Here is a basic statement:
Of course, the key word in that first sentence is "knows". Mass, charge, space and time are ideas, the products of consciousness. Bhaskar tries to simplify this: there are "intransitive" mechanisms. But it doesn't get rid of the "knows" problem. And it gets more complicated because consciousness, which gives us all these ideas, itself appears to be emergent from the matter of physiology and brains.
Once we have got past the problem of "knows", we then have to think about "is composed of". "Is composed of" is a way of thinking about origins: where a story begins. What is it in our consciousness which leads us towards defining a beginning of a story? What is it in the structure of a story which determines an origin?
Marx's story of dialectical materialism grew from 19th century science, when evolutionary stories were much in vogue: first there was x, then there was y, then there was us... But there's no evidence for "first there was..." In fact, there is no evidence for evolution: evolutionary processes cannot be observed - Darwinism is abduction in the same way as creationism.
In Marxism, the relation between material conditions and consciousness is a tension between natural rights, equity and abundance against exploitation and power. Marxism draws its power from a fundamental emphasis on material origins.
But if we say that consciousness begins with physics, we are committing an epistemological error (thanks to Lou Kauffman for reinforcing this to me the other day!). Yet the lure of materialist origins is itself a phenomenon which cannot be discounted. There is something like "truth" in it.
Modern quantum mechanics is telling us something different about the nature of the physical world and historical emergence. In place of a mechanistic, sequential set of knock-on effects, its grappling with non-locality, superposition, uncertainty etc is suggesting that broken symmetries at different orders of reality create patterns in nature. David Bohm's idea of a "hologram" is, I think, the most powerful idea here: that the patterns of symmetry breaking at the smallest unit of nature are reproduced at higher orders. John Torday is suggesting that the symmetry breaking of consciousness itself is tied to symmetry breaking at the material level - particularly to that contained in our cells. Karl Pribram also held to a holographic view of consciousness, also influenced by Bohm.
There is a musical analogue here. Music appears to be composed of redundancies which articulate broken symmetries related to music's originating material. The different aspects of music's holographic structure become aligned and unaligned at various moments. This raises a question: when we think of material origins, are we really setting our consciousness on a path to find alignment between the broken symmetries of thought and the broken symmetries of biology and physics in its historical emergence?
SO... Materialism is holographic alignment between thought and physiology?
That's an interesting idea. So where does that leave exploitation or dialectics? They are accidental misalignments of the hologram: surface broken symmetries which are detached from deep resonances. Capitalism is noise.
What do we do with noise? Redundancy is what is required. The pattern is already written - it just needs amplifying.
Matter, as far as anyone knows in physics, is composed of basic things like mass, charge, space and time.
Of course, the key word in that first sentence is "knows". Mass, charge, space and time are ideas, the products of consciousness. Bhaskar tries to simplify this: there are "intransitive" mechanisms. But it doesn't get rid of the "knows" problem. And it gets more complicated because consciousness, which gives us all these ideas, itself appears to be emergent from the matter of physiology and brains.
Once we have got past the problem of "knows", we then have to think about "is composed of". "Is composed of" is a way of thinking about origins: where a story begins. What is it in our consciousness which leads us towards defining a beginning of a story? What is it in the structure of a story which determines an origin?
Marx's story of dialectical materialism grew from 19th century science, when evolutionary stories were much in vogue: first there was x, then there was y, then there was us... But there's no evidence for "first there was..." In fact, there is no evidence for evolution: evolutionary processes cannot be observed - Darwinism is abduction in the same way as creationism.
In Marxism, the relation between material conditions and consciousness is a tension between natural rights, equity and abundance against exploitation and power. Marxism draws its power from a fundamental emphasis on material origins.
But if we say that consciousness begins with physics, we are committing an epistemological error (thanks to Lou Kauffman for reinforcing this to me the other day!). Yet the lure of materialist origins is itself a phenomenon which cannot be discounted. There is something like "truth" in it.
Modern quantum mechanics is telling us something different about the nature of the physical world and historical emergence. In place of a mechanistic, sequential set of knock-on effects, its grappling with non-locality, superposition, uncertainty etc is suggesting that broken symmetries at different orders of reality create patterns in nature. David Bohm's idea of a "hologram" is, I think, the most powerful idea here: that the patterns of symmetry breaking at the smallest unit of nature are reproduced at higher orders. John Torday is suggesting that the symmetry breaking of consciousness itself is tied to symmetry breaking at the material level - particularly to that contained in our cells. Karl Pribram also held to a holographic view of consciousness, also influenced by Bohm.
There is a musical analogue here. Music appears to be composed of redundancies which articulate broken symmetries related to music's originating material. The different aspects of music's holographic structure become aligned and unaligned at various moments. This raises a question: when we think of material origins, are we really setting our consciousness on a path to find alignment between the broken symmetries of thought and the broken symmetries of biology and physics in its historical emergence?
SO... Materialism is holographic alignment between thought and physiology?
That's an interesting idea. So where does that leave exploitation or dialectics? They are accidental misalignments of the hologram: surface broken symmetries which are detached from deep resonances. Capitalism is noise.
What do we do with noise? Redundancy is what is required. The pattern is already written - it just needs amplifying.
No comments:
Post a Comment