Tom on "Quantum Enlightenment"

[Balder]

For anyone interested --

Tom, a former member of IPS, has posted an interesting -- and lengthy! -- blog on Integral Life.

 

Quantum Enlightenment 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Tom: At yellow, one jumps out of deficiency needs---the leap into being....represents the first realization that evolution develops in stages…[through] a non-linear leap.

I'm reminded of the “real and false reason” thread. On p. 1 I asked whether modeling stages requires a different kind of math than used in the MHC, for example, with its linear progression of nested sets. I suggested Roca’s use of a nonlinear math of uncertainty, which might have some relations with QM?

Page 2 goes into how postformal cognition appears differently depending on the model used, and that models like Wilber's and the MHC are still using a formal math that seems inadequate to explain this shift to a “being” mode. I explore Torbert and Gebser on this. For example, as distinguished from the more formal Hegelian transcend-and-include thesis-antithesis-synthesis on which the MHC is based Torbert describes the Magician/Clown thus: “Ego identity disintegrates, creates mythical events that reframe situations, blends opposites, treats time and events as kairatic, symbolic, alalogical, metaphorical” (186-7). The whole notion of a Hegelian dialectic is replaced by understanding that core dualities cannot be “resolved” into a higher integration but rather a Magician “blends opposites” dynamically according to context through analogical, metaphorical narrative. This is further reinterated in his last stage, Ironist, who “cultivates a quality of awareness and action that highlights dynamic tensions of the whole enterprise” (189).

Here is an excerpt from Torbert’s 2008 “Developmental Action Inquiry” noting this shift from structural approaches (akin to your deficiency needs) to being with regard to ambiguity, a key ingredient in QM:

“Unlike people at conventional action-logics, who tend to…avoid ambiguity, all…postconventional samples saw creative potential in ambiguity…. The Individualist endured it; the Strategists tolerated it; the Alchemists surrendered to it; and the Ironists generated it. ….in a figure/ground shift, the Alchemists and Ironists experienced ambiguity as the creative, ongoing element of all experience. This finding is consistent with the change from a primarily cognitive/structural approach to…a primarily attentional/spiritual approach in the shift from Strategist to Alchemist.”

As to developmental “leaps” instead of progressive stages, I like how Weiss puts this in the “ladder, climber, view” thread. He starts by noting that the Hegelian model uses what I’ve come to call false reason, in Gebserlingus deficient rationality, which misses the discontinuous nature of how stages “develop” via mutation:

"Weiss said that Gebser was clear that his work did not describe a linear evolution, development, or progress of consciousness…. Gebser used the term 'mutation'to describe the process of moving from one consciousness structure to another, but this was not intended to reduce the development of consciousness to a biological metaphor. Rather, he used this term to emphasize the discontinuous nature of the various structures of consciousness. The word 'mutation' connotes the sense of a leap that is more sudden in comparison to the gradualism of Darwin's biological evolution…. But crucially for Gebser, the later mutations do not 'transcend and include,' as in Wilber's model of evolution. Instead, they are discontinuous and autonomous modes of awareness, each of which has its own intrinsic validity, and for which the perception and appearance of time and space are radically different."

 

[Balder]

I mentioned the intersubjective psychologists, Atwood and Stolorow, in a previous post.  Here's another article by Stolorow that is worth a gander, in light of some of the recent posts:

 

Dynamic, Dyadic, Intersubjective Systems

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

"A cardinal feature of the dynamic systems approach to development is that it categorically rejects teleological conceptions of pre-ordained end-states toward which developmental trajectories are presumed to aim" (339).

"The process of change in dynamic systems is nonlinear and discontinuous, as changing contexts and changing conditions within the system assemble the elements into radically different patterns of coordination unanticipated by prior configurations" (340).

[Edward theurj Berge]

Starting on p. 6 of this thread I explored dynamic systems. For example:

“Returning to DeLanda’s example, in terms of genetic structuralism neoteny is a fine example of the way structure grows out of structure in a process that at bottom yields increased complexity by generating a new developmental level. The problem that makes discussions of evolution difficult is that Deleuze rejects the notion of epistemological and developmental ‘levels’, which is essential to Piaget. Instead, Deleuze introduces the concept of ‘strata’, which are intermingled or folded into one another and shot through by escape routes or ‘lines of flight’. At one point Deleuze says that among strata there is no fixed order, and one stratum can serve directly as a substratum for another without the intermediaries that one would expect from the standpoint of stages or degrees. Or the apparent order can be reversed.”

[Balder]

:-)  Yes, exactly why I chose to share the article at that moment!

theurj said:

"A cardinal feature of the dynamic systems approach to development is that it categorically rejects teleological conceptions of pre-ordained end-states toward which developmental trajectories are presumed to aim" (339).

"The process of change in dynamic systems is nonlinear and discontinuous, as changing contexts and changing conditions within the system assemble the elements into radically different patterns of coordination unanticipated by prior configurations" (340).

[Edward theurj Berge]

Derrida didn't differance his differance.

I'm not going to defend against this statement, just point. See this, for example. Or this.

[Balder]

I came across this odd, interesting video today (shared by Julian, an old Zaadz/Gaia blogger, on Facebook).  The video presents a "theory of everything" drawing on neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and relativity.  About midway through, they begin discussing quantum-influenced notions of consciousness (using de Broglie's equations).  The graphics are very well done, and the narrator has a very odd, seemingly "constructed" accent (reminds me of the voice of Morpheus, if he was a Chinese man who had then studied Russian before learning English...)

 

[Edward theurj Berge]

Looking at the freeze frame of the video above my Muse spoke to me saying:

How come the physical foundation of our consciousness, the neuronal network, is connected by a bunch of wires? If it is quantum, why don't neurons communicate through some sort of quantum wifi?

There are of course deeper implications behind this surface question but we'll leave those till later. My Muse is like that: asks the simple question that leads deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.

[Edward theurj Berge]

The point I was trying to emphasize, given that the wave-particle is (non) "dual," was not so much that there isn't a background wifi as much as that without the foreground "wiring" there ain't no wifi either! Or to paraphrase something quoted earlier, "God" only (non) exists through, or coterminous with, its instantiations.

[Balder]

Tom:  Re my comments on freedom, an act that is caused is by my definition unfree, such that freedom necessarily is acausal in some essential respect.  That's my boiled-down view, if that helps.

 

Yes, I understood what you meant regarding your definition of freedom.  I was saying I wasn't sure about your conclusion and wanted to back up because of what followed that definition, where you said this move put the observer back in the driver's seat.  But you have clarified that now, which helps. 

 

I like the connections you are making to the quantum view -- and have been attracted to similar moves, such as in Bitbol's work -- and I think it is worthwhile to keep pursuing and unfolding the implications of the developments in this field, but in an "integral" spirit I find it helpful to complement or balance this particular formulation with similar ones from other "zones" or quadrants, to avoid potential perspectival reductionism.  (For instance, quantum theory includes the observer but still seems to privilege 3p language).  I don't think you're doing this; I just wanted to add this observation.

 

Tom: Theurj, I think Torbert's thoughts about ambiguity are relevant in this context.  The combination observer+observed renders both observer and observed fundamentally, irreducibly ambiguous.  One cannot say where one begins and the other ends.

 

I was present at a "panel" featuring Torbert and several of his student assistants and associates, and one woman presenter gave the most delightful, engaging talk on ambiguity that I think I've ever heard.  Fantastic.  I will look for a transcript, if anything like that exists.

 

Concerning ambiguity and wholeness, I am reminded again of a text we have discussed briefly here before -- Unbounded Wholeness: Dzogchen, Bon, and the Logic of the Nonconceptual, an ancient Bon text which presents a "logic of wholeness" and which, among other things, emphasizes fundamental ambiguity and the idea that unbounded wholeness is found in, implied by, and inseparable from, multiplicitous instantiations, which themselves are acausal and "spontaneously emergent."  Here's a review of the text, if you're interested.  When I get home, I will poke around in it for some possible relevant contributions to this thread.

[Balder]

The following essay, which I posted here awhile back, seems relevant WRT your last comments, Tom:  On Idols, Emptiness, and Relativity.

[Balder]

I thought you might!  I hadn't mentioned it previously in this thread.  I first brought it up on the old Gaia IPS, and then I posted it to this forum earlier this year, and I only now remembered it when I read your most recent post.  This article, and a related one by Michel Bitbol in the book, Buddhism and Science, both have played a role in the formation of my thoughts on "postmetaphysics."