Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

  Post 117.  October 22, 2021

   Information - Consciousness - Reality

   Does the Cosmos Know Itself?  

The author is a theoretical physicist with a Phd in Complex Systems. Yet, in practice, he’s a financial quantitative analyst. And this book is primarily a work of philosophy, as viewed from a cosmic economic-ecological perspective. It’s a very technical book, in both a philosophical and scientific sense. But it’s laid-out like a college textbook. He presents his main thesis as A> an information-theoretic ontology, and as B> a participatory ontology1. He doesn’t say so, but the latter sounds similar to physicist John A. Wheeler’s “participatory anthropic universe” hypothesis. He does specifically acknowledge a debt to Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, which is a “Search for Meaning”, and expressed in terms of a“Metaphysics of Quality” (values ; morality). He explains that the philosoph-ical term “ontology”2 asks three questions : “What am I? What is Reality? What Can I Know?”

In the preface, he gives away an implicit theme of the book in two quotes : “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself”__Alan Watts, and “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”__Carl Sagan. He then offers two ways of understanding this dynamic world : in Aristotelian terms as “the entelechy3 of existence”, and the metaphor of “the rhizome4 of reality”. Later, he mentions a more technological way to think of reality, as a mathematical structure forming “the software that connects us, that enables all distributed systems, including life itself”. However, he seems to think of this evolving complex-ifying mechanism as more like a living cosmic organism. Hence, the notion that it is becoming self-reflective, as some of its creatures have become capable of forming mental models of the whole cosmic system.

Spoiler alert! This book discusses such metaphysical notions as PanPsychism, PanDeism, and PanEnDeism. Which are also examined in the Enformationism Thesis as possible explan-ations for the mind-like properties of the whole cosmos, as well as some of its constituents.

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1. Perticipatory Ontology :
In a participatory epistemology, meaning is neither solely objective nor solely subjective. That is to say that meaning is not, per modern or positivist views, found solely outside of the human mind, in the objective world, waiting to be discovered. Nor, per postmodern or constructivist views, is meaning simply constructed or projected onto an inherently meaningless world by the subjective human mind. Rather, Tarnas argues that meaning is enacted through the dialectical participation of the human mind with the larger meaning of the cosmos. Thus meaning exists in potentia in the cosmos, but must be articulated by human consciousness before it exists in actuality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_theory

2. Ontology :
Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. It includes the questions of how entities are grouped into basic categories and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level. Ontology is sometimes referred to as the science of being and belongs to the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

3. Entelechy :
“the realization of potential. . . .    the supposed vital principle that guides the development and functioning of an organism or other system or organization. . . . the soul of the cosmos”
___Oxford dictionary
Note : this concept is similar to my own coinage: “Enformy”.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

4. Rhizome :
Literally, a continuously growing horizontal underground stem which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.
Figuratively, it’s any complex and entangled branching system. But Gilles Deleuze gives the term a more graphic meaning based on the aggressive intertwining of roots with themselves and others. I take it to be simply a metaphor for the interconnectedness of Holism :

Information

Consciousness

Reality  

James Glattfelter

2019

“How a new understanding of the Universe can help answer age-old questions of existence”  

Information

Is Reality

ENFORMATIONISM

The Rhizome of Fungal Reality

The Rhizome of the Cosmic Web

The Rhizome of Roots

“We are a way for the cosmos
to know itself”
___Carl Sagan