Tim Morton makes the useful point that E/Z’s notion of the “noosphere”
can only be functional if it discriminates between some kinds of thing such as cognizing with neurons versus other kinds of thing such as cognizing with plant hormones, or resting on a table, or spanning a river.
But these discriminations shouldn’t just be imported wholesale into the system: that’s just smuggling pre-given contraband into your philosophical view. Otherwise the system just can’t account for the very things it is trying to integrate: all knowable things.
Ken Wilber goes to some lengths to defend his view of a hierarchy of interiority — from the most basic prehension through to consciousness and so on — but his argument need not be treated as a fait accompli. There are very different ways of grasping things (prehending), and some entities’ (Whiteheadian “societies”) ways are more complex than others — more layered, internally self-reflexive, and so on.
Human ways — using complex imagery and language — are one set of complex prehensive/interpretive/modeling tools, but there might be other kinds that we cannot even imagine. What does certain whales’ capacity to send and receive vocalizations over hundreds of miles do for their sense of the oceanic world and of themselves? E/Z refer to such things now and again — their awareness of the growing field of animal cognition and animal culture studies is gratifying (they even propose the terms “zooethnology,” “zoopology,” and “bioethnography” for the growing field). But I suspect that we’re barely even equipped to hypothesize about whale noesis, let alone Armillarial noesis.
I prefer to think of the ‘noetic’ (noos, noosphere) as essentially the same as the ‘mental’, and I think that a consistent Whiteheadian (and Peircian and Batesonian) approach would be to acknowledge that noesis is everywhere: a noosphere, or a mental ecology (pace Guattari), would build up wherever noesis is shared, with bubbles of it proliferating everywhere like life in those hydrothermal vents at the ocean bottom (one of which is pictured above).
It’s conceivable that such a sphere could become more or less coextensive with something akin to a civilization, a communicative system that would be territorialized over a broad expanse of physical space (a continent, a planet, etc.). But this doesn’t mean there’s any inherent developmental trajectory that goes from ‘ethnocentrism’ to ‘worldcentrism’ to ‘planetcentrism.’
I would argue that ‘ethnos,’ ‘world,’ and ‘planet’ are simply three different ways of demarcating a world, a cosmos. All self-maintaining entities do that — all prehend and, in one way or another, model their environments. The sharing of such models, and therefore the building of a ‘worldspace,’ is facilitated by translation devices — such as the conjugal plasmids or transposons that facilitate bacterial horizontal gene transfer, or languages and books, or sea walls echoing whalesong back to other whales. (Translation devices are simply things that are turned to use as translation devices, extending communication further than it had gone without that use.)
So I agree with Wilber and E/Z that there is complexity generated through the emergence of structural and formal relations between things. The layeredness and enfoldedness of those relations could be taken as a gauge of what Wilber calls “depth” (which I prefer to “height”; I also like “thickness”). But, like Tim, I think we need to be careful in positing any clear demarcations between “the” physiosphere, “the” biosphere, and “the” noosphere.
Thanks for all your posts on this section of the book, Adrian. I think we are really getting into some interesting and important questions, many of which still hinge on the difficulties we encountered when trying to gain clarity on the troublesome question of subjectivity, where we threw around several related, though clearly different terms (“panpsychism,” “panexperientialism,” “prehension,” “pansemiotics,” etc). I think our difficulties in discussing the noosphere fall within this same rubric of troublesome language and definitions.
I’d like to enter this conversation by suggesting a few extra points on terminology, which might help us clear up some of this up. First, we could start with the word “noosphere” itself, which, as Tim pointed has pointed out, is a term first coined by Vernadsky, but here Wilber and E/Z are drawing upon the concept in the context of Christian theologian Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard is the paradigm case of a panpsychist, and though E/Z are drawing on Teilhard’s concepts (“interiority” and “noosphere” being the strongest examples), E/Z’s use of both terms is different than Teilhard’s. As we have noted, E/Z aren’t referring necessarily to consciousness going all the way down (as Teilhard was), but rather to experience, or, using Whitehead’s language, prehension (on a side note they have also ditched Teilhard’s Christian eschatology- good move!)
The physiosphere and biosphere, then, do prehend certain world spaces, with each world space being enacted by the level of complexity of that particular entity. I think this suggest that worlds are being carved out before the arrival of sentient beings. Or, to quote the authors on this point:
“Moreover, even though organisms with neurological systems have a greater degree of subjectivity and intersubjectivity than beings without such systems, this fact does not mean that atoms, molecules, and cells lack subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Instead, all individual physiospheric and biospheric holons have modes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that are perfect for their own kind, although limited when compared to noopsheric beings” (p. 93).
E/Z go on to tell us that the necessary criteria which differentiate between “biospheric” and “noospheric” organisms lie within the organisms capacity for “image generation” (p. 119). We can argue with the authors on when and where image generation begins, they seem to assign it to at least all of the mammals, and, as we have pointed out following Mark Bekoff, most of the complex animals. This seems to at least go someway to differentiating physis, bios, and nous. Personally I think that semioticity (particularly if we already agree that it “goes all the way down”) seems to suggest that some form of image generation/interpretation may in fact be a part of the physiosphere, and thus collapse its distinction from the noosphere. I have no firm conclusions on these topics so I am playing it a little bit safe here, as it seems that the physis/nous distinction is difficult to sort out.
One additional comment I have with regards to these questions has to do with Adrian’s invocation of Bateson’s “ecology of mind.” I think Bateson is using “mind” in a way that is similar to the OOO use of the term, in that, for Bateson, “mind” is a low-level property of all systems, not an emergent property of strictly complex ones. Thus I think one could differentiate between the biophysical mind of a coral reef, and the image generating mind of horses, monkeys, and humans. Again, this is all very speculative for me, and I am happy to re-draw the cognitive capacities of any species if the evidence indicates the need (there is no room for dogma out on these edges). Thus I think Bateson’s “mind” is a property of the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere, whereas the E/Z emphasis is on minds that can generate images, thus making them a different kind of mind operating at the level of nous.
I also have a few initial comments to make on the IE/OOO front of things as well. We could start by looking at the difference between “holons” and “objects.” Both the holons of IE and the objects of OOO prehend or “carve out” a world (despite Zimmerman’s Heideggerian background, prehension is an ability extended to all entities, and not just beings with sentience). The difference between IE and OOO here, I think, would be that OOO prefers to call both blue coffee cups and the US army “objects.” IE theorists, on the other hand, differentiate between “individual holons” and “social holons.” In this sense the coffee cup is an “individual holon” whereas the US army would be a “social holon.” Diving more deeply into these issues is something I am currently working on, as the broader relationship between OOO and integral ecology is very interesting to me (and here I mean the broader field of integral ecology, and not just the E/Z version).
A last comment on the IE/OOO situation: I have yet to find anything in the IT literature that resembles the OOO concept of “withdrawal,” or Tim’s “hyperobjects.” I would be very interested to hear the IE reaction to both of these ideas, since so much, if not all of AQAL, hinges on perspectives, and yet I don’t hear much talk about “withdrawn holons.” Likewise, Tim began an interesting discussion between the OOO use of “interobjectivity” as oppose to the IT use of the same word. I’m interested in how these differences play out, and as an initial comment I would say that OOO interobjectivity is an integral form of relationship between objects, and not just the “flatland” variety that IT theorists ascribe to their use of the word. A whole essay could be written on these issues alone, which I have a good amount of inspiration to do, but that will have to wait for another day.
Thanks for your detailed thoughts, Adam…
I prefer terms like panpsychism, panexperientialism, and pansemiotics (and pantheism, for that matter) over noo*sphere*, semiosphere, etc – probably because I like the rhizomatically proliferating sense I get from the ‘pan’ (and the god Pan) over the circling-the-wagons-ness of ‘spheres.’ But if the sphere is endless growing and radiating (like this slice of time), then I don’t mind. I’ll be the first to admit that my terminological preferences often arise out of aesthetic considerations at least as much as strictly philosophical considerations (though I’m happy to defend that philosophically)…
And I guess that means that I’m not prepared to defend any *one* of the ‘pans’ over the others, since I think they aren’t that different from each other – they really depend on the definitions being used (of experience, semiosis, psyche, even theos).
It’s been years since I’ve read Teilhard, but I’ve always felt he was a bit too much of a ‘centrist’ for me – too centripetal (things always gravitating their way toward Christ-consciousness and the Omega point) rather than centrifugal (the ‘pan’ of the above, the decentrism/dissemination of deconstruction, the rhizome of Deleuze & Guattari). Whitehead, for me, balances these out well. But maybe I’m wrong about Teilhard… and in any case these are those same aesthetic considerations.
You’re right to point to those moments where E/Z acknowledge the worldspace of non-noospheric holons. I agree with you that the idea of semioticity going all the way down (Peirce’s pansemiosis) would at least blur, if not collapse, the distinctions between E/Z’s 3 spheres. But if distinctions (differences, becoming, proliferation, dissemination, etc) are good, then conjuring new spheres should also be good… (I’m arguing with myself here.) As long as we define them smoothly/creatively – as potentials opening onto possible worlds – rather than stratigraphically (as hierarchic striations delimiting the possibilities of existing worlds). (I’m revealing my overdebtedness to D&G here all too clearly…)
No comment on the IT-OOO connections & differences. (I’ve been slapped around too many times for taking the OOO-ists too literally, or something like that… I’ll let Tim speak to those.)
There’s a lot going on both in the post and in the comment, guys. I’ll keep reading them.
I just have a couple quick notes on the IE-OOO connections that Adam raised. Regarding the question about whether E/Z’s work accounts for the “withdrawal” of holons, I am guessing that it does, particularly in light of the Buddhist influences (including Tantra) that pervade E/Z, Wilber, and Integral Theory in general.
I remember Tim saying something on his blog a few months ago about Tantric Buddhist OOO, describing female Buddhas as real objects (withdrawn) and male Buddhas as sensual objects (luminous form). Things or holons can be imagined as copulating male-female Buddhas (see “father-mother” or yab-yum figures). This is also figured as a union of vajra and bell, that is, the union of wisdom (withdrawn, empty) with the skillful means of compassion. This also resembles the Buddhist principles of emptiness (sunyata) and dependent origination (pratitya samutpada), as long as emptiness is not thought of as a lack but as a molten core of Buddha-nature, tathagata garbha, the root or embryo (garbha) of the Buddha, who is the one thus gone (tathagata). Here’s a relevant quotation: “Integral Ecology recognizes that the complexity of ecosystems is always elusive: a splendid display of emptiness and form” (p. 595).
Another IE-OOO connection particularly relevant for the IE chapters on levels: IE and OOO both celebrate levels. The “all-level” map that IE adopts from Wilber could play well with the “levels of the world” that Harman adapts from Lingis.
Adrian – Your reading of Teilhard is for the most part accurate, and I agree with your troubles in his thinking. I do, however, find the concept of “spheres” to be helpful insofar as we are talking about the actual concrete sphere within which we stand- the earth itself. For Teilhard, biosphere and noosphere are only “spheres” because of the fact that they literally wrapped around the earth and come to meet eachother again (you can imagine the first prokaryotes slowly emerging from the earth’s geological material and then spreading around the globe until they meet again and interact to evolve into more complex life forms-you can see how this easily might become an overly teological view). I also agree with your comments on aesthetics, noosphere has never really rolled off my tongue with ease.
Sam- I don’t know enough about Buddhism or Alphonso Lingis to comment on your insights. I wonder though if you find Harman’s use of “levels” to be developmental and encompassing (“transcending and including”) as in Wilber’s schema. I’m not sure I have
gotten this sense from Harman’s writing.
I’ve also not gotten this sense of ‘levels’ from Harman, or the sense that ‘withdrawal’ is a Tantric sort of thing, withdrawing into the generative emptiness (as opposed to a withdrawal into the secret core of a given object, unknowable by any other). Not that these can’t be somehow reconciled with Buddhism (as I think Tim is trying to do)…
Adam, I don’t think the Harman-Lingis levels are developmental, but maybe encompassing (“objects wrapped in objects wrapped in objects…”). In any case, I think the AQAL levels and the OOO levels might produce some thought-provoking contrasts.
I definitely don’t know enough about Buddhism to comment on what I said. Adrian, I think you’re probably right that a withdrawal into generative emptiness seems more likely for Buddhists than a withdrawal into unknowable cores of objects. I do like Tim’s image of the yab-yum as a copulating sensuous object and real object, and I want to think more with the suggestive connotations of the “Buddha-embryo” translation of tathagata garbha. Surely, a lot more work needs to be done.
In terms of IE, E/Z would want to include perspectives for which there is a withdrawal of holons. Everybody’s partially right, right? On the question of whether there is or isn’t withdrawal or the question of whether withdrawal is of an underlying (Harman’s “undermining”) mystery or of a plurality of molten cores, the Integral theorist wouldn’t have to take one position, but could hold multiple, even contradictory, positions. Perhaps that sounds too much like trying to have one’s cake and eat it, too.
Cheers!
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