This is part of my exploration of the interconnectedness of everything. A useful tool to talk about it is through Graham Priest’s gluons. Graham Priest is a mathematician, logician, philosopher, and a Buddhist thinker. Here I will lay out the basic arguments behind them, partially to lay the groundwork for the idea of gluons and partially because I think the arguments themselves are fascinating. There are two things at stake here. The first is a discussion of identity and what it means for something to be one. The second thing at stake is the relations of the ones, how do they relate and what it means for everything to be interconnected.
Graham Priest, like Arthur Koestler, is interested in parts and wholes. The goal here is to figure out what makes something one or a unity. What makes a house a house? What makes me me?
Things have parts, he says. A computer has parts, a country has regions, a musical piece has notes, etc. But what is the relation between a thing and its parts? The individual parts can exist when a unity or the whole they are supposed to compose does not exist. The bricks of a house can be scattered around before the house was built or even after it has been destroyed. The parts themselves are not enough. They must be arranged in a certain way. Change around the notes in a piece of music and it is completely different. So a whole, or a unity, is more than just the sum of its parts. Priest uses Aristotle and calls this “more” the form of an object. The form is what binds the parts together. Except now there is a contradiction. This form is a something. It is an object since I just spoke about it. Parts + form = whole. But if it were an object then the problem of what binds the parts together is still a problem. So what does make the parts a single thing? The solution Priest offers is what he calls the gluon of an object (G). The gluon both is and is not an object.
One reason the gluon cannot be an object is because of the Bradley Regress. The problem goes something like this: If we have parts A, B, C, D then there must be something that binds them together. If we assume that the object’s gluon, G, does this then there must be something that binds G, A, B, C, D together, G’. Then there must be something that binds G’, G, A, B, C, D together. And so we reach an infinite regress. The problem is that this does not give an explanation for why there is unity.
A common explanation to account for unity is the relationship between the parts, a sort of configuration, structure, or arrangement of parts. A relationship is just a certain type of object (think: holon). Just because I have a relation to my mom by virtue of being her child, does not mean we are a unity. So, a gluon cannot simply be a different type of object like a relationship. So, we are left with three options:
- There are no gluons.
- Reject the claim that gluons are objects
- Reject the claim that gluons are not objects.
If the first option is the case then we are without any explanation of the differences between a unity with parts and a plurality of parts. The second option makes little sense. If we can refer to it, quantify it, and talk about it then it must be an object. The third option leads to the Bradley Regress. So how do we make sense of this? The answer lies in the question of identity. Priest says that the key is breaking the regress. And here’s how he goes about breaking that regress.
Assume we have parts A, B, C, and D of an object that are held together by a gluon G. The problem, remember, is assuming that G is distinct from the other parts. If A and G are distinct then there is room from something to be inserted between A and G. Or if there is space between the two then there is something required to join them together. So, the regress is broken if A and G are identical. For those same reasons G must be identical to B, C, and D as well. By being identical to each of the parts G combines them into a unity. So G=A, G=B, G=C, and G=D. Priest imagines having two physical bricks and joining them together with glue. The glue bonds to each brick and joins them together. In doing so, the glue doesn’t make them one brick but it bonds with part of each brick becoming identical to it. Yes, he is aware that identity doesn’t normally behave this way and that the transitivity of identity fails. But, by using paraconsistent logic he shows that contradictions don’t have to explode in our faces. I will save you, dear reader, from the logic of this. For now, we will assume that this works and move forward.
There is the question of whether or not every object has a gluon. Could an object have just one proper part (one part distinct from the whole)? Nope. If X is a proper part of Y then Y – X is another part. So what about objects without proper parts (simple objects)? Every object, simple or complex, has a gluon. A gluon is what constitutes that object as a single object; that is, it is what it is that constitutes the unity of the object.
Heidegger and Gluons
The next area Priest brings gluons into is Heidegger’s Being. Priest is careful to clarify that by “being” he does not mean “existence”. Being means being an object–being identical to something. So, something is an object iff (if and only if) it has properties. If it is an object it has properties, at the very least it has the property of being an object. This is different than what it means to exist–the ability to enter into causal interactions. This is Heidegger’s understanding of being, that everything someone can think about has being. Heidegger says that being is used in all knowledge and predicating. Everyone understands the statement “The sky is blue” or “I am happy” despite not “existing” in the material world. So how does this relate to gluons?
Priest says that there is no problem of non-existent objects having gluons. A unity with existing parts may have an existing gluon while a unity with non-existing parts has a non-existing gluon. A house may go out of existence by being torn does. When this happens the existing gluon becomes a non-existent object as it is not identical to the other parts which could still exist. So, Priest argues, being and unity are really the same thing; if something is an object then it is one thing. If it is one thing then it is an object. So, to be is to be one. The being of something is in virtue of it being one. What is it by being one? The gluon. The being of something is its gluon. And here comes a fun kicker. Heidegger suggests that one cannot say what the being of something is because saying the “the being of X is Y” is to treat it as an object (which is a no-no for Heidegger), we are saying the being of being, the fundamental thing we are trying to articulate is something. Heidegger essentially tries to make it out as ineffable while talking about it. But, Graham Priest says, the being of something (its gluon) is a thing because we can talk about it. Heidegger talks about it. And Priest has as well. So Heidegger contradicts himself, but he does this because the thing he talking about is contradictory. This is why the gluon, which both is and is not an object, can be equivalent to being itself!
According to Priest, Heidegger took being and nothing to be the same thing. Priest thinks this is not the case. To make sense of nothingness, first make sense of everythingness. The first thing that is interesting, is that Priest says the word “every” is ambiguous. Now I think this is a cool point. In formal logic there is a quantifier for “every”. So “everyone has a cat” means for every person X, X has a cat. But, he says, “every” words can also be noun phrases. “He (H) found himself in the middle of everyone” does not mean that for every person X, H was in the middle of X. Absurd! It means that there was a totality of people and he was in the middle of it. So “everyone” names the totality. When Priest (and subsequently I) use the word “Everything” he means absolutely everything, every object there is–the totality of every object. So “Everything” refers to an object, one thing, meaning it has a gluon, a proper gluon. Everything is related to all other objects and has all the properties of any part (object). Remember previously that G was identical to A, B, C, and D without A having to be identical to B.
Returning to nothing, just like everything nothing functions as a quantifier and a noun. We can say that Heidegger wrote about nothing. Nothing, like Everything, is an object. We can think about it. This does not mean that Nothing exists. We can think about non-existent objects (I can think of Gandalf). Nothing, does not exist because it is impossible for it to enter into causal interactions with things (Priest’s requirement for existence as said earlier). Nothing is also a contradictory object. Since it is an object, it must be something. But it is the absence of all things too. So Nothing is nothing. Everything is the sum of the universal set and Nothing is the sum of the empty set. But there is nothing in the empty set so Nothing is complete absence, the absence of all objects and all presences. So it is both an object and not an object–just like a gluon! So Nothing can have no parts other than itself but remains a gluon.
Up until this point in the book, Graham Priest has been talking about the relation of identity, what identity is and how it functions. The next part focuses more on what the identity of something is.
Relational Quiddity
The next section focuses a bit more on identity. What makes me the thing that I am? Or what makes me that particular person? Further still, what is it to have my being? To avoid some of the baggage or overlapping terms, Priest introduces the term quiddity. This is the what-it-is-to be the person or the object. So what makes you the person that you are? Or what gives you your quiddity? Is it the self, of what is the self? There are various answers or theories of this which I’ll be forsaking for the sake of space. Priest suggests that the quiddity of an object is constituted by its locus in a network of relations. There are different kinds of relations. There is the relation to my birth and death. There is also my relation to my parents, wife, friends, strangers on the street, etc. Some relations are more important than others. The way my parents raised me makes me more of who I am than someone whom I was friends with for a year. This is similar to the classical theory of gravity: every object exerts a gravitational influence on every other object no matter how far apart they are. The total gravitational force on me includes the star 50 billion light years away. The effect on the net total might be tiny, but it still factors in.
This relational quiddity was the essence of the disagreement on the nature of locations in space and time between Leibniz and Newton. This is illustrated by the following thought experiment. Suppose that everything was picked up and moved uniformly a mile one way. And, suppose that all events in the universe were the exact same except that they all started one hour later. Would this make sense? Newton would say yes. Space and time are absolute. Space and time are essences themselves and don’t function in relation to anything else. They would be what they are even if there was nothing physical that occupied space and time. Leibniz, on the other hand, would say no. Nothing would have changed so the situation is incoherent. This is because he is a relationalist about space and time. They have no intrinsic nature. So to be 2000 is to be after the Second World War, the same year as the birth of my sister, before the invention of Bitcoin, etc. Newton sees space and time as having self-nature. For Leibniz they do not. This emptiness of self-nature is key to some schools of Buddhist thought. Nothing has self nature. Things are what they are only in relation to other things. Something is what it is only because of its location in a network of relations.
Structural Trees
So, if the quiddity of an object is determined by its location in a network of relations then for any given object (A) there will be a bunch of objects and relations R. This means A will have a relation (say R1) to B, a relation to C, a relation to D, etc. The following is an example of the tree Priest uses.
This creates a structural tree, which gives the ontological structure of A. This means that all objects have the same kind of ontological structure–being determined by the root of a tree. To demonstrate this you can replace A with a single dot. This dot can represent any object. So, all of the other objects can be replaced with dots as well as seen here.
These structural trees, I think function in a similar way as holons do in Arthur Koestler’s philosophy mentioned earlier. Each object can become the center of focus for a structural tree. Its relations with other objects are brought into focus, thus creating the holon. It is both an object itself and a relational component to other objects in other holons. More on this later.
Interpenetration
Interpenetration is a relation between structural trees. The example Priest uses is of the north and south pole of a magnet. The north pole only is what it is because there is a south pole. You cannot have the north pole without the south and vice versa. So the tree for the north pole (N) contains the tree for the south pole (S) as a part of its relations. But, the south depends on the north just as the north depends on the south. So, a subset of the S tree is the N tree. And a subset of the N tree is the S tree. So the two encode each other. They are like two mirrors facing each other.
This is embodied in the philosophies of French thinkers such as Jean-Louis Chretien, Michael Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Luc Marion among others. Fundamental to their thinking is the relationship between an individual and the Other (be it God, another human, etc.). The Other’s personhood Calls us to Respond in a certain way. My existence depends on the Other’s Call to me. I think the way these technical terms are used is a representation of the concept of interpenetration. This will have to suffice for now, as I will spend another post detailing this connection.
The Net of Indra
The Net of Indra is one of my favorite concepts. Priest quotes two examples of it, both of which should be reproduced here.
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of the jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite.
Francis Cook, Huayen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra.
‘It is like the net of Indra which is entirely made up of jewels. Due to their brightness and transparence, they reflect each other. In each of the jewels, the images of all the other jewels are [completely] reflected. This is the case with any one of the jewels, and will remain forever so. Now, if we take a jewel in the southwestern direction and examine it, [we can see] that this one jewel can reflect simultaneously the images of all other jewels at once. It is so with the one jewel, and is also so with each of all the others. Since each of the jewels simultaneously reflects the images of all other jewels at once, it follows that this jewel in the southwestern direction also reflects all the images of the jewels in each of the other jewels [at once]. It is so with this jewel, and is also so with all the others. Thus, the images multiply infinitely, and all these multiple infinite images are bright and clear inside this single jewel. The rest of the jewels can be understood in the same manner.’ In his short story, ‘The Aleph’ (in Borges (2000)), Borges describes a point in space, the aleph, where all things are present (including the Earth, which itself contains the aleph). Each jewel is such an aleph.
Ming-wood Liu, “The Harmonious Universe of Fa-tsang and Leibniz.”
All jewels in the net encode each other. Each one contains the whole in itself. This is particularly interesting in the context of the psychedelic experience. Many users report feeling at one with the universe. They feel more connected to everyone and everything within it–closer to other people, to nature, to animals. This feature is common in and after mystical experiences–whether contained within a religious context or in the psychedelic context. Assuming Graham Priest, the Net of Indra, and the Buddhist traditions are correct (and I think they are), what these things do is enable one to have a better, more fundamental or truer perception of reality; the one where we can see that we are all connected.
So what does the Net of Indra have to do with Everything and Nothing? Well, take any object A. This object relates to Nothing (the gluon) in a particular way. For any object A, it does not equal Nothing. This is important because part of the quiddity of A is the be an object. It could not be an object unless it stood out against Nothing. So not being nothing makes it possible to be an object. So, just as the north and south poles interpenetrate, so does any object and Nothing. A interpenetrates Nothing and Nothing interpenetrates B, so A interpenetrates B. Every thing interpenetrates every thing. This means that you could take any two objects and consider a relation that makes the other what it is. I contribute to making a tree what it is and the tree contributes to making me what I am. This relation might be minuscule as it is with gravity and objects far away, but it amounts to something nonetheless.
In the Net of Indra example, the image of one jewel in another will be larger or brighter the closer it is. The final note in this section by Priest regards the Huayan tradition. According to this tradition not only does each object interpenetrate with each other object but each object also interpenetrates with the totality of all objects. Everything would not exist without you. Priest then turns his attention to the ethics of this sort of view. First, for the unfamiliar reader, a brief introduction to a few important concepts in Buddhism.
The Four Noble Truths
Some of the first teachings of the Buddha are called the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that life is duhkha. This usually gets translated as suffering. It has connotations of discontent, unhappiness, sorrow, etc. that is caused by illness, death, and other maladies. Priest uses the word disquiet, which I actually like better than suffering. Life is disquieting. It shoves us out of balance repeatedly causing us to flail about trying to grasp hold of something to stabilize ourselves. This leads to the Second Noble Truth: there is a cause of duhkha. This is something like our attachment or aversion mental attitudes. We want something good to last forever and something bad to cease immediately. The Third Noble Truth is that since suffering/disquiet/duhkha has a cause, it can be uncaused or gotten rid of. Good news! The Fourth Noble Truth is a series of ways to get rid of the attitude called the Eightfold Path. This falls under three categories.
Wisdom
- Right View
- Right Intentions
Action
- Right speech
- Right action
- Right livelihood
Mental State
- Right effort
- Right mindfulness
- Right concentration
The Eightfold Path teaches an individual how to overcome their disquiet and achieve inner peace.
Inner Peace and Interconnectedness
One of the biggest misconceptions about Buddhism is that it promotes detachment from everything in search of inner peace. This leads some people to consider inner peace to be flat-lining. This is not the case for Priest. He argues that inner peace does not free you from the world, it frees you for the world. It allows a person to immerse themselves in life and engage with valuable things. As I have written about before, working through your issues enables you to be more free. You now are able to engage in life more fully and help others do the same. And, seeing the emptiness of everything spoken about earlier, generalizes the concern for inner peace from oneself to others.
A more traditional, Hobbesean conception of the individual views them as atomistic existences, they are that independent of each other. In this instance each looks after their own interests only. However, from an emptiness standpoint this is not the case. My nature, my quiddity, is not self-standing. It depends on other things–most importantly the individuals whom I interact with in a causal way. Their natures are determined in exactly the same way. I am what I am because of my causal interactions with others: my parents, friends, people I read, environments I exist in, etc. Priest calls this inter-being. My inner peace is reliant on other’s inner peace as well. This brings us back to the Net of Indra.
If we suppose that a mental state of disquiet or lack of inner peace manifests as a small red spot in a jewel in the net, then any red spot causes a red spot in any other jewel near it. This disquiet is coded into all the jewels nearby. This is true of all jewels. Those that represent adults, animals, babies, etc. This encoding, he argues, does not imply that the red spot is consciously experienced as disquiet. That would require the individual to have certain cognitive abilities and attainments–a certain type of (self) awareness that is not always present. Disquiet in another individual is passed on to those around them. This is not groundbreaking by any means. Numerous studies have been done on the communication or reflection of negative or positive emotions by individuals around us and even from people we pass by on the streets. Fear begets fear. Kindness leads to kindness.
Things are not always this simple though. We aren’t always troubled by others we might know to be suffering. For example, we know people are suffering from poverty in far away countries and that does not seem to bother most people on a day-to-day basis. This is likely due to in-group/out-group perceptions. However, things can affect us unknowingly. We often don’t know that we are stressed or upset until someone points it out or it manifests as headaches or illness. Similarly disquiet in others affects us even if we are unaware of this. Priest indicates that this might still plant the seeds of unease deep in the unconscious. He also notes that this is analogous to the red spot metaphor. The further away the source of the red spot, the weaker the effect. The further away I am from the person suffering, the weaker the effect. So it isn’t surprising that most of the effect of the suffering of others is below our awareness.
If this is so, then the suffering of others is very much our concern. Some could say that I should then only be concerned with the well-being of those I come in contact with. While the immediate effects on me are from those individuals who I am closest with, they are close with other individuals who affect their well-being, and so on. It then follows that much of the effects on me are from sources that are far-beyond what I can see. 10,000 pin pricks would do more damage to me than a single knife wound. Perhaps the best solution then would be to run to a desert island away from all of the effects. However, solitary confinement is used as a form of punishment. Humans are social creatures. “Escaping” from the net would have ill effects on one’s well-being. If we cannot escape it, then we are at the mercy of our surroundings, of the people around us, the environment we live in, the plants and animals around us just as they are at our mercy as well.
People like Gabor Mate and Robert Sapolsky have shown the role stress and the people around us play in our physical well-being. The people around us play a direct role in our mental well-being. And, with the internet and the globalization of the world, we are more directly interconnected than ever before. What might have been a minuscule red spot on our jewel, the source of which was far removed in past times, is now a clear red spot not so far removed. Thus we have even more reason to care for people outside our in-group. And, if Peter Wohlleben is correct and trees do secrete into the air when stressed or harmed, which we pick up on, we have all the more reason to care for the plants and other living things around us. As Francis Cook wrote: “Thus each individual is at once the cause for the whole and is caused by the whole, and what is called existence is a vast body made up of an infinity of individuals all sustaining each other and defining each other. The cosmos is, in short, a self-creating, self-maintaining, and self-defining organism.”