*3.4. The Link to Dialectics*

As stated by Lupasco, dialectics can be considered neither more, nor less, than the generalization and mental expression of conflicts in nature and civilization, and their resolution, that man has observed from time immemorial. "Beings and things seem to exist and are able to exist only in function of their successive and contradictory conflicts" [34]. For Heraclitus, conflict did not mean the splitting or destruction of the unity of reality, but its constitution. The *logos* is the only "abiding thing", the orderly principle according to which all change takes place as a 'binding-together'. Conflict (*polemos*) and *logos* are the same. As defined in Lupasco's Table of Deductions, ortho- and para-deductive chains of implication are thus an integral part of logic. A *disjunctive* dialectical oscillation is required between the first three implications of implications, and between the three implications of implications of implications controlled by the former, and so on, of which the following is the first sequence (A = actual; P = potential; T = T-state):

> [(⊃ A) ⊃ (⊃<sup>P</sup>) ] ∨ [(⊃<sup>A</sup>) ⊃ (⊃ P) ] ∨ [(⊃ T) ⊃ (⊃<sup>T</sup>) ]

This implication formula defines the meaning of disjunction as the mechanics of dialectics: no dialectic without disjunction and vice versa. It is disjunction that is implied by the fundamental postulate that permits the dialectic, and the dialectic implied by the same postulate, as principle of antagonism that permits and requires the disjunction, the connective 'or' [35]. In an early paper [36], Aerts describes the failure of the classical 'or' but offers no adequate replacement.

The operation of the fundamental structural logical principle of LIR implies a type of *dialectics* at all levels of reality between the two terms of any interactive duality. In other words, the dialectical characteristics of energy—actual and potential, continuous and discontinuous; entropic and negentropic, identifying or homogenizing and diversifying or heterogenizing—describe the dynamic structure of all interactive phenomena, physical and mental, including information, propositions and judgments.

We quote here another key concept in Lupasco [34]:

"Energy must possess a logic that is not a classic logic nor any other kind based on a principle of pure non-contradiction, since energy implies a contradictory duality in its own nature, structure and function. The contradictory logic of energy is a real logic, that is, a science of logical facts and operations, and not a psychology, phenomenology or epistemology."

Contradictions or dynamic oppositions thus exist in things being continuous and discontinuous, unified and diversified, wave and particle, local and global, in some way at the same time, but not completely so, only in the sense of alternating between ideal limits which are never reached. A standard Aristotelian logic—one which tries to eliminate or avoid contradiction of any kind—is not adequate to describe real systems, all of which are derived from energy in all its *macroscopic thermodynamic* forms: mechanical, electromagnetic, electrostatic (chemical). LIR is not intended to apply to gravity and quantum entities as such. Some paraconsistent logics permit true contradictions, but retain idealized, abstract concepts of truth and falsity. Consequently, they fail to give an adequate picture of the emergence of complex, real-world phenomena. These points apply to all phenomena: ideas, theories, propositions, as well as physical systems.

Contradictions, in the physical sense of real opposing processes, entities or properties can never disappear completely, since this would imply, ultimately, going below the quantum limit, defined by

the Planck quantum of action. All phenomena thus continually but non-reflexively (that is, without 'perfect' circularity) alternate between degrees of actualization and of potentialization of themselves and their opposites or contradictions. The application of the logic of the included middle implies an open, incomplete structure of the set of all possible levels of reality, similar to that defined by Gödel for formal systems3. Concatenations of systems and dialectics in the sense of a Hegelian or Marxist synthesis never yield a third term. Hegel's vision was solely philosophical, without the advantage of the physical grounding we now have. The Lupascian T-state is not a static term, but a dynamic state, and emergen<sup>t</sup> T-states, at a higher level of reality, can also enter as elements into contradictory relations. In a sense, which remains to be explored in greater detail, *relations are T-states*, conceptualizations of change that are nonetheless energetic within the laws of physics. This scheme reflects only one step in what Lupasco called the 'ortho-dialectic' processes of processes that constitute change, looking from the process standpoint. From the point of view of the entity, since no real process returns to the same point, if the process is going in the direction of non-contradiction (of diversity or identity, the net result is that it will be more of an identity or more of a diversity in consequence. In this scheme, the process that leads to more and more di fferentiated individuals, that is, biological processes, is one of heterogenization which should be distinguished from the contradictory process that creates homogeneous individuals from a multiplicity of entities.

The fundamental axioms of LIR imply that entities can be *both* the same and di fferent, *both* distinguishable and indistinguishable. This seems consistent with the interpretation of Krause [37] for quantum cases. More formal ways are still needed, however, to distinguish between macroscopic process elements involved in an 'active' process and objects for which the dialectics are 'frozen': subject to an input of energy, they are to all intents and purposes in the 'classical' part of the LIR theory. This is similar to the quasi-set situation, for macro elements that are distinguishable; the set-theoretical description has a classical part4.

Jainist philosophers in India [38], in the first half of the 1st Millennium made similar statements in a positive mode: quoting from Stcherbatsky, the nature of reality, they said, is permanent and impermanent at the same time, finite and infinite, particular and universal. They realized that a being with absolute identity would be unrelated to all others and could not exist, but without some identity, it would be indistinguishable from everything else. Many authors use this construction when they are unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon under study. However, no explanation is given of how such states of a ffairs might be instantiated, and the phrase 'both at once' can only be understood metaphorically.

The performance of philosophy can thus be considered as a dynamic and dialectical process itself, in which one oscillates between analytic and synthetic approaches, each serving as a control of the other. In the LIR conception, all physical processes, including mental or neuro-psychic, are first of all real *qua* the energy involved in their instantiation. To think about something being an illusion or an abstract entity requires energy to do so. The logic of/in reality proposes a dialectical relation between 'reality' and its appearance to a conscious observer. It is the totality of this picture that we consider realism; reality and appearance are both real. What is *not* real then is not in the sense of lacking any character of dynamic opposition, that is, non-spatio-temporal phenomena such as abstract entities of all kinds. We see here the basis for our 'discovery', outlined below, of a criterion for distinguishing between natural philosophy and all philosophy.

A standard anti-realistic argumen<sup>t</sup> is that since perception can be and often is unreliable, realist theories such as LIR that that are based on it are invalid. We consider treat experimental discovery, as for example the components of perception, as *generally* empirically reliable, and, subject to consensus,

<sup>3</sup> Computational logic now includes concepts of formal systems as open, capable of handling changing or evolving information, replacing the Hilbert concept of formal systems as closed.

<sup>4</sup> This is again similar to the contextual concepts of Aerts. It should be considered the rule rather than the exception that macroscopic systems as well as quantum systems have classical and non-classical parts.

an adequate naturalistic philosophical explanation of why our beliefs based on perceptions represent knowledge about objects that are independent of those perceptions to all intents and purposes. The availability of what Brenner has called catastrophic counterexamples will not change this conclusion. Accordingly, any change to a new theory can preserve structural properties allowing a certain ontological continuity accompanying a conceptual revolution as discussed by Cao [39]. This ontological *synthesis* is a dialectical picture of growth and progress in science that reconciles essential continuity with discontinuous appearance in the history of science, a process that, again, is a logical one in LIR.

#### *3.5. Logic in Reality and Hegel*

The major precursors of the logic of/in reality are discussed in [1] and in several papers by Brenner. However, because parallels to Hegel's dialectics, logic and ontology exist, we will state explicitly how LIR should be di fferentiated from Hegel's system. Lupasco considered that his system included and extended that of Hegel. However, one cannot consider Lupasco a Hegelian or neo-Hegelian without specifying the fundamental di fference between Hegel's idealism and Lupasco's realism. Both Hegel and Lupasco started from a vision of the contradictorial or antagonistic nature of reality; developed elaborate logical systems that dealt with contradiction and went far beyond formal propositional logic; and applied these notions to the individual and society, consciousness, art, history, ethics, and politics.

However, Lupasco proposed *two* dialectics, ascending and descending (*diverging*) toward the non-contradictions of identity and diversity and a *third* dialectics *converging* toward contradiction. As above, the ubiquitous contradiction in nature is that inherent in energy and is the only existent reality. To say that material-energetic reality was the result or emanation of some other necessity as the foundation of the real amounts to tautology or mysticism, and Hegel's "obscure logical descriptions remained without a future for logic and science". As Lupasco expressed it, Hegel's system was "only half of a dialectics" [40]. In Hegel, the a ffirmative value of identification always transcends the negative value of diversification. In LIR, contradiction between them, and what can emerge from them, is established at the basic physical level.

As pointed out by Taylor [41], Hegel's thesis depends on a premise of ontological necessity that in turn would depend on a contradiction of the finite. Hegel established or expounded his resulting ontological structure at 'high' levels, but his project required demonstration of his ontology at the lowest level of simply determinate beings, and his attempted proof of contradiction failed. The realism of LIR successfully answers this major objection to the coherence of Hegel's system, without requiring a commitment to the idealist part of his doctrine.

The Hegelian philosophical vision of "embodied subjectivity, of thought and freedom emerging from the stream of life, finding expression in the forms of social existence, and discovering themselves in relation to nature and history" is still relevant. However, Lupasco's view of contradiction founded a dynamics, whereas Hegel's did not, precisely because his system is *not* metaphysically and physically grounded at the "lowest level of simply determinate beings" that is, microphysical entities. Lupasco [34] showed that there is no *deductive* necessity in Hegel for thesis generating anti-thesis, let alone any subsequent fusion5. In line with our e ffort of naturalization of philosophy in general, LIR can be considered as Hegel *naturalized*, since a physical basis in reality for Hegelian change has been defined.

We note with regre<sup>t</sup> the absence of any resonance of Lupasco's work in French thought, other than in the relatively non-scientific context of the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research founded by Nicolescu, Lupasco and a few others. Lupasco lost his position in the French National

<sup>5</sup> Lupasco rejected Hegel's dynamic relation between being and becoming, since he wanted to limit contradiction to the domain of becoming, which drastically limits the value of Lupasco's thesis. In fact, Lupasco's universe consists of almost nothing but Becoming as functional contradiction, the alternation of the actualization of a phenomenon, with the potentialization of its contradiction, and the actualization of the former, plus emergen<sup>t</sup> T-states. Contradiction is absent only in affect or affectivity, which has no energetic aspects and is the only constituent of being. This metaphysical position is incompatible with the non-naïve realism of LIR.

Scientific Research Center (CNRS) because no one could decide in which field his logic and approaches to biology and psychology should be placed. In the 1980's his work was referred to disparagingly as just 19th Century German romanticism. In a competition for a key position in the Collège de France in the 1950s, Merleau-Ponty was chosen over his contemporary rival—Lupasco. The marginalization of Lupasco can be dated to this event. More recently, no mention of Lupasco is to be found in the 'dialectical walk in the sciences' of Évariste Sanchez-Palencia [42]. He wrote in 2012 that if dialectics is defined as the "general theory" (or logic) of change and evolution, we are dealing with forms of reasoning which do not function by 'yes' and 'no', the principle of the excluded middle is clearly inoperative and in this thus totally different from formal logic. Ironically, Sanchez-Palencia although Spanish spent his entire academic career in the French CNRS in which Lupasco had started it.
