A Personal Metaphysics and Cosmology (Draft)

I. Onto-epistemological Cycles and a Definition of Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a term that is not well defined in usage or scholarship. This being an exposition of a personal metaphysics, with the understanding that universal conclusions in this domain are not possible, I adopt also a personal definition of metaphysics. With only general allusion to such discourse as has been generally set forth, I allow that metaphysics consists of the study of the personal divine, the universal divine, and the relations between the two.

I claim that there can be no universal conclusions with regard to that domain, and it is in this sense that everything here set forth belongs to the personal – theories, definitions, and conclusions that relate only to my personal individuality, perception, and deduction. No universal conclusions are possible because of the circularity of onto-epistemological cycles. That is to say, what we determine is real (in the sense of being a universal conclusion (our ontology), is limited by those means of producing knowledge about the world that we accept (our epistemology). But similarly, our epistemology is limited by our ontology. Thus, ontology and epistemology support each other in a self-affirming cycle. Each person acquires, perhaps through a combination of cultural transmission, reflection, and personal evolution, a particular onto-epistemological cycle. Groups of individuals find greater or lesser coherence among their distinct onto-epistemological cycles, and form associations (religions, ideologies, schools of scientific thought) that then reinforce the core cycles of individuals, as well as developing into a group cycle.

But none of these onto-epistemological cycles, individual or group, can establish universality over contrasting cycles. Since contrasting cycles have incompatible epistemologies, the conflicting ontological claims of incompatible cycle groups cannot be established through the production of knowledge. Since contrasting cycles have incompatible ontologies, competing epistemological methods cannot be resolved on the basis of their differing conclusions about the world.

Human inquiry is thus left in an overall condition of metacognitive dissonance, wherein groups and individuals make starkly contrasting claims about the world that are proven to the satisfaction of the onto-epistemological cycle in which they exist, but outside that cycle can gain no traction. This condition seems loosely to be a consequence of Godel's Theorems of Incompleteness and Undecidability, as set forth in his On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Other Systems (1931) in which he concludes, among other things, that no formal system of logic that is at least as complex as elementary number theory can prove its own consistency. Formal systems, whether algebraic, geometric, or philosophical, consist of a set of axioms and a set of rules of inference. Theorems are provable if they can be produced by a series of applications of rules of inference to a subset of the axioms. But both the axioms and the rules of inference are essentially arbitrary, and conform to the expectations of their creator rather than any universality external to the system. As an example, Euclid considered the proposition that only one line can be drawn through a given point, parallel to a given line, to be necessitated by the conception of “straightness.” All of Euclidean geometry is built on that assumption. But when that axiom was discarded, an entirely new geometry was discovered that was essential to the understanding of general relativity. Like all axioms, the fifth postulate was arbitrary and limiting. In logical systems, the axioms behave like an ontology, the rules of inference like an epistemology, that encloses the system within an onto-epistemological cycle. What is inside the cycle is valid within the system, and what is outside it is invalid within the system, but not in any universal sense.

Thus, even in the most rigorous of rational systems, claims can only be made with respect to a given onto-epistemological cycle, and no universal claim is possible. For this reason, I conclude within my own onto-epistemological cycle that no universal conclusions are possible regarding anything, and in particular, none are possible within the contentious, evidence-poor, and ill-defined domain of metaphysics.

But this does not mean that all reason and discourse are futile. Quite the contrary. It is through reason and discourse that we construct a consistent and definable paradigm. Such a paradigm functions like the personality's ego: It is self-centered and resists integration into the universal, but it is essential to coherent existence. If we utterly abolish ego, we cease to exist as an individual, and if we utterly abolish reasoning and discourse as subject only to limiting cycles of the individual, or at best, a large group of individuals, then our sense of the world likewise disintegrates into incoherence. Such discourse and reasoning must, then, be seen as constructive and beneficial, but also must be seen as limited by its own self-reference. Of course, this exposition itself falls in that domain, and both the nature of onto-epistemological cycles and the conclusions that belong to my own particular cycles should be seen in that light.

Under such lengthy disclaimer, I consider that there is a personal divine, a universal divine, and a relationship between the two. I take this to form not the universal definition of metaphysics, nor even the personal definition that I adopt, but a personal definition – meaning one among many possibilities – that I am adopting at present. Likewise, the metaphysics and cosmology here described are not claimed as the universal metaphysics and cosmology, nor even the personal metaphysics and cosmology that I have adopted, but a personal metaphysics and cosmology that I adopt under these conditions for now.

II. The Emergence of the Personal Divine

I take the whole of the modern scientific method to represent valid epistemology inasmuch as it recognizes its own limitations to what is observable and measurable. The scientific method makes no claim to knowledge outside its own domain, but that domain is very limited, so if we are to make any metaphysical claims, they must lie outside of the scientific method. I require any such claims to be compatible with the scientific method, since science is the refined application of observation, and if what we conclude is contrary to observation, then I feel there would be little to which to anchor our conceptions. Metaphysical claims must pass beyond the observations that cannot reach their domain, but must be nevertheless grounded in those observations.

Scientific methods are not nearly as restricted and linear as many seem to believe – and that is the failing of an educational system that has a vested interest in presenting a reductionist view of the world. Quantum mechanics, chaos theory, emergent complexity, swarm intelligence, and a modern understanding of evolution are far from reductionistic, and allow for the emergence of very rich and surprising interactions among the elements and agents of the universe.

Emergent complexity is the reverse process of entropy. Ilya Prigogine did work in what he called dissipative systems, which are characterized by a gross net increase in entropy that allows, and even encourages, local decreases in entropy that manifest in the form of self-organizing systems. The Earth is such a system, because every hour it takes in tremendous amounts of highly organized energy in the form of sunlight, and dissipates it in the form of radiant heat. In this vast flow of entropy, it is possible, perhaps even likely, for eddies in the flow of entropy to develop, and here systems tend to become more, rather than less organized. This is one of the new understandings that has impacted the science of evolution: that the evolutionary progression of systems from less to more organized is a natural consequence of the earth as a dissipative system. In fact, we expect systems to become increasingly complex until the sun stops shining about five billion years from now.

Swarm intelligence, or distributed intelligence has been the subject of much study at the Santa Fe Institute, among other researchers and groups. Distributed intelligence is often studied in relation to bee hives or ant colonies, in which the hive or colony solves complex problems (such as construction of an arch or finding the shortest path among pollen sources) that none of the individual organisms can solve on their own. The hive or colony behaves like a brain whose individual neurons have legs and can go walking around on their own, but are nevertheless just cells in a larger brain.

Distributed intelligence is a form of emergent complexity, a form of organization wherein a collective system behaves in ways that are qualitatively different from the subsystems that compose them. Early work in emergent complexity was done by Murray Gell-Mann (also at Santa Fe Institute) on the emergence of magnetic polarities in heated ferromagnetic materials, but was quickly recognized to have much more general applications. Stuart Kauffman (guess what? Also SFI!) applied Gell-Mann's ideas of emergent complexity to biological evolution, and showed that living systems “adapt to the boundary between order and chaos.”

Consciousness is also a form of emergent complexity (applications of complexity and chaos theory to consciousness study are a specialty of Allan Combs of the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Graduate Institute). None of the individual cells of the brain/body system appear to have the property of consciousness, but in the system as a whole, consciousness arises. There are simpler biological parallels, one of the most basic of which is cardiac muscle fibers. A small number of living heart cells in a petri dish will contract in unrelated rhythms, but when a certain critical number of cells is reached, they all began to pulse in synchrony. Synchronization is not a property of any one or even any small group of cells, but emerges spontaneously when a large enough group of cells are brought together. There are also non-biological examples of emergent properties. Temperature, for example, is not a property of any individual molecule in a substance. But when the motions of the molecules are taken collectively, temperature emerges as a simple and measurable property that behaves according to the laws of thermodynamics, which are quite different from the laws of mechanics obeyed by the individual molecules.

If consciousness emerges as a collective property of the cells of the body, this can be taken as the personal divine. It is divine in that it is unpredictable, miraculous, and far beyond the simple association of systems that make it up. It is personal in that it pertains to a particular body, constructed as distinct from its surrounding environment.

III. The Emergence of the Universal Divine

But that distinction is somewhat arbitrary. Recent studies in human bacterial colonies have revealed the astounding observation that the average human body contains about nine times as many nonhuman bacterial cells as it does human cells. That is, every “human body” is composed of only ten percent human cells. Indeed, the conception of a human being as an individual is quite misleading. In point of fact, a human being is a walking ecosystem. From what part of this ecosystem does consciousness emerge? Or does it depend on all of it?

Furthermore, beyond the individual, organisms are subsystems within biomes and ecosystems. If the theory of swarm intelligence is correct, it is quite reasonable to suppose that a super-consciousness emerges within biomes and ecosystems of which the individual organisms may be only dimly aware. It is possible, and I take it to be so, that the individual organisms would be no more conscious of the superconsciousness in which they participate than are the cells of our brains aware that they are part of a human being who is reading or writing about metaphysics. Biologist Sally Goerner takes this notion to an extreme, but I believe correct, point at which intelligence is generally distributed throughout the universe. That is, after ecosystems, planetary systems, galaxies, and galactic clusters may contribute to an emergent superconsciousness. This is what I take to be the universal divine.

IV. The Role of Evolution

Fundamental to all consciousness and living systems is evolution, the process whose simplest elements are reproduction, mutation and selection, but whose emergent properties are vastly more complex than those three simple elements, in the same way that the complexity of the world around us far surpasses the simplicity of its composition of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Evolutionary process is very general and does not apply only to biological systems. Technology and computer codes develop under the same three forces, and I consider the evolution of story into myth to follow similar lines. Investigations along these lines have been conducted by the Generalized Evolution Research Group (GERG) which included Allan Combs and Sally Goerner, but is not currently an active organization.

Another level of the complexity of evolution as a process is its self-reference. Self-reference is a fundamental property not only of consciousness, but also of very interesting logical systems, including Godel's aforementioned theorems (See the tremendously interesting Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter, 1979) . Self-reference is intrinsic to evolution, because every organism carries within it an image (in the form of DNA coding) of itself. Moreover, it is not only the agents of reproduction that evolve under an evolutionary process but the evolutionary process itself – that is, evolution evolves. Moreover, the process by which evolutionary process evolves itself evolves, and so on ad infinitum. The evolutionary process is thus highly generalized and self-referential at infinitely many levels. It is thus fertile ground for emergent properties, including the properties of consciousness and intelligence.

This is what I feel is most missing from the popular reductionist view of biological evolution. There is nothing haphazard about evolution, and randomness plays very little role. In terms of what can be demonstrated rationally within observation and deduction, the limits of this are outlined in Stuart Kaufmann's extraordinary The Orgins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993). His conclusions suggest a startling level of deliberate strategy in the process of mutation. But my own metaphysical conception of evolution goes beyond that. I unite Goerner's notion of universally distributed intelligence with a conception of evolution as a highly complex self-referential process with emergent properties to conclude that evolution is an intelligent process. In fact, it is the most intelligent process, since our own intelligence is a mere by product of it.

Thus is laid out my conception of the universal divine: It is the distributed intelligence of the universe itself, consciously involved in the process of creation through evolution, which is the essence of its own being. Should I call it God? Why not? This conception neatly resolves the contention between intelligent design and evolution, by claiming that evolution is none other than a process of intelligent design. My conception is differentiated from creationism in that as I see it, the creator is not distinct from the created – we are one and the same – and that the act of creation is not a singular act that is concluded in the past, but is an ongoing act of which we are even now a part of the unfolding.

V. Toward a Metaphysical System and Inquiry

Thus I see the personal divine as our own consciousness, complex, shining, miraculous, and luminous, an emergent property of the body as a moving ecosystem, and the universal divine as that continuously creative, inconceivably luminous process of the unfolding of the universe in time. Our relationship is one of inclusion and participation. We are a product of that universal consciousness in the same way that ants are included within the colony, but the universal consciousness is also a product of the individual consciousness in the same way that the colony only exists because of the ants that comprise it. The part contains the whole, and the whole contains the part.

I find many spiritual doctrines to be useful guides in interpreting knowledge, being, and right action in the world, and these also form a part of the relationship between the universal divine and the personal divine. There are the Great Teachers, including Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Mohammed, and the unknown thirty-six Tzadikim believed to exist on earth at any given time, anonymously holding the greatest and purest wisdom for all mankind, among many others. Since each of us is the co-emergent center of the universal divine intelligence, each of us can serve as a conduit for that consciousness – only to the extent that our personal divinity (ego) does not interfere with the transmission. But since without ego the human personality ceases to exist, there is always interference, and the teachings are always corrupted. Thus the Upanishads teach that all dharmas are pierced by adharma.

So it is with all sacred scripture. There is not one sacred scripture I have read that does not contain both a pure and perfect wisdom, and also a corruption – both a dharma and an adharma. And how are we to tell which is which? Only by means of our personal divine consciousness, which is connected to the universal consciousness, but only through the distortions of ego. So what are we left with? Only our own onto-epistemological cycles. But as we reflect and interact, these evolve and grow as does any evolutionary system, and through the divine intelligence of that evolutionary process, we can hope to approach a glimpse of pure reality.

There is also guidance in the collection of cultural wisdoms offered by humanity. Thus, I find much of value in indigenous systems of thought, including what is usually called European Paganism, the pre-Christian indigenous wisdom of Old Europe. I find paganism and indigenous thinking particularly compelling because these systems combine the two seemingly contradictory notions of the objective observation and systematization of nature (on which indigenous survival depended, and which forms the backbone of modern science) and of a living, spirit-animated world of diverse conscious elements, not all of which are easily accessible. It should be clear how those notions co-exist comfortably in my personal onto-epistemological cycle, and form the basis of it.

I likewise seek understanding of right action in ancient teachings, in observation of nature, and from within my own divine soul. I believe with the Buddhists that compassion is the basis of all ethics, with Jesus that the greatest imperative is to love those who hate and harm you as well as those who love and help you, and with the Taoists that the natural state is closest to the divine. It is nothing other than my own divine soul that tells me that these are the parts of these teachings that resonate for me. I don't agree with everything that the Buddhists say, or the Christians, or the Taoists.

I also agree with the Buddhists and many others that it is desirable to follow the path of nonjudgment. But to say that nonjudgment is “desirable” is already a paradox, so can there be a teaching, or not? The ultimate difficulty and ultimate simplicity of the path of nonjudgment are well expressed by the Zen Koans of the Blue Cliff Record and the unteachings of the Heart Sutra, so I am drawn to them as points of departure for reflection and meditation.

I find that conscious reflection and meditation are deeply enhanced by relationships that are based on conscious witnessing and mutual trust within a container of safety. I am blessed in my life with many such relationships, one of which is so honest and life-affirming, as well as passionate and mystical, that it is itself like a portal to the universal divine. May everyone be blessed with such a relationship, and if not, at least with someone with whom they can dialog in trust. It is in dialog that our personal divine selves can meet, bear witness, and perhaps glimpse a view outside the limitations of our own cycles of perception.