Dialogue with a Reader.

 Dialogue with a Reader.

Dear Reader,

It is my pleasure to share with you a dialogue that I have been enjoying with a skeptical and insightful guest of the dialectics web site.

My Reply to Reader’s Letter, Below: 

Hello!

Thank you for your reply!

....

Dialectic is yes, certainly, but only in part, as we see it, about humans coming to comprehend, ever more concretely, the development of human “natural languages” -- of both ‘‘‘generalist’’’ and specialist, or “technical”, human languages.

And, as we see it, yes, dialectic is also about humans coming to understand other human-social structures as well.

Indeed, as we see it, dialectic is, in part, about humans coming to comprehend the total ‘‘‘human phenome’’’ -- the entire non-chromosomal inheritance, the total ‘‘‘memes pool’’’, of human-social “cultures”.

[Indeed, our second book, A Dialectical Theory of Everything, volume 2, focuses on the dialectics of ‘‘‘the human phenome’’’].

As such, dialectics is, in part, about ‘ideo-ontology’, and about ‘ideo-physio-ontology’ -- about the ‘ideo-meta-genealogy’ of human ideas, of the ‘dialectical speciation’ of human ideation.

But, as we see it, ‘ideation’ is an almost uniquely human capability and activity.

Whence, we have to ask you, comes your idea that categories -- even “empty categories” -- somehow exist somehow apart from human minds, from human brains, from collective, social networks of inter-communicating human beings; from human cultures?

Where do such categories exist, and of what are they composed?

Do you posit that every possible idea and category already exists, in some intangible, immutable, absolutely statical transcendental substance, from eternity, and completely apart from human minds and human societies?

If so, we would see that as a contra-empirical, contra-scientific, mystical Platonism -- mathematical and more -- of the grossest kind; as an ideology with which you are afflicting your own cognition.

It is not our fault if both the speciation of humans-produced ideas/categories, and the speciation of pre-human and extra-human Nature at all known scales, as well as the speciation of human ‘ideo-physio-ontology’, all exhibit the, thus universal, aufheben processes and relations of ‘meta-monad-ization’, of ‘meta-unit-ization’, of ‘meta-holon-ization’. It is not our fault. It is an observable, empirical fact for all of these three aspects of Nature.

Nature as a whole is ‘aufheben-ative’. Therefore, Nature as a whole is dialectical.

Our human Nature is a part of Nature. Our human Nature has grown out of pre-human Nature. Is it, given those two facts, such a surprise that the aufheben, dialectical, universal architectonic of Nature also applies to the human part of Nature?

We see, when we look at Nature, not just the reductive [and actually idealist] abstraction “Matter”.

The cosmos that we see is ‘ontologically combinatoric’.

To us, atoms, and their ionized nuclei, are different than free-roaming protons, neutrons, and electrons. Atoms constitute a different kind of being, that was, once, in the deep past history of our cosmos, a brand new kind of being, brand new ontology, generated by a ‘physio-onto-dynamasis’, from, and by the agency of, pre-atomic “particles”, e.g., by the initial, ‘‘‘cosmological nucleosynthesis’’’, as well as by later, and still ongoing, “stellar nucleosynthesis”, both kinds of nucleosynthesis representing special cases of aufheben ‘meta-unit-ization’.

The molecules in the “molecular clouds” from which new stars and, later, new planets were born -- and still are being born -- were once only “atomic clouds”.

Those “atomic clouds” transformed themselves, as the variety and density of higher atomic species increased, due to the explosively diffused enrichment of the “interstellar medium”, which gives birth to these “clouds”, by the products of advanced stellar nucleosynthesis.

This self-transformation of atoms into molecules was a cosmological aufheben process, a process of aufheben ‘meta-unit-ization’, by which some of the atom units transformed themselves into higher, molecule units, each molecule unit being a ‘meta-unit’ relative to atoms as units, each molecule unit being made up out of a typically heterogeneous multiplicity of atom units.

If you reduce, in your mind, atoms to “just” protons, neutrons, and electrons; if you reduce, in your mind, molecules to “just” atoms; if you reduce, in your mind, “prokaryotic” or ‘‘‘pre-eukaryotic’’’ living cells to “just” molecules -- and if you reduce all of these different kinds of things to just “quarks” and “gluons”, etc., then that is a choice that you are making, and you have a right to make that choice.

But we see “pre-atomic particles”, “atoms”, “molecules”, and ‘‘‘pre-eukaryotic’’’ living cells as prevailing names for four different kinds of being, for four ontological categories for four qualitatively-different kinds of units; for four successive, progressional kinds of being that are related ‘meta-genealogically’, and such that each produces its successor by a dialectical process, a process of aufheben, ‘meta-unit-izing’ combinatorics.

Hence we see these four ontological categories as characterizing four “epochs” in a cosmological-ontological dialectic of natural history -- in a singular ‘dialectic of Nature’.

As we see it -- “everything changes.” -- is a true, if still very abstract, summary statement about our experienced actuality.

The statement -- ‘each well-formulated ‘‘‘eventity’’’ changes itself as well as being changed by the impacts upon it of other ‘‘‘eventities’’’.’ -- is a somewhat less abstract, and even truer summary statement.

Indeed, as you say, the truth-about-human-experience of the summary statement -- “everything changes.” -- implies that this humans-formulated statement too must change, since this statement itself is a -- human, mental kind of -- “thing”; a part of, "every", "thing".

It should change, in our opinions, into a more concrete statement, such as -- each well-formulated ‘‘‘eventity’’’ changes itself as well as being changed by the impacts upon it of other ‘‘‘eventities’’’, and as well as changing other ‘‘‘eventities’’’ with which it interacts.’

But it must mean, in our view, that the kinds of change also change, along with “everything changing” -- along with the changing of everything else.

The statement -- “everything changes.” -- also implies, in our view, that ‘change changes’.

That is, the kind of change in which some pre-atomic “particles” change themselves into atoms is a different species of change from the kind of change in which some atoms change themselves into molecules.

Likewise, the kind of change in which some molecules change themselves into ‘‘‘pre-eukaryotic living cells’’’ is a different species of change from the kind of change in which some atoms change themselves into molecules. The specifics of change, well, themselves change themselves, but the generics of change persist.

As “change” goes on, new species of change, new kinds of change, manifest. But all of these qualitatively, ontologically different species of change that we just noted above involve the general features of ‘aufheben meta-unit-ization’. Hence they all inhere in the same genos of dialectic.

The kinds of change manifested in the history of change, in the history of Nature, in natural history, grow, change, or diversify. But all of these kinds of deep, qualitative, ontological change inhere in the ‘super-category’ of dialectic; of the, singular, ‘dialectic of Nature’.

We do not see that the chain of ontological, aufheben, dialectical self-transformations in Nature has ever “split” into “two or more irreconcilable strands”.

We do not see that ‘‘‘radical dualisms’’’ exist, or persist, in nature.

Synthesis, hybridization, complex unification eventually arises, though the opposite kinds of units that later become synthesized or hybridized typically still continue to ‘‘‘evolutely’’’ persist, even after the higher unit[ie]s that constitute their ‘‘‘hybrids’’’, dialectical “syntheses”, or ‘‘complex unit[ie]s’’’ have combinatorically manifested.

We see the progression of our cosmos as a whole, and within each of its included “Domains”, as being more ‘‘‘evolute’’’ than ‘‘‘convolute’’’, and, as a whole, as being ‘covolute’, ‘covoluteness’ being our name for the dialectical synthesis of ‘convoluteness’ and ‘evoluteness’.

Dialogically yours,

Miguel

Letter from a Guest of the dialectics website:

Hi, thanks for the response. Right now I can only give a brief response ... .

As of writing, my impression is that dialectics is a practice revolving around about us understanding the development of 'natural language' (aka everyday language which most people use) and technical language as well as other human social structures, which we are responsible for given that we are the only reason-capable forces who shape our societies and our resources (including our bodies).

On the other hand, from what I've read, you have made it a theory about the development of the entire universe.

So far I have two main questions about this.

First, I don't understand qualitative 'self critique'.

Is it merely to do with the bunching together of similar things giving rise to a new kind of order or is it something else?

If so I'm not entirely sure how it's a 'different kind of being', and if it really is, then surely it must already be in existence as a category even if it is 'empty', though to me that sounds like the kind of teleology which we should be dispensing with or tell us nothing at all because infinite such categories exist, and we end up back in the modern ideology with its familiar anthropomorphisations and other such reifications.

The other question is about change.  

If everything changes, the truth of the statement 'everything changes' is also set to change, which would yield a formal contradiction -- what happens then?

Is there another kind of change?

What form could it take, if it takes one at all?

Are the forms already linked with how we describe and understand them, so that we end up in a situation similar to Marx where we know we can't get away with describing whole economies without also focusing on their parts (because that amounts to using abstractions)?

My additional question:  are there forks in the dialectic where the chain splits into two or more irreconcilable strands or do we get every single combination of qualities with some being empty?

Thanks for responding to me earlier and I hope to hear from you again.

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, please see --

www.dialectics.info

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ -- see:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DialecticsMATH

¡ENJOY!

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

Voting Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.],

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison,

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

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