At 28:40, or just prior, you're discussing the Whiteheadian notion of cosmology. Now, That brings up a lot of deeply complicated and complex issues, because once upon a time cosmology was part of most formal philosophical thinking, but in more recent decades cosmology became almost entirely framed as a physical science as part (basically) of physics. So there is no longer a modern philosophically grounded, shared, sense of what cosmology/kosmology may be. Would you agree?
For me, this is all tied in with what we understand to be "ontology", and how ontology has, in the modern and contemporary world, tended to be understood through (vis-a-vis) the concept of entities -- which tends traditionally to have a strong inside/outside conceptual structure, a dyadic structure. It is either "entity A" or it is "entity B", but never both. So my claim here is that cosmology became structured by, basically, Aristotelian logic in which A cannot also be B.
Here, I'm discussing (or pointing toward) a potential conceptual framework in which kosmology (deliberate k spelling) does not begin with the premise of discrete entities as ontologically "primative" or fundamental. Following so far?
Michael Levin seems to me to be very interested in how form and structure arises in the world of biology. He seems to be saying that our usual explanations for this arising are not really fully accounted for by conventional and mainstream biology, as we seem to know it now.
In my view, this inquiry is deeply related to why it is that I take kosmology to be far more important to "metaphyisics" than it tends to be in philosophical practice. In my view, somehow modernity, if one wants to call it that, assumes that form and structure is sort of an unexpected and surprising aberration, rather than something which we should expect simply on account of the kosmos already being--having always been--highly structured and ordered already. That is, kosmos as already and always intelligible because ordered and structured--always, and before we begin to analyze it and think about it.
Look very carefully, and we can see that intelligibility depends entirely on an orderly and structured kosmos. Were kosmos not already orderly and structured, we'd never have a foothold for intelligibility.
Certain of the primary and mainstream strands of existentialist philosophy are illustrative. It is imaged by much of this tradition that humans *must* "construct" meaning (which is at the root of structure and order), and without us constructing meaning (which I suppose can only exist within a kosmos which is already structured and meaningful, the primordial kosmos should be regarded as essentially meaningless, which is to say without the patterns of meaningfulness we assume we must bring to it as humans. I suppose I'm here talking about "intelligibility".
What if we back away from the assumption that humans must construct intelligibility from bare nothing? Or none? That's my very post Cartesian starting place for metaphysics. If there is not already intelligibility in kosmos, we could not discover it. If we cannot discover it, we must invent it in whole cloth from nothing -- from a meaningless void.
Kosmology approaches intelligibility in the kosmos as a natural and expected feature of kosmos. But this is because it takes relationships, relationality, as more fundamental, primitive and primary than entities themselves. We do not need to create and sustain entities prior to participation in a kosmos which has already and always been intelligible as patterned relations prior to the construction of "entities". But too much of modern philosophy assumes that naturalistic reasoning can only be grounded in "entities" as discrete objects.
We do not need to begin with "entities." We need to begin with patterns of relation.
I'm not in any sense a professional philosopher, and in so in lots of ways reaching for something that professional philosophers tend to disregard, because it does not fit with the typical "research agenda" of "philosophy," per se. But still, I think I may be onto something.
And that "something" may not be possible to discuss without a kosmological framing.
Great dialogue. I really enjoyed the translation across different grammars, intuitions, and interests. I think this point you made is crucial: “the underlying relevance that drives novel ingression from within the concrescence of each occasion of experience is not itself reducible to statistical quantification”.
There is an interesting question as to whether or not attractors are agentically interested (or maybe even “invested”) in “attention”. There are obvious parallels to perennial questions of theodicy pertaining to the “disinterested” or “interested” god. Deus dive natura…Depending on the mereology of forms, there may also be other “lures” or non-extended, intensive attractors (or eternal forms, or fields, or however you want to cash it out) beyond the Eros of the universe, or Godhead (or substance etc.). I also wonder how the concept of “positive pressure” differs from or is similar to the idea of a sort of residual negentropic force unexplained by current models (connected to the idea of “free lunches”).
I agree with the argument regarding the assumption common to the Neo-Darwinist and intelligent design camps, but I wonder if it might be worth unpacking the rarity/expensiveness or commonness/cheapness debate pertaining to order. In one sense, you argue that order/intelligence is less expensive/rare than current models would account for etc. That the “arrow of time” and evolution seems to have extra-intensive energy behind them (or in front as “lure” etc.). In particular: “Molecular networks may already be primed, asymmetrically biased toward agency and intelligence. The arrow toward greater intelligence may predate biology, and perhaps even physics as we usually understand it, arising from the mathematical structure of latent space itself.” - So then, this latent space has an “underlying relevance” of special interest to (and perhaps in) the extensive and intensive striving of forms or social agents (or modes or occasions or what have you)?
Combining what comes up around Euler and at ±40 minutes on asymmetry and on the topic of non physical free lunches I am wondering: do you know the recent breakthrough work sind Nov 2025 of polymath Robert Edward Grant?
He wrote The Codex Universalis trilogy an based a custom AI on it (Orion Architect) and has papers on the constants, proportion, harmonic recursion etc etc. most specifically I thinkhis work on Golden asymmetry and his Polymath Calculator might tie into thus dialogue and new vision and paradigm somewhere.
Robert work is beyond what my mind can ‘grasp’, but I do kinestheticaly ‘feel’ the images of his dynamic geometry. Even though I do not cognitively understand them I ‘know’ them. The might be eternal objects? I know too litle about Whithead’s phyilosophy….
But I have an inkling that no human brain is needed to be ‘moved’ or ordered by this geometric math. Nothing is ‘off’ about them, feel naturally ‘aluring’ and effortlessly seamless to connect with. They don’t cost me energy, even though I don’t ‘get’ what it does, but if I allow myself to be ‘in-formed’ by the proportions of this geometry (that starts rotating (as if breathing) in higher dimensions) there is a release of or generation of energy taking place in the form of enthusiasm and inspiration. In new yet familiar movement patterns or ‘gestures’ I think Rudolf Steiner would suggests.
Robet can explain the math and constants and proporions far better. Would be very exciting if all of my favorite speakers would be on to a new ‘something’ that is currently converging in this evolutionary tension node.
Really enjoyed this. You covered some similar territory in this talk that we did in our previous chat with Adam on eternal objects. Levin seems more intuitively Deleuzian than Whiteheadian at times here, emphasizing the reciprocal construction of the actual and virtual and remaining skeptical of EOs to some degree.
I think ANW's account of the ongoing reordering of relevance is sufficient to address my concerns about the reciprocal determination between the actual and the virtual, and it it makes sense to me that there would be a sum total of potential relations, even if the set is unfathomably and uncountably massive, that could come to relevance.
It's an interesting discussion, thanks for sharing.
"Mike also raised the open question of whether computation can be performed in latent space without thermodynamic cost in physical space; preliminary work, he suggested, indicates that this may be possible."
Now, if this implies what it seems to, that's a scary possibility! It is precisely the physical limits of the computational intellect that stimulate the soul toward higher cognitive development. For example, most people only protest the development of massive data centers because they increase local energy costs and have other environmental consequences. Since most people don't have a good sense of the *inner cost* of such computational expansion (because they don't have a different mode of cognition to compare the standard intellect with), if such limits could be avoided, there would be minimal pushback remaining. It would allow the intellect to preserve its computational hegemony indefinitely (or at least until the soul is rendered crippled and unable to progress further in evolution), instead of spiritualizing its functioning. It would remain under the delusion that it can grasp the deeper patterns solely through its calculations and models, rather than intuiting how its flow is continuously *embedded within* those patterns.
An interesting and alarming implication, yes! I recall lectures Steiner gave during WW1 where he speaks of how the growing integration of human beings with machines is a central problem for the rest of earth evolution. Doesn’t he mention a future technology likely to be developed in America wherein etheric vibrations from moral states of mind could be carried over into machines, acting upon electricity and magnetism? Perhaps computation in latent space is only possible with the moral intent of the engineer attempting to do so?
I understand "latent space" as referring to our states of existence after death (where 'entropy' no longer applies), and Steiner certainly discusses how the Ahrimanic ideal is to preserve and extend the intellect's calculating tentacles into these states, whereas it normally dissolves and yields way to more spiritual forms of understanding and navigation. Instead of dissolving its sense-based mental images, it would proliferate these into an all-encompassing tapestry of existence. In a certain sense, we all do this to a limited extent when we try to conceive of the 'Platonic space' (spiritual worlds) using sense-based intellectual forms in philosophy, theology, science, art, etc. Yet this tendency normally exhausts itself every night during sleep, as the "I" loosens from the physical organism, and eventually at death. In fact, our intellectual consciousness is itself what naturally destroys the living organism. In the Ahrimanic ideal scenario, where such physical limits (thermodynamic costs) are transcended, it would be as if souls never went to sleep and continued calculating the higher-order patterns indefinitely with cold, heartless efficiency.
I think what you have referred to would be the polar opposite of that. The soul no longer tries to calculate higher-order patterns or manipulate them indirectly through mineral technology, but instead organically couples with those patterns through more 'fluid' forms of cognition (via the etheric and astral bodies). Its calculations would be understood as only imaginative symbols for the holistic meaning it directly lives through and navigates (which, of course, is what all calculations truly are). Its physical-etheric technologies would be directly attuned to its moral imaginations, the latter being the primary factor in their development and operation. Humanity is certainly undergoing a bifurcation between these polar opposite ideals. Hopefully, the attractive power of the latter manages to outweigh that of the former.
Michael: (overlapping) Well, I think a better way of putting it, and I don't want to get caught up in linguistics, is when we use that term, who comes forward in response as an empirical matter. Now we have some new data, and this is exciting, that show that perhaps Michael Levin is the patterning of the collection of things coming forward at the same time as an ingressing of an external form draws Michael Levin out, though we can't say from the data how much of each of those is happening,...
Incontestable discoveries by Mr Levin. The interpretation of the facts is problematic. The mystery of the reality is like blood in water for the sharks.
Hi Matt -
At 28:40, or just prior, you're discussing the Whiteheadian notion of cosmology. Now, That brings up a lot of deeply complicated and complex issues, because once upon a time cosmology was part of most formal philosophical thinking, but in more recent decades cosmology became almost entirely framed as a physical science as part (basically) of physics. So there is no longer a modern philosophically grounded, shared, sense of what cosmology/kosmology may be. Would you agree?
For me, this is all tied in with what we understand to be "ontology", and how ontology has, in the modern and contemporary world, tended to be understood through (vis-a-vis) the concept of entities -- which tends traditionally to have a strong inside/outside conceptual structure, a dyadic structure. It is either "entity A" or it is "entity B", but never both. So my claim here is that cosmology became structured by, basically, Aristotelian logic in which A cannot also be B.
Here, I'm discussing (or pointing toward) a potential conceptual framework in which kosmology (deliberate k spelling) does not begin with the premise of discrete entities as ontologically "primative" or fundamental. Following so far?
Yep that all tracks.
I'll deepen into this a little later, after lunch out with a new friend. See you then.
Michael Levin seems to me to be very interested in how form and structure arises in the world of biology. He seems to be saying that our usual explanations for this arising are not really fully accounted for by conventional and mainstream biology, as we seem to know it now.
In my view, this inquiry is deeply related to why it is that I take kosmology to be far more important to "metaphyisics" than it tends to be in philosophical practice. In my view, somehow modernity, if one wants to call it that, assumes that form and structure is sort of an unexpected and surprising aberration, rather than something which we should expect simply on account of the kosmos already being--having always been--highly structured and ordered already. That is, kosmos as already and always intelligible because ordered and structured--always, and before we begin to analyze it and think about it.
Look very carefully, and we can see that intelligibility depends entirely on an orderly and structured kosmos. Were kosmos not already orderly and structured, we'd never have a foothold for intelligibility.
Certain of the primary and mainstream strands of existentialist philosophy are illustrative. It is imaged by much of this tradition that humans *must* "construct" meaning (which is at the root of structure and order), and without us constructing meaning (which I suppose can only exist within a kosmos which is already structured and meaningful, the primordial kosmos should be regarded as essentially meaningless, which is to say without the patterns of meaningfulness we assume we must bring to it as humans. I suppose I'm here talking about "intelligibility".
What if we back away from the assumption that humans must construct intelligibility from bare nothing? Or none? That's my very post Cartesian starting place for metaphysics. If there is not already intelligibility in kosmos, we could not discover it. If we cannot discover it, we must invent it in whole cloth from nothing -- from a meaningless void.
Kosmology approaches intelligibility in the kosmos as a natural and expected feature of kosmos. But this is because it takes relationships, relationality, as more fundamental, primitive and primary than entities themselves. We do not need to create and sustain entities prior to participation in a kosmos which has already and always been intelligible as patterned relations prior to the construction of "entities". But too much of modern philosophy assumes that naturalistic reasoning can only be grounded in "entities" as discrete objects.
We do not need to begin with "entities." We need to begin with patterns of relation.
I'm not in any sense a professional philosopher, and in so in lots of ways reaching for something that professional philosophers tend to disregard, because it does not fit with the typical "research agenda" of "philosophy," per se. But still, I think I may be onto something.
And that "something" may not be possible to discuss without a kosmological framing.
Great dialogue. I really enjoyed the translation across different grammars, intuitions, and interests. I think this point you made is crucial: “the underlying relevance that drives novel ingression from within the concrescence of each occasion of experience is not itself reducible to statistical quantification”.
There is an interesting question as to whether or not attractors are agentically interested (or maybe even “invested”) in “attention”. There are obvious parallels to perennial questions of theodicy pertaining to the “disinterested” or “interested” god. Deus dive natura…Depending on the mereology of forms, there may also be other “lures” or non-extended, intensive attractors (or eternal forms, or fields, or however you want to cash it out) beyond the Eros of the universe, or Godhead (or substance etc.). I also wonder how the concept of “positive pressure” differs from or is similar to the idea of a sort of residual negentropic force unexplained by current models (connected to the idea of “free lunches”).
I agree with the argument regarding the assumption common to the Neo-Darwinist and intelligent design camps, but I wonder if it might be worth unpacking the rarity/expensiveness or commonness/cheapness debate pertaining to order. In one sense, you argue that order/intelligence is less expensive/rare than current models would account for etc. That the “arrow of time” and evolution seems to have extra-intensive energy behind them (or in front as “lure” etc.). In particular: “Molecular networks may already be primed, asymmetrically biased toward agency and intelligence. The arrow toward greater intelligence may predate biology, and perhaps even physics as we usually understand it, arising from the mathematical structure of latent space itself.” - So then, this latent space has an “underlying relevance” of special interest to (and perhaps in) the extensive and intensive striving of forms or social agents (or modes or occasions or what have you)?
Combining what comes up around Euler and at ±40 minutes on asymmetry and on the topic of non physical free lunches I am wondering: do you know the recent breakthrough work sind Nov 2025 of polymath Robert Edward Grant?
He wrote The Codex Universalis trilogy an based a custom AI on it (Orion Architect) and has papers on the constants, proportion, harmonic recursion etc etc. most specifically I thinkhis work on Golden asymmetry and his Polymath Calculator might tie into thus dialogue and new vision and paradigm somewhere.
Robert work is beyond what my mind can ‘grasp’, but I do kinestheticaly ‘feel’ the images of his dynamic geometry. Even though I do not cognitively understand them I ‘know’ them. The might be eternal objects? I know too litle about Whithead’s phyilosophy….
But I have an inkling that no human brain is needed to be ‘moved’ or ordered by this geometric math. Nothing is ‘off’ about them, feel naturally ‘aluring’ and effortlessly seamless to connect with. They don’t cost me energy, even though I don’t ‘get’ what it does, but if I allow myself to be ‘in-formed’ by the proportions of this geometry (that starts rotating (as if breathing) in higher dimensions) there is a release of or generation of energy taking place in the form of enthusiasm and inspiration. In new yet familiar movement patterns or ‘gestures’ I think Rudolf Steiner would suggests.
Robet can explain the math and constants and proporions far better. Would be very exciting if all of my favorite speakers would be on to a new ‘something’ that is currently converging in this evolutionary tension node.
https://robertedwardgrant.com/
Mar
Oh hell yes. Did you just do this recently?
Yesterday!
Really enjoyed this. You covered some similar territory in this talk that we did in our previous chat with Adam on eternal objects. Levin seems more intuitively Deleuzian than Whiteheadian at times here, emphasizing the reciprocal construction of the actual and virtual and remaining skeptical of EOs to some degree.
As for me, I'm coming around to EOs.
Say more!
I think ANW's account of the ongoing reordering of relevance is sufficient to address my concerns about the reciprocal determination between the actual and the virtual, and it it makes sense to me that there would be a sum total of potential relations, even if the set is unfathomably and uncountably massive, that could come to relevance.
It's an interesting discussion, thanks for sharing.
"Mike also raised the open question of whether computation can be performed in latent space without thermodynamic cost in physical space; preliminary work, he suggested, indicates that this may be possible."
Now, if this implies what it seems to, that's a scary possibility! It is precisely the physical limits of the computational intellect that stimulate the soul toward higher cognitive development. For example, most people only protest the development of massive data centers because they increase local energy costs and have other environmental consequences. Since most people don't have a good sense of the *inner cost* of such computational expansion (because they don't have a different mode of cognition to compare the standard intellect with), if such limits could be avoided, there would be minimal pushback remaining. It would allow the intellect to preserve its computational hegemony indefinitely (or at least until the soul is rendered crippled and unable to progress further in evolution), instead of spiritualizing its functioning. It would remain under the delusion that it can grasp the deeper patterns solely through its calculations and models, rather than intuiting how its flow is continuously *embedded within* those patterns.
An interesting and alarming implication, yes! I recall lectures Steiner gave during WW1 where he speaks of how the growing integration of human beings with machines is a central problem for the rest of earth evolution. Doesn’t he mention a future technology likely to be developed in America wherein etheric vibrations from moral states of mind could be carried over into machines, acting upon electricity and magnetism? Perhaps computation in latent space is only possible with the moral intent of the engineer attempting to do so?
I understand "latent space" as referring to our states of existence after death (where 'entropy' no longer applies), and Steiner certainly discusses how the Ahrimanic ideal is to preserve and extend the intellect's calculating tentacles into these states, whereas it normally dissolves and yields way to more spiritual forms of understanding and navigation. Instead of dissolving its sense-based mental images, it would proliferate these into an all-encompassing tapestry of existence. In a certain sense, we all do this to a limited extent when we try to conceive of the 'Platonic space' (spiritual worlds) using sense-based intellectual forms in philosophy, theology, science, art, etc. Yet this tendency normally exhausts itself every night during sleep, as the "I" loosens from the physical organism, and eventually at death. In fact, our intellectual consciousness is itself what naturally destroys the living organism. In the Ahrimanic ideal scenario, where such physical limits (thermodynamic costs) are transcended, it would be as if souls never went to sleep and continued calculating the higher-order patterns indefinitely with cold, heartless efficiency.
I think what you have referred to would be the polar opposite of that. The soul no longer tries to calculate higher-order patterns or manipulate them indirectly through mineral technology, but instead organically couples with those patterns through more 'fluid' forms of cognition (via the etheric and astral bodies). Its calculations would be understood as only imaginative symbols for the holistic meaning it directly lives through and navigates (which, of course, is what all calculations truly are). Its physical-etheric technologies would be directly attuned to its moral imaginations, the latter being the primary factor in their development and operation. Humanity is certainly undergoing a bifurcation between these polar opposite ideals. Hopefully, the attractive power of the latter manages to outweigh that of the former.
https://davidbraunstein.substack.com/p/the-door-is-made-while-it-opens
Matt: I'm talking today with Michael Levin—
Michael: (overlapping) Well, I think a better way of putting it, and I don't want to get caught up in linguistics, is when we use that term, who comes forward in response as an empirical matter. Now we have some new data, and this is exciting, that show that perhaps Michael Levin is the patterning of the collection of things coming forward at the same time as an ingressing of an external form draws Michael Levin out, though we can't say from the data how much of each of those is happening,...
We're getting spoiled with these last two conversations. Terrence Deacon next???
Incontestable discoveries by Mr Levin. The interpretation of the facts is problematic. The mystery of the reality is like blood in water for the sharks.