Mistaken recognition of holes repressed by a global focus?

Imagining Toroidal Life as a Sustainable Alternative (Part #9)

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The indications in the previous section clarify the extent to which the "hole" characteristic of toroidal forms is widely recognized, if not associated with the highest values -- as with crowns, halos, wedding rings, and prayer beads. By contrast, in the case of the global form, any central hole is relegated to deep underground at the centre of the Earth -- a realm readily associated with hell and a source of threat from volcanic eruptions.

In a separate argument the more mysterious nature of holes, characteristics of halos and rings, was highlighted to a greater degree (Is the World View of a Holy Father Necessarily Full of Holes? Mysterious theological black holes engendering global crises, 2014). That included the following sections:

With reference to Necessary incompleteness, that argument notes the consequence of deliberately omitting, or unconsciously missing, a dimension essential to systemic viability can be reviewed and further justified by the work of the biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon (Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged from matter, 2012; The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain, 1997). He explores the paradoxical incompleteness of semiotic and teleological phenomena in terms of information to demonstrate how specific absences (or constraints) play the critical causal role in the organization of physical processes that generates these properties.

For Deacon, in introducing his argument:

The problem is this: Such concepts as information, function, purpose, meaning, intention, significance, consciousness, and value are intrinsically defined by their fundamental incompleteness. They exist only in relation to something they are not.... The "something" that each of these is not is precisely what matters most. But notice the paradox in this English turn of phrase. To "matter" is to be substantial, to resist modification, to be beyond creation or destruction -- and yet what maters about an idea or purpose is dependent on something that is not substantial in any obvious sense. So what is shared in common between all these phenomena? In a word, nothing -- or rather, something not present. (p. 23, emphasis in original)

The fundamental value of focusing on what is "absent" from conventional explanation is introduced by Deacon by comparing it to the vital role of zero in the number system -- itself a great discovery (cf. Charles Seife, Zero: the biography of a dangerous idea, 2000; Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, The Nothing that Is: a natural history of zero, 2000). For Deacon:

Basically, it means that our best science -- that collection of theories that presumably comes closest to explaining everything -- does not include this one most defining characteristic of being you and me. In effect, our current "Theory of Everything" implies that we don't exist, except as collections of atoms. So what's missing? Ironically and enigmatically, something missing is missing. (p. 1, emphasis added)

He uses this analogy to zero to demonstrate how a form of causality dependent on specifically absent features and unrealized potentials can be compatible with the best of science. Deacon sees this approach as offering a glimpse of the qualitative outlines of a future science that is subtle enough to include us and our enigmatically incomplete nature, as legitimate forms of knotting in the fabric of the universe (p. 17)

Deacon places great emphasis on the vital constraining role of absence in systemic organization. It is in this sense that the "hole" recognized in the new metaphor proposed by Oxfam offers vital insights into the possibility of more viable strategic organization (Kate Raworth (A Safe and Just Space for Humanity: can we live within the doughnut?, Oxfam, February 2012). This possibility is separately considered (Exploring the Hidden Mysteries of Oxfam's Doughnut: recognizing the systemic negligence of an Earth Summit, 2012).

In concluding, Deacon argues:

We are what we are not: continually, intrinsically, necessarily incomplete in our very nature. Our sense of self, our experience of being the originative locus of agency, our interior subjective isolation, and the sense of emerging out of nothing and being our own prime mover -- all these core characteristics of conscious experience -- are accurate reflections of the fact that self is literally sui generis, emerging each moment from what is not there. (p. 535)

In his concluding paragraph Deacon notes:

In the title to one of his recent books, Stuart Kauffman [At Home in the Universe: the search for laws of self-organization and complexity, 1995] succinctly identifies what has been missing from out current blinkered metaphysical worldview. Despite the power and insights that we have gained from this powerful way of conceiving of the world, it has not helped us to feel "at home in the universe". Even as our scientific tools have given us mastery over so much of the physical world around and within us, they have at the same time alienated us from these same realms. It is time to find our way home. (p. 545) [emphasis added]]

The challenge of thriving in this cognitive environment is then less a question of locating relevant literature, learning the knowledge it contains, or citing it to justify positions to others. Nor is it a question of who has been there before, or any criticism from some other perspective of "rediscovering the wheel". The question might even be the validity of the external frame from which that question could be asked. By whom is one to be persuaded, about what and why -- and why should one seek to persuade? To what extent is any essential incommunicability a matter of Ludwig Wittgenstein's concluding phrase: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921).

As discussed previously (Evolutionary influence of the absent, 2011), with respect to the argument of Deacon, a key factor with respect to the emergence of knowledge may be intimately associated with what is missing -- a point succinctly made in the contrast between the print and online summaries of his argument (The importance of what is missing, New Scientist, 26 November 2011; Consciousness is a matter of constraint, New Scientist, 30 November 2011). For Deacon:

... have we been looking in the wrong places for clues? ... brain researchers and philosophers of mind have focused on brain processes, neural computations and their correspondences with the material world. But what if we should be focusing on what is not there instead? ... I believe that in order to overcome this stalemate we need to pay more attention to what is intrinsically not present in everything -- from life's functions and meanings to mind's experiences and values. [emphasis added]

As he concludes in Incomplete Nature:

Perhaps the most tragic feature of our age is that just when we have developed a truly universal perspective from which to appreciate the vastness of the cosmos, the causal complexity of material processes, and the chemical machinery of life, we have at the same time conceived the realm of value as radically alienated from this seemingly complete understanding of the fabric of existence. In the natural sciences there appears to be no place for right/wrong, meaningful/meaningless, beauty/ugliness, good/evil, love/hate, and so forth.... By rethinking the frame of the natural sciences in a way that has the metaphysical sophistication to integrate the realm of absential phenomena as we experience them, I believe that we can chart an alternative route out of the current existential crisis of the age... (p. 544)

Although the initial chapter of Deacon's thesis is entitled "(W)HOLES", ironically he has nothing to say about "holes", as it possible to explore them in relation to his focus on what is missing in any understanding of incompleteness.

With respect to the Cognitive mystery of holes, lacunae and incompleteness, the argument notes those producing models are faced with the reality of their competitive deprecation by those of other persuasion -- without offering any way forward beyond "I am Right, You are Wrong". The issue has been described by Nicholas Rescher as the conclusion to his study of The Strife of Systems: an essay on the grounds and implications of philosophical diversity (1985):

For centuries, most philosophers who have reflected on the matter have been intimidated by the strife of systems. But the time has come to put this behind us -- not the strife, that is, which is ineliminable, but the felt need to somehow end it rather than simply accept it and take it in stride.

What is the "well" or "hole" of ignorance that underlies conventional knowledge, sustaining Rescher's "strife", and inhibiting fruitful reconciliation in the light of conventional model building? (cf. (Unthought as Cognitive Foundation of Global Civilization, 2012). What is the implication of the provocative insight of Ambrose Bierce: The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

Of particular relevance is the remarkable exploration by Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi (Holes and Other Superficialities, 1994) -- with respect to the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry, and the theory of perception (reviewed by Steven A. Gross, What's in a Hole? The Harvard Review of Philosophy, 1994). They seek to answer two basic questions: Do holes really exist? And if so, what are they? As they indicate in an extensive entry on holes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Hole representations -- no matter whether veridical -- appear to be commonplace in human cognition. Not only do people have the impression of seeing holes; they also form a corresponding concept, which is normally lexicalised as a noun in ordinary languages...Moreover, data from developmental psychology and the psychology of perception confirm that infants and adults are able to perceive, count, and track holes just as easily as they perceive, count, and track paradigm material objects such as cookies and tins... These facts do not prove that holes and material objects are on equal psychological footing, let alone on equal metaphysical footing. But they indicate that the concept of a hole is of significant salience in the common-sense picture of the world, specifically of the spatiotemporal world.

Conundrums noted by the authors include:

1. It is difficult to explain how holes can in fact be perceived.... a causal theory of perception would not apply to holes. Our impression of perceiving holes would then be a sort of systematic illusion, on pain of rejecting causal accounts of perception...
2. It is difficult to specify identity criteria for holes -- more difficult than for ordinary material objects. As holes are immaterial, we cannot account for the identity of a hole via the identity of any constituting stuff. But neither can we rely on the identity conditions of its material host... And we cannot rely on the identity conditions of its guest, for it would seem that we can empty a hole of whatever might partially or fully occupy it and leave the hole intact.
3. It is equally difficult to account for the mereology of holes. Take a card and punch a hole in it. You have made one hole. Now punch again next to it. Have you made another hole?... what prevents us from saying that we still have one hole, though a hole that comes in two disconnected parts? After all, material objects can be disconnected... Perhaps holes may be disconnected, too? If so, perhaps we have just punched a single, disconnected hole?
4. It is also difficult to assess the explanatory relevance of holes. Arguably, whenever a physical interaction can be explained by appeal to the concept of a hole, a matching explanation can be offered invoking only material objects and their properties.... Aren't these latter explanations enough?

The focus of that argument is on holes as they may be perceived in tangible objects. The argument is not extended to the implications for intangible holes -- for which tangible holes are used so frequently as a metaphor. However tangible they may be considered to be, hole is the metaphor of choice for atomic physics and astrophysics.

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