Notes 1-15

INTRODUCTION Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 APPENDIX A APPENDIX B NOTES Notes 1-15 Notes 16-35 Notes 36-44 Notes 45-56

     ¹ Bausch, The Emerging Consensus in Social Systems Theory, p. 15.

     ² Bausch, The Emerging Consensus in Social Systems Theory, p. 16.

     ³ This is not to say that autopoietic and systems approaches cannot be applied to interiors, as we will see, but only that when they are, they still capture only the third-person aspects of those interiors.

      The autopoiesis paradigm of Maturana and Varela is often mentioned as a "postmodern epistemology" because it strongly denies the existence of a pregiven world (i.e., it denies the "myth of the given"--the myth of the Mirror of Nature--the myth that the world is a given territory that we are supposed to map and mirror accurately [see The Marriage of Sense and Soul for a discussion of the myth of the given]). According to Maturana and Varela, the representational or mirror-of-nature epistemologies naively assume that there is a single biosphere or natural world--the great Web of Life--and that we are to live in accord with that Web, which itself is the myth of the given. The autopoietic approaches point out that "nature" and "the world" actually consist of various enacted worlds brought forth in part by the autopoietic regimes of the organisms perceiving them. There is no "biosphere" or "nature" or "the natural world" except in the rationalized cognition of some human beings, a cognition not shared by 99.9999% of biological organisms.

     The enactive point that Maturana and Varela make is true enough, and to that extent, the notion of autopoiesis is indeed postmodern. I share an agreement with most of its important features; but my point is that the autopoietic version of this interpretive component of world-making is still addressing only the insides of the exteriors, not the insides of the interiors (see fig. 3). It is, if you will, a postmodernism of the UR, not the UL. Obviously this is an important perspective that we would want to include in any integral methodological pluralism, but again, only if shorn of absolutisms.

     (Demonstrating this inadequacy--which means, not wrongness but partialness--of the autopoietic paradigm is the burden of several critical endnotes in SES which specifically address the strengths and weaknesses of the typical enactive paradigm, which--as with Whitehead--could be called "the partial enactive paradigm" as opposed a more "complete" or "tetra-enactive paradigm." For a critical appraisal of Francisco Varela's work, see numerous endnotes in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, second edition [CW6], particularly note 1 for chap. 14, beginning with subheading "Francisco Varela's Enactive Paradigm," pp. 734-741; this note also gives references to several other notes in the book discussing these themes.)

     On a very positive note, Maturana and Varela speak of biological and even physical phenomenology--that is, they fully acknowledge the existence of the UL (or interior experience or proto-experience) going all the way down to, and including, physical holons. They also acknowledge that these interiors: (a) can be known from within, (b) can be described (or reconstructed), or (c) can be known from without (by observing behavior). I definitely agree. The problem is that when they attempt to reconstruct (which is item "b") the inside experiences (which is item "a"), they actually slip into (c) realities.

     For example, they correctly maintain that organisms have an inside to the extent that they have structural memories and co-evolve (or structurally couple) with their environments. Structural memories represent the enacted history of an organism's cognitive choices via structural coupling with the exteriors. But those cognitions are pictured/described in third-person terms, not first-person terms: they are the "insides" of exteriors, not the insides of interiors (see figs 2 and 3). Actual prehensions represent the felt-meanings of interiors as they touch their preceding feelings, which do not represent cognitive choices with nomic intent (i.e., "biological identity and survival"--which is Maturana and Varela's definition of cognition), but rather the felt presence of the holon in its bit of exuberant élan vital and joie de vie (to put it more poetically, which is the better language for the UL anyway). The habits of intimate touching of prehensive unification tend to be reduced to the mechanics of structural coupling and exterior-cognitive enactment. I agree with what they say about structural coupling, but, as explained in SES endnotes, it does not cover the actual UL very well at all; rather, autopoiesis looks at the organism in third-person terms (which is fine; this is science), and then attempts to explain what goes on inside that (exteriorly-viewed) organism as it enacts and brings forth its world: hence, the insides and outsides of the exterior, neither of which actually includes first-person realities as such.

      Varela has attempted to integrate first- and third-person perspectives in his "neurophenomenology." Again, this is an important move toward a more integral stance, but one that is flawed, in my opinion, by a lack of inherent second-person perspective and a lack of waves and streams (i.e., it fails to include quadrants, levels, and lines). See Integral Psychology for a critical appraisal of neurophenomenology. Varela's reliance on, e.g., Merleau-Ponty's version of felt phenomenology makes it more difficult for his theory to easily cover intrinsic intersubjectivity as well as waves and streams.

     ⁴ There are not different holons in the four quadrants; the four quadrants are four dimensions of every holon. There are different dimensions of a single holon in the four quadrants, not separate holons. (Of course, those dimensions can be subconceived as holons in their own right, but those holons themselves then have correlates or dimensions in all the other quadrants, so they themselves are not separate holons either.) So when we say the insides of an interior holon, for example, that actually means the insides of the interior dimensions of a holon. But it is easier and simpler to say things like "holons in the UL quadrant," and so on, which is fine, as long as the tetra-nature of any holon is clearly remembered.

     ⁵ Also keep in mind that when we say, e.g., that ecosystems can be represented in it-language, that does not mean that ecosystems are nothing but "its." All ecosystems have interiors--all LR systems have LL correlates--all social exteriors have cultural interiors--but those interiors are captured best in "I" and "we" terms of cultural solidarity, as we will see, and not the it-terms of systems and webs and processes.

     ⁶ See "On Critics, Integral Institute, My Recent Writing, and Other Matters of Little Consequence" [posted on this site for a discussion of the four different types of holons: individual, collective, artifacts, and heaps. Each of those is a "whole" in a very loose sense, and therefore has "parts" in an equally loose sense (and thus each is a "holon" in a loose sense). I generally restrict the use of the term "holon" to individual and collective holons. Only an individual holon, however, has a dominant monad or "I" with a singular agency or intentionality, and thus only an individual holon has consciousness per se (although a collective interior holon can have a type of diffused consciousness, e.g., "group ego"). Thus, by "holons," unless otherwise specified, I mean individual holons (and secondarily, collective or societal holons, although the latter are usually specifically indicated as social, cultural, collective, communal, etc.). Again, context will have to be used to determine intent.

     In the text, when I say that all holons are sentient beings, I specifically mean that all individual holons (or compound individuals)--such as quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms--have an interior dimension (UL) of sentience, prehension, proto-experience, or awareness, which always already arises as a first-person perspective of/on the (tetra)enacted worldspace in which it occurs. I generally prefer the simple term "interior" to specific terms like "feeling," "awareness," "experience," etc., because I believe the junior grades of interiority are likely to have qualities not easily or explicitly felt by humans, even though those junior grades are internal and interior to human awareness. I therefore prefer to call this position "pan-interiority" instead of "pan-psychism," although I understand why some see that as a trivial distinction.

     ⁷ Is there any perception that is not a perspective? Yes, I believe so, and it has to do with satori or nondual awareness (or pure Emptiness--consciousness without an object, which is therefore consciousness without a perspective), which I will explore in later excerpts. The conclusion of this integral reformulation of the wisdom traditions is that samsara (or the world of Form) is composed of perspectives, and nirvana (or Emptiness) is pure perception without an object or perspective. The union of Emptiness and Form is thus the union of perception and perspective, where in my pure perception I am one with everything that is arising (although as expressed through my own individual perspective, with which I am no longer exclusively identified). Finding Emptiness is a freedom from all perspectives (a nirvana free of samsara); a union with Form is finding the Fullness of perspectives that alone can express this Freedom (the nonduality of nirvana and samsara). Wisdom is transcending perspectives, compassion is embracing them all.

     ⁸ But even in the human domain, I am not saying that there is no reality outside of human perspectives, only that those realities are prehended within a matrix of perspectives that always already arrive with whatever else it is that arrives. It is not that the human mind has a priori categories that pre-structure perception (although it does), it is that the Kosmos itself has a structure that pre-structures the relation of sentient beings: namely, as Leibniz pointed out (but did not pursue), each sentient being occupies a different locale in spacetime, and therefore each has a different perspective of/on the others. Human beings can deduce that there are realities on the other side of their perspectives, but those deductions themselves are third-person objects in first-person minds, which does not mean they (or their referents) aren't there, only that they are perceptions that arrive within perspectives.

     ⁹ Remember that we are not concerned at this point whether this I is "real" or not; for integralism, that's not an interesting question; everything is real in its own worldspace. You might meditate on this "I" until it disappears in a stream of momentary sensations, but all that means is that you have used a different paradigm to bring forth or enact a worldspace where the "I" is not present; but in the conventional world where you started, the I is present, and that is what has to be accounted for, not explained away.

     Thus, the goal of this type of initial pan-phenomenology (what Peirce called "phaneroscopy") is not to pronounce one of these perspectives real and the others illusory, but simply to note the fact that these phenomenological worlds already present themselves to us. After we take a holistic inventory, so to speak, of these dimensions/perspectives, we can more easily judge which of them, if any, can be enfolded or subrated by others, and thus start to judge whether some of them are more encompassing or "more right" than others; but if we are going to play that type of game, where the stakes for getting it wrong are so high, we have to err on the side of expansive inclusiveness in our initial inventory of phenomenological worldspaces, which is why we are according all 8 of these worlds an honored and respected place at the integral table.

     ¹⁰ As we will see in later sections and excerpts, I do share nonreflexive solidarity with other sentient beings in my local ecosystem, and I do so at all levels at or below mine; but levels of physical complexity (e.g., triune brain) need other similar levels of complexity to be decoded. So every culture has a social system in the immediate vicinity of the organism, but not merely there (culture does not primarily move or exist in phenomenologically sensorimotor spaces).

     ¹¹ I use the word "b/its" in a very general sense to refer to the monological view of information (where information is described as coded patterns that can, e.g., be carried in a digital stream of 1's and 0's). Those data bits or b/its are indeed "its," in both senses: they represent (merely) the objective and interobjective aspects of communication (the signifiers or signals), as well as the flatland or monological theories of communication that do not adequately acknowledge interiors, interpretants, or signifieds (and are thus dealing merely with its or b/its). These monological theories assert that "information" captures the "mind" side of the equation, and "experience" captures the "body" side, so that in asserting that each occasion has an informational and an experiential component, the mind-body problem is solved.

     In my view, those theories are very similar to autopoiesis theories, in that they are not actually giving the interiors (mind) and the exteriors (body), but simply the inside and outside streams of the exteriors. In other words, when communication is viewed as information transfer (which leaves out levels of interiors that are responsible for decoding information but cannot be reduced to information), then "mind" is actually reduced to "brain," and if the mind-body problem is thus reduced to the brain-body problem, of course it's easy to "solve": the brain is part of the organism. (See chap. 14, Integral Psychology.) But that's not "the hard problem" nor its solution.

     Just as autopoiesis is supposed to be the "inside" view of biology, but is actually the inside of the exterior (not the inside of the interior), so "information" is simply the inside view of the exterior (e.g., first-person mind treated as third-person brain), not the prehensive insides of the interior (or the first-person experience of first-person realities).

     For AQAL metatheory, information considered as an objective (i.e., interobjective) stream of communicative occasions (such as digital bits or b/its) is accessing the third-person plural modes of being-in-the-world; whereas "information" in the interiors can only be accessed in first-person modes (described as feelings, prehensions, impulses, etc.). Since few information researchers even consider the interior modes, I will usually use "information" to mean exterior b/its (although, as usual, context will determine). But all individual holons (or sentient beings) engage in the transfer of communicative artifacts or signals to some extent (i.e., information exchange), and this applies to everything from electron orbital shifts to bird calls to computer traffic.

     Information or b/its, in that exterior sense, means the stream/system of signifiers, not signifieds (the syntax, not semantic), although the latter are clearly implied by information theory (since it is recognized that, yikes, information does need a decoder, even if the decoder itself is poorly treated in information theory, if at all: the decoder is just another monological data stream). Again, information theory is attempting to get at the insides, but only in third-person terms, and thus ends up giving us the insides of the exteriors (e.g., mind treated as brain).

     Integral calculus: 1p(1p) x 1p(3-p*pl) x 3p(3p) x 3p/(1-p), which means, my first person has a third-person plural view of the third-person aspects of an event as seen from its insides. In abbreviated form, a 3 x 1 x 3: the exteriors of an occasion looked at from within but still in a third-person mode. "3 x 1 x 3" is quintessential zone #3 (e.g., Maturana and Varela). See Appendix B, Integral Mathematics.

      Exterior information transfer can also include subtle energies; see Excerpt F.

     ¹² Of course, as folks from Wittgenstein to Heidegger have pointed out, from within an interior boundary you can see neither the boundary nor what is on the other side of the boundary. The limits of interior spaces appear as horizons, not physical borders. But some interior spaces can indeed see the outside of other interior spaces, and we are phenomenologically tracing all of those insides and outsides as they appear to successively encompassing interiors. Of course, those ultimate boundaries are horizons that cannot, at that point, be meta-viewed. The only place to go from the top of that 100 foot pole is into Emptiness.

     ¹³ The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, p. 362.

     ¹⁴ The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, p. 367-8.

     ¹⁵ For a discussion of "singular" Spirit/Subjectivity grounding all intersubjectivity, see "Do Critics Misrepresent My Position?, Appendix A" [posted on this site].

      The reason this is an "enormously complex issue" is that, at bottom, I subscribe to the Madhymaka position that points out, when it comes to any sort of ultimates, one cannot make a noncontradictory assertion about them (as just demonstrated with that statement: if that statement is ultimately true, it is false).

     This is not merely a matter of Russell/Tarski/Godel recursiveness, which occurs when finite assertions are self-referential. It is, so to speak, bigger than that. Any sort of assertion about ultimates or absolutes (including denying them) amounts to an assertion about reality as a whole, and any statement referring to reality as a whole would include the statement itself, at which point you generate paradox at best, infinite regress at least, and ad absurdum always.

      For Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka (the basis of all Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism), the "ultimate," or "absolutely real," or "Spirit" cannot be known using that type of knowledge, philosophical reasoning, or any other sort of assertions arising within phenomenological space, whether those assertions are relativistic, pluralistic, or absolutistic. Rather, the ultimate or nondual can only be accessed in a state/stage of consciousness known as nondual (e.g., satori), which itself cannot then be made the basis of any sort of assertion within the phenomenal world. The most we can say is that the ultimate is shunya (or empty) of all qualities-- including that one.

      In other words, the nondual is a realization that is engaged, enacted, and brought forth by a paradigm or practice of meditation that moves in dimensions not captured by mental paradigms, and when the result of such spiritual paradigms are filtered through the lens of mental paradigms, the result is paradox, regress, absurdity.

      Thus, when I say there is "one Subject" grounding all intersubjectivity, that is not a philosophical statement, nor is it an assertion. There is not a "single" Subjectivity or consciousness, not literally, because "single" only makes sense when contrasted with "plural," and the nondual is neither (nor both, nor this, nor that, indefinitely....)

      Why, then, do I even use the notion of "ultimate Subject"? Because those who have engaged the causal-nondual paradigms have found that the realizations brought forth by those paradigms decisively contribute to otherwise insoluble issues such as the mind-body problem and intersubjectivity, and therefore I use such shorthand statements as "consciousness is singular of which the plural is unknown" as a type of constant reminder that other paradigms need to be brought to bear on these issues. Although the "conclusions" of these other paradigms cannot be seen by mental paradigms, they can be seen by integral individuals, who can then directly contemplate their relevance for these issues. We will return to this topic in Excerpt E, subsection Integral Semiotics.