“Reality is not composed of things or processes; it is not composed of atoms or quarks; it is not composed of wholes nor does it have any parts. Rather it is composed of whole/parts, or holons.
This is true of atoms, cells, symbols, ideas… There is nothing that isn’t a holon – upwardly and downwardly forever.”

He then goes on to develop 20 tenets describing how holons interact and the patterns that connect them, and eventually incorporates the holon idea as a foundational element within his multidimensional, integrative theory of everything.

Whether or not positing holons as fundamental in this way can contribute anything to the above discussion I shall leave for the experts to decide.

@John Hannon
“Does not causation cease to apply amid such weirdness?”

An excellent question, sir. So long as something is happening there, we have causation. More specifically, so long as whatever is happening down there does not explain its own existence but depends on something else to exist, we have causation. We might not be able to describe the causation in detail, but we know that something is happening. That we cannot speak with a great deal of certainty should fill us with humility and causation with what speak. Thus, I fully admit that the English word “causation” starts to loose its luster down there in the subatomic world. All I need it to do is designate that being is being given from one thing to another thing.

@admin
“Minimally, the question is, what gives the part causal priority over the whole? I’m not seeing a load-bearing structure in this.”

I am afraid that the search for the ultimate “load bearing structure” is itself a search for a coherent system of thought. Please excuse my meta argument, but here it goes. Most work in philosophy from the Enlightenment on has been focused on explaining how human beings understand. These systems of thought attempt to reduce reason into parts. I affirm that you cannot. Your reason simply works, just like your will simply works. The proof that you will and think cannot be objective because these two powers are what make you a subective person. Accordingly, my ability to conceive of higher levels of order within reality, whether those orders be intra or extra, cannot be proven. The ability itself is simply accepted. Aristotle’s advanced epistemology (which he conceived of as logic itself) were the laws of identity, noncontradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. Most modern philosophy has gone after a way of explaining how we can explain the universe. This search is a great way to make your head hurt in my opinion.

Anyways, I bring up the above to frame my following answer. The part exists before the whole in so far as the parts communicate being to the whole. Aristotle’s brillant insight was to understand that the whole can also communicate being to the parts that they do not posses by themselves. Accordingly, what has priority over what is a matter of perspective – please, excuse the metaphysics pun In terms of material existence, atoms seems to be prior to molecules. In terms of human action, the soul is prior to the being that it communicates to the various members of our bodies. I hope that this answer better explains the internal coherence of my perspective.

For example, if you drop a ball (let us avoid apples!) it will fall to the ground as expected. If you were very small and able to drop some metaphorical sub-atomic ball (particle) it may well hit the ground, or go sideways or move upwards. I think I’ll call this Boolean reality, given the ‘OR’ nature of what might happen.

As for time travel, I have no idea if time exists in the first place. It seems to us that reality depends on a linear progression from one thing to the next – but is this really so? Could it be that time is a human construct based on our hard-wired perception of reality? Suppose, instead, that we exist in a single moment where there is only change, and that this change can be described as ‘flux’ because it appears as linear ’cause and effect.’ Linear time may be an illusion in which case one cannot travel through it.

Change can manifest itself as time, but it does not depend on a first cause as posited by Aquinas. If reality is change then a theoretical God must also be subject to it. A theist would say, ‘God is beyond change’, but I cannot see a Universe which does not depend on flux for its entire being, or any being which does not depend on flux.

Personally, I find the notion of a God trivial and Medieval. I also find the concept intellectually conservative and terrifyingly smug, given the level of human suffering in the world. God, should such an amorphous pink jelly of a no-thing actually exist, remains aloof from human affairs leaving humanity free to rape the planet into the void and twist each other into tortured shapes. If something as complex as reality can be easily explained using brutish logic (the tractor of the mind) then the arguments employed to this end are doubtlessly flawed and usually I tend to leave them alone. Not this time it seems!

I tend towards a less Westernised view of the world where I see that reality can only be transcended and revealed as no more than a convincing puppet show. It can never be properly explained (or indeed fully experienced) without direct apprehension. Thought alone is inadequate to this end.

“Also, can we really separate ‘before’ from time-reference?”

The clearest example of priority without time is an instantaneous line of causation. Let us take for the sake of argument my coffee cup. It is composed of molecules. Those molecules are composed of atoms. Those atoms are composed of electrons, neutrons, and protons. These sub-atomic particles are in turn composed of quarks or strings or whatever stuff the physicists think compose them. At every measurable interval of time, my coffee cup’s existence depends on this chain of being instantly working. Accordingly, the molecules are prior to (of before) the coffee cup, the atoms are prior to the molecules, and the sub-atomic particles are prior to the atoms not in time but in causality.

Now, onto the first part of your reply. When Aquinas speaks of God as First Cause, he means cause in the above sense of transmitting being at every second to every distinct thing. Since we exist in a world where things exist dependent on chains of instantaneous causes, these chains of causes must be anchored to a single cause that explains itself. That First Cause causes itself to exist distinctly from the chains of causes. If that First Cause did not cause itself to exist distinctly as itself, it would not be the First Cause but just another cause. In that cause we would have an infinite instantaneous chain of cause, which is not possible. Either a chain of causes has a definite beginning or it cannot communicate being instantly. Since we know that being is transmitted instantly, then we know that the chain of causes has a beginning. Aquinas, as do I, calls that First Cause God.

The most interesting part of the above is the conception of chains of causes that cannot be both infinite and instantaneous. In my experience that part strikes most contemporary people as really weird and confusing. What do you think?

Instead of a ton of quote, allow me to explain in broad strokes. For more information please see Summa Theologia, First Part, questions 2 and 3. First, through the five proofs (q.2, article 3), Aquinas establishes that God exists as that which comes before all else in terms of motion, causation, necessity, gradation, and governance but not with respect to time. Then in question 3, Aquinas establishes the simplicity of God. More specifically, in the eighth article of question 3, he goes over how God cannot be a composite with the things of the world. In short, being part of a compound goes against being essentially prior in terms of motion, causation, necessity, gradation, and governance. Later on in the Summa Theologia Aquinas will show that God exists with perfections above those of the material universe. I hope this clarifies the position sufficiently, but if it doesn’t, I am happy to continue.