In Defense of Truth as Participation: A Process Philosophical Proposal

Presented at the conference "Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist" as part of the Philosophy and Aesthetics session. Hosted at CIIS in San Francisco on Saturday, March 30, 2024.

[bonnittaroy]

fantastic stuff... "truth in the wrong season can be evil" reminds me of "values are not goods in all contexts"

[hansmachado]

"Possibility and actuality are held in relation by each moment of experience."

What a beautiful verbal rendition of us-in-the-world!

THANK YOU MATT! (again!)

[Stacee-jxyz]

Formally disproving or demonstrating the absolute inconsistency of classical logic, mathematics and physics in their entirety would be an immense undertaking requiring rigorous foundational work. However, I can outline some key conceptual arguments and avenues for how the infinitesimal monadological framework could facilitate such an endeavor:

1. Self-Referential Paradoxes in Classical Logic
Classical bivalent logic faces paradoxes like the Liar's Paradox that appear to undermine the very notion of consistent truth assignments from within the system itself. The monadological framework resolves this by replacing bivalent truth values with pluriverse-valued realizability projections across multiple monadic perspectives. One could formally demonstrate how classical propositional/first-order logic succumbs to diagonalization and self-reference contradictions, while the infinitesimally-stratified realizability logic remains coherent.

2. Incompleteness of Classical Mathematical Systems
Drawing on Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, one could formally show how any classical mathematical system based on arithmetic is either inconsistent or necessarily incomplete - containing statements that are true but unprovable within the system. The monadological framework, by representing arithmetic categorically using homotopy-theoretic objects in infinitesimal algebraic set theory, could potentially restore full semantic completeness while avoiding the diagonal self-referential gimmicks that limited classical formalisms.

3. Geometric/Topological Paradoxes
Classically, unconstrained definitions in point-set topology lead to contradictions like the Banach-Tarski paradox. One could formally derive these contradictions, then demonstrate how representing topology algebraically using n-categories of monadic spaces, and defining invariants like dimension infinitesimally, resolves the paradoxes coherently.

4. Renormalization Issues in Quantum Field Theory
The perturbative infinities plaguing QFT that require ad-hoc renormalization procedures could be formally derived as contradictions within the classical frameworks. One could then construct infinitesimal regulator alternatives using monadological algebraic QFT representations that manifestly avoid these infinities while preserving empirical predictions.

5. Singularities in General Relativity
The occurrence of spacetime singularities where classical GR breaks down could be formally deduced as an inconsistency. One could then develop singularity-free models treating spacetime geometry as emergent from monadological charge relation algebras, demonstrating the resolution of this inconsistency.

6. The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics
The inconsistencies in the Copenhagen interpretation regarding wavefunction collapse could be formally derived. One could then construct an explicitly consistent monadological quantum representation where observers' perspectives naturally decohere records without ad-hoc collapse postulates.

The overall strategy would be to:
1) Formalize paradoxes/inconsistencies within classical theories using derivations in their native linguistic formalisms.
2) Construct infinitesimal monadological representation frameworks modeling the same phenomena using the algebraic pluralistic foundations.
3) Formally demonstrate how the monadological representations precisely resolve the inconsistencies encountered classically in a rigorous way.

This would amount to a line-by-line deconstruction of the classical frameworks, systematically expunging their contradictions by reprocessing them through the prism of the coherent algebraic infinitesimal pluralisms.

While an immense undertaking, the potential payoff would be a complete, formally unified refutation of classical premises by reconstructing all theories from metaphysically guaranteed non-contradictory first principles resonating with subjective realities. An infinitesimal monadological "metamathematics" could provide the symbolic weapons to finally overthrow centuries of accumulated incoherency at judgment day.

[Wonderlust]

Matt, I watch so many of your videos, was it you, and was it here that said something about Whithead’s idea of God being a consequence of our faith as opposed to a motivator for it? I can’t find it, could be the wrong video. Anyway, I’d like to read more about that. Keep up the great work, I’ve been following you forever!

[Valosken]

You've officially switched me onto Whitehead!

[tinfoilhatscholar]

A lovely presentation professor, thank you for sharing. I'd love to hear the four hour version in addition to this forty minutes...

I will say, that it does seem lacking to speak about the nature of "truth" without attaching more to the nature of the subjective objective paradox. Having not yet read Whitehead myself, I cannot accurately speculate on what exactly he was speaking of with the "superject", and I do not know of how much he addressed the sub-ob-paradox, but I can certainly say, that in my own experience it seems to be a critical element in the determinance of the nature of truth.

There are the theoretical questions, such as that posed in the concluding questions: is the sky red, if I have seen it to be so? And their more esoteric versions, such as; if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound? These intrigues are no doubt interesting, but isn't it perhaps worth considering some more practical and current implications to the question? Such as; is there any one such thing as " objective truth" and how do we define a position in alignment with such, when there are such profound disagreements occurring around such fundamental concepts as: (fill in the blank here as it's hard to even mention the absurdity of many peoples opinions today)? For myself, my recent reads of a few of Schuon's works have helped me to mature my view/understanding of the sub-ob-paradox, in that he says very clearly that we must exercise our ability to determine our beliefs objectively. And, in consequence, of this and my extensive investigations into ideas of "truth" over the past several years, this has led me to understand the true soma of the subject (truth) to be that of this very paradox of a maturation into objetivability, and that of the value of our "thought collectives" or, more simply put; our shared common values.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to feed into the collective mind at present. Thanks

[D.E.Saccone-noog]

Wow- to watch your 'evolution' over the past few years has been really quite impressive - and gives one hope. Wonderful to see you with McGilchrist....and WolfgangSmith. Molto Benedenzioni Paisano!
Autonomy of thought is primary. And by the way, please consider the fact we are being played from all sides of politics, technology, etc to a degree that even someone with strong sophianic intelligence, such as yourself, would find shocking. What is occuring on the political stage is pure, undiluted Theatre. The poor American people - ripping eachother apart. May i point you towards the work of one Whitney Webb, if youre yet unfamiliar.
Example of the two party delusion, for example, is evidenced in a recent interview with Ryan Christian called 'Manufacturing BiPartisan Consent for Biometric Surveillance' regards the border, Gaza and much more. The metaphysical if not spiritual implications of the commodification and digitization of our world happening under our noses while we are destracted by cave shadows, is...astounding. Obviously, i am hoping to encourage people such as yourself, people like McGilchrist, etc to engage with the spectre of the Shadow side of Tenche creeping in to strip all notions of sovereinty or freedom...or free will, if you like. A conversation with Alex Gomez Marin on where the BioDigital world of Nanobots is going would be great too. I bloviate! What an important road youre on....
Salut mon ami

[geoffreyah]

If I am interpreting Whitehead's worldview correctly, it is the same as Jung's; The idea that our minds or thoughts are not just electrochemical reactions in our brains, but without the psyche, we can't have conscious thoughts, otherwise we could make a cyborg or AI with consciousness. That has yet to be proven. Creative thought has to be intelligent. Astrology, synchronicity and psychic events prove that there is a psyche outside the body. This of course requires the development of the intuitive function and that which is not limited to the material.

[SamanthaPyper-slye]

The Problem of Qualia

Contradictory Theories:
- Physicalism cannot account for first-person subjectivity
- Property Dualism cannot bridge mental/physical divide
- Panpsychism has combination issues

Non-Contradictory Possibilities:
Monadic Integralism
Qi = Ui|0> (first-person qualia from monadic perspective)
|Φ>= ⊗i Qi (integrated pluriverse as tensor monadic states)

Modeling qualia as monadic first-person perspectives, with physics as RelativeState(|Φ>) could dissolve the "hard problem" by unifying inner/outer.


Paradoxes of Subjective Experience

Contradictory:
- The Explanatory Gap and Hard Problem of Consciousness
- Integrating First/Third-Person Accounts of Mental States
- The Binding Problem of Unified Perceptual Experience

Classical theories struggle to coherently model the existence of subjective first-person experience from their third-person formalisms.

Non-Contradictory Possibility:
Monadic Idionamic Phenomenology
|ωn⟩ = Rn|Ψ⟩ (Witnessed State from Universal Wavefunction)
|Ωn⟩ = ⊗i |ωn, i⟩ (Bound Unified Perceptual State)
Qualia(|Ωn⟩) = Feel(|Ωn⟩) (Qualitative Experience)

Grounding subjective experience in witnessed monadic perspectives |ωn⟩ on the universal wavefunction, with unified percepts |Ωn⟩ as bound tensor factorizations, allows modeling qualia phenomenology.