Avoiding the Partialist Fallacy and Scaling Out to the All-inclusive Embodied Mind: A Mereological Supplement to Michael Levin’s “Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds”

Marine biology is essential to the emerging study of diverse intelligences. Theory of cognitive scaling and the framework advanced in Michael Levin’s “Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds” [1] should be supplemented by explicitly recognizing mereological and related distinctions (whole and part, all, some, none … contingent and necessary). Ultimately, mereology distinguishes whole of reality from parts of reality.

An adequate theory of reality (of reality as such) must include conceptually distinguishing the whole of reality from some parts and all parts. Unlike contingent parts of reality, the whole of reality exists necessarily. To be sure, for any of us who are parts of the whole of reality, verbally denying the existence of the whole of reality can yield only self-refuting nonsense. No sensation, no observation, no experience, and no experimental outcome can deny the reality of the whole of reality. Instead, our every experience necessarily confirms (by exemplifications) that we are partly-inclusive parts of reality, among variously-inclusive parts of reality. And mereological use of language confirms (by definition and logic) that all parts of reality are included as variously less-than-all-inclusive parts of “the one all-inclusive whole of reality” [2,3].

Similarly, an adequate theory of value (of value as such) must include “explicit recognition” of “the whole of which all lesser values are parts” [4]. Accordingly, in moral theory, failure to recognize the all-inclusive value of the whole has been labeled the partialist fallacy. This label refers to fallaciously claiming that there could be real parts of no whole of reality (a self-refuting claim). Like fallaciously advancing a parts-of-no-whole conception of reality, to fallaciously advance a parts-of-no-whole theory of value is to commit the “partialist fallacy” [5]. Avoiding the partialist fallacy allows conceptually scaling all the way (up, down, in, out, throughout) to “the one all-inclusive whole of reality” that is greater than the sum of all parts of reality.

A comprehensive understanding of “diverse bodies and minds” (Levin) must include recognizing that the all-inclusive embodied mind is “the intelligent universe” [6] and “the one universal individual” [7] who, logically-necessarily-existentially, is “that than which none greater can be conceived” (Anselm).

*Another fallacy worth avoiding is labeled “the zero fallacy” [8] for fallaciously claiming to have observed the absolute zero of creativity. From least-inclusive to all-inclusive reality, there is “shared creative experience” [9-13].

1. Levin M (2022) Technological approach to mind everywhere: An experimentally-grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience 16: 1-43.
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4. Hartshorne C (1975) Beyond humanism: Essays in the philosophy of nature. Peter Smith Books, USA.
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13. Whitehead AN (1978) Process and reality: An essay in cosmology. In: David RG, Donald WS (Eds.), Free Press, USA, pp. 1-413.