Foundations of Special Systems Theory

Chapter 01

In the Name of the Completion of Nature

Kent Palmer

http://kdp.me

kent@palmer.name

714-633-9508

Copyright 2013, 2014 K.D. Palmer

All rights reserved. Not for distribution.

FoundationsOfSpecialSystemsTheory01a03kdp20140119a

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5298-4422

2013.7.3 edited 2014.01.19

Introduction

This work is prompted by the publication of Terrence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature.

Deacon’s book attempts to rethink the foundations of physics in order to make the case

for the non-miraculous possibility for the arising of Life, and Consciousness. In the

tradition of H. Maturana, F. Varella and S. Kaufmann and others in the artificial life and

artificial consciousness research community he is trying to work out the necessary

conditions for the possibility of Life and Consciousness within the limits set by current

contemporary physics. In many ways his effort is complementary to that of R. Rosen in

Life Itself, where Rosen attempts to show using Category Theory that when we consider

both inference and causality as modes of entailment that there are possible entailment

structures that are possible that make biology possible within the episteme of physics as

considered from the point of view of entailment structures that are possible which are

more complex than normally considered within the mechanistic paradigm. Deacon does

not mention Rosen but refers to him in his bibliography and so is aware of Rosen’s work.

I see the work of Rosen and Deacon as complementary. But beyond the physicalist

paradigm I see his work also in the light of Heidegger’s Being and Time (B&T). The

followers of Varella such as E. Thompson in Mind in Life delve into phenomenology as a

way to ground their paradigm that includes according to Mark Rowlands in The New

Science of the Mind being “embodied (made up partly of extraneural bodily structures

and processes), embedded (designed to function in tandem with the environment),

enacted (constituted in part by action), and extended (located in the environment)”.

Thompson appeals to Merleau-Ponty in the Structure of Behavior (Comportment) as the

basis for his phenomenological rethinking of autopoietic Theory which was begun in The

Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Unfortunately, even though

the Thompson and Varela approach is very popular from the point of view of Special

Systems Theory and Phenomenology their account has significant problems and it turns

out that from that point of view Deacon’s work is much nearer the mark but still not a

complete theory. So here our attempt will be to bring Special Systems Theory and

Phenomenology to bear on the theory of Deacon in order to give it more structure from

the mathematical and physical anomalies that are the basis of Special Systems Theory

and at the same time giving it a foundation in human experience that phenomenology

strives to attain. It is as if Deacon tried to rewrite B&T within a present-at-hand mode

recognizing the limits of that mode via ententional1 phenomena that appear as abstential

2

eventities. It is as if Deacon’s approach to showing the limitation of the present-at-hand is

to relativize it to what is missing in it which at the level of life and then even more at the

level of mind become what is central to the phenomena itself, what is not there is what is

the most important thing about the phenomena, and all the phenomena that are there are

pointing toward what is missing. Heidegger on the other hand relativizes the present-at-

hand, which he sees as a Cartesian product mostly stemming from the innovation of the

combination of algebra and geometry by showing that there are other modes access to

phenomena other than the present-at-hand such as those of the ready-to-hand and that of

Dasein to itself. So Heidegger fills in some of the holes that exist in the present-at-hand

accounts in a positive way by giving human beings other modes of access to phenomena

while Deacon is merely pointing to what is missing in the physicalist accounts that is

very important to the understanding of life and mind. Deacons generalization of all

absentential phenomena as ententional is helpful in as much as it takes what generally are

spoken of separately and recognizes that it is a single category from the point of view of

what cannot be understood based on the mechanistic and thermodynamic physicalist

account. Then he uses what we do know about the physicalist account to try to show how

those levels of phenomena come into existence that refer to ententional phenomena

intrinsically. For the most part this occurs beyond the thermodynamic level at the level of

what Deacon calls Morphdynamics which is what he calls negentropic phenomena ala

Prigogine. But he goes beyond both Thermodynamics and Morphodynamics to posit a

level he calls Teleodynamic where ententional phenomena arise as abstential eventities at

play within the interaction between morphodynamic entities. In Special Systems Theory

the morphodynamic emergent level Deacon posits is equivalent to the Dissipative

Ordering Special System that is also based on the work of Prigogine and what he explains

as “dissipative structures”, i.e. dynamic negative entropy processes that are ordering

systems that are far from equilibrium. But also in Special Systems Theory there is a

corollary for the Teleodynamic systems that come out of the interaction of two different

morphodynamic systems which is the Autopoietic Symbiotic Special System. What

Deacon does not have is the next level up from the Teleodynamic which I would call

“Sociodynamic” and would associate with the Reflexive Social Special System. So

Deacon is missing a level in the emergent sequence that is predicted to exist by Special

Systems Theory, and this level is also missing in the Thompson account. The whole

purpose of Special Systems Theory is to show that the social level of emergence is just as

fundamental as that of Life and Consciousness. And Special Systems Theory does that by

appointing out anomalous mathematical and physical phenomena that have a structuring

which suggest that the three emergent levels are different but always go together and

entail each other. Special Systems Theory establishes the importance of Sociological

Theory as having something to contribute to the debates about the origins of Life and the

1 A neologism by Deacon that is a generic adjective for “describing all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achive something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value” 2 A neologism coined by Deacon for “the paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly non-existent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes in inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind”

Mind, in as much as the origin of the Socius is implicated in the structures that constrain

the physical systems in such a way that the possibility of life, mind and social have their

its necessary conditions in mathematical and physical phenomena. It is interesting that

Deacon’s whole book talks about these absences in terms of constraint, but he does not

specify what it is that provides this constraint that causes life and mind to arise as through

morphodynamic and teleodynamic processes. In special Systems Theory there is an

answer to this question. Special Systems Theory is based on Anomalies in Mathematics

and Physics and seeks to generalize the application of those anomalies by analogy to

explain the existence of the necessary conditions for the possibility of life, mind, and the

social. Thus it is mathematical and physical anomalies that constrain physics such that the

emergent levels of Life, Consciousness and the Social are possible within the constraints

of Physics and the Mathematical structures inscribed in existence that influence the

physical structures that are possible, that in turn makes Life, Consciousness and the

Social possible as emergent thresholds of phenomena. Since we are living, social, and

conscious we cannot deny that these thresholds are possible within our universe on our

planet because we are the existential proof of that. Phenomenology comes in to the

picture because all experience of some objective world that we posit as existing as a

reality beyond us, must be experienced by our consciousness as living beings who are in

social communities such as that of scientists. In other words as Bernstein says about Kant

the only road to Transcendental Realism is through Transcendental Idealism. We only

know about the present-at-hand phenomena of objective nature as subjects via our

conscious experience of it, and so we cannot escape our entanglement and implication in

the observations that we make of nature. So the fundamental problem we face is that we

are the best example of what we are studying when we study Life, Consciousness, and

the Social, but we are not the only examples because there are other biological forms that

exemplify this phenomena, but we are the only ones that thermalize it consciously and

turn out thematizations of the phenomena into science. So that is how phenomenology

comes into the picture and the key figure in phenomenology is Heidegger and his early

work called B&T which explicitly attempts to connect physical science to the lifeworld

of everyday normal human beings through the characterization of Dasein (being there),

i.e., being-in-the-world.

Unfortunately the Mathematics and Physics that is appealed to by Special Systems

Theory through its analogies indicates that the theory of autopoietic systems developed

by Maturana and Varella is flawed and we can see this flaw continuing in the work of

Thompson. Also Thompson appeals to an early work of Merleau-Ponty as his reference

point into Phenomenology and that leads to further problems. We really do need to

understand Phenomenology as a school in toto if we are going to appeal to it. And we

need to get the mathematical grounding of autopoietic theory right in order to have a

chance of making sense of the unique phenomena that we are exploring. Science is not

very good at describing unique phenomena. And we ourselves are unique to our

knowledge, at least until some Aliens show up. My teacher said in Astronomy class that

we understand the lifecycle of trees in a forest by walking into the forest and seeing trees

at all stages of their development. And that we did the same thing with galaxies or stars,

we observe their myriad forms and then work out our hypothesis about the process that

they go though in their physical evolution. For human beings there is no forest, but only

one tree, our family tree in evolution. And although we know that animals are living and

have awareness and sometimes are social, we are the only creature we know that exhibits

full consciousness, social as well as living characteristics all in the same entity, and it is

because of this that we can have science, and culture in general. So our science of

ourselves faces much greater hurdles than our sciences of other phenomena. We mistreat

lab rats but we tend not to want to mistreat ourselves in the same way we mistreat

laboratory animals, at least for scientific purposes. Our humanistic biases get in the way

of our own objective study of ourselves, which is a good thing. But it shows our

fundamental bias when it comes to study of ourselves. We are not recommending we get

over that, but we do want to point out that this bias is an impediment, like the fact that all

our experience of ourselves comes though living socially conditioned consciousness

which is the phenomena we wish to explain objectively. It is because of this impediment

that we are forced to consider phenomenology as a crucial part of our research agenda,

something that Deacon is not willing to accept as yet as has Thompson.

However, Deacon has made important advances in rethinking some of the fundamental

concepts of physics to show the importance of abstential eventities within their

definitions. And when we combine that with the positive formulation of phenomenology

of Heidegger we get a fairly complete picture of the phenomenological grounds of

science as the thematization of present-at-hand phenomena. Here we are going to

consider some of the implications of Heidegger’s views that perhaps have not been

brought out before that are relevant to the study of the Special Systems which define the

levels of morphodynamic, teleodynamic and sociodynamic phenomena. We will set that

in a broader rethinking of the Kantian Episteme as what we will call a meta-episteme.

That view will subsume the work of R. Rosen which attempts to define what Rosen calls

complex phenomena and anticipative systems. Deacon’s valiant effort to understand

ententional phenomena based on abstential eventites is itself hollow without this broader

context which understands it in relation to the Kantian Episteme as interpreted by Husserl

and transformed by Heidegger into a critique of Objective Science. Deacon’s work is a

radical departure that physicicalists are not going to be able to understand because it says

that entententional phenomena that is based on abstential eventities are not physical, and

that physical phenomena is revolving around something that is not there. But it can be

understood in philosophies such as that of Deleuze in Logic of Sense in which there are

floating signifiers that exist in crossed series. Deleuze uses the advent of the floating

signifiers in crossed series to explain difference between sense and non-sense. His is the

first work to build on and extend that of Russell and his theory of Higher Logical Types

as summarized by Copi. Analytical Philosophy abandoned the study of Higher Logical

Types and it is very interesting that Deleuze was the next philosopher to make headway

in attempting to understand how gaps, or holes can have significance and mediate the

distinction, which accentuates the difference that makes a difference between sense and

non-sense. There are many tools that have been developed outside of Physics that can be

used to explain the type of phenomena he is indicating which is central to understanding

the physical phenomena of life and mind (as well as the social) but which are not

available to him within the realm of physics. Here we will bring those tools to bear to

contextualize the important distinctions that Deacon is making which are indeed

necessary to understand to make sense of Morphodynanics, Teleodynamics, and even

Sociodynamics. Special Systems Theory is a complete meta-theory of how these various

emergent levels fit together and are interrelated. A snapshot of the theory has recently

been captured in a brief monograph. But this theory has been around since the early

1990s and has been languishing without any impact on current theorizing in the

problematic of Life, Consciousness and the Social. Hopefully, by connecting Special

Systems Theory to the work of Terrence Deacon in Incomplete Nature others will

recognize that a complete meta-theory exists and be able to make use of it to solve some

of the conundrums that are being faced in explaining the Biology of Life and

Consciousness, as well as in Sociobiology.

Kantian Meta-Episteme

At least as far as Science is concerned we live in the Kantian Episteme and the

modifications of that Episteme by Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger do not modify its

limits but rather adhere to those limits. However, the work of Robert Rosen in Life Itself

uses Mathematical Category Theory to consider the relation of causality to inference

under the auspices of entailment to see that mathematical mechanistic physics has room

for complex phenomena within it and thus a place for Biological phenomena which had

not been noticed before. We can take a hint from Rosen who only refers to Descartes

philosophy and not that of Kant to think about what it would mean to apply Category

Theory to the Kantian Episteme. When we do that as has been done in “Towards a

Deeper Theory of Everything” my attempt to goad Len Troncale to write his book that he

has threatened to write on a Deeper Theory of Everything about Systems Theory. In my

exploration of this territory from a philosophical point of view I ran into the fact that it

was possible to apply Category Theory to the Kantian Episteme and generate the meta-

episteme, which in turn shows that the meta-episteme has more room in it than we had

previously thought for interesting phenomena like life, consciousness, and society.

Set: Algebra, co-Analysis = Time = Indirect Product = schematization, Set: Co-algebra = Analysis = Co-space = Direct Product = reductionism Mass: Synthesis = Geometry = Space = Direct Sum = holism Mass: Co-synthesis, Co-geometry = Co-time = Indirect Sum = Topology = virtual

The key for transforming the Kantian Episteme into the Meta-episteme is the realization

that Algebra stands in for Arithmetic as the analogy for time that is the dual of geometries

analogy for space. And by category theory we can derive the co-algebra by reversing

arrows, and eventually they worked out that a co-algebra was a state machine. And it

turns out that Analysis exists with respect to the Co-algebra and not the Algebra, which is

the opposite of Synthesis related to Geometry. So there is a problem that once the co-

algebra is implicated then that means there must also be a co-geometry which is

obviously Topology. When we do the same Category Theory trick to A priori and A

posteriori we find that there is an extra moment of time as well, which I call the mythic

moment, which is the co-now. Now this realization that the Kantian Episteme can be

expanded into a meta-episteme via categorical analysis ripples throughout the Kantian

limits on Science. The limits have extra space in them that no one seems to have

discovered previously, because the idea of submitting them to a categorical analysis

seems so far fetched. However, once we make that move then the work of Deacon

becomes more tenable. This is because just like a new moment of time appearing a whole

new moment of Co-synthesis, Co-time, Co-geometry shows up that never would have

been thought to exist previously.

We have to say that there are four Aspects of Being, which are Reality, Truth, Identity,

and Presence. Deacon says that the absential eventities that come into play at the

teleodynamic level are Absences that make a difference, that have value. But this does

not put them outside the realm of the aspects of Being. Rather it brings up the importance

of absence in the same way that Deleuze brings up the importance of Difference, or

Nietzsche bring up the importance of Lies, or others like Descartes brings up the

importance of illusion (the work of an evil demon one might imagine in the place of God

if you doubted everything). But the absential does not leave the realm of Being, we are

merely emphasizing the importance of what is absent as being a phenomena too, as

Heidegger does in B&T. Once we realize that a whole categorical realm which is hitherto

unknown has been absent throughout the Kantian Epistemic epoch then it is less hard to

believe that other absent phenomena that might be important might also be missing. But

the way that Deacon talks about what is missing has a problem of being a purely negative

description. What we really need is a positive description of the role that what is missing

plays like that given by Deleuze in Logic of Sense with regard to the floating signifier

within intersecting series. That is what Heidegger gives us in B&T. He gives us a way to

step away from the present-at-hand epistemic mode that is based on objectivity and

subjectivity being dualistically distinguished. Through the intermediary of the ready-to-

hand mode of dealing with Poesis via Techne he moves toward the attempt to bring us

back to Aristotle’s idea of Phronesis (Judgment) being the realm of direct experience as

the province of Dasein. This is a reaffirmation of fundamental Aristotelian categories

rooted in ancient Greek usage. Heidegger is saying we have forgotten the different kinds

of Knowledge that Aristotle recognized and have reduced everything to Epistemic

knowledge in our time, just as we have reduced all causation to the efficient. Deacon is

trying to resurrect the other forms of Aristotelian causation and their importance. Rosen

also referred to Aristotelian causes, which was taken up by J. Kineman and related to the

quasi-causality in the relation to between the system and the niche within the meta-

system, which are explored in the paper What are the Principles that arise in Practice? by the author. By remembering the classical distinctions between different types of

knowledge as framed by Aristotle is according to Heidegger in B&T the way for us to

reclaim our relation to science. The epistemic view of science was given a very large

boost by the marriage of algebra and geometry by Descartes. That was an extremely

important fundamental basis for physics description to be founded on. Science and

Technology took off after the enlightenment took hold based on the initial flurry of

Rationalist philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz augmented by Locke and

Hume. The most important move was made by Newton, which united the mechanics of

the Heavens and the Earth. And it was to shore up the foundations of the physics of

Newton and in response to the Skepticism of Hume that Kant ventured his systematic

philosophy. Although Kant’s philosophy, which was based on the Calculus for its

structure and inspiration, was criticized on many accounts for instance by Hegel, it

continued to set the fundamental direction for the Western worldview’s grounding of

Science because all the major thinkers continued to operate within its limits, even

Nietzsche and Heidegger. Now we can see that these limits actually have more room in

them when looked at through the lens of Category theory than has been understood by the

tradition up till now. And this is because Kant took Arithmetic and Geometry as the

models for time and space. Since Arithmetic as Algebra and Geometry were merged into

Algebraic Geometry by Descartes it was only a matter of time before Spacetime was

recognized as a continuum as it was by Hegel according to Heidegger, and then

eventually by Einstein as a fundamental concept of the background for all physical

phenomena that happen in spacetime. Heidegger’s B&T was a fundamental response to

Relativity Theory which attempted to reverse the primacy of Space and instead give

primacy to time within the fusion of spacetime, by instead developing the idea of

timespace as the essentially human temporality upon which all science of what happens

in the present-at-hand of spacetime is based. Heidegger’s attempt to reverse the primacy

of the terms involved in the spacetime continuum so that the symmetry breaking is

understood in a different way from a human perspective was a major move to reassert the

primacy of the lifeworld over the present-at-hand epistemic view of everything

established by Science. This view of Heidegger played off the model of special relativity

of Minkowski in order to imagine timespace. It is quite clear that there are two different

ways of looking at time, one in which there is three dimensions of space and one of time,

and the other in which there are three dimensions of time and nowhere that appears in

Minkowski’s representation of special relativity. Each lightcone has a present, a future

and a past, and what ever falls out of the light cone is nowhere from the point of view of

that lightcone, in an unreachable place with respect to causality. One way to think of

Dasein is as the vertex of the light cone. It has a future (projection) and past (throwness)

temporal ecstatic horizons, but it also has a present (falling) ecstatic temporal horizon and

the fourth temporal horizon, the mythic ends up being nowhere in this model. The present

temporal horizon is the movement of time itself, which is thermodynamically directional,

with a specific arrow of time determined by entropy. When we bring thermodynamics

into play with the Minkowski model we get the future directed temporality that

Heidegger gives precedence to over the other temporal ecstasies. Heidegger sees the

vertex of that lightcone as the fundamental projective nature of the human being which

Kant called the Transcendental Subject of apperception and which Heidegger trying to

get to a place before the Subject/Object dichotomy arise calls Dasein. Heidegger sees the

light cones as ecstatic dimensions of time rooted in the nature of Dasein. There is the

Future lightcone in the direction of times arrow, and the Past lightcone in the contra

direction determined by entropy. But there is also the ecstasy of the present in which the

actual vertex of the cone must continually move within the four dimensional spacetime

continuum which is the third ecstasy. But as noted there must be in the Minkowski model

a nowhere that falls outside any given lightcone. Heidegger assigns existentials to these

moments of time. Befindlichkiet (foundness) is assigned to the past, Verstehen

(understanding) to the future, and Falling to the present. The existential of Rede (talk,

discourse) remains unassigned to any moment of time and we would have to assign it to

nowhere, i.e. the things that are discussed in talk are really nowhere, they are ententional

phenomena that appear as references to abstential eventities. In the opposite view of

spacetime x+y+z-ict it is time which is nowhen which is to say disembodied instead of

nowhere of space in the Mikowski model. If time is imaginary then it is circular because

there is an inherent circularity though the cycle from real to imaginary numbers positive

and negative. But in the Minkowski model time is linear as a hyperplane must be seen as

moving through four dimensional timespace. Different observers are in different

reference frames based on the speed of the movement of their hyperplanes, but also

whether their lightcones make them reachable by light exchanged between observers.

There is lots of unreachable “nowhere” space which is called “null space” by some in this

lightcone model. But for Heidegger this unreachable space is intrinsic to the model which

makes space associated with Dasein “deseverence” which is its own spatiality. In effect

Heidegger uses the Minkowski model as the basis for reclaiming temporality for Dasein

from Einsteinian relativity. Dasein is falling on a hyperplane through timespace, which is

the ecstasy of the present. Thermodynamics determines the ecstasies of the past and

future based on times arrow. Thus all the temporal moments are accounted for, but there

is still an existential that is not accounted for temporally which is Logos (rede, discourse,

talk). We associate that left over existential with the lost moment of time we call mythos,

which is the virtual co-now that pops up when we apply category theory to the Kantian

Episteme to derive the meta-episteme. And of course that co-now appears in co-time that

is the fourth lost quadrant of the displacement between algebra-geometry as models for

time-space, and the analysis-synthesis duality that because of the link of analysis to co-

algebra creates the necessity for co-geometry that we recognize as topology.

The fourth quadrant that is unearthed in the meta-episteme is a virtual realm in which can

support the ententional pheonemena that connects absentential eventities with actual

present eventities that reference them semiotically. Deleuze talks about this realm and its

necessity using Bergson as a backdrop in Bergsonism. He distinguishes between Real and

Possible verses Virtual and Actual. It turns out that these are really the phases of the

Emergent Meta-system and so we can think of the emergent meta-system phases as

analogous to the quadrants of the meta-episteme:

Mass: Geometry Synthesis Space = Real (Fourth, synergy)

Set: Algebra Co-analysis Time = Actual (Present, Third, continua)

Co-Set: Co-algebra Analysis Co-space = Possible (True, Second, relata)

Co-mass: Co-geometry Co-synthesis Co-time = Virtual (Identical, First, isolata)

What ever is in space is real and what is possible is in co-space. What ever is in time is

actual and what is virtual is in co-time. Thus when we think about probability we see that

it is determined by actualized instances that occur in time. When those instances occur at

a particular place in space they are real. There are many other possible actualizations that

do not occur and just remain possible and so they can be said to be in the adjacent

possible in co-space. But what has not factored into our analysis is the virtual temporality

that Bergson points out which can be seen in the expansion and contraction of living

time. It is not just as Wm. James says that there is a specious present, i.e. that it takes

time for something to be what it is, and we can never find the infinitesimal present

moment but only an hazy and ambiguous flurry of activity that we grasp as a whole, but

rather there is a time unaccounted for by physics that Bergson called the Elan Vitale.

There is a virtual time, a co-present that is mythic and is sustained only in logos and is

intrinsically social. We consider that to be the intersection of two orthogonal timelines

which gives the possibility of time expanding and contracting which is not possible in the

present-at-hand notion of time in which each moment is external to every other moment

within the four dimensional manifold of spacetime. This is to say that each vertex of a

light cone is a point of intersection of orthogonal timelines and that is why there are four

moments of time and not three so that all the existentials of Heidegger can be mapped to

moments of time, the outstanding one being the virtual co-now of mythos in discourse.

But the key here in the context of Deacon’s work as seen through the lens of Deleuze is

that there is a realm within the Kantian Meta-episteme unrecognized until now whereby

ententional phenomena related to absential eventities can make contact at a distance with

the presences that indicate them semiotically. And this is of course true of the other

aspects of Being as well, i.e. illusion, fiction, difference, all the anti-aspects can be

mediated through the virtual to the given aspect. This for instance is how we get the

relation between what Badiou calls the Multiple and the Ultra-One to Monicity and

Plurality. The Multiple as pure heterogeneity of difference is virtual until the ultra-one

appears and then cardinality becomes possible as for instance the three versions of

rationality Monicity of Spinoza, Duality of Descartes, and Plurality of Leibniz. The

plethora of fictions that exist in novels live in a virtual world of the interior of

Subjectivity. Virtuality allows the absent to co-exist with the present, haunting it as

meaning haunts the words on a page, or value haunts commodities, or purpose haunts our

actions. This haunting phenomena is well described as a general economy by Arkady

Plotnitsky in Complementarities and In the Shadow of Hegel based on the work of

Bataille in Accursed Share. Essentially every ententional phenomena opens up a general

economy within which the anti-aspect haunts the aspect via a virtual connection. The

aspects are merely the representatives of the Perician Philosophical Categories where

Identity is a First (isolata), Truth a Second (relata), Presence a Third (continua) and

Reality a Fourth (synergy) which are all subsumed into Existenz which is a Fifth

signifying integrity. This series is founded on a Zeroth, which is seen in the concepts of

emptiness or void, and its bookend is a Sixth which is has the property of poise. One way

to see Dasein is as the expression of that Poise toward the ecstatic horizons of thrown

past, falling present, projected future, and mythic discourse. But that poise is based on the

ecstasy of projection, thrownness, falling, discoursing that appears in Existence. And

existence contains a synergetic reality, that in turn contains myriad presences as continua,

and that in turn contains many truths as relata, which in turn contains many identities as

isolata all arising out of a background of Zeroth of nondual emptiness or void. The Fifth

of Existenz that has integrity is in four dimensional space and has four moments of time

related to each other by the Quaternion group. And it is this group that is at the heart of

the Autopoietic System. It is by this group that the ententional phenomena enters the

teleodynamic. Linear time is broken up and we enter the Heterchronic Era when we

realize that time is no longer conceived coherently as linear or circular only. Time is a

hyperplane moving through the fourth dimension in the Minkowski model. But this

model has its own complexities when we try to relate it to the human being considered as

Dasein in order to understand our relation to timespace. The mythic is what takes place

nowhere and nowhen that is outside the causal matrix of physics, but it is also this non-

causal realm that allows ententional phenomena to communicate between presences

semiotically with absential eventities. Heidegger understands this need for a semiotic

level associated with the ready-to-hand while Thompson jumps right to the symbolic

level skipping the structural semiotic layer in his invocation of Merleau-Ponty to attempt

to understand mind in relation to the autopoietic. This use of early Merleau-Ponty to help

establish the jump to mind belies the actual sophistication of the later Merleau-Ponty and

his interest in Signs as an intermediate step.

Thus we would like to interpret Deacon’s pursuit of an understanding of ententional

phenomena via the semiotic connection described by Heidegger explicitly in B&T

between abstential eventities and present referring loci. Deacon says that we must add to

Shannon’s information model both the referent but also the interpretant, which is close to

the idea that Peirce had in his more sophisticated semiotics based on mediation than that

of de Saussure based only on relata. Deacon does not dwell on Peirce’s semiotics but we

can see it hovering in the background. Once we bring semiotics into play then we have

the bridge to logic, and it is across that bridge that Robert Rosen will want to cross to see

inference and causality as two aspects of entailment. Heidegger is evidently not aware of

Peirce’s prior phenomenology and semiotics despite the influence of Emil Last on him

who was influenced by Peirce. But what we do get in Heidegger is the use of prescession

which they both get from Duns Scottus. Prescession is a quasi-analysis that looks to the

structure of things without taking them apart. It is a middle ground between analysis and

synthesis. The thought of Perice was grounded in his Fathers contributions to

hypercomplex algebras. For Peirce Algebras entail hypercomplex versions. Hyper-

complex algebras give us access to a realm of pure exteriority even greater than that

which appears in the present-at-hand marriage of algebra and geometry inaugurated by

Descartes. But perhaps we can see topology as the opposite of that in which

transformational continuities are seen as the basis for present-at-hand continuities. Thus

both Co-Analysis and Co-Synthesis give us other alternatives to analysis and synthesis as

they are normally understood in the Kantian parlance. Prescission seems like a type of

balancing between Co-analysis and Co-synthesis. On the one hand there is a withdraw

into a realm of imaginaries that has its own differentiation and leads to interpenetration.

On the other hand there is an immersion into topology in which transformations between

shapes are seen as homeomorphic that leads to inter-inclusion. Prescission is nondual

between Analysis and Synthesis calling on the resources of co-analysis and co-synthesis.

Co-analysis gives us schematization while Co-synthesis gives us the virtual realm of

transformation between forms. Co-analysis supports the articulation of schemas as

templates of understanding on the basis of which analysis is carried out. Co-Synthesis

gives us a structural underpinning that allows transformations between these schemas

which may be multiply projected on a given ontic phenomena. The two together gives us

a way to understand the phenomena via its constitutive schemas though the

intertransformation between those schemas without piercing the veil of wholeness by

taking the phenomena apart in a reductionist way. When we do not take it apart then we

do not have the problem of not being able to put it together again. Dealing with life and

the mind as well as the social, if you reductively take them apart then they are dead and

have been transformed into something else, mere matter. But also holism does not tell

you much about the phenomena that you do not already know. Thus prescession comes to

the rescue and allows you to observe the phenomenon and infer its hidden differentiation

without killing it, much the same as we do when we use fMRIs, CAT, or PET scans. We

have to look inside the Transcendental Ego without killing it, and that is the whole point

of daseinanalysis which is really a form of prescession. That vertex of the light cone,

what is inside of it when it is a living, conscious, social observer. Heidegger attempts to

postulate what it might be within the wholeness of Dasein based on a rough equivalence

between the categories of the object postulated by Kant and the existentials which are the

minimal structure for reflexivity as discovered by Hegel.

Quality = Befindlichkeit (foundness, mood, state of mind) Thrown, Past

Quantity = Falling (counting nows) degenerate mode of other existentials Present

Relation = Rede (discourse, talk) Hypothesis: Mythic virtual moment

Modality = Verstehen (understanding) Projection, Future

Heidegger was searching for four existentials to balance the four categories of Kant. But

on a deeper level Heidegger was taking to heart the stages of self-reflection unearthed by

Hegel. Heidegger building on the work of Dilthey was also trying to represent the minimal structure of reflexivity. If you think about reflexivity and what is needed as a minimal system to represent it then of course you will need something like befindlichkeit (the situation in which you find yourself thrown) and its moods that connect the person with the situation prior to the arising of subject and object as external to each other. Befindlichkeit is like the sense certainty of Hegel, it is as Braver says like the starting position of naïve realism. It is the situation in which one is totally immersed and from which one has not differentiated oneself. Then just as Hegel talks about the first step out of sense certainty being self-consciousness of the slave, so also Heidegger that step is back to understanding (verstehen). There is a preconceptual understanding in the thrown situation, and when that becomes conceptual then it is seen in terms of its possibility as projected into the future. The next step back from sense certainty beyond self-consciousness for Hegel is into rationality which is based in Logos. So to for Heidegger the next step back is into rede (talk, discourse) when one is able to articulate ones understanding of the situation. For Hegel there is a further step that he adds to those of Kant which is a step back to Spirit which is the criteria that is used by reason to set limits on its use in speculation. Kant does not believe that there are any possible limits on reason nor any criterion beyond reason, and that is why reason for Kant is so dangerous and must be mixed with experience to be useful. Kant does not believe that Pure Reason

has a use in itself because of this lack of any criterion to tell the antimonies apart. Hegel believes that there is a criterion that arises out of Reason itself that allows Speculative Reason to function as a dialectic and that is what gives you the possibility of aufhebung. Spirit of course takes us back to common sense of the community as it evolves in history and more deeply understands itself and its place in the world in successive generations and though the development of actual philosophies. Since philosophies react to previous ones and develop more sophisticated visions through time Hegel sees this as the development of spirit, of the mutual and intersubjective understanding that gives each age its particular ways of thinking, culture, literature, music, etc. Heidegger handles this relation with the intersubjective milieu through the concept of Mitsein whose degenerate form is the They (One) that are what Lacan calls the Big Other, which in a disembodied way establish norms. Heidegger like Kant really does not believe that there is a fourth independent layer of the unfolding of the self, and thus his fourth existential is Falling, a falling back into sense certainty, back into the unconscious adherence to the prescripts of the They which is a degenerate mode of sense certainty, or befindlichkeit, one finds oneself thrown into a Mitsein which determines ones approach to things until one has become authentic and individuated oneself. If Heidegger had a positive view of the social then this fourth moment would be something more like Spirit of Hegel, but Heidegger does not have a positive view of the Social and certainly does not believe that the social gives positive criteria for understanding beyond the persons own articulation of the situation criteria for bounding the operation of Pure Reason. Of course, Reflexive Social Special Systems Theory suggests otherwise. It suggests that the Social is its own emergent layer of phenomena that is sui generis as Durkheim suggested when he averred that the projection of the a priori categories were social. But our point here is that the primary existentials in Heidegger B&T are perhaps an attempt to work out more or less along the lines of the development of the emergent levels in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind what is the minimal system of self-consciousness and that minimal system is seen to have four moments. And this is good because as B. Fuller says the minimal system must be a tetrahedron because it is the first minimal solid that differentiates inside from outside. And thus we would expect four core existentials to be part of this structure to align with the four categories imputed to the object a priori by Kant. But of course this causes a problem when Heidegger goes to map to the moments of time that are traditionally three and thus one existential must be left out of that mapping. However, that is solved if we realize that Discourse has a mythic moment of its own which can be retrieved from the mythopoietic inaugurating the heterochronic era in the process. There is a close proximity between Heidegger and Peirce by their use of prescission as a way to avoid the nihilistic opposition between synthetic and analytic judgments. Both received this tool from Duns Scottus and put it to different use. Deacon inherits from Peirce and thus what he is attempting to do has a hidden connection with Heidegger’s B&T. He is giving a negative view of what is missing from the present-at-hand (or we might say the aspectual-at-hand including as well identity, truth, and reality as aspects that might be at-hand) but which drives it

never the less at the teleodynamic level. Heidegger is attempting to give a positive view of the same phenomena by distinguishing levels of ready-to-hand (techne of poesis) and dasein (phronesis, i.e. judgment itself neither analytic nor synthetic). But what is even more impressive is how close Terrence Deacon comes to two of the basic structures (Dissipative Ordering = Morphodynamics and Autopoietic Symbiotic = Teleodynamics) of Special Systems theory without the anomalous analogies from mathematics or physics as his guide. It is unfortunate that Deacon did not recognize the importants of the Reflexive Social Special System and thus posit sociodynamics as the third Special System, but this then becomes a corrective we can make to his exposition. When we put together his rethinking of the foundations of physics to take into account the ententional phenomena that appear as absential eventities and then connect that with phenomenology starting with Heidegger and then moving to later Merleau-Ponty then we get a very deep theory that augments the Special Systems Theory already developed. Deacon appeals to constraints but something has to impose the constraints for them to have an effect. What imposes those constraints that give ententional phenomena that point to absential eventities their points of reference and interpretation? What we say is the anomalous structure of existence which is itself empty and void but which is ordered and is a source of the nomos that comes into existence as negentropy. When we open up the flood gates by the arising of dissipative structures that are negentropic in morphodynamics then the anomalies in mathematics itself produces the structure of the necessary gaps that are ententional at the teleodynamic level and even more so at the sociodynamic level not mentioned by either Deacon or Thompson. As S. Kaufmann says order comes in from nowhere, but what he does not say is that order has an anomalous nondual structure that gives rise to the various emergent levels of phenomena we know as the Living, Conscious, and Social, i.e. to the structures of the special systems.