A ‘Field’ View of Logic

I have often thought of ‘logic’ as being ‘analytical backfill’ that turns things around and makes it look as if we behave the way we do because ‘we choose to’.    We say things like “I did that because it is a good thing to do.  I am a moral person.  I choose to do my duty in serving God and the Queen.”

This makes it seem as if the drive and direction of my behaviour is locally originating and pushes forth from out of my centre-of-intention.

My experience is that life is not like that at all.  How could it be when everyone within a religious, cultural or political (national) group are all manifesting similar behaviours.  There is a price to pay for going against the grain of the group one is physically included in.  If you ‘step out of line’ there will be a dozen steely faces throwing you dagger-looks, and that’s just for starters.

My experience is that, in social situations, there is a ‘field of expectations’ which induces conformant behaviour from us and we ‘reverse engineer’ this and present it as ‘our purpose’.

The interesting thing about this is that the only visible aspect is ‘what we do’.  The unique configuration of steely glances setting up the field of expectation is, but our actions are real physical phenomena.  If our Hell’s Angels’ brothers expect us to give an old close friend of ours a ‘tune-up’ just for nothing, other than to show our loyalty to the band, we leave behind a real physical record of what we did [which could put us in jail].  But the field of expectations that induced us to do it, that engendered and shaped our behaviour from the outside-inward, is nowhere to be seen.  It was real in the sense of ‘spatial-relational potentiality’, like a large rock sitting on a slope above us that is ready to rock and roll.

Is ‘potentiality’ real?

Perhaps that’s not the appropriate question.  The better question would be; ‘does potentiality shape our individual and collective behaviours?’  Most of abide by the signs that say; “no stopping, avalanche zone”?   In fact, I often speed up because I know that the likelihood of an encounter with an avalanche is proportional to the time spent in the zone of avalanche potentiality.  Do white people avoid driving or walking through troubled black districts?

If the tires on my car left clear black tread marks everywhere they rolled [as if they were dispensing india ink], my trajectory through a busy stretch of freeway would be very clear, but what about my explanation of my own moves?  I would be thinking; ‘that looks like an avalanche zone over there so I am going to avoid it’, and ‘I am in his blind spot and I’m going to zip forward or brake, to get out of it.  So, can I say that my trajectory represents my locally originating, internal logic and purpose directed behaviour?  No, I can’t.  My behaviour is orchestrated by the fields of potentiality in which I find myself situationally included, on a continually unfolding basis.  Are ‘fields of potentiality’ all in my head?  Should we give no credit for the shaping of our behaviour to the condition of the space we are situationally included in?

The fact is, that the biological model of the organism will not allow us to shift the sourcing of behaviour from its standard inside-outwards pushing orientation, and accept an outside-inward sourcing, unless, it conforms to Newton’s laws where we are actually, physically, pushed around by externally applied forces.  In other words, the biological sciences do not recognize the existence of behaviour-shaping ‘fields’ such as ‘fields of expectation’, and therefore they insist on attributing the behaviour of the organism to calculations that go on within the organism such as intellection and logic.

This is a critical point.  This is a point where I am making a stand.  I say that these fields are ‘real’ and that it is ‘analytical backfill’ forced on us because we are anchored to this silly biological model of an organism as a local animate being that is mutually exclusive of the space it is included in.  This flies in the face of the physics notion that ‘field’ is primary and material systems are secondary; i.e. they are ripple-structures in the energy-charged field-medium.  That is, ‘we are made of fields’.  We are ‘fields within fields’ [as Carlo Rovelli implies in ‘Quantum Gravity’.

Now, I would like to revisit the notion of ‘revelation’ as used by Skinner who suggests that we discover what is ‘good conduct’ by way of ‘revelation’.  ‘Revelation’ corresponds to sensing a field of expectation/potentiality.  For example;

“… where Chimpanzees were sprayed with ice-water every time they touched a distinctive red ladder placed in their cage.  The chimps quickly learned to police one another so that there would be no climbing by anyone on that ladder.  There was soon no longer any need to spray the ice-water since their mutual policing was so effective.  When newcomers joined the group, they were quickly trained not to touch the red ladder, and when the entire group was replaced, one after the other, with new residents who had never experienced the spraying of ice-water in association with touching the red ladder, the entirely new group continued to police themselves so that they did not climb on it.  Learning ‘good behaviour’ was by way of revelation of what the group held to be ‘good behaviour’.”

Now, in order to understand this we have to examine BOTH the outside-inward behaviour-shaping influence AND the inside-outward behaviour-shaping influence.

Logically, I can say that my personal ‘objective function’ is the ‘maximizing of self-interest’.  This renders my behaviour ‘purposeful’ and gives my intellection a supporting role, so now I really do fit the biological model of an organism, as a ‘local system [machine] with its own locally originating, internal process driven power and steerage’ [the power drive is biochemical and the steerage is intellection and purpose based direction].

This is fine and dandy, but how logical is my behaviour, really, when all of this depends on ‘revelation’ of what is ‘good behaviour’ within the social group?

As Jules Henry (‘Culture Against Man’) and many other anthropological and psychological researchers into the workings of our society have found, our educational system is predominantly based on ‘fear of failure’.   In close proximity are teachers and parents slapping their police batons threateningly into their helpless open palms as they watch with steely gazes, and farther out with are the employment market foremen, slapping their baseball bats into the helpless open palms.   Our understanding of ‘good behaviour’ comes to us by way of revelation, as Skinner says.  The outside-inward behaviour-shaping force is by way of ‘revelation’, but all that is invisible, and what can be seen is ‘what we actually do’, so we are free to reconstruct a model of what we do in a manner that fits with the simple biological model of the organism; i.e. we depict ourselves in the Aristotelian manner, as an acorn that is pushing forth from out of itself to make itself into an oak tree, … to ‘do it our way’ using our ‘intellect and purpose’ to direct our behaviour.

Just like when we examined our india-ink tire trajectory on the freeway after the fact, the record of what we did is clear, but the phantom field of potentiality implied by our situational inclusion in a web of transforming spatial-relations, that shaped our behaviour from the outside-inward, is gone.   If our tire trajectory takes a sudden major veer to the left and we are asked about it, we may say; ‘oh, that was when I had to get out of the way of a huge red semi that changed lanes without signalling’.  But that is like the chimp saying, ‘I acted so as to avert having to grab hold of the red ladder’.  Seen from the inside-outward asserting, it appears ‘logical’, but the higher order behaviour-shaping influence is nevertheless ‘revelation’.  One ‘discovers’ what is good behaviour and it is primary determined by outside-inward fields of potentiality.

So long as we try to understand the world in terms of ‘what things do’, we are going to miss the greater reality that we are included in an evolutionary dynamic, wherein, as Nietzsche says, the outside-inward influence predominates over the inside-outward influence.  We are informed of the former by ‘revelation’ but our habit is to think of dynamics in terms of the latter, as if the web of dynamic spatial relations we are situationally included in is a passive matrix that we are steering through, like a pattern of red rubber traffic cones that we have to steer through in a driving test to ‘show that we know what we are doing’.

But in life, the opposite influence prevails; i.e. the outside-inward fields of potentiality prevail in shaping our behaviour.  It is our ego that insists on claiming that ‘we know what we are doing’.  Nietzsche would say that it is this ‘ego view’ that we have infused into the biological model of the organism, making it look like a ‘powerboater’ with its own inboard intellection and purpose directed behaviour.

‘Revelation’ rules, … it is just that we are in a state of denial.  Our ego puts us in denial.

‘Revelation’ as the means of discovering ‘good behaviour’ in the natural world also comes to mind as the appropriate device.  When I am riding in a group of motorcyclists, the co-forming of sweetspots in the common slipstream ‘teaches me’ what good behaviour is; i.e. behaviour wherein, like the wildgeese in their ‘V’ formation, I can go farther, faster for less expenditure of energy/fuel.  Of course, I am going to repeat this behaviour, and each time I am going to find out what constitutes good behaviour today, by ‘revelation’.  If the air temperature and humidity are different, no doubt the ‘good behaviour’ will be different, but my behaviour is firstly by ‘revelation’ and only secondly by ‘knowledge’.

In fact, in this less ego-centric way of understanding behaviour lies a general model of understanding, knowledge and genetic structure.

Consider Mary Oliver’s poem ‘Wildgeese’

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

We have all felt the ‘call of the wild’ and it invites us, … not simply to push ourselves forth into the world as we if know where we are going, but to accept the invitation of the habitat to move into its fields of spatial potentiality and to discover how to co-cultivate outside-inward – inside-outward resonance, to discover ‘by revelation’ what good behaviour is, in the wild.

‘Knowledge’ is based on ‘actualization’ and is secondary to ‘revelation’ which is rooted in potentiality.  This is a way of looking at the ‘logic of the included third’ as described by Lupasco [1], though in the logical treatment, the feeling of voluminous inclusion in a spectacular natural habitat fades [it can be found in the ‘higher level reality’].

The excluded observer sees only ‘what things do’ and cannot ‘feel’ the ‘revelation’ that the included experient is feeling wherein the outside-inward shaping influence from the fields of expectation/potentiality predominate over his inside-outward asserting potentials.  One can understand this in the sense of the sailboat, in the sense that he is ‘pivoting’ from the power of the crowd/habitat and using crowd/habitat force as the source of his own dynamic behaviour and steerage.  This is as relativity would insist it has to be.

If a man joins a new culture, he may launch his behaviour using his ‘knowledge’ of what is ‘good behaviour’ but he will let ‘revelation’ of what is good behaviour in the new habitat ‘trump’ his knowledge, and in fact, ‘update it’.

‘Knowledge’ in this case, is like the ‘world in a grain of sand’, it is the real component of a complex variable.  The phantom configuration of the field of potentiality that precipitated the ‘actualization’ that was certainly felt, vanishes without a trace and all we are left with is the physical record that we might, in vain, try to interpret in the one-sided terms of such behaviour having pushed forth from the interior of the individual actor.

The ‘real record’ of ‘what happened’, while it is the ‘world-in-a-grain-of-sand’ [the result of outside-inward influence predominating over inside-outward influence] we try to interpret in a purely inside-outward manner as if the habitat were not an influence; i.e. as if the genesis was fully inside-outward directed.  The ‘real record’ is thus like the DNA structure that purports to encode the genesis in terms of an inside-outward driving determinative process.  But in fact, the DNA is merely the ‘real component’ of a complex unfolding whose greater aspect is the outside-inward field-of-potentiality influence.

In other words, our “‘knowledge’ of ‘physical actuality’ does not teach understanding”, as Heraclitus said.

Furthermore, if ‘revelation’ of what is ‘good behaviour’ rules, then as a group, we can develop a field of expectations that transforms individual behaviours from the outside in.  As we know from our experience driving in the flow of the freeway, where the cluster we are in is a ‘friendly driving’ cluster, we learn that it is ‘good behaviour’ to ‘give way’ [nachgeben] so as to sustain balance and harmony in the flow.  This is as it is in the celestial dynamics as described by Kepler in ‘Harmonies of the World’.  This differs from learning ‘good behaviour’ in an unfriendly cluster where potential openings are ‘closed down’ to keep fast lanes the exclusive property of the few who are the fastest and most aggressive.

Could DNA and/or knowledge that purports to explain genesis of behaviour and form in a strictly inside-outward fashion ‘really’ be the lesser aspect of an invisible, nonlocal, outside-inward predominating behaviour-shaping field-influence.  Should we be looking at DNA and knowledge in a ‘grain-of-sand’ sense [as in ‘world in a grain of sand’] and not taking the ‘grain of sand’ literally, as in ‘what you see is what you got’?

Here’s what one biological cell researcher ‘gone-dissident’, Bruce Lipton, says about this;

“Advances from science’s frontier offer new insights that provide a bright light at the end of this dark tunnel. Firstly, in contrast to the emphasis on the Newtonian material realm, the newer science of quantum mechanics reveals that the Universe and all of its physical matter are actually made out of immaterial energy. Atoms are not physical particles; they are made of energy vortices resembling nano-tornadoes.

Quantum physics stresses that the invisible energy realm, collectively referred to as the field, is the primary governing force of the material realm. It is more than interesting that the term field is defined as “invisible moving forces that influence the physical realm,” for the same definition is used to describe spirit. The new physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a Universe made out of energy, everything is entangled, everything is one.

Biomedical research has recently toppled the widespread belief that organisms are genetically controlled robots and that evolution is driven by a random, survival-of-the-fittest mechanism. As genetically controlled “robots,” we are led to perceive of ourselves as “victims” of heredity. Genes control our lives yet we did not pick our genes, nor can we change them if we don’t like our traits. The perception of genetic victimization inevitably leads to irresponsibility, for we believe we have no power over our lives.

The exciting new science of epigenetics emphasizes that genes are controlled by the environment, and more importantly, by our perception of the environment. . .

… In contrast to random mutations, science has identified “adaptive” mutation mechanisms, wherein organisms adjust their genetics to conform to existing environmental conditions. We did not get here by chance. Every new organism introduced into the biosphere supported harmony and balance in the Garden. Every organism is intimately engaged with the environment in a delicate pas de deux. Human existence is not a random accident, but a carefully choreographed event that takes into account the cooperative nature of the biosphere. Humans evolved as the most powerful force in supporting Nature’s vitality. However, we have misused that power and are now paying the price for our destructive behavior.”

Whether or not Lipton is prepared to go this far, I would say that what we have here supports the notion that the reality seen by way of material dynamics is ‘maya’, ‘illusion’ as Schrödinger has explicitly declared.  What we are seeing is the ‘grains-of-sand’ and what we are missing is the ‘world-in-the-grain-of-sand’.  The current folly of our Western scientific-minded culture can thus be captured by our attempt to perceive the grains-of-sand literally, as if their meaning lies within them; i.e. as if they are ‘facts’ or ‘atoms of content’ from which we can construct understanding by using these atoms as bricks in our construction-of-understanding project.  Thus, observe the behaviour of an individual and impute the animating source to lie within the individual, as the biological sciences model of the organism demands.  We thus impute logical intellection and purpose to be the animating source when what predominates, in reality, is ‘revelation’.

Yes, we can say that the individual is optimizing his self-interest in a logical manner, but ‘bigger than self-interest’ is revelation of what sort of behaviours will favour a pursuit of his self-interest.  The DNA logic structures associated with the genesis of his behavioural dynamic are as is the case in present day post-Darwinist, post-genetics biology; i.e. “genes are controlled by the environment” – Bruce Lipton.   The expression ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’ [or ‘when in the Hell’s Angels, do as the Hell’s Angels’ or remove yourself if you can] is another way of saying the same thing, what constitutes ‘good behaviour’ [behaviour that is good for our self-interests] is ‘revealed’ to us by the environment we find ourselves situationally included in.

Our actual behaviour is ‘the grain of sand’ that cannot be taken ‘literally’ and ‘explained’ in terms of; ‘this is what grains of sand are, and what they do’, because the world that is in that grain of sand, the dynamic spatial-relational web that the grain is uniquely situationally included in, that precipitated that grain, is missing when we take the grain of sand literally and reverse-engineer its behaviour as if it pushed forth out of its own interior as in the Aristotelian acorn-to-oak-tree view of genesis.  That is, the oak-tree is a mere grain-of-sand that is the precipitate of an unbounded spatial-relational world/universe/plenum.  To put an absolute Euclidan reference space box over its head and claim that it pushes forth out of itself is ridiculous.  Just because Ronald Reagan said “If you’ve seen one Redwood tree you’ve seen them all.” doesn’t mean that this is a model for how we should understand the world.  Reagan also tried to convince people that ‘evil’ was a one-sided locally originating force, pushing forth from itself as in ‘the evil Empire’ http://usaguns.net/petition2/reagan/evil.html His view continues to have widespread support.

In conclusion, we are in need of a new openly discussable model of knowledge and understanding which overtly acknowledges that tangible, physical, material, behavioural dynamics are ‘not it’.  They are simply the precipitate ‘grains-of-sand’ that are only the ‘real component’ of a complex ‘world-in-a-grain-of-sand’ reality.

To live in a world where we have divided ourselves up into 195 sovereign states committed to the optimization of their own self-interest, and to embrace at the same time, a view as articulated by Reagan, that behaviour is locally originating from within the interior of the person or empire, is collective insanity.

As Skinner observed, understanding what constitutes ‘good behaviour’ comes by way of revelation.  As Howard Zinn implied, the ‘executioners’ [the colonizers] were those who were sufficiently powerful to establish the global norm for ‘good behaviour’ while ‘good behaviour’ was ‘revealed’ to the ‘victims’ [the colonized] by the fields of potentiality [avalanche zones] they found themselves included in.  Implicit in the behaviour of the Indian is the world of the colonizer in which he is included.  His behaviour cannot be taken literally and seen ‘in its own right’.  Indian behaviours in the standoff at Wounded Knee may seem to be ‘the behaviours of the Indians at Wounded Knee, but reflecting back from those Indians, those grains-of-sand, is the world of the colonizers in which they are unhappily included.

Call it ‘spirituality’ or call it ‘field effect’, it is real enough even though it is non-material and non-physical.  It is what we get when we lift away the veil of ‘maya’.

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