’s evolutionism -- which remains decisively and radically a meliorism, i.e. the world is getting better everyday in everyway, and only those with most "evolved" minds can visualize it.

{24}
Evolution works to create more complex systems. On the biological path, conflict and competition have produced a biological agent that has produced a great profusion of atomic bombs by applying evolved faculties of intellect. Recoiling from the abyss of MAD, the agent seeks melioration by exploring the prospect of survival by applying the symmetry solution to the problem of conflicted first-person perspectives, not just between competing individuals but between competing nations and across ideologies. Evolution selects for both analytic and emotional faculties. But what we do with them depends on what we learn from experience.

If there were melioration in evolution, we would not need our emotions or learning. The quantum genie would happily direct our choices at every turn. There is NO meliorism in physical evolution. Indeed, evolution without the transcendence possible through conscious, informed, and mindful choice will most likely destroy any species in which sophisticated mind rises. All evolution does is create the possibility for an informed choice to be made, the choice to set aside the instinct for conflict and to adopt cooperative creativity as the more productive survival mode. Melioration arrives through our experience with our higher emotions; its felt drives and learned directions that guide our more constructive choices.

{25}
The only meliorism built into natural order is in the way any abstract imperative can be more or less satisfied by any of a whole class of particulars (objects of chance or choice), and should transcendence not occur on Earth to prevent our MAD, it will perhaps succeed on some other planet, out of statistical necessity. Indeed, the Yellowstone Caldera is well overdue for eruption, the basin now rising about an inch a year. It is already displacing a lake into some new-growth trees, and will probably end civilization, being several thousand times more potent than the Mt. St. Helens episode. It is not simply a vertical fault down into magma, but is filling a horizontal layer about 5 miles down and several miles in length and breadth. So much for meliorism and naiveté.

{26}
Meanwhile, history has shown that even one charismatic individual making the right choice may be sufficient to lead that population into transcendence if not Transcendence. The choice is ours to make. It will not evolve and appear mindlessly to save us, as did our eyes and ears. The need for T/transcendence is a unique episode, a moment of truth in cosmic creation; hardly surprising that it has religious connotations.

{27}
GW<5>. . . The wholeness KJ's refers to is more than the wholeness of the JJ strain of evolutionism . . .

{28}
JJ: Again, while the sciences are "content descriptions" of various parts of natural order, AT is the process description of the structure of natural order as a whole; an objective hypothesis of the evolution of system complexity as a directed process. AT defines the objective context as no more than the means through which the fundamental subjective ends are pursued, showing human mind to be the integral creative agency of the whole. The objective reality is the heroic first-person journey from eternal sameness into a contrived realm of differences and limits. The subjective reality, as GW<1> so nicely put it, is that "explicit beauty is the search for implicit beauty." So it would seem. Has the origin of man finally been located?

{29}
GW<5> The wholeness KJ's refers to is more than the wholeness of the JJ strain of evolutionism; more than holistic but includes it, absurdly more in a healthy sense, wholly other, beyond the explicit and implicit, beyond, before, and after abstraction, beyond clannish decisions, and includes "a faith which neither sees nor possesses but trusts, in association with a traditional faith handed down by persons that are admired and loved" (From KJ's Gen. Psycho., The Human Being As A hole).

{30}
JJ: AT can only point in the direction of the higher qualities, the aesthetic path to be endlessly explored. Hopefully it has identified the sciences and their material power as means rather than ends in themselves. The problem with:

"a faith which neither sees nor possesses but trusts, in association with a traditional faith handed down by persons that are admired and loved" –

is that there are many such traditional faiths that have been warring with one-another. AT proffers the hand of science to tradition. In a rapidly shrinking and confrontational world, all traditions need to respond, not with self-righteous intolerance but with informed intelligence to embrace common metaphors such as symmetry, harmony, justice, respect, love, beauty and indefinitely beyond into the truly sublime qualities of natural order where abide the survival of mind and the author of its creativity.

---------------------------------

Joseph Johnson