[1]
Abstract: Gary Schouberg's solid commentary succinctly identifies both the strengths and weaknesses of TA 8 as seen from "View 1." There are, as Schouberg has pointed out, limits to View II and the entire viewpoint needs to be vetted for soundness and utility. In response, I'll address some of the limitations, expand on its logical base and mention some areas of potential.


THE LIMITATIONS OF VIEW II
[2]
Schouberg points toward the limitations in View II, the inverted worldview that I described in Target Article 8 when he says, "Hooley never says why he is offering View II for our consideration. He is presumably offering View II as somehow preferable to View I, though he never makes this claim, either explicitly or implicitly" <5>.

[3]
View II is just as much a rationalization as any other view. The act of assigning relevance or significance necessarily follows after the immediacy of experience. Perhaps, in loose metaphor, I could say that the universe universes and we self-referently label the inflowing pressure/potential as best we can after the fact.

[4]
Although View II speaks of "wholeness of experience" and of contentless experiential space, it is part of the content. Perhaps our awareness is like the Medussa. It freezes the flowing manifestation into a still image so that we can see the relationship of the parts. The very act of noting a distinction, of separating an object from wholeness, comes at a cost. We create the part in recognizing it.

[5]
View II, in any representable form, even an internal one, is a limited tool. I take this as one of Schouberg's points and completely agree. It is a conceptual scaffold which points toward another perspective on the process of creation. By shifting the constants and variables manifestation can be seen to arise through a different path. This could be useful. Viewing similar processes from different viewpoints often is.

[6]
However, there's a catch. View II demands participation because the level of research is beneath the cultural assumptive flooring. The observer and the observed, including all content of experience and any reality statements, become the variables while the wholeness of experiential space becomes the constant. There is no unchanging platform mappable to View I on which to stand. Rather obviously, there is quite a difference between View II as a transferable construct and View II as an experience. View II, as mental hard copy, is best taken in its most restrictive sense, simply as a pointer toward one experiential researcher's approximate orientation.

[7]
Nor do I want to give the idea that something exciting is happening behinds the scenes. Although "running" View II, which I do intermittently, is somehow pleasing for me, it is nearly indistinguishable from View I. This last week, when I had a cold, for instance, I felt just as lousy as I always do.

[8]
I do not propose View II as superior to View I, nor do I claim that it offers any tangible benefits. It may, and I certainly hope that it will (why bother otherwise?), but my intent in TA8 is to report on experiential research in progress.

FAILINGS OF VIEW I

[9]
In <5> Schouberg goes on to say, "I suspect that he is following the tradition that rejects View I for two reasons: (1) a factual issue -- since View I inevitably involves the notorious Cartesian dualism that almost every article to the Forum assumes must be overcome, Hooley offers us View II as an alternative that tries to absorb everything within consciousness; (2) a valuative issue -- since View I places greatest confidence in the physical world yet cannot justify that confidence, View II offers an experience of wholeness in which we can rest with complete assurance."

[10]
Schouberg states the case better than I could myself, but my own dissatisfaction stems more from the logic and arises out my work with AI. The attempt to program "reality" into an artificial intelligence has been instructive and frustrating. Using a simple example, the attempt to program an intelligent vacuum cleaner so that it can deal appropriately with unforeseen situations, a piece of jewelry or a balled up stocking under the bed, for instance, is far more difficult than it at first appears. Any database look-up table is "fragile", breaking down when the conditions exceed the programming. Such limited programs work for factory robots but not within complex environments. Furthermore, on a philosophical note, where is the intelligence in a look- up table, regardless how extensive?

[11]
Although no consensus has emerged in AI research, after some years I came to the conclusion that "reality" isn't programmable. The robust AI must create its own reality through environmental interaction. It builds, from tabula rasa via pattern acquisition, a self-referent experiential space under selective pressure. The poiint is that from a practical standpoint human dependent reality statements are not mappable to AI.

[12]
A self-grown intelligence is a solipsistic system, or "solipsystem." Its experiential space is a field of contextual interactions, a complex real-time layered processing. If the AI creates "reality", does a tree or a cell? On what grounds do I, as a human being, declare what reality is for all? On what logical grounds do I paint what is forever beyond my knowing from a self-referent pallet?

[13]
So, my dissatisfaction with View I is due at least in part to its parochial logic. There is no knowable external reality, the way I see it. Such a reality may exist and it is obviously workable under certain conditions to create an as-if model containing one, but such an external reality is, in principle, unknowable. The reality that we can know arises one solipsystem at a time.

[14]
It is my opinion that we will one day look back on the construct of an external reality the way we now do on geocentric cosmology.

THE ATTRACTION AND POTENTIAL OF VIEW II

[15]
I find only one "fact," the constancy of experiential space. View II is based on this fact.

[16]
That happens when I alter my worldview to reclaim the expenditure that I have invested in an external reality? Perhaps such a retrenchment would release energy, leaving more power to benefit the world that I can know. This potential is worth some effort, in my opinion.

VIEW II AS ESCAPIST

[17]
Schouberg describes View II as escapist and there is some truth in that. A dissatisfaction bordering at times on misery has pushed me toward escape from View I. However, in the end what determines whether an action is labelled escapism or genius is whether it works and it's just too early in this process to foretell the outcome. I feel that the most meaningful research often demands the gamble of personal committment.

[18]
Schouberg says, "without an ontological explanation of the relationship between that wholeness and the world of View I, wholeness is purely escapist. That is, without that ontological explanation, we are left with the bald choice between a useful but inevitably insecure View I and a peaceful View II for which the self and the world inevitably evaporate." This is clearly put and I agree with its strictness. However, I believe that Schouberg's statement imports an assumption under the table -- that View I holds certification rights concerning that ontological explanation. As long as View I plays the grandfather card, it makes the rules and will remain the dominant attractor. That doesn't prove the product, but rather proves the process -- our viewpoint, whether I or II automatically filters for self-verification. View II from View I will always read false. The only way to know View II is to "run" it.

[19]
Perhaps View II makes a better default viewpoint because it encompasses View I while the converse is not true.

[20]
Schouberg offers some ways in which View II could be incorporated into View I. "Can we combine View I and View II? Very briefly, we can do so by combining the accepted ontology of View I with Hooley's phenomenology of View II. The experience of wholeness in View II can be explained by View I as suppression of those cognitive functions and neural processes that support content, leaving those functions and neural processes that support only consciousness itself." For what it is worth, I believe that his approach has equal merit. In either case the emphasis shifts from content to wholeness.

[21]
The concept of View II is approximate and temporary at best, and the results of living it, of functioning "upside down and inside out", while worth reporting, are inconclusive.

[Chris Hooley
email: <chooley@idnsi.net>]