In Support of a Unified (Wholistic) Systemic Conceiving of Reality
Wholistic Existential Anthropology: Essay Four
Essay number three in a series explicating a theory of reality which I call Wholistic Existential Anthropology presented evidence in support of conceiving reality as triadic (Medium.Com. December, 2020). This fourth essay is intended to address the question of how “reality” might be conceived to be triadically differentiated within a monadic (unified, singular, systemic, wholistic) theory of everything there is.
The proposal that “reality” be conceived as Wholistic is intended to stress that the conceiving of reality as differentiated into three worlds of reality does not mean that there is conceived to be separation or segmentation within all of “reality”. Rather, within Wholistic Existential Anthropology it is proposed that any “event” or “situation” within “reality” be conceived to take place within the unity and totality of “reality”. All “events” and “situations” are considered integrally contained as a unity within all that is “real”.
I am proposing that the concept of CO-CREATION be used to elucidate the relationships among the proposed distinctive 3 aspects or worlds of reality, within Wholistic Existential Anthropology, in a way that also supports the conception that reality be thought of as unified and not segmental. Diagram One is intended to represent this aspect of this theory of reality.
Diagram One: CO-CREATION
The concept of CO-CREATION within the theory Wholistic Existential Anthropology suggests not only that every “reality event” and “reality situation” has implications for every other “event” and “situation”, but also that the conceived structure of (triadic) differentiation of “worlds” of reality themselves only come into extancy as a unity of “events” within the totality of “reality”.
I am proposing that CO-CREATION be conceived as neither temporal nor causal. It has been stated several times in previous essays that the extancy of the proposed three “worlds of reality” is understood to be ideational, conceptual, intellectual, and abstract, and not to be conceived as “concretely material” (or physical). Within the theoretical structure of Wholistic Existential Anthropology “time”, “space”, and “causality” are understood to have different meanings in three worlds of reality. From this point of view, one could say that there is a conception of “time” that is physical, a conception of “time” that is phenomenological (or experiential) and a concept of “time” that is theoretical. This can be stated in a parallel way in relation to the concept of space. It is also appropriate to make a parallel statement in relation to the idea of “causality”.
The fluidity of these concepts in this way is an underpinning for conceiving that various aspects or worlds of reality be understood in ways that do not depend upon temporal or causal concepts, since the concepts themselves cannot be specified within the conception of reality as a unified whole, but only in relation to their specificity within each conceived world of reality. To state this in an apparently simpler way, In the unity of all of reality, of everything there is, in the sense of Tao, we conceive of no-time, no-space, no causality.
Thus, the theory contains no proposal that one world of reality had extancy prior (before in “time”) to either of the other two worlds of reality. There is also no proposal that one conceived world of reality is thought to be the cause of or as giving rise to either of the other two worlds of reality. Each world of reality is thought of as having a relationship of CO-CREATION with the other two worlds and with reality as a unified whole.
More specifically, within Wholistic Existential Anthropology, Physical World does not precede Phenomenological World or Theoretical World. Nor does Physical World create or give rise to Phenomenological World or Theoretical World. Phenomenological World does not precede or create or cause Theoretical World or Physical World. Theoretical World does not precede or cause Phenomenological World or Physical World.
The three worlds are considered to have co-extancy and co-creativity in relation to one another. They are extant together. They change together. Events and situations in one are reflected in events and situations in the others. This conceiving goes along with the proposal that within Wholistic Existential Anthropology, reality—all of reality and three worlds of reality—is/are ideational, conceptional, intellectual—even Physical World (with its constituents of matter and energy), even Phenomenological World (with its constituent of Experience), even Theoretical World (with the proposal that its ideas must be physically recorded).
In this view, the Human brain does not precede or give rise to the Human mind; they co-create each other. Human minding does not proceed or create science. Science and Human minding are CO-CREATIVE, the extancy of one being reflected in the other. The Human Mind (or Minding) would not be as it is conceived to be without Science having extancy as a cultural reality. Science would not be what it is conceived to be without individual Human minding. Science (as method and knowledge) would not be what it is without the Human brain being what it is conceived to be. The Human brain would not be what it is conceived to be without Science. Science and the Human brain are in a relationship of CO-CREATION. They have co-extancy and influence the nature of one another.
Since we are not used to thinking this way, or using words in just this way, most of what is written above probably strikes many or most people as imprecise, not logical, overly analytic, too complex, not analytic enough, ambiguous, paradoxical, perhaps disorienting or otherwise confusing. Although some of these qualities may be appropriately conceived to inhere in the nature of reality itself, another referral to Diagram One and some exemplary material are presented next to possibly add some clarity.
In The Diagram CO-CREATIVE relationships are suggested by the 6 lines of arrows interconnecting the “three worlds of reality” and always with pairs of lines which go in opposite directions. These arrows also represent the suggestion that any event or situation within “reality” effects all other aspects (worlds, elements, events, situations) of “reality”. Since it is proposed within Wholistic Existential Anthropology that there is unity in what is meant by reality, including unity with its conceived aspects (or worlds), the containing circle in the diagram, which represents all of reality, also is meant to represent the idea that all of reality is in a relationship of CO-Creation with all of its conceived aspects (or worlds).
EXEMPLARY DISCUSSION
What does it mean to ask and attempt to provide an answer to the question: “What evidence do we have regarding how the Human brain has come into extancy”? When we ask this question within the framework of Wholistic Existential Anthropology the question seems to be located in Physical World of reality. This might lead us to imagine the following pursuit of an answer to the question.
The pursuit might start by pointing at an object with a demonstrable chain of evidence. Let us imagine some human being—let us say a biological scientist with a subspecialty in evolutionary neurobiology. She stands in front of a laboratory table and looks at an object which she has taken from the skull of a dead Human Being’s corpse. The scientist might also have before her a line of other objects, which she has taken from the skulls of other animals. These have been labeled in order-- “lizard’s brain”, “shark’s brain”, “emu’s brain”, “rat’s brain”, “dog’s brain”, “monkey’s brain”, “chimpanzee’s brain”.
The scientist might describe these objects for us, pointing to aspects of each of them that is similar to each of the others and certain differences which she proposes represent increasing complexity. She might actually slice into these “brain” objects and use a microscope to show cellular similarities and differences in the sequence of objects. We might imagine that she is building a case that there is a phylogenetic progression in “brain” organization and size and complexity which supports the conclusion that the Human brain developed out of progress through time that led from these simpler brains through the stages of the more complex until, at last, there is the Human brain.
This proposal would quickly have to expand beyond the current demonstration laboratory table,(and, in the conceiving in Wholistic Existential Anthropology, into a consideration of Phenomenological World and Theoretical World, as well as Physical World). The evidence that these “smaller and simpler” brains are a precursor to the more complex and most complex brings in evidence that correlate with a “time” line that involves “geologic” or “biological time”—100’s of millions of “years”. It relies on evidence from fossil records that suggest that the simpler brains were extant on earth before the more complex and that the Human brain was the last of these to appear. The “time” referred to here, the “before” and “after” is “theoretical time”. It is beyond Human “phenomenological experience of time”. It is not even what is usually meant by “physical time” in ordinary language, because the “time” itself is not measured, it is inferred through a chain of abstractions and inferences, even though there are fossils used as evidence and they are assigned to “time” units through various kind of measurements.
However, even if we agree to the set of inferences and abstractions that order these fossils temporally, so that we can utter with confidence, “the simpler brains came to be extant on the earth earlier than the more complex ones”, we still are lacking anything akin to a causal explanation that makes the case that the simpler brains gave rise to, or helped create the more complex ones. This temporal evidence has no concept of a process whereby one form of brain in one kind of animal leads to another, more “advanced” form of brain, in another form of animal. It can only provide evidence that the simpler was present on earth before the more complex.
In the way that “physical causality” is used in its non-scientific mode, in its more phenomenological sense, we mean event A antecedes event B, and when A occurs, B always follows. For example, most people would understand and except the statement “If I hit a 60 watt light bulb sitting on a wooden bench with a 16 ounce hammer, the light bulb will shatter into many pieces” (and would no longer function to produce light as it did before). We would understand and accept the idea that hitting the light bulb with the hammer caused the light bulb to shatter. We would predict that if we took 1000 such light bulbs and hit them in the same way, each one of the 1000 would shatter.
Hitting a light bulb with a hammer takes place in current (“phenomenological time”) and the causal relationship between that action and the inevitable resulting shattering is observable and experienced in present time and space. Conceptually this fits the concept or paradigm of what we mean when we say that one thing (or action) causes another.
As an integral aspect of the way reality is conceived to be unified in Co-Creativity in Wholistic Existential Anthropology—the described shattering of the light bulb is extant in all three worlds of reality as well as in reality as a whole. The event is real In the Phenomenological World as the experience of the individual Human being doing the hitting and observing the shattering. The events also take place in Physical World because they are carried out with material objects and energetic actions. To the extent the event is thought of, in words, as the “hitting causing the shattering”, the event also has extancy in Theoretical World. These are different aspects or ways of conceiving the same, unified reality.
It should be noted that this way of looking at reality becomes much more complicated and abstract as the events and situations become more abstract—more remote from present, experienced time and place.. For a Human Being or a scientific community to study the effects that hitting various kinds of objects of various shapes and made of various materials, with an intention of being able to specify and predict when there will be shattering and when there won’t be, the way in which these are extant in the three worlds becomes more differentiated and requires more sophistication to conceive and conceptualize their unity. Even more so when asking questions about the origins and changes in ‘life” on earth. Even more so, when exploring the origins of the universe. What is meant by “time” may be quite different when studying Microcosm (the atomic and subatomic world) and Macrocosm (the world of planets and galaxies and gravity and black holes). More about that later.
When a Historian asks what caused World War I, or a political scientist asks what caused Donald Trump to lose the recent election, they are using the word “cause” in a different way. Historical events and political events are extant in Theoretical World and the basis of their “time” and “causality” have to be conceptualized as distinct ways appropriate to those elements of Theoretical World. The book that represents a particular view of history has extancy in Physical World—in the physical book. But history or a history is extant in Theoretical World and the causality referred to in that world of reality is different from the causality of Physical World. We have an experience of past time in Phenomenological World, but an (or the) historical past has extancy and is real in Theoretical World, and is related to and different from phenomenological or “lived time” as Minkowski calls it.
Similarly, evolution and its processes are extant in Theoretical World, and depend on a theoretical extancy of “time”. Or one might say that the word “time” doesn’t refer to the same reality when we discuss Physical World and Phenomenological World and Theoretical World. Even though we are explaining or hypothesizing events or processes or objects that have extancy in Physical World, the relationship between or among events and processes that are not present are related in abstract and conceptual ways, not in simple material ways. We don’t in fact say, in the theory of evolution, that the lizard brain causes the chicken brain. We may have evidence of forms of brains that bridge the gap (are missing links) between the brain of a lizard living today and the brain of a chicken living today, but the evolution takes place over a “time” that we cannot experience and the processes have an imagined complexity and an evidentiary complexity that is not concrete and has no extancy in the currently extant material world (or the material world that we are currently extant in and experiencing). The fossils don’t change or evolve into one another.
Charles Darwin’s written theory of evolution demonstrates an event coming into extancy in Theoretical World and it is also clear that the theory was Co-Created in Physical World (as an understanding of the observations of birds done by Darwin) and in the thinking and ideas that arose in Darwin’s Phenomenological World (his minding) and with a necessary grounding in the written cultural record of other naturalist and scientists who preceded him in Theoretical World.
The scientist imagined earlier in this discussion has to be present, with her presumed Human mind to be asking the question: “How does the Human brain come to be extant?” Moreover, not only does her brain have to have this Human form, there also has to be the extancy of the science of evolutionary neurobiology—with its books and papers containing concepts and hypotheses and “evidence’—all extant in Theoretical World—for her to be standing in her laboratory talking about and acting upon and demonstrating the evidence she is presenting. There is no basis for saying, in the way we can say that “the movement downward of the hammer precedes the shattering of the light bulb”, that her brain was extant before her mind or that brains were extant before there was language or a science or prescience, or biology. That is the label “brain”, pointing to some agreed upon object, to be found in the skull of some animals, is a part of the (and her) brain’s extancy.
This discussion is related to the consideration of the common question: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Careful reflection quickly reveals that this is not a physical question as is usually presumed to be. It is an intellectual, theoretical, linguistic, conceptual question. The concept of egg and chicken are in a co-creational relationship. When we use the word “chicken”, we are referring to a creature in Physical World which produces eggs. In biology, in Theoretical World, an egg is an object which contains material which under the right conditions produces a new version of the animal out of which it came. A chicken egg leads to a new chicken. Chickens are creatures which produce eggs which produce chickens. None of this addresses the issue of how chickens came to lay eggs that produce new chickens. In a theoretical sense a creature which doesn’t lay eggs usually won’t be thought of as a “chicken”. In the same sense, there can’t be a chicken egg if there is no chicken who lays it. The two concepts are definitional in relation to each other. One cannot be prior to the other and one doesn’t cause the other. Within the framework of Wholistic Existential Anthropology we would say that the chicken and egg are in a CO-CREATIVE relation to one another.
If we accept the scientific evidence and reasoning that support the theory of evolution, we assume that the creature and its way of reproducing grew out of earlier forms, with mutation and functional adaptability as processes that are involved in the changes and developments. But we can’t see these evolutionary processes. If we had a flock of 1000 chickens and one day one of them gave birth to a small live chicken, we would understand this to have happened by some process within the chicken which reproduced in this way—as an “accident” or mutation. If that chicken survived and started giving birth to new chickens born alive and these proved to survive by breaking all of the eggs they could find laid by the other chickens, then without intervention these “new kind” of chicken, without eggs, would probably soon make up the whole flock and we would have seen a biological change in action. Although we might decide that the creature who gave live birth to another “bird” was not a chicken (or even not a bird), because, by definitions, chickens (and birds) reproduce by laying eggs. In the case being imagined, the chicken came without an egg if we want to keep calling these creatures who look like chickens in every way except that they don’t lay eggs, “chickens”. We would still be curious about what change inside the one chicken’s reproductive system led to it suddenly and uniquely giving birth to live “chickens” with no eggs. Also, since the laying egg feature of chickens is very meaningful to Human Beings in many times and places, this new creature will have lost one of its main values for people — which might provide a less theoretical reason for not calling the new creature a chicken.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Without a Human mind there is no Human brain. Without a Human brain there is no Human mind. Without biology there is no Human mind. Without a Human mind there is no biology. Without biology there is no Human brain. Without a Human brain there is no biology. There is currently emerging scientific study suggesting that the Human brain or mind has been changed or is changed by reading written language. This theorizing is likely to be more productive if it doesn’t lose sight of the likelihood that changes in the brain and in the mind and in the development of writing are best understood as Co-Creative and inseparable from one another, in the totality of what is real.
This is the unified circle of reality. Each world of reality, each realm or aspect of reality that we distinguish has extancy within the totality of all there is and is inextricably related to, bound up in, co-extant with each of the others. They are a material and mental and theoretical whole. They are interdependent and inseparable, they are one and many (perhaps three). There are no “events” or “happenings” or extancies in reality that don’t have co-occurences and co-creations in all of reality and all of its aspects.
As Lao Tzu poetically says, we can’t even talk about this unity, because human language destroys the very unity it seeks to represent or describe.
The modern world has overemphasized the analytic, categorical aspects of knowing, has overemphasized the development of Physical Science, considered as mater and energy, and taken it to be what is really real. This aspect of minding is good at breaking up things into parts, into separating, into logically (and mathematically) analyzing. It has a dependency on categories and either/or thinking. It is very useful in certain ways. But it is limited and out of balance. It ignores the apparent reality of unknowability, ambiguity, the non-binary, unity, interdependence, wholistic aspects of reality and the endeavor of studying and understanding the nature of reality. It also excludes that which is non-material (ideals, ideas, dreams, novels, laws, myths)as fundamental to a conception of reality .
It may be that the next essay will explore some of the relationships among language, thinking and reality and what they suggest about this project of conceptualizing the nature of reality. There is one hint as to part of the nature of this discussion in the question of whether the animal who doesn’t lay eggs should or would still be called a chicken or experienced as a chicken. In disguise, these questions point to the kind of consideration of language influenced by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Finally, let us note that we cannot know what is extant in the presumed natural world beyond our knowing. The object we call the Human brain may have dimensions which are beyond our knowing—in a sensory sense and in a conceptual sense. What we call the Human mind may have potentials and functions which we don’t experience and aren’t aware of. There may be forms of culture, categories of theory, that we have not imagined or discovered. We don’t know what our relationship to this presumed natural world might become in what we call the future.
Balance: Painting by Harris W Stern, Ph.D., 2004
Bibliography
Barbour, Julian. The End of Time: The next revolution in Physics. 1999, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Barnes, Robert E. A theory of Meaning: 7 psychosocial types, generated in the language of Object, Attitude, and Interest. Unpublished working drafts and personal communications 1965-2017.
Binswanger, Ludwig. Being-in-the-World: Selected papers of Ludwig Binswanger (Translated and with a Critical Introduction to his Existential Psychoanalysis by Jacob Needleman). 1963, Basic Books, Inc., New York.
Brian Beakley and Peter Ludlow (eds.). The Philosophy of Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues. (Second Edition) 2006, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Carroll, Sean The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe. 2016, Dutton, New York.
Catapano, Peter and Critchley (eds.) The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments. 2010, Liveright Publishing Corporation: A Division of W. W. Norton & Company New York.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. John Murray, London. 1859
Du Sautoy, Marcus. The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science. 2016, Viking Press, New York.
Glasersfeld, Ernst von (ed). Key Works in radical Constructivism (Edited by Marie Larochelle). 2007, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Glasersfeld, Ernst von. Radical Constructivism: A way of Knowing and Learning. 1995, RoutledgeFalmer New York.
Gregory, Bruce. Inventing Reality: Physics as Language. 1988, Wiley Science Editions, John Wiley and Sons Incorporated, New York.
Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. 2018,Pelican Books, Penguin, Random House, UK.
Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time (Updated and expanded edition). 1996, Bantam, Dell, New York. (Original Edition; 1988, Bantam Books, New York.)
Hawking, Stephen. The Universe in a Nutshell. 2001, Bantam Dell, New York.
Hawking, Stephen. The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe. (Special Anniversary Edition) 2006, Jaico Publishing House, Mumbai. (Based on the original hardcover edition; 2002, New Millennium Press.)
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson from the 1926 German Edition) 1962, Harper and Row Publishers, New York.
Hossenfelder, Sabine. Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. 2018, Basic Books, New York.
Kant, Emanual Critique of Pure Reason. (Translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn from the 1787 second edition) 1901, George Bell and Sons, London.
Kling, Sheri D. Whitehead’s Metaphysics as a Cosmological Framework for Transpersonal Psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist. June, 2019 Volume 47, Number 2 (pages 181-200). American Psychological Association, Washington D.C.
Krauss, Lawrence M. The greatest Story Ever Told--So Far: why are we here? 2017, Atria Books, New York.
Lao-Tzu. Tao Te Ching. (translated by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo). 2007, Shambhala, Boston and London.
Lao Tzu. Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown teachings of Lao-Tzu. (Translated by Brian Walker.) 1994, Harper Collins Publisher, New York.
Le Guin, Ursuala. Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way AND THE POWER OF THE WAY. A new English Version. 1997, Shambala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts.
May, Rollo; Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henry F. (eds). Existence: a new Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology. 1958, Basic Books, New York.
Mill, John Stuart Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 1829by James Mill, edited and with additonal notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)
Minkowski, Eugene. Lived Time: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies. (Translated by Nancy Metzel.) 1970, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois.
Mitchell, Stephen. tao te ching: A NEW ENGLISH VERSION. 1991, Harper Perennial, Harper Collins Publishers, New York. (1988, Hardcover Edition published by Harper & Row, New York.)
Piaget, Jean. The Origins of Intelligence in Children. 1952, International University Press, New York.
Piaget, Jean. The Child's Construction of Reality. 1955, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Rosen, Hugh and Kuehlwein, Kevin T. (eds). Constructing Realities: Meaning Making Perspectives for Psychotherapists. 1996, Josey-Bass Inc., San Francisco.
Rovelli, Carlo. Reality is not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. (Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, 2016; from the Original published 2014 by Rafaela Cortina, Milan) 2017, Riverhead Books, Penguin Random House, New York.
Sapir, Edward. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir: in Language, Culture and Personality. (1963 Edition, Edited by David G Mandelbaum). 1949, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles California.
Stern, Harris W. Principles of Wholistic Existential Psychology. 2008, website: HarrisStern.com.
Stern, Harris W. Anxiety from Wholistic Existential Psychology point of view. 2009, Kindle Books Amazon.
Stern, Harris W. If you don’t MIND, I Will. 2010, Kindle Books Amazon.
Stern, Harris W. Ideals. 2015, Newsletter archived on Constant Contact, accessible though HarrisStern.com
Stern, Harris W. Existential Challenges. 2015, Newsletter archived on Constant Contact, accessible though HarrisStern.com
Stern, Harris W. ON THE NATURE OF REALITY: A Theory of Everything There Is. Conceiving Reality: Wholistic Existential Anthropology. Medium.com, June 2019
Stern, Harris W. Is There a Natural World Independent of Human Knowing about it? Essay Two: Wholistic Existential Anthropology: A Theory of Everything Medium.com August 2019
Stern, Harris W. In Support of a Triadic Conception of Reality Essay Three: Wholistic Existential Anthropology: A Theory of Everything. Medium.Com, December, 2020
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf. (Edited by John B Carroll). 1956, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and John Wiley, New York.
