Stuart Kauffman’s recent discussions of “Kantian wholes” comprised of autocatalytic sets of chemical and organic reactions that exhibit self-organized criticality are reminiscent of earlier reflections by thinkers as prominent as Kant himself, as well as Hegel, Peirce, Bergson, Whitehead, Poincaré, Schrödinger, Bertalanffy, Prigogine and others. In each case a fundamental question has concerned causality, and whether valid scientific explanations must come entirely from bottom-up analyses. Each has argued in one way or another for the fine-grain “incomputability” (Kauffman’s term) of such systems, and the latter’s importance for the creativity seen in biological and other forms of evolution.

Through a series of closely reasoned publications beginning in 1995 Combs has labored to show that the onflow of the mind, James’ “stream of consciousness,” can be understood as such a Kantian whole. Moreover, that the dynamical processes describing it may reflect parallel dynamical processes of the brain itself. Drawing together the ideas from these past efforts, and combining them with current complexity theory the authors attempt to give a partial answer to James’ query, “This multitude of ideas, existing absolutely, yet clinging together, and weaving an endless carpet of themselves…whence do they get their fantastic laws of clinging, and why do they cling in just the shapes they do?” (The Principles)

This presentation also these ideas in the light of insights form Yogacara philosophy.

Leslie.Allan.Combs@Gmail.com
RienHavens@gmail.com