There are some works of philosophy, that may be written (and sometimes read) as a sort of austere pursuit of pleasure in the pure delight of watching the thought burgeon and develop in this direction and that. Such has been my experience during the writing of this paper and I hope it may be yours.

          Copyright © 2007 Jud Evans. Permission granted to distribute in any medium, commercial
              or non-commercial, provided author attribution and copyright notices remain intact.

                                                              INTRODUCTION

The 'problem of causation' has bedevilled philosophy for centuries and it is generally acknowledged to be the last great unsolved ontological question for philosophy.

I seek to introduce an alternative version of determinism and challenge the traditional understanding of causality.

I present for your consideration the notion that the existential modalities of all entities are determined combinatorially and hierarchically by the totality of the antecedal catenulate modalities of an infinite material universe, and that its constituent persistent objects (vide: Hume’s billiard balls etc.) are merely sub-holonistic agents or proxies of change deterministically and concatenationally selected by the remote mechanisms of the material imperium.

This paper is planned in such a way as to introduce the subject of eliminative determinism in sequential stages in an attempt to anticipate questions before they are implied.

We are, as Voltaire intimated, to a certain extent ensnared by the inadequacies of the language which we have inherited. This is especially aggravating when conflicts of definition arise. Having no wish to write up my ideas in the logical symbolisation of 'Ramsey sentences,' it behoves me to explain at some length the manner of my approach to conventional English as opposed to language employed in ontological discussion as it is used in this paper. For the hard nominalist, serious determinist and extreme eliminativist only material objects exist. Those objects are of three main kinds:

Human animal objects exist as communicative entities. There are other animal objects, that can communicate to a much lesser degree, though in a manner adequate as a component of their survival-niche requirements. For the purposes of this essay, those animals with their crude calls, limited displays and physical gesticulatory posturing will be ignored.

     Eliminativist philosophy rejects the existence of imaginary or chimerical phenomena like Pegasus or unicorns, or Meinongian crystal mountains beset with golden trees bearing luscious bespangled fruits.  The eliminativist preoccupation lies with identifying and discriminating between human symbolisation, both audible and visual, which correctly points to an actual object (denotatum) that once, historically, could be found in the world, or can contemporaneously be encountered as an actual object – and those which did not and do not satisfy these verificational conditions.

     Words which fail this requirement to indicate actual objects are abstractions. In philosophical usage the term 'abstraction' refers to the thought process of the human animal, whereby his or her ideas are distanced from certain objects in the world. In classical linguistics such non-denotational abstract words are graded as ‘designata,’ a designatory miscellanea which lacks the definitional stringency of ‘denotata’ and which usually refer to verbs describing actions, abstract or gerundial nouns, adverbials and adjectives used to describe the general existential modalities [properties] of entities rather than specific objects.

            'Facts' do not exist - only that which is factual (objectively actual) exists.

     Until new forms of language develop with which to describe ideas beyond the terminologically encumbered realm of folk ontology, there is no alternative other than to write in natural language and to include regular semantic caveats.
The abstraction used in this paper is only employed instrumentally in order that eliminativist ideas can be communicated, and to ensure that the (abstract) concept of the ‘material imperium’ not be misconstrued either as actually existing, or acting as some replacement deus absconditus or ‘hidden god.’

     Personification in relation to insentient objects is employed in this essay where there is no other linguistic option. In practice this means for example, that when I use the term 'persistent' or 'perdurant' to describe the existential modality of an insentient object such as a stone. I am not attributing a human 'mental attitude' or 'volition' to the stone. Eliminativists reject the concept of human ’ideation’ as existing anyway. Nor am I assigning the capability of ’conscious choice’ or 'intention' to an entity bereft of the ability to think. The use of such abstraction does not mean I am guilty of crude personification, but is a pragmatic recognition that as we lack any words in the family of Indo-European natural languages which adequately describe the existential 'tendencies' of insentient objects to perjure in the world.

     We must therefore come to terms with the paucity of linguistic symbolisation available, or generate neologisms and hope that they are accepted and taken seriously. In accordance with the age-old principles of nominalism, which act as a fundamental ground or rationale of most eliminativisms, abstraction is only acceptable in the realm of philosophical or ontological dialogue if it is employed in its correct syntactical role as helpful fiction, facilitating an easier and less periphrastic, explicatory, descriptive, exegetical or commentarial account of the world. I wish at this point to make it clear that my own neologisms – ‘The material Imperative, the materiocracy, the materioarchy and the holarchy’ etc., are themselves abstractions.

     Such expressions are ‘provisional’ or ‘abstractive markers’ pending the day when alternative significations, shorn of confusing classical and medieval payloads of anthropocentric meaning are introduced which are accepted and employed by the scientific and philosophical community as semantically satisfactory labelling suitable for mapping descriptions of the inanimate nominata in question. As a nominalist I class my own neologic abstractions, which mainly pertain to material collectivisms [collections of objects, holons, etc] as abstractions, because the terms nominologically do not refer to existent individuate material singletons.

     When such physical collectivisation of individual objects takes place, as when humans congregate in football crowds for example, or when sand is shovelled into a heap, it goes without saying that each person or grain of course exists. But the proximal manner, modality or form in which the contiguous arrangement of those individuals can be described does not exist. Such collective nouns are nominologically orphanic, being nothing more than the neuro-linguistic states of the observer, addressor or descriptor.


      Traditional determinism of the: ‘object–on–object’ (or billiard-ball–on–billiard-ball ) type causality that one encounters in most philosophical writings is usually classified under three main headings. Libertarianism, which is non-deterministic, compatibilism or soft determinism for which ‘free will’ is considered to be congruous with determinism and is taken to be an important requisite of moral obligation, and lastly incompatibilism or hard determinism. Unrestricted or complete libertarian ‘free will’ does not only have scientific implications, but has religious and ethical implications too. The acceptance of complete free will means that there are no legal or religious problems regarding responsibility for misdemeanours or sins, either against God or the state. In addition there are modern compatibilists, who, following Hume, often characterise the problem in terms of a compatibility between determinism and the principles of right and wrong, or the ability, or lack of competency to adapt to an acceptable standard of personal conduct.

Abstractions in themselves do not nominate some object that exists. That is they map back to the utterer’s existential states. Such orphanic designata are a feature of the existential modality of the addressor and the addressee. Neither do such abstractions instantiate, existentialise or represent by an instance any material entity that can be found in the world. Eliminativists employ abstraction just like anybody else in daily life and see no reason not to take advantage of the useful fictions embedded in language in order to save time. The intention is to eliminate the use of ontologically clumsy terminology from the sphere of philosophical and scientific discourse, where abstraction, if used unthinkingly can cause problems of contextual definition with profound ontological implications.


     The intention is NOT to eliminate the words themselves from the lexicon, many of which are vitally important, culturally valuable and often aesthetically significant. A verb like ‘loving’ functions perfectly well as used in the conjugation of the continuous present in natural language, in that it can economically describe a mode of existence of an entity, as in the term: 'The loving mother.' But ‘loving’ as a gerund, creates the impression of having a specific referent that has modes of existence of its own.
Thus for the eliminativist: 'The dancing girl, the rotten apple and the ragged flag’ are seen as being ontologically acceptable, syntactically structured as they are in such a way as to make it semantically obvious and abundantly clear that the existential modalities of the girl, the apple and the flag are introduced as being one of the manners or modes in which they are presently conceived of as existing. One last example of gerundial ontological mischief: 'Fishing can provide a welcome addition to any larder.' as against: 'Fish can provide a welcome addition to any larder.’

We now move on to a consideration of the holarchic super-systemic  materiocracy, which I will introduce by way of a beautiful oriental metaphor.

Metaphors are not usually ratiocinative or based upon exact thinking, but they can conjure up an image that challenges what is traditionally accepted in the realms of philosophy, ontology and mereology. The breathtaking Buddhist vision of ‘Indra’s Web’ below is such a metaphor. The source was [2] (Capra. 1982) though the following form of words are mine:

The elegant citation above does not bespeak of determinism, but many such tropes and metaphors are lavishly elegant and refined and have a recherché beauty and vital usefulness as forms of communication. Although eliminative determinism could not be further away from any suggestion of mysticism, religious or otherwise, the Buddhist paean above is intriguingly redolent of the eliminative deterministic holarchic principle of a cosmic materiocracy - a metaphysical precept upon which eliminative determinism is grounded.


      Cosmologically the postulates of eliminative determinism are of a unificatory theory that identifies the ordering structures of the physical holarchy as the existential modality of the very material of the integrum itself. The material whole – the entiatic entirety – exists in continually changing states of adjustive tensional balance between the interplay of opposing existential elements or tendencies instantiated as the material determinata, which is both dissipative and unificational. The term ‘materiocracy’ is a useful fiction, an abstraction, a disposable portmanteau word which helps to describe the control structure of matter as matter itself, whereby the materioarchy of the whole qualifies its own constituent elements, which it unifies and preserves as constantly updated and reflexively renewed current versions of ITSELF.


    Individual molecules are sub-holons, induced or acting in accord with the inherent formulae of corporality of the materioarchy into patterns of concrescence and coalescence, which, via spatial propinquity, results in a multiplicity becoming a whole within a multiplicity of wholes within the penetralia of the ultimate whole.
In common with all eliminativist abstractive tools the words ‘materiocracy’ and ‘consubstantiality’ can be discarded and kicked away like some disposable semiotic rungs of Wittgenstein’s ladder once the idea is conceptualised and the notion of ‘consubstantiality’ or existential participation or coexistence in the same substance is grasped. The moderator of this physical interplay is the very material itself – the ‘material imperium.’ or ‘purposeless persistence factor.’ The substances of the materioarchy or cosmos are conceived of as existing in an autopoietic, symbiotic system of equality and similarity of material distribution. The conception is of a boundless, infinite integrum indicating that the nature of the micro materials which characterise the stars is similar to that of any pebble on the seashores of our world.

    Etymologically the term 'holon' as coming from the Greek 'holos,' which means: 'whole, entire, complete in all its parts,' together with the suffix - on, which indicates its neuter form, cf. proton, neutron and electron.

    The neologism ‘holon’ was coined by Arthur Koestler the prolific Hungarian author in a 1967 non-fiction work, and has since been accepted as part of the glossary of many sciences - particularly systems theory. The title: ‘The Ghost in the Machine’ [3] Koestler. 1967) refers to the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle's negative description of René Descartes' mind-body dualism.

While himself rejecting what he refers as ‘crass dualism’, Koestler is using a different approach, aiming at a more general explanatory principle, the hierarchical organisation of life and the adaptability of living forms through a continuous exchange of energy and information. [4] (Wikipedia. 2007)

     Metaphorically speaking the holon is 'Janus-faced,' gazing not so much backward into the past and forward into the future, for neither past nor future exist for the eliminativist - but downwards and inwards into the micro-holarchic, quantum sub-systemic world within, and above and outwards towards the super-holon of the starry meta-systemic heavens of the visible universe at the same time.

Every entity in the cosmos is considered to exist as a perdurant object - meaning every object exists in a modality of systematised, physical purposeless persistence, lacking any teleological ends or intentions but to remain extant in its currently functional existential state, yielding and generating change only as a damage-limitation strategy when necessary.

Hierarchical transformation results in the composition of new holon-systems, and new entities which are stable at a higher or lower stratum. There is ceaseless holarchic colonisation, amalgamation, absorption, rejection, retrogression and fragmentation, where holonic subsystems come under the influence of new systems. The super-system is constrained by its parts, and the parts are at the same time restricted by the whole. It is vital to remember of course that the ‘systems’ do not actually exist in themselves – the notion is a human abstraction – it is the systemised material objects that actually exist. Hamstrung by the language of folk ontology – the eliminativist has no alternative but to issue regular ‘personification warnings’ and ‘abstraction-alerts!’
Holarchic conatus (persistence) is preserved in equilibrium by a series of deterministic readjustments finely tuned by the physical dictates of the materioarchy. Sub-systemic persistence is imperatively constrained by the ‘codes of corporality’ of the holarchy. A relaxation of hierarchical ascendancy in a super-system brings about a corresponding lack of cohesion and an increase in automony in nested subsystems.
Thus is the eliminative deterministic vision one of a holarchic cosmos with disparate systemic levels. Each of the multitudinous, independent but interrelated elements, (a carbon atom, a pebble on a beach of planet Earth, or the Pleiadian holonistic star-cluster in the constellation of Taurus comprise a contemporaneously superstructural and sub-systemic unified whole.

Holons coalesce into greater holarchic conglomerates in the manner of the formation of the stars and planets, or fracture into smaller sub-systemic objects in the case of a super-nova or a broken window glass. Humans and other biological objects begin as eggs or sub-systemic seeds, and in the course of life transform into super-systems – only to dissolve into micro-systemic holons when the system fails. The idea is advanced that each object in the holistic cosmos is not merely a discrete, effectuated entity, but a reciprocative, autonomous, sub-systemic component of the universal environmental meronymy which identifiably can be conceived of from a human point of view as being at the same time both the parts and the sum of those parts the – both the constituents and the integrum.  By way of illustration one can perceive of sand as either a multitude of individuate grains, or as a heap.

Any change must be seen as the result of all antecedent changes in the universe. Most people in their daily lives are concerned only with a single change (or a few concatenational links backwards in the causal chain) and its immediate or proximal causes. The focus here however is not on the deterministic mechanisms and concerns of everyday life, but rather are concentrated on the deterministic universe itself. To simply deny the existence of the abstraction 'cause' cuts through the ontological Gordian knot in one blow and sets in train a refreshing form of lateral thinking. Whilst it is true that in this world of philosophical and scientific complexity no utterance is completely free from the influences of antecedal determinants, the label of inter-theorecticality does not sit comfortably with eliminative determinism. The view offered is constitutively anti-theoretical and non-reductionist in that taken as a whole the theory is not evincing the outcomes of one field of knowledge in the language of another.

The theory of eliminative determinism seeks to modify the notions of Indra’s Net and conjoin this beautiful ancient metaphor with remediated elements of a de-mystified, eliminativist, occidental, secular, deterministic ontology. The factor of ‘object–on–object cause’ that initiates change in motion, as in the case of a billiard ball striking another was accepted generally unquestioned until the brilliant mind of Hume addressed the question.

     For Aristotle there was a final cause or teleological (entelékheia) end towards which an event is purposed. This notion is also rejected in eliminative determinism which sees the machinations material imperium as purposeless. Aristotle wrote that every event had both an efficient and a final cause, which is hard to understand when we think that 'purpose' requires agency, intelligence and intention. It made perfect sense for Aristotle when the substance of things contained the 'entelechy' or 'end within,' which brings about, for instance, the growth of an acorn into an oak.

     The eliminativist view is that the change from acorn to oak is a manifestation of deterministic, non-agential purposeless persistence (conatus) devoid of any mystical 'entelechy.' Acorn and oak? There has been much philosophical discussion concerning which came first - the chicken or the egg? The answer is neither. Both terms are identificatory labels for diachronic existential modalities of the same changed object. Mereologically, like the planks and other equipage of the Ship of Theseus were completely renewed during its long voyage – so too the cellular composition of most biological species, such as acorn, oak egg and chicken are changed completely over a period of time. In the course of seven years every cell in the bodies of the ship's crew was completely renewed.

     The real or sentential extantal subject is that which equates or corresponds with the entiative object (the nominatum) named by the signifier - the name or noun by which it is identified. The nominatum of the definite article and signifier ‘the man’ is at the same time a familiarly shaped human with a head, a body two arms and two legs and the holonistic assemblage or conglomerate of the human existential quantum and cellular components and their ever-changing states and modalities – a seething similitude of requisite physical change-based somatic equivalences that occur to the quantum-based, component mini-entities that holonistically equate to the entity – ‘man.’
Descartes claimed in a letter to Mersenne that the active power or propensity of bodies to change and move exists by courtesy of and in compliance with the power of the Christian God. he adds that:

       Some later philosophers of the seventeenth century preferred a more natural explanation of events. Entities were now being seen by some as existing in modalities of a systematised persistence to remain extant in their current existential modality. Spinoza who prudently attributed all power and change to ‘God’ or ‘Nature’ depending upon the circumstances, and the way the religiopolitical winds were blowing, considered each existential mode of an object has an innate striving (conatus) to persevere in being. For him ‘conatus’ also refers to the ‘force’ with which the motion of an object is initiated and maintained. Eliminativism rejects ‘force’ and ‘energy’ as no more than useful fictions and later provides a more detailed consideration of these scientific phenomena on pp. 31– 32 of this paper.


Spinoza in his account of conatus ad motum, writes that in physics, striving or conatus is understood as a tendency to a certain kind of motion:

        What other way is there to describe the motivational complexity of an insensate object's constant holarchic reconfiguration? How else are we to describe the physical imperative of ‘self’-energisation, ‘self’-adjustment and ‘self’-actualisation?

       The use of the very word 'self' immediately taints or ontologically besmirches our text with overtones of personification - how can a rock have a 'self?'
There is no alternative for the eliminativist natural philosopher but to employ such 'unnatural' natural language, which attributes human qualities to inert objects and encumbers rooks, rocks and roller-coasters with a clumsy semantic payload of anthropocentric implication, which acts to wrongly animate and invest with intelligence and human characteristics to objects devoid of feeling, consciousness or animation. Even the Kant’s bright concept of the ‘thing in itself’ is diminished and maculated by the murk of anthropomorphism.

Of all the seventeenth century philosophers, the one who I feel closest too is the notorious Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. (1623-1673) She was quite pretty, very wealthy of course, but also rather idiosyncratic, swore like a trooper, wore what were considered in those times to be strange clothes, was a vegetarian, and in the heyday of hunting was against animal blood sports. She was referred to by all and sundry as: ‘Mad Madge.’

Her philosophy however was far from mad. Her biographer O’Neill describes her as a natural philosopher. Cavendish rejected Aristotelianism and the mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century. First, the natural world is wholly material, and given that there are no vacua in nature. Nature is a unified whole that is further self-moving.
[8] (Cavendish. 1688. pp. 47-8; 70-4; 208ff)

     This explains O’Neill’s label of Cavendish’s system as organic materialism – nature is a self-moving unity, much like an organism in which parts serve the whole and must be defined in terms of the whole. For Cavendish causation is explained through a kind of sympathy or affinity of parts within a whole, as opposed to external motion transferred from substance to substance Matter is essentially moving, and motion as a mode is essentially connected with a substance. [9] (ibid. pp. 139-44)

     In a pleasing accord with eliminative determinism, Cavendish claims that any theory of causation dependent upon the transfer of motion model, will, in Cavendish’s evaluation, fail to explain these most basic metaphysical principles.

     Another point of contact across the centuries is that for her the notion that inherently moving matter can also regulate itself invests a modern holon with a certain provenance of self-sufficiency.

Sadly in explanation for this phenomenon the lady held that every part of matter senses and reasons in some degree, so in that ontological area it is only a partial meeting of minds. We touch hands collegially once again however, when Cavendish insists that the natural world has existed eternally and is infinite. [10] (Ibid. pp. 32; 73)

      This last has led some to insinuate that she skirted perilously close to atheism – or actually crossed that religious Rubicon. After all, it is true that Cavendish attributes all natural effects to the self-regulating corporeal whole that is nature itself. There is no clear role for God in her natural philosophy – neither in the maintenance, nor in the creation of nature. [11] (ibid. pp. 208-12)

Cavendish identified two degrees of matter – animate and inanimate  [12] (ibid. p. 211)

Further, for Cavendish, human ‘souls’ are the imaginative and arrogant creation of none other than humans, who want to separate themselves (erroneously) from the nature of which they are a mere part. In Cavendish’s conception of natural beings; human dominance over other creatures is wrong, because humans and every other being in the world are made from the same material [13] (ibid. pp. 66-7)
Not surprisingly, then, one of her poems advocates vegetarianism and a cessation to hunting.

     Cavendish further differentiates two forms of knowledge that animate matter has – rational and sensitive knowledge. Cavendish believes any part of matter we may isolate, no matter how small, will include both inanimate and animate elements, as well as reasoning and sensing parts. [14] (ibid. p. 206)

     Whilst the genius of Hume perceived the phenomena of causal interaction between objects as an internalised misconception based upon our repeated exposure to such apparent causal interaction, Schopenhauer contended that the cosmos is essentially ‘will’ - an unreasoning, striving desire, which I believe was actually a re-casting of the seventeenth century ‘conatus’ principle. There is after all little difference in meaning between the terms ‘will’ and ‘persistence.’ Schopenhauer envisaged this ‘will’ as a ‘nisus’ or ‘an effortful attempt to attain a goal.’ Causality is seen as a law of nature – the reciprocation of forces on certain states of matter. Force continues to be an little understood mysterious concept to science – they imagine they can measure it, but what they are really measuring are forceful objects. My own theory does not claim to have identified it – but rather to have abolished it and restored and reinvested material objects as the true noble proprietorial nominata of the sobriquets of such terms as: ‘force, puissance, power and energy. Like many before and since he misconstrued the materialist’s ontological preoccupation with the physical as nothing more than an attack upon religion and morality. This is not necessarily the case, for some materialists are moral to the point of prudishness and many men of science are practising Christians.

     Fundamentally Schopenhauer’s world is made up of our representations in space and time and the ‘will.’ As for humans, we are really all one being. Interestingly for such a grumpy old misanthropic individual he extrapolated from this that we should be sympathetic to others, and that to hurt another is in reality to hurt oneself.
Turning once again to Hume we immediately encounter a superior intelligence:

A well known member of the ‘object–upon–object’ school of determinism
Ted Honderich comments:

    My own modest alternative version of causality is a contribution towards a furtherance of Hume’s amazing deterministic breakthrough – the concept:
‘integrum–on–object’ –-–‘object–on–integrum’ is offered by way of a homage to our great British Empiricist.

     My hero David Hume was on the way to it - and made a tremendous leap of cognition, but he just fell short of it. I held my breath whilst reading the relevant passages waiting for the epiphanic moment of sudden understanding or revelation and the final explanation or critical exegesis which never came.

                Bohm wrote the following to elucidate the Copenhagen position:

I begin this section with yet another reminder that much of what follows might be misidentified for the personification of insentient objects – as always this is not the case. The term the Material Imperative is a key term coined to characterise the imperitival self-regulation or ‘codes of corporality’ of the holarchy or the physical realm of objects, called here the 'materiocracy.' Such material objects are considered to function as the 'regulators of their own physicality,' regulated by the necessities and exingencies of the sub-systemic and super-systemic physical affinities in which they are constrained to exist. In the true spirit of eliminativist phrase structure, the term ‘Imperative’ should be positioned adjectivally before the noun ‘'materiocracy,’ in the manner of: ‘The imperious materiocracy,’ a syntactical stratagem which ontologically removes the transcendental triggering device from any suggestion that ‘imperiousness’ is an abstract ’property’ of the materiocratic integrum. But no matter how the eliminativist twists and turns, he cannot escape being enwrapped in the Medusan coils of a serpentine traditionalist abstraction.

     The spectral  sounding: 'Laws of Nature' are seen not as some set of physical formulae applied by an abstract, spiritualised dius absconditus renamed as: 'nature,' nor as the heavenly ordinances of some spiritual being. The Material Imperative is a term which characterises 'that which exists' as existing both as a singular meta-systemic 'Ding an Sich' (thing in itself') - and synchronically as a multiplicity of pluralistic 'Gegenstände in Sich' (,things in themselves') at the same time.

   Existing consubstantially both as a meta-systemic conglomerate and a sub-systematised diaspora, embodying the infinite cosmos as the sole state in which the integrum could and does exist, the signifier ‘material imperative’ points to the nomological system-command structure existentially and modalically embodied in the ‘meta-systemic integrum.’


The abstraction tagged as: ‘the material imperative’ might just as easily be termed ‘the causal imperative,’ for both terms suffice and are interchangeable as abstract labels for the same universally present regulator.

    All entities exist as the modal archetypes or physicalised blueprints of allowable realised physical relationships developmentally draughted and tested during the uncountable millennia by prototypically rigid, elastic, gaseous, electric, fluid, magnetic and chemical objects which have populated the infinity within which the covariant and contravariant sub-systems manoeuvre and jockey for hierarchical position via the opportunities generated by the interminably repetitive ‘big bangs’ which punctuate eternity.

    So too does the mechanistic material imperium of trial and error prototypically control all other events known and unknown as envisaged and unimagined by cosmologists and quantum physicists.


    From the cosmic events and the quantum collision events of tiny holonarchic sub-systemic systems only visible as trace-marks on the screens of the observational monitors in synchrocyclotron control rooms, to the child’s rattle which falls from a baby’s pram – the imperious codes of corporeality of the imperium are equally coterminous.

Any “scare quotes” around the adverb “within” are deliberate, in the sense that as the ‘meta-systemic integrum,’ is conceived of as unboundedly infinite in every direction – there is no ‘without’ and consequently no ‘within.’

        Baron d’Holbach takes nature to consist in matter and motion and nothing else:

     So spoke the great philosopher Baron d'Holbach. The following is an attempt to understand and describe the evolutionary processes of molecular, material, biologic, gaseous and energetic insentient objects and the function of spatial impingement and insentient niche-seeking as a feature of the preservative processes and ascendency procedures in the struggle for material persistence. Though the deterministic tempo of the evolutionary time-scales of entiatic matter throughout the holarchy are staggeringly slow relative to human measurements of material change, the differentiae in the nature of the processes are merely those of quantity and duration rather than character.

     Concerning the vast diversity of elements, metals, minerals, chemicals and gasses, it will come as no surprise that such inanimate objects are also environmentally adaptive in a similar way that biological species have proved to be here on earth. When crude ‘prototype elements’ produce or enter a new environment with many unoccupied niches, the compendium of material species expands (radiates) and evolves suitable adaptations better fitted to fill these available niches in much the same way that animal or vegetable taxonomic categories multiply to fill available niches here on earth.
   
     By way of example. The process of becoming adapted to these different niches may lead to elemental extenuation or competition. Corrosive chemicals in conflict with corrodible metallic substances may lead to either or both the development of variant metals more resistant to corrosive attack, or the development of more corrosive chemicals, etc. In many cases these inter-materialistic conflicts have led to the formation of new elements or the modification of existing substances. Time sequences apart, I perceive there to be little difference between the irrational motivation of the biological gene as a survival stratagem, and the incessant deterministic unconscious interaction and 'savage' competition for substantial-security by material variants sharing the same mereological coincident boundaries.

         As I see it, the metanarrative of the cosmos describes a hierarchy of holarchic nested sub-systems in continuous savage competition for the best niche for prolongation. The ruthless exploitation of the Darwinian model of 'the survival of the fittest' here on earth is performed in the far reaches of the galaxies with a similar ruthlessness by the star-material from which we are constructed. The emergence of life-forms such as ours and those of others with which we share this planet is a part of the unceasing competition for the existential niches that best offer durability and continuance. The unceasing, titanic struggle for entiatic dominance of which we are a part and a product is alive and well and at work throughout the immense assemblage of everything that exists within the meta-systemic complexity which is the cosmos.

For something to be described as being predictable is to describe something as being determined of course. From the so-called sub-atomic to the super-galactic, the competition amongst quantum entities and metallic and chemical compounds is similar in nature to the competition for deterministic niche-construction and retention in animals and plants as described by Darwin. I believe the motivational mechanism of universal change as being that of competitive persistence and the drive for continuity and increasing complexity. But is there still a ‘why’ question to be answered?

                               ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’

Is the hoary old anthropocentric question of religion and metaphysics still valid and meaningful? Does the attribution of 'purpose,' based upon a model of human intentionality and volition to a cold, uncaring cosmos make sense? I think not.

As Paul Edwards put it put it in his paper: “Why?,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Set against the particular meronymic relation to the relevant sub-systemic and super-systemic holons in question, and depending upon whether their relationship is transitive or stable and the degree of integrality with the host or hosted sub-systems. The meta-systemic integrum or ‘cosmos’ provides a battleground upon which all the objects vie for continuity-niches in pursuance of perdurance. The prospect of ‘lastingness’ provides the enginery of change for the war-games of niche-invasion and protection. This constant existential conflict between the constituted authority of the material macrocosm and the rebel constituents of holonic change and conservation struggling for survival is reflected throughout the whole of nature – and insentient objects are no exception to the rule of the material imperium.

       It is my belief that deterministically changing entities change intrinsically, and have no specific endogenous cause, but react autogenously to the changes within the general meta-systemic environment of which they are a part. Therefore logically, their change is self initiated (for the parts and the integrum are synonymous) and what is undergone when the baby drops his rattle is undergone by the whole cosmos whether all parts are aware of it or not.


   The abstraction 'cause' is a cosmic catenulation rather than a local outcome, as will become clear if one tries to make sense of which snowflake ‘causes’ what in the flurry of a snowstorm? Energetic objects which are impinged-upon by the environment respond by changing or re-arranging their existential modalities in the most conservational way possible. If a car’s carburettor is replaced or modified the whole super-holonistic vehicle has undergone modification – not just the sub-holon which mixes air with petrol vapour prior to explosion.


     Described via the inadequacies of human language, there exists a reciprocal resistance, or constitutional polarity in every holon – both a self-assertive oppositional propensity and a yielding, integrative tendency, which is a universal characteristic of all hierarchic order. When challenged by the super-systemic environment, holons react in accordance with the physical rules of the material imperative, and in the case of organic entities with the concomitant physiological dictates of the particular persistence-niche in which they inhere, in order to ensure the least functional and morphological damage.

   Whether it is the self-crunching-up carrosserie of a crashing car, or the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire the same damage limitational mechanisms kick in. Oppose or submit? [cf. ‘fight or flight.’) Every holon has the two-fold disposition to persist and affirm its identity as a quasi-autonomous singleton; and at the same time to operate as an incorporated part of a greater unity. The damaged car wing crumples in such a way that the minimum amount of integrality is sacrificed as a result of the impact, and the least possible re-arrangement of its bodily form is manifested in keeping with the characteristics of its original structure.


     In anthropocentric language terms there is a natural balance arrived at between the limits of damage limitation in relation to total destruction. No 'exchange of energy' takes place between the two balls - because ‘energy’ per se does not exist to be transferred or conserved. That which we call ‘energy’ comprises of energised quantum objects hosted by a super-holon – they do not migrate from one billiard ball to another like dancing pin-head angels on a spree and nudge up against it and make it move. The stationary ball employs its own intrinsically energised managed matter to abandon the spatial location it occupies at the instant of impact in order to avoid exploding in a shower of plastic fragments. The oncoming ball enacts the same evasive action in coming to an abrupt halt or changing direction. That is the reason that physicists claim there is a detectable energetic equivalence between the two purposelessly persistent objects.

     Purposelessly persistent objects are subject to constant and never-ending internal change. This is not because of the particular impingement of other objects, but because they exist as the recipient vectoral objects of inevitable concatenational influences from the micro-causal objects of which they are physically constituted. All objects change - because they are the objects they are. All objects change because they exist in the way that they exist at the time that they are implicated or become subjected to the 'linkage mechanism' of the codes of corporeal contiguity of the concatenational material imperative.

     The overall, macro-picture of deterministic concatenational auto-change [which is actually what 'causation’ is] is difficult for humans to detect, because we are so obsessed with the identification of the relatively small number of catenulate changes we observe or experience and see as significant, compared with the uncountable trillions upon trillions of entiatic changes that are going on inside us and all around us which pass unnoticed. We tend to single out only those changes which we consider meaningful or important to us in our daily lives.

     The incident or event of the two billiard balls on the table before us therefore assumes an ontological significance far beyond its real cosmic importance, which restricts us from seeing the deterministic wood for the ontical trees.
Much as I applaud the genius of Hume in spotting the repetitive impingement (‘The Regularity Theory' of causation,) I claim that the abstraction ‘causation’ 'does NOT exist. Both 'cause' or 'effect' IN THEMSELVES do not exist.
What exists are self-causal and self-effectuated objects aka ‘holons.’

     We COULD say that 'cause' and 'object' are 'consubstantial.' I use this fiction only as an ideational rundle which can be stepped upon and then kicked away once an understanding of the concept is realised, for I do not wish it to be thought that 'cause' or 'change' REALLY exist - even consubstantially.

I noticed it first when I used to take my kids to nursery and watch them as they added to their a posteriori knowledge of causal objects by manipulating coadundate, interlocking, coloured building blocks. If they persevered pushing two together they clicked and 'caused' the ensuant bi-partite object to 'become' (say) the arch over a doorway in a toy house etc. Learning to predict the causal-effectional outcomes of ergodic - or stochastic random impingements, (I call it: ‘identifying catenulate accountability') where no previous, impingemental or antecedal interactive model has been formerly experienced to predict values, is a part of the way we develop as humans - from the time that we are born.

      Thus, incrementally we become acquainted with Hume's: 'Regularity Theory of Causation,' which for the eliminativist has become the: 'regularity theory of persistent objects.'

‘Change – aka – cause’ is somatogenetic and sui generistic - being the only example of its kind applicable to ALL OBJECTS constituting a tautological uniqueness of its own; unparalleled to ALL - not to certain members of the entiatic cosmic community. In other words if we say that 'all objects are causal' we must consider the term syncategorematical, in that it imports the nature of the predicate to the subject and excludes every other 'suppositum' from the predicate, and pleonistic in that the denotatum of the words ‘object’ and ‘change’ are repetitions of same sense in different words.

'Cause' is synonymous with 'change,’ which is the only way that any object can exist. 'Cause' aka 'change' is not predicative of the object - as ‘cause-change’ IS the object - the way that it exists.

After noting a definition of determinism on page one of ‘Elbow Room:’
‘All physical events are caused or determined by the sum total of all previous events.’
Daniel Dennett goes on to say something in: ‘Why Do We Want Free Will?’
that speaks for both of us…

After reading thus far through the above account and the counter-intuitive claims it makes - that our traditional intuitive perceptions of causation are no more than helpful fictions, one could be excused for responding:

‘So what?’ Our present understanding is quite sufficient to allow us to make reasonable predictions about the world in which we find ourselves. We know the likely outcome if one throws a brick at a window – the glass shatters. Our scientists tell us, that just as the kinetic energy of one billiard ball is transferred to another when they collide, the kinetic energy of the moving brick is transferred to the fragile surface of the window and the glass breaks when the missile hits it?’

     David Hume considered our perception of causation as that of necessary connection as being naive. He thought the association lay not in the objects but envisioned by the observer’s mind. A number of subsequent philosophers have addressed the Humean problematic by seeking a connection in the objects via so-called physical processes such as the mysterious ‘energy-flows’ of which nothing is known. Not a single person on the face of the earth can give a convincing definition of the abstraction that is ‘energy.’ The reason is of course quite simple – it does not exist to be defined. What exists are energised objects or energetic holonic systems.
ALL objects are energised – otherwise they would not exist.

Two respected authors of text books for US High School students – Abbott, and Van Ness comment thus:

Surely what this means is that ‘energy’ is simply: ‘the material’ – the physical manner in which all objects exist?
What is ‘mass?’ Something tells me we are to be told that it is a so-called ‘property’ of a body – like ‘beauty’ is the ‘property’ of a beautiful woman-object’s body, or ‘love’ the ‘property’ of a human male-object? And sure enough – here it comes…‘Mass,’ so any dictionary tells us is:

     The answer of course is what was obvious all along – the only thing in the cosmos which has ‘mass’ ‘(whatever the word ‘has’ is supposed to mean in this context) – is ‘that which is material.’ Thus the so-called ‘energy’ that ‘does all the work’ or ‘has the potential to work,’ which is what the scientists keep telling us about – like ‘causing’ other objects such as billiard balls to move etc. – is nothing more than simply the way that the holons known as ‘billiard balls’ exist as part of the materioarchy. Now as the materiocracy and its parts are the same thing, so what the human observer actually sees when he witnesses the collision of the billiard balls is just the tiny bit of the cosmos that he is homing in upon at that moment. In his mind he associates the two ‘events’ as one ‘happening,’ and attributes the ‘cause’ of what he sees to the two specks of matter before him and ‘brackets out’ (in true Husserlian manner) the rest of the immensity of the historical and contemporary universe, which is the actual antecedal concatenational reason for anything that has happened, is happening, or will EVER happen ANYWHERE at ANY TIME.


And this is what Richard Feynman – one of the most respected twentieth century scientists in the world had to say on the matter:

Surely 'energy' like all abstraction is merely a reification of the activity of an object into a ‘thing? Similar to the way that ’love’ is reified into a quasi-object, when plainly it is only the human objects we characterise as lovers who exist?  And yes, someone else believes that to be true…

The way I see it, the idea of attributing some ‘mysterious’ process which is not understood, as being the work of some ‘secondary’ even more ‘mysterious’ force that is not understood, is hardly different from that of our primitive ancestors, who, ignorant of the nature of thunder and lightening, attributed the flashing and banging phenomenon to an unknown, invisible spirit who lived in a tree.


If one ceases to believe in spirits or Gods that once satisfied our forefathers as being responsible for a so-called ‘creation’ of the universe – then what else is there other than material TO be held responsible? By eliminating one of only two alternatives, a person is but left with one remaining available explanation – an explanation which I am forced to cast into metaphorical language as that of:
                           

In the jargon of some of the marketing and advertising types with whom I mix, together with sundry philosophical commentators with whom I congregate cybernetically – ‘The idea has legs.’ Although it is plainly counter-intuitive in parts, ontologically it stands up to criticism and is capable of falsification in the classical Popperian manner. It would be foolish to claim that it would be impossible for negative evidence to be brought forward to disprove any theory, and indeed, such an attitude leads not to an apparent weakening of philosophical methodology, but understandably helps to authenticate scientific technique.

     What possible failings this ontology may have, lies not in the logic of the conclusions it may offer, but in my own inadequacies of explanation fettered as it is in personificational semantic paradigms which linguistically are not fit for the purpose. There is I realise a perceptual chasm which lies betwixt those that believe in the existence of abstraction, or so-called ‘abstract objects,’ and those who hold to a more rigorous view of what can be found in the universe.


    As to the physics of the theory, I have not had the temerity to present it to a physicist. I would anticipate some opposition if I did, mainly on the radical suggestion that objects ‘change themselves’ rather than are ‘forcibly changed’ by causal encounters or the impingement of other objects. Although I have conducted much research in this area I obviously need to do more. En passant, the actual stimulus to write this was a fascinating snippet of anecdotal information obtained from my tutor Dr. Tim Rosser of UCLAN whilst in a conversation concerning Leibnizean metaphysics, in which he told me of UCLAN philosopher Vernon Pratt’s metaphysical–metaphorical conceptual cameo of the ‘self-imploding beer can.’

                             Jud Evans. University of Central Lancashire. April 2007

                                                     REFERENCES
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[3] Koestler. Arthur ‘Ghost in the Machine.’ (1967)
[4] ‘The Ghost in the Machine.’ Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Accessed 20.03.2007.
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[9] Ibid., pp. 139-44.
[10] Ibid., pp. 32; 73.
[11] Ibid., pp. 208-12.
[12] Ibid., p. 211.
[13] Ibid., pp. 66-7.
[14] Ibid., p. 206.
[15] Schopenhauer, A. ‘On Human nature – The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer.’ p.4. Trans. T.Bailey Saunders. Publisher: Hard Press, 45 Walker Street, Lennox MA 01240. 2006.
[16] Hume. David. 'Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.' Selby-Bigge Edition.
[17] Honderich. Ted. 'Causality or Causation – the Fundamental Fact Plainly Explained.' 2007. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwCausationHonderich.html Oxford Univ. Press.
[18].David Bohm, Quantum Theory (London: Constable and Company, Limited, 1954 Reprint), p. 161.
[19] Ibid, p. 147.
[20] Baron d'Holbach (Paul Henri Thiry.) 'System of Nature, (Systeme de la Nature) trans. E. F. Bennett. Project Gutenberg. Visited 26.03.2007.
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[22] Ibid.
[23] Flood. Anthony. Quoting P. Edwards’ essay: 'Why?' Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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[25] Dennett. Daniel. 'Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting.' Ch.7. p. 171)
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[29] Abbott. M. M. & Van Ness. H. C. ‘Theory and Problems of Thermodynamics.’ McGraw-Hill Book Company.