Strata of Real Being

To discuss ontology in general and to compare competing ontological proposals some structure is useful. This structure will help to place candidate beings in relation to others, understand their way of being and, for example, avoid the category mistake of identifying elements of physical reality with their mathematical representation.  Here we will explore the proposal that reality is indeed stratified and secondly what that stratification may be. In critical ontology it will be important to distinguish whether these levels are levels of reality per se or levels in a description of reality. 

The starting point cannot just be comprehensive scepticism about whether anything exists or not. That will get us nowhere. We will start by taking the phenomena around us as the they appear. There appear to be things that take up space and are stable. There appear to be things that take space and grow. There are appear to be things that have some purpose and make choices. There appear to be things that are made up of other things.   In addition, there are beings with emotional states and awareness of making choices. There is also awareness of resistance or pushback from other things. There is awareness of being the capacity of some beings to change the state of other things. We may be mistaken about particular things and their relationship to each other but the appearances are the appearances.  In talking about things and beings, we have implicitly used categories such a space, time, choice, emotion, awareness and substance. The categories will play an important role is characterising the levels in which beings exist. There will be separate post on categories.

Hartmann proposes a pluralistic view of reality, that covers all the things and beings listed above, that appear in four dynamically interrelated strata [1]:

1. Inorganic 
2. Organic 
3. Psychic 
4. Spiritual. 

The layers are presented in the order of decreasing ontological strength. That is, in each layer the beings depend on those in stronger layers to exist. However, the beings in the less strong layers cannot be reduced to beings in stronger layers. They have their specific categories of existence. There are also multi strata beings as will be illustrated at the end of this post. The question of whether these levels exist and the nature of their existence will not be examined here other than to recognise them as structural proposals and so will be seen to at least exist at the spiritual level. 

The name given to each level is not problematic except for the fourth.  Spiritual being is a translation from the German geistige Sein and the use of the term Geist follows the tradition influenced by Hegel and Dilthey—as it is used, for example, in Geisteswissenschaft—and its meaning covers both individual mind as well as superindividual culture, which is why it lacks an adequate English translation. No religious sense of the term is intended here. Beings at the spiritual level cannot exist without the other levels. 

Although the listing of the four strata suggests a hierarchy, to provide this thought with some substance something needs to be said about the relationship between the strata. The levels of reality are characterised (and therefore distinguished) by their categories. With regard to the levels of reality, it is obvious that the categories in question are ontological rather than epistemological. There are categories that pertain to reality as whole - such as time, whole, part. At the inorganic level the categories of physics are different from those of chemistry. Some examples follow.

1. Inorganic stratum, with categories such as space, time, process, substance, is organised through causality.
2. Organic stratum, with categories such as metabolism, assimilation, self-regulation, self-reproduction and adaptation, is organically organised - the details of the organising principles are unknown for the time being.
3. The psychic stratum, with categories such as consciousness, pleasure, act and content, has its own psychic network of relations. Equally unknown is the inner essence of the form of determination of mental acts.
4. Spirit includes categories of fear, hope, will, freedom, thought, personality, but also society, historicity, or intersubjectivity. It is organised as three modes of spirit;
• Personal - thought, freedom, conscious action and moral will
• Objective - superindividual but living as culture, collective or society
• Objectivated - superindividually existing but non-living. As in cultural artifacts and institutions

All categories at the inorganic level, such as space and time, recur at the organic level.  This recurrence of categories is called superinformation. There is also autonomy off levels and this is known as superposition - building above. For example, consciousness, a category of the psyche, is not spatial.

In addition there are the “fundamental” categories (common for all strata of real being) that come in pairs: 

principle–concretum; structure–modus; form–matter; inner–outer; determination–dependence; quality–quantity; unity–manifoldness; harmony–conflict; contrast–dimension; discretion–continuity; substratum–relation; element–structure.

The above only provides a sketch. For more detail on the categories of real being see Cicovacki [1] who provides a bridge to the detailed work by Hartmann.

The basic structure can be summarised in a diagram.

Hartmann's model of reality includes mind and spirit superposed on an ontologically stronger foundation of life and matter. There is, however,  a feedback loop that is not explicit in the diagram. The objectivated spirit gives rise to artifacts, such as books and architecture, that are also actualised as things at the material level. For example, a person, James Joyce say, has some thoughts (personal spirit) about Dublin society (objective spirit) and creates a novel, Ulysses (objectivated spirit), that is published as book (still objectivated spirit) and printed in several editions (inorganic objects).

The being James Joyce was made of inorganic matter organised as an inorganic life form with a mind and emotional life on which was superposed a spirit that could choose to work for years on intricate works of literature. He would also often choose to drink heavily after a day's work. He loved his immediate family.

A further example. This blog exists as objectivated spirit. It came into being because of my choice and was enabled by the infrastructure supplied by Google. Making and maintaining the blog are choices made by me at the level of my personal spirit. The blog infrastructure is dependent on organised matter (inorganic level) the organisation of it is objectivated spirit because it was designed. The blog and its posts are captured and encoded in the blog infrastructure. The posts are instantiated on the screen of a reader's device. The readers use their sense organs and brain (organic level) to access the information that is processed through their psychic level and, hopefully, understood at the level of their personal spirit.  The blog readers and I form a loose community that exists as objective spirit.

Simple beings such as electrons may only inhabit the inorganic level but the existence of complex beings may be across many or all strata. This complex existence is a process rather than a hierarchy.

[1] Cicovacki, Predrag, The Analysis of Wonder. Bloomsbury USA. 2014