James Schofield

The aim of this chapter is to elucidate how Harris’s metaphysics of evolution purports to bridge the gap between mind and cosmos, thereby providing a phenomenological ontology. In Sect. 8.2, I outline Harris’s appeal to dynamic systems theory (DST) in neuroscience and his anticipation of theories depicting consciousness as “phase of matter”. Here, I consider possible implications this proposition has for autopoietic enactivism (AE). In Sect. 8.3, I reconsider the teleological anthropic principle (TAP) in light of Harris’s response to the hard problem and highlight some consequences this theory has for a naturalization of knowledge. I argue Rapoport’s and Rosen’s independent conceptions of Klein bottle logic serve as a suitable analogue of Harris’s reasoning and extension of AE’s appeal to second-order science. In the final Sect. 8.4, I outline Harris’s contention that consciousness is a scale and argue that the resulting model reveals a cosmological dimension for the enactivist paradigm.

In this chapter the principles of Harris’s holism are presented and compared with contemporary theses from a range of fields. Here, the aim is to demonstrate that Bohm’s implicate order and enactivism rely upon the same concepts of dialectical relations, holism, and process ontology as Harris’s system. I argue that within Harris’s metaphysical framework, a symbiotic merging of these camps holds significant theoretical promise for a transdisciplinary paradigm shift. The aim of Sect. 2.2 is to introduce Harris’s conceptions of internal relations, scale of forms, and the Concrete Universal. Using these terms, Harris’s epistemology and approach to the problem of consciousness are outlined. In Sect. 2.3, the theories of autopoiesis and embodiment are introduced under the enactivist paradigm, which is the closest contemporary position to Harris’s theories of life and mind. In Sect. 2.4, David Bohm’s implicate order is introduced as a quantum mechanical theory partially anticipated by Harris and consistent with enactivist theories of mind. In Sect. 2.5, a synthesis of these three camps is proposed, which sets the course for the following chapters.

This chapter examines in greater detail Harris’s conception of cosmic evolution, which he claims follows from the postulate of the Concrete Universal and supports his teleological anthropic principle (TAP). Section 5.2 begins with a sketch of Harris’s conception of cosmogenesis as characterized by self-organization. The following sub-sections assess the extent to which Harris’s reasoning dovetails with various contemporary arguments from the philosophy of complex systems. In Sect. 5.3, Harris’s arguments for the scale of forms is critically examined and theoretically updated, in light of current contentions regarding emergence. The aim in this section, as in the previous sections, is to develop a sympathetic reading of Harris’s system and demonstrate the extent to which he has anticipated contemporary works.

In this chapter, Harris’s appeal to four versions of the anthropic principle are examined in light of four recently developed multiverse theories that some cosmologists consider effective for avoiding the conclusions of stronger anthropic reasoning. In Sect. 4.2, the weak anthropic principle and three associated selection effects are exemplified. The aim here is to elucidate Harris’s phenomenological means of avoiding certain multiverse theories. In Sect. 4.3, it is argued that a weaker version of Harris’s participatory anthropic reasoning can be revised and upheld by appealing to Bohmian quantum theory and phenomenology. Arguments to the effect that the final anthropic principle is irrelevant to Harris’s project are provided in Sect. 4.4, and in Sect. 4.5 these discussions culminate with the introduction of Harris’s (paradigmatic) teleological anthropic reasoning. This chapter concludes that dialectical holism avoids many arguments that have been utilized for refuting stronger AR, but Harris’s ontological conclusions must nevertheless confront numerous unforeseen challenges to be addressed in the following chapters.

Errol E. Harris (1908–2009) devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now been unrecognized within mainstream discussions. The aim of this chapter is to introduce and briefly situate Harris’s metaphysics within the history of philosophical ideas and motivate the arguments to follow. By way of introduction, Sect. 1.2 outlines the major historical developments in process philosophy and phenomenology that have given rise to Harris’s system. Section 1.3 introduces the scientific theories developed independently in recent decades, which both are supportive of Harris’s methods and may serve to unite traditions of process ontology and phenomenology moving forward. Section 1.4 distils the central arguments to be discussed in the chapters to follow.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and evaluate the arguments and conceptual corner stones that are essential in a dialectical holist philosophy of physics. In Sect. 3.1, Harris’s appeal to relativity as empirical support of dialectical relations and the unifying principle is assessed for its theoretical viability. The aim of Sect. 3.2 is to evaluate Harris’s holism in the standard model of cosmology and in quantum theory. These sections reveal that Harris’s identification of the unifying principle in macro and micro scales of physics remains plausible and is echoed in contemporary works. However, Harris’s conception of the Concrete Universal is at odds with the reductive unity espoused by proponents of the SM. Harris’s appeal to anthropic reasoning is introduced in Sect. 3.3, where his implicit motivations for linking the philosophical discussions of cosmos and mind is clarified and defended.

As Harris’s philosophy of mind is fairly extensive, I confine my focus to only the central thread of his argument concerning efforts to naturalize subjectivity and knowledge. Towards this end, in Sect. 7.2, I clarify Harris’s anticipation of the autopoietic enactivism (AE) approach to consciousness. In this section I also establish a preliminary reformation of the hard problem to be elaborated in the following discussions. In Sect. 7.3, I assess Harris’s and Damasio’s respective appeals to Spinoza’s conception of ideatum as a model of mind and contrast these approaches with more recent arguments from embodied cognition. In Sect. 7.4 this line of thought is extended to Spinoza’s concept of conatus in order to clarify how Harris’s theory of self-awareness relates to corresponding views from embodied and embedded theses of mind.

The goal of this chapter is to present the dialectical holist stance on key topics in philosophy of biology as a theoretical bridge to Harris’s metaphysics of mind. In Sect. 6.2, I set out Harris’s necessary and sufficient conditions for life and in subsequent sections I compare these contentions with contemporary accounts. The central issues to be discussed in this chapter will be whether the notion of the unifying principle (ϕ) can be applied to the simplest unit of life, and if so, to establish what if any further philosophical insight this provides into the natures of life, evolution, and mind. In Sect. 6.3, I outline Harris’s argument that the explicative process () subsumes and broadens Neo-Darwinism. Here I address whether formal governance in collective living systems provides teleological direction to biological evolution. In the final section, I show that for both Harris and AE, positing formal governance across a range of biological systems implies the Gaia theory.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical commitments of autopoietic enactivism in relation to Errol E Harris’s dialectical holism in the interest of establishing a common metaphysical ground. This will be undertaken in three stages. First, it is argued that Harris’s reasoning provides a means of developing enactivist ontology beyond discussions limited to cognitive science and into domains of metaphysics that have traditionally been avoided by phenomenologists. Here, I maintain enactivist commitments are consistent with Harris’s reasoning from certain synthetic a priori first principles, to his derivation of a teleological anthropic principle, which asserts the necessity of consciousness within the cosmos. Second, it is proposed that Steven Rosen’s long-standing proposal for a topology of phenomenology may provide a common logical foundation for both Harris and enactivists regarding anthropic reasoning. Third, it is argued that a pragmatic approach to process ontology is the most rigorous way of responding to the realism/anti-realism concerns that inevitably follow. If successful, this work will update Harris’s arguments with contemporary scientific and philosophical terminology and extend enactivism from philosophy of mind, into a general phenomenological ontology.

The purpose of this work is to critically assess Errol E. Harris’s process philosophy in the face of contemporary research in the special sciences. Harris devoted his life to grappling with the big questions concerning the relationships between nature, mind, and knowledge. His 70-plus year career was distinguished, his texts on the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and consciousness were widely published, and yet his metaphysics has until now remained excluded from mainstream discussions. This book’s contention is that Harris’s work reveals as yet unnoticed connections between theories in numerous scientific disciplines ranging from psychology to cosmology and that an examination of certain theories within these disciplines may serve to strengthen his original arguments. This work maintains that the resulting metaphysics frames a transdisciplinary paradigm shift and provides a viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness.