Gaia Community: Joel Morrison's Blog

Falsification is a Myth: Aesthetics is King

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:15:25 GMT

or Revolutions as the Quantization of Aesthetic Gestalt/Belief Systems

The philosophical idea of Popperian falsification is a myth: an ideal that science does not and cannot (currently, if ever) live up to. For example, in discussions on the up-and-coming Electric Universe model orthodox-adherents will refuse to abandon the standard view until there is some piece of data that it absolutely CANNOT explain and which can ONLY be explained via the Electrical Universe model. As they aptly demonstrate, theories are as infinitely (indefinitely) flexible as the human mind that invents them. And by this logic we'd never have abandoned the Ptolemaic earth-centric model of the solar-system. No doubt one could invent all sorts of contraptions to account for ALL of our current data with this old model. Nobody would believe it through all the contortions, but it could be invented. There was no one piece of data that could not be explained by the old model, but which fit only the new one. Rather, as the model failed to predict event after event, it had to retrofit itself to new complexities which its infrastructure was not robust enough to deal with (analogies with software programming and "legacy code" are abound). These new ad hoc explanations kept piling on and on and people kept on believing in them long after they ceased to have any causal, reasonable or rational explanation. They just kept getting more and more absurd until the new model looked much more appealing next to this fantastic and growing Rube Goldberg machine of epicycles in deferents in epicycles.

In the end aesthetics is king. We like Copernicus because he UNIFIED and SIMPLIFIED our increasingly complex rational-empirical world-view. And this is precisely the advantage being experienced by the Electric Universe view. It gets rid of the mental clutter of ad hoc retro-fit after retrofit to constantly unexpected data, and unifies and simplifies them under one far more powerful force discovered after the foundations of the gravitocentric model were laid.

So, the shift is a gradient. Some folks are sensitive to slight changes in the force of simplification or parsimony and readily adopt the new, more aesthetically appealing and predictive model, while others are more conservative and cautious, preferring the safety that comes from large numbers of fellow believers in a "standard view".

What a beautiful image and thought experiment to resurrect these old models and fulfill their trajectory into infinite absurdity. If we could get a snapshot of them all compared side-by-side with one another, rising and falling one after the other: a series of curves beginning in unbelievable simplicity, peaking in the collective belief in robust predictive-explanatory power, and receding into indefinite complexity and absurdity as it fails to predict and explain more and more data, with the lag rates for retrofitting expanding further and further into the distance of limited returns...

Every theory? I don't know. Maybe we are approaching an asymptote....or maybe that's just another expression emanating from this infinite cycle.

Tags: kuhn, paradigm, electric universe, meta-science, philosophy of science, aesthetics, belief

Does Quantum Physics Refute Kuhn?

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:07:56 GMT

Quantum physics was not a proper paradigm shift. It was an attempt to maintain the old classical metaphysics of the particle bias in the face of new evidence to the contrary, e.g. the "wave-nature". It wasn't a revolution, but a necessary kludge to hold the old, tacit metaphysics of Democritus and Leucippus inviolate, even at the expense of science as we know it, and the law of causality.

So, no, this type of quasi-revolution---taken about as far as it can go and on it's last legs now---simply wasn't explained or predicted by Kuhn. It just doesn't fit within his model and shows it's limitations, not its incorrectness. When taken into account, it's really a hybrid of a revolution and a normal-science saving of the phenomena. It just expands the Kuhnian toolset.

This is why quantum physics still has a "background-dependent" mathematical infrastructure, while Relativity has moved on to the post-classical infrastructure of "background-independence." In qualitative terms, this is the move from the classical "solid-bias"---a monolithic "absolute space, such as that of the solid classical ether, and leading to the solidity underlying the particle-bias---to an inherently dynamic and infinitely fluid space-time, such as that in Sorce Theory, and described mathematically, to a degree, in Relativity.

Tags: thomas kuhn, quantum physics, relativity theory, background independence, classical physics, paradigm shift, democritus, leucippus, Sorce Theory

Symptomatology: Nomothetic vs. Idiographic Explanations

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:27:28 GMT

from SpinbitZ I, p187

We will never find the sense of something….if we do not know the force which ... is expressed in it. A phenomenon is not an appearance or even an apparition but a sign, a symptom which finds its meaning in an existing force. The whole of philosophy is a symptomatology…
— Deleuze, Nietzsche & Philosophy

An instance of these distinctions in action can be seen in the different forms of scientific explanation. Nomothetic explanations are general case explanations using laws governing and derived from generalized categories, whereas idiographic explanations recognize the immanent idiosyncrasies of the individual object or event and attempt to tell the story of that particular event/object. An example of a nomothetic explanation would be the mechanical laws of physics, such as F = MA, whereas an example of an idiographic explanation would be the explanation of a medical case file culled from an exhaustive examination of the patients history of symptoms; a symptomatology.

It may indeed be the case, given the transcendent bias, that the nomothetic explanation exclusively is imposed on the immanent world of the quantum because we expect things to get ultimately and categorically simple in our post-medieval and foundationalist scientific mind-set. Without recognizing the infinite difference of immanence (Leibnizian/Prigoginian active-space/matter), we can’t see deviations from these categories and laws for what they are; emergent properties from immanent complexity. And so we assume that conceptual randomness, opposing our simplified categories, rules in this domain, rather than recognizing the limits of the nomothetic explanation and the need for the idiographic.

This is a classic example of the transcendent-bias in action. Given the Principle of Infinite Determinism, above, the resolution to the conundrum is simple. Embrace the immanence of univocity and there is no need to discard the idea of causation or determinism when our categories and laws give way to the idiosyncrasies of the individual object-event. The call for randomness, in every case, can be seen as the conflict and break-down of the nomothetic categories in the entropic face of infinite difference and idiosyncrasy. Randomness, then, calls for the idiographic methodology, in a univocal polarity of explanatory function between the nomothetic use of the principle of the same and the idiographic use of the principle of infinite difference.

Indeed, the laws were formed as general cases from a symptomatology in the first place. In our foundationalist mind-set we simply expected them to govern absolutized categories, with absolutized laws, rather than real idio-singularities of infinite difference in interactions of infinite detail.

The Univocity Framework, therefore, opens the way beyond the closed oppositional forces of the categories of Representation, to a recognition of the need for an evolutionary history—a symptomatology—for each individual “particle,” in order to get a full account of the infinite determinism equals indeterminism of any single event-object, and indeed to account for the “arrow of time,” in the eternal NOW. No two events are alike or ultimately predictable, not because there are no determining factors involved (i.e. randomness), but because there are infinitely many.

Tags: neitzsche, deleuze, symptomatology, nomothetic, ideographic, science, explanation, laws of nature, quantum, randomness, determinism

SpinbitZ: Volume 1 -- I finally published!

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:33:00 GMT

Finally I published my book. Here's the link for the free ebook and the print copy.

http://www.lulu.com/spinbitz

I set the price as low as lulu.com would allow. Money's just not the point. I just got my print copy and its really gorgeous. 740 pages with 100 illustrations for 20 bucks!

Here's the back cover blurb:

SpinbitZ Volume I, presents the fundamentals of Interface Philosophy whose purpose is the illumination and integration of abstract philosophical concepts through the integrated use of the imagination and its percepts. Interface Philosophy effectively constructs a set of philosophical "graphical user-interfaces" at the vision-logic level of cognition. It is thus a philosophy of vision-logic interfaces, employing the "triune interfaces," or "cultivated thirds" hidden within the polarities of every duality, dichotomy, controversy and paradox to build a consistent system for the effective understanding and resolution of their key esoteric truths, rather than for their dualistic and reactionary refutation. In using these interfaces to trace a nondual thread of rationality to its historical roots, it is discovered that only the dualistic, exoteric (or commonly understood) forms of rationality begin with the Greek trinity: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. By reconnecting to the earlier nondual truths of Heraclitus and Parmenides, the conceptual axis-mundi itself (what Lao Tzu called "the door to all wonders") is found spinning at the core of Zeno's paradox, and thus at the core of nondual rationality. Through a fusion of Art, Science, Mathematics and Philosophy—and with the help of nearly a hundred detailed diagrams and illustrations—this embryogenesis of rationality is traced as it reconnects to the alternative lineage of philosophy uncovered by Deleuze, with a nondual fusion of the systems of Spinoza and Leibniz.

In esoteric Theosophy it is said that in the "shock" of the interface between Spinoza and Leibniz "the essence and Spirit of esoteric philosophy would be made to appear." Unfolding through these vision-logic interfaces, this Interface Philosophy finally appears to reconcile many of the dualities plaguing the history of exoteric rationality. In its nondual interface with empiricism and Integral theory, for example, a detailed sketch of an Interface Epistemology is unfolded. Operating at the crossroads of the ontic-epistemic (reality vs. knowledge) and subject-object polarities, the evolutionary symbiogenesis of the exoteric dichotomies at the foundations of human knowledge is examined—illuminating and reconciling the "ontic-shadow" of post-modernity.

The process of reanimating these hidden nondual truths of rationality demonstrates that mathematics itself mirrors this holarchic structure implicit in the embryogenesis of the concept. This is because mathematics, as the art and science of pure relation, employs the most rarefied and abstract form of the concept, e.g. numbers and operations. Unfolding in layer upon layer, this Interface Mathematics transitions from the "oppositional forces" of dualism, ultimately again to the "intensive," integral or "second-tier" truths, and to the originary axis-mundi of the nondual. In making mathematics visible, visceral and understandable—a Vision-Logic Coordinate System is constructed revealing two fundamental axes of conceptual thought (one of which is this axis mundi or immanent/transcendent axis). Spinoza's "three infinities" are then shown as the triune interface, or cultivating third between these binary axes, for illuminating and reconciling the many paradoxes and controversies of infinity—e.g. Zeno's, Galileo's and Cantor's—as they wind their way into the truths of our modern mathematics of the continuum and set-theory.

see http://www.spinbitz.net for more info

Tags: spinoza, leibniz, deleuze, ken wilber, philosophy, science, art, ontology, epistemology, nonduality, nagarjuna

Saturn's Hexagon and Fluid Geometry

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:22:37 GMT

perplexed by Saturn's hexagon?

run the following links through your analogy engine...

http://www.physorg.com/news66924222.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7253148167 375317006&q=cymatics

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Global Warming in a Climate of Ignorance

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:14:42 GMT

This is easily the most informed view of global warming I have seen to date...

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8gfbewe7

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The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 03:18:00 GMT

And the dialectic continues...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&hl=en

Tags: global warming, environment, development, third world, united nations, atmosphere, sun

SpinbitZ: What's the purpose? An excerpt from the introduction.

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 02:36:52 GMT

The other day I was asked "what is the purpose" of my forthcoming ~600 page SpinbitZ: Volume I (of II), The Tao of Rationalism. I wasn't given much of a chance to respond, but it got me thinking a bit more clearly. I thought I'd respond in the form of simply quoting a section from the introduction to the volume. Hope this helps...

BTW, if anyone would like to get a ~500 page sneak peak at this beast in progress--snapshots from the womb, so to speak--email me and I'll send you a link.

__

SpinbitZ is a toy: a playful, whirling, churning, folding and unfolding set of concepts, created, and to be used, ultimately for enjoyment. It is not to be taken deathly seriously, as an attempt to unveil THE TRUTH about reality. This conceptual toy emerged slowly but spontaneously as the most creative, difficult, artistic, rigorous and enjoyable endeavor that I have ever undertaken.

Toys are not just for the young of years, but also for the young at heart; for the learned and experienced of all ages and levels of development. All animals play, and as psychologists tell us this play serves a critical function for flexing, strengthening, and even creating, mental muscles, skills, perspectives, patterns and intuitions that can be used for other applications later on. The Rubik’s cube, for example, was played for hours, or even days, and months on end by the most serious of scientists and mathematicians.

As Deleuze says, “Joy emerges as the sole motive for philosophizing.” While this is necessarily a personal (algedonic) motive for philosophy, there are certainly transpersonal and evolutionary layers of motivation as well. Indeed while SpinbitZ can be seen as a sort of puzzle for the ever-curious, unlike the Rubik’s cube (or simply to a much higher degree), it is a puzzle that while figuring it out, while playing with the toy, a valuable meta-perspective and conceptual toolset will begin to emerge into the curious and open mind of the reader. It then becomes a visual interface for playfully understanding, integrating, cross-fertilizing, and inter-harmonizing many aspects of human creative endeavor; from art, to science, to philosophy, and to mathematics. This is its value and function, to integrate the fragmented forms of knowledge and conceptual endeavor through a perceptual “vision-logic” interface; a meta-paradigm, meta-system space.

This is indeed the deeper creative and evolutionary function of philosophy, because—as R. Buckminster Fuller (perhaps the foremost inventive, visionary, pioneer of the 20^th century) argued—in a world of increasing specialization, if no-one specializes in comprehensive generalization, then who is looking at the big picture? In that case we are indeed “divided and conquered” by our own educational system which forces individual specialization into one narrow field of study in order to “have a career” and “make a living.” Indeed, geniuses like Fuller often have to step entirely outside “the career,” and outside the educational system itself (Fuller was expelled from Harvard) to do just that, on behalf of humanity; to take a step back and get a good look at where we, as the whole of human-kind, are at and where we are heading—and most importantly evaluating where we could go if we could take stock of our options and get creative.

That, as well, is the function of meta-paradigm and meta-system explorations such as SpinbitZ. To create and expand a system in which we can take a step back and begin to scientifically or rigorously compare, contrast, integrate, cross-fertilize and cross-catalyze more specialized systems themselves (such as science, philosophy and mathematics and their subsets), and ultimately to transcend-and-include the useful parts and let the not-so-useful parts fade away, or come to rest in the archive to be made use of later.

Tags: toys, purpose, spinbitz, bucky, buckminster fuller, philosophy, meta-system, meta-paradigm, interface

Deleuze Lectures

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 16:46:02 GMT

I found a repository of lectures by Deleuze which are very useful at an introductory level.

http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html

Enjoy!

Tags: deleuze, spinoza, leibniz, kant, bergson, nietzsche, lectures

Earth 2.0

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:49:31 GMT

Rough Notes on a Peristaltic, Vascular Communication and Transportation System for Planet Earth in the Nanotechnological Era

I recently fixed up and uploaded some old notes of mine exploring the mind-boggling possibilities opened up with a mature nanotechnological infrastructure. Enjoy!

http://home.comcast.net/~spinbitz/Articles/SZ_Earth2.0.htm

From the introduction:

An active polymorphic, Utility-Fluid* nanotechnological substrate is loosely outlined which could be used to form a multi-scale object, matter/energy transportation, transformation sensor/effector system which could span the Earth, fill and extend the atmosphere and transform it into an active participant in near and sub-terrestrial events. The Utility-Fluid system bears a behavioral macro-level resemblance to John Storrs Hall’s (JoSH) "utility fog," (see http://www.nanotech-now.com/utility-fog.htm) but the similarities between the two systems rapidly diminish at the unit level. Rather, this system uses a "utility fluid" (UFL) model for its architecture as opposed to a gaseous or "utility fog" model, and it is possible that this would provide for a very different set of capabilities at the meso and macro levels.

Tags: spinbitz, nanotech, nanotechnology, utility fog, John Stors Hall, transportation, communication, sensor, effector, peristalsis

Intellectual Impostures of Intellectual Impostures

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:36:51 GMT

A Review of Mr. Dawkins Review of "Intellectual Impostures" by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. ...originally posted as a comment to this blog piece:
http://wolftrappe.blogspot.com/2006/11/postmodernism-disrobed-review-of.html

Unfortunately, the truths of the postmodern movement, as obscured by the common trash as they are, have equally been lost on Mr. Dawkins, Mr. Sokal and Mr. Bricmont.

In a word..."hermeneutics."

What the authors fail to realize is that philosophy is indeed not science, and should not be read as such...even when it uses the ideas and words of science in new contexts for which they, the scientists, are wholly unfamiliar, and unqualified to judge.

The meaning of any text is a function of the interface between reader and writer; i.e. hermeneutics. The authors don't UNDERSTAND the text and they fail to understand the limitations of their own personal, and in this case, failed, reading. Certainly it is not true that all readings are created equal, as the extreme post-modernists would have us believe, but by this token it is by no means clear in these cases that a failure to make sense of a text is the correct reading either.

Is a failure to interpret, an interpretation of failure?

I have read Mr. Sokal and Bricmont's previous book "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science" and found it enlightening. They found some of the most brilliant post-modernist prose out there, but in most cases they entirely missed the point of the "nonsense" which they attempted to criticize. This new book seems more of the same. A case in point. They cite Deleuze and Guattari, clearly unable to understand the prose, and then leave it to their common reader to follow suit, naturally adopting the easy and comfortable collective belief that a failure to interpret is an interpretation of failure.

The postmodernists have adopted, and indeed adapted the words of science for their own specialized use. To interpret those same words in the original scientific meaning is indeed to throw a wrench into the gears, to disrupt the "multi-dimensional machinic catalysis" of the non-linear meaning. This is the root of the failure of Mr. Sokal and Bricmont to understand not only the texts they criticize, but the distinction between science and philosophy itself. Philosophy is not science and it should not be addressed as such. Philosophy is a meta-science and indeed, at the edges of empirical knowledge, every bit as much, and necessarily so, an art; a function critically of intuition as much as erudition, logic and knowledge. Philosophy attempts to synthesize and analyze all forms of knowledge together and apart, and is not limited to the resources of any one of them, such as the limits of their own specialized vocabularies. Science has a fertile ground of concepts for philosophy to adapt, and often radically, for its own meta-scientific and creative uses. Any scientist attempting to make sense of this adaptation—-especially in the case of the fertile imaginations (and this in the good way stated by Einstein, “imagination is more important than knowledge”) of Deleuze and Guatarri—-will fall flat when he takes those words, which in his scientific context are all-to-familiar, at face value in this radically new context. The authors have stripped these passages from their "multireferential, multi-dimensional" context and then naturally failed to make sense of the adapted meanings of their own words and concepts. They then impose this failed hermeneutic as if it were pregiven and absolute, expecting their unwitting, and equally unqualified readers, to follow suit.

They have failed to learn from their enemy the value of context and hermeneutics. This is not to excuse the occasional errors that will occur in all human endeavors, philosophy not being an exception, but merely to expose the limitations of a "scientific" reading of philosophy. Scientists should know, especially if they have any knowledge of the philosophy of their discipline, that one must follow the injunctions of the "paradigm" if one is to find its meaning. In this case, one must understand the context and adapted meanings of the words in use before one can first understand, and then pass judgment on the text. Essentially the judgment being cast--when the failure to interpret is taken at face value--is that the postmodernist authors have simply played with the meaning in a radically new context for which the scientists are no longer truly competent to judge. Not having followed the injunctions of the "paradigm" (scare-quotes indicate a loose adaptation of the term) to learn from the context the new, adapted meanings of their beloved vocabulary, the "experiments in hermeneutics" by these scientists venturing into this new terrain of philosophy, have naturally failed. Philosophy is not science, and is neither inferior nor derived from, or reducible to it. Scientists would be wise to learn this and to suspend judgment over what they are often not qualified to understand.

If, on the other hand, a philosopher attempts to describe a scientific theory, and bungles it in the context of the science itself, that is another issue entirely. The philosophers, in this new case, have wandered into the scientist's domain and in this case the scientists are doing us a favor by pointing out the flaws. This is not the case here, however, with these quotes, stripped of their context and meaning, or "disrobed" as the authors so poetically put it. In these cases, the post-modernists have taken the science into their own world to be trans-adapted for new meanings, a typical evolutionary strategy, as Mr. Dawkins should be aware. And in this case of meta-criticism the scientists have wandered into a new and unfamiliar space, that of post-modernist philosophy, in which they are incompetent to judge. They are attempting to reclaim the old meanings of their terms, but this is as futile and meaningless as attempting to reclaim the pre-mammalian jaw-bones that have been functionally adapted into the delicate sensorial operations of the mammalian ear. To reclaim those words, concepts and ideas for science--as if science had an ownership and hold on the evolution of even its own language--is analogous to ripping out the angular, articular and the prearticular bones so critical to mammalian hearing. It is equally as mal-directed and violent, and equally a step back down the "ladder" of evolution, at least in a particular domain.

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Comments on "Space/Time Foam"

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:23:51 GMT

John Hagelin on Space/Time Foam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84_kXpsDJEk&mode=related&search=

My Comment cross-posted from:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/frame.html?main=/mindx/show_thread.php?rootID%3D66146%26o%3Ddate

Interesting use of the boiling metaphor, and the fluidity of the "ultimate substrate," but I think his idea that the energy of a force is due strictly to it's scale is highly oversimplistic and abstract...and incorrect. The reason that the nuclear force is stronger than gravitation, or electricity, is a function of organization, not merely scale. Scale in this case is incidental to our persepctive on this organization. The level of atomic formation (sub-atomic level) is simply the closest "basement level" (as it is called in Sorce Theory/SpinbitZ) where continuity is at its superfluidic maximum and has the properties necessary (e.g. ~zero viscosity, ~zero friction and high compressibility (fermi pressure)) to form the highly compressed, highly stabilized, primary types of matter-units, e.g. the proton or basic atomic nucleus. According to SpinbitZ, which incorporates the empirical scaling relations of the Self-Similar Cosmological Model [Rob Oldershaw], the same type of units occur at the Planck level as well. While there are far more units per unit area, however, there is far less energy per self-similar type of Planck-unit. Furthermore, these harmonically self-equilibrating units, being ~10^20 times smaller than the proton, are far more difficult to disrupt in their internal patterning so as to release their energy. It merely ends up statistically emerging onto the properties of the atoms which are made out of them, such as mass, etc.

David Lynch on Peace and the Uni-field

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:41:22 GMT

David Lynch - "Peace is not a stupid thing. It's not a doily."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvEkPNitdQ&mode=related&search=

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going causal: causation vs.essence in physics

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 03:52:29 GMT

Cross-abstracted from a post at: mindX

In common regurgitations (what a great opening phrase!) of the standard model of particle physics, there is often no description of any actual causality at all, despite the colorful physical-sounding verbiage, like "patina" and analogs with mountain ranges, rubber-trampolines, glue, color, charm and whatnot.

For instance, try to describe to us the causality of how a "gluon" actually "glues" the particles of a nucleus together. How does the gluon transmit the "glue" and what causation or structure gives the "glue" its properties? Does a gluon merely possess the "essence" of glue?

I wondered where those long lost ancient essences ran off to! Modern theory has a "patina" of physicalism, with loose and poetic physical analogies for its accounting categories, but it is really a hyper-complex essentialism at its core; with the disembodied essences of glue, color, strangeness, and charm just wandering around magically infecting their assigned particles with their abstract "particle-mediated" nature.

This is an empty accounting system, not a causal model of fundamental physical reality, as is Sorce Theory. The difference is VAST and impossible to see without learning and embodying BOTH models in order to compare them simultaneously. Once you go causal, you can't ever go back ... unless the sheep clawing at your heels gets to be too much.

Tags: physics, particle, essence, causal, causation, essentialism, regurgitation

Freedom, Causation and the Nondual

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:01:32 GMT

"Infinite freedom," as infinite anything, is to limit the unlimited by a concept. The infinite is ineffable. This is why we fall into conundrum when we place concepts at the infinite level. The infinite is not a concept, such as freedom or causation. By the Taoist identity of opposites, if you place one opposite at the absolute level of the infinite, you must place its opposite there as well. Thus infinite freedom must equal infinite causation, and vice versa. This ancient operation may indeed be the source and resolution of all our cherished paradoxes.

Tags: freedom, taoism, nondual, infinity, non-dual, causation, identity of opposites

The Univocity Framework: Summary and Context

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:10:45 GMT

“There has only ever been one ontological proposition: Being is univocal…..A single voice raises the clamour of being…"
-- Gilles Deleuze

This article lays the foundation for the SpinbitZ project of integrating the shadow-element of post-modernity cast upon rationality. It places the Spinoza/Deleuze concept of Univocity, in the nondual context of the Taoist principle of polarity, or "the identity of opposites." The Univocity Framework (UF) demonstrates simply and visually that Univocity ("Being has one voice which can only express differences") is ultimately an explication of the principle of non-duality. Univocity becomes the concept of polarity (the essence of the relative scope) applied to itself in order to reach its identical opposite in the absolute. This core SpinbitZ article operationalizes the concept of Univocity into a rigorous and intuitive framework that provides a simple conceptual "space" for open and honest ontological speculation, maintaining the necessary nondual relativity of this ontological space and its resident or emergent concepts and relative truths. This operationalization of Univocity enacts, and softly enforces, the principle of nonduality by recognizing the fundamental polarity between the absolute and relative "scopes." Since all concepts are relative, it is a contradiction in terms to absolutize any concept (without its polar opposite), whether ontic or epistemic. Such an absolutized relativity simply does not make sense in the Univocity Framework and so these absolutist models and ideas---which arguably are the main cause of confusion, dualism and controversy in philosophy (and tacitly-philosophical science, etc)---cannot take root in any meta-paradigm with an explicit univocity framework.

The main value and purpose of the Univocity Framework is in facilitating a proper transcendence and inclusion of the truths and tools of modernity and post-modernity, such as the esoteric truths of rational/empirical ontology (modern eastern and western nondual and rational metaphysics, as opposed to the pre-rational Great Chain of Being) and the necessary relativity of knowledge and truth operationalized by the post-modernists. This is crucial for the emerging "Integral" models, such as Ken Wilber’s "Integral Methodological Pluralism" (IMP), because it demonstrates that the key rationalist Spinoza (and Leibniz to an extent), was already "AQAL-compliant" and indeed "post-metaphysical," according to the Deleuzean alternative and Wilber's own pre-rational and medieval notion of "metaphysics" as essentially the "Great Chain of Being." And further, true (unshadowed) rationalism, with its "positive [non-regressive] notion of infinity" and univocity, was not saddled with the absurd post-modernist rejection (shadow-element) of ontological claims of relative truth. Indeed, esoteric rationalism held intact the critical ontic-epistemic and relative/absolute polarities. Modern models that incorporate academic/orthodox accounts of philosophical history---based on the Leibnizian/Hegelian "false" or incoherent reading of Spinoza, and excluding the Deleuzean coherent alternative---are not fully integral. If they were, they would incorporate (differentiate and integrate) the truths on both sides of the controversy. As it stands, Ken Wilber hardly mentions Deleuze's name, and when he does so, he does not mention any of Deleuze’s concepts, even though Deleuze seems an important precursor (if in parallel discovery) to key ideas in Wilber's IMP. Indeed, Foucault himself, whom Ken Wilber idolizes amongst the post-modernists, said of Deleuze that “one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian.” Nowhere, it seems, does Wilber take into account the Deleuzean alternative to orthodox (and clearly biased) interpretations of the history of philosophy. As a result, these modern Integral models (namely IMP and its offshoots) tend to be subtle epistemic absolutisms, derived from the rejection and avoidance of the ontic level and its relative claims of truth. This is seen clearly in Ken Wilber's effective claim that "The Universe is made of (primordial) perspectives" If All is perspective, then what is it that has, gains or expands this perspective?

When it comes right down to it, however, although Wilber routinely denies the validity of ontological claims in general, as the essence of his "Integral Post-metaphysics," the only metaphysical claims that he actually denies seem to be those absolute, static and eternal (pre-given) forms of the "Great Chain of Being," which itself is an archaic and medieval model of metaphysics, placing "matter" below, or immanent to, transcendent "mind." None of the key rationalists (specifically Spinoza and Leibniz), except perhaps for the proto-rationalist (pre-rational/theological apologist and protector) Descartes, held anything remotely similar to the metaphysics of the Great Chain of Being. Spinoza himself, far from being the "dedicated Cartesian" that Wilber claims of him, radically rejected Descartes' dualism and pre-rational theology. Spinoza merely used Descartes "geometrical" methodology to turn it radically against him. In the end, and according to the Deleuzean heteroodox interpretation which I independently converged upon (see my article

Spinoza's Attribute Polarity and the Nucleation of Observability), Spinoza created an AQAL-compliant and nondual (univocal) polarity between the two attributes, "Thought" and "Extension," which are now clearly recognizable as Wilber's two quadrants, "I" and "IT," respectively. The "parallelism" of attribute expression in Deleuze’s Spinozism, mirrors exactly (excluding the inherited ontic-shadow and the plural quadrants) the parallelism, or "tetra-arising," found in the AQAL model.

As for the post-modern (“green”) shadow cast on the relative ontological truths of rationality, Deleuze makes a subtle, yet critical distinction; that between "the relativity of Truth" and "the truth of relativity." It is the tendency of extreme post-modernism (brought about by an intrinsic "transcendent bias") to absolutize the relative scope and claim the "relativity of Truth," (with a capital T denoting an absolute scope). At this deconstructive apex, all truths or interpretations are as good as any others, i.e. relatively worthless. This absolutism of relativity is precisely what Univocity denies. Instead of the "relativity of Truth," univocity affirms the "truth of relativity" in that, affirming the absolute/relative polarity, it allows the ontological space for REAL difference and relativity within every perspective to emerge beneath the "tyranny" of absolutized emergent or transcendent concepts (transcendent-bias) such as platonic forms and numerical identities.

The integral adherents always admonish the destruction and leveling of holarchies by extreme postmodernism (the "mean green meme"), but as it turns out, the core ontic-epistemic holarchy, the polarity of polarity that manifests, touches, enfolds and unfolds from the absolute scope, is ultimately bulldozed and razed to the ground by the denial of the validity of relative ontological truth claims. The denial of Univocity, and the ontic-epistemic hierarchy of esoteric rational ontology, is the last holarchy to be brought out from under the shadow of the heavy green rug of post-modernity, dusted off, restored and further expanded into key pieces of the Integral Operating System.

With this conceptual framework successfully installed in the mind, the project of the integration of all forms of knowledge and truth into an "integral meta-paradigm"---including those relative truths of rational/empirical ontology hitherto denied and abandoned into the “green” shadow cast by post-modernity---will be much simpler because we have made explicit the many implicit differentiations and distinctions that so often confuse these absolute-level discussions. With the Univocity framework, we can now cast aside the shells so often unwittingly employed in the shell-game of academic philosophy and, for perhaps the first time, move these symbols around our game-board in the light of reason, and indeed, "in the light of eternity".

...stay tuned for the publication of this article...

Tags: Taoism, Ken Wilber, nondual, epistemology, Deleuze, SpinbitZ, Great Chain of Being, Hegel, univocity, Integral Methodological Pluralism, Spinoza

What's New at SpinbitZ

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:06:31 GMT

The above post is a summary and explanation of a forthcoming article on SpinbitZ.net titled "The Univocity Framework". I have cross-posted it here because I'd like to generate some discussion and critical analysis of the general ideas before final publication.

Also new to SpinbitZ is a similar summary for another soon to be published article on nondual expansions of Sorce Theory. This article is titled "Sorce Theory: Unlocking the Basement"

Also new to SpinbitZ is an article written by an artist friend of mine, Robert Kernodle, titled "Fluidism: A Painting Technique and Kindred Cosmology"

And finally, I published a fairly recent poem of mine as well: Spell-Binding

Tags: art, painting, poetry, Sorce Theory, SpinbitZ, univocity

What's New on Spinbitz.net

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Wed, 03 May 2006 12:07:46 GMT

added an "Interactive Poetry" section, from an old site of mine.
added this blog
added ordering capability for art prints from zazzle.com

SpinbitZ.net

...

Tags: art, poetry, spinbitz

Entropy is In-tropy… seen in reverse

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Wed, 03 May 2006 10:53:07 GMT

entropy was only invented to explain--and therefore only applies to--simple machines. But the universe is NOT a simple machine. Rather, it seems to be at least indefinitely complex beyond our observational horizons, and the laws of self-similarity would suggest that this depth of complexity is infinite. Therefore, entropy has a very minimal role in physical reality as a whole even though to the physics of man and his simple machines, entropy is King.

Sorce Theory (http://www.anpheon.org) shows how indeed entropy is only one side of a cycle of continuous (yet punctuated or quantized) energy transformations with, for example, heat ultimately leading to the attraction of fine dust particles, as opposed to being the end product of dispersion. This can be seen in a simple experiment using a cooled smoke-filled jar and a heat source, like a stove on high. The smoke will clearly "gravitate" toward the heat, tilting the surface between the settled smoke and the air in the sealed jar, and pulling the smoke toward the source. This effect can be seen from across the room, in fact.

So a simple demonstration that anyone can do in their kitchen (not to mention the many demonstrations from Prigogine et al) shows that entropy does not rule the universe leading it down into a final dissolution or "heat death". Rather, heat can function as the beginning of the cycle, acting as a local collective force, rather than merely as a global tendency for ultimate dispersion as seen in our simple machines. Entropy is clearly not the final word.

For those who appreciate the dissolution of duality into a Taoist identity of interpenetrating opposites, here is one for the organic/machinic distinction. The organic quality to the universe that the above seems to imply can also be seen in purely machinic terms, which seems ultimately to defy the orgnic/machinic distinction itself. For example, Deleuze says that our machines are not nearly mechanical enough. They are not machines made out of machines made out of machines, etc, etc, etc, etc... the way we find them in nature. Rather, in man's machines, very quickly the parts "break down" into bulk (undesigned/unevolved) materials generally composed of simple crystaline, haphazard and regular grids.

Our machines are made of parts, and "stuff," not of machines made of machines etc. .... In other words, the infinite holarchy (wholes (machines, systems) which are the parts of the next level ad infinitum, up and down) which is fundamental to universal "designs", gets truncated with the simple grids of our human-limited "bulk" materials and computational grids, etc. The universe doesn't run on parts that are not also wholes. It runs on holarchy, self-similarity and complexity.

Entropy is merely the incompatability between the simple machines of man and the infinitely complex machines of nature. Nature's infinite machines underly, and over-arch, man's bulk materials with their simple, random and static geometric grids of repeating units or parts. And nature's unceasing and dynamic complexity begins to emerge from within and without until its holarchy self-resonates throughout in the dissolution of the "artificial" which does not use nature's organizational, and machinic/organismic methods. In this way, nature's extropy (syntropy) is man's entropy. They are the two sides of the same coin. The dissolution is merely the destruction inherent in every act of creation. The artist must destroy the simple tube of paint to create his masterpiece of complexity, as the sculptor must destroy the block of marble and the composer must destroy the silence...

... the difference is, (to circumvent the transcendent (top-down) anthropic overtones) that "G-D" works from both the inside and the out... and that creation, or intelligent evolution, is the entropy=in-tropy identity of opposites. We merely have to decide which pole or polarity with which we wish to align: in/out or both/neither.

Tags: art, creation, destruction, machines, nature, universe, organic, man, entropy, syntropy, sorce theory

introduction

http://spinbitz.gaia.com — Wed, 03 May 2006 10:47:07 GMT

Ok, here is my introductory zaadz blog post. I will just use this blog to collect my rather loose thoughts gleaned from discussions in other forums, such as mindx (http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/frame.html). I hope it proves at least entertaining to someone for the time being, but ultimately, the seeds of these raw ideas may make their way into my evolving book at http://www.spinbitz.net.

enjoy ...

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