In this article, we describe the transdisciplinarity process in our education postgraduate program at the University of Veracruz. The program emphasizes the main processes of the eco-formation experience for sustainability through a transdisciplinarity methodology that is focused on three processes: Re-Learning; Eco-literacy; and Dialogue of Knowledge. The experience of self-knowledge is described through our specific re-learning practices in the Mastership program, which represents a central tenet in the process for creating our Learning Community through holarchy practices, profound dialogues, and self-organization (...) processes. Finally we discuss three central ideas: creativity, spirituality, and play, which express and nurture our Learning Community. (shrink)

Consciousness is arguably the greatest mystery in science, still being unsolved after millennia of thinking. This book is one further attempt at trying to bring new insights regarding consciousness. While certainly the mystery will continue, the ideas in this book will raise awareness regarding an aspect of the phenomenology of consciousness that has been overlooked by past thinkers, and that is the emergent structure of consciousness, which in the end will be shown to be realized by the nature of self-reference (...) of looking-back-at-itself. The great take-away from appreciating the true nature of self-refence would be the need to switch to an unformal way of thinking in doing science if the problem of consciousness is to be resolved. To unformal way of thinking means abandoning the desire to have clearly defined entities in our theories, like “energy” or “space-time” or “spin”, and instead allow for entities that cannot be formalized, to be responsible for the workings of the world. We will slowly see as the book unfolds why the need for unformal way of thinking arises. -/- Regarding the presentation style, the book is both a popular book and a rigorous presentation that goes into thorough phenomenological analyses of consciousness. The reason is that our lives themselves are both familiar and the very nature of existence. As opposed to other writings that use a more technical approach, the philosophy of this book is that a theory of consciousness should focus more on the most mundane manifestations of consciousness, like the redness of an apple or the warmish feeling of cup of hot chocolate, in order to give a clearer understanding of consciousness. Therefore, the book is full of everyday examples of conscious experiences that the reader can relate to and use them to gain deeper insights into the workings of consciousness. In the same way that LHC is the laboratory of physicists, introspection is our own laboratory, the advantage of introspection over LHC being that it is accessible to anyone. Every person can gain a deep knowledge of consciousness by simply paying close attention to his own experiences. Of course, the difficulty arises because of the huge diversity of our experiences and this might raise an apparent initial obstacle of where one is to begin his understanding of consciousness. The book is designed as a guide through the complexities of everyday experiences in the direction of sorting them out in general and clear ways of thinking, showing that consciousness needs not be something that difficult to understand if only the proper attention is given to our experiences. -/- Therefore, the book starts with a chapter about qualia, where through many examples it is shown to be a form of meaning. Then the reader is familiarized with the Self through simple thought experiments that lead to the conclusion of the unicity of the Self, and then a further logical analysis that shows the eternal existence of the Self. After these initial familiarizations with consciousness, the book goes into its core subject, that being the emergent phenomenology, in which it will be shown how consciousness is structured on a holarchy of levels and how ultimately this structuring is a result of self-reference looking-back-at-itself, consciousness being shown to be possible only because of the unformalizable nature of self-reference. (shrink)

The paper proposes two ideas: (1) The wilderness preservation movement has failed to identify key elements involved in situations of environmental conflict. (2) The same movement seems unaware of its location within a tradition which is both elitist and Puritan. Holmes Rolston's recent work on the apparent conflict between feeding people and saving nature appears to exemplify the two points. With respect to point (1), Rolston's treatment fails to address the institutional and structural features which set the agenda for individual (...) human lives. The human ecology of environmental destruction cannot ignore the role of corporate actors such as banks, national governments, transnational corporations, trade unions and so on. These agents interact with each other in various ways and also have an internal structure – perhaps akin to Arthur Koestler's conception of the holarchy - which enables people working within them to avoid taking responsibility for policies that have damaging environmental consequences. As far as thesis (2) is concerned, Rolston's work shares common features with Arne Naess's deep ecology and Aldo Leopold's land ethic. All of these writers draw, perhaps unconsciously, on a tradition of sporting elitism associated with the Great White Hunter. One variety of this tradition combines elitism with a form of Puritanism. (shrink)

Prema teoriji holona stvarnost se ne sastoji ni od, samo, cjelina, niti od, samo, dijelova, nego od međuprožimajućih cjelina i dijelova, odnosno od holona , koje nalazimo unutar materijalnih i idejnih okvira stvarnosti. S obzirom na to da potpuno izolirani i neinteraktivni entiteti ne mogu opstojati holoni se udružuju, čineći tako zajednice holona, odnosno holarhije. Unutar holarhije naročit značaj imaju holoni s velikim brojem veza prema ostalim holonima. Takve holone nazivamo koncentratorima, s time da možemo razlikovati koncentratore prvog reda i (...) koncentratore drugog reda. U konačnici, ako neki holon zapostavlja svoju dijelost, u cilju dominiranja nad ostatkom holarhije, tada govorimo o neprirodnim hijerarhijama, a ukoliko zapostavlja svoju cijelost, što dovodi do toga da se jednostavno stopi s ostatkom holarhije, tada govorimo o neprirodnim heterarhijama.According to the theory of holons reality does not only consist of parts or wholes, but also from inter-permeating wholes and parts, that is, holons; which are found within material and ideological framework of reality. Given that fully isolated and uninteractive entities cannot exist, holons associate, in this way forming a community of holons, that is, holarchies. Within the holarchy special significance have holons that contains a large number of connections to other holons. Such holons are called hubs, thus we can distinguish first-order hubs and second-order hubs. In the end, if one holon neglects his communion, for the purpose of overdomination over the rest of the holarchy, then we talk about unnatural hierarchies, but if one holon neglects his agency, which leads him to simply fuse with the rest of the holarchy, then we talk about unnatural heterarchies. (shrink)

The international research on teams, which is inspired by the input-process-output model, is mostly empirical. Researchers in this field look for causal explanations between independent (e.g., team size and team composition) and dependent (e.g., team performance) variables. Recently, some critics have pointed to the deficits in this model. Especially, the temporal, contextual, and dynamic aspects of teams need to be investigated further (multilevel approach). Emergent states, such as team cognitions, team emotions, and team hierarchies, comprise a promising field of study (...) that leads to a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of teams. These emergent states offer an opportunity to reconcile former concepts (Lewin’s gestalt, Koestler’s holarchy, and Cattell’s syntality) with topical team research. Therefore, the future of research on teams may partly lie in its past. (shrink)

The UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas between Theise and Menas’ ideas (2016) and my ideas (2002-2008) in Physics and Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy (the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics, etc.) -/- (2016) Theise D. Neil (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas (bDepartment of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA; cSchmid College of Science & Technology, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA) (2016), REVIEW - Fundamental awareness: A (...) framework for integrating science, philosophy and metaphysics, in COMMUNICATIVE & INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY, 2016, VOL. 9, NO. 3, e1155010 (19 pages), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19420889.2016.1155010 -/- A friend of mine indicated me the strike similarities between Theise and Kafatos’ ideas in their book (Fundamental awareness: A framework for integrating science, philosophy and metaphysics) and my ideas in 2002-20008! I do not have access to this book, but I investigate the ideas that are in a review about this work. Let me introduce the abstract of that Review: -/- The ontologic framework of Fundamental Awareness proposed here assumes that non-dual Awareness is foundational to the universe, not arising from the interactions or structures of higher level phenomena. The framework allows comparison and integration of views from the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness: science, philosophy, and metaphysics. In this framework, Awareness is the underlying reality, not reducible to anything else. Awareness and existence are the same. As such, the universe is non-material, self-organizing throughout, a holarchy of complementary, process driven, recursive interactions. The universe is both its own first observer and subject. Considering the world to be non-material and comprised, a priori, of Awareness is to privilege information over materiality, action over agency and to understand that qualia are not a “hard problem,” but the foundational elements of all existence. These views fully reflect main stream Western philosophical traditions, insights from culturally diverse contemplative and mystical traditions, and are in keeping with current scientific thinking, expressible mathematically. (shrink)

En el marco de la elaboración de la Estrategia de Desarrollo Sostenible de la Región de Murcia (EDS), España el autor se plantea como punto de partida una análisis-evaluación del estado de la sostenibilidad regional, lo que supuso la construcción de un modelo de análisis y un método para ese diagnóstico de partida. Este reto supuso recorrer la corta historia de la epistemología de la sostenibilidad, postulando que ella debe ser epistemología heurística, enactiva, participativa y contingente . El artículo desarrolla (...) una holoarquía de la sostenibilidad -un sistema de sistemas jerárquicamente relacionados- como marco para la acción estratégica. (shrink)

A synthesis of the two primary theory structures in Robert Rosen’s relational complexity, relational entailment mapping based on category theory as described by Rosen and Louie, and relational holism based on modeling relations, as described by Kineman, provides an integral foundation for relational complexity theory as a natural science and analytical method. Previous incompatibilities between these theory structures are resolved by re-interpreting Aristotle’s four causes, identifying final and formal causes as relations with context. Category theory is applied to introduce contextual (...) entailment algebra needed to complete the synthesis. The modeling relation is represented as a recursive four-cause hierarchy, which is a unit of both whole and part analysis that relates realized and contextual domains of nature as complementary inverse entailments between structure and function. Context is a non-localized domain of distributed potentials for existence, as contrasted with the realized domain of localized interactive and measurable events. Synthesis is achieved by giving modeling relations an algebraic form in category theory and by expanding relational analysis to include contextual entailments. The revised form of analysis is applied and demonstrated to examine Rosen’s M-R diagram, showing that structure–function relations imply adaptive interaction with the environment, and that contextual relations imply three forms of the M-R entailment corresponding with the generally known three forms of life; Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota, which can be represented by their holon diagrams. The result of this synthesis is a consistent foundation for relational science that should have important implications in many disciplines. (shrink)