....continuation of first comment below which was truncated when it was edited... unexpected glitch, I think...
...one must turn to the phenomenological philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas--but, while deeply important, that is far too large a tangent--although fundamentally important. This is covered some of those who are writing about 'semio-ethics'. Raghuveer & Endres criticize 'Bayesian Mechanics' and the FEP on the basis of what is implied in terms of metaphysics if it were to be true and accepted. What is implied, as is the case with most of the models that are brought forward by modern neuroscientists who see the 'hard problem' as eventually solvable, is a SUBSTANCE METAPHYSICS, which is basically anathema to anyone who believes that process is primary. Why? Because, as Raghuveer and Endres state:
'the theory... (ie. substance metaphysics offers) ...no resource to model novelty, growth, and development observed in human psychology.' And I would hasten to add--not only novelty, growth, and development in 'human psychology', but as features that are deep, foundational aspects of Nature. And then the authors go on to offer an alternative based on process metaphysics. Which is similar, I would argue, to the kind of evolutionary process metaphysics that Charles Sanders Peirce offered in a series of papers in 'The Monist' in the last decade of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. Which raises the question: what is it going to take to get beyond the mechanistic formalism and its associated ontological implications--like the implications that result when one adopts a metaphysics based on 'stuff' rather than 'process'? I would humbly suggest a thorough reading and study of these two papers, both of which quote the fundamentally significant work of relational biologist, Robert Rosen, and some of the more recent extensions of this work that realize the true autopoietic nature of living organisms, as open systems that are closed to efficient causation. And which are necessarily self-referential and manifest the capacity to anticipate and act autonomously with purpose related to the biologically granted capacity to persist in their physical embodiment in the context of their species-specific ecological conditions, not as passive creatures, but as intentional agents who may even have the capacity to modify their ecological niche to some degree...https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/evan.21534 ....which is something that our species has taken to the point where it all appears to be backfiring on us.
Just a brief addition... yes, purposeful niche construction and the process of learning how to do it demonstrates how the learning of individual members of a species can influence the direction of evolution... and this adds to the argument that any model that does not adequately account for learning, growth, development, and adaptive agency of living organisms, doesn't really tell the full story... does it?
One of the problems is the assumption of computability as a foundation for the operation of living organisms. It does not and cannot work, as was shown some time ago by relational biologist, Robert Rosen. Mechanisms compute; Organisms exceed computation. Mechanisms are strictly deterministic in their obedience to the 'ontology of states'--ie. the fact that they admit to the mechanistic formalism means that their operation can be very neatly partitioned into 'states'
and the 'laws' that control them. It really is SO nice! And enticing. But it is entirely inadequate as a model for a living creature. Fundamentally. Rosen calls the assumption of computability the 'Church-Pythagoras Theorem' in an essay in his book, 'Essays on Life Itself' (it is chapter 4 in the book), blatantly and misleadingly false. Living organisms are not reducible to mechanisms... they are context-dependent creatures that adapt through a process of agency and cognition, which are, as Jaeger et al maintain, 'fundamentally not computational'. What quantum physics is telling us is that the mechanistic formalism needs to be transcended--it does not work as a model for 'complex' living organisms. Mechanisms, as Rosen shows, in conforming to the mechanistic formalism, have limited entailment capacity, and are 'simple' relational systems. Period. Adaptive agency cannot be accommodated by the mechanistic formalism. It can only be weakly approximated. One wishes that more people would read the work of Robert Rosen--relational biologist extraordinaire! The other important piece are the metaphysical implications and the ethical and moral inferences and fall-out, for which one must turn to the phenomenological philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas--but, while deeply important, that is far too large a tangent--although fundamentally important. This is covered some of those who are writing about 'semio-ethics'. Raghuveer & Endres criticize 'Bayesian Mechanics' and the FEP on the basis of what is implied in terms of metaphysics if it were to be true and accepted. What is implied, as is the case with most of the models that are brought forward by modern neuroscientists who see the 'hard problem' as eventually solvable, is a SUBSTANCE METAPHYSICS, which is basically anathema to anyone who believes that process is primary. Why? Because, as Raghuveer and Endres state:
'the theory... (ie. substance metaphysics offers) ...no resource to model novelty, growth, and development observed in human psychology.' And I would hasten to add--not only novelty, growth, and development in 'human psychology', but as features that are deep, foundational aspects of Nature. And then the authors go on to offer an alternative based on process metaphysics. Which is similar, I would argue, to the kind of evolutionary process metaphysics that Charles Sanders Peirce offered in a series of papers in 'The Monist' in the last decade of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. Which raises the question: what is it going to take to get beyond the mechanistic formalism and its associated ontological implications--like the implications that result when one adopts a metaphysics based on 'stuff' rather than 'process'? I would humbly suggest a thorough reading and study of these two papers, both of which quote the fundamentally significant work of relational biologist, Robert Rosen, and some of the more recent extensions of this work that realize the true autopoietic nature of living organisms, as open systems that are closed to efficient causation. And which are necessarily self-referential and manifest the capacity to anticipate and act autonomously with purpose related to the biologically granted capacity to persist in their physical embodiment in the context of their species-specific ecological conditions, not as passive creatures, but as intentional agents who may even have the capacity to modify their ecological niche to some degree...https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/evan.21534 ....which is something that our species has taken to the point where it all appears to be backfiring on us.
Thank you, Matt. I totally agree. That is a really brilliant paper in my opinion and I see that you have done some dialoguing with it--which I will definitely check out. I am interested in following up on what they mean by the 'trialectic' co-constructive dynamic. The key issue is 'Thirdness' in the 'new list of categories' of CS Peirce. What is that? It is the necessary process of mediation. In Peirce's Evolutionary Process Metaphysics, that mediating element is what he called 'Evolutionary Love'--which is a concept that is explained in some detail in a little book by Adam Crabtree. The fundamental issue, in my mind, is the recognition that organisms are categorically distinct from machines and do not admit to the mechanistic formalism. In fact, as living beings living in the context of relational time that mediates their 'transactions' with other subjects, living beings cannot possibly be mechanisms and cannot admit to a Substance Metaphysics. Why? Because they contain closed causal loops that operate on a temporal continuum. Besides the fact that they are closed to efficient causation--which mechanisms are NOT!--living organisms have a semantic description that exceeds their syntactic description, as Rosen shows. Which means that living organisms operate in the domain of context-dependence and you cannot predict their functionality in any complete way from a knowledge of their structure, the way you can with a mechanism--which, in admitting to the mechanistic formalism, is strictly deterministic. If you know the structure of a mechanism, you can predict exactly how it is going to behave. It is operating in an idealized context-independent realm. It is like the difference between a computer language which functions without any ambiguity--it cannot because if it did, then the compiler would not know what to do! Versus a natural language which operates in the realm of context-dependence. Tim Eastman addresses some of this in his Logoi framework. Mechanisms operate 'by the numbers' in Tim's 'first realm' of context-independence. Organisms do not and cannot. If they did, they would never manage to survive. They are fundamentally context-dependent living creatures. That is Tim's 'second realm' of context-dependence. And then there is the 'third realm' of context-transcendence. Which is a realm in which time-dependent systems cannot exist. Though it is quite possible that we may gain some intermittent access to it in the context of what has been called 'unexplained experiences'. We are finite creatures who have had the infinite 'implanted within us.' See: Ecclesiastes 3:11 Which is really quite extraordinary. There is a transcendent relational reality that we cannot fully inhabit. However, we may be able to gain some insight into how it operates by way of quantum science and the workings of the 'quantum substratum', which is the realm of possibility, of Heisenberg's 'potentiae'. And, I do think, that this may well be consistent with the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics, which is what Ruth Kastner has been exploring. That is, that everything operates out of a hidden relational realm of possibility, which would also correspond with what David Bohm called the 'Implicate Order'. And 'trans-action' requires three elements, as is evident in Ruth's work: 1. An 'emitter' that has something to 'give', to 'confer', 2. An 'absorber' which has the possibility of receiving what the 'emitter' is offering up. and 3. A 'MEDIUM' through which messages (ie. 'waves') can be transmitted between potential 'emitter' and potential 'absorber', an 'Offer Wave' from the potential emitter, and a 'Confirmation Wave' from the potential absorber--which John G Cramer likened to a hidden 'handshake' which determines how things will actualize out of the hidden relational realm of the quantum substratum and into the manifest realm of the physical world. And McLuhan knew what he was talking about when he generated the aphorism:
'The Medium is the Message' Without a medium, without permeable boundaries through which the medium penetrates, there can be no trans-action, no exchange. And we have what Leibniz called a world of 'windowless monads'... a 'silent' mechanistic world devoid of transaction.
The implications of this realization are massive, and they relate to understanding the importance of what Bergson referred to as the 'open source' of morality and religion ( actually what John Vervaeke called 'Religio' that I take to be the process of binding together ). And the ideas resonate deeply, in my opinion, with the phenomenological approach to ethics and morality of Emmanuel Lévinas, recognizing the priority of the diachronic over the synchronic, the relational over the material, the infinite realm of organismic possibility over the finite realm of mechanical totalization. Which is what Lévinas, in effect, tackles in his first major book, 'Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority.'
This is also why we are in the process of bringing to fruition an issue of Pari Perspectives that I mentioned in another post here on the general theme of 'Life Beyond Mechanism. Undoing the Legacy of the Machine Metaphor' Arran Gare and Judith Rosen have agreed to contribute and I am hoping there will be others. In order to advance beyond our current mechanistically oriented 'perspectival' Mental/Rational Structure of Consciousness, and arrive at a new 'mutation' in the structure of consciousness that opens up into the 'aperspectival' Integral structure, we are going to need to realize that what quantum physics is telling us is that ALL natural relational systems are 'organismic', and that biology and the comprehension of the life of organisms is the real foundational science of existence, not physics. Because what is truly originary is the relationality of mind, not physicality of substance.
Matt and Tim begin by reaffirming their mutual excitement about Whitehead’s Symbolism and the broader aim of relating Whitehead’s metaphysical framework to the Free Energy Principle. They see potential resonances in Whitehead’s emphasis on process, novelty, and the organism–environment relationship, and the FEP’s modeling of adaptive systems via “Markov blankets” and predictive processing.
Philosophical vs. Empirical Concerns
They clarify that Whitehead’s philosophy provides a metaphysical grounding (especially regarding perception, causal efficacy, and novelty), while the FEP is a formalism often invoked to explain cognition, homeostasis, and action in biological and cognitive systems. They want to see where these two approaches converge and where they might conflict.
2. Whitehead’s Approach to Novelty and Eternal Objects
Emergence of Laws vs. Predefined Possibility Space
Early in the conversation, they return to a key question from their previous discussion: how does Whitehead explain the emergence of new “generals” (laws, habits, or patterns) without relying on a fixed possibility space? Whitehead’s Eternal Objects are introduced as his way of talking about “pure possibilities,” yet they also note that John Dewey criticized this as a “mathematical residue.” Tim and Matt acknowledge tension in Whitehead—he wants a minimalist “posited” framework for possibility (the “primordial nature of God” holding Eternal Objects) but still wants a radically empirical, fallible system open to revision.
Constructivism vs. Residual Axioms
Tim raises the concern that positing Eternal Objects (and a primordial God) might sneak in axiomatic assumptions. They agree Whitehead tries to keep these assumptions minimal and always subject to revision in light of experience. Yet the question lingers: to what extent are we “smuggling in” final answers about reality via these seemingly axiomatic posits?
Novelty and Path Dependency
Tim emphasizes path dependence in evolutionary and developmental biology: organisms’ innovations and goals are contingent upon their histories. Whitehead too highlights creativity and contingency. They see Whitehead’s scheme as capturing path dependence because each new actual occasion grows out of previously actualized occasions—though not in a rigidly deterministic way. This partial determinacy plus openness to novelty is at the heart of Whitehead’s “creative advance.”
3. Whitehead’s God vs. ‘Possibilitect’
God as “Order of Possibility”
Matt jokes about ChatGPT’s suggestion that we rename Whitehead’s God the “possibilitect” or “architect of possibility,” but notes these terms carry their own loaded implications (e.g., “architect” sounding interventionist). Whitehead’s “God” is minimal and non-coercive, guaranteeing the availability of Eternal Objects while leaving room for creative emergence in actual entities.
Freedom and Agency
They underscore that Whitehead’s God is not imposing a single path on creation. Instead, God is more like a lure, presenting a realm of possibilities that creatures (actual occasions) can actualize in novel ways. This guards against deterministic or purely repetitive accounts of biological and cosmic process.
4. Free Energy Principle: Basics and Critiques
Statistical Invariance vs. Genuine Novelty
Matt references critiques of the FEP that claim it presupposes invariances or stable attractors, potentially leaving out the life-affirming emphasis on novelty. He cites a recent article by Kate Nave (“Life Beyond the Free Energy Principle: How to Survive Without Invariance”) and notes Maxwell Ramstead’s rejoinder that the latest versions of FEP can handle more historical and path-dependent phenomena.
Markov Blankets and Boundary Drawing
Tim explains how the Markov blanket formalism can seem deterministic if taken too rigidly: a node plus its Markov blanket can fully “explain” that node’s internal states in a state-based approach. Yet in more recent path-based formulations, the FEP tries to capture the continuous interplay of perturbations and adaptive reconfigurations. One can define Markov blankets at many scales (cells, organs, organisms, or even an organism-environment system), but these boundaries are to some degree “stipulative,” chosen for the sake of analysis.
Escaping Rigid Attractors
Using evolutionary biology examples (like lizards evolving new uses for salivary proteins, or invasive species “escaping” constraints), Tim stresses that novelty arises when systems shift from one attractor to another or create new attractors. FEP can model steady states (homeostasis) well, but might need extensions to handle transformative novelty (e.g., multicellularity, major evolutionary transitions) as Whitehead’s philosophy demands.
5. Symbolic Reference and Perception in Whitehead
Causal Efficacy vs. Presentational Immediacy
The heart of Whitehead’s theory of perception is that we perceive in (at least) two modes:
Causal Efficacy (a vague, affective sense of the world’s causal push on us—“time perception”), and Presentational Immediacy (the clearer, spatially projected sense-data—“space perception”).
Most of the work of combining these two modes into a coherent perception is done below the threshold of conscious reflection via “symbolic reference.”
Against Sense-Data Representationalism
Whitehead rejects the notion that we first receive “bare sense-data” (like color patches) and then interpret them. Instead, we are already in a causal flow with the environment, and the organism’s body “transmutes” these causal feelings into structured perceptions. Thus, the world is not “represented” but partially re-enacted in the perceiver.
Embodiment and Measurement
Whitehead notes that all measurement in science—say measuring lengths or energies—depends on how our body projects and symbolically refers. There is no “view from nowhere,” only an embodied vantage that reaffirms realism without succumbing to naive objectivism. The conversation here anticipates a link to the FEP’s talk of “generative models”: Whitehead might say the organism is (rather than has) a generative model, embedded in a real physical and causal nexus, not a detached, representational mind.
They distinguish between the openness or randomness at a quantum or small scale and the kind of creative, agentive freedom that arises in complex biological systems. Whitehead’s process perspective says new forms of order can emerge while still drawing on underlying stochasticity. The FEP can incorporate noise and random perturbations but must also account for how an organism might “choose” or canalize certain possibilities in non-deterministic ways.
Scaling Up: Cell Collectives, Multicellularity, and Goals
They discuss how, for example, single cells can form collectives with new “emergent” goals (e.g., multicellular bodies). Mike Levin’s xenobots highlight how cells freed from normal developmental constraints spontaneously discover novel modes of behavior. Again, Whitehead’s notion of novelty and the FEP’s talk of reorganizing Markov blankets both come into play, each claiming to explain how new goals or attractors form.
7. Realism, Nominalism, and the Boundaries of Organisms
Gradualism of Boundaries
Matt and Tim mention real debates in biology—e.g., whether something is truly “venomous,” or precisely when a cell’s boundary becomes an interface for a new “self.” Whitehead’s process-relational perspective sees boundaries as real but also dynamically emergent and not absolute. The FEP’s Markov blankets likewise can be redrawn at different scales, underscoring the semi-arbitrary nature of analysis.
Thoroughgoing Realism
They align with Whitehead’s stance that the world is not just constructed by us. Actual boundaries do exist, though they can be fuzzy in practice. Whitehead’s realism wants to avoid both naive realism and nominalism: actual patterns and actual occasions are real, but they are also emergent from creative processes.
8. Connecting to Future Writing and Research
Plans for a Formal Write-Up
They agree the best way to explore these resonances is to write a structured piece (or series of articles) mapping Whitehead’s concepts—Symbolism, Process and Reality, and specifically the causal efficacy–presentational immediacy schema—onto the FEP in its evolving formulations. They envision clarifying how the FEP can escape rigid or purely “internalist” readings by adopting Whitehead’s robust account of embodiment and novel emergence.
Further Topics
Whitehead’s “God”: They want to revisit how Whitehead’s minimal theism (the “primordial nature of God” as possibility) parallels or diverges from a purely naturalistic or quantum-fluctuation account of cosmic order.
Measurement and Observer-Dependence: They see parallels with Wolfram’s observer theory or holographic principles (reading information off surfaces). Whitehead had anticipated that measurement is always from a particular embodied perspective, which resonates with modern discussions of “map and territory” in the FEP community.
Symbolic Reference: Symbolism specifically details how advanced organisms link causal efficacy to immediate sensory space, which they believe dovetails with the FEP’s talk of “generative models” (though Whitehead’s brand is more genuinely relational than representation-heavy).
9. Conclusion
Throughout their dialogue, Matt and Tim continually return to three core threads:
Whitehead’s Organic Metaphysics: The tension between an inherited set of stable forms (“habits,” “Eternal Objects,” or “God”) and the creative emergence of novelty.
The Free Energy Principle’s Explanatory Scope: How well can FEP handle genuine novelty, historical path dependence, and complexity, rather than merely describing organisms as self-evidently homeostatic systems or “good regulators”?
Perception as Embodied and Relational: Whitehead’s key move—emphasizing causal efficacy, symbolic reference, and a partial identity of cause and effect—may correct or enrich the internalist, representational language often found in mainstream readings of the FEP.
Their conversation closes with plans to continue exploring chapters in Symbolism and references in Process and Reality, preparing for a deeper integration of Whitehead’s philosophical insights and the newer developments in FEP. They see genuine promise that a Whiteheadian interpretation of the FEP—one that underscores embodiment, novelty, and relational process—can transcend the typical “representational” or “deterministic” critiques, all while honoring Whitehead’s “thoroughgoing realism.”
....continuation of first comment below which was truncated when it was edited... unexpected glitch, I think...
...one must turn to the phenomenological philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas--but, while deeply important, that is far too large a tangent--although fundamentally important. This is covered some of those who are writing about 'semio-ethics'. Raghuveer & Endres criticize 'Bayesian Mechanics' and the FEP on the basis of what is implied in terms of metaphysics if it were to be true and accepted. What is implied, as is the case with most of the models that are brought forward by modern neuroscientists who see the 'hard problem' as eventually solvable, is a SUBSTANCE METAPHYSICS, which is basically anathema to anyone who believes that process is primary. Why? Because, as Raghuveer and Endres state:
'the theory... (ie. substance metaphysics offers) ...no resource to model novelty, growth, and development observed in human psychology.' And I would hasten to add--not only novelty, growth, and development in 'human psychology', but as features that are deep, foundational aspects of Nature. And then the authors go on to offer an alternative based on process metaphysics. Which is similar, I would argue, to the kind of evolutionary process metaphysics that Charles Sanders Peirce offered in a series of papers in 'The Monist' in the last decade of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. Which raises the question: what is it going to take to get beyond the mechanistic formalism and its associated ontological implications--like the implications that result when one adopts a metaphysics based on 'stuff' rather than 'process'? I would humbly suggest a thorough reading and study of these two papers, both of which quote the fundamentally significant work of relational biologist, Robert Rosen, and some of the more recent extensions of this work that realize the true autopoietic nature of living organisms, as open systems that are closed to efficient causation. And which are necessarily self-referential and manifest the capacity to anticipate and act autonomously with purpose related to the biologically granted capacity to persist in their physical embodiment in the context of their species-specific ecological conditions, not as passive creatures, but as intentional agents who may even have the capacity to modify their ecological niche to some degree...https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/evan.21534 ....which is something that our species has taken to the point where it all appears to be backfiring on us.
Just a brief addition... yes, purposeful niche construction and the process of learning how to do it demonstrates how the learning of individual members of a species can influence the direction of evolution... and this adds to the argument that any model that does not adequately account for learning, growth, development, and adaptive agency of living organisms, doesn't really tell the full story... does it?
For example, see: https://nicheconstruction.com/#:~:text=Niche%20construction%20is%20the%20process,natural%20selection%20in%20their%20environments.
A few more papers to check out that are fundamentally critical of the FEP with, I think, sound justification... Jaeger et al... https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1362658/full
...and a paper by Raghuveer & Endres... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373107823_Active_Inference_and_Psychology_of_Goals_A_study_in_Substance_and_Process_Metaphysics
One of the problems is the assumption of computability as a foundation for the operation of living organisms. It does not and cannot work, as was shown some time ago by relational biologist, Robert Rosen. Mechanisms compute; Organisms exceed computation. Mechanisms are strictly deterministic in their obedience to the 'ontology of states'--ie. the fact that they admit to the mechanistic formalism means that their operation can be very neatly partitioned into 'states'
and the 'laws' that control them. It really is SO nice! And enticing. But it is entirely inadequate as a model for a living creature. Fundamentally. Rosen calls the assumption of computability the 'Church-Pythagoras Theorem' in an essay in his book, 'Essays on Life Itself' (it is chapter 4 in the book), blatantly and misleadingly false. Living organisms are not reducible to mechanisms... they are context-dependent creatures that adapt through a process of agency and cognition, which are, as Jaeger et al maintain, 'fundamentally not computational'. What quantum physics is telling us is that the mechanistic formalism needs to be transcended--it does not work as a model for 'complex' living organisms. Mechanisms, as Rosen shows, in conforming to the mechanistic formalism, have limited entailment capacity, and are 'simple' relational systems. Period. Adaptive agency cannot be accommodated by the mechanistic formalism. It can only be weakly approximated. One wishes that more people would read the work of Robert Rosen--relational biologist extraordinaire! The other important piece are the metaphysical implications and the ethical and moral inferences and fall-out, for which one must turn to the phenomenological philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas--but, while deeply important, that is far too large a tangent--although fundamentally important. This is covered some of those who are writing about 'semio-ethics'. Raghuveer & Endres criticize 'Bayesian Mechanics' and the FEP on the basis of what is implied in terms of metaphysics if it were to be true and accepted. What is implied, as is the case with most of the models that are brought forward by modern neuroscientists who see the 'hard problem' as eventually solvable, is a SUBSTANCE METAPHYSICS, which is basically anathema to anyone who believes that process is primary. Why? Because, as Raghuveer and Endres state:
'the theory... (ie. substance metaphysics offers) ...no resource to model novelty, growth, and development observed in human psychology.' And I would hasten to add--not only novelty, growth, and development in 'human psychology', but as features that are deep, foundational aspects of Nature. And then the authors go on to offer an alternative based on process metaphysics. Which is similar, I would argue, to the kind of evolutionary process metaphysics that Charles Sanders Peirce offered in a series of papers in 'The Monist' in the last decade of the 19th century, well over 100 years ago. Which raises the question: what is it going to take to get beyond the mechanistic formalism and its associated ontological implications--like the implications that result when one adopts a metaphysics based on 'stuff' rather than 'process'? I would humbly suggest a thorough reading and study of these two papers, both of which quote the fundamentally significant work of relational biologist, Robert Rosen, and some of the more recent extensions of this work that realize the true autopoietic nature of living organisms, as open systems that are closed to efficient causation. And which are necessarily self-referential and manifest the capacity to anticipate and act autonomously with purpose related to the biologically granted capacity to persist in their physical embodiment in the context of their species-specific ecological conditions, not as passive creatures, but as intentional agents who may even have the capacity to modify their ecological niche to some degree...https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/evan.21534 ....which is something that our species has taken to the point where it all appears to be backfiring on us.
That Jaeger et al article on Vervaeke’s relevance realization is great. I had a dialogue focused on it here last week: https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/reflections-on-the-naturalization?r=2at642
Thank you, Matt. I totally agree. That is a really brilliant paper in my opinion and I see that you have done some dialoguing with it--which I will definitely check out. I am interested in following up on what they mean by the 'trialectic' co-constructive dynamic. The key issue is 'Thirdness' in the 'new list of categories' of CS Peirce. What is that? It is the necessary process of mediation. In Peirce's Evolutionary Process Metaphysics, that mediating element is what he called 'Evolutionary Love'--which is a concept that is explained in some detail in a little book by Adam Crabtree. The fundamental issue, in my mind, is the recognition that organisms are categorically distinct from machines and do not admit to the mechanistic formalism. In fact, as living beings living in the context of relational time that mediates their 'transactions' with other subjects, living beings cannot possibly be mechanisms and cannot admit to a Substance Metaphysics. Why? Because they contain closed causal loops that operate on a temporal continuum. Besides the fact that they are closed to efficient causation--which mechanisms are NOT!--living organisms have a semantic description that exceeds their syntactic description, as Rosen shows. Which means that living organisms operate in the domain of context-dependence and you cannot predict their functionality in any complete way from a knowledge of their structure, the way you can with a mechanism--which, in admitting to the mechanistic formalism, is strictly deterministic. If you know the structure of a mechanism, you can predict exactly how it is going to behave. It is operating in an idealized context-independent realm. It is like the difference between a computer language which functions without any ambiguity--it cannot because if it did, then the compiler would not know what to do! Versus a natural language which operates in the realm of context-dependence. Tim Eastman addresses some of this in his Logoi framework. Mechanisms operate 'by the numbers' in Tim's 'first realm' of context-independence. Organisms do not and cannot. If they did, they would never manage to survive. They are fundamentally context-dependent living creatures. That is Tim's 'second realm' of context-dependence. And then there is the 'third realm' of context-transcendence. Which is a realm in which time-dependent systems cannot exist. Though it is quite possible that we may gain some intermittent access to it in the context of what has been called 'unexplained experiences'. We are finite creatures who have had the infinite 'implanted within us.' See: Ecclesiastes 3:11 Which is really quite extraordinary. There is a transcendent relational reality that we cannot fully inhabit. However, we may be able to gain some insight into how it operates by way of quantum science and the workings of the 'quantum substratum', which is the realm of possibility, of Heisenberg's 'potentiae'. And, I do think, that this may well be consistent with the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics, which is what Ruth Kastner has been exploring. That is, that everything operates out of a hidden relational realm of possibility, which would also correspond with what David Bohm called the 'Implicate Order'. And 'trans-action' requires three elements, as is evident in Ruth's work: 1. An 'emitter' that has something to 'give', to 'confer', 2. An 'absorber' which has the possibility of receiving what the 'emitter' is offering up. and 3. A 'MEDIUM' through which messages (ie. 'waves') can be transmitted between potential 'emitter' and potential 'absorber', an 'Offer Wave' from the potential emitter, and a 'Confirmation Wave' from the potential absorber--which John G Cramer likened to a hidden 'handshake' which determines how things will actualize out of the hidden relational realm of the quantum substratum and into the manifest realm of the physical world. And McLuhan knew what he was talking about when he generated the aphorism:
'The Medium is the Message' Without a medium, without permeable boundaries through which the medium penetrates, there can be no trans-action, no exchange. And we have what Leibniz called a world of 'windowless monads'... a 'silent' mechanistic world devoid of transaction.
The implications of this realization are massive, and they relate to understanding the importance of what Bergson referred to as the 'open source' of morality and religion ( actually what John Vervaeke called 'Religio' that I take to be the process of binding together ). And the ideas resonate deeply, in my opinion, with the phenomenological approach to ethics and morality of Emmanuel Lévinas, recognizing the priority of the diachronic over the synchronic, the relational over the material, the infinite realm of organismic possibility over the finite realm of mechanical totalization. Which is what Lévinas, in effect, tackles in his first major book, 'Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority.'
This is also why we are in the process of bringing to fruition an issue of Pari Perspectives that I mentioned in another post here on the general theme of 'Life Beyond Mechanism. Undoing the Legacy of the Machine Metaphor' Arran Gare and Judith Rosen have agreed to contribute and I am hoping there will be others. In order to advance beyond our current mechanistically oriented 'perspectival' Mental/Rational Structure of Consciousness, and arrive at a new 'mutation' in the structure of consciousness that opens up into the 'aperspectival' Integral structure, we are going to need to realize that what quantum physics is telling us is that ALL natural relational systems are 'organismic', and that biology and the comprehension of the life of organisms is the real foundational science of existence, not physics. Because what is truly originary is the relationality of mind, not physicality of substance.
ChatGPT summary of the transcript:
1. Context and Motivation
Why Whitehead and the FEP?
Matt and Tim begin by reaffirming their mutual excitement about Whitehead’s Symbolism and the broader aim of relating Whitehead’s metaphysical framework to the Free Energy Principle. They see potential resonances in Whitehead’s emphasis on process, novelty, and the organism–environment relationship, and the FEP’s modeling of adaptive systems via “Markov blankets” and predictive processing.
Philosophical vs. Empirical Concerns
They clarify that Whitehead’s philosophy provides a metaphysical grounding (especially regarding perception, causal efficacy, and novelty), while the FEP is a formalism often invoked to explain cognition, homeostasis, and action in biological and cognitive systems. They want to see where these two approaches converge and where they might conflict.
2. Whitehead’s Approach to Novelty and Eternal Objects
Emergence of Laws vs. Predefined Possibility Space
Early in the conversation, they return to a key question from their previous discussion: how does Whitehead explain the emergence of new “generals” (laws, habits, or patterns) without relying on a fixed possibility space? Whitehead’s Eternal Objects are introduced as his way of talking about “pure possibilities,” yet they also note that John Dewey criticized this as a “mathematical residue.” Tim and Matt acknowledge tension in Whitehead—he wants a minimalist “posited” framework for possibility (the “primordial nature of God” holding Eternal Objects) but still wants a radically empirical, fallible system open to revision.
Constructivism vs. Residual Axioms
Tim raises the concern that positing Eternal Objects (and a primordial God) might sneak in axiomatic assumptions. They agree Whitehead tries to keep these assumptions minimal and always subject to revision in light of experience. Yet the question lingers: to what extent are we “smuggling in” final answers about reality via these seemingly axiomatic posits?
Novelty and Path Dependency
Tim emphasizes path dependence in evolutionary and developmental biology: organisms’ innovations and goals are contingent upon their histories. Whitehead too highlights creativity and contingency. They see Whitehead’s scheme as capturing path dependence because each new actual occasion grows out of previously actualized occasions—though not in a rigidly deterministic way. This partial determinacy plus openness to novelty is at the heart of Whitehead’s “creative advance.”
3. Whitehead’s God vs. ‘Possibilitect’
God as “Order of Possibility”
Matt jokes about ChatGPT’s suggestion that we rename Whitehead’s God the “possibilitect” or “architect of possibility,” but notes these terms carry their own loaded implications (e.g., “architect” sounding interventionist). Whitehead’s “God” is minimal and non-coercive, guaranteeing the availability of Eternal Objects while leaving room for creative emergence in actual entities.
Freedom and Agency
They underscore that Whitehead’s God is not imposing a single path on creation. Instead, God is more like a lure, presenting a realm of possibilities that creatures (actual occasions) can actualize in novel ways. This guards against deterministic or purely repetitive accounts of biological and cosmic process.
4. Free Energy Principle: Basics and Critiques
Statistical Invariance vs. Genuine Novelty
Matt references critiques of the FEP that claim it presupposes invariances or stable attractors, potentially leaving out the life-affirming emphasis on novelty. He cites a recent article by Kate Nave (“Life Beyond the Free Energy Principle: How to Survive Without Invariance”) and notes Maxwell Ramstead’s rejoinder that the latest versions of FEP can handle more historical and path-dependent phenomena.
Markov Blankets and Boundary Drawing
Tim explains how the Markov blanket formalism can seem deterministic if taken too rigidly: a node plus its Markov blanket can fully “explain” that node’s internal states in a state-based approach. Yet in more recent path-based formulations, the FEP tries to capture the continuous interplay of perturbations and adaptive reconfigurations. One can define Markov blankets at many scales (cells, organs, organisms, or even an organism-environment system), but these boundaries are to some degree “stipulative,” chosen for the sake of analysis.
Escaping Rigid Attractors
Using evolutionary biology examples (like lizards evolving new uses for salivary proteins, or invasive species “escaping” constraints), Tim stresses that novelty arises when systems shift from one attractor to another or create new attractors. FEP can model steady states (homeostasis) well, but might need extensions to handle transformative novelty (e.g., multicellularity, major evolutionary transitions) as Whitehead’s philosophy demands.
5. Symbolic Reference and Perception in Whitehead
Causal Efficacy vs. Presentational Immediacy
The heart of Whitehead’s theory of perception is that we perceive in (at least) two modes:
Causal Efficacy (a vague, affective sense of the world’s causal push on us—“time perception”), and Presentational Immediacy (the clearer, spatially projected sense-data—“space perception”).
Most of the work of combining these two modes into a coherent perception is done below the threshold of conscious reflection via “symbolic reference.”
Against Sense-Data Representationalism
Whitehead rejects the notion that we first receive “bare sense-data” (like color patches) and then interpret them. Instead, we are already in a causal flow with the environment, and the organism’s body “transmutes” these causal feelings into structured perceptions. Thus, the world is not “represented” but partially re-enacted in the perceiver.
Embodiment and Measurement
Whitehead notes that all measurement in science—say measuring lengths or energies—depends on how our body projects and symbolically refers. There is no “view from nowhere,” only an embodied vantage that reaffirms realism without succumbing to naive objectivism. The conversation here anticipates a link to the FEP’s talk of “generative models”: Whitehead might say the organism is (rather than has) a generative model, embedded in a real physical and causal nexus, not a detached, representational mind.
6. Degrees of Freedom, Complexity, and Agency
Randomness vs. Novelty
They distinguish between the openness or randomness at a quantum or small scale and the kind of creative, agentive freedom that arises in complex biological systems. Whitehead’s process perspective says new forms of order can emerge while still drawing on underlying stochasticity. The FEP can incorporate noise and random perturbations but must also account for how an organism might “choose” or canalize certain possibilities in non-deterministic ways.
Scaling Up: Cell Collectives, Multicellularity, and Goals
They discuss how, for example, single cells can form collectives with new “emergent” goals (e.g., multicellular bodies). Mike Levin’s xenobots highlight how cells freed from normal developmental constraints spontaneously discover novel modes of behavior. Again, Whitehead’s notion of novelty and the FEP’s talk of reorganizing Markov blankets both come into play, each claiming to explain how new goals or attractors form.
7. Realism, Nominalism, and the Boundaries of Organisms
Gradualism of Boundaries
Matt and Tim mention real debates in biology—e.g., whether something is truly “venomous,” or precisely when a cell’s boundary becomes an interface for a new “self.” Whitehead’s process-relational perspective sees boundaries as real but also dynamically emergent and not absolute. The FEP’s Markov blankets likewise can be redrawn at different scales, underscoring the semi-arbitrary nature of analysis.
Thoroughgoing Realism
They align with Whitehead’s stance that the world is not just constructed by us. Actual boundaries do exist, though they can be fuzzy in practice. Whitehead’s realism wants to avoid both naive realism and nominalism: actual patterns and actual occasions are real, but they are also emergent from creative processes.
8. Connecting to Future Writing and Research
Plans for a Formal Write-Up
They agree the best way to explore these resonances is to write a structured piece (or series of articles) mapping Whitehead’s concepts—Symbolism, Process and Reality, and specifically the causal efficacy–presentational immediacy schema—onto the FEP in its evolving formulations. They envision clarifying how the FEP can escape rigid or purely “internalist” readings by adopting Whitehead’s robust account of embodiment and novel emergence.
Further Topics
Whitehead’s “God”: They want to revisit how Whitehead’s minimal theism (the “primordial nature of God” as possibility) parallels or diverges from a purely naturalistic or quantum-fluctuation account of cosmic order.
Measurement and Observer-Dependence: They see parallels with Wolfram’s observer theory or holographic principles (reading information off surfaces). Whitehead had anticipated that measurement is always from a particular embodied perspective, which resonates with modern discussions of “map and territory” in the FEP community.
Symbolic Reference: Symbolism specifically details how advanced organisms link causal efficacy to immediate sensory space, which they believe dovetails with the FEP’s talk of “generative models” (though Whitehead’s brand is more genuinely relational than representation-heavy).
9. Conclusion
Throughout their dialogue, Matt and Tim continually return to three core threads:
Whitehead’s Organic Metaphysics: The tension between an inherited set of stable forms (“habits,” “Eternal Objects,” or “God”) and the creative emergence of novelty.
The Free Energy Principle’s Explanatory Scope: How well can FEP handle genuine novelty, historical path dependence, and complexity, rather than merely describing organisms as self-evidently homeostatic systems or “good regulators”?
Perception as Embodied and Relational: Whitehead’s key move—emphasizing causal efficacy, symbolic reference, and a partial identity of cause and effect—may correct or enrich the internalist, representational language often found in mainstream readings of the FEP.
Their conversation closes with plans to continue exploring chapters in Symbolism and references in Process and Reality, preparing for a deeper integration of Whitehead’s philosophical insights and the newer developments in FEP. They see genuine promise that a Whiteheadian interpretation of the FEP—one that underscores embodiment, novelty, and relational process—can transcend the typical “representational” or “deterministic” critiques, all while honoring Whitehead’s “thoroughgoing realism.”