{"id":4719,"date":"2011-06-18T10:03:25","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T15:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=4719"},"modified":"2011-06-18T10:11:03","modified_gmt":"2011-06-18T15:11:03","slug":"on-noospheres-and-noesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/06\/18\/on-noospheres-and-noesis\/","title":{"rendered":"On noospheres and noesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Morton<\/a> makes the useful point that E\/Z’s notion of the “noosphere”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/em> There are very different<\/em> ways of grasping things (prehending), and some entities’ (Whiteheadian “societies”) ways are more complex than others — more layered, internally self-reflexive, and so on.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> noesis.<\/p>\n

I prefer to think of the ‘noetic’ (noos, noosphere)<\/em> 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<\/em> 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).<\/p>\n

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.’<\/p>\n

I would argue that ‘ethnos,’ ‘world,’ and ‘planet’ are simply three different ways of demarcating a world,<\/em> a cosmos.<\/em> 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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977],"tags":[550,25025,25024],"class_list":["post-4719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","tag-integral-ecology","tag-noesis","tag-noosphere"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1e7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4590,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/06\/16\/integral-ecology-week-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":0},"title":"Integral Ecology – week 3 (part 1)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The Integral Ecology reading group moves here this week, picking up the baton from Adam and Sam at Knowledge Ecology. (And see Michael's summary at Archive Fire.) This week we're focusing on chapters 3 (\"A Developing Kosmos\") and 4 (\"Developing Interiors\"). Following a short summative preamble, this post examines Chapter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/05\/22\/pointing-to-omega\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":1},"title":"Pointing to Omega?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, so I watched Harry and Meghan's royal wedding (not so much intentionally as to enjoy the loving company of my co-habitants) and was impressed by the tension between Bishop Michael Curry's sermonizing on love and the dour and perplexed faces of many of the royal-loving Brits in the audience.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4933,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/07\/09\/ecological-selves-integral-ecology-week-6\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":2},"title":"Ecological selves (Integral Ecology week 6)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After a brief hiatus, the Integral Ecology reading group is back in action here. (Antonio at Mediacology combined two chapters - 5 and 6 - in his post of two weeks ago, and I'm running a little late with this one.) What follows is my summary and response to Chapter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/07\/levels-of-consciousness-275x143.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8747,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/07\/wark-on-the-geopolitics-of-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":3},"title":"Wark on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"McKenzie Wark has written a very provocative piece on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene, or what he calls \"The Geopolitics of Hibernation.\" A quote:\u00a0 \"Resource wars are no new thing. They are a defining feature of the history of geopolitics. But perhaps the resource wars of the Anthropocene have some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13598,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2025\/07\/18\/ontology-101-b-buchlers-natural-complexes\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":4},"title":"Ontology 101-B: Buchler’s “natural complexes”","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 18, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"An earlier post on this blog, entitled \"Ontology 101,\" proposed to clear the way for a general understanding of the different kinds of things an ontology (or general conception of reality) should be able to distinguish. My book The New Lives of Images, which will be out in September, examines\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2024\/04\/image-5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6667,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/04\/22\/dark-earth-days\/","url_meta":{"origin":4719,"position":5},"title":"Dark earth days","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Composing a worthwhile Earth Day post takes more energy than I have today, so instead I'll link to Jeremy's Earth post at Struggle Forever!\u00a0 It articulates a thought I often feel on this day (surrounded as I get by students eager to maternalize the planet) but in a way that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Earth Day\"","block_context":{"text":"Earth Day","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/earth-day\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Earth_at_Night","src":"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/struggleforever.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Earth_at_Night.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4719"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4719\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}