The Problem of Scale

Previously I have argued that the idea of self is a fiction, a delusion, an artefact of mind that is generated by snipping out a piece of reality from the whole to make it thinkable. In other words, there is no self apart from the universe in all its complexity. Of course, if reality were not thinkable, I wouldn't be really here writing about it, so the self is a reality of a sort, a connected thing rather than a separate thing. We just miss most of the connections. While we need to notice how rationality can misdirect, we should try to improve it rather than dispose of it; my mistake.

The mind works by manipulating categories. A category is defined by a collection of properties; for example, a chair is something you sit on. Ah, but Amy sits on Shannon, so does that mean Shannon is a chair? No. If the definition of the category is unsatisfactory in some way, then we adjust it; for example, a chair is an object made for sitting on, so Shannon is not a chair because she was not made for sitting on. Just now, I am sitting on something made for sitting on. It has room for two other people. Perhaps we reserve the category chair for a single sitter. So this object on which I now sit belongs in a different category. 

Rationality has this flaw: to make things simple and easy, we select a few properties as relevant and ignore countless others. Therefore we may make rational progress by noticing discrepancies and adjusting the definitions. As a result, definitions proliferate, and dictionaries get updated and we are never quite sure we are talking about the same thing.

The story so far: categories are mental constructs which are defined and redefined while they are in use. They do not exist outside of mind. While we are busy managing categories so that we can think, we tend to forget about the Whole which is the reality we attempt to map with our problematic categories.

Recall this proposition stated by Immanuel Kant: "For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first." Having seen the whole, next we define its constituent parts so we can think about how they relate to each other within the whole. Some such thinking is described in Wikipedia:

Antireductionism
Emergence
Holarchy
Holism
Holism in ecological anthropology
Holistic management
Holistic health
Holon (philosophy)
Interdisciplinarity
Organicism
Scientific reductionism
Systems thinking

This is getting complicated.
Makes you want to stuff it all into a three letter word,
capitalized for good measure,
and get on with life.
God is that, 

a refuge from complexity,
what was, what is, and what will be,
the whole, the everything connected,

including my circus, and my monkeys... for now.

Not thinking or thinking is a choice.
Might as well think now and then
and have a say in what happens next.

In this article, Ecosystems Within Ecosystems, David Suzuki and Rachel Plotkin have their say concerning ecology.

In this Just-Have-a-Think video, Dave Borlace tells us about  Algae: The Secret Weapon to Combat Climate Change. Engineering solutions to problems caused by engineered solutions to other problems has me wondering.

What do you think?