The implications and explications of the fold

This is part of my exploration of the fold in this IPS thread. Bruce and I had this conversation today.

Bruce: Given Bryant's appeal to autopoiesis, a comparative look at Bryant and Thompson might be worthwhile.

Me: Bryant includes Brown's unmarked space as one example of the real excess beyond our access. In the beginning of Thompson's video he mentions Buddhist emptiness, but only in the context of relational dependent arising.

Bruce: Wilber uses Brown too, but in a more Idealist fashion, of course.

Me: It doesn't appear he [Thompson] includes this excess beyond relations. And yet Bryant has lately turned into a correlationist.

Bruce: With his fold model?

Me: Even before that.

Bruce: Maybe a weak correlationist, reading it as co-relation?

Me: Seems that way.

Bruce: That's in line with Buddhist emptiness (in one of its iterations)

Me: That's Thompson's pitch.
 

Bruce: I think Bryant may not grok how much he skirts around a Buddhist view.

Me: That doesn't seem to be one of his studies. Morton though is an avid Buddhist of the Wilber variety. Meaning shentong.

Bruce: Yes, so there should be better rangtong representation in SR/OOO!

Me: I do recall though one Bryant post criticizing Morton's Buddhist take as being one form of correlationism.

Bruce: I remember. And Bryant may not be aware of rangtong interpretations.

Me: Starting on p. 9 of his paper on the fold he counters Harman's completely unrelational withdrawn with the fold. It is a dyadic relation between object and the filed, but not dualistic. In the fold there is no ultimate ground.

Bruce: Yes, more Nagarjunan dependent origination. I really wonder if he read our forum because I used to bring that up when first encountering his talk about completely unrelational withdrawn.

Me: And yet it is not empty or undifferentiated (10).

Bruce: Perhaps empty in one sense, but not another?

Me: Hard to tell what he means. It seems the 'field' is still Brown's 'unmarked space.' But maybe that too is not undifferentiated, itself a product of difference? E.g., on p. 18 he notes that not only do autonomous objects implicate from the field, but they also explicate those autonomous differences back into the field, thus also changing the field. The field is thus also co-arising.

Bruce: Yes, that's similar to what I touched on in my translineage paper, drawing on Gendlin's latest work on body-and-environment, body-as-environment.

Me: It might be similar to Thompson's being-in-the-world of contextual relations, but he uses far different language. 

Bruce: Yes. I think a Thompson-Bryant interface would be a worthwhile exploration. Maybe you and I should do it.

Me: And of course Bryant no longer uses the word 'object' but 'machinic assemblage.' Yes, it would be a good project to bring in Thompson't work on the neurophysiology of meditative states to 'ground' the typical kennilingus idealism about those states.

Bruce: And to expand OOO work well beyond where it usually goes.

Me: We could 'ply' them, ha!

Bruce: LOL! Yep. Which calls for folding in Faber or Keller too.

Me: "You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them." That could be the opening quote of the paper!

Bruce: Love it. 

Me: I also like Bryant suggesting on p. 22 that instead of using the term 'withdrawn' for machines perhaps 'radiant' is better. This of course relates to the 'radiance' of meditative states.

Bruce: Radiance also sparks thoughts of excess.

Me: Thompson does imply that consciousness itself is a folded interaction between us and the environmental field. As do all the embodied realists, Lakoff included.