Absolute Idealism 2.0 and Plotinus

In various posts on this blog I have sketched the rough outlines of a contemporary version of Absolute Idealism – ‘Absolute Idealism 2.0’ – which is both ontological and mathematical in nature. It is ontological, not epistemological, in nature in that its main motivation is to explain reality rather than just our knowledge of reality. Its fundamental concept is the ontological self-grounding of self-consciousness, i.e. the idea that self-consciousness – due to its circular, self-referential nature – grounds its own existence and is in that sense causa sui. This makes possible, in my view, an Absolute-Idealist answer to the most fundamental question of ontology, namely, Leibniz’ question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Here Absolute Idealism can answer: there is something, rather than nothing, because self-consciousness is causa sui. In my view, this ontological prioritization of self-consciousness as the explanation of reality as a whole – including physical reality – is confirmed by recent developments in the philosophy of mind (notably the Hard Problem of Consciousness) and of physics (Russellian Monism, the role of observation in quantum mechanics, the anthropic principle, and Wheeler’s idea of the self-observing universe).

Metaphysics continuous with science
Obviously, this self-consciousness I appeal to in order to explain reality as a whole is not the individual, finite self-consciousness embodied in physical organisms. Rather, it is a universal, infinite, absolute self-consciousness that is ontologically prior to time and space. I consider this assumption of an absolute self-consciousness as a metaphysical hypothesis that is justified to the extent that it helps us to explain reality. It is, therefore, a form of metaphysics, but one that aims to be continuous with science. In my view, Absolute Idealism is justified only insofar as it accords with the scientific world view. This also explains the mathematical orientation of my approach to Absolute Idealism. Physics, after all, shows that mathematics is the deep structure of physical reality. Thus, the Absolute-Idealist explanation of reality as a whole in terms of absolute self-consciousness can only work if it also explains this ontologically fundamental role of mathematics.

Royce’s mathematical view of the Absolute
In my view, we find the required link between mathematics and absolute self-consciousness by focussing on the recursivity of the latter, i.e. on the fact that self-consciousness, in being its own object of awareness, is also aware of its self-awareness, and aware of that awareness of its self-awareness, and aware of the awareness of that awareness of its self-awareness, and so on ad infinitum. As the American Idealist Josiah Royce has pointed out, this infinite recursion of self-consciousness is isomorphic to the recursion that defines the natural number system ℕ (i.e. the recursive successor function S(n)=n+1, which starting with n=0 generates 1, 2, 3 …). In this way, we can see the absolute self-consciousness, through its inner recursivity, as aware of all natural numbers. From here, as I have argued in different posts, it is only a small step to seeing the absolute self-consciousness as a ‘cosmic computer’, given the fact that computation is standardly understood in terms of mappings from ℕ to ℕ.

The Absolute as ‘cosmic computer’
Since physics shows the basic computability of all physical processes, we can view the physical universe as a privileged subset of all the computations going on in the absolute self-consciousness. But why is this subset privileged? Why does the absolute self-consciousness ‘think’ the computations that constitute this universe rather than any other universe? Two facts suggest an answer: (1) the anthropic principle in physics, which points out that the universe seems ‘just right’ for the evolution of life, and (2) the tautological fact that the aim of absolute self-consciousness is to attain complete knowledge of itself. Thus, it stands to reason that insofar as the absolute self-consciousness computes at all, it pays special attention to those computations that “simulate” intelligent, self-aware organisms. For by focusing its attention on those computations – e.g. the computational structure of the human brain – it sees its own essence reflected in the medium of mathematics. This gives us the following hypothesis: the universe is that proper subset of computations in which the absolute self-consciousness sees its own essence best reflected. It is, to repeat, only a hypothesis, which becomes acceptable only insofar as it enables us to explain reality, in conformity with the scientific world view.

Closeness to Neoplatonism
Looking for historical precedents of this approach to Absolute Idealism, we arrive first and foremost at Neoplatonism, especially as developed by Plotinus. Plotinus was unique among the Neoplatonists in that he accorded a fundamental role to self-consciousness in the self-causation of the Absolute, i.e. “the One” in his terminology. According to Plotinus, the One is the consciousness it has of itself and as such it exists because it is conscious of itself. Thus, Plotinus writes that the One "so to speak looks to himself, and this so-called being of his is his looking to himself, he as it were makes himself […]." (Ennead VI.8.16, 19-23) In my view, this insight into the ontologically self-grounding nature of the absolute self-consciousness is precisely what we need to answer Leibniz’ question as to why there is something rather than nothing. In this respect, then, Plotinus is a major inspiration for my approach to Absolute Idealism.

The mathematical aspect of Neoplatonism
But not only that; the insight into the link between mathematics and absolute self-consciousness can also be found already in Plotinus. This is, perhaps, not so surprising, given the well-known influence of Pythagoreanism on (Neo-)Platonic thought. The Pythagorean idea that numerical relations and geometrical forms are constitutive of reality was already dear to Plato himself, and only gained importance with the further development of Platonism. Thus the “emanation” of reality from the One was for all Neoplatonists also a mathematical process, a multi-leveled unfolding of increasing multiplicity out of a primordial unity. Plotinus was not unique in this. Neither was he unique in his technical development of mathematical ideas (in this respect, in fact, Plotinus was rather weak). He was unique, however, in the connection he forged between the self-consciousness of the One and the mathematical unfolding of emanation. Here he virtually anticipated Royce’s insight into the infinite recursivity of absolute self-consciousness as the generative source of the natural number system.

Plotinus and Royce
This becomes clear when Plotinus writes about the second hypostasis, Intellect, which is the first self-image generated by the self-consciousness of the One: “[W]hen it sees itself it does so not as without intelligence but as thinking. So that in its primary thinking it would have also the thinking that it thinks […].” (Ennead II.9.1, 49-59) Plotinus then goes on, in the same passage, to argue that we should not stop here, we should rather add “another, third, distinction in addition to the second one which said that it thinks that it thinks,” namely, “one which says that it thinks that it thinks that it thinks”. And then Plotinus asks rhetorically: “And why should one not go on introducing distinctions in this way to infinity?” Thus Plotinus clearly indicates that the recursion involved in Intellect’s self-thinking is endless and as such generates infinite multiplicity. In this way, one can say, the self-thinking of Intellect amounts to an endless self-multiplication.

In this way, Plotinus clearly anticipated Royce’s insight into the link between the natural number system and the infinite recursivity of absolute self-consciousness. In fact, I think that Plotinus took this insight a great deal further than Royce did. For Royce, this insight remained something of an afterthought – quite literally, as his ideas about the mathematical nature of absolute self-consciousness were only expressed in the “Supplementary Essay” to his The World and the Individual. Royce never fully embraced a Neopythagorean, mathematical view of the universe. Plotinus, of course, did embrace such a view, given his Neopythagorean commitments. For this reason, too, my approach to Absolute Idealism owes more to Plotinus than to Royce (the other reason being Plotinus’ insight into the self-causing nature of absolute self-consciousness, which is more or less lacking in Royce).

The self-reflection of the Absolute in Neoplatonism
There is also a third reason why I like Plotinus. Earlier I said that we can, perhaps, explain the physical universe as the computational self-image of absolute self-consciousness, i.e. as its self-reflection in the medium of mathematics. The fact of the matter is that this emphasis on creation as a self-imaging or self-reflection of the Absolute is also thoroughly Neoplatonic in nature. Emanation is for Plotinus essentially a process of imaging and re-presentation, where a higher reality creates a lower reality as its own image (thus material Nature is the image of Soul, which in turn is the image of Intellect, which finally is the image of the One). In this way, of course, Plotinus takes over, and develops further, the Platonic theory of participation, where empirical particulars are seen as the images or shadows of ideal archetypes.

Plotinus systematizes the Platonic theory by seeing the One as the ultimate archetype that creates, in successive stages, its own images (Intellect, Soul, Nature). Although Plotinus remains frustratingly implicit about this, it seems clear to me that this theme of imaging is intimately related to the self-consciousness of the One. That is to say: because the One is essentially self-consciousness, it creates images of itself, images in which it reflects itself and through which it enhances its own self-awareness. This seems to me the most logical interpretation of Plotinus’ theory of emanation, where each lower hypostasis is the image of the preceding hypostasis: this entire sequence of images is nothing but the unfolding of the primordial self-consciousness which is the self-caused essence of the One.

Neoplatonism as Absolute Idealism
One possible misunderstanding should be avoided: Plotinus' claim that each hypostasis produces an image of itself should not be understood as meaning that this image exists independent or outside of its source. For Plotinus makes it quite clear that each later hypostasis exists only inside the preceding hypostasis. Thus, Nature exists inside Soul, which in turn exists inside Intellect, which finally exists inside the One. In this way Plotinus can say that “all things belong to It [i.e. the One, PS] and are in It” (Ennead, V.4.2). In this way, Plotinus transformed Platonism in a thoroughgoing monism where only the One really exists and all other levels of reality are somehow produced inside the One as the Hen Kai Pan (“All-In-One”). Thus it becomes clear that Plotinus’ Neoplatonism is essentially a form of Absolute Idealism, since the One is for Plotinus nothing but the consciousness it has of itself. The entire sequence of self-images produced by the One should be seen as a sequence internal to the One, an internal unfolding of the One's self-contemplation.

Self-Causation, Time, and Quantum Physics

"The future is not what it used to be."
(Paul Valéry)

1. Introduction: Self-causation from Plotinus to Wheeler
A recurrent theme on this blog is the idea that we need some notion of self-causation in order to answer Leibniz's famous question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" If we define "reality" as the totality of what exists (including past and future existence), then by definition nothing exists outside of reality (not even "nothing"). If we then presuppose the Principle of Sufficient Reason – that there is a sufficient reason for every fact, including the fact that reality exists – then it follows that the reason for reality's existence must lie within reality itself, since there is nothing outside it. And since we generally call the reason why something exists the cause of that something, we must conclude that reality has to be self-causing. In this post I want to investigate the possibility of self-causation in relation to time. 

Can reality bootstrap itself into existence?

1.1 Physicalism and the fig-leaf conception of self-causation
Before going more deeply into the topic of this post, let me first say a few words about the controversial concept of self-causation, which is bound to raise eyebrows. Let me just note that by "self-causation" I mean roughly the same as what contemporary thinkers mean by "explanatory self-subsumption" (Robert Nozick), "self-explanation" (Nicholas Rescher), "cosmic bootstrapping" (Peter Atkins), and "self-excitation / self-synthesis" (John Wheeler). All these thinkers agree with the point made above: that since there is nothing outside of reality as a whole, the reason for its existence must lie within itself, such that reality must ultimately be understood as self-producing. So why don't these thinkers just use the term "self-causation", which is after all the traditional term of art for what is meant here? Premodern and early modern philosophers, from Plotinus to Spinoza, had no qualms in speaking of God as being self-caused (causa sui). So what has changed in the meantime?

What has changed, of course, is the rise of physicalism as the dominant ontology of the modern age, due to the huge experimental successes of mathematical physics and the victory of Neo-Darwinism. As a result, the concept of causation has become virtually synonymous with "physical causation". And if physical causation is the only form of causation around, then clearly self-causation doesn't make much sense (or does it? see the discussion below about retrocausation in quantum physics). Contemporary thinkers have become so imbibed with physicalism as the dominant ontology that they consciously or unconsciously – even if they explicitly reject physicalism! – adopt the physicalist ban on self-causation and use fig leaf notions in its stead, such as "explanatory self-subsumption", "self-explanation", "cosmic bootstrapping", etc.

At the same time, however, we should note that physicalism is currently going through a deepening crisis, mainly brought on by the troublesome phenomenon of consciousness which refuses complete reduction to a physicalist framework. This crisis of physicalism means that the concept of self-causation becomes somewhat less of taboo: it gets a second chance. (See e.g. philosopher John Leslie who, as a Neoplatonizing Spinozist, is quite happy to invoke self-causation.) The crucial role of consciousness in bringing on this crisis makes one wonder if perhaps consciousness holds the key to understanding the self-causation of reality... But this is something I will discuss further in my next post.

1.2 Self-causation and the problem of time
In this post I will focus on a somewhat more specialized topic: the possibility of self-causation in relation to time. As a process in time, self-causation is clearly impossible. As I will argue below, the self-causing entity would either have to precede itself in time or instantaneously emerge in time from out of nowhere – two possibilities which are equally absurd. So if we need self-causation in order to explain reality's existence, then it seems we must be dealing with timeless self-causation. This, of course, was one of the reasons why the philosophical tradition from Plotinus to Hegel conceived of God (i.e. "the One", "Substance" or "the Absolute") as existing outside of time; for otherwise God's self-causation would become unintelligible.

On the other hand, however, quantum physics appears to upset this conclusion, because in quantum physics it does seem possible for causality to work backwards in time. I am, of course, referring to the mysterious retrocausality displayed in delayed choice experiments, where an act of observation can collapse the wave function of a quantum state not only in the present but also backwards in time, altering the state's past. This retrocausality, seemingly allowed by quantum physics, has been used by the theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) to explain how reality has brought itself into existence. On Wheeler's hypothesis of the self-observing universe, present-day and future observers retro-actively collapse the wave function of the universe from the big bang onwards, thereby facilitating their own – as well as the universe's – evolution. On Wheeler's scenario, therefore, the self-causation of reality seems to be possible in time after all. In other words: Wheeler seems to contradict the claim that self-causation is only possible as a timeless process.

But is this really the case? In fact not, as I will show in the final section of this post. On Wheeler's account of the universe, time (at least as experienced by us ) becomes an illusion, and the self-causation of the universe turns out to be a timeless affair, a closed loop between past and future within the "block universe" which itself exists outside of time as a purely mathematical structure in 'Plato's Heaven'. Thus even on a Wheelerian approach to reality's self-causation, the latter remains a timeless process.

2. Time and the (im)possibility of self-causation
It seems prima facie clear that self-causation is impossible in time, and that the self-causation required to explain reality's existence must therefore be a timeless process. After all, on our normal, intuitive understanding of time and causality, only two kinds of temporal relation can obtain between a cause x and an effect y: either x is earlier than y, or x and y occur simultaneously. The latter happens in instantaneous causation, as when a locomotive starts pulling a train with perfect mechanical rigidity: the motion of the former instantaneously causes the motion of the latter. Instantaneous causation is a controversial concept, although some philosophers (notably Kant, Richard Taylor, Myles Brand) have reckoned with its possibility. Be that as it may, it is clear that the concept of self-causation is problematic in either case, both when x precedes y and when x and y occur simultaneously.

Kant thought instantaneous
causation was possible

Starting with the first case (the cause preceding the effect), it is clear that self-causation would require that the cause precedes in time its own existence, which would be absurd. The self-causing entity would literally have to travel back in time in order to effectuate its own existence. It seems we can safely dismiss this as impossible (pace quantum retrocausation). And the situation is not much better when we allow instantaneous causation in time. Admittedly, with instantaneous causation the self-causing entity would not have to travel back in time to cause itself, so in that sense the notion of self-causation becomes less problematic. Still, however, a lot of absurdity remains. For with instantaneous self-causation in time, there would first have to be a time when the self-causing entity did not yet exist, and then suddenly it would instantaneously cause itself to exist. Thus the self-causing entity would magically pop into existence out of nothing, like a 'hiccup from the void'. It seems clear that this fantastic scenario violates the principle that from nothing only nothing can come (ex nihilo nihil fit). Self-causation, then, seems impossible in time. But we need self-causation to explain reality's existence. Therefore we must postulate a timelessly existing self-causing cause of reality.

2.2 Platonic existence and the 'something-ness' of time
Some people argue that since self-causation is impossible in time, self-causation must be impossible per se. But then they falsely presuppose that all existence is temporal, thus forgetting two things. Firstly, they forget the possibility of Platonic existence: the non-spatiotemporal existence of ideal objects, paradigmatically mathematics. Thus the fact that self-causation is impossible in time leaves open the possibility that the self-causing cause of reality exists in 'Platonic Heaven' (and this raises the question whether the self-causation of reality could be mathematical in nature).

Secondly, they forget that time itself is something. Time – like space, with which it is intimately connected, as relativity shows – is an entity of sorts, a 'thing' with various properties (e.g. one-dimensionality, directedness, dilatability). Time, in other words, belongs to the 'something' we try to explain when we ask Leibniz's question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Since time obviously does not explain its own existence, it must be explained by something else, ultimately by the self-causing cause of all reality. But, as we have seen, self-causation is impossible in time. Thus time itself already presupposes timeless self-causation.

3. The issue of retrocausation in quantum physics
Above I argued that self-causation is "obviously" impossible in time, both in the case of instantaneous causation, where cause x and effect y occur simultaneously, and in the more normal case where x precedes y. But is this correct? How about retrocausality in quantum physics? There, apparently, an act of observation can collapse the wave function of a quantum state not only in the present but also backwards in time, altering the state's past. Doesn't this enable us to make sense of self-causation as a temporal process? The proposal of the self-observing universe, advanced by the physicist Wheeler, might be interpreted in this way. So does Wheeler give the lie to the claim that the self-causation of reality can only take place outside of time? I will finish this post with discussing this question.

John A. Wheeler (1911-2008)

Before discussing Wheeler's proposal in more detail, however, let us first become clearer about how quantum physics creates room for the notion of retrocausation. As already noted, in quantum physics it seems possible for an act of observation to collapse the wave function of a quantum state not only in the present but also backwards in time. That, at least, is what the famous delayed choice experiment seems to show. The delayed choice experiment was originally devised by Wheeler as a thought experiment in the late seventies and early eighties of the previous century, because back then the technology was not yet sufficient in order to realize this experiment in practice. Due to technological process, however, the experiment did become practically possible around 2006. The most rigorous version of the experiment was not done until 2007 by a research team led by French physicist Alain Aspect. The outcome of the experiment was surprising and precisely as originally predicted by Wheeler: observation is able to collapse wave functions in the past and thus to work retro-actively.

3.1 The delayed choice experiment
The delayed choice experiment can be understood as a variation on the classic double-slit experiment which demonstrates the particle / wave duality of quantum states and the curious involvement of the observer in determining which aspect of this duality comes to the fore. In the double-slit experiment, light from a point source falls on a screen with two slits in it; the light bounces off from the screen, except for the two slits through which some of the light passes, thus creating an image on a second screen. The image appears in the form of bright and dark vertical bands (interference fringes) which demonstrate the wave nature of light. The curious role of the observer in quantum mechanics then becomes manifest when the experimenter deliberately looks to see through which slit the photons pass, for in that case no interference pattern emerges and the wave-like nature of light is lost. The act of observation collapses the wave-function of the light and turns it into a stream of point-like particles.

The double-slit experiment

Thus far the double-slit experiment 'merely' demonstrates the wave / particle duality of light and the weird role of the observer in quantum mechanics. But it gets even weirder when the double-slit experiment is extended into a delayed choice experiment. Here the choice to observe through which slit the photons pass is delayed until the light has already passed through both slits and is just about to create an interference pattern on the second screen. Although the light has already passed unobserved through the slits, and therefore as a wave, the choice to observe nevertheless collapses the wave function and prevents the interference pattern from emerging. Again the act of observation has turned the light into a stream of point-like particles. But now a mystery arises: how is this possible given the fact that the light had already passed unobserved through both slits and therefore as a wave? That this is indeed the case follows from the fact that if the choice to observe had not been made, then the interference pattern would have emerged and the wave-like nature of light would have manifested itself. The only possible conclusion seems to be that the delayed choice to observe affects the nature of the light backwards in time, undoing its earlier wave-like nature and turning it into a stream of discrete particles!

3.2 But is this retrocausality?
To repeat: the light originally went through both slits as a wave, but the delayed choice then forced the light 'to change its mind' and 'retrace its steps', now no longer moving as a wave through both slits simultaneously but as a stream of discrete particles going through just one slit at a time. Let us also repeat the crucial point that this is not just quantum theory. The retro-active influence of observation on past quantum states has been demonstrated in real experiments. But is this retrocausality? This question is a hotly debated one. But the debate seems to be a largely verbal one, since it all depends on how you define "causality". In normal cases of causation, some information and energy is transferred from cause to effect. But no such transference takes place in the delayed choice experiments: from the collapse of the wave function in the past no information can be obtained about the future act of observation responsible for this collapse; likewise no energy is transferred from the future act of observation to the quantum state in the past. Thus it has been concluded that causality plays no role in the effect demonstrated by the delayed choice experiment.

But, as said, all this is to a large extent just semantics. Is the transfer of information / energy really essential to the concept of causation? Well, that's a matter of definition, isn't it? And therefore it is arbitrary up to a point. (Remember that the crisis of physicalism forces us to broaden our definition of causality anyway...) If we define "x causes y" broadly as x is the reason why y exists, as we did above in the introduction (a definition that seems reasonable), then clearly quantum physics allows retrocausation, since in the delayed choice experiment the present observation of a quantum state is the reason for the existence of its wave function collapse in the past. Thus, on a very broad definition of causation, quantum physics does allow retrocausation.

Wheeler's U diagram of
the self-observing universe

4. Wheeler's self-observing universe
But does this quantum retrocausation allow us to make sense of the self-causation of reality? The physicist Wheeler certainly thought so. He wanted to know how contemporary physics could explain the self-creation of reality. "How come existence?", Wheeler asked in his own truncated version of Leibniz's question (Wheeler 1999: 310). As we did above, Wheeler argued that, since there is nothing outside of reality as a whole, the latter must have a way of bringing itself into existence, through some kind of closed causal loop: "Existence is not a globe supported by an elephant, supported by a turtle, supported by yet another turtle, and so on. In other words, no infinite regress... To endlessness no alternative is evident but loop [...], such a loop as this: Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics." (Idem: 313-4)

4.1 "How come the quantum?"
Wheeler looked in particular at quantum mechanics as allowing such a closed causal loop. In fact he explained the existence and nature of quantum reality ("How come the quantum?") by arguing that it is the universe's means for self-creation: "The strange necessity of the quantum as we see it everywhere in the scheme of physics comes from the requirement that – via observer-participancy – the Universe should have a way to come into being." (Wheeler 1983: 206) On Wheeler's account, then, the classical universe – i.e. the universe whose wave function has been collapsed – brings itself into existence by evolving the very observers whose acts of observation retro-actively collapse that wave function: "Beginning with the big bang, the universe expands and cools. After eons of dynamic development it gave rise to observership. Acts of observer-participancy ‒ via the mechanism of the delayed-choice experiment ‒ in turn gave tangible "reality" to the universe not only now but back to the beginning." (Wheeler 1983: 209) To illustrate this idea, Wheeler came up with the U diagram of the universe as "self-excited circuit": "Starting small (thin U at upper right), it grows (loop of U) and in time gives rise (upper left) to observer-participancy – which in turn imparts "tangible reality" [...] to even the earliest days of the universe." (Wheeler 1983: 209)

4.2 "It from Bit"
It should be stressed, however, that this appeal to quantum retrocausation on a cosmic scale forms only one half of Wheeler's hypothesis of the self-observing universe. As noted above, quantum retrocausation can only explain the classical universe, i.e. the universe whose wave function has been collapsed. This still leaves unexplained the universe at the quantum level, i.e. the universal wave function and the Schrödinger equation which describes its evolution. Where do they come from? If Wheeler's idea of the self-observing universe is to answer Leibniz's question, then Wheeler must also explain their existence. In order to do this, Wheeler left quantum theory behind and generalized his idea by making critical use of information theory. Wheeler argued – as one of the first – that physical reality ultimately consists of bits of information, a point of view encapsulated by his famous dictum "It from Bit". On this view, physical reality exists only for the observers who pose the yes-no questions to which the bits are the answers. As Wheeler puts it: "It from bit. Otherwise put, every it – every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself – derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely – even if in some contexts indirectly – from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits." (Wheeler 1999: 310-11) Since the observers posing the yes-no questions are part of the very same information space that emerges through their questions, we should conclude that on Wheeler's account these observers ultimately bring themselves along with all of reality into existence.

Is reality nothing but information?

This is how Wheeler explains the existence of the universal wave function and the Schrödinger equation which describes its evolution: they emerge as special substructures in the information space created by the posers of the yes-no questions. Once the universal wave function exists in information space, and the evolution of its myriad superposed states is dictated by the Schrödinger equation, we find in one of its superposed branches the biological evolution of intelligent observers. These observers then retroactively collapse the universal wave function, resulting in their possible universe becoming the universe – the tangible, classical universe we observe around us. In this way concrete reality bootstraps itself into existence out of the abstract information space created by the observers who pose the yes-no questions – observers who, remember, are themselves part of that concrete reality.

On Wheeler's scenario, then, the universe must have emerged in such a way that conscious observers exist within it, since it is only in relation to them that the universe can exist. This also explains why according to Wheeler the information space contained the Schrödinger equation: because the latter facilitates the evolution of a universe containing intelligent observers. Wheeler pointed out that this is one way to explain the remarkable role played by the Anthropic Principle in cosmology. According to Wheeler, the bio-friendliness of the universe is just what one should expect for a participatory universe; he therefore spoke of the "Participatory Anthropic Principle" (PAP).

5. The timelessness of self-causation on Wheeler's scenario
Clearly Wheeler's hypothesis of the self-observing universe is indeed just that: a hypothesis – or rather, as Wheeler himself humbly admitted, an "idea for an idea". It is by no means yet a well-established scientific theory. This holds in particular for the information-theoretic side of Wheeler's hypothesis: the idea that posers of yes-no questions bring themselves into existence by creating the very information space in which they exist. This idea, clearly, is wildly speculative and incredibly vague. At least with the quantum-theoretical side of Wheeler's hypothesis we have some kind of theoretical and experimental underpinning (respectively, quantum mechanics and the delayed choice experiment). But even here we have no empirical evidence whatsoever for the claim that observers now and in the future retro-actively collapse the wave function of the universe all the way back to the big bang. Wheeler's hypothesis of the self-observing universe is therefore to a large extent pure speculation (as he himself was the first to admit). Nevertheless, the fact that this hypothesis presents a distinct scientific possibility, worthy of further investigation, is acknowledged by many contemporary philosophers and scientists. We should therefore take it seriously. So let us ask: is Wheeler's scenario at odds with the claim that self-causation is impossible in time?

5.1 The paradoxes of retrocausation as a temporal process
At first sight, this does seem to be the case, particularly in light of the quantum-theoretic side of Wheeler's scenario. As we have seen, Wheeler speculates that observers in the present and future retro-actively collapse the wave function of the past universe all the way back to the big bang, thereby facilitating their own and the classical universe's evolution. Thus the arrow of (self-)causation clearly points backwards in time. However, on closer inspection it becomes obvious that Wheeler does not describe the self-causation of the universe as a temporal process at all. Rather, on Wheeler's account, time – at least as experienced by us – becomes an illusion, and the self-causation of the universe turns out to be a timeless affair, a closed loop between past and future within the whole of spacetime which itself exists outside of time (the so-called "block universe"; see below). To see why this should be so, note first of all that the paradoxes surrounding self-causation as a temporal process still stand. On the intuitive conception of time (i.e. time as we experience it), only the present is fully real: the past exists no longer and the future exists not yet. On this intuitive conception, the only thing that fully exists is the "flowing now", this paradoxical limit which separates past from future and constantly moves forward, turning the future into the past. On this conception of time, self-causation by means of retrocausation is absurd: the self-causing entity would literally have to exist before it existed, it would have to travel backwards in time to cause its own existence. But how is this possible if only the present is real and both past and future are inexistent?

5.2 Retrocausation only possible in the "block universe"
In order for self-causation by means of retrocausation to be possible, therefore, this intuitive time must be an illusion. Only if past and future exist together does it make sense to see the future as having a causal effect on the past. That is: only if the "arrow of time" is an illusion (or at least a superficial phenomenon that does not characterize ultimate reality) is it possible for the arrow of causation to point in both directions, i.e. from the past to the future as well as from the future to the past. This "unreality of time" is a familiar view in physics, known as the "block universe". The block universe is a four-dimensional spacetime which represents all the places and all the times that ever have existed and will exist together as a single unchanging entity. There is no essential difference between the past and the future, because there is no present time defined to separate them; they cannot be distinguished from each other, so there is no meaningful present. 

Without an objective present, however, time cannot be said to flow in any real sense: the passage of time must be an illusion. The universe just is and contains the whole of spacetime. Only on such a picture of the universe, where past and future are equally real, is it possible for the future to have some kind of causal effect on the past. Only with a block universe, therefore, does retrocausation make sense. But as we have seen, the delayed choice experiment demonstrates the reality of a form of retrocausation (namely, a present observation collapsing a quantum states' wave function in the past). Thus we must conclude that the delayed choice experiment also demonstrates the unreality of intuitive time and the correctness of the block universe.  
 
5.3 The absence of time in the Wheeler-De Witt equation
That this is also Wheeler's own opinion becomes apparent when we take into account the fact that he is one of the co-inventers of the famous Wheeler-De Witt equation, which attempts to combine mathematically the ideas of quantum mechanics and general relativity. As is well-known, the parameter of time is conspicuously absent in general relativity. As such it constitutes the classic argument for the block universe. Since the Wheeler-De Witt equation attempts to combine general relativity with quantum mechanics, it imports this timelessness from general relativity into quantum theory. In a way, therefore, the Wheeler-De Witt equation is simply the universal wave function without the time parameter: it describes a timeless superposition of quantum states for the whole of spacetime. As such, the Wheeler-De Witt equation is one of the purest examples of the block universe in physics.

On Wheeler's account, then, the self-causation of the universe turns out to be a timeless affair, a closed loop between past and future within the block universe described by the Wheeler-De Witt equation. This timelessness of reality's self-causation, as conceived by Wheeler, is further confirmed by the information-theoretic side of his hypothesis of the self-observing universe. As we have seen, Wheeler speculates that reality starts of as an abstract information space created by the observers who pose the yes-no questions to which the bits are the answers – observers who are themselves inhabitants of that information space! But an information space is an abstract mathematical construct, existing timelessly in Plato's heaven. Thus, for Wheeler, the self-causation of reality comes down to a closed loop within a timeless mathematical structure.

References
-Wheeler, John A. (1983), "Law Without Law", in: J.A. Wheeler & W.H. Zurek (eds.), Quantum Theory and Measurement, pp. 182-213. Princeton University Press.
-Wheeler, John A. (1990), "Information, physics, quantum: The search for links", in: W.H. Zurek (ed), Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley.

Plotinus's Metaphysics of Creative (Self-)Contemplation

In my previous post I introduced the idea of Mathematical Neo-Platonism (MNP), where a transcendent source -- analogous to the One/Good in historical Neo-Platonism -- is seen as generating the Platonic reality of mathematics which in turn generates the physical universe in which we find ourselves. This MNP is a long-term project I am working on, and I hope to write more about it in the future. But since MNP obviously harks back to historical Neo-Platonism, especially the system of Plotinus, I want to say more about the latter in this post, where I give some historical background to my proposal for MNP. I also want to discuss Plotinus because his system is highly interesting in itself and deserves much wider recognition as being the true birthplace of Absolute Idealism in Western philosophy.

Plotinus (c. 204/5-270)

Plotinus's relation to Plato
In the Plotinian system, as laid down in Plotinus's only work, the Enneads, all of reality flows from a first and self-causing principle, called both "the One" and "the Good", which produces all remaining levels of reality (Intellect, Soul and Nature) through a process commonly called "emanation" (though it is important to note that Plotinus himself uses this term only rarely). The One and the other levels of reality are called "Hypostases" by Plotinus. The Plotinian system, though essentially syncretic in that it combines different ideas from Platonism, Aristotelianism and Stoicism, was intended by Plotinus as a faithful rendering and development of Plato's 'real philosophy' as expressed not only in the Platonic dialogues but also in Plato's letters and especially his oral teachings in the Academy (as recollected by some of Plato's students, notably Aristotle). Thus Plotinus himself would have strongly objected to the label "Neo-Platonist". He saw himself simply as a Platonist, a follower of Plato first and foremost. However, it is commonly agreed that Plotinus, in his attempt to develop systematically the Platonic philosophy, in fact developed an original system of his own.

Nevertheless, in order to understand Neoplatonism, it is convenient to start with Plato and see how Plotinus went from there. As every student of philosophy learns, Plato distinguished two realms in reality: on the one hand the spatiotemporal realm of physical reality, where everything is in constant flux and nothing truly 'is', and on the other hand the non-spatiotemporal realm of true being, i.e. the Ideas or Forms that give intelligible order to the physical flux. Physical objects were said to "participate" in the Forms, where "participation" (methexis) was understood by Plato as the relation in which an image stands to its archetype. Thus, as Plato said, the spatiotemporal flux is "a moving image of Eternity", i.e. a spatiotemporal image of the Forms beyond space and time. It remains unclear, however, exactly how Plato thought about the way in which physical objects come to participate in the Forms. In the Timaeus Plato invokes a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who created the physical world by using the Forms as paradigms in giving shape to unformed matter. But it is doubtful whether Plato intended this creation story to be taken literally or merely as a philosophically useful myth to indicate a higher but ineffable truth. Such a use of myth and simile is after all common in Plato's dialogues.

Further unclarities in Plato
It also remains unclear in Plato where both the realm of Forms and the spatiotemporal realm 'come from', i.e. what their ontological origin or basis is. Without the structuring influence of the Forms the spatiotemporal realm would be pure chaos, nothing but unordered matter, but why this unordered matter should exist at all is, as far as we known, nowhere explained by Plato. The same holds for the realm of Forms. Here it is important to keep in mind that Plato's Demiurge was not an all-creating God: the Forms and unordered matter were given beforehand, not created by the Demiurge. It is true that Plato, with the famous analogy of the sun, suggests that the Forms are somehow subordinated to a highest Form called "the Good". Thus in the Republic he writes:

Plato in Raphael's painting
"The School of Athens"

"What the Good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things." (508c)

But it is unclear whether this relation between the Good and the other Forms is meant primarily in an epistemological sense, with the Good merely making possible our knowledge of the Forms (and thereby of physical objects as well), or whether this relation is also meant in an ontological sense, such that the Good is the ultimate source of the being of the Forms. The narrowly epistemological interpretation is suggested by Plato's explicit focus, in the analogy of the sun, on the epistemological activities of understanding and sight. The more broadly ontological interpretation is partly suggested by Plato's comparison of the Good with the sun, which after all is the precondition for the existence of life on Earth; so likewise the Good may be the precondition for the existence of the Forms.

The ontological interpretation is also suggested by Plato's description in the Republic of the Good as "beyond being" (509b), since this could be interpreted as meaning that the Good is the source of being as such and 'is' therefore prior to being (though "being" here means the intelligible being of the Forms, not the existence of unordered matter, since the latter, according to Plato, lacks true being). This ontological interpretation of Plato's notion of "the Good beyond being" is controversial, however, because this notion could also be interpreted in a narrowly epistemological fashion, such that the Good in imparting knowability on the other Forms remains itself unknowable, much like the sun light that makes objects visible cannot itself be seen (it is visible only as reflected by those objects). As thus unknowable, the Good would not itself be part of the intelligible being of the other Forms and would in that sense be "beyond being", but not in the ontological sense of being their origin.

Plotinus's transformation of Platonism
It was in the light of these unclarities in Plato that Plotinus attempted to systematize Platonism. He did so by basically making two moves. Firstly, Plotinus choose decisively for the ontological interpretation of Plato's "Good beyond being" as referring to the self-causing cause of all reality. Much of Plotinus's originality and importance for philosophy today lies in how he conceived this self-causing capacity of the Good or (to use Plotinus's own term) the One, as this supplies us with a very interesting and still relevant answer to Leibniz's famous question why there is something rather than nothing (I will return to this below). Secondly, Plotinus systematized Platonism by breaking radically with Plato's dualism: instead of seeing the intelligible realm of Forms and the spatiotemporal realm of the physical flux as two separate ontological domains, Plotinus sees them both as produced by the One and indeed as both existing in the One. In the Plotinian scheme, the One produces ('emanates') the Platonic realm of Forms, which Plotinus identified with the Aristotelian notion of the Divine Intellect. The Intellect in turn emanates Soul, which finally emanates the material world of Nature.

But this should not be understood as meaning that each later Hypostasis exists somehow outside of the earlier Hypostasis that produced it. Rather, Plotinus makes it quite clear that each later Hypothesis exists only inside the preceding Hypostasis: thus Nature exists inside Soul, which in turn exists inside Intellect, which finally exists inside the One (cf. Wallis 1995: 51). In this way Plotinus could say that "all things belong to It [i.e. the One, PS] and are in It" (Enneads, V.4.2). Thus Plotinus transformed Platonism in a thoroughgoing monism where only the One or the Good really exists and all other levels of reality are somehow produced inside the One as the Hen Kai Pan (All-In-One). How and why does this production occur, according to Plotinus?

The productive power of the One
For all his revolutionary innovations in philosophy (and there are many, a we will see), Plotinus was still, of course, a child of his time. This is particularly clear in his explanation of emanation as a necessary consequence of the One's supreme perfection and goodness. It was a commonly shared assumption in Greek antiquity that perfection is necessarily productive of something beyond itself, something that reflects that perfection, such that perfection automatically produces an external image of itself (cf. Remes 2008: 43). For Plotinus, the authority of this assumption was guaranteed by the fact that it can also be found in his hero, Plato, who in the Timaeus (29e) describes the creator of the physical world, the Demiurge, as a naturally good being and therefore as wishing that the world resembles his own goodness as much as possible. In later scholastic philosophy (which, through Augustine, was strongly influenced by Neoplatonism), this productive power of perfection was known as the principle that bonum est diffusivum sui (goodness is self-diffusing).

In the philosophy of Plotinus, this principle was expressed in such a way that the One produces a sequence of external images: first the Intellect, which -- qua image of the One's perfection -- is itself also productive, namely, of a second image called "Soul", which finally produces a third image, namely, the material world of Nature. This, then, is what "emanation" means for Plotinus: the 'overflowing' of perfection into an external image, or rather a series of such images. In this way Plotinus greatly expanded on Plato's conception of participation as the relation in which an image stands to its archetype. One possible misunderstanding, however, should be avoided here: Plotinus's claim that perfection produces an external image of itself should not be understood as meaning that this image exists independent or outside of its source. For, as we noted above, Plotinus conceived of the lower Hypostases as somehow existing inside the higher Hypostases, ultimately inside the One as Hen Kai Pan. Thus the sequence of images produced by the One should rather be seen as a sequence internal to the One; they constitute an internal unfolding of the One's self-intuition (more about that below). As I will argue below, however, this account of emanation in terms of self-awareness stands much closer to the original core of Plotinus's system than his more traditional account in terms of productive perfection.

Tensions in the Plotinian system
Note that the Plotinian sequence of Hypostases is also a gradual falling way from the One's perfection, as each image is somewhat less perfect than its archetype, until finally, at the lowest level of Nature, we encounter the pure chaos of unordered matter, which Plotinus identities with absolute evil. But how can this be? How can what is perfect generate something that is less perfect and, indeed, ultimately evil? To explain this, Plotinus invoked a second principle (besides the first one that perfection necessarily produces), namely, the principle that the product is always less than its producer. Thus, for Plotinus, in the act of production something of the producer's power is inevitably dissipated and the resulting product is therefore invariably of lesser quality. So whereas the One is a perfectly simply unity, its products are increasingly less unified and more and more 'infected' by plurality, since, for Plotinus, unity is more perfect than plurality. 

This second principle, that the product is less than its producer, was really Plotinus's own invention; it cannot be found in earlier philosophers. It is commonly agreed that it is one of the weakest points in the Plotinian system. The principle is really a mere ad hoc expediency, needed to explain the obvious imperfections of the physical universe in which we live, notably the presence of suffering and evil. Apart from facilitating that explanation, the principle is not given any independent motivation by Plotinus (cf. Armstrong 1962: 32; Wallis 1995: 60). This second principle is all the more problematic in light of the fact that it is obviously at odds with the assumed supreme perfection of the One, which Plotinus also theorizes as omnipotence, the power to create everything possible. Indeed, Plotinus sees the power of the One as implying a principle of plenitude: all that can be created will be created (cf. Lovejoy 1964: 62; Wallis 1995: 64). But if the One is supremely perfect and omnipotent, how then could it be limited in its ability to create an image of itself? After all, there 'is' nothing outside the One by which its creative power could be limited, simply because the One is the self-causing All-In-One. So not only is the second principle ad hoc, it is also inconsistent with Plotinus's basic assumption that the One is supremely perfect, omnipotent and creator of all.

A further reason to be dissatisfied with the Plotinian system is the fact that Plotinus (like all later Neoplatonists) does not spell out any clear mechanism by which emanation occurs. True, the first principle (that perfection necessarily produces) explains to a certain extent why the One generates something beyond itself, but how this generation occurs remains shrouded in mystery. Here Plotinus offers no more than emanative/radiative metaphors taken from the physical world, like light and heat radiating from the sun, or the diffusion of cold from snow or scent from something scented (cf. Armstrong 1962: 31; Wallis 1995: 41-42). Relying on such metaphors Plotinus speaks of the One as a "generative radiance" (Enneads, VI.7.36.20). Of course, for Plotinus the legitimacy of this 'radiative' conception of the One rested firmly on the authority of Plato's analogy between the Good and the sun. But can such a merely metaphorical approach to the One's productive activity be truly satisfying from a philosophical point of view? Plotinus does insist that we must purify such metaphors from their material limitations before applying them to the One and the other Hypostases (with the exception of the material world of Nature, where emanation does take that crudely physical form). But this leaves unaltered the fact that Plotinus's entire explanation of how emanation occurs remains metaphorical and therefore offers no true understanding. This is especially so because the emanative metaphors refer to processes in time and space, whereas the One and its productive activity are essentially non-spatiotemporal (indeed, time and space only emerge on the lower levels of Soul and Nature). So the notions of emanation and radiation are actually very unsuited to clarify what is going on when the One produces its sequence of self-images (cf. Corrigan 2005: 28).

The hidden core of the Plotinian system
I suspect that these problems in the Plotinian system have a much deeper source, which has to do with how Plotinus conceives of the productive power of the One. As we have seen, when Plotinus explains the One's productive power in terms of perfection, he is voicing an idea that was quite common in Greek antiquity (i.e. "everything that is perfect produces something else"). However, there is a strange lack of overlap between this notion of productive perfection and Plotinus's explanation of the One's self-causation in terms of self-awareness -- terms that are surprisingly close to what the German Absolute Idealists Fichte, Schelling and Hegel would say almost two millennia later. It seems to me that it is here, in his ideas about the One as a self-causing self-awareness, that Plotinus's true originality and importance lies.

I would like to venture the hypothesis that Plotinus himself did not fully understand the true significance of this discovery, that the One is self-producing through self-awareness, and that he therefore 'fell back' on the traditional idea of perfection in order to explain the One's production of the other Hypostases. That is to say: if Plotinus had stuck consistently to his innovative conception of the One as self-causing self-awareness, he would also have explained the One's production of the other Hypostases as following from that primordial self-awareness. Such an idealist explanation of the Hypostases would also be more in line with Plotinus's insistence that the sequence of Intellect-Soul-Nature is really a sequence of images produced by the One and -- note! -- within the One qua all-encompassing totality. For doesn't this imply that the sequence of Hypostases is really just an internal unfolding of the One's self-awareness, such that each Hypostasis is a determinate stage in that unfolding? I suspect that that is the essential core of the Plotinian system -- a core that more or less remained hidden, however, under the traditional Greek notion of productive perfection.

It is easy to appreciate that Plotinus's true originality lies in his conception of the One as self-causing self-awareness. His claim that there must be a self-causing cause of reality was totally new in classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, as was his explanation of that primordial self-causation in terms of self-awareness. It is true that Plotinus's conception of the One in terms of self-awareness owes a lot to Aristotle's conception of the Unmoved Mover as the Divine Intellect whose activity consists solely in self-contemplation, to the extent even that Aristotle defines God as a "self-thinking thought" or "thought thinking thought". But for Aristotle this did not mean that God was self-causing, nor did it mean that the Unmoved Mover was, through this self-contemplation, the efficient cause of the rest of reality. In fact, for Aristotle the Unmoved Mover was merely the final cause of reality, the telos towards which everything strived. It was therefore a truly revolutionary move when Plotinus radicalized the Aristotelian notion of a divine self-awareness by transforming it into the self-causing cause of reality as such.

This originality is also apparent from Plotinus's break away from Plato's ontological dualism. For it was precisely Plotinus's conception of the One as the self-causing cause of reality that allowed his radical monism, i.e. his reduction of all of reality to a single, all-encompassing principle. Finally, the fact that Plotinus conceptualized this self-causing principle in terms of self-awareness is also what underlies another aspect of the Plotinian system that is commonly regarded as highly innovative, namely, his doctrine of creative contemplation, where each Hypostasis (i.e. each image) is produced through the contemplative activity of the preceding Hypostasis (cf. Deck 1991: 19; Gatti 1996: 26). For it is the One's self-awareness which ultimately drives this process of creation through contemplation. Thus I think we are justified in seeing Plotinus's conception of the One as self-causing self-awareness as the original core of his system. Let us therefore take a closer look at this remarkable doctrine.

Escher's Self-portrait in a spherical mirror

The One as self-causing self-awareness
The remarkable fact is that Plotinus was the very first philosopher who spoke of God (or rather, in Plotinian terms, the One) as being "self-caused" (aition heautou): "the extraordinary phrase "self-caused" [...] appears here for the first time in the history of philosophy so far as we know" (Gerson 2011: 34). Equally revolutionary, as Gerson notes, was Plotinus's description of the One as "making itself from nothing" (Enneads, VI.8.39.7.54). These were revolutionary claims in the context of Greek philosophy, where the existence of reality had always been taken for granted as something unproblematic, something that needed no explanation. Hence, as we already noted, neither Plato's Demiurge nor Aristotle's Unmoved Mover presents us with an all-creating God. This no doubt had to do with the fact that the ancient Greeks simply had no conception of absolute nothingness and therefore could not imagine that the universe might not have existed. Thus Leibniz's famous question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" could not have occurred to them. But somehow this changed with Plotinus. He was the first philosopher to realize that not only the things in reality require explanation, but also reality itself. In that way Plotinus was remarkably modern. In a sense he anticipated Leibniz's rationalist Principle of Sufficient Reason, which obligates us to explain everything. As Leibniz noted, this principle forces us to ultimately postulate self-explaining principles, because otherwise the Principle of Sufficient Reason would commit us to an infinite regress of explanations. Plotinus was the very first philosopher to recognize that fact, as witnessed by his revolutionary claim that the One is self-causing.

Plotinus's description of the One as "making itself from nothing", however, should not be understood in temporal terms, as if at first there was nothing and then a moment later the One suddenly created itself. In time, obviously, such self-causation is impossible. We should remember here that the One, according to Plotinus, essentially exists outside of time and space, with the latter only emerging in the lower Hypostases of Soul and Nature. So in that sense Plotinus's idea of divine self-creation is not as absurd as it might initially seem. Still, everything turns on Plotinus's ability to give a credible account of how this self-creation could occur. As already indicated, it is also in this respect that Plotinus's thought was highly innovative, since his account of the One's self-causation through self-awareness was completely original -- similar insights were only to re-emerge in the Absolute Idealisms of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! Here especially Fichte's notion of the self-positing Self, i.e. the Self that produces itself by being self-aware, should be mentioned as particularly close to Plotinus's conception of the One: "The One [...] made itself by an act of looking at itself. This act of looking at itself is, in a way, its being." (Enneads, VI.8.16.19-21) 

The comparison with Fichte's notion of self-positing is all the more apt because both Fichte and Plotinus stress the immediate, intuitive nature of the self-causing self-awareness. To stress this immediacy Plotinus compares it to a "self-touching" rather than explicit self-knowledge (cf. Enneads, V.3.110.40-43). The self-awareness of the One is, at its deepest level, not mediated by concepts nor by the subject-object duality that characterizes discursive knowledge. It is a form of self-awareness where the subject is immediately aware of itself as its own object, and indeed where the subject is nothing but this immediate self-awareness. Plotinus says this quite explicitly: "It will have only a kind of simple intuition directed to itself. But since It is in no way distant or different from Itself, what can this intuitive regard of Itself be other than Itself?" (Enneads, VI.7.38-39) Some of Plotinus's most beautiful passages are about this special nature of the One's self-awareness, which is of course not surprising since this concerns the very heart -- the ontological core -- of the Plotinian system. Here are some examples:

"His essential being is His self-directed activity; and this is one with Himself. So He gives Himself being, for his activity continually accompanies Him. If, now, His activity does not become but always is, and is a kind of wakefulness which is not other than the one who is awake, being an eternal wakening of super-intellection (hypernoêsis), then He is as He waked Himself to be." (VI.8.16)

"It is, at the same time, the beloved, love as such, and love of itself, for it is beautiful only in and for itself... In it, being and its desire for itself are one... It is itself that which it loves; which is to say, it brings itself into existence." (VI.8.5.1-8, 16, 14).

"He is borne, so to speak, to His own interior as if in love of the clear light which is Himself, and He is what He loves. That is, He gives Himself being, since He is a self-dwelling activity." (VI.8.16)

"Its thinking of Itself is Itself, and exists by a kind of immediate self-intuition, in everlasting rest..." (V.4.2)

Conclusion: A Metaphysics of Creative (Self-)Contemplation
As I noted above, Plotinus lacked a proper explanation of exactly how the emanative process takes place, i.e. how the One generates the other Hypostases as a sequence of images. In this regard he basically went no further than the metaphors based on radiative processes in physical reality, such as light radiated by the sun or scent diffused by something scented. Given the spatiotemporal nature of these metaphors, they are thoroughly unsuited to make intelligible exactly how the One generates reality. I have ventured the hypothesis that this is so because Plotinus himself did not yet fully understand the consequences of the revolution he had brought about in philosophy, namely, his conception of the One as self-causing self-awareness, which anticipated Absolute Idealism. Since the One, according to Plotinus, basically is this self-causing self-awareness, Plotinus should have explained the 'emanative' process as following from that self-awareness. That would have been the only consistent position. But that is not what he did. To explain the productive power of the One, Plotinus harked back to traditional Greek philosophy and employed the ancient idea of productive perfection ("everything that is perfect produces something else"). One could say that Plotinus in this regard remained too much of a Platonist, remaining caught in the Platonic analogy of the sun, which is the central source of Plotinus's conception of the One as a "generative radiance". In this way Plotinus actually fell behind his own discovery, the self-causing capacity of self-awareness.

It is important to note that the traditional idea of productive perfection figures in no way in Plotinus's account of how the One causes itself through self-awareness. One could say that the One's perfection (which includes self-sufficiency and omnipotence) follows from the One's self-causation through self-awareness. But that perfection is in no way needed to explain how that self-causation is possible, for here the notion of immediate self-awareness suffices. Hence it seems plausible that Plotinus's notion of productive perfection is indeed just a left-over from the Greek tradition and not essential to Plotinus's own original contribution, i.e. his insight in the self-causing capacity of divine self-awareness. This is also clear when we look at what the Hypostases are supposed to be according to Plotinus, namely, images: the One produces as its image the Intellect, which in turn produces as its image the Soul, which finally produces Nature as its image. Isn't it clear, if we take into account that the One is self-causing self-awareness, that this entire sequence of images is nothing but the unfolding of that primordial self-awareness? Especially if we remember that Plotinus conceived of the lower Hypostases as somehow existing inside the higher Hypostases, and ultimately inside the One as Hen Kai Pan. Thus the sequence of images produced by the One should be seen as a sequence internal to the One, an internal unfolding of the One's self-contemplation.

References
-Armstrong, A.H. (1962), Plotinus. New York: Collier Books.
-Corrigan, Kevin (2005), Reading Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press.
-Deck, John N. (1991), Nature, Contemplation, and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Burdett: Larson Publications.
-Gatti, M.L. (1996), "Plotinus: The Platonic Tradition and the foundation of Neoplatonism", in: Lloyd P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-Gerson, Lloyd (2011), "Goodness, Unity, and Creation in the Platonic Tradition", in: John F. Wippel (ed.), The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?, pp. 29-42. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
-Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1964), The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
-Remes, Pauliina (2008), Neoplatonism. Stocksfield: Acumen.
-Wallis, R.T. (1995), Neoplatonism. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.