Heidegger

PART TWO - THE HOLARCHIC COSMOS
Metaphors are not usually ratiocinative or based upon exact thinking, but they can conjure up an image that challenges what is traditionally accepted in the realms of philosophy, ontology and mereology. The breathtaking Buddhist vision of ‘Indra’s Web’ below is such a metaphor. The source was [1] (Capra 1982) though the following form of words are mine: ‘The Heaven of Indra’ or ‘Indra’s Net’ of Mahayana Buddhism evinced by the Indian mahatmas some 2,500 years before the development of quantum theory suggests that every object in the cosmos IS IN FACT everything else. There is said to be an omnidirectional network or reticulation of silken filaments, which billow across the empyrean to infinity. The vertices of the web are embedded with catenulate luminous pearls of exquisite beauty, so arranged that if looked upon every one be reflected in every other.’ The elegant citation above does not bespeak of determinism, but many such tropes and metaphors are lavishly elegant and refined and have a recherché beauty and vital usefulness as forms of communication.
Although eliminative determinism could not be further away from any suggestion of mysticism, the Buddhist paean is intriguingly redolent of the holarchic principle of the cosmos to which we turn to next - a precept upon which eliminative determinism is grounded.
THE MATERIOCRACY. Cosmologically the postulates of eliminative determinism are of a unification theory that identifies the ordering structures of the physical holarchy (the integrum - the whole - the entirety) as existing in a permanent tensional balance between the interplay of opposing elements or tendencies, which are both dissipative and unificational. The materiocracy is an overcoming of its own constituent elements which it unifies and preserves as - Itself. The moderator of this physical interplay is the very material itself – the material imperium. The substances of the materioarchy are conceived of as existing in an autopoietic, symbiotic system of equality and similarity of material distribution, suggesting that the nature of the micro materials which characterise the stars is similar to that of any pebble on the seashores of our world. The theory of eliminative determinism is itself founded upon a view of the cosmos as a deterministic conglomerate of holonistic sub and super-systematised material. Etymologically the term ‘holon’ comes from the Greek ‘holos,’ which means: ‘whole, entire, complete in all its parts,’ together with the suffix - on, which indicates its neuter form, cf. proton, neutron and electron. The neologism was coined by Arthur Koestler (1967) the prolific Hungarian author in his book: ‘Ghost in the Machine’ and has since been accepted as part of the glossary of many sciences - particularly systems theory. A ‘holon’ can be conceived of as a constituent or sub-system of a larger structure which exists in a paradoxical state of tension between that of subduing or superseding, but simultaneously maintaining and preserving. It also has a meronymical relationship of oneness with the cosmos at the same time, aptly defined by a central term of Hegel, the German word “aufheben”, which is usually translated as “sublation” into English. Froeb (2006.) Metaphorically the holon is ‘Janus-faced,’ gazing not so much backward into the past and forward into the future, for neither past nor future exist for the eliminativist - but downwards into the micro-holarchic, sub-systemic world within, and outwards towards the super-holon of the starry meta-systemic heavens of the visible universe at the same time. Sub-holons exist as determinata or contiguities of dissipative complexities which the materiocracy imperiously combines into sub-unities. Every entity in the cosmos is considered to exist as a perdurant object - meaning every object exists in a modality of systematised physical persistence to remain extant in its currently functional existential state, yielding and generating change only as a damage-limitation strategy when necessary.
Hierarchical transformation results in the composition of new holon-systems, and new entities which are stable at a higher or lower stratum. There is ceaseless holarchic colonisation, amalgamation, absorption, rejection, ret rogression and fragmentation, where holonic subsystems come under the influence of new systems. The super-system is constrained by its parts, and the parts are at the same time restricted by the whole. It is vital to remember of course that the ‘systems’ do not actually exist in themselves – the notion is a human abstraction – it is the systemised material objects that actually exist. Hamstrung by the language of folk ontology – the eliminativist has no alternative but to issue regular ‘ personification warnings’ and ‘abstraction-alerts!’ Holarchic conatus (persistence) is preserved in equilibrium by a series of deterministic readjustments finely tuned by the physical dictates of the materioarchy. Sub-systemic persistence is imperatively constrained by the ‘ ground rules’ of the holarchy. A relaxation of hierarchical ascendancy in a super-system brings about a corresponding lack of cohesion and an increase in automony in nested subsystems. Thus is the eliminative deterministic vision one of a holarchic cosmos with disparate systemic levels. Each of the multitudinous, independent but interrelated elements, (a carbon atom, a pebble on a beach of planet Earth, or the Pleiadian holonistic star-cluster in the constellation of Taurus comprise a contemporaneously superstructural and sub-systemic unified whole.
Holarchic conatus (persistence) is preserved in equilibrium by a series of deterministic readjustments finely tuned by the physical dictates of the materioarchy. Sub-systemic persistence is imperatively constrained by the ‘ground rules’ of the holarchy. A relaxation of hierarchical ascendancy in a super-system brings about a corresponding lack of cohesion and a haemorrhaging of holonistic materia from one level to another and an increase in automony in more established nested subsystems. Thus is the eliminative deterministic vision one of a holarchic cosmos with disparate systemic levels. Each of the multitudinous independent but interrelated elements, (a carbon atom, a pebble on a beach of planet Earth, or the Pleiadian autonomy star-cluster in the constellation of Taurus,) comprise a contemporaneously superstructural and sub-systemic unified whole.
Holons coalesce into greater holarchic conglomerates in the manner of the formation of the stars and planets, or fracture into smaller sub-systemic objects in the case of a super-nova or a broken window glass. Humans and other biological objects begin as eggs or sub-systemic seeds, and in the course of life transform into super-systems – only to dissolve into micro-systemic holons when the system fails. The proposition is offered that each object in the holistic cosmos is not merely a discrete, effectuated entity, but a reciprocative, autonomous, sub-systemic component of the universal environmental meronymy. Any change must be seen as the result of all antecedent changes in the universe. Most people in their daily lives are concerned only with a single change [or a few concatenational links backwards in the causal chain] and its immediate or proximal causes. The focus here however is not on the deterministic mechanisms and concerns of everyday life, but rather are concentrated on the deterministic universe itself. To simply deny the of the abstraction ’cause’ cuts the ontological Gordian knot in one blow and sets in train a refreshing form of lateral thinking. Whi lst it is true that in this world of philosophical and scientific complexity no utterance is completely free from the influences of antecedal determinants, the label of inter-theorecticality does not sit comfortably with eliminative determinism. The view offered is constitutively anti-theoretical and non-reductionist in that taken as a whole the theory is not evincing the outcomes of one field of knowledge in the language of another.

Posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 2:00 pm
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