Welcome to the Bernard X. Bovasso Site
A Critical review Hyperobjective Reality and the Reinstatement of Determinism in the New Culture Epoch
by Bernard X. Bovasso
bernx@aolcom
Copyright ©1994 - Bernard X.Bovasso
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CONTENTS
I: The New Determinism: Cosmos Contra Tyche
II: The Debate; A Question of Alternatives
III: Psychological Predisposition
IV: Introversion and Male Homosexuality
V: Science, Myth and Catholicization
VI: Epistemic Correctness and Hyperobjectivity
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Forward: Pre-Determination and Choice
It is not often that an uncalled for coincidence asserts itself in a timely manner. Involved in this case were two scientifically addressed subjects appearing in the May issue of Scientific American that were topically miles apart but retained of a peculiar thread of relation. I could not resist the novelty of the coincidence and decided to announce my response in a brief letter to the editor. Levity, however soon gave way to compulsive seriousness. There was more here than deserves a casual response. Indeed, something epochal was at hand. A culture phenomenon had run itself into an ontological dilemma that was equally the problem of hard core physics. Students of culture and students of matter in general mutually exclude each other. But why should I be surprised at this? It has always been that way. Yet, it has always been my view that reality, whether culturally, socially or psychologically explicit had a direct relation to how the world and universe,in all their materiality and physicality, are scientifically interpreted. Here was an opportunity to make my point. The material shoved in my face was not only an epistemological ball game but emotionally charged. I could not resist the temptation and sunk deeper into a conceptual morass, struggling to stay afloat and avoid entanglement in the bottom weed. It was, however, a surprisingly quick heroic adventure and the following paper surfaced.
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The subjects of Quantum Mechanics and male homosexuality juxtaposed may have been as disquieting to the scientifically inclined readers of Scientific American as were some of the graphics appearing in the May, '94 issue. They included a generous array of photographs of scantily clad persons variously embraced in suggestive homoerotic poses. The sensually sublime studio shots illustrated a series of articles by Simon LeVay and Dean H. Hamer under the heading; Is Homosexuality Biologically Influenced? Whether the graphics were intended to editorially influence the question is only rhetorically suggested. The provocative illustrations, in any case, served visual notice to the readership that Scientific American had come out of the closet and arrived in the open, less squeamish about tilting with moral, psychological, philosophical and metaphysical questions. In this case it joined in the widespread media attention and promotion given to the culture trend towards same sex preference. But the term preference merely serves a political convenience in the cause of civil rights. If homosexuals were made in heaven, that is, genetically predisposed, or on earth by psychological conditioning (too much Ma and less, or no Pa), no acts of free will and freedom of choice would be involved. Thus a notion of "preference" must be accommodated as an as if or virtual reality.
The culture phenomenon, accordingly, goes far beyond a question of actual sexual practice, preference or chosen lifestyle. It touches at some essential and fundamental concepts that strongly influence, for example, an interpretation of quantum mechanics. With or without such intention the coincidence of alternatives has poignant significance, reminding that the scientific mood of the moment expresses a need for an alternative (to whatever conceptual omissions it suffers). In other words, the May issue of S.A. was itself expressing an alternative for coinciding between its covers not only Bohm's alternative and a biological ground for the Gay alternative, but an alternative to its usual manner of presenting scientific papers.
Immediately following the alternative sex articles was an extremely comprehensive piece titled Bohm's Alternative to Quantum Mechanics, by David Z. Albert. What appeared to be a silly coincidence of meanings suggested that Bohm's alternative (theory) as an attempt to remedy the indeterminism ruling modern physics. It was no different than the hope to locate a biological influence in male homosexuality. Short of such influence the explanations for homosexuality remained as much indeterminate as quantum mechanics, and more likely limited in cause to cultural, social and psychological contingencies. A biological foundation would, as would Bohm's alternative, provide an objective premise serving as first cause in any chain of causalistic reasoning. On the other hand, the new determinism would be presented by still another challenge; the compromise of the freedom of choice. Even prior to that the question loomed: Is a sexual modus a question of choice any more than choosing between two fundamentally opposite yet equivalent scientific interpretations? In the standard Copenhagen interpretation (the school of Niehls Bohr) the position of the observer in a probabilistic cosmos of random events and chance coincident established a very distinct world-view which, by and large, has had great cultural influence. Here, a field of random events provided itself as the matrix to a notion of freedom and choice, simply because it negated the influence of a teleological prefixed and apriori directed course of events. In this view, following an egalitarian principle and the politics of rights and freedom, it is assumed the observer (as subjective presence) has a choice. But Bohm's alternative theory challenges the probabilistic, subjectivist picture of reality implicit in the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. It is only upon second thought that it is realized choice is possible only in a random manifold of events and by which the accidents of coincidence are summed as essentially acausal and as if without priority according to the mandates of both cosmos and the Logos. This "alternative" is also predicated as a virtual reality and suggests there is no more choice for the subjective presence in what was once enjoyed cosmogonically in a universe of random events.
In the study by Simon LeVay and Dean H. Hamer the notion of the homoerotic tendency as a genetic predisposition also leaves no choices in the question of preference for alternate sexual lifestyles. In both cases--that of Bohm's abolishment of randomness and the biological determination of a sexual lifestyle--the subjective presence is objectively prevailed as a child of predetermined destiny.
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Part I: A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES
The New Determinism: Cosmos Contra Tyche
The challenge to the freedom of choice, however, comes up against more than the theoretic problems of physics. A principle of indeterminism had equally settled to predicate the deconstruction of Western Culture. It is echoed in Nietzsche's proclamation, God is Dead, herald to the new age of relativism and uncertainty corresponding with a structural affinity for horizontal rather than vertical social order. Was the Death of God merely a symptom of the epochal demise of the masculine cultural priority? Was it contingent upon the rise of feminism, the global appeal of an egalitarian principle and the quick and massive expansion of the technologically enabled age of consumerism? How much did a fundamental indeterminism and relativism transhistorically sweep an entire culture to its present day momentous climax in universal ontological uncertainty?
Indeed, which came first, the scientific transformation of physics or the cultural mood? Or, alternately, what is the rule by which they are rendered coincident? Is there a synchronicistic rule of order correlated to the chaos of random events, accidental coincidences and ubiquitous uncertainty? Even if Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were immune to such cultural upheavals, the momentous proposal of the uncertainty principle and the arrival of quantum mechanics cannot be viewed as merely a random accident. The cross-link between the particular concepts of Quantum Mechanics and the cultural dissolution of a God-the-Father centered universe was indeed more critically endangered by the introduction of randomness, or chance and unpredictability. The development was theologically unacceptable, at least to those who fathomed the implication, such as, for example, Einstein himself (for whom God does not play dice with the universe ). Perhaps the scientist was less worried about a universe submitted to the vice of gambling than he was about the introduction of Madam Tyche, Lady Luck, as an agency of determining alternatives and absorbing thereby the human endowment of freedom of choice. He did, in fact, whether consciously or not, respond to the return of the goddess and her implementation of tyche not only in physics but the personal life (not to mention the stock market!) In other words: a universe where chance rules and displaces the predetermined moira ("apportioning out") of individual and collective destinies.
The notion of chance or random events, it should be noted, was active rather late in human history. It is less the mark of the Age of Reason but the signature of modernism (industrial technology, super-states, capitalism, socialism, great dictators, etc.) where the fate of the individual is no longer a private destiny. The private destiny is replaced by an ideology of individual freedom and rights. This does not, however, account for "fate," or destiny, except as those genetic accidents that may leave the individual with either physical or psychological disadvantages. Hence, the egalitarian ideal is violated, whether by the Fata Morgana, or Lady Tyche (Luck), the female fairy (fata), or the goddess, who serves as the agency of an inscrutably deterministic and fixed destiny that is regulated as if ordained by chance and randomness. The activity of such a figure serves as the complement to a concept of cosmos and the divine order as manifestations of an ontologically in place God. In that case order and design would be meaningfully prefixed, teleologically directed toward a final, or eschatological, perfection. Random events, coincidences and accidents would indeed be unthinkable under such a format. The order of Jung's synchronicity would have been brought to order according to a physicalized nomos and the acausal nature of meaningful coincidence absolved of uncertainty by the simple device of ontologizing and thus factoring the nature of uncertainty as an actuality. This would merely be an extension of calculating, as Albert notes, "the positions of all the particles in the world at any time, and the worlds complete quantum-mechanical wave function at the time..." And this would this include factoring in the equation a quantum of ignorance?
Albert elaborates: "Any incapacity to carry out those calculations, any uncertainty in the results of those calculations, is necessarily in this theory an epistemic uncertainty. It is a matter of ignorance and not a matter of operations of any irreducible element of chance in the fundamental laws of the world. Nevertheless, this theory entails that some such ignorance exists for us, as a matter of principle. The laws of motion of Bohm's theory literally force this kind of ignorance on us. And this ignorance turns out to be precisely enough, and of precisely the right kind, to reproduce the familiar statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. That happens by means of a kind of averaging out over what one does not know, which is exactly the kind of averaging that goes on in classical statistical mechanics."
Thus the Fata appears to intrude itself as a part of deterministic order and it is nominally and epistemically combined as "chance" in a single moment of uncertainty which the physicist attempts to investigate and quantitatively fix in terms of measuring wave function and mass! But this quantum of ignorance equally plays a vital part in an approach to the relation of synchronistic phenomena to psychic processes and archetypal influences.
Jung notes, for example, in his initial investigations of such phenomena: "I know, however, from long experience of these things that spontaneous synchronistic phenomena draw the observer, by hook or by crook, into what is happening and occasionally make him an accessory to the deed. That is the danger inherent in all parapsychological experiments. the dependance of ESP on an emotional factor in the experimenter and subject is a case in point. I therefor consider it a scientific duty to give as complete an account as possible of the result and to show how not only the statistical material, but the psychic processes of the interested parties, were affected by the synchronistic arrangement.1
Consistent with Bohm's approach, the "ignorance factor" was also an instrument in the measuring of a phenomenon: where wave functions provide the inherent uncertainty in the purely empirical approach. In either case, however, the uncertainty, and which is the measure of the observer, is not statistically overridden, but ontologically accommodated insofar as it represents a state of being. Or said otherwise: a knowing of God is not ontologically real without the immanence of doubt, uncertainty and ignorance. But this is precisely the epistemological position taken by Sir Karl Popper when he asserts that a question of science is not involved when a considered object of science is beyond disproof. Along such lines, Heidegger observes: "The god-less thinking which must abandon the god of philosophy, god as causa sui, is thus perhaps closer to the Divine God. Here this means only: god-less thinking is more open to Him than onto-theo-logic would like to admit."2 As a result, the question of God as a given and hence beyond scientific scrutiny and the object or phenomenon that is beyond science because it cannot be disproved would appear to have more in common than not. In other words, the question of God as the agency of order in the universe is once again rejoined as a scientific question and by which, it would appear, Bohm's new alternative would not only controvert Popper but requalify Einstein's deepest hope that God did not exercise his cosmogonic prerogative at the crap table!
Commencing the epochal theological turnabout at the end of the 19th Century, the unseating of a god concept was in order. It is displaced by all that is opposite in nature and yet equivalent to it, generalized nominally, as Mother Nature. She is rooted (etymologically) as mater, matrix and matter. Why does She, as Mother or Matter, have mass when her husband is weightlessly identified with Spirit, or a relatively massless photon? She is large without her (husband's) laws, that is to say, without her husband when He is gaming with the "other woman," Lady Luck! Regardless of the possibility of divine philandering and cosmological crap shooting, if there is any nominal equivalence here, then the idea of God the Father must be met unequivocally by Mother Nature as His complement. However facetious this may sound it merely falls back on what is intrinsic to language and the way we (must) think. Linguistically and conceptually speaking, for example, taking the theos out of "theory" would be as bad as taking the mater and matrix out of matter! This would leave-although without notice-the rule of random events as its own negation, a Chaos in appearance with Theos as no more than its unconscious immanence and latent (seminal) potential of order. In that case a principle of ubiquitous randomness regulating subnuclear events would be theoretically irrelevant especially that probability would be left as the beam in the eye of the beholder (as Schrodinger's cat-in-the-box paradox demonstrates). Nevertheless, subjectively convenient probabilities and explanations in randomness are not threatening (to scientists) simply because they do not violate an understanding of causality (as a fixed and determinate principle), locality (as the rule of time and space) and both of which are regulated in a fixed and determinate constant. With these rules (of Theoria) in place the play of random events may be accommodated so that Order (Cosmos) enjoys the priority over Chaos (randomness).
But no sooner demonstrate the possibility of nonlocality, acausal connections and action at a distance, than measure the disappointment of Einstein for the "EPR paradox" and its failure to demonstrate an objective frame of reference. Apparently the chaos factor of Mother nature and Tyche has been classically in strong contention with the ordering principle. But no matter, "It is now emerging," observes Albert in his article, "that those conclusions were settled on somewhat too quickly. As a matter of fact, a radically different, fully worked-out theory exists that accounts for all known behaviors of subatomic particles. In this theory, chance plays no role at all, and every material object invariably does occupy some particular region of space. Moreover, this theory takes the form of a single set of basic physical laws that apply in exactly the same way to every physical object that exists...That theory is principally the work of David J. Bohm of BirbeckCollege, London."
Although his formulation has existed in the scientific literature for more than 40 years, it has until quite recently been mostly ignored simply because removing the demon of chance would provisionally reestablish a fixed objective standpoint for scientific premises. An isotropic and deterministic universe was also proposed by the Marquis de Laplace 200 years ago. It met with opposition by religionists since it indicated that the possibility of the absolute predictability and measuring of the universe and physical phenomena competed man (as scientist) with God. The deterministic model lasted until the beginning of this century until the notions of complementarity and the uncertainty principle removed the last possibility of fixed reference for the object. And this disallowed the locality assigned to the subjective presence and the non-locality traditionally assumed for the Divine Presence. But the new quantum mechanics idea of indeterminism and chance was by far the greater threat to a theological premise insofar as it inferred a new definition of God. However the isotropic model offered by LaPlace and then Bohm overlapped an idea of God, could it be put back into science to represent a principle of an absolutely objective standpoint?
In either case a tertium comparationis would have been (re)established by which an understanding of phenomena may be mediated. It may be apparent to the scientist and philosopher that a one on one relationship to phenomena is a useless attempt at "pure empiricism." Between the subject and the object a mediating imperative is required that includes the presence of the Logos, an epistemic registry by which mind and experience (of the object) are combined in a representation. Short of that it is impossible to speak of scienza or praxis. It would admit that God (as Father in Being) is not dead but simply lost in the great culture swell of indeterminism, the mother-grounded probabilistic, subjectivist picture, where anything goes, doctrinal permissiveness is the rule, with social and ethical relativism as the (typical) norm of a deconstructed culture.
The problem of requiring an objective ground for both science and a form of culture points up another distinction in a definition of God. Was the Nietzschean "God is dead" proclamation referring to the Beingness of God or God as a being (a thing or person). The distinction has strong relevance to the ambivalence of Quantum Mechanics insofar as the Beingness of matter is different from the ontic "thingness" nature of matter as particle and wave. From the standpoints of 19th century science and theology, and now, Bohm's Alternative, the conditional and relativistic presence of the observer, the measuring subject, would be something necessarily apart from what is fixed and objective as Being in and by itself.
The beingness of matter is accounted for by Bohm in a concept of non-locality, the simultaneity of events at a distance. Since this is disallowed in relativity theory it would represent a hyper-objective reality in the same sense of non-locality as it applies to Jung's "objective psyche" and by which he means the collective and transpersonal unconscious. In either case the subjective factor is offset because irrelevant to a postulate of non-locality by which the object (and hence the subject!) is not fixed in a particular position in time and space. Neither is its quantum energy and mass limited to such fixed particularity. Accordingly, no sooner say "hyperobjective" and "non-locality" than indulge an idea of a hyper-being as transcendent subject that is also ubiquitously beyond particularization. In either case the nature of Being is not predicated but prevails sui generis so that it is not limited to locality. If Being is not compromised by a relativistic locality, then things and events in becoming (actuality) cannot displace it. But in the view of Quantum Mechanics that is precisely what happens so that not only is subjective being relativized in time and place but Objective Being (as a God concept) is reduced to locality and thus diminished or left deniable altogether.
On the other hand, from the philosophical standpoint of Martin Heidegger, the God presence never left science or any other article of Western Culture but is inextricably imbedded in all cases. All statements, along with language would be invested with what he refers to as the onto-theo-logical.[1] Would its reinvestment, as suggested by Bohm's Alternative, serve as a cure for uncertainty? Would its readmittance as an immanence for scientific and philosophical thinking renew confidence of a meaningful Universe and Creation? And if uncertainty and indeterminism was a gnawing problem for male homosexuality and alternative sexuality, would not some ontological reassurance be offered by locating an a priori biological foundation for homosexuality?
Were the editors of S.A. aware of this mutuality of mission in the separate articles and were they indulging a subtle editorial comment by juxtaposing them in the same issue of their publication? More to the political rather than the "coincidental" point, alternatives drew the focus, especially that the homosexuality papers were presented in the form of a debate. The format provided the homosexuality question with a number of possibilities for resolution: consensus through polling, a public referendum, or perhaps a trial by a jury of scientific peers. The burden of judgement in a scientific a scientific question was in this manner passed on, after a ritual of dialectical exchange, to the readership. Would a democratically achieved consensus decide the question of how male homosexuality may be enabled to meet with majority approval or, more critically, whether it will be allowed morally (by natural law) correct because rooted in other than humanly contestable necessity. If same-sex love was thus attained to a hyperobjective priority, in this case grounded in a genetic pre-disposition, the conditional ground would fall away as irrelevant and homosexuality would be included as a part of evolutionary speciation.
Even greater stakes are implied if the question of alternatives, in this case grounded in a hyperobjectivity (without need of an observer), relates Bohm's alternative to the homosexuality question. In either case Divine approval is sought if at all the alternative compensates whatever is all and opposite to the philosophies of materialism and relativism familiar to a 20th Century world view. Here, the alternative, because hyperobjective in nature, amounts to what Heidegger referred to as the step back, a recursive move that in fact would serve to reinstitute the Deity in scientific thinking. But was the God in Science ever really lost except veiled and concealed?
The tandem alternatives thus far noted represent a bending back to what is inescapable: the conceptual foundation of Western thought. That difficulty lies in language. Heidegger continues; "Our Western languages are languages of metaphysical thinking, each in its own way. It must remain an open question whether the nature of Western languages is in itself marked with the exclusive brand of metaphysics, and thus marked permanently by onto-theo-logic, or whether these languages offer other possibilities of utterance, and that means at the same time of a telling silence."[3] The philosopher states this as if it were apodictic and an inescapable destiny!
Mathematics may offer other possibilities as the language of "telling silence" but which is nevertheless onto-theo-logically permeated until it is rendered godless by the uncertainty principle, the Devil of indeterminism itself; the principle of indefinite specification. Is such uncertainty, shaped to conceptual proportion, without precedent in the history of Western culture? Has it displaced the onto-theo-logical by which physical events are invested with a deterministically fixed order?
In reaction to this, physicality in Bohm's theory is apparently itself the fundamental destiny and demonstration of order. "In Bohm's account," notes Albert, "wave functions are not merely mathematical objects but physical ones, physical things. Bohm treats them somewhat like classical force fields, such as gravitational and magnetic fields. What wave functions do in Bohm's theory (just as classical force fields do) is to in effect push the particles around, to guide them, as it were, along their proper courses."
But does such "guiding" of particles in a prefigured track that is no less their correct course represent the conceptual acme of physical and cosmic determinism!"
It is, of course, difficult to imagine a mathematical object as physical. A mathematical object is a representation. It is not the thing itself but only itself as a mathematical representation, just as Being in itself is not to be confused for beings (physical things). Since Being in itself is a direct reference to the onto-theo-logical and which in itself is a representation, it stands (in Being) as a hyperobjective state. Bohm's alternative exemplifies such ontological virtuality but then steps back and makes a short circuit run from mathematical object to physical object, circumventing, as such, the necessary (for thought or thinking) agency of representation, the language (or Logos) itself! His approach, as such, is unconventionally metaphysical and only inferentially onto-theo-logical but succeeds, nevertheless, at achieving a hyperobjective hypostasis, a physicalizing of a virtual reality, or the reification (thingifying) of wave function, in attempt to render it physically concrete.
Here, I must admit, I have coined the term "hyperobjective" especially because it so conveniently seems to accommodate Bohm's alternative and, as we shall later see, his concept of "Implicate Order". Although it may be obvious that the metaphysical thing in itself and the onto-theo-logical investiture are merely subsumed in so ungainly a category as the hyperobjective, it remains a necessary postulate because required to accommodate the solidifying of wave function whereby space is rendered absolutely uniform. And of course neither objects or motion may accommodate themselves in such a medium.
This would, of course, disqualify the difference between space/time and the thing in space/time and so pave the way for a notion of spatial and hence material non-locality (which at the moment may be defined as the virtual reality of a"Black Hole"). Neither objects or motion (as we know and define them) are feasible in such a dense medium. But, more calamitously, what this also achieves is the virtual annihilation of the lowly subjective presence. It manages this by including the observer as part of the total statistical calculation. Yet, notwithstanding that object and subject are inseparable as unit polarizations, the purpose of a postulated hyperobjective reality is to absolutely and unequivocally attempt (dialectically) to requalify the observer, the lowly measurer representing mortality, according to a new frame of reference.
The mortal presence has, in this argument, already been rendered somewhat impotent because its necessities have been limited as the contingencies of measure, and whose mortal reality is designed in uncertainty. Consequently, the future as only statistically (mathematically) and not ontologically predictable. Here, the psychological nature of the hyperobjective possibility reveals itself: as the most viable allusion to a state of immortality. Bohm, in effect, seeks to absolve the mortal presence of limit to a statistical frame of reference, but in doing so the subject, as it were, is swallowed up by the object which, as a nuclear particle, is both physically in place yet ubiquitously all over the place. Following in the Bohmian physical paradigm the mortal subject, because physical, would be assimilated to hyperobjective Being, in effect, "The Father and I are One." Would this in turn infer that the incarnation of hyperobjective being (Being in itself) attempts to physicalize the Divine Estate?
Now, be it reminded, I am not declaring this is what Bohm in fact had in mind or that he even grasped the full metaphysical possibilities of his physicalistic speculations. It may only be assumed he had hopes to declare the incarnation of hyperobjective Being (Being in itself) as a physical event; that is, what would amount in theological terms to the materialization of the divine estate. At this point it may be clear that a piece of Alice In Wonderland logic has been extended to its necessary climax in either absurdity or divine revelation. More tangibly manifested, however, is a psychological state of mind turned in on itself, re-embodied in the pleroma of hyperobjective reality, the virtual state of immortality achieved: where World and Self, because thinkable realities, are physically bonded as one. They are attained thereby of singularity; homo qua homo in the modus of cogito, ergo sum, and hence death overcome!
To think, therefore would be the antithesis to death and annihilation and by which Mind is postulated as the Heaven of the thinker. A caveat is in order here and which draws some relevance to the above noted coincidence of alternatives. The homophilia state of being as a rarefied introverted existence that is not necessarily confined to and thus translated in sexual terms. In whatever the mode of comportment where absolute uniformity is demanded an intrusion from without is proscribed. Since the attempt is made to unconditionally conserve both world and self as homogeneously uniform it may be understandable that it represents an inscrutable form of heterophobia; where the Other and Opposite (self) must be rigorously suppressed because posed as a fatal intruder into the unus mundus of such colossal self-world-cosmos identity. It is here that the question of male homosexuality as genetically pre-ordained takes its place as an unconditional absolute along with Bohm's new alternative. The question must thus be addressed in either case: does such self-identity by which a closed universe is defined according to a fixed absolute reflect more a state of mind and a psychological attitude whose introverted necessities requires a universe that is invulnerable to compromise by random events and those accidents of change by which the individual destiny is reconditioned? If there is the barest suggestion of this, would it not reflect a yearning for an apriori absolution by which the individual is freed of all responsibility for the contingencies of the life destiny?
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The male homosexuality debate engaged Simon LeVay, whose specialty is neuroanatomy, and Dean H. Hamer, a scientist versed in biological chemistry. Dr. LeVay is also founder of the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education. Both specialists, in their Evidence for a Biological Influence in Male Homosexuality (the article may have just as well been called The LeVay/Hamer Alternative), presented a case for how a bio-genetic causality is related to homosexuality. Their tandem views were countered by William Byne, a medical researcher and practicing psychiatrist, in his The Biological Evidence Challenged. Each side presented didactic arguments and what appeared as appropriate evidence. More to the political point, alternatives drew the focus, especially that the Homosexuality papers were presented in the form of a debate. The format provided the homosexuality question with a number of possibilities for resolution: consensus through polling, a public referendum, or perhaps a trial by jury? The burden of judgment in a scientific question was in this manner passed on, after a ritual of dialectical exchange, to the readership. Would a democratically achieved consensus decide the question of how male homosexuality may be enabled to meet with majority approval or, more critically, whether it will be allowed morally (by natural law) correct because rooted in other than humanly wrought biological necessity? It was, however, somewhat disturbing to realize that the debate format amounted to a politicization of a scientific issue. This left me at a loss to make an educated choice. I was somewhat disarmed and obliged to fall back on a subjective response. Yet, the pro-biological authors won my approval simply because they wrote in a way I found appealing and they seemed fair-minded. For all that, their argument hardly convinced me. I simply preferred them to their opponent. My judgement, by and large, was determined subjectively. In a debate format such is often the case: judgement precedes the evidence and nature ofthe issue and leans sympathetically toward a preconditioned emotional and subjective response: Scienza compromised by doxa!
On the other hand, the challenger to their case, William Byne, immediately rubbed me wrong in the first paragraph of his article. He started out with a naive epiphenomenalistic statement: "All psychological phenomena are ultimately biological." Just as well say all this is ultimately all that! Why indeed refer to anything psychological as phenomenon when in fact it has been reduced to epiphenomenon? More likely, reducing one thing as the contingency of another is a cheap shot judgmental means of disqualifying it. In such an approach, whatever is favored and agreeable is assigned position as prima causa. What is repugnant is given to the rear as merely derivative or dependant. What else could I immediately think but this psychiatrist was an epistemological cluck. I forced myself to read on, found that he presented a credible challenge, but totally dismissed him when at the end of his discourse he again committed epistemological heresy by wistfully concluding: "Perhaps the answers to the most salient questions in this debate lie notwithin the biology of human brains but rather in the cultures those brains have created." Now there is something to choke on. At least the fellow was consistent in his approach.Was he speaking euphemistically or did he really believe that culture is the mere epiphenomenon of brains?--that brains arrive ready made, proceed to create out of themselves, and all without even a remote consideration that brains and culture enjoy an exchange relation in each their particular modes of discursion. Could it be, in this peculiar psychiatric view, that the (biological) evolution of brains had nothing to do with the evolution of culture and the collective response of humans in time and experience? That brains would posit "brains," such as they are, were a given in and by themselves, indeed, no less apriori hyperobjective brains!
Such a fundamentalist view is obviously prepared for discourse only insofar as it is guaranteed a preconceived conclusion. He knew all along, and before a ritual debate, "that all psychological phenomena are ultimately biological," and that biological brains created culture. Did he mean the brains of individuals, or a collection of brainsall at once? Whose brains created culture? Was it possible to attribute the creation of language, for example, to the exceptional brains of some unknown singular individual? Barring such possibility, it may be admitted that the creation of culture was the effort of collective brains. This poses an immediate problem for the culture-pro-brains argument. Is it possible to isolate a biologically constituted and all pervasive collective brain? Saw and scalpel are useless here. Statistical analysis is not. It may then become clear that the expressed constituent elements of this collective brain are in fact measurable only as statistically derived quanta. Jung called them archetypes such as they are prevailed in the quantum field of the collective brain. The manifest form of these quarky endopsychic predispositions is, of course, called "culture."
The field, or body of such non-molar quanta, is called "Psyche." And since psyche is quite invisible (to the senses), yet no doubt attributable to biology, it is astounding that psychiatrists and psychologists do not dispense with the study of the soul (psyche) and focus on bios? That would mean giving up the great convenience of epiphenomenalism; of being at two places at the same time but knowing neither of either! In this way the manifest image, or personification, would be reducible to psyche qua bios yet available for their hard evidence in appearance for final conclusions. But that is precisely why it is fashionable to compare the operation of the brain to a computer; to confuse neurological performance for the operations of mind and intelligence; or all in all short circuit the connection of biological and physiological processes to mental activity. Such quick resemblances, homo qua homo, indicate a generalizing, ignotum per ignotius, where the least is known of either.
It would have been more practical, even for a practicing epiphenomenalist, to accept that brains and culture are in an evolutionary relation of relentless mutual exchange. A case for brains creating culture sets the stage for a premise of un-natural selection in the evolution of culture. Such may be the case for the contrary to "natural" but Dr. Byne must lose my vote because hardly blessed with the power to grasp that the relation of things rather than the things themselves is the thing; or object of science I would hate to think (as a painter and poet) that my creative efforts may be reduced to a pile of categorically fixed a priori gene-beans)!
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Part III: Psychological Predisposition
In view of my choice, however,it was not so simple to turn over my vote to Messrs. LeVay & Hamer. They too have put all their categorical beans in one biological bucket. Neither am I without suspicion that their scientific approach is graced with a certain amount of proprietary intention for promoting the social acceptability of male homosexuality. Heterophobe that I am not, this wouldn't bother me, except their argument proceeds with predetermined biogenetics and ends with the freedom of choice to locate the causal nexus of male homoerotic proclivities! The luxury of rationally having it both ways, however, is bench marked as tautology, the logical sin of self-predication. After two biological explanations offered they are generous enough to speculate a most compelling third: ". . .that there is no causal connection, but both sexual orientation and the brain structures in question are linked to some third variable, such as a developmental event during uterine or early postnatal life." Their tertium quid is not only mediatory and fairminded but psychologically accommodating. But why stop at uterine or early postnatal life in this recursive procedure? Why not move back even further? They already infer as much. Toward the end of their article they make, perhaps without fully exploiting it, the critical point: ". . . that the hypothetical gene acts indirectly, through personality or temperament, rather than directly on sexual-object choice." With that statement the contest, debate, case, is closed and as if they had they pleaded nolo contendere. The winner is the third variable, or more precisely, the tertium comparationis by which complements in relation are interfaced. Only from here may we proceed to extrapolate, keeping in mind that a psychological predisposition may enjoy priority over the declamatory notion of an a priori genetic predetermination in same sex alternatives.
Unfortunately, the authors' curiously miss the point about what constitutes psychological predisposition when they add (and in doing so blow their cover): "For example, people who are genetically self-reliant might be more likely to acknowledge and act on same sex feelings than people who are dependent on the approval of others." This brings up a vital problem of the over-exposed Gay community; the urgently compelling need for social, political, ethical--and, in the case at hand, biological--approbation. This is hardly a question of self-reliance but one of self-commitment to a way of life that has little to do with how others may judge it. In other words, a question of ontological resolution; or what is generally euphemized as "self- esteem." No sooner admit a genetic foundation for self-reliance, after, of course, an apology to Ralph Waldo Emerson, than a host of other personality traits and affectations are forthcoming and which may be attributable to the same genetic treasure house. It may even be acceptable that Romanticists and Classicists, Liberals and Conservatives, or Democrats and Republicans are genetically pre-ordained for either a left or right handed political bias.
Before, however, swallowing the short-circuit reasoning in evidence here, some basic headwork in the logic of classes and types is in order. Indeed, forget "self-reliant." It would fit in the same class with both sexual-object choice and political-object choice. Are such phenomic affectations contingent upon a predisposition far more structurally bare and morphologically fundamental, that is to say, genomically quarky?.
It is impossible to predict how the articulation of a psychological predisposition will manifest itself. Such predisposition, by nature of its psychological definition, precludes conclusive concrete description according to (empirically) discernible qualities. Indeed, it is by necessity that the physicist offers the barest directional valences of a quark, insofar as it represents the most fundamental, non-qualitative (statistical) description of matter. It must remain ubiquitously satisfying for all material possibilities. But the uncertainty is even greater in terms of psychological predispositions simply because a translation has to be made from physical evidence to interpretive description of expressive behavior. Need it be said, translation from the physical to the psychological paradigm cannot be made on the basis of qualities in resemblance or apparent sympathy.
Better, therefore, to understand psychological predispositions by the logic applied to a quark. Only the most essential of description is possible and which has to do with the alternatives of spin, direction, and location, all aspects of the wave function. In the case at hand only a predisposition to a particular alternative of directional valence is possible to ascertain before taking the rather overdrawn jump to such affectations of judgment as self reliance, sexual or political object-choice. In other words, is the predispositional quark nature of the subject either inwardly or outwardly inclined, subject or object orientated? Is it an inny or outy, uppy or downy, righty or lefty?--or all in all a predisposition for understanding world and self from either an exoteric or estoric standpoint?
Such inclinations merely assert whether a predisposition pre-exists for an introverted or extraverted psychological attitude. Where that takes us in terms of sexual or political alternatives is determined only after the fact of conditional circumstances. It is, accordingly, only remotely possible to determine whether the many modes and varieties of sexual expressions, choices and preferences are genetically predetermined and fixed. This is no more possible to affirm than whether the varieties of religious experience, belief and faith may be reduced to a question of biology and genes. Or for that matter, whether the political differences of Liberals and Conservatives are a priori and genetically pre-ordained.
Such reductions too easily establish the possibility of "race memory," or the genetic retention and Lamarkian transmission of acquired images and ideas. Indeed, DNA may carry a code but certainly not morphologically engramed little pictures, illustrating sexual programs or poitical expositions! Neither is the brain and its genetic background so neatly comparable to the performance of a word processor with graphics capability and an extensive clip file! But, following Psychoanalytic notions, is the brain a garbage pail receptacle of bundled away, ready made and visually defined archaic images phylogenetically accumulated from a primordial past and residing psychically in situ? . Along similar lines, it is a quaint modern superstition that a cloned Albert Einstein or Adolph Hitler would axiomatically produce, respectively, a scientific genius and a political despot!
The nature of genetic predisposition is not so categorically deterministic. The facultas praeformandi and what is rendered fait accompli are related only after developmental articulation is completed, taking into account the contingencies along the way. Aristotle understood this when he discoursed on the nature of entelechia, potentia, dynamis and morphe, and how they are related (the seed and its potential to form according to its genetic endowment). On the other hand, a predisposition may actualize in resemblance to an image "remembered" from a past never actually experienced. This not a "race memory" since every actualization as an image involves an original transformation without precedent that neurologically has nothing to do with memory retention of a particular ready made and stored image. The transformation from raw and undefined cathexic potential is prevailed as a process of relentless evolution; the innate predisposition in constant transformation as an interaction of it and experience in the world.
Because a predisposition is genetically innate, its image description is not fixed. Its wave description may be determined, that is, where it is genetically located, but not its whatness. Schrodinger, for example, is obliged to remind: "Real existence is a term almost hunted down by many philosophical hounds, and its simple, naive meaning has almost been lost to us. I wish, therefore, to remind here of another imperative. We have spoken of the fact that [sub nuclear] particles are not individual simply because the same particles are never really observed twice, just as Herakleitos said of the river. We cannot mark an electron--paint it red'--and not only that we cannot even think of them as marked, otherwise false results are obtained by incorrect `counting' step by step--for the structure of line spectra, in thermodynamics, and many other cases...In contrast, it is very easy to imprint an individual structure on a wave so that it can be recognized again with complete certainty..." What the reality of a particle has in common with a genetic predisposition is the state of immanence. In either case no two descriptions actualize as predictive repetitions but serve a continuous interaction that is evolutionary in each case. Although "types" of descriptions may result and be classified according to a structural commonality, total identity and resemblance is impossible simply because the contingencies of actualizing (wave description in the case of a particle) imply locational variations. But in the highly theoretical nature of hyperobjective reality, immanence and potential are literally everywhere at once and yet nowhere at the same time.
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The ancient ideas of potential as pre-formal immanence, or indwelling, is no less cogent than the modern notions of predispositional causal relations in the transmission of DNA, e.g., the ancient Hebrew idea of the Shekinah and its vessel, the mobile Ark of the Covenant, suggesting the divine seminal immanence is transitive yet inscrutably ever present. Indeed, would it be fit to speak of a "wave function" implied by the mobile Ark? A physical model does not apply in the ancient case but certainly a conceptual one does. The conceptual model, however, is far more accommodating than the modern physical paradigm. In the case of the latter the range of the conceptual paradigm is limited to a particular physical evidence that tends, as such, to foreclose the fuller potential of actualization for a given predisposition. Such premature finalization leads directly to the folly of a politicized argument according to which it must be decided--as if an either/or choice were involved--whether either a priori genetic endowment or conditioning determine the destiny of an individual or, for that matter, a collective body of people.
Such logical tilting is dissipating if not occlusive to the fuller realization of a latent potential. Unfortunately, the exclusionary dialectical logic has ruled the modern mind and its mode of arriving at judgements. In the case at hand, the digital either/or operation may categorically deny or affirm all bio-genetic influence in psychological temperament and offset, obscure or postpone a scientific conclusion.
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Part IV: A QUESTION OF ALTERNATIVES
Introversion and Male Homosexuality
The partisan views expressed in the questions of quantum physics and that of homosexuality may, accordingly, be divided into two major attitudinal orientations regardless of subject material. In one orientation a decidedly inward approach is favored. It is inward in the technical sense of introversion, characteristically self-indwelled and which is structurally accommodated in a closed system. In psychological description such introversion enjoys definition as "subject-directed." This is hardly "subjectivist," or solipsistic, insofar as the "inner world" of the subject represents a real universe, although one that for the most part tends to be closed off from external influence and conditioning. The so-called "inner world" is understood as the true (in the sense of value) objective reality. "World," in this case, is conditioned by Self, and not the other way around.
A genetic predisposition for introversion may actualize such descriptions as same-sex love, an essentially inward orientated attitude, or where the world is drawn in the image of self. In all cases the focus is on world as inner, the self homo qua homo in love with self. This is not simply an example of self-centered egoism but an attitudinal predisposition by which world and self are understood as an intensive and esoteric closed and impenetrable circle. The "world within" is presented as a virtual hyperobjective reality, an interior chthonios or underworld familiar in Greek myth as the domain of the phallic Hades and the androgynous Dionysos. Or as Nietzsche described it in his Birth of Tragedy, the "realm of the mothers."
Whatever the ambiance of intensive introversion it is especially characterized as a state of alienation. Bohm, for example, experienced certain social and professional difficulties often associated with the introverted predisposition for alienation. Such essential alienation, in the case of homosexuality, precedes actual sexual choices and preferences that are determined after the fact of conditional circumstances. The difficulties encountered in such alienation are in the main cultural, especially that Western culture is preeminently outgoing, extensive, exoteric or extraverted. Alienation in such cultural ambiance is hardly considered except as something pathologistic. On the other hand, the extraverted predisposition, insofar as it inclined as object rather than subject directed by and large accommodates the Western culture ideal. Where the extravertd object seeking invests itself in the other than itself, the introverted subject seeking is more at home with itself and what is similiar to it. Along similiar lines, collective extraversion would be in its cultural determinations less sympathetic to a same-sex inclination, or indwelling on Self. On the other hand, however a predisposition for self-identity may be intrinsically partial to an essential to an inwardness the fact that it may may settle as an alternative sexual practice, there are many other modes of expression to which the inward directional bias that may be drawn that reflect spiritual, philosophical or political alternatives. It is more than apparent, for example, that male homosexuals manifest a greater sensitivity for inward or psychic reality, creative imagination and fantasy, along with a special affinity for those endeavors demnanding a heightened aesthetic sensibility. The male heterosexual, on the other hand, finds it difficult to accommodate or accept such preoccupations from the cultural pro-masculine standpoint. The inwardly dwelled man, aside from any declared sexual preferences, is often enough denigrated as feministic simply because the woman, from mother to wife, carries the inner world for a real he-man. In this manner the inner life of the male is barred to him. Unable to relate to his native "inner world" the psychism remains intact past puberty and early manhood, resulting in what I have come to call "the matri-retentive male." In other words, the attitudinally inward directed male may be driven to the feminine estate that, culturally and in a most literalistic manner, is the only accommodation a malepredisposed in this manner may indulge for his introverted necessities.
More often than not a conflict ensues whose resolve is in an alienation that separates the introverted male from football jocks and the kind of ladies that enjoy them. Same sex preference is after the fact of such psychogenic conflicts, offering as such the course of least resistance to an external paradigm of inwardness. The greater human consideration is not for the manner of sexual preference effected but that an essential inwardness is given expression from the outside in rather than the from the inside out, representing as such an inversion through invasion from without of what superficially resembles inwardness. Here an external feminine image is a convenience of such a reverse cathexis. The masculine "inner woman" (as anima is thus atrophied as inner and the external feminine image is adopted in turn as a persona identity.
From a morphological standpoint the feminine describes a womb- space receptacle, a vas, place of containment and darkness that is inward and esoteric, as opposed to the fundamental extentional or erectional morphology of maleness. But if the male personality is in some way shielded from the endopsychic anima and its function of maintaining a relation to the unconscious it may be forced to assume the feminine image as a personality vestment. The affectation, if only in the pretense of a life-style serves as an urgent means of defense from a direct confrontation with the unconscious. In that sense the "gay" personality, fortified by a community in kind, serves as prophylactic device for warding off an invasion from within and an overt psychosis. This is not to indicate that the extraverted male is less prone to such invasion under similiar matriretentive circumstances. In either case the nature of introversion when unaccommodated in the personal ecology reflects the unconscious in its most threatening womb qua tomb, eros qua thanatos personification.
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Part V: Science, Myth and Catholicization
The editors may not have required that Simon LeVay, Dean H. Hamer and William Byne--the contestants in the homosexuality debate--consider the possibilities presented in David Z. Albert's review of Bohm's alternative; that is, at least before they put their views to print. In either case, a great shyness was in evidence that worked fruitlessly to conceal any partisan response to the sociological phenomenon of an exponential increase of the homoerotic alternative in modern Western culture. Be that as it may, it would appear that the airing of gender politics in a scientific journal has gone out of its way to exclude not simply a more definitive survey and analysis of the social, psychological and cultural circumstances involved, but the subjective standpoints representing each the debaters' particular sexual preference. But, as evidenced by Bohm's theory, the subjective presence is no longer an obstacle, at worst, an unwelcome intruder carrying the obsolete baggage of uncertainty in the proposed brave new world of hyperobjectivity. The not so subtle a clue that uncertainty is on its way out is the rather ubiquitous use in recent years of the term "politically correct." It is the crude forerunner to an instituted epistemic absolute, a virtual "law of nature," in effect, the Word of God engraved on the stones of whatever discipline or mode of thought. Little speculation is need to anticipate the full effect of Bohm's theory instituted: Or if a case for the biological origin of homosexuality is accommodated by consensus. What do the parties to the debate gain in a new age of hyperobjective scientistic correctness? Indeed, the same old categorically tempered nuts and bolts of Classical and Newtonian science idealism is till screwed in the promise of progressive salvation! LeVay and Hamer imply as much when they conclude: "We believe scientific research can help dispel some of the myths about homosexuality that in the past have clouded the image of lesbians and gay men." It is, of course, par for the course that part of the myth of science includes as one of its propensities a duty to dispel myths. The nature and specifics of such myths are not discussed, unless it is assumed that there is a self-evident mythological rather than biological basis for the enmity that exists between homophobes and heterophobes. However the line is drawn between such partisan societies, the causes of hostility in either case derived in a lack of scientific enlightenment? Does such enlightenment pave the path for what is correct, politically or scientifically? Or is such advocacy merely a device for seeking universal approval, a necessity spared the genetically self-reliant Gay person. Apparently those who are genetically both self-reliant and homosexual make up a small minority of the Gay community. It is thus inferred that for the greater majority too much emphasis is placed on World rather than Self in the question of approval. In other words, the outer object (society at large) is disproportionately far more important than self-qualification and evaluation. In technical terms this is refereed to as , something suffered by the , or the introvert not reconciled with the functional nature of introversion.
The effort to achieve social and cultural approval is misleading if there is no reckoning with a genetic predisposition for an introverted psychological attitude. It is highly possible that such an attitude is collectively shared by those who have either banded together as a community of homosexuals, or were lead to a choice of a Gay life style in the first place because as introverts they found little comfort or support in a society that is culturally valenced toward extraversion. Were such persons born homosexuals or born introverts? A person genetically predisposed for inwardness and for whom Self, and the expression of Self, are far more compelling than the rewards of object- oriented worldliness may just as well choose to pursue the practice of art and embrace the art community. But even here it will be noticed how artists are compulsively obsessed with winning approval and recognition in the world. Indeed, as in the homosexual case, the World is the enemy to be overcome because it does no more than repress and oppress the sensitive person, a person highly responsive to self and the endopsychic world. Only wistfully could Andy Wharhol, who was both a homosexual and an artist, admit that the glories of fame and the special attentions of society (whether in approval or not) are worth no more than fifteen minutes of ones time.
In view of this, it would be hoped that the first "myth" to be dispelled by science would be that introversion, and the personality demonstrations of its tendencies, does not represent a moral deficiency, a dysfunctional psychology or require a special social sub- class accommodated as "nerds." If fame, success and social approval are set as the exclusive requirements for predicating Self then it may be clear that self-achievement has been divested of its subject. Indeed, Self and subject are separated with the latter swallowed up and homogenized in hyperobjective reality. Euphemistically this would amount to claiming that the worldly rewards of achievement and fame include a position in (or at best, 15 minutes of either history or immortality). It may be apparent in this respect that as concepts hyperobjective reality and immortality have something in common.
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The greater slippage in scientific veracity is apparent when the weight of science is intruded in the fragile fields of conscience, freedom of choice and the courage to be (what one is, or chooses to be). Keeping this in mind, regardless with or without a priori biological justification, the freedom of choice is compromised if it requires the engraved in stone truths of hyperobjectivity to qualify itself. Apparently LeVay and Hamer are aware of this and much more when they note: "We also recognize, however, that increasing knowledge of biology may eventually bring with it the power to infringe on the natural rights of individuals and impoverish the world of its human diversity." It is apparent to them that relentless proselytizing and the attempt at catholicizing the scientific propriety of alternative sexuality amounts to missionary enforcement, fired in the zeal of overcompensated doubt. This may happen, of course, when the articles of science are construed in the hyperobjective sense of moral imperatives, force-fitted to satisfy virtual rather than actual necessities, in this case the necessities of sexuality examined scientifically. Even more alarming, however, it appears axiomatic to the authors that the mission and destiny of science somehow includes "...the power to infringe on the natural rights of individuals and impoverish the world of its human diversity." Is it suggested that the verification of a biological influence of homosexuality would first, "infringe on the natural rights of individualsimpoverish the world of its human diversity." Obviously, an infringement would be at hand if a homosexual was informed that his choice of a life style was biologically pre-destined. It is equally clear that such biological affirmation would work to compromise the "human diversity" distinguishing heterosexuality as an instrument of evolution. In either case, science is employed for doctrinal purposes, as demonstrated in other great proselytizing efforts aimed at world catholicization, such as Roman Catholicism and Marxism. In all cases human diversity must be overcome and natural rights are only those that are spiritually, scientifically, politically, psychologically, etc., correct, according to the epistemic indelibility of what is finalistically instituted (placed in being, instatuerre) as a hyperobjective reality. But need it be emphasized here that this is the destiny of science only when it serves as the instrument of an ideology.
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In the case at hand, the partisan view favoring a biological explanation for homosexuality and that representing the new determinism as expressed in Bohm's Alternative, appear at home in the introverted closed system of hyperobjective reality. Such a reality may be euphemistically referred to as "inner reality", or further predicated as "spiritual," "transcendental," "mystic," or "psychic," since all such terms indicate the esoteric reach of introversion. This does not entirely accommodate the nature of hyperobjective reality simply because it is constituted by premises already externalized and evolved in world rather than self experience and then, after a critical stepping back, introjected and installed in the medium of the self. Essentially, this would describe a continuous evolutionary process that is the chronic reality of intensive introversion. It includes, for example, the venerable company of Plato and Platonists, and those whose philosophical outlooks have nominally have come to represent the transhistorical long haul of conceptually expressed introversion as opposed to Aristotle and the Aristotelian extraverted objective reality defined as res extensa. The latter influence, however, is by and large the stronger one in Western cultural evolution, representing a persistent outgoing, outreaching, extensional or exoteric inclination toward the object. But here the object is all that is outside the Self and limited to the world and matter. Such extraversion is unquestionably in empirical relation to the object only if the object is definable as a thing of the senses. The inner object, as res intensa, endopsychic object, is out of the question. Offhand such distinctions would appear nominal, since for the Platonist the inner object is real, whereas for the Aristotelian the outer object (of the senses) is actual. Need it be reminded here that real and actual are not synonymous for a philosopher.
In view of such predispositional inclinations for the inner or outer, Bohm's theory appears either derived, or intimately related by coincidence, to certain historically prevailed ontological understandings. Heidegger, for example, attempted to show how the idea of God (as the Onto-Theo-Logical) is absolutely penetrated into every aspect especially language, syntax and logic of Western culture. This would establish the onto-theo-logical as an absolute, or objective reality, much in the manner of how Bohm deals with materiality and physical events. And this is precisely the same essential outlook enjoyed by LeVay and Hamer who attempt to locate the causal nexus of homosexual inclinations in a biological and genetic foundation. Each would in effect and principle allow homosexuality the status of an a priori objective reality or, more precisely, a hyperobjective reality. In this same rarified or transcendental class Plato's a priori intelligibles (archetypal ideas) comfortably fit, as does Jung's notion of a "collective unconscious" (that he alternately refers to as objective psyche). Both share a commonality with Bohm's alternative: their hyperobjective reality is not contingent upon the presence of an observer.
Theologically, the hyperobjective reality would precede mortality and in that sense render it irrelevant. Indeed, only divine angels inhabit this heavenly, empyrean realm, along with Liebnitz' impermeable "windowless monads," and more lately, Rupert Sheldrake's "M-Fields" and how he applies them to a "shared order" notion to account for the EPR paradox. In such company as the music of the spheres we may now enter the a priori and archetypally genetic engram, the encoded facultas praeformandi for homosexuality. If, however, such a mixed bag occupies the hyperobjective reality, its contents must owe their being to the radix philosophorum alternative proposed by Parmenides in his concept of the Logos: as uncreated, impermeable, indestructible and eternal, setting as such the historical ursprung for all notions of the hyperobjective reality to come. What such a reality sadly leaves behind, however, is the mortal and human estate, burdened as it is in contingencies, accidents of being and development. The sum of conditional and environmental factors articulates the mortal presence and frames it in þthe probabilistic, subjectivist picture of realityþ that has in fact made up the major trend of scientific weltanschauung since the Classical and Newtonian approach to physics succumbed to the relativity view. This same trend also influenced such divergent fields as sociology, psychology, political science, etc. In all cases the emphasis was placed on conditioning so that the traditionally observed hyperobjective reality of a priori elements was severely repressed. From a simplicistic standpoint the historical contest poses þspirituality,þ and the patrilinear cultural mode, against "materialism" and its subdivisions, such as positivism, relativism, deterministic socialism, behaviorism or what is often predicated as matriarchal. Obviously, scientific veridity has not been spared influence in either of these polar ideologies and what distinguishes them conceptually. Their conditional causality doesn't dispose of but merely occludes the question of conceptual duplexity.
Bohm's mathematically demonstrated alternative indicates an unequivocal hyperobjective reality, or one not offset by the measuring attempts of an observer and the relative position of the observer doing the measuring. On one hand this would conceal the question of conditional influence, and on the other, just because of the occlusion, reinstates not only conceptual duplexity but Cartesian dualism. More alarming to the prevailing quantum model and the principles of relativity, Bohm's theory: "...allows for the possibility that something that occurs in region A can have a physical effect in region B, instantaneously, no matter how far apart regions A and B may happen to be." In other words, the universe from origin to end is fixed as one continuous nut, prevailed beyond the measure of time and space. It is implied, accordingly, that beginning and end occur simultaneously, regardless their time and distance apart. This is because the conditional time and space occupied by the observer are not polarized to either event but factored in the general equation. This would obviate the subjective observer and in effect subvert the human cognitive presence. The observer would be present but not dialectically polarized in a subject/object relation but subsumed in the resulting hyperobjective reality. The observer and all its specifics would be absorbed in the general statistic since it is the observer that generates the problem of uncertainty that for Bohm's theory, notes Albert, “...is necessarily...an epistemic uncertainty. It is a matter of ignorance and not a matter of the operations of any irreducible element of chance in the fundamental laws of the world.” Such ignorance (the uncertainty factor of the measurer) is simply averaged out, as it were, swallowed up and digested and thereby incorporated in the hyperobjective reality.
Obviously, the obstacle to this totalistic cosmic fascism is the observer as a free, if not hermeneutic, agent whose presence disturbs a totalistic concept of the totally deterministic nature of material and physical phenomena. Because not given to chance the hyperobjective reality is prevailed as a closed universe in which matter has absolute presence but no extension. This also happens to be a viable definition of God! It is also the world view of the obsessed introvert for whom hyperobjective reality expresses inner world as a totalistic condition. Equally served would be god as mother, a black hole reality enjoying zero mass and ultimate density. Apparently, in the onto-theo-logy of the new hyperobjective (scientific) religion, the diety no longer needs be genderized and gender no longer needs be dialectically declared in terms of a physical polarity. It is thus inferred that gender difference and the heterosexual condition need no longer prevail in deference to the unisexed “new generation,” that is sensually gratified in the hyperobjective reality of homo qua homo sexuality.
The material being of the deity without extension infers that God is absolutely in the totalistic sense ubiquitous, and follows Bohm's theory of non-locality. It is worth reminding that a notion of non- locality would have provided Jung a physical basis for his synchronicity hypothesis, especially that he understood such “acausal meaningful coincidences” acted as if time and space as measured conditions were abolished. But time and space as a measured (relativistic) unity satisfies neither Bohm's alternative or Jung's synchronicity insofar as they accommodate a principle of simultaneity. The question must be here asked; are such notions merely metaphysical hypotheses? The answer is that they are if their antitheses and complementary postulates are excluded and they are rendered homo qua homo in bias. This gets back to the question of a priori genetic predispositions (entelechia in potentia) and their discourse in the conditional reality of extension, contingency and the accidents involved in the physical elaborations and articulations of time and space.
In view of such complex interplay it would be impossible to determine whether a human nature was genetically predetermined either homosexual or heterosexual or, for that matter, either male or female. In other words, either too much or not enough is laid to what is genetically given, just as the same such deficiencies apply when causal explanations are limited to physicality (as object). In either case, world and Self are forced into dialectical opposition and as if they were not all along vigorously in complementary relation. Hyperobjectification infers that homophysis enjoys priority over heterophysis, whereby the unus recommends itself as if it were not a unity of complements (as simultaneous instants) but a þsmoothþ and þuninterruptedþ homogenous mass; indeed, fully conformed to the paradigm of the Alchemical massa confusa, Chaos, or undifferentiated material state. The isomorphic condition defines the chaos as an homo qua homo uninterrupted plasma that is antithetical to what is ordinarily meant by þorder,þ or cosmos, except it is understood in potentia: order indwelled as an immanence in the homo qua homo state. Such latency, however, passively accommodates the infinite smoothness of the Chaos and the homo qua homo mass. Only when interrupted or analytically þcutþ is the principle of order in play. This amounts to an intrusion into the undifferentiated smoothness of chaos but which begs the question whether the intrusion arrives from within the mass or from without. From the standpoint of non-locality, the intrusion is simultaneously inward and outward in origin. Such simultaneity and non-locality was apparently understood by St. Augustine when he offered the metaphor of God as a circle whose center is nowhere but simultaneously everywhere. The notion is neither unique to modern quantum theory or St.Augustine's theologism. It is simply the common sense topological understanding of a point in space. Obviously, since a point has no spatial dimension it remains non-local. Euphemistically speaking, a point is used to mark a place in space. But such an operation requires that the space is defined in the first place by a boundary. No sooner define a boundary than an analytical exclusion is performed where space is rendered hyperobjective and removed, accordingly, from space as the Being in Itself enjoyed of the Kantian an sich. It is only deceptively that Space in itself and hyperobjective reality enjoy a commonality; simply because space in itself, like Being in Itself are not achieved by exclusion! Exclusion is an analytic operation whereas Being in Itself is archai, an original given.
In such descriptions it may be apparent that Chaos and Order are bound in the complementarity relation. What Chaos is to the wave function, Order is to particularity and mass. However difficult complementarity is to accept it is made even more problematical because it must include what is impossible in the measured descriptions of time and space; a principle of simultaneity and non- locality. The obstacle to such a principle would be the measuring presence fixed in a particular locality. Yet, a concept of complementarity infers itself contingent to a principle of simultaneity, one the necessity of the other. They are demonstrable, however, not empirically but by statistical quantification. Does the latter affirmation disqualify the subjective presence simply because it does not make its calculation in situ, that is to say, “on location” This would admit that mind and its operations are hardly defined in the Cartesian res cogitans that, if included in the definitions of non-locality, would enable simultaneity as a physical event of the mind. That is a scary possibility best dismissed as þmetaphysical,þ except now metaphysicality enjoys an ontological place (sans locality) in the virtual reality of hyperobjectivity. Once the uncertainty factor (of “ignorance”) is accommodated, such as it is in Bohm's theory, and the subjective presence is hyperobjectified, there is no question that wave and particle may be received as a singular event and the uncertainty dichotomy integrated as an unus mundus. The problem here is how to hyperobjectify the subject, or what amounts to a radical alteration of consciousness as we know it. No doubt such alteration would include endowing a mathematical object, an abstract concept or an idea with physicality so that it is available to sense perception. Such physicalization of the immaterial ghosts and spirits of mind would, of course, be contingent upon the physicalization of mental process itself, in the sense of the Cartesian res cogitans. In that case, however, the relativistic format of consciousness would cease to exist so that þphysical,þ and þmaterial,þ would be without reference, just as þspiritual,þ and þghostþ (as in geist) would equally be set adrift. The term þspiritualþ cannot exist without the term “physical,” just as the necessary complement to “mind” is “matter”. But if annihilating one or the other complements is successful there is then achieved a hyperobjective reality where physical/mind may exist in and by itself or, alternately, spiritual/mind may exist in and by itself. In their hyperobjective states such complements are finalistically bifurcated and have absolutely nothing to do with the other (in the operation of exchange relation). Annihilated in such a state would be the possibility of anything heteromorphic. In this sense hyperobjective reality is homomorphic in particular and spatially isomorphic, if at all the latter may be spoken of in terms of wave description.
Bohm's alternative or what I have so far referred to as hyperobjective reality is hardly without conceptual precedents. It follows in its theological paradigm as a particular definition of God; of God before the creation, without man and in and by Himself, or what is later extrapolated in the Monophysite doctrine of Christ as all (Spirit) divine and not (corporeally) mortal. In this sense, mortality subsumed, denied or abolished (by hyperobjective decree), necessarily postulates original creation and eschatological end as a single moment. Like the yearned for utopos it is a non-locality, no-place. But post-Bohm's alternative, it is the human event (posteriori Adam and Eve in their Garden of Paradise) intrusion, the mortal sin of interrupting this uroboric moment of absolute and uninterrupted continuity and performing its indelible and irreversible “cut:” the unus mundus hyperobjective Bohmian paradise; the moment of origin/end, archai/eschaton, sliced like a salami into so many increments of time and space (that all the King's horses and all the King's men, with the help of God and Bohm's theory cannot put together again).
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F I N I S
Bernard X. Bovasso,bernx@aol.com