Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Old Paradigm Based on "What Is" Metaphysics

Substance Metaphysics Characteristics (Old Paradigm)

• Discrete individuality
• Separateness
• Fixity of nature
• Passivity (being acted upon)
• Classificatory stability

Substance (Metaphysics) Required
• Determinism
• Cause/effect
• Passive Things
• A thing world
• A fixed thing world
• A study of only “what is”
• It makes “what is” permanent

The Old Material World View

Psychologist Eleanor Rosch characterized perception based on this form of knowledge as follows:
"In the analytic picture offered by the cognitive sciences, the world consists of separate objects and states of affairs, the human mind is a determinate machine which, in order to know, isolates and identifies those objects and events, finds the simplest possible predictive contingencies between them, stores the results through time in memory, relates the items in memory to each other such that they form a coherent but indirect representation of the world and oneself, and retrieves those representations in order to fulfill the only originating value, which is to survive and reproduce in an evolutionarily successful manner”

Emergent Paradigm is about Life-itself and How It Creates Itself

Based on Process Metaphysics Characteristics (New Paradigm)
• Interactive relatedness
• Wholeness
• Innovation novelty
• Productive Energy
• Fluidity

Process Metaphysics Requires
• Becoming based on values
• Wholeness
• Stretching for Novelty
• Fluidity
• Self aware energy
• Relations of relations
• Functions of functions

New Life World View
Eleanor Rosch has also described the world of life:
"Primary knowing" arises by means of "interconnected wholes, rather than isolated contingent parts and by means of time-less, direct, presentation" rather than through stored "re-presentation." "Such knowing is open rather than determinate, and a sense of unconditional value, rather than conditional usefulness, is an inherent part of the act of knowing itself... Acting from such awareness is "spontaneous, rather than the result of decision making”, and it is "compassionate…since it is based on wholes larger than the self."

Life has its own will

Life Works How?
• Life is creative and fundamental

• Life works by living entities choosing and initiating acts based on values, all connected

. Life requires coherence laws, not control

• Life does not work by cause and effect

Imagine Billiard Balls on a Pool Table
• With right force, momentum and angle, you can predictably cause those balls to go where you want them too.
-This is cause and effect

Now Imagine Billiard Balls as alive with their own will and ability to choose acts

• No force, momentum nor angle of approach can predict what will occur when you hit such living entities, can you?

- This is life and living processes

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Why War? My Life's Walk by Norm Hirst

November/December 07 Inner Tapestry

Some of you have been asking about the history of my research. And given today's preoccupation with war and what war does to people, causing major turns in human history, I feel compelled to share my war story, and how it caused me to dedicate my life to finding the reasons for war. My years of investigation are now beginning to produce the findings that we are bringing to you in each issue in this column with a book now in progress. It began 60 years ago. I began to dig and dig deeply into what we believe about reality, about science, about fundamental structures that have continuously formed a war-filled world.

We have just returned from delivering a paper at a Values Conference. I was thrilled to learn that a major point of our message was received and acknowledged. Our paper was received with a degree of enthusiasm I never expected. One of the participants has now sent us email in which he wrote:

“Being originally trained as a scientist, I’m specially impressed by your distinction between causality, as THE explanatory tool in the natural sciences, and the concept of fluidity or process you presented to us as the explanatory tool in the human sciences, the distinction stemming from acknowledging man’s free will... Otherwise we would only be deterministic objects, and not the (unique and most valuable) subjects that, thankfully, we are.”

Now I want to write about our message. To properly ground it I will begin at the beginning.

It was 1951. The Korean War was in progress. General MacArthur had missed his promise to have the boys home for Christmas. I was in the Air Force and in Korea. My job was to maintain airborne radar. I was told to pack up and be ready to fly out. The fighting had come within 200 miles of us. If it came any closer I was to be out of there. As it happened it never came closer.

I found myself in an unusual position. I was to have a ringside seat to the war; far enough away to be relatively safe yet close enough to witness the war. What I witnessed was horrifying. I was not prepared to see human beings inflict such pain, suffering, death and destruction on other human beings. I defended us on the grounds that it was our moral duty to snatch success from an evil enemy. Never would we engage in such acts if an evil enemy had not forced us to.

Finally my enlistment was up! I went home. I applied to MIT and was accepted as a full time student. Because of my radar background I also had a part time job maintaining components of an unusual computer. One day I found a spontaneous party going on in the computer room. They told me they had finished running tests of a new weapon system. It exceeded their expectations. I thought, “They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people… They are celebrating a better way to kill people." That thought went on for two and a half days, around and around.

Then after lunch I was walking by the athletic field going back to work. I suddenly got an electric shock in the back of my neck. I could feel the electricity go up into my head and down my spine. I thought of two armies of little boys approaching each other with toy guns. In moments they would learn that they were no longer little boys; the guns were not toys. Then I remembered the parades I had seen with flags waving and soldiers marching. Then in a moment, all the values I had grown up with died. The values that justified our acts in the Korean War were gone. I was left feeling like a zombie. I had to begin to question everything at the most fundamental levels to rebuild my world. I dedicated my life to finding the causes of war and preventing war. I was soon to realize that it depended on better understanding of values, but I did not know how.

For the next semester Robert Hartman arrived; a visiting professor of philosophy whose specialty was creating a science of value. From my physics training I knew what science is. I learned Hartman thought the same about science. Science combines the analytic theories of empirical philosophy with the synthetic theories of a formalism such as mathematics. Without the formal component there is no science, just a form of philosophy. Hartman became my teacher, friend and mentor for many years.

Unfortunately, today, the nature of science has been totally lost. I've learned that today’s philosophy has lost the analytic and synthetic, an unfortunate regression. The practice of science has been thoroughly corrupted by greedy sponsors who suppress scientists from speaking truth. I hate to mention science; but we do need to restore real science to provide help for us now in confusing times.

Learning and unlearning through many disciplines of my inquiry:

I studied physics gaining experience with an actual science. I studied the philosophy of science to help me understand science in general. I studied mathematics to understand the driving force behind scientific inquiry. I studied the theory of logic to understand the limitations of mathematics. I discovered the limitations of logic itself. I then studied the most modern theory of formalisms and discovered that logic, as we know it, is simply one amongst many possibilities for doing meaningful formalisms. What people today believe is rational is simply one choice. Believing that philosophy itself was a way of exploration I turned to it. Mainstream substance philosophy offered a worldview, a metaphysics that further entrapped us. Way down deep human knowledge developed in a way that became committed to errors that destroy life.

My fifty-year search found more useful knowledge, but I kept learning that what was accepted, as foundations of our sciences, didn't support the living domain. I concluded that values were only operative in living processes. Thus I considered biology. It became apparent to me that biology had tried to become scientific by adopting the protocols of physics. These conformed to materialism, cause and effect, and reductionism. I believed that biology would provide no answers.

In one developing area I found great promise. At the end of the 19th Century there were crises in the foundations of mathematics. This I saw as very significant; yet I suspect that very few people have heard about it. This led to more research in logic in the 20th Century than all previous human history. I found the results electrifying. There are now forms of logic that do not require consistency; at least not truth consistency. I saw truth consistency as a catastrophic error. Life is creative. It does not conserve truth. Life requires both poles of categorical contrasts. Life works on self-knowing by self-reference. Consistency blocks self reference. Given the importance of self-knowing we named our Institute “Autognomics” for auto gnosis, i.e., self knowledge.

I had found an unbridgeable lacuna between mathematics and the logic required to understand life. Physics can no longer be considered the basic science.

Beginning in the 70’s I began to see new disciplines such as autopoiesis, the theory of self-creation and astounding discoveries in both physics and biophysics. Physicists discovered the Dirac Sea consisting of zero point energy that fills what had been thought of as empty space. In 1992 the biophysicist, Dr. Mae Wan Ho, discovered that living tissue is liquid crystalline. Our bodies are an electro-magnetic environment that supports oneness of action. It may appear that our bodies consist of organs as parts, but functionally there are no parts. Our bodies function holistically. There are whole organism diseases that defy current medical models.

All this totally changes our beliefs about reality, and now a paradigm change is underway and documented by The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS has just published a report documenting the change, the 2007 Shift Report. Their web site summarizes the report as follows:

“The 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming, attempts to chart the transition we believe is underway from a rigid, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview to one that is built on a foundation of interconnectedness, cooperation, and the intersection of science and spirituality.”

Reviewing the growing catalog of unsolvable problems facing us today, it appears that all of the problems are based on errors of the old paradigm. I will write about them in future reports. For now, know that life requires every living entity to be autonomous. Every living entity can only do what it has learned through inner processes. Also, every living entity is unique and equipped to insist on fulfilling its unique meaning. Thwarted it will turn to coping dysfunction and possible violence.

Life cannot be controlled. Unfortunately force and control is all that we know from the old paradigm. There has been no room for understanding values beyond thinking of them as Sunday-School virtues. In the new paradigm conscious awareness of value processes become essential to the way living entities choose their acts and assert their will. Since, as yet, we do not have sufficient understanding of the role of value processes we think force makes sense. Politicians stand up and promise to be tough. This is just futile posturing because under the heading “tough” there is nothing they can do that doesn’t exacerbate the problem they are trying to solve. I would reject such politicians.

To give such an example, the United States has the largest percentage of its population in prison. It also has the toughest sentencing. We found that a contributing factor to the growth of the prison population was an increase in recidivism after imposing tougher sentences. That seems paradoxical. One might think tougher sentencing would cut down recidivism. By understanding how living entities function and that life cannot be controlled may explain why tougher sentencing increases recidivism.

Life requires coherence laws, not control.

I think legislators should know that laws that attempt to control will fail and will make things worse. In life, coherence laws are required. Coherence laws maximize freedom. An example of a coherence law is driving on the right hand side of the road. It works so well it rarely ever needs enforcement. Another example is the right to privacy. When governments spy on citizens there are people who say they don’t care because they have nothing to hide. That is not the issue. The issue is privacy. We all have different life styles. We don’t need to be in each other’s face all the time. Coherence laws are what enable life to work miraculously. Our founding fathers, in writing the Constitution, knew this. To not defend the Constitution is to sacrifice the coherence conditions desperately required. Life free to produce miracles will solve the unsolvable problems we face. It is life itself that produces evolution.

Where life cannot find ways to fulfill itself, results will be abhorrent, unhealthy work-arounds. If subverted long enough, violence is inevitable. Life will not be controlled by any degree of force. War serves only to make a few people rich.

Monday, September 17, 2007

New Series on Emerging Paradigm

In this series of pub notes, I hope to make it a real discussion. That is, I hope pub note subscribers will contribute their thoughts.

The topics will be:

Recognizing the nature of and dynamics of this fundamental paradigm shift

What a paradigm is
A paradigm is a system of very basic ideas by which we define and recognize reality; how we make sense of experience. For example, the old paradigm reality has been "what we can perceive through our senses, if you can see it, touch it, or measure it, it is real." Once such basic ideas take hold they develop a momentum of their own. As people live with such ideas it is very hard to escape. This is the power of a paradigm. Life just keeps changing everything until the old paradigm doesn't fit or work anymore. There becomes an abundance of problems that cannot be solved. Then a new paradigm is born. The transition from the old to the new paradigm can be a time of chaos. That is our current state.

What are the characteristics of this emerging paradigm?

How will the paradigm affect you?

How the old paradigm makes problems and how the new paradigm solves them. The new paradigm provides a new and different understanding of the fundamental character of life, how it works and what it requires. As we learn about and examine the basic ideas of the new paradigm we see how the unsolvable problems can be solved.

For example, (full details in future PubNotes):

Health Care: The US has the worlds most expensive health care. Unfortunately it is not the world’s best care. On most measures of quality, in comparison to other countries, the US ranks from midlevel to last. The basic assumptions behind our health care, notions of machines, mechanisms and technology, are ill suited to care for living organisms.

Prison Populations: The US has the largest percentage of the population in prisons. We also have the toughest sentences. Knowing how living organisms learn and develop we see how unreasonable tough sentences increase recidivism and too many laws increase crime.

Education: Schools assume today they can put information into children. They cannot. Education results from self-motivated inquiry. Schools can facilitate inquiry, but not force it.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

PubNotes: The Nature of Occurring Paradigm Shift and Values

By Norm Hirst
Copyright (c) September, 2007

Here we begin a new series of newsletters called PubNotes.

As the Institute of Noetic Sciences has documented, in their published 2007 Shift Report, a change of consciousness is sweeping through the world. This is a new paradigm developing. As usual with new paradigms there will be a period of chaos. Ultimately the chaos will yield to a new order.

Meanwhile there is cause for hope; there are many new ideas and understanding to help us sail through the chaos. New paradigms usually occur when there is a growing accumulation of unsolvable problems. Today there is such an accumulation. New paradigms bring new ways of thinking. Today there is a new and different science revealing unprecedented understanding of values and value processes. Such understanding shows how the "unsolvable problems" can be resolved.

What follows is a description of some of the topics PubNotes will be about; and of course, as we go deeper, new topics will arise.

What I want to share is not suitable for normal dialog. There will be moments when we should stop and ponder/reflect. I will speak of topics that I understand – after years of pondering! I am reminded of discussions in Schultz’s Beer Garden near the University of Texas. Discussions were of such quality that we called Shultz’s, "Philosophy Department Headquarters". I will tell my story in PubNotes. Each note will be another day in the bar having left space to ponder between notes. My favorite beer is John Courage. I could get it in Connecticut. I can no longer find it. We proceed with courage.

Fifty-two years ago, studying physics at MIT, I realized that in the future the most important problems were going to involve values; physics would not solve them. “I realized” is an understatement. What I experienced was a soul altering force.

The next semester Robert Hartman came to MIT as a visiting professor; a renowned philosopher working to create a science of value out of philosophy. He pointed out that if we could bring Plato back to life he would understand our philosophy books, but our science books Plato would find utterly bewildering. "That," said Hartman, "described the crisis of our time." I took Hartman’s course. He became my teacher, my mentor and my friend.

Now, what might he have had in mind as a “science of value”? In his time there was a clear distinction between empirical philosophy and science. In the time I was studying and working with Hartman there was still such a distinction, perhaps a dying remnant.

Before Newton there was only philosophy. Based on new mathematics, Newton provided a new basis for inquiry. That became known as science. Science replaces the analytics of language with the synthetics of formalisms. Mathematics is a formalism, but by no means is it the only formalism.

You may need to ponder. “Analytics of language” and “synthetics of formalisms”! These are not difficult ideas. They are just so damned different. I am reminded of some experiments done a few decades ago. Mathematicians tried teaching transfinite arithmetic to first graders. First graders latched right on to it. Adults have problems with it. (This topic might require several days in the bar. It might require Scotch!)

Bertrand Russell stated that philosophers know what they are talking about; they just don’t know what they are saying. Mathematicians know precisely what they are saying; they just don’t know what they are talking about. It takes both to make a science. But even that doesn’t get to the full depth of it. Inquiry by formalism reveals ideas that we would never encounter in experience. The foundational ideas of physics would never be known except by formal inquiry. Electromagnetic waves were discovered on the basis of Maxwell’s differential equation relating electricity and magnetism. My favorite formalism is the square root of minus one, an unreal mathematical idea that now plays a major role.

Hartman fully appreciated all this. He knew that if we were ever going to save ourselves we needed a formalism for values. On the basis of the formalism he developed the Hartman Value Profile (HVP); a test of value perception. It does not reveal your own personal choice of values but it does reveal how you use them. We are all different!

No, this is not just Hartman’s idea. The HVP has been validated and used in most societies on Earth to day. Has the formalism revealed anything we would not detect in ordinary experience? Yes. I will mention two examples.

Measurement is all the rage today. I was asked what the value formalism says about metrics. The full set of metrics includes finite numbers and at least two levels of transfinite numbers. The finite numbers only apply to the lowest level of values. Any project subject to measurement can only deal with the lowest values. Such measurement is destructive of values and life.

Similarly, General Petraeous is being considered as the ultimate authority on continuing the Iraq war. No doubt he should be considered the ultimate authority on military operations since war is based on the logic of force. But war is in a domain of living where value processes are operative. We should be asking if military operations are the best option. That is a question for folks with an entirely different expertise than that of a military general.

Back at MIT, I fully agreed with everything I learned from Hartman, but still I was troubled. There was nothing in our knowledge to support Hartman’s ideas. Given our dominant worldview of matter, determinism, reductionism and what we mistakenly thought of as protocols for science, there was neither place nor need, for values. I accepted the task of finding support for values.

It was a bleak task until the 70’s. Then there occurred experiments casting doubt on our worldview. Today, the last two decades have totally invalidated our worldview. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has published a 2007 Shift Report documenting that there is a change in consciousness, a new paradigm, occurring all over the world. (www.ions.org)

What's coming:

Life is fundamental - not matter. Empty space is filled with zero point energy, energy from quantum fluctuations at a temperature of absolute zero. This energy is called the Dirac Sea in honor of the physicist Paul Dirac. Living entities, such as you and I, are connected through the Dirac Sea; all life is oneness.

As we learn how living entities function, it turns out that it is nothing like we thought. Living entities are not machines, nor machine-like. Their workings are not subject to cause and effect, and they are not carrying out calculations. Living entities are capable of initiating their own acts based on values. They live in societies that give them maximum freedom within coherence conditions required by life. That is true even in the cells in our bodies. It is true of the molecules in cells, and, in nature. It is true of us on the living earth.

Unfortunately, some people are so limited in their understanding of living processes they don’t trust freedom. They insist on control. But living entities are autonomous. Controlling them with force, shock and awe, confinement and such may appear to be a way to control living entities, but we're learning the inner life force is stronger and actually cannot be controlled. A lifetime of learning, the living entities identities and the fundamental will to act autonomously cannot be predicted when force is imposed. Force is a bankrupt notion.

Matter as fundamental, determinism and reductionism have lost their dominance as a worldview. This will take several days in the bar celebrating. We will switch to Champaign.