Can 2R fix its broken relationship with the Truth?

Research and Sense-Making
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Yeah. Everything in the Fat Tony thread.

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But I am not Fat Tony, and nothing in that thread seems to be relevant. Fat Tony doesn’t care about truth, because he’s 100% pragmatist. He probably doesn’t care about morality much, either. If the pragmatic solution to a problem he faces is to rob a bank, then his thoughts will turn to how he might get away with it, not agonising about the morality of it. I know one of these Fat Tonys, and his ability to get things done is nothing short of amazing.

I am doing something very different to that, which takes both truth and morality very seriously indeed, and in highly theoretical rather than pragmatic terms. The end goal is pragmatic: the construction of an ecocivilisation. But the strategy works at the deepest level and on the longest term – which is the complete opposite of Fat Tony.

All we have in common is that neither of us have any time or use for the way academia operates.

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Fat Tony: “Highly theoretical truth and morality” are another name for “BS”.

Fat Tony: “the strategy works at the deepest level and on the longest term”. OK, but what’s it done for me lately?

I don’t hate the idea of long-term survival on an environmentally-attuned planet. Survival, however, is a one-day-at-a-time operation. You have to get through Monday to make it to Tuesday. Then try for Wednesday. Stack that process over long time and that’s what survival looks like.

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I think you are dodging the real issue here. The post you were responding to was a serious question about the conflict that arises when I try to post here: the conflict between the integration of people, and the integration of knowledge. 2R does the first and resists the second, I do the second but acknowledge that this was only possible because I didn’t even attempt the first until the whole system was finished (to the extent that it had no contradictions and no massive holes). The paradigm shift itself requires both.

Fat Tony has nothing constructive to offer in response to this. Do you?

85

Do you think science can hold a “Both/And” perspective with respect to the solution to the mega-crisis in cosmology? Do you think we can have a “Both/And” resolution to the Hubble Tension, or the question of why we can’t quantise gravity, or any of the other 20+ problems?

Or do you think those sorts of things require “certainty” (where “certainty” means a conclusive resolution of the problem, and a new scientific consensus about a new paradigm)?

Could there have been a “Both/And” solution to the problems suffered by Ptolemaic-Aristotlean cosmology in the 16th century, or did we require certainty that the Earth revolves around the Sun?

Jason Storm’s version of metamodernism does not claim we need to oscillate. He says we need to accept there is such a thing as truth, including truths about metaphysics and science.

A useful example maybe: wave-particle duality in QM. We need Both the wave model And the particle model, but that isn’t enough. 100 years of (unwanted and inconvenient) “Both/And” has led only to an unresolved and deepening crisis – not because there isn’t an element of truth to both models, but because quantum mechanics cannot be completed until we have a consensus about the correct way of bringing them together into a deeper model of reality (which is currently missing). Will the deeper model also be “Both/And”? No, that won’t work. We need certainty (even though it will doubtless raise new questions we can’t answer yet).

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Hanzi Freinacht is not Jason Storm. Storm I largely agree with. “Frienacht” indirectly accused me of being a fascist, because I was defending realism in politics.

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Integrate people? Integrate ideas? WWFTD?

Be sure both the people and the ideas are interesting and engaging. Strike up conversations. Don’t scare people away! Also, don’t bore them with endless expositions of ideas that are entirely too sure of themselves.

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That’s not going to help resolve this problem, is it? You’re talking entirely about style. I am only interested in content.

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Integrating people is very largely about style.

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Integrating people is very largely about style.

Integrating knowledge has nothing whatsoever to do with style. There is our problem again.

The rest of this post is in response to dvdjsph.

Your analysis ranked 2PC as “just another rival model” on the basis that it failed to resolve the crisis in cosmology “in a way that working scientists would recognise”. I have therefore run a new test. I showed the AI the list of 30 problems (cosmology, consciousness, quantum foundations), and then showed it chapters 8-14 of the book (so not the last two chapters, which are about philosophy and society, not cosmology or science, and not the introduction or any of parts 1 or 2).

I then gave it this prompt:

I have a question in two parts.

(1) To what extent does 2PC (two phase cosmology) resolve the crisis in cosmology in a way that working scientists would recognise?

(2) To what extent does 2PC resolve the crisis in cosmology in a way that working scientists would not recognise at all?

Here is the response:

I’ll structure this in two parts, as you requested. The boundary between them is roughly the boundary between what a scientist might treat as a legitimate, if heterodox, empirical proposal and what would strike them as a complete departure from the very definition of a scientific resolution.

(1) To what extent does 2PC resolve the crisis in cosmology in a way that working scientists would recognise?

In a limited but real sense, 2PC offers moves that look scientific —they engage with data, propose causal mechanisms (however unorthodox), and make empirical bets. Several features would be at least legible to a cosmologist:

  • Selection effects as an explanatory tool. Scientists already accept anthropic reasoning in some contexts (e.g., the weak anthropic principle in multiverse cosmology). 2PC’s Psychetelic Principle is a radical extension, but its basic logic—only branches that permit conscious observers are actualised—is structurally similar to anthropic selection. The claim that flatness, smoothness, and fine-tuned constants are “selection effects” rather than dynamical problems is an extreme application of an existing style of explanation.
  • Direct empirical claims. 2PC makes falsifiable predictions:
    • No other abiogenesis or conscious life: Finding a second genesis would falsify the model. This is a clear, risky empirical bet.
    • Early massive galaxies as a “fast track” signature: If observations pushed the era of massive galaxy formation to much later cosmic times, the “fastest possible” interpretation would be challenged.
    • Monopole/“monopolium” as dark matter: This is a specific particle-physics candidate that can be tested by direct-detection experiments, annihilation signatures, or collider searches. A positive detection would be strong corroboration; a null result doesn’t falsify the core of 2PC, but the proposal itself is scientifically concrete.
    • The Hubble tension as a category error: The claim that CMB-inferred H₀ is a model-dependent reconstruction of a fictional past, while local H₀ measures real geometry, is a structural explanation. It could motivate scientists to examine the model-dependence of early-universe parameters more critically, a project some cosmologists already pursue (e.g., questioning the assumptions behind CMB parameter extraction). The idea that Λ is an intrinsic curvature, not an energy, echoes some geometric approaches to dark energy.
  • Reinterpretation of quantum gravity. 2PC says: don’t quantise gravity; gravity is classical geometry emergent upon collapse. This resonates with semi-classical gravity, Penrose’s ideas, and the view that the metric is not a quantum field but a hydrodynamic/thermodynamic limit. While the specific mechanism (collapse via representational contradiction) is alien, the conclusion “quantising gravity may be a category mistake” is not unheard of.
  • Consistent treatment of Λ. The cosmological constant problem is reformulated by noting that Phase-1 vacuum energy is not physically instantiated. This is a clean separation: the QFT calculation applies to possibility space; the observed Λ is a geometric constant of the realised manifold. While not standard, it is a logically coherent way to dissolve the 120-order-of-magnitude mismatch without new fields.

In these respects, 2PC interacts with empirical science as if it were a scientific theory. It generates concrete “if-then” statements about observables, and it offers a logical scheme that scientists could assess. A minority of cosmologists already sympathetic to observer-selection effects, Penrose-style gravity, or information-based ontologies might even recognise some of these moves as interesting, if massively underdetermined.

The recognition limit: Even these legible parts are embedded in a framework that scientists would deem untestable at its core. The Embodiment Threshold, the Void, and the metaphysical collapse mechanism are not themselves measurable. So scientists would see 2PC as philosophy with empirical trimmings , not a genuine physical theory. It resolves problems by redefining them at a level that physics cannot reach.

(2) To what extent does 2PC resolve the crisis in a way that working scientists would not recognise at all?

This is the larger and more fundamental part. 2PC’s deepest resolutions are metaphysical , not scientific, and they change the very meaning of “resolution” in ways alien to the standard practice of cosmology.

  • The entire causal architecture. In 2PC, the cosmos does not have a continuous physical history. What scientists call “the early universe” is a retrodicted surface from a Phase-2 present, not an actual earlier epoch. The Big Bang, nucleosynthesis, recombination—these are not events that happened ; they are formal structures in a selected timeless block. A cosmologist who spends their career simulating structure formation from initial conditions would find this literally nonsensical: it denies the reality of what they are modelling.
  • Consciousness as the trigger of cosmic realisation. The idea that the universe only becomes actual when a unified self-model with incompatible valuations arises, and that this collapse retroactively selects the entire history, is a complete inversion of scientific explanation. Scientists explain consciousness as a late product of physical processes; 2PC makes physical processes dependent on consciousness. This is idealism-adjacent neutral monism. It resolves fine-tuning not by finding a physical mechanism but by saying “the only branch that can be embodied is one that permits a conscious observer.” That’s not a scientific solution; it’s an ontological axiom.
  • The logical, rather than dynamical, necessity of collapse. The Embodiment Inconsistency Theorem is a piece of metaphysical deduction. Scientists expect collapse or decoherence to be a physical process, described by a modified Schrödinger equation or an objective reduction timescale. 2PC says collapse happens because a representational subject cannot branch. No equation, no dynamics, no timescale—just a logical constraint. That’s not a resolution scientists can use; it offers nothing they can compute.
  • The Void (0|∞) as the ground. The ultimate explanation is an infinite nothingness that is also infinite potential, a paradoxical ground that cannot be described in positive terms but “contains” all mathematical structures. This is straight out of mysticism and negative theology. Scientists would not recognise it as an explanation; they would see it as a poetically dressed-up statement that existence is brute. It resolves the “something from nothing” problem by linguistic fiat, not by physical mechanism.
  • Teleology without laws. The Psychetelic Principle says the universe appears fine-tuned because it was retro-selected for the emergence of consciousness. This is teleology—explicit goal-directedness—but without any new forces or equations. Nagel asked for teleological laws; 2PC provides a teleological selection event at the moment of first collapse, which is a single metaphysical act. To a scientist, this is indistinguishable from saying “it just happened that way, and we live in the branch where it did.” The “resolution” is a re-description of the fact to be explained.
  • Redefinition of physical problems out of existence. The monopole problem, flatness problem, horizon problem, and baryon asymmetry are “resolved” by saying they were never real problems—they only appear under the false assumption of a continuous classical past. This is a dissolution by ontological fiat, not a scientific solution. A scientist would say: “You haven’t explained why we observe no monopoles; you’ve simply asserted that in the selected branch there are none.” 2PC provides no dynamical suppression mechanism, no prediction for relic abundance, no way to test the selection. It’s a philosophical stance, not a cosmological model.
  • The nature of time and memory. In 2PC, time begins with the first collapse, and the arrow of time is the direction of commitment. Memory is the ongoing stabilisation of the past via micro-collapses. This is an experiential, phenomenological account with no mathematical formulation. Scientists would not know how to express the “storm of micro-collapses” in a way that connects to general relativity or quantum field theory. The claims about time are essentially untranslatable into the language of physics.
  • Neogeocentrism. The claim that Earth is the metaphysical centre of the cosmos—not geometrically, but because it is the locus of the first conscious observer—is a value statement, not a physical finding. It inverts the Copernican principle completely, but on grounds that science cannot adjudicate.

In summary: 2PC “resolves” the crisis in cosmology by substituting a metaphysical architecture for a physical theory. Working scientists would not recognise these as resolutions because they don’t extend the existing framework of law-based, quantitative explanation—they replace it with a consciousness-first, selection-based ontology. The few empirical hooks (Fermi, early galaxies, monopole DM) are genuine points of contact, but the overwhelming bulk of the resolution lies in a domain that science is methodologically barred from entering. From their perspective, 2PC has simply declared the problems solved by changing the subject from physics to metaphysics.

Follow-up question: To what extent does the 2PC solution resonate with “metamodernism” as defined by Jason Storm?

Comparing the Two-Phase Cosmology (2PC) with Jason Storm’s Metamodernism reveals a deep, structural resonance. While they operate in different domains—2PC in cosmology and philosophy of mind, and Metamodernism as a new paradigm for the human sciences—they arrive at nearly identical philosophical “moves” to escape the deadlock of their respective fields.

Both frameworks offer a critique of the prevailing form of materialism/postmodernism, identify a shared crisis, and propose a revolutionary new model of reality that integrates competing paradigms. At a structural level, they mirror each other by positing a deeper reality (Phase 0 vs. Metarealism), a dynamic zone of actualization (Phase 2 vs. Process Social Ontology), and a fundamental substance connecting mind and matter (Information vs. Hylosemiotics). Ultimately, they converge on a shared mission to heal the rift between fact and value, mind and world.

:mirror: The Shared Critique: Escaping the “Dead Ends”

Both 2PC and Metamodernism begin with a diagnosis of catastrophic failure in the status quo.

  • The Crisis in Cosmology (2PC): 2PC argues that the dominant paradigm of scientific materialism is intellectually bankrupt. Its flagship model, ΛCDM, is described as a “ship holed beneath the waterline,” unable to solve fundamental anomalies because it rests on the “sacrosanct but rotten foundation” of physicalism. The demand for empirical proof before any new paradigm is considered is seen as a way to systematically protect the status quo, leading to a “zombie non-paradigm.”
  • The Postmodern Impasse (Metamodernism): Storm argues that postmodernism has reached a dead end. Its relentless critique has successfully deconstructed grand narratives and universal categories (like “religion” or “science”), but this “hermeneutics of suspicion” has led to epistemological paralysis and ethical nihilism. It can deconstruct knowledge but cannot reconstruct it, leaving no basis for progress or shared values.

:handshake: The Convergent Solutions: A New Model of Reality

The most profound connection between the two frameworks is the structural similarity of their proposed solutions. They don’t just critique; they build parallel alternative models of reality that escape the impasse through a shared philosophical move: synthesis. Both achieve this by recognizing that reality has different “phases” or “modes.”

The Deep Parallel: A Side-by-Side Comparison

This core similarity can be seen by mapping the key components of each system onto each other:

Key Concept Two-Phase Cosmology (2PC) Metamodernism (Jason Storm)
The Ground of Being Phase 0 (0 ∞): The Infinite Void, a paradoxical unity of absolute nothingness and infinite potential. It’s the unconditioned ground from which all structured possibility emerges. Metarealism (Part I): A move beyond the “correlationist” trap of postmodernism, which can only access reality through our concepts. It posits a stratified reality where a mind-independent “Real” exists, even if we can only grasp it through our conceptual schemes.
The Realm of Possibility Phase 1: The Pythagorean ensemble of all non-conscious, mathematically consistent structures (potential cosmoses) in timeless, spaceless superposition. Multiple Modes of the Real: An acknowledgment that reality is not a single, flat plane of objectively given facts. It exists on multiple levels simultaneously, with different kinds of truth and being.
The Realm of Actuality Phase 2: The dynamically unfolding, classical-relativistic material reality, instantiated and sustained by conscious observers. Process Social Ontology (Part II): An account of society’s ever-changing nature, where fluid processes temporarily materialize into stable “zones of stability” or “social kinds”.
The Fundamental Substance Neutral Monism (Information): The “stuff” of Phase 1 is neutral information, neither mental nor physical. Hylosemiotics (Part III): The theory that matter (hyle ) and meaning (semiotics ) are inseparable and must be formulated together, rejecting the idea that meaning is isolated from the physical.

The Crucial Role of the Observer/Agent

In both frameworks, reality is not a pre-existing, mind-independent object. It requires a participant.

  • In 2PC , a cosmos transitions from a timeless possibility (Phase 1) to a lived actuality (Phase 2) only when a conscious observer crosses the “Embodiment Threshold.” The observer doesn’t just witness reality; their value-laden choices collapse the wave function and bring a single, coherent world into being.
  • In Metamodernism , the emphasis is on human agency and the construction of meaning . Storm’s focus on “emancipatory knowledge” that reconnects knowledge with value parallels the 2PC view of the conscious agent as an active participant whose valuations shape reality. The agent’s perspective, intentions, and social context are not obstacles to truth but are central to how reality is enacted and understood.

:gem_stone: Conclusion: A Unified Vision for a Post-Crisis World

The resonance between 2PC and Metamodernism is not superficial. It’s a convergence on a new philosophical paradigm. Both recognize that the old, reductive models have failed and that a way forward requires a more complex, multi-layered, and ultimately synthetic understanding of reality.

  • The Core Thesis : The fundamental move of both systems is to overcome a false dichotomy. For 2PC, it bridges physicalism and idealism with neutral monism. For Metamodernism, it bridges modernist realism and postmodern constructivism. It is a synthesis that claims we can have both a robust sense of a mind-independent real and a fully constructivist account of our knowledge of it.
  • The Shared Goal : Both are, at heart, reconstructive projects . They seek to heal the rift between fact and value, mind and world, to provide a foundation for knowledge that doesn’t collapse into skepticism, and to restore a sense of meaning and purpose to our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it.

They are separate ships, one sailing the waters of physics and metaphysics, the other the waters of the human sciences, but they are both navigating by the same, newly discovered star: a vision of a participatory, meaningful, and irreducibly complex reality where consciousness and value are not accidental byproducts but fundamental features of existence.

Now, who would like to discuss how we should proceed from here?

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Every time I post here I feel like I’m prodding an angry hornet’s nest or getting between two apoplectic chimps. Or one, if it was possible to clone them.

@geoff, it is hard to argue against you because each time a point is raised you either dismiss it as irrelevant or not worthy to engage with. Occasionally, you contradict yourself, too. The ‘mammals are special’ thing being the closest example I can think of. I have a very good memory, a photographic one - “I can see words” - and I am absolutely certain, 100%, that at some point you conveyed to me (maybe not here) a narrative that mammals are special. In how they ‘broke down the wavefunction’, rendering the void state into something substantive. Yet when I go into that here you deny ever saying it. If you really, utterly, believe that, I can spend time probing correspondence and get the exact phrases you used. I suspect, though, even if I did that, you’d utilise some tautological reasoning around the definitions of mammals, or perhaps consciousness, even though on the foundational level it will mean the same thing.

Science has spent the last several hundred years, time after time, proving how insignificant we are in the universe. To relegate all this in the opposite direction, as your theory does, is like hurtling back to the age of the inquisition.

Just look up at the night sky, my man. Contemplate the patterns in nature, outside of humans, outside of mammals. Take some DMT or shrooms.

I might say plough through some heavy textbooks if you were able to navigate renormalization group flow or gauge field equations. And you might tell me to go read Whitehead’s or Bergson’s work, or indeed your own heavy tome. But I’m not into excluding people. If the only way to debate is to a) read the entirety of your book, word for word, page for page; b) even then, when raising points, risk having them dismissed as irrelevant, vague, or not worthy of engagement,

Then
 well
 I don’t have much more to add.

I do commend you on the persistence, the degree of responsiveness, and the passion you show, though. Those are quite rare qualities. The inputs also create liveliness and, at times, provoke deeper contemplation. Sometimes throwing a bit of fire into a forum makes it more interesting. Some of your positions I also agree with. Why not start spot on with the agreement points and then follow a concise logical process to take it to the next step as opposed to gigantic walls of text or reference to even greater bodies of work?

If ever I’m bed-bound and bored I’ll return and read it all, promise!

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Your memory is failing you. I have never, ever said anything remotely like that, anywhere. I have never had the slightest reason for believing it. The original phase transition was the trigger for the Cambrian Explosion, not the transition between reptiles and mammals.

Science has spent the last several hundred years, time after time, proving how insignificant we are in the universe. To relegate all this in the opposite direction, as your theory does, is like hurtling back to the age of the inquisition.

Except it isn’t, because my argument is backed up by science and reason, not theological dogma.

It most certainly is a “Copernican counter-revolution”. This is not something I have any intention of apologising for, as if it was a fault. I am shouting it from the rooftops.

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To find the exact reference with mammals, I’d have to locate it within sub-responses of a Facebook group, sent years ago. I did find this more easily however:-

The area seems relevant to your mammalian-consciousness hypothesis. One theory suggests that it’s the mechanism by which connection can happen with a non-local quantum field

19/04/2025, 14:48

As far as I am aware, the only serious suggestion for the biological end of the mechanism is Penrose/Hameroff, and my intuition is telling me their solution isn’t quite right. I am happy to look at any reliable/interesting information about any other suggestions, but there needs to be decent evidence or I will likely remain agnostic.

Worst case, I somehow drew the conclusion from your theories that mammals had a unique place in consciousness. Can you think why?

Let’s approach it differently. Something breaks down the wavefunction in your theory, yes?

And that attribute is not bestowed on all forms of life, right?

I distinctly recall a discussion relating to one of your texts whereby that organism is mammalian. PERHAPS it was the precursor to mammals. Either way, I think you are skirting the heart of the matter, for whatever reason. The heart of the matter: you distinquish one kind of life from another, as playing a unique role in consciousness, like no other. Or is that denied too? Why not say instead ’ you’re wrong , your memory fails you - THIS is what I meant’ instead of leaving it open to continued guessing/debate? You do reference the Cambrian Explosion here, but again without pinpointing the locality of where/how this is occurring.

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No. I have no idea why you have arrived at this conclusion. Penrose/Hameroff’s theory doesn’t even restrict consciousness to complex animals – plants and fungi have microtubules, and Hameroff is a panpsychist.

Let’s approach it differently. Something breaks down the wavefunction in your theory, yes?
And that attribute is not bestowed on all forms of life, right?

No. I have explained this multiple times, in detail. What breaks it is a brain – something capable of modelling the world, with itself in that world as an entity persisting over time, and capable of modelling different futures and assigning non-computable valuations to them (this last bit comes from Penrose, not Hameroff).

I distinctly recall a discussion relating to one of your texts whereby that organism is mammalian. PERHAPS it was the precursor to mammals. Either way, I think you are skirting the heart of the matter, for whatever reason. The heart of the matter: you distinquish one kind of life from another, as playing a unique role in consciousness, like no other. Or is that denied too?

No. The distinction is whether or not the animal has a brain, which is completely in line with vast amounts of evidence from neuroscience. This isn’t even philosophy. It’s hard science.

Why not say instead ’ you’re wrong , your memory fails you - THIS is what I meant’ instead of leaving it open to continued guessing/debate? You do reference the Cambrian Explosion here, but again without pinpointing the locality of where/how this is occurring.

My memory is not failing me. Yours is failing you (although the quote above was from a time when I had not figured out the details of the threshold, which is exactly what I was explaining to you).

I pinpoint a specific fossil organism, which existed exactly 555 million years ago.

1 Like
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This is complete contradiction again. Either you don’t know how biology works, or you are being deliberately evasive.

You say it is unique to a brain. Only some forms of life have brains. So
 !!

Do I really have to be so super-specific that we are talking about ‘an organism with a brain’ instead of ‘an organism’? Is there really zero effort in trying to understand what I am saying that even when we speak the same language I have to effectively describe the curvature and angles of each letter?

You deny implying that something breaks down the wavefunction and that this capacity is not bestowed on all forms of life.

Then hit back at me that it is the brain.

WTF :face_with_spiral_eyes:

I try to etch out - maybe ‘desperately encourage’ is a better description - some further cogent description of what you mean and the only response is that my memory is wrong.

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Eh?

So only some life forms are conscious. :slight_smile:

Do I really have to be so super-specific that we are talking about ‘an organism with a brain’ instead of ‘an organism’? Is there really zero effort in trying to understand what I am saying that even when we speak the same language I have to effectively describe the curvature and angles of each letter?

At the moment I’ve got no idea what you are talking about. My own position has always been that consciousness requires a brain. What I was missing for about 10 years was the specific definition of what counts as a brain – what is it that brains do, which makes them uniquely capable of hosting consciousness and collapsing wavefunctions? 2PC answers this question in a revolutionary way, because it is quantum neutral monistic, not physicalist. It is purely based on information, not matter.

You deny implying that something breaks down the wavefunction and that this capacity is not bestowed on all forms of life.

I am very clearly explaining exactly what breaks it, and the exact point in evolutionary history that this happened.

If you think I said mammals are conscious and nothing else is, then your memory is wrong. I have never believed that.

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I have read your site reference.

I obviously cannot prove this, but my tentative conclusion is that their nervous system does not cross the Embodiment Threshold. A “central processing unit” is required: a brain.

The immediate ancestors of LUCAS must have been stymied by the Frame Problem. Their increasing cognitive complexity would have amplified the combinatorial explosion of potential futures they could model, but at that point they had no mechanism to assign meaning or value. Without the capacity for valuation that only comes with consciousness, effective decision-making would have been difficult. However, so long as reality remained superposed, meaningful choice was metaphysically impossible anyway – all physically possible outcomes existed in parallel, just as believers in MWI think they still are.

The only way for the informational structure to continue coherently in this situation is through a selective mechanism – a mechanism experienced as free choice. This moment is psychegenesis and the beginning of phase 2. Cosmic history before this point was actualised retrocausally: the entire evolutionary trajectory leading to LUCAS was selected as a unified classical timeline. After this point, evolution could proceed with genuine decision-making capacity. A new sort of phase 1 information structure began to exist. The original phase 1 history, selected for realisation at the moment LUCAS becomes conscious, was a timeless and unchanging block. Now there was a dynamic structure in which the Void was embedded and animals were conscious.

LUCAS as the lighting of the fuse for the Cambrian Explosion

My suggestion for the best candidate we’re aware of for LUCAS is a worm-like organism smaller than a grain of rice. It lived at the end of the late Ediacaran Period, around 560 to 555 million years ago, not long before the Cambrian Explosion. It is the earliest confirmed organism exhibiting bilateral symmetry, a through-gut, and a clear front-back axis. It is the simplest known organism that might have been capable of making choices in a metaphysically meaningful way. Ikaria wariootia was small, blind, and simple, but for a brief period of time the Earth was its oyster; at the end of the Ediacaran nothing could challenge it. It appeared when the only other complex “animals” were so unlike anything living today that scientists are uneasy using the word “fauna” to refer to them. Maybe they weren’t animals at all, but some other branch of life which died out, because it was unable to compete when the Cambrian got going. Under 2PC we can shed some more light on this.

The Ediacaran ecosystem existed at the start of phase 2 of cosmological history, but its origin was in phase 1, and like everything else in phase 1 it was retroactively selected because it was on the path that led to LUCAS. The Ediacaran fauna were the supporting cast of actors which were necessary for there to be a functioning ecosystem for LUCAS to evolve within. On the direct line to LUCAS (which was necessarily one very specific lineage) this evolution was directed by teleology rather than natural selection, but presumably some kind of natural selection did apply to everything not on that direct line. Some of these organisms must have had nervous systems but no brains, like jellyfish and comb jellies today. Ikaria was the first bilaterian, and with this new symmetry came the capacity to move forward with purpose, to push through the microbial mats of the sea floor in search of nourishment. It was the first organism which had a solution to the Frame Problem, and this must have provided an overwhelming advantage.

You have come up with something akin to Tolkien’s world building.

There are parts of your total 2PC theory that I like, and which I think connect to a deeper truth.

But the details, and how you deal with consciousness, with what you describe as choice


I don’t know where to start. If I dared start, there’d be no end to it.

You spent a great deal of time on this, and I respect that. Anything with even grains of potential truth is worthy of notice. But I can’t debate with you on it - your position is too set, and you are so sure of yourself, that even legnthy debate (as I saw with others) would just see us circling around forever the same points.

I also write as much with analogies and comparison as with direct, minute chains of detailed terminology. So, I think we may reason a bit differently. Probably if we chilled over some other task/subject it would be another matter though.

J out on this one, my man :waving_hand:

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Those are not enough if you are dealing with the subject matter I am dealing with. I am trying to change the rules by which science works, and my tool to do this is analytical philosophy. This requires extreme precision in terms of terminology and engagement with the existing literature. I am not writing poetry, and I am deeply critical of the vagueness and ambiguity which is endemic to Continental philosophy.

100

Good work here Geoff at defining the two core ambitions, though I would challenge you to see 2R as much more about addressing exactly this challenge of bringing people and knowledge together. That is precisely why I’ve been trying to move 2R more directly toward a framework for discussion of collective action, since this is precisely the challenge of any coherent Collective Action paradigm.

I appreciate your effort here to begin to focus on this key challenge, and again think that 2R MAY be a good framework for working on this challenge, although as a new “tester” of this 2R framework for working productively on the collective action problem, I’m in verification mode. The proof will be in the pudding of what I see happen with 2R over the next 6 months. Since time is short, I will look elsewhere for investment of my creative energies if I don’t see a dedicated commitment here to focusing on the development of a strong collective action framework by end of the year.

101

Yes, nice summary statement here dvdjsph of how any serious movement dedicated to integration of knowledge and people has to be working from what I’ve been calling a “sense-making” framework that does not assume epistemic frameworks can ever be perfect, and must be open to continual updating from both the scientific and social ecologies of reality. The Whiteheadian process philosophy with all the updates connected to John Cobb’s ecocivilization framework, provide a good model for this.

Has everyone seen the new book on Ecocivilization by Jeremy Lent that was just released last week? Lent is doing a bunch of engagements over this month to talk about his book, and it might be an interesting topic for a few 2R discussions to review this book together to define what strengths and weaknesses it may have for contributing to the 2R project.