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

Part II. ZONE #1: The Insides of the Interior (page 2)

Plural: The Insides of a "We"

     Such is the inside of the interior of an individual or singular holon--anything seen or felt from within an I-boundary. The inside of the interior plural is simply anything seen from within a we-boundary.

     Specifically, the inside-interior of a collective holon is the view from within the boundary of a "we" (or the inside view of a first-person plural phenomenological space). What must happen for a first-person "I," a second-person "you," or a third-person "him" and "her," in order to understand each other, or feel each other, or share any sort of horizons at all? What happens in order for any sentient beings to be able to say, or simply feel, or even vaguely intuit, that they belong to a "we"?

     Do you believe that geese have feelings? I do. What happens when geese fly together in a beautiful V-formation in the sky? Obviously they are coordinating their exterior forms and they are modifying their exterior behavior so that each individual bodily form (each "it") is part of the collective V-formation (the social form or "its"). In other words, each organism or "it" is aware of other individual "its" (other geese), and they are behaving so that each "it" is part of (or inside) a social system of "its." The geese are clearly registering and coordinating with each other's exteriors.

     But if they also have interiors--impulses and sensations and proto-feelings--aren't they in resonance with those interiors as well? If they share exteriors (which clearly they do) and if exteriors make no sense without interiors (which they don't), mustn't the geese share interiors as well? If there is inter-exteriority in the flock, isn't there some sort of inter-interiority as well? Not full-blown, self-reflexive, linguistic intersubjectivity, but similar sensations in the feeling space that they share when they fly together?

     Personally, I believe that geese are sentient beings and that they feel together when they fly, and that is why they fly in the first place. I am not denying that they have exterior physical and biological reasons for doing so. I am simply saying that I believe that all exteriors have interiors, and I believe that all shared exteriors therefore have some sort of shared interiors. Exteriors without interiors is like "up" without "down" or "north" without "south."

     If you don't believe that geese have interiors (you insensitive slob, you), then you should probably stop saying they have exteriors, because you are simply talking nonsense at that point. But, in any event, for AQAL metatheory, and absent evidence to the contrary, all holons have a Lower-Left quadrant, an inter-interior, or inter-proto-interior, or inter-subjective dimension--all the way up, all the way down. If geese register each other's outsides (and they must in order to fly together), then that same event felt from within, not merely seen from without, is called the Lower-Left quadrant.

     But whatever you think about geese, we can move directly to the human domain and make our points with less fuss. The "inside-interior" view of a collective holon is simply whatever you and I see whenever we use the term "we."

     This "we," of course, is a total and complete mystery (whether it appears in geese, in wolves, or in you and me). Like all interiors, you simply have to be there, in person, in immediate presence, and look, in order to see what a particular "we" is seeing (or in order to feel what we are feeling). As will often be repeated, all interiors are known by acquaintance, not description--you have to be there, in person--which means, in first-person singular or first-person plural.

     (After all, the "third person" is somebody or something we are talking about, so of course a third person, as third person, can be adequately known by description or talking about. But first-person realities cannot be known by talking about, only by being, only by direct acquaintance, by immediate awareness as the first person who is speaking, not being spoken about.)

     In this case, the point is that two interior "I's" that are initially outside of each other can, miraculously, be inside of an interior "we"--not inside the same social system, ecosystem, or exterior collective, but inside the same interior collective, inside a circle of recognition and understanding and shared meaning horizons, whose contours, we have seen, always overlap with collective exteriors but cannot be reduced to them, shared interior contours that are evoked whenever you and I and use the word "we."

Individual (I/It) and Collective (We/Its)

     Let's pause here and notice a point whose importance cannot be overestimated. We previously noted that no Left-Hand occasion can be reduced without remainder to its Right-Hand correlate--no "I" can be reduced to "it," no "we" can be reduced to "its." The simplest reason is that perspectives are, by their very nature, not interchangeable. Of course, I can stand in one perspective and claim that I am giving the "real" factors operative in all the other perspectives--for example, "All first-person realities are really third-person processes"--but that is simply violence in its purest form. The same is true for the upper and lower quadrants. No collective can be reduced to component individuals, nor can the collective itself ("we" or "its") be treated as an individual ("I" or "it").

     The latter notion--that a society of organisms is not itself an organism, or a system of individuals is not itself an individual--often causes a great deal of confusion, so let's look more closely at the relation of an individual and a society. For this discussion, an "individual" means any holon in the upper quadrants (an "I," an "it," or both together--an "I/it"--which is how they exist in the real world); and a collective, group, society, or system means any holon in the lower quadrants (a "we," an "its," or both together, "we/its," which is how they exist in the real world).

     Traditionally, there have been two major views of the relation between an individual being and a group of individual beings.

     (1) The first view is that the individual is the fundamental reality. Groups or systems of individuals do not bring anything to the table that is not present in individuals alone, or, at the least, groups or systems or societies do not have any rights above and beyond the rights of separate individuals. This is the "individualistic" view (which in its strong form amounts to a type of atomistic individualism). Paradoxical as it sounds, this view believes that only wholes exist, not parts. That is, the whole individual is an end in itself, and it is NOT a part of any larger whole. The individual is a whole, period, not a whole that is a part of some larger whole. In short, when it comes to individuals, they are wholes, not parts.

     (2) The second view is that the individual is indeed a part of a larger whole or compound aggregate. The group, society, or system is the fundamental reality, and individuals are basically strands in this web, or parts of this system as a whole, and gain their meaning from their place in the whole system. In and of themselves, individuals have no rights, or at the least, individual rights are subsumed by the rights of the whole. In this view, society itself is often viewed as an organism or superorganism. As such, the individual members of society are like limbs or parts of the superorganism. Accordingly, this view is often called the "organismic" view.¹⁷

     Where the individualistic position maintains that individuals are wholes in themselves (and not parts of something bigger), the organismic view takes the opposite stance--individual beings, from atoms to ants to apes--are primarily parts, not wholes, and they are parts of the great system, strands in the Web, or limbs of the superorganism, which itself is considered the primary or fundamental whole (e.g., the state, the biosphere, the ecosystem). As such, it is the society, system, superorganism, or Web that has the most fundamental rights, and the rights of all strands of the Web (or all parts of the superorganism) are therefore subservient to the rights of the Web itself. In this view, individuals are fundamentally parts, not wholes.

     Both of those views historically have had major and widespread influence. The Greek polis and the Roman imperium viewed societies on the organismic model--and right up to today with James Miller ( Living Systems), many forms of systems theory, the idea of a great Web of Life, Gaia as a superorganism, and so on. Most forms of eco-philosophy subscribe to the imperium view.

     Traditional liberalism, on the other hand, has championed the opposite end of the spectrum--individuals have certain rights that cannot be trumped by the collective. The Bill of Rights of the American Constitution is a classic statement of the inalienable rights that no society can take away from an individual without a due process of elaborate checks and balances. In its extreme form, this view tends toward an atomistic individualism and strident libertarianism.

     Most sophisticated theories of the relation of individual and social have attempted to steer a course between those two basic stances, taking the more enduring truths from each and jettisoning their absolutist claims (or, as I would put it, jettisoning the points at which they violate the nonexclusion principle), and this would, of course, include any integral approach attempting to honor the truths of both. Exactly how to do so in a satisfactory fashion has, however, proven more difficult than might be imagined, and only recently have certain solutions begun to suggest themselves.

Two Different Types of "Parts" and "Wholes"

     Here's an overall example of what is involved. People commonly say things like, "My sister and I are part of a very close family," or "We are all part of the same biosphere," or "We are a part of the local community." That's one type of "part-ness," if you will: being a part of a community, system, or network. We might call this being a member or a partner in a wider system or assembly of other partners.

     Another "part" is like this: atoms are parts of molecules, which are parts of cells, which are parts of organisms. Here, "part" means an actual ingredient or element of a compound.

     There is a obviously a big difference between being a partner and being a part. To literally be a "part" means to be a component or element that is 100% subservient to the compound of which it is an ingredient. An atom is a part of a molecule, which means that it is fully contained in, and governed by, the molecule. If one holon is literally a constitutive part of another holon, then the first holon is a subholon of the latter and is basically controlled by it.

     For example, if my dog Daisy Mae (who is Chester's sister) decides to get up and walk across the room, 100% of her cells, molecules, atoms, and quarks completely obey her command and move across the room with her. There is a not a democratic vote to see which cells go with her and which cells don't; 30% of her cells don't remain behind; half of the cells don't go one way and half another. Daisy's intentionality 100% subsumes the intentionality of her subholons, and they dutifully obey her commands without question.

     No society, not even fascistic, has that degree of control over its members, because members are not literally units in a single huge organism. A society does not have a sensitive center, nor a central "I" awareness, nor a single intentionality; it has lots of "we" awareness, but no dominant "super-I" that is aware of and controls all its "parts." A social holon sometimes has one part (like a king) trying to control other parts (like you and me), but not only do such social systems strike us as pathological, even so, the king does not do this by instantaneous intentionality that directly makes you and me jump at a distance. There is simply no such fashion in which individuals are in all ways to societies as cells are to individuals.

     The point is that an organism is not a part of a society in the same way that a cell is part of an organism. These are two different types of "parts" and "wholes": two different types of "wholes" (a whole individual and a whole system) and likewise two different types of "parts" (constitutive components and participating partners).¹⁸ Even those philosophers who have taken a generally "organismic" view--from Herbert Spencer to Alfred North Whitehead--have emphasized the many important differences between individual organisms and societies/systems, differences we will continue to explore as we go along.

     (Of course, in one sense, an individual organism is a system, because "system" in general simply means "a functional whole"; but this individual system has a center of prehension, whereas a collective system does not--as Whitehead put it, the individual has a "dominant monad," whereas societies categorically do not--which is why "system" usually means the collective system, although it can apply to systems in an individual organism. The point is simply that systems in an individual often have a central agency, but collective systems rarely do--and if they do, they become what, by definition, is called an "individual"--which is why "systems" is usually used to refer to communal, societal, or collective holons, which is generally how I will use that term, although context will tell. A system or collective holon is indeed "a functional whole," but, as we will see, its control mechanisms--or how it establishes its wholeness--differs fundamentally from those of individual holons.)

     As we saw, the strong organismic view maintains that a system or society is an organism or superorganism composed of its members as if they were limbs of a single body. This is the imperium view of systems, a view also referred to as the leviathan view. The word leviathan--which etymologically means "very large animal," "titan," or sometimes "monster"--has been used by writers (most famously Thomas Hobbes) to mean that the state, as leviathan, must have supremacy over its subjects (in order to curtail their selfish ways); and it also applies generally to any systems view that sees the whole system as the primary sovereignty, or the fundamental reality, and all parts of that whole are therefore primarily strands in a web, not members or partners in a coalition.

     But we have seen that there are no actual leviathans anywhere in existence. Individual holons have something like a sensitive center--a locus of prehension--or an individual subjectivity, agency, and intentionality. The more developed forms of an individual holon use the word "I" and can take a first-person singular perspective on events. Collective holons or systems do not have a single super-I, super-will, or super-agency; they never use the word "I"; they do not 100% subsume the agency of all their members; and they have no sensitive center--in short, there is no social leviathan anywhere in concrete existence. There are plenty of social systems, but no social leviathans.

     On the other hand, there is no individual anywhere in existence, either. All holons have (at least) four dimension-perspectives (quadrants), none of which can be reduced to the others. The individual holon possesses properties that cannot be fully derived from the collective holon with which it is enmeshed. Likewise, the collective holon (e.g., ecosystem, social system, cultural habitus) possesses patterns, rules, and networks of exchanges that cannot be reduced to, nor derived from, its individual members. These members are not merely strands in a web, cogs in a machine, or bricks in a building (the leviathan view); neither are they atomistic individuals who are libertarian islands unto themselves in a sea of other aliens; but rather they are all interacting partners, members, or associates in networks of intersubjective and interobjective exchange. Sociocultural holons and collective systems often use the word "we," but they never use the word "I."

I and We in an Ecosystem

     Let's take a simple example and do a "walk-through" using a calculus of indigenous perspectives to highlight some of these important distinctions.

     Let's take a local ecosystem that, for simplicity's sake, we say is composed of life-forms up to bacteria. This ecosystem itself does not have single sensitive center or single "I," although all of the bacteria themselves do have a sensitive center (an "I" or proto-"I"). Whitehead called this "I" or sensitive center a "regnant nexus" or "dominant monad," and his point is that individual organisms have it, systems do not.¹⁹ In terms of the ecosystem's relation to the individual bacteria, the ecosystem is not itself a Daisy Mae: the bacteria are not limbs in a leviathan, parts of a big Web, elements of a compound, or subjects in an imperium, but are partners or members of a social system (the local ecosystem), a system that cannot be reduced to its individual members, but neither is it a superorganism that swallows its members whole.

     A four-quadrant view of that particular ecosystem, honoring each of its indigenous perspectives, might go like this: in reference to the bacteria, in the Upper Left is a individual bacterium looked at from within, as a living being, as a bearer of some sort of sentience, rudimentary experience, proto-"I," or prehension. However rudimentary, each bacterium has a first-person prehension that is its own spark of awareness, and that first-person reality cannot be captured, or even hinted at, by third-person objective terms, concepts, or theories. The bacterium, within the event hori-zone of its immediate sensation, is not a third-person organism but a first-person feeling.

     On the other hand, each bacterium does indeed have aspects or dimensions of its being-in-the-world that can be effectively viewed or felt as an object or an objective occasion, not only by humans, but by other bacteria. As one bacterium approaches another bacterium, they each have a first-person prehension or sensation, and they each also register the other as an approaching or "objective" entity (an object in the Whiteheadian sense, a third-person "it"). The objective aspects of the approaching bacterium are particularly signaled by chemical messengers, rudimentary tropisms, and molecular sensing. The simple point is that each bacterium has an interior sensation, but also an exterior registration of other exteriors (i.e., UL and UR, respectively).

     The sum total of those exterior registrations and interactions is what we call a "system" (which is the Lower-Right quadrant: the whole system or network of interobjective exchanges)--in this case, the local ecosystem, which includes, in this simple example, numerous life-forms up to bacteria and their limitless number of mutual interactions. In other words, each individual bacterium--when viewed in a third-person or exterior mode--appears as an objective organism that is registering and interacting with other objective organisms, and the sum total of those interactions, when also looked at in a third-person or exterior mode, appears as an objective system or network of mutually related interactions. In short, each object is involved in an interobjective network, a series of exteriors that are mutually related and mutually interdependent.

     At this point, there are two ways to conceptualize those exteriors--and here we come back immediately to the autopoietic and the systems/complexity views. The autopoietic view attempts to suggest (or reconstruct in third-person terms) the types of exteriors that the bacterium itself is actually registering or enacting, while the systems approach stands back and takes the "view from 50,000 feet," which, although NOT a view present in the biological phenomenology or cognition of the bacterium, is a view that some humans take and is useful in that regard. (Those two approaches were the inside view and the outside view of exteriors, which we will later explore in more detail as zones #3 and #4). For our simple four-quadrant view of this ecosystem, we will mostly use the systems view (at the end of this example, we will return to autopoiesis and fine tune these hori-zones).

     Taking a systems stance, when we view bacteria not as first-person sentient beings but as third-person objective organisms, and we do so from our own level of rational cognition or higher (i.e., from orange or higher), then we find that organisms are inter-related in networks or systems of mutual exchange. That is, a paradigm or social practice of systems observations conducted by the orange probability wave brings forth, enacts, and illumines networks of objective organisms--it brings forth the systems or network-nature of third-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world. (Because this rational or systems view is disclosed only at orange or higher, it is not part of the cognition of the bacteria themselves--nor of the archaic, magic, or mythic worldviews.)²⁰

     The simple point is that this systems paradigm or practice discloses that each organism is involved in various social systems and ecosystems (each object is a part of an interobjective network, where "part" means partner or member, not element or ingredient). The various organisms are linked together into networks, not because they are limbs in a leviathan, but because they share objective intersections, intersections that are necessary for the life and existence of each member of the ecosystem. These intersections include, above all else, extensive systems and networks of communication that link all organisms in any system (at all of their various levels).

     As we will see in the following sections, Niklas Luhmann caused a profound revolution in systems thinking when he pointed out that systems are not composed of organisms or individuals, but of communication. In other words, the "ingredients" or "component parts" of a system are not individuals (that would be a leviathan) but the networks of contacts and exchanges between all of them. The sum total of these exchanges or intersections, at any given locale, is the "system" of which each organism is a member, not a part. Organisms are not parts of a Web, but their transactions are.

     Luhmann's conclusion is exactly the conclusion arrived at using an integral calculus of indigenous perspectives; but, as I will try to show, an integral calculus also discloses that the same is true in the Lower-Left quadrant--namely, that networks of intersubjective exchange help to constitute cultural backgrounds of "we," just as networks and systems of interobjective exchange constitute their social correlates ("its"). Luhmann captures many of the essentials of social networks, but not cultural networks. That is, where social systems can effectively be captured by third-person plural terms (e.g., "mutually reciprocal and interrelated networks of dynamic processes"--or "holistic its"), the networks of intersubjective circles can only adequately be captured in first-person plural terms: by any other name, "we." And whereas "its" can be known by description, "we's" can only be known by acquaintance.

     The "we" in all its many forms is the Lower-Left quadrant. It is the interior of any exterior system (an interior not itself located in exterior space; and affected, not caused, by exteriors, as part of mutual tetra-enaction). This "we" is the inter-interiority that geese feel when they fly together-- it is a mutual resonance of interiors, not just a behavioral coordination of exteriors. Accordingly, an ecosystem can be looked at from the outside in a mode of third-person plural, but it can also be felt from within in a mode of first-person plural. Exactly what that means will be extensively invested below in the sections on "solidarity," sections that emphasize the importance of hermeneutics for getting at collective interiors, just as systems sciences are needed to get at collective exteriors. And, of course, any AQAL methodology would suggest including both.

     In short, if bacteria have exteriors (they do), then have they interiors. And if those exteriors exist in networks of mutual interaction (they do), then so do the interiors. Those are the four quadrants.

     Moreover, AQAL metatheory maintains that those four basic zones are available at the level of bacteria themselves, in that each bacterium has an interior sensation (or prehension), an exterior registration (or rudimentary cognition of its enacted world), an inter-exterior system of communication (which forms part of its social system or ecosystem), and therefore an inter-interior harmonic resonance with other bacteria (and other sentient beings). Its turtles all the way down, and therefore inter-turtles all the way down.

     Of course, by the time we get to humans, the cognition of these zones has evolved into rational and vision-logic cognition of these zones, which results in highly sophisticated and often self-reflexive modes of inquiry and paradigms of social practice, few of them available to other sentient beings, but all of them, it seems, launched from essentially similar indigenous perspectives available to sentient beings in general. This allows us, as we will later see, to plug any human mode of inquiry seamlessly into the Kosmos and thus truly be at home in the universe.

     Let me point out one more item, quickly. We said we would return to the bacteria and look at them through the autopoietic lens. In the Upper-Right quadrant in this example (i.e., when viewing the existence of a bacterium as a third-person singular occasion), what Maturana and Varela did that was so original and profound was to look at that occasion from within its own enacted horizons--but they did so, not in first-person terms, but in third-person terms. That is, although they fully acknowledged that the bacterium has a proto-"I" or experiential dimension (UL), they admitted that their autopoietic paradigm did not and could not get at that interior, nor was it intended to. Rather, they indicated that they were instead giving a reconstruction (in third-person terms) of how the bacterium enacts and brings forth its world (hence, "biological phenomenology"). Autopoiesis is thus a brilliant attempt to take into account the first-person nature, activity, and agency of a biological sentient being, but only insofar as it can be viewed and approached in third-person terms--which is itself a knowledge by description, not acquaintance.

     In other words, the autopoietic approaches to individual organisms are giving the inside view of the exterior organism. This is why, in figure 3, you can see "autopoiesis" written inside the boundary of the holon in the Upper Right (where it is contrasted with the more conventional scientific approaches of empiricism, behaviorism, and positivism, which view the objective organism from without--i.e., the outside view of the exteriors).

     What Luhmann then did was to take Maturana and Varela's conception of autopoiesis and make his own profound contribution. Instead of viewing a "system" as composed of individuals (as had Maturana and Varela), Luhmann pointed out that systems simply do not behave the way organisms do--i.e., systems are not leviathans, but networks of communication, and those networks themselves are autopoietic. Again, that is also the conclusion of an integral calculus of indigenous perspectives, but the integral calculus delivers that conclusion for both the Lower-Left and the Lower-Right dimensions of being-in-the-world (we will return to that in a moment).²¹ Luhmann was not the first to point out that a system is not a leviathan or an imperium, but he was the first major theorist to spot that social systems can themselves be looked at from the inside, so to speak, and thus those networks of communications themselves can be seen as autopoietic.

     In short, Luhmann did for holons in the LR what Maturana and Varela did for holons in the UR; they gave, respectively, the inside view of third-person singular and third-person plural. Those inside views of the exteriors (singular and plural) are some of the most influential approaches to zone #3 (the inside-exterior perspectives). We will especially explore those event horizons in Excerpt E (where they are contrasted with zone #4, the outside view of exteriors, singular and plural, including behaviorism and traditional systems theory), and we will return to an ecosystem and its members below, "Membership." In the meantime, you can see "social autopoiesis" entered as the inside view of the social holon or system, where it is contrasted with the standard "systems theory" that gives the outside view of the social holon or system.