Michael Kosok

[Balder]

I recently learned about the work of Michael Kosok (via a discussion in Bonnie's Magellan course).  I've only cursorily reviewed his website this morning, but his work certainly looks worth a gander.  He touches on a good number of themes that we have explored on this forum (intersubjectivity, paradox, embodiment, the myth/metaphysics of identity, quantum theory, post-Marxist social theory, etc).  Given the nature and scope of his work, and the early date of his writings (some of this stuff dates back to 1975), I'm surprised I haven't come across references to him in Wilber's writings (that I recall).

 

The New Dialectics (Introduction)

 

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

This caught my eye, from "Revolution vs the myth of consistency and identity," section 2c:

"All relations, therefore, are relations between different kinds of wholes — producing a whole of wholes and not a 'part-whole' hierarchy.... Thus, Self and Other, I and Thou, autonomy and communality are but mutual expressions of each other on different dimensions and not identifications in simple opposition."

[Edward theurj Berge]

From "The dynamic of paradox":

"A paradoxical situation arises whenever any immediate situation exhibits, upon reflection, inseparable distinctions where neither distinction has any reality or independent existence by itself, while at the same time their inseparability is not capable of being viewed as a simple, abstract unity or oneness. In paradox, two elements appear as one, but the unity in turn appears as a mutuality of two." Strictly seeing them as binary opposition causes one to lose sight of "the immediate precategorical ground out of which both oppositions arose as mutual polarities."

[Edward theurj Berge]

I like this too, from the same essay:

"Only within a state of paradox and non-linearity is it possible to prevent contradiction in the first place, for, precisely because nothing is independently dicted as a separate identity, no contradiction to that non-existent diction can arise. Furthermore, no incompleteness exists either: in a paradox plus A and minus A are two aspects or sides of a singular boundary relation. The boundary does not exist as a third element between the two elements, but rather expresses the relatedness of the elements involved. Paradox, being at once complete and consistent, transcends the limitations of Goedel’s theorem, for it transcends the categorical logic of given identity upon which it is based."

[Balder]

The greater the differentiation in the theory in question, the greater the power.

With that in mind, what do you think of his discussion of relativity and quantum mechanics in section 4 of his introduction?

[Balder]

Yes, I like what Kosok says there.

 

"It's all relative" collapses back into paradox by stumbling on its own self-contradiction: relative-only is absolute relativity.

 

How do you interpret Durr's statement that "there is only relationship" in light of this?

[Balder]

Distinctioning is therefore a function within the all that raises observables---lifts or manifests them---by and as the form of its own understanding (from Joel).

Quantum physics, on the other hand, says qualia are the real that appear in contexts calling forth that real.  The observer is the observed, so what I see is the thing without distinguishing I and thing.

Qualia *are* the context *is* the measurement situation.

These descriptions sound, to me, quite close at least in some respects to what I have been describing as, and under the heading of, integral/nondual postmetaphysical enactivity, so I am definitely sympathetic to them.  But I believe speculative realists such as Bhaskar, Meillassaux, Bryant, and others would likely critique it as correlationist.  For a summary of Bhaskar's view, at least as he held it during his speculative realist phase, check out Bryant's discussion here, particularly beginning in section 1.2.  (I'd really be interested in your response to this).  Attempting to speak from the place of this critique, though I'm not sure if I can do this entirely representatively, I would like to play the role of devil's advocate and pose the following questions in response to your recent posts:

Since human beings are always part of the "context" in a scientific measurement situation, does this mean that the qualia, the observables, described by science are, and can only be, reality-as-invoked-within-human-mediated-activity, and that our descriptions are only ever of observables creatively manifesting, on the spot, by and as forms of our own understanding?  In other words, is it impossible, or at least misguided, for us to attempt to know or describe a human-independent reality, because there is no real apart from ever-new qualitative manifestations within/as measurement events (which are experiential events), and the only measurement events we can experience or talk about are necessarily inseparable from human experimental activity?

[Balder]

Have you read very far into Bryant's discussion?  He does describe Bhaskar's reasoning for transcendentally deducing such intransitive objects (see section 1.3, for instance).

 

(Bhaskar, by the way, currently espouses a nondual, Vedanta-like view of reality, which he calls meta-reality, but I personally do not know how his speculative realist views have been modified within his new nondual meta-reality framework).

[Balder]

I'm not sure I can speak well for Bryant (Ed would be better at that), but in my understanding, he does not posit a complete absence of knowing in the universe absent humans; he only says that we must be able to imagine, and talk about, a universe existing prior to, and without necessary reference to, human beings; and further argues that the project of science necessarily presupposes such.

[Balder]

Yes, that is quite similar to a Wilberian postmetaphysical response to such a claim:  the positing of a human-free universe or object is nevertheless and inescapably a human positing, a human knowing. 

Regarding Bhaskar's view, I believe he would say that asking for evidence is starting off on the wrong foot, an over-privileging of the empirical that necessarily keeps us trapped in the anthropocentric and correlationist circle (the only 'real' we can meaningfully discuss, imagine, or describe are human-dependent, human-mediated qualia).  He would say, rather than asking for evidence, we have to ask, transcendentally, what are the necessary ontological preconditions for the program of science?  He thinks science is unintelligible if the only reality is immediately given qualia: if so, there's nothing further to know or explore.  The immediately phenomenally given is it.

[Balder]

To the extent that to say "universe" is already to make a (knowing) distinction, yes, I agree that there is no "universe" (as conpercept, or enacted distinction, in Wilber's language) apart from knowing.  Wilber adds a qualification, though, that I think is worth bringing in: he says that, while we can't say that, for example, a "universe" or "ecosystem" exists (ex-ists) apart from knowing subjects capable of perceiving/enacting/calling forth such, human subjects can retro-read "universe" or "ecosystem" back into pre-human states of affairs, in which case we can say an ecosystem or the universe subsist prior to human beings (which is different from saying independently of all human perception, because humans are doing this retro-reading or projective enacting).

[Balder]

Yes, I follow you, and see the fractal relationship between these two "levels."  I'll tell you, as we go, if I lose track of what you're saying or if you make a leap I haven't followed.

 

At this point, I'd like to insert a question that I think Bhaskar (and/or Bryant) would ask you, in response to what you wrote above:  is the being of something equal to its immediate relationships and/or its being-known?  More specifically, are you, for instance, "no more" than what I currently know about you through our internet encounters?  Is your being exhausted by, or entirely equal to and encompassed by, my present knowledge of you?

[Balder]

To be clear, when you say, "'Me' doesn't appear as such," do you mean, there is no "me" independent of another's knowing?

 

When you say the knowing of someone is inseparable from one's perceiving stance, that what we say or do bears the "mark" of mutual influence, that we tend to act consistently around different people (who bring different things out of us) and thus there is a fundamental ambiguity in our knowing and experience, yes, I follow all of this.  This is the basic intersubjectivist understanding (such as I shared with you in the essays by Stolorow and Atwood): there is no fixed me, but rather me-and-you arise inseparably in relationship.  However, I think Bryant would step in at this point and say, when you talk about different contexts and people bringing different things out of us in a consistent way, does this suggest that there is some there there -- that you have potential qualities in reserve that are not activated except in certain contexts?