Auxiliary Papers
Auxiliary Papers from TAI Website 2018
Autognomics: The exploration study of Life-itself (Between and Beyond) through combined empirical and metaphysical research of the practical and theoretical Getting to minimum structures of natural Organism law; self-law, self-organization, connectivity, coherence laws of values & multi-co-relational creativity. Join us
Co-Founder Jon Ray Hamann's Dream
All times are for some, sometimes, the best of times, while for others simultaneously the worst of times. My dream, my hope is that humanity grow the perfection of its collective wisdom so that we as individuals might better learn how to cooperatively improve the possibilities of those experiencing the worst of times. Perhaps then we could all-ways, all times, wish all of the best TO ALL and it might actually be personally meaningful TO EACH.
Norm Hirst Co-Founder background
Norm Hirst began this work at MIT 50 years ago as physicist, mathematician and process philosopher seeking meaning and functioning of the role of values in science. He discovered that values are only operative in living processes and science at that time did not work for living processes. He began looking for what was missing in science to provide new sciences that would work for living processes.
Culminating Norm's decades of investigation, the Institute is finding meta-principles and processes unique to living organisms, forming a new approach for thinking about life-itself, addressing emerging discoveries about organisms, and working towards a new definition for what living organisms are. The ultimate hope is to lay the formal foundations for a science of life-itself, providing thought-leadership and facilitation in areas of business, health care, governmental ethics, education, meaning and caring of democracy, global peace, personal fulfillment leading to a world that knows its oneness, connectivity with the whole of natural life. Humans are cells in this magical and wondrous eco-nature
Auxilary Articles
Autognomics Movement - Moving towards life and meaning
By Norm Hirst To further explain what we envision as a movement I begin with what Arran Gare, the Cosmos and History editor, said about my published paper.
“Hirst’s paper, which is partly autobiographical, describes an intellectual adventure to find a place in a scientific world for values and meaning. What this adventure revealed was that mainstream science, mathematics, logic and philosophy mutually support each other to promote a comprehensive materialist world-view that has no place for meaning or creativity.”
That materialist world-view has caused damage. Indeed, the damage is beyond the ability of words to give it adequate expression. Life has become meaningless; a mere accidental development on an otherwise dead planet. So we kill a million in pursuit of theoretical goals. But if those formerly living, breathing, feeling beings have neither value nor significance there is no basis for us to have value or significance either. Let the poor starve; they surely have no value, else they wouldn’t be poor.
Now there is good news! Beginning in the 1970’s laboratory experiments began producing results that could not happen given materialism. That was a warning that believing in the adequacy of materialism is a profound and damaging error. More, in the 1990’s biophysics began to reveal the origins of reality based on living energy flows; not matter.
Now it is known, the universe is a living entity. Life is pervasive. It is life that brings evolution. It is life that provides for meaning and creativity. Life is an organizing force. Clinging to our adherence to materialism we block what life is trying to achieve by the current paradigm change. It is trying to set us free from the materialistic prison we have lived in. As seen from the drabness of life as a struggle inside the prison, looking out the sun is shining. From the drabness life offers miracles; miracles of fulfillment, miracles of self-actualization and miracle solutions to the problems that beset us, problems that cannot be solved in materialism.
The organizing principles of life now being revealed are not simply our beliefs. They are emerging from the latest research in several disciplines. We are trying to make them conscious for everyone in revealing the Logos of Life Itself. Logos basically is the root for logic. The logos for life involves new and different logics that are just now being discovered. For 2000 years logic has required consistency and truth preservation. But life is constantly oscillating between contrasts and in creativity changing truth. Clearly a consistent truth preserving logic is not the logic of life.
One does not need to study logic, old or new, to learn that consistency does not apply to life. If I were in court listening to testimony I would tend to believe the witness whose story had some inconsistencies because life is like that. The one who had no inconsistencies I would assume was telling a well rehearsed tale.
I am not a luddite. I believe useful technology is a blessing. But when technology is used in activities that really require living skills I think it is wrong. I think it is dangerous and I see it as a growing trend. An example would be activities that require genuine intelligence. There is a lot of hype about computers and artificial intelligence. There are even predictions that artificial intelligence will be better than genuine intelligence. Now we have the wonders of medical databases and many kinds of electronic devices to enlarge the field of what a physician can observe. I have argued elsewhere that reliance on such advances has reduced our health care system to 72nd worldwide for quality of care. For reliable medical care physicians must know their patients; then they can reliably interpret what the electronic deices show them. It is time to question the role of technology.
Unfortunately materialism has given us many stultifying beliefs. Skye calls them HOGS for “Have to”, “Ought to”, “Got to” and “Should”. Since materialism allows no values, to succeed we just have to sacrifice who we were born to be to the HOGS. We become good little machines with the loss of our humanity.
Now there is a worldwide change in consciousness. The old worldview is dying. A new worldview is being born. The time is frightening, yet it is full of promise.
US Congress - Idiots in Playland — Norm Hirst 8/1/2011
In Washington DC. this past few months I’ve seen what kind of crazy leadership we’re saddled with. The moderates have left town being fed up with the “stuckness” of the dialogue to finding workble solutions to our nation’s challenges. What we've got now are Idiots in Playland because they are so disconnected from life that they cannot perceive the coherent whole. They choose to live in an impossible reality called Playland. By this I mean they see only fragmented bits and pieces of reality. By hanging onto an ideology that is one they make up out of some imaginary should for the world, they keep themselves from creating, learning, growing and evolving towards a rich unity that is lasting and good for everyone. In any negotiation – somewhere there needs to be the possibility for change. Just saying no to anything that does not fit your position will and does lead to warring, destructive events. as we have seen and I'm sure there are more to come if changes are not made. Some are saying the Republican Conservatives have won, but I would say all they have won is the ability to cause war and endless fighting.
Reflections on What Is Life? — Norm Hirst
What is coming out in today's research requires understanding how living processes are free to act and combine in societal unities. It is life itself that produces evolution, not random processes or survival of the fittest. Life evolves based on values, which requires an awareness of holism. At all levels, living entities are choosing acts based on values characteristic of their level. That the molecules in cells are living is contrary to what biologists have traditionally thought. Now laboratory evidence shows signals and behavior indicating that they are living and acting.
In life, valuation processes are pervasive. We have lived with materialism too long to remember the qualities of life. It seems to me that many are trying to live as if they are machines; we are not well suited to being robots. It is the adventure of living fully that gives life meaning. Life is< philosophy gives us new assumptions about reality and that's where we discover value dynamics in living processes by which we find our emergent ways.
I began at MIT delving into the foundations of knowledge from physics and mathematics to metaphysics, logics, biology and theology—and then into new findings in biophysics and quantum physics.
…Instead, I would discover through a lifetime of inquiry that physics and it's foundations in substance metaphysics and accompanying logics is totally inappropriate for applications to understanding life. Way down deep human knowledge developed in a way that became committed to errors that destroy life.
Recent experiments of the past 20 years in physics and biophysics are producing results that cannot be explained with the traditional scientific materialism and substance philosophy. A new worldview is required. Not only is a new view of reality required, we also need to change protocols of inquiry to cope with it.
Following my tour of duty in the Korean War— I became deeply concerned about the causes and destructiveness of war and when I met Robert Hartman, the founder of the first formalism of values, I was inspired by Hartman and dedicated my life to more fully develop Hartman's science of values.
The current reality change is making a transition from a rigid, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview to one that is built on a foundation of interconnectedness, cooperation, and the intersection of science and living processes and experiences.
Living entities can initiate acts. In acting they add an uncontrollable quality that cannot be calculated through any physical laws of force. Living entities do not passively await an external force to do something. For life there is no cause and effect. No determinism. Life is holistic from bottom to top. Using reductionism destroys knowledge of our living organization and how best to work with it; the very aspect we should be trying to understand. In structure, an organism may appear to have many parts, but in process and function organism consists of societies of actors, acting on the basis of communication and coordination with all that organism’s societies and actors. Thus organisms function as a single holism.
But scientific materialism has provided technology by which the internal workings of living organisms can be observed as they live. But how living organisms work is unlike anything ever imagined! As we learn how living entities function, it turns out that it is nothing like we thought. Living entities are not machines, nor machine-like. Their workings are not subject to cause and effect, and they are not carrying out calculations. Living entities are capable of initiating their own acts based on values. They live in societies that give them maximum freedom within coherence conditions required by life. That is true even in the cells in our bodies. It is true of the molecules in cells, and, in nature. It is true of us on the living earth. Reality is not just rocks with accidental creation of life as epiphenomena here on earth.
Life itself is fundamental.
Matter isn’t fundamental, some form of, not yet defined, energy is. Physicists have discovered the Dirac Sea; zero point energy that fills all of what we thought was empty space. The physicist, P. A. M. Dirac, made a change to Schrödinger’s quantum equations that lead to discovery of this pervasive energy; thus it is named the Dirac Sea. Much of fundamental reality occurs in the Dirac Sea from which it becomes manifest in our space-time of material. Rather than matter being fundamental, energy flows in the Sea of Dirac are fundamental. The reality-underlying quantum theory is a living organism. That is why quantum theory is so difficult to interpret. The dynamics of those energy flows are, I believe, the dynamics of life. The energy flows manifest matter and living entities. All life is one, a living organism. Due to its connectedness we have primary unmediated experience.
To be alive is to be able to act. There is nothing in our history of ideas, whether philosophical or scientific, that deals with living self-making entities. Everything in our philosophy and science is an attempt to imitate life with non-living entities not capable of action. We will talk about life as energies within the electronics nature of living organisms; mysteries - such as how can bodies of so many parts be holistic? The answer is: the living processes within it are holistic. The living processes within it are “meta-stable” and constantly have to be maintained by energy. If the living processes are gone, all that's left is hardware.
Unfortunately, given a materialistic meta-physics, scientific explorers have been limited to a minor territory, the domain of the physical/non-living. Can all those deterministic forces possibly account for our experience? Is there any way to combine them all together in such a way as to produce what we experience? Simply, no. There is no way. So biologists explain that it’s “random processes” and survival of the fittest. There is no chance in hell that random processes can produce what we have in our experience; nor produce us for that matter. Life charged with creating novelty under conditions of great co-intelligence can create life and evolution. We must quickly create a philosophy and science for the 21st Century and for what Life is<.
Value are the Coherence Conditions of; Coherence Conditions Essential of Life — Norm Hirst
I believe the most serious mistakes result from the failure to understand Life itself and the role of values. Life itself needs a huge variety and harmonization. The many different societies are like different cells in the larger organism of unity. Each society has it's own coherence. However, too often people have different criteria for coherence. Some societies are seen as analogous to cancer cells needing to be destroyed. Finding ways to harmonize and utilize that variety creates a healthy body/world. However, not being aware of the possibility of harmonization we resort to violence and destruction.
In this moment of now, what might you be aware of? It is certainly not restricted to sensory input. If you only believe in what you can touch and measure, you are disconnected from primary knowing based on connectedness of all life. Your intuitions and feelings are telling you all about this connectedness, unless you choose to ignore it. In your holistic awareness of the moment, there are three distinct interwoven value domains. Each value requires a different way of knowing.
The three distinct domains of value are: Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Systemic described as follows:
- Living entities that are self-defining, self-valuing and self-acting. Any interaction with a living entity will produce results beyond our expectations and, perhaps, beyond our control. Living entities are valued intrinsically; living entities must be valued for their own uniqueness; that is called unconditional loving.
- Things that are passive. They cannot violate forces of nature. Otherwise we can control what they do. Things are judged extrinsically by comparison to other members of the class concepts to which they belong, i.e., chairs or jobs.
- Structures and rules that are invented by us. They are invented to provide order, reason, agreement and the possibility of creativity. Since we invent them, they are what we say they are. We judge them by applying them to our experience and then judging them as to whether or not they work, judging them as right or wrong. This is the domain of systemic values.
Now begins valuation leading to harmonization-valuation
Organisms (Living Entities) Require Coherence. (I think of coherence as conditions permitting freedom to act in parallel with a multitude of acts without destructive interference.) Life is the process of forming a coherence or unity within, which is developed through a multiplicity of events within and coupled with events without. It is a series of evolving events of birth, growth, maturation, integration and fulfillment. Values are the coherence conditions that life imposes on living processes and entities. I have come to think of values as the "coherence conditions of life." Strictly speaking I believe it is valuation processes that are important to living entities. The necessary autonomy of living entities prevents their having any informational inputs. Yet they do need to discover what works in their living context. They do that by acting, to find effective acts. Acts that produce the organism’s intentions are effective acts. (see definition of Autonomy).
Substance metaphysics (started over 2500 years ago) has forced upon on us worldviews precluding values. With a few exceptions, the literature on values is rather ridiculous. Values are not things. They are conditions on living processes.
- I think of coherence as conditions permitting freedom to act in parallel with a multitude of acts without destructive interference. For example, driving on a designated side of the road. That gives maximum significant freedom to drive anywhere without crashing into someone else. It makes coherent traffic flow, gives us greater freedom to drive to a destination and really doesn’t need enforcement. Living entities are autonomous; they are intended to individuate; to develop their unique potential to become a unique actor while staying within the coherence laws of their identity.
- Reviewing the characteristics of life gives the concept “harmonize” a specific emphasis.
- Life is the process of forming a coherence or unity within, which is developed through a multiplicity of events within and coupled with events without. It is a series of evolving events of birth, growth, maturation, integration and fulfillment.
- Living processes are carried out by living entities capable of acting. Actions are based on perceived facts of experience when an event is starting. Those facts set the stage for what is possible. Value processes select the most effective acts. The living entity acts and the stage is now changed to include a mixture of old and new perceived facts ready for the next event.
- Harmonization is the process by which we creatively find a way to resolve differences between conflicting coherence conditions to find a new coherence unity. Understanding the role of values and valuation is essential to carry out this process.
- Talking about values with our current linguistic habits turn values into ideals to live by. For example, always tell the truth. However, there are times when truth is essential and there are times when truth is better not said. What life requires of us are the value process skills to know when truth is required and when it is not.
- If you think values are ideals, then you make harmonization impossible because your values are right and theirs are wrong and there is no room for harmonization. Rather, ideals are abstractions. Abstractions do not hold the entire reality in which they are thought to function. Thus they cannot be achieved, and even if they could be, given the dynamics of life, there is no absolute right and wrong set of ideals that apply to everyone all the time.
I suggest that in Hartman’s hierarchy systemic valuation and extrinsic valuation are in consciousness. Intrinsic valuation is in awareness. Intrinsic valuation is the highest because it provides the ground for the others to develop.
Living Process Coherence Events called valuation
To talk about values I want to look at the events in a living process, i.e., those events when you choose a set of acts for the next step in your evolving process.
It is the sailor in me that wants to say, “values are navigation aids”. When I set sail I may know where I want to go, but I have no idea how I am going to get there. It all depends on the wind and tides. A sailboat has to be in equilibrium with its environment. Motorboats can crash through the environment. Sailing is a good teacher for life. I am free to go wherever I like, provided I maintain coherence with the sea.
New mind for New Government By and For the People — Skye Hirst
What is happening and how?
Winning, at all costs, to what end? What mediates such excess, and drive? The answer is lots of people who care about something other than JUST winning. When there are people with lots of money who want more of lots of money, when the ends justify the means, we get a fools game like we’ve witnessed in the US Congress. We can point to that set of events and say how is this happening?
A world breaking down
Constellations of events have converged to create a world that doesn’t work, a world that breaks down trust, hope, morale and ethics agreements of centuries in the making. For example; rule of law, checks and balances between branches of government, rules against nepotism, no conflict of interest in leadership roles, regulation where the masses are protected against the control of the few (monopolies) control of public air ways (FCC), and communication rights (TV, Radio, Cable and now Internet), Protection of Environment for all (EPA) to name but a few.
Totalitarianism in the making
When there is no one to do the protecting, when the police and military become those in charge with no counter balance of justice or consequence, when leadership is singularly driven by acts of self-aggrandizement, using money, legal minds who can work around the laws, and psychological trickery to manipulate people vulnerable to advertizing, persuasion by distractions, anxieties and fears, then you have what we have today, a totalitarianism in the making. The people who are participating unwittingly in this making are like fools in play land; US Congressional players with their hands in the pot grabbing what greed wants as the system falls apart.
Becoming a counter balance
Maybe a new idea is to wake up, to re-member – by being an active counter balance, an antidote, to provide energy for new direction, actually, with renewed capacity, to be a government by the people, and for the people. Can there exist a government such as this? Even if the American ideal was just that, an experiment in the making, can what was put in place by founding fathers be re-invented with new minds that have deeper understanding of how life works, how consciousness creates structures from spirit of intention, from highest values of inclusion, valuing life-itself as highest value, (inalienable rights)? To make choices that are life-giving, that grow, not kill, that support, not constrain, that free, not entrap, that create hope, trust, and working together towards what works for the whole good of life-itself in which we all share.
Growing a New Mind
How this can occur, many here know already, is best exemplified by Open Space Technology. Harrison Owen put a name to this living process he describes as Open Space Technology. Over twenty years ago, he began to talk of this universal process that goes on in nature, plays out over and over again when certain conditions arrise. People closest to the work to be done, people most impacted by what needs to change, come together, sit in a circle, listen to their own passions and knowing and find ways to act with new awareness. Through listening, being responsible for what needs to happen, plans for actions emerge. Often action begins immediately in times of crisis. Leaders emerge around projects and work to be done. Hearts and minds are changed with new ways of knowing the situation at hand reveal. Movement towards harmonization happens with no controllers, no force required.
Six pillars of process that must be maintained to insure a life giving, productive workplace — Tess Jette
It begins with an understanding of the value of each individual as singularly unique and as a significant part of the whole. It begins with a philosophy that everyone is here for a reason and that there is a reason for every result. It begins with a desire to create, to be aware, to be involved, to be passionate, to relate, to nurture and to love. It begins with an act.
Every act contributes uniquely to the makeup of who we are. Recurring results of specific acts become stored data that form our physical and emotional reality. That reality is confirmed each time an act is repeated and causes a similar effect. The reality from that act becomes a rule for living that we incorporate into the conceptualization of who we are and what we can expect. If the act of a child is to reach out for affection and that child is pushed away or abused that child eventually stores the information that reaching out for affection is not an effective act.
The living being is continuously acting out on its environment. If a person matures cataloging negative results the outcome is an erosion in the trust of oneself to effectively act with positive results. The reality we begin to form from the moment of the first act, whether it is a conscious memory or not, is the emotional reality that we draw on every day to make decisions.
When a group of people are drawn together in a work environment, each relates and communicates according to his/her own accumulated set of rules. They bring with them a singular perception of the world, their value in it and an expected result of how they will be received and treated. The possibility of ending up in a work environment that includes only people who feel well adjusted, centered, self-assured, confident, and valued is probably zero. We live in a culture that glorifies technology and we live and work amongst people who have learned to not trust in their own felt sense. They no longer act from the heart but rather based on the result of information received from external sources, hence the lost of trust in their own “gut” feeling of what is good or bad for them.
Our first acts are based on instinct. The act is formed from within, from a feeling of pure self-interest, self-motivation or self-protection. It is only in an environment that allows freedom of action without retribution that each being can truly follow a path that is genuinely true to that being’s sense of self. Each individual, allowed to test acts without fear, in a trusting environment, is then truly in a place of learning.
The highest and best goal for any manager is to try to create this learning environment. The only way to achieve this is with trust. By trust we mean trusting that each person’s activities, creations, ideas and feelings are no less valued than anyone else’s. One must trust that every person is emotionally and spiritually exactly where they need to be in their life and that you have no control over their unique decisions for themselves. The role management plays is to serve, to create a safe haven, a trusting environment that allows people to feel. Once a person truly believes that it is o.k. to feel and express those feelings honestly without fear of injury something wonderful begins to happen. You get to know the people you are working with.
The structure of the workplace, both physical and spiritual, is key. What is apparent is that fewer rules and regulations make managing easier and allows the community to self-organize. Some parameters, however, are absolutely necessary. Boundaries are required to establish a safe environment and maintain a sense of fairness. Rules and regulations should be reviewed periodically to determine if they still apply to the entire community, and whether they still make sense at all. Every community is dynamic and evolving. It is also important to make sure that rules are not being put in place as a reaction to a single incident. Each incident should be handled on an individual basis taking into consideration the circumstances surrounding the event. Always look at the SYSTEM first, not the individual. The first reflection should be with management. Ask the question, “Did we provide the right support, were we completely clear, is there a way to avoid a similar event in the future without adding restraints to our entire community?”
As an example, a small manufacturing company in Connecticut had multiple errors with shipments. Even with all the signage, notes, meetings and paperwork provided to insure that every possible question was answered prior to shipping mistakes still occurred. Management was at an impasse as to how to make clear what needed to happen. The first instinct was an old one; just say it louder. Instead of jumping up and down and berating two genuinely committed employees about how they had failed the company, management completely turned the “traditional” table. The two employees came into the conference room with heads bowed completely expecting to be shamed into doing a better job. Management began the meeting as follows: “When a ship runs aground who gets blamed? It’s not the guy steering the ship, it’s the captain.” Management took full responsibility. They admitted that even with all the systems created they had failed to provide one that worked for everyone. The solution presented was for these two employees to remain in that conference room and design a new system that would work for them. They were given an unlimited timeframe to accomplish this task and were assured that the company would purchase whatever tools necessary that they felt would assist them. In a matter of 2 hours they submitted a completed presentation (which included the purchase of lime green labels). Management affected the changes immediately. The system was in place for quite some time and worked for as long as it needed to….which was until the next change.
The entire event was positive, learning and empowering. They “owned” this system; it was their creation, not management’s. In turn they shared in the responsibility to maintain it and take pride in the overall results. No one was admonished. No one was written up. Everyone walked away feeling valued, appreciated and energized. Even though the occasion revolved around task oriented issues the premise for the solution was to first look at the emotional impact of failure and admonishment towards the employee. Every time you take away the employee’s ability to find their own solution you are decreasing their power and adding to your own list of things to manage. They become lazy in their thinking and lose interest in what they are doing if all the decisions are made for them or they are constantly dictated to.
What the entire workforce learned from this experience was that it’s o.k. to make a mistake; that is how we learn. Knowing what to leave behind and what to take forward is the mark of excellence in management. The ability to change is an absolute necessity. The ability to change with immediacy is what makes change effective. It is possible to change policies or systems very quickly, within hours or even minutes, if you are not entrenched in rules and control. Employees adjust very quickly to change if they see it often enough and have a sense of confidence that their feedback will be acknowledged. Management must be responsive to the needs of the employees. If long periods of time elapse the general consensus is that management does not care, that the only time change occurs iwhen it affects management personally. The crux is that unresponsiveness and stagnancy affects the entire entity. If changing one small item that is problematic for a person in the shop is not important to the manager sitting in his office then there is a complete failure. Over time, an employee becomes increasingly disassociated from management and less and less effective in his/her job. This is a clear example of acts and their effectiveness.
Six pillars of process that must be maintained to insure a life giving, productive workplace.
- Embrace change; it is the essence of life and growth.
- Get personal and be present.
- Work is a privilege and it is creating.
- Create a nurturing and sensory rich environment.
- Love the workers and the workplace before the work.
- Make time for community and celebration.
Each of these pillars support evenly but not necessarily simultaneously. They are equally important and must be exercised accordingly. Remember, the environment is organic which means it is in constant change. It must be tended to, watched over and cared for as a living entity. Tedium is a reality. The work needs to get done and you may not be able to compromise the physical aspects of the task. You can, however, affect the environment. When employees trust that they are being cared for and valued they respond in kind with increased motivation and a feeling of joy in the workplace. Onerous tasks become secondary to the overall sense of well being.
Cosmos Journal of Natural Philosophy; Editor, Aaron Gare's Overview of Hirst Paper: What Is Life? Published 2008
Norm Hirst's paper What Is Life? published in Cosmos and History - The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy. Editor, summary commentary on the paper:
The fourth paper, ‘Towards a Science of Life As Creative Organisms’ by Norm Hirst, is the point of departure for the following paper by Floyd Merrell: Life before matter, possible signification before tangible signs: Toward a Mediating View
Hirst’s paper, which is partly autobiographical, describes an intellectual adventure to find a place in a scientific world for values and meaning. What this adventure revealed was that mainstream science, mathematics, logic and philosophy mutually support each other to promote a comprehensive materialist world-view that has no place for meaning for creativity. In this journey Hirst discovered the work of Rosen, and concluded, as Rosen had, that a new metaphysics is required. In this paper he uses Peirce’s notion of ‘abduction’ to justify the speculative presentation of an alternative, process organismic world-view, a form of process metaphysics. While strongly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead and scientists influenced by him (especially the biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho), it is an original synthesis. This synthesis is then contrasted with ‘materialism’. This highlights the way diverse ideas cohere to display the real alternatives, revealing thereby that what are often regarded as obvious, theoretically neutral ideas actually provide the foundations for a particular perspective of the world. Against the background of the account of materialism, Hirst argues that advances in biology herald the move towards a process organismic world-view. However, this is being blocked not only by mathematical ideas, but more fundamentally by mainstream ideas in logic. In identifying blockages to this revolution in thought Hirst is particularly concerned with the influence of extensional logic, which, like the mathematical formalism attacked by Rosen, effectively eliminates meaning and creativity. What is called for, he argues, is a new logic adequate to the creativity of life.
The Peircian semiotician floyd merrell has recognized in Rosen’s and Hirst’s critique of mainsteam thought justification for his own philosophy as a solution to problems they have revealed. In a massive trilogy (Signs Becoming Signs, Semiosis in the Postmodern Age, and Signs Grow), Merrell developed a coherent Peircian cosmology advancing Peirce’s most radical ideas on the semiotic nature of all reality, fusing the customary distinctions between life and non-life, mind and matter, self and other, appearance and ‘reality’. In his contribution Merrell further explicates Peirce’s philosophy, revealing how radical his ideas really were, and in doing so, offers the basis for the development of the kind of logic Hirst argued is required to understand life.
Value Intelligence in All Creative Organisms Skye Hirst
Published in Robert S.Hartman Value Institute Annual Journal
Friendly Links to Robert S. Hartman Institute Robert Hartman Institute