The Duality of Perspective and the Spectrum of Reason

This Text Can Be Found in the Book,
The Evolution of Consent: Collected Essays (Vol. I)

evolutionofconsent.com

Introduction

The world seems to be a very divided place. Duality seems to be a common aspect of our Universe. We will be taking a look at the duality and spectrum inherent in our perspective. Beginning with the natural orientation of life, we will proceed into a discussion of epistemology, before touching on morality and theology.

Duality and Spectrum

What is at the foundation of existence? Let’s have a look. Have you ever heard someone say, “The world is not so black and white!”? Well, this may be so, but does the alternative, gray, exist on its own accord, or only by the mixture of white and black? So then, gray is a product of duality, is it not? It would seem so. According to modern science, though, there is no such thing as darkness, only the absence of light. Again, it appears we are relying on a single element, light, and yet, there still seems to be a duality: presence and absence. And still, visible light exists within the electromagnetic spectrum, of which it makes up a small portion, and any absence of visible light does not entail the absence of energy entirely. Energy, in one form or another, is everywhere.

Humanity will not come accross true opposites in its lifetime, but rather their spectrum of compromises.  No one has ever seen absolute darkness (a black hole) or absolute light (a white hole), just as no one knows everything or nothing at all. Everyone has, instead, seen varying shades of gray, and maintains various grades of knowledge between the absolutes; the extremes can only be felt as tendencies. Do these tendencies demonstrate that the Universe is composed of two substances, or is everything ultimately composed of a single substance, that is somehow expressed as duality?

True substance duality, the division of the basis of being into two parts, which cannot ultimately be reconciled, is an impossibility. There can be only one substance[1] (that is expressed in two differing attributes, and many modes of them), lest causality lose its philosophical and scientific importance. Yet, we perceive a duality within the single substance, contributing to our strife. We are unable to fully perceive the underlying unity beneath us, though many of us have felt it, rationalized it, or sensed it intuitively to a lesser degree.

The ultimate ends of our behavior is directed to a complete understanding of, and combination with, this underlying unity, but the steps that must be taken between are means to smaller ends, which are just tendencies toward the final goal. As explained in “The Journey of Realization,” moving from one point in time to the next is like climbing a ladder: If one could just jump to the top, one wouldn’t need the ladder! Somehow our perspective is limited, and this is tied to our nature and purpose as humans. We must take the proper steps to climb the ladder to satisfaction.

A Matter of Life or Death

Causality is very persistent, but even causality is found to have its duality. The goal-setting of consciousness, and the metabolism, growth, reproduction, and evolution of complexity in life set its causal relationships apart from the non-living. Rather than entropy alone, life is governed by syntropy, laws from the future, as well. Ulisse Di Corpo, among others, points this out quite reasonably.[i]

Time and space are intertwined as the space-time continuum, sharing a relationship together. Time’s movement forward is generally seen as the playing out of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that as time moves forward everything tends toward entropy (a general term in thermodynamics— the study of heat/energy— for loss, dissipation, chaos, erosion). That is, as time goes forward space expands, things fall apart, snap, get rusty, and not the other way around! Just the same, we can say that as things decay, break down, and corrode, time moves forward. Under these conditions it has been theorized that the entire Universe, and not just our own solar system upon the burning out of our sun, is destined to die a very cold, dark, death.

Entropy seems to govern the Universe, and yet, life seems to stand defiant against this law to some degree, as life, especially while young, is motion toward complexity and growth, and consciousness in general is attributed to effects-before-causes (but still tied together in relationship of causal unity, never a cause without effect or vice-versa). For life, especially while it is youthful, its relationship to thermodynamic time works differently: As time moves forward, new life grows, and life in general constructs complex organic compounds (otherwise impossible) in its cellular structures, multiplies, and avoids danger through conscious decision-making. As life grows in complexity and completeness, time moves forward. This process, the opposite of entropy, is called syntropy or sometimes negentropy.[2] The results of entropic and syntropic forms of causation are objective and subjective perspectives. The subjective experience of consciousness is tied to duality and spectrum in time and space.

 Objectivity and Subjectivity

Objectivity exists when all possible perspectives are in accord with one another. That is, something is objective when it is agreed upon by all parties (with the capacity to understand). Something is said to be subjective, however, when it represents personal opinions, taste, feelings, and such. An objective statement would be “The ball is round,” as its roundness can be seen by anyone with eyes to see. A subjective statement would be “The ball is pretty,” as different people may agree or disagree. Our own experience is considered by others to be highly subjective, unless it is agreed with.

Subjectivity exists only in separation; a subject is considered to be outside of, but not encasing, the object. As experience, subjectivity is lack, separation, division. All things with a subjective consciousness—life— desire fulfillment, be it nourishment, sex, warmth, shade, or shelter, because they lack, and want to complete themselves. If not for feelings of lack, desire, yearning, and even sadness, one would not be compelled to self-preservation and completion. The force that responds to desire and induces an organism to lasting is its will, and all living beings have a degree of this will, as a characteristic of living organisms— subjective consciousness—is response to stimuli. Stimuli induces the will to respond at times, but the will itself responds as physical response in reverse, by creating goals rather than simply responding to inertia. Life is linked to the syntropic processes, and subjectivity is its mechanism.

True objectivity, absolute knowledge, is completion. Humanity is not capable of true objectivity between one another, but we can certainly share a degree of inter-subjectivity (commonly referred to as objective), which is defined as two or more individuals sharing a common subjective experience or goal. When one has gained what they feel to be objective knowledge about a thing, something inter-subjective, they feel a sense of completion, but there is ever more to know, and the drug wears thin. We can have a sense of contentment and completion for a moment, but it is always fleeting, as the purpose of humanity is not to purely thrive in the fulfillment of desires, but to search for such fulfillment. We gain it only temporarily. We hunger to retain it, but we shall not. Not in this lifetime. We will, however, set up the possibility for such a future to be experienced later on, by the very same energy that now makes up our bodies. Afterall, this has been done before our current consciousness, and is the reason we’re here to experience life as humans to begin with.

The ultimate duality in the Universe lies not between the processes—those of syntropy and entropy—, but between unity and separation, the resulting extremes of entropy and syntropy.

Singularity and Plurality

The absolutes of subjectivity and objectivity are plurality and singularity. In plurality everything is subjective, as absolute plurality is absolute separation. In singularity everything is objective, as experience itself is shared by all; there is one consciousness. The entire present Universe expanded from such a point of singularity— where it had all been compacted into an abode of infinite density, being dimensionless and having only one possible perspective— into the three spacial dimensions, and the fourth dimension of time we know today (each having a duality), creating a plentitude of perspectives. It continues to expand exceedingly toward the plurality we will eventually face (not in this lifetime), and (as Ulisse Di Corpo and Antonella Vannini suggest), after this point of extremity, syntropic contraction will begin to take the place of entropic expansion.[ii]

Objectivity, contraction, singularity, is completed through a process of subjectivity, plurality, yearning for completion. Being on the human side of the equation makes it harder to describe what would motivate a singularity to expand, to put us where we are now, but many spiritual beliefs have imagined a sort of loneliness or boredom in this state for God, the supreme being (which I understand as the Universe), which would drive such a pandeist Universe’s expansion toward plurality.

Objectivity and subjectivity are both absolutes and processes. Absolute objectivity resides in singularity, while absolute subjectivity comes to us in full expansionary plurality (2). Each of these positions begin their affiliated processes (3), going from objectivity to subjectivity to objectivity again, and vice versa. The process from singularity to plurality, from objectivity to subjectivity, is here associated with objectivity because it spawns from the objectivity of singularity (2), but also because it represents the perspective we hold of a material world outside of us, which is commonly refered to as objective (1) and unconscious, and which we may generally mutually refer to. We are aware of the real-material past (objectivity, 3) to large degrees, but we are uncertain of the ideal-spiritual future (subjectivity, 3), encouraging us to label views about such as subjective. The process from plurality to singularity is considered to be a subjective one because it originates in the subjectivity of plurality (2), but also because it represents the thought processes within us, which cannot be shown to others (1).

In a way, objectivity offers contradictory definitions, depending on the viewpoint, be it external or internal. One’s internal sensations are objective to themselves, but are held to be subjective to others when they disagree. In this way, objectivity is both a shared experience of external reality (we’ll call this soft objectivity) (1), and direct but exclusive experience of one’s own internal reality (we’ll call this hard objectivity) (4). Subjectivity is only the indirect experience from the outside of another’s direct and objective sensation from the inside; it is an illusion, perhaps better understood as relativity than subjectivity, as its nature is the substitution of complete with partial knowledge. The great philosopher, Parmenides of Elea, tells us that

it is right that you should learn all things, both the persuasive, unshaken heart of Objective Truth, and the subjective beliefs of mortals, in which there is no true trust. But you shall learn these too: how, for the mortals passing through them, the things-that-seem must ‘really exist’, being, for them, all there is.[iii]

Internal and External

The only reason subjective perspectives are considered subjective in the first place is because there is a lack of direct experience on behalf of others; the true intentions and premises of knowledge can only fully be known to the holder from the inside. Others may have different values or preferences further leading to confusion. We cannot, with any certainty, tell the intentions or abilities of another person. Even after knowing them for a length of time, they can surprise us. Nor can we always agree with the reasoning of others, or see their feelings, intentions, goals, priorities, values, etc. Perspectives clash. Coupled with the fact that individuals use lack of information for their advantage in negative ways, by lying and tricking, there is a lack of trust.

If one hurts, and they shout that they are hurting, this is very much true, independent of observation by others, but it is the ability to lie or differ that keeps their view from being objective to others (remember The Boy Who Cried Wolf?). Objective and subjective perspectives may also be defined, then, as external and internal viewpoints (hard objectivity is internal, soft objectivity is external; hard subjectivity is non-existent, while soft subjectivity is external). When a perspective is external to one’s self, it is felt to be subjective, and when the perspective is one’s own, it is rather objective (if the perspective is of an external reality, it is softly objective, perhaps better understood as intersubjective; if the experience is one of an internal reality, it is one of hard objectivity). To others, we have a subjective perspective, and, to ourselves, we have an (imperfectly) objective experience. One will not generally accept a perspective with which they disagree as an objective one, but only those which are agreed upon. Objectivity is based on agreement of perspective, and (unless we are schizophrenic, perhaps) we agree with our own perspective.

The integral psychologist, Ken Wilber, muses on the nature of subjective knowledge:

Thus, in a scientific text, you will find the limbic system, for example, described in detail—its components, its biochemistry, when and how it evolved, how it relates to other parts of the organism, and so on. And you will probably find it mentioned that the limbic system is the home of certain very fundamental emotions, certain basic types of sex and aggression and fear and desire, whether that limbic system appears in horses or humans or apes.

But of those emotions, of course, you will not find much description, because emotions pertain to the interior experience of the limbic system. These emotions and the awareness that goes with them are what the holon with a limbic system experiences from within, on the inside, in its interior. And objective scientific descriptions are not much interested in that interior consciousness, because that interior space cannot be accessed in an objective, empirical fashion. You can only feel these feelings from within. When you experience a sort of primal joy, for example, even if you are a brain physiologist, you do not say to yourself, Wow, what a limbic day. Rather, you describe these feelings in intimate, personal, emotional terms, subjective terms: I feel wonderful, it’s great to be alive, or whatnot.[iv]

Because of the nature of our internal feelings, Wilber points out, we can not study them using empirical science:

The brain physiologist can know every single thing about my brain—he can hook me up to an EEG machine, he can use PET scans, he can use radioactive tracers, he can map the physiology, determine the levels of neurotransmitters—he can know what every atom of my brain is doing, and he still won’t know a single thought in my mind.

This is really extraordinary. And if he wants to know what is going on in my mind, there is only one way he can find out: he must talk to me.[v]

Wilber says,

You can point to the brain, or to a rock, or to a town, but you cannot simply point to envy, or pride, or consciousness, or value, or intention, or desire. Where is desire? Point to it. You can’t really, not the way you can point to a rock, because it’s largely an interior dimension, so it doesn’t have simple location.[vi]

There is only one kind of feeling which we can hold as objective fact— our own—, but, even then, what we feel can only be held as objective to ourselves. So long as there is anyone outside of us, we are considered to have a subjective perspective.

God

Outside of Universal singularity, there is one way to experience objectivity, though it is an incomplete one for humanity, and is only complete for God. This way is to know what is in oneself. One’s thoughts, emotions, and sensations are in themselves very objective experiences for the holder, even if their representations or projections to others are false. The Universe, God, has an objective viewpoint, as none other may see The All as subject, or question The All’s knowledge or intentions; everything happens within the framework of God. Just as our perspective, being within us, is objective to ourselves (even if that perspective is “I don’t know”), and subjective to others, God’s perspective is objective to entirety, and subjective to none, as it encases, and in fact is, The All. What God thinks, is. Quantum physicist and Hindu, Amit Goswami, asks, “Do we have a big head?” He says,

The idea is quite simple. Realism says that only the external object is real; only objects that we find outside of us are real because they are public and we can get consensus about them and make them the object of objective scientific scrutiny. Idealism says that we cannot directly see what is “outside” without the help of the intermediaries of our “inside” private representations. So these inside representations must be more real than the objects they represent. Or rather, they had better be real, because objects in their suchness will never know.

Easy solution, said Leibniz and Russell. Suppose we have a “big” head in addition to the “small” head that we normally experience, so that so-called outside objects are outside the small head but inside the big head. Then aren’t both realism and idealism valid? Realism works because the objects are outside (the small head); idealism works because the objects are also inside (the big head).[vii]

One cannot know a thing for sure, comprehend the objective nature of a thing, except for that which is in them, is them, which they feel, sensually or intuitively. One can know their concepts of external objects, but those concepts alone, they cannot know those objects themselves, intrinsically. One may have objective knowledge about their own thoughts, while others may not share in such knowledge. God, being the one purely objective existence, lacking subjectivity and being of a single all-knowing substance, is the only thing that can be described as perfect in knowledge or intention, because only God is fully understood by Self, and lacks others from outside, as God is that which is in itself.

Only God’s intentions perfectly match with outcomes. Perfection, true objectivity without dispute, God, is the synthesis of good and bad, and all that we subjectively see as good and bad exist upon this underlying objectivity.[3]

Yet, subjectivity is in our nature, and cannot be forsaken, as our purpose is tied to our desires and their outcomes. Because our purpose cannot be fought, as— in the oft-quoted words of Arthur Schopenhauer— “Man can do what he wants; but he cannot will what he wants,” it is best to learn to wholly express and use this will to its fullest (which means finding ways to make it work alongside the will of others), rather than trying to reject it, as our will is connected to God’s plan for us, and to do as God intends is to reap the rewards. What God intends, as shown by the characteristic needs of life, is for us to be compassionate, to love and to care about one another, to find compatibility, mutualism, to work toward unity, and to be happy.

Our own subjectivity, as it is seen by others, is but a fraction of objectivity, perhaps better regarded as relativity. While God is pure and completely objective, and composes a single substance, we are expressions of this substance, and expressions don’t share the perspective of objectivity of which only God has the privilege; we acknowledge duality, and our concepts fall in a spectrum within this duality. Upon completion, the final solution of subjectivity and creation of objectivity, all that exists will share in an objective experience and unity with God. This is objectivity fully realized, the final culmination of inter-subjectivity. Hegel says that,

The terminus is at that point where knowledge is no longer compelled to go beyond itself, where it finds its own self, and the notion corresponds to the object and the object to the notion. The progress towards this goal consequently is without a halt, and at no earlier stage is satisfaction to be found.[viii]

And,

This being at home with self or coming to self of Spirit may be described as its complete and highest end: it is this alone that it desires and nothing else. Everything that from eternity has happened in heaven and earth, the life of God and all the deeds of time simply are the struggles for Spirit to know itself, to make itself objective to itself, to find itself, be for itself, and finally unite itself to itself; it is alienated and divided, but only so as to be able thus to find itself and return to itself. Only in this manner does Spirit attain its freedom for that is free which is not connected with or dependent on another. [ix]

One can see now that our subjectivity, our pain and self-righteousness, and even our spiritual slavery, is due to separation of consciousness from God, for when one is united with God, sharing the perspective of the Universe, in singularity, one agrees with existence and shares God’s objective understanding. Objectivity, though, can only occur for our currently subjective consciousness after a long evolutionary process of inter-subjectivity, completion, love, and compassion. It is in this motion toward objectivity that we find our purpose. This motion plays into our evolving ethics and systems of value. Ken Wilber tells us that,

The crucial point is that the subjective world is situated in an intersubjective space, a cultural space, and it is this intersubjective space that allows the subjective space to arise in the first place. Without this cultural background, my own individual thoughts would have no meaning at all.

[…]

In other words, the subjective space is inseparable from the intersubjective space, and this is one of the great discoveries of the postmodern, or post-Enlightenment movements.

So here […] the validity claim is not so much objective propositional truth, and not so much subjective truthfulness, but intersubjective fit. This cultural background provides the common context against which my own thoughts and interpretations will have some sort of meaning. And so the validity criteria here involves the “cultural fit” with this background.

[…]

The aim here is mutual understanding. Not that we necessarily agree with each other, but can we at least understand each other? Because if that can’t happen, then we will never be able to exist in a common culture.[x]

Our subjectivity leads us to our notions of what is right and wrong, good and bad. The necessary struggle is in compromise and synthesis, compassion.

Good and Bad

What is good is what is desirable, and what is bad is what is undesirable. Good and bad are subjective measures, being based in individual preferences or priorities. These can be understood in both the short- and long-term. A long-term preference would oftentimes entail the forfeiture of short-term outcomes, as in investment, where one suffers in the short-term to gain in the longer one. Short-term preferences oftentimes entail the overriding, or ignorance, of longer-term preferences for immediate satisfaction, perhaps a strict form of hedonism. Longer-term values tend toward spiritualism, asceticism, while shorter-term values tend toward materialism. The degree the outcomes are satisfying is the degree to which they are understood as good, and to the degree they are troublesome is the degree to which they are seen as bad.

As human consciousness grows, the more long-term values, toward the greater good, are ascribed to. The longer-term human preferences, such as universal harmony, are based in greater goods.

An individual may have their own subjective opinions about what is good and bad, but what is best, strongest, the greater good, is to come to an agreement, to create a larger, more objective view. Remember, God’s idea of good, the greatest good, if you will, is simply what happens, and when we can voluntarily come to agreement, and make things happen together, we can have a stronger impact on the future, we can better approximate God’s objective will for ourselves. By materializing our ideals, especially through cooperation, we become part of a process larger than ourselves, and in doing so, we are living in accord with God’s will, rather than trying to live in contradiction to it, and from this we experience happiness, eudaemonia.

Georg Hegel is often attributed to have said, “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” Likewise, the corollaries; bad is not really bad, but good misunderstood by another good. It is a relative truth misunderstood. The greatest bad, then, is found through thorough incompleteness of perspective and misunderstanding, while the greatest good is found through a process of moving toward the completeness and understanding of objectivity. Hard-objectivity is approached through intersubjectivity. The process of communication, then, is crucial to a transition toward objectivity, as communication is our best known method of understanding one another and completing our own perspective with missing information, which may only be directly experienced by others. At such a point, one’s views are no longer necessarily bad to the other, or at conflict, but may be found to complete or compliment them, in an effort to know and share the truth. In order for this to work, however, it should not be forced, but the individuals themselves must see benefit in cooperation and find truth through dialect (forced cooperation leads to rejection, not unity and understanding of complementarity).

God is the balance of good and bad, as God is perfection, and bads are merely goods that are misunderstood, as they complete a necessary and complimentary part of existence. Necessitarian, objective, eternalism is the underlying truth, but our subjectivity, lack of understanding, and mortality keep us from knowing this and feeling it fully. This is directly connected to our purpose, as “God does not play dice,”[xi] and all outcomes are the already written fates and destinies within this Universe.[4]

Totality and Fraction

Duality can perhaps best be expressed in fractions and fractals. Take, for instance, good and bad. While the Universe is entirely perfect, its perfection becomes broken up into parts which lose sight of the perfection in the other parts. Everything is perfect in itself, but because all things other than God—The All— are within something larger, they lose their absolute perfection and objectivity for comparative value and subjectivity, resulting in relativity, good and bad, objective and subjective attributes, real and ideal, etc.  Within the ultimate perfection of God is lesser perfection—subjectively known as good—, and lack of perfection (which is really lack of understanding of complimentarity), which we understand subjectively (or sub-objectively) as bad. The relationship of perfection, good, and bad, is a relationship of (hard and soft) objective and subjective understandings. Within the subjective understanding of substance, perceiving only modes of reality but not the underlying substance, there is labeled a subjective and objective (this being the soft form) understanding, creating a spiraling fractal of existence. Humanity is incapable of a truly objective view of substance.

Aristotle attributed virtuous behavior to the golden mean (but expressed that this was not always a quantitative measure); one should not live in excess or in deficiency, but in balance. Altruism, for instance (my own example), is generally considered good, but in specific, when used in excess, it can be damaging to the wielder. If you give too much away to others, you have nothing left for yourself. Narcissism is the opposite, and is generally considered bad, but narcissism must balance altruism, or altruism becomes a vice. Excess or deficiency in either causes problems.

Though Aristotle stated that the relationship of virtues and vices is not always a clearly mathematical one, like him, I will use the golden mean to represent the path of virtue. This spiral is not necessarily physical, but rather metaphysical. The physical and spiritual are not opposed, however, merely different ways of saying the same thing.[5]

Within the objective perfection of the single-substance, God, Universe, there appears the good and bad, or mental and physical, processes of its attributes, as perceived in syntropy and entropy, summer and winter, night and day. Each good and each bad exist themselves within a higher good or bad. Life, as a process of syntropy, is generally good, but its individuals, as specifics, may be relatively bad. What makes life good in general is that its good specifics outweigh the bad. Likewise, those individuals seen as good are not perfect, and perform bad actions at times. Life in general is good. Humankind in general is good. Individuals in general have good intentions, and good intentions usually have good results. The upward spiral is one of motion toward ultimate objectivity, true goodness, perfection, understanding, unity with God, and transcendence of the illusion of subjectivity. The process downward is toward definitive subjectivity, separation, and lack. The process upward toward objectivity is expressed in growing inter-subjectivity— recognition of the inner perfection in others— as conveyed through compassion, communication, complementarity, and community. Again, this cannot be forced, and transcendence of consciousness is restricted to a timely process of evolution.

Conclusion

The evolutionary process of life, opposite of the process of death, is the process of seeking good, seeking fulfillment and satisfaction. It is a syntropic process, an ideal one. The passing of time, as determined by the will of life, is a constant passing of real into ideal, bad into good, opposed to the unconscious process, which works in reverse, according to physically determined laws rather than the organic will of life. As life spreads and overtakes the Universe, awakening it to subjective perspective, the laws of syntropy— expressed as free will, compassion, inter-subjectivity— will overgrow the entropic laws of expansion, separation, and determinism. As we learn to avoid conflict, and learn to see the perfection in others, and complimentarity between us all, we will learn to unite our perspectives, creating larger, more objective perspectives, similar to the unity of cells composing our larger consciousness. When all of life voluntarily unites to form a larger organism, the process of inter-subjectivity—syntropy— will begin to overcome the process of conflict—entropy—, and the Universe will collapse into objectivity, singularity. We will be past our duality of perspective and spectrum of reason. We will incur gnosis, contentment, happiness. Good will overcome bad, ideal will overcome real, just as summer overcomes winter, day overcomes night. Then the process will begin again.

Notes

[1] By substance I mean the ultimate base of reality, the very smallest component; I don’t mean particles, atoms, molecules, etc. but the most basic “stuff” that makes these things from the smallest scale.

[2] It’s important to note that life is not purely syntropic, but only expresses degrees of syntropy. Life expresses both entropy and syntropy.

[3] It’s important to note that the hard-objectivity of God is not like the soft-objectivity of the material world, lacking spirit, but instead, perhaps unimaginable, is the synthesis of soft-subjectivity and soft-objectivity.

[4] If there is a multiverse composed of alternate decisions, God becomes that multiverse rather than being limited to our own Universe.

[5] As a metaphor, think about the Fibonacci Sequence. The numbers in this sequence can themselves be numbered in sequence of their steps. If we see the steps as the real descriptions of the world, the Fibonacci sequence may represent the ideal descriptions of the world. Both are correct in their descriptions.

References

[i] Ulisse Di Corpo¹

[ii] Ulisse Di Corpo and Antonella Vannini²

[iii] Parmenides of Elea

[iv] Ken Wilber, 69.

[v] Ibid., 78

[vi] Ibid., 81

[vii]Amit Goswami², 264.

[viii] Georg Hegel², 45.

[ix] Georg Hegel¹, 23.

[x] Ken Wilber, 102.

[xi] Albert Einstein