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Human Ontology

What do we consider ourselves to be? To give something of a survey of the answer to this question is essential for considering what comes later. Here we overview the major options of western human ontology. The purpose of this is so that we later on make an assessment as to how AI might interact with what we take ourselves to be and whether or not we should consider this desirable or not.

Humankind has frequently been defined largely by its rationality e.g. Descartes (for whom rational thinking was a dominant feature of humanity), Kant (who emphasised reason as key to our moral nature) and Aristotle called us rational animals; for him, reason was the tool by which we learned virtue and achieved eudaimonia, a flourishing life.

Religious perspectives offer accounts of humans as created by a divinity either in their image (Christianity) or for their worship (Islam) or they are simply trapped in a situation of suffering that may be alleviated through spiritual means (Buddhism). Clearly these are vast simplifications of highly complicated pictures, yet they serve to remind us of another sense in which we can think of the being of the human.

For the existentialists, the very being of man is inextricably linked to freedom. Central to this is the idea that existence precedes essence; humans are not born with a pre-defined purpose but rather define themselves through their choices and actions. This radical freedom implies that individuals are entirely responsible for who they become, carrying the weight of infinite possibilities and often experiencing anguish as a result. Existentialism champions authentic living, urging individuals to embrace this freedom and take ownership of their choices rather than conforming to external pressures. In a world putatively devoid of inherent meaning, humans are tasked with the freedom, and the burden, of creating their own values and purpose. Essentially, human existence is viewed as a constant project of self-creation through the exercise of freedom, emphasizing that individuals are not defined by a fixed nature but are perpetually in the process of becoming through their choices.

Heidegger conceives the human not as a rational animal or a free subject, but as Dasein — literally being-there. Dasein is not a consciousness standing apart from the world but a being always already in the world, entangled with others, tools, and social structures that constitute its everyday existence. This being-in-the-world is not a mere spatial condition but an ontological one: we are defined by our involvement, our concern, and our capacity for understanding the meanings that the world discloses to us.

For Heidegger, the central issue is not the exercise of freedom in an absurd universe (as for Sartre), but the way Being itself is revealed or concealed through our existence. Human life is characterised by care (Sorge): our projects, our concern for others, and our awareness of our own finitude. Dasein’s possibilities — the many ways it might be — are always shaped by the world into which it is thrown and by the temporal horizon of death that bounds it. Authentic existence arises when Dasein recognises and takes up these conditions rather than fleeing them; inauthenticity occurs when it dissolves into the anonymous everydayness of “the they” (das Man).

The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari on the other hand, holds a kind of nuanced Spinozistic philosophy that suggests, not unlike Heidegger, that humankind is essentially open; however here the openness beyond the human is made even more overt. The human is essentially never just human but rather a series of becoming-other. There is always a generally static trend of human being (what we sometimes think of as human in a given era) but there is also a bleeding edge of becoming many other things. The Spinoza connection is not always entirely visible, but it lies in Spinoza’s view of the conatus as our ‘power of acting’. To become-other is to participate in this creative expansion of possibility. In such becomings, humanity is not lost but transformed.

Psychoanalytic thought offers yet another way to understand human ontology, this time grounded not in reason or essence, but in desire and lack. For Freud, the human psyche is not a unified rational subject but a conflicting field of drives and their repression (with commensurate symbolic substitution). Consciousness is a surface phenomenon, continually shaped by what it seeks to exclude. Lacan refined this view, describing the subject as fundamentally divided—constituted through language and through the loss that language itself imposes. For her to speak, to enter the symbolic order, is to be separated from immediacy; the self is a void, not a fullness.

From the scientific perspective, the human is best understood as a biological organism — Homo sapiens, a highly evolved primate distinguished by its neural complexity and capacity for symbolic communication. Evolutionary theory situates the human within a continuous natural history, explaining cognition, language, and sociality as adaptive functions rather than transcendent traits. The body is approached as an intricate system of mechanisms, coordinated through the brain and nervous system, sustained by metabolic exchange and genetic inheritance. In this view, what distinguishes the human is not metaphysical essence but quantitative difference — greater brain power, linguistic ability, and technological behaviour. Scientific ontology thus conceives humanity as an emergent pattern in matter: a contingent arrangement of organic processes capable of self-reflection, yet explicable in the same terms as any other material phenomenon.

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Almost everything that is written here is a combination of two things: experience of synchronicity and an intuition/thought sequence I once had over 30 years ago concerning establishing a sort of metaphysical value to regional art/creative endeavours in which it could be easily seen that they did not need to be seen as compared to ‘real’ works. This latter chain of thought I have never been able to establish properly again since the original insight, though I do remember feeling something similar to it in reading a book on Laruelle.

I think the hegemonic materialism that has gained greater and greater traction since the renaissance is actually more powerful than I realised. I see in my philosophy, everything is an apology in a way. The agnostic disjunction is a fence sitting move that pays homage to this materialism, it acknowledges it might be right, even though really I feel it isn’t right at all. But that’s the point of that philosophy isn’t it? You cannot trust how you feel about things. Surely there is actually wisdom in this, furthermore if I were just to wax unfettered metaphysics I would be part of a new age ish culture that I long ago rejected. So maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on the agnostic disjunction.

What is maybe more illuminating is my feeling of a certain liberation after reading Federico Faggin’s Irreducible. Not because I agree with it all, but because a figure, like Faggin who was deeply embedded in the materialist computer science world has come to think that this is almost certainly wrong and puts forward a powerful picture to suggest that our experience of consciousness is a quantum process, which puts it forever out of reach of AI, no matter how machinically capable it becomes (because the quantum nature of consciousness means it is non-algorithmic). He reminds us how little we actually understand at this level of physics, how reasonable it is that quantum processes will be going on in biological organisms and how perfectly reasonable it is that we are some kind of part of larger conscious field that exists in something like a Hilbert space.

Ideas, at least like the last point have existed in mysticism for a long time. Indeed the new age movement has been using quantum physics for a long time to make various claims. Often though, these just sounded like putting the word quantum in front of something to make it sound a bit funky. I think the actual processing of Faggin’s point gives a strange liberation that I have not properly unpacked yet, but it reminds me of the insight into meaning that I had 30 years ago.

Back to hegemonic materialism, I don’t like it that for all my work on pneuma, for all the weird things that have happened, for all the books on this area I have read, it has taken an albeit changed, but still authority figure (white male scientist let’s be clear) for my consciousness to feel it is allowed to feel this possibility less tied to the apologetic agnostic disjunction. That shows me how deep it goes (maybe not for other people, but for me).

But I feel this won’t be just about me, this will be something true for a lot of people. People who think they might think things are a bit strange but actually have the materialist thing holding sway. Interestingly it’s almost an inverted Nietzsche, who thought the shadow of Christianity was long (it is), but here we have a lurking materialism, that removes meaning, and for Nietzsche supposedly frees us to make ourselves. What it really did was kill us inside, it wasn’t liberation.

But here is maybe a true way forwards (maybe). The new age movement and similar notions get’s things wrong. We can’t go backwards, we can’t start believing in all that old shit, because it’s just wrong. All those, gods, spirits, astrological ideas, tarot cards, they aren’t ancient real science. But equally they all can kind of work and they work because reality is some massive feedback kind of mess made of pure information (pneuma as I call it). But that doesn’t make them the true system/tools.

Back to the quantum consciousness bit, our consciousness, our pneuminous field , isn’t epiphenomenal, it isn’t inert, it’s an active system that is interacting with the fields around us in who knows what kinds of ways. My recent theorising suggests different directional temporalities may be responsible for beings being able to manifest information orthogonally into temporal flows (synchronicity), but this is only theorising.

The whole task is nearly impossible. It involves recognising the forces involved in this reality as actually what we call weird (but really that’s just normal) and at the same time not listening to nearly any voice that speaks from the deep pneuminous layers. Why? Because these layers lie. They will produce more magic books, they will pronounce more messiahs, more strange rituals, more blood sacrifices.

We don’t have to lose reason, that’s not the point. We have to apply reason (and other regions of consciousness) to how this works but equally recognise we’re involved in something so mysterious and strange and we should be embarrassed that we every tried to label it with this brutal materialism. It’s listening, it’s all listening. Just don’t listen to everything it says back.

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These notes work towards the development of the previously mentioned idea of a description of a pre-ontological level that would fail to register any paranormality as such, owing to its simply being one more aspect of existence. Whether such a kind of prior state is adequately describable is questionable (the meaning of prior this instance being one of the problems), however it may be that the attempt will prove useful.

One stumbling block in such definition as ‘pre-ontological’ is that the issue we seek to discuss can be seemingly achieved by a given ontology. That is, it is perfectly possible to conceive of an ontology that does not need deny paranormal phenomena, rather it simply incorporates them into its theorising about being. Such a move though, is unsatisfying because any given ontology belongs to the other end of the structure.

What do we mean by this? What we are trying to work with is in fact a double ended structure. One end is the pre-ontological level and the other is the level of multiple ontologies. The end of multiple ontologies has in the CEO been labelled manifestationism. More can be read about this in this old CEO compilation. It basically takes it that a priori no philosophical theory (a manifestation) can be ambiguity proof. This is based on the incoherence/coherence thesis that can be read about in the Tractatus Pneumatologico Philosophicus which states that all concepts are essentially incoherent in some way or another. Philosophers as agents of different ontologies to which they are affectively attached, will work with the inherent incoherence to defend the ontology that they work for, whilst being blind to the incoherence in their ’employer’. Everyone argues with everyone, forever.

This is one end of the structure we wish to try to articulate. This end is the multiplicity of theory by which we try to understand what is going on. Theory has happened and is continuing to happen. Of special interest to us is that fact that modern scientific and philosophical theory, especially in the west has in general placed all paranormality outside of it. The presupposition is that despite various idealist discussions continuing, materialism actually supplies something that approximates the true. The world is solid and continuous. Theories that supply alternative pictures are relegated to quantum-fuelled new-age speculation. The radical picture of reality that such thought demands looks so distant from the cosy walls of hegemonic materialism that it appears whole-heartedly ridiculous. Hence whilst the manifestationist multiplicity certainly contains such theories, they are at the moment largely distinct from ‘conventional’ philosophy.

This kind of talk repeats the spectre of the ontology that is accepting of various ‘para’-normalities. As mentioned, such an ontology is certainly possible (pneuminous accretive theory is exactly such a thing), however it is not what is required here. The mention of paranormality here is not to emphasise it as an important realm of theory (manifestation) but only to show how this is relevant to the other end of the structure.

The other end of the structure has be characterised as pre-ontological. This language is used to draw attention to how it must be ‘before’ theory has happened. Possibly this can only be employed heuristically, nevertheless we will continue with this and see where it goes. The point of this prior end of the structure is to imagine a space in which there is no schism in the experienced world. One can feel a kind of Heideggerian sense in what is being aimed at here. Poetic disclosure in a primal sense, an announcing of being. This encounter though cannot abnegate events that we would deem as paranormality, it cannot have the hidden presupposition that such things are not real to it. It is this level that we must ask ourselves, if possible, what might it look like?

A hydra of theory heads emerging from the dark earth. This is the task.

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Postulating there is no deity setting actual rules for existence (other than deities which are themselves vast hoary accretions, or potentially powerful pneuminous beings not of our creation, either of which would not be an ultimate being) what can we say about the ethical status of the accretions? Does this question even make any sense?

We believe there is some kind of commentary can be made on this topic, though it is difficult given that all human existence is a priori accretive (if we accept the theory). All the ideas in your ‘mind’, all the stuff you can see and hear, even yourself are all accretions of the same conceptual substance -pneuma. The commentary requires a kind of wondering. The wondering is something like this: is it possible that attaching too many accretions to the self (the neurotic accretion or NA) is in some sense negative? Again this is tricky because of the issue of value. In an ethical void, whether we exist as pneuminous beings bound up with endless threads to endless other accretions or whether we minimise the lines of connection seems to matter little. However there is the matter of the functionality of the organism. Is it possible then that weighing the NA down with endless accretive layers impairs its functionality?  This doesn’t really seem unreasonable.

Using our the recently developed D&G plug-in we can say that extra accretions are formed through intensities. Emotional attachments, patterns of behaviour, these are how it happens. Keeping things, holding onto feelings, being fixed in routine. If accretive theory is correct then these kinds of actions are creating actual accretions of pneuma that themselves accrete to the NA. Some kind of affect, some kind of will makes this happen.

It is easy to note systems like Buddhism eschew attachment (many religions touch on this kind of aspect) and in that sense encourage forming as few a lines as possible. What we find interesting is the tension between the poles of maximum and minimum accretive attachment. A truly minimal engagement with excessive accretions is often the aim of occult systems. The notion is that the accretions encumber the ‘energy body’ and thus reduce its capacity to be effective. This, in its harshest form, could involve separating oneself from even other persons in order to free oneself from the bonds both of our attachment to them and of their ability to pneuminously restrain us through their perception. At the other end of the spectrum is the pneuminous hoarder. Some NAs don’t know how to let go of anything , either emotionally or physically. Pneuminously these are near identical. A physical thing is just pneuma attached to a vector, it is the pneuma we are in contact with, not the vector. ‘Physical thing’ is just one more concept (accretion) itself, admittedly a deep grammatical one. Unbound pneuma (the contents of the mind) is just that, pneuma unbound to the vector field plane that gives rise to physical grammar. Emotionally charged accretions, either bound or unbound can be astonishingly powerful and the NA may feel it cannot separate itself from them. Artifacts, memories, places all can be accretively bound by intensity. Extreme cases of being wedded to endless accretive structures can be reasonably said to impair the well-being of the organism.

But in the middle of this spectrum, isn’t this where ordinary human existence lies? Accretive formations are a regular part of existence that humans generally manage to negotiate without lapsing into the hoarding pole -the other pole is generally perceived as less problematic and certainly not something one is likely to lapse into. What is interesting to speculate about in this regard is the role of capitalism in relation to our accretive relations. Mass production, endless improvement and easy replacement arguably have a negative impact on what could be seen as positive accretive relations.  Whilst it can be seen as unhealthy to be excessively attached to appliances, furniture etc, it is possibly better to have some kind of intensity attachment to such things as opposed to viewing them as purely disposable. Disposable is fine if the disposability can be dealt with, however we can see that this has not really worked out.

The point is that a certain kind of keeping things is not unhealthy attachment even if it can resemble it. Disposable and/or mass produced things mirror each other in their encouragement of the non-special. The keeping of and passing on things imbued with intensity is an important part of being-human. By this I again refer to something like the notion of Heidegger’s human. The human of the disposable is the post-human. The fantasy of freeing oneself from stuff (unless one is embarking on an occult path) is largely exactly that. You free yourself from stuff in order to passively accept the disposability of stuff. You cannot give someone a phone and expect it to be particularly meaningful. No one will keep it to pass it on.  But things like vases, plates, cutlery, rooms, tables these should be allowed to grow old (for humans to be humans -if they want to be humans) and be passed on.

In this sense capitalism gives the worst of both worlds. It generates attachment to stuff, desire for stuff. The accretive attachment becomes to ‘buying’ itself and the ephemeral status/feeling the stuff may bring. Capitalism gives no freedom from attachment to accretions like the sorcerer requires, attachment is still horribly present. But equally, valuing the stuff is lacking, for there is so much more where it came from. The attachment of affect at the level of what I have called being-human is missing.

Viewing things through the eyes of accretive theory can help to redeem some of the capitalist dehumanising. This is so because accretive theory says that the things gather what happened to them. Not just in their cracks and knocks but at the pneuminous level. Things accrete like we (NAs) do, it is a double process. Just as I become attached to it so it does to me and when I am gone my interactions with the thing are still there accreted to it. Disposability/mass production helps to develop the attitude that the things are all the same. Each thing has embedded in it its story in the pneuma.

None of this says what anyone should do. It merely describes certain relations under various conditions.