This is the dilemma my theory was meant to resolve. It provides a paradigm by which it can be understood what the relation between mind and matter is. When asked to explain my theory in as few words as possible, I am at a loss of also providing a full explanation for how I can say such things. The result is, I end up sounding like a schizophrenic. But I assume that you there, reading this paper, have been well familiarized with my explanations, so I can go ahead and present one of the many ways I epitomize, in a sentence, how I express my theory: All mental experience is a description of the physical processes that go on in the brain. If you don't like that one, I've also got this: For any behavior X of any physical system, there is an experience Y that makes sense out of it. As you might notice, this does not shed any light on causation, and therefore the actual mystery of mind and matter has not been officially solved. However, I did provide a subtle explanation for what I believe the link between mind and matter to be. It, too, can be summed up in as little as one sentence: Experience is the link between cause and effect.
This is not enough though. This is rather answering the question "What leads one material event to its material consequent?" If we’ve been accepting our own will power as a mechanism for behavior, the will of some physical system is as good an explanation for its behavior as any other. This does just fine to replace as vague a notion as natural laws, but it fails to explain what the will itself or the experience was produced out of. One could suggest "the material cause", but that only belabors the obvious and the already observed, not the underlying dynamics. By "observed", I mean that it is merely a description of what we already know. It simply describes a constant in the system which is that a material cause always precedes consciousness. But underlying dynamics are still needed. What leads material cause to produce conscious experience? How does mentality derive out of this, and moreover what is mentality?
To answer this question, I must explain the advanced theory of mind and matter. This is where it gets eliminitavist. According to the statement "Mind is the link between cause and effect", there must be a series of material causes and effects linked by experiences of one kind or another. This statement is enough to explain how experience leads to behavior: experience, when rule 3 guides it to the point at which it must entail a volitionary act, enforces will onto an adjacent material body, thereby causing it to behave. As for the seemingly spontaneous appearance of experience from the cause in the chain, we still appear to have coexisting mutually exclusive antecedents. But this time, rather than leading to some physical behavior, I'm refer to a mental experience as the result. We have a physical event causing the mental experiences fitting snugly between the whole series of physical events, but we also have a whole series of pure and homogenous mental experiences in a flowing chain linked by rule 3. So, do we say it was a neurotransmitter that caused your upset mood or disconcerting news that did? Remember that I'm not saying that the neurotransmitter-or anything physical in the brain-is one and the same with the experience (this is not materialistic eliminitavism), so they are coexisting mutually exclusive causes.
But if you will recall from my original paper on the theory, you will understand the one advantage that the experience as an antecedent has over the physical event as an antecedent. It's precisely the point that this paper has been leading up to until now. I called experience, on account of rule 3, self-sustaining entities, unlike physical phenomena. The most that we can say about the neurotransmitter is that it precedes the upset mood, and that's nothing more than a correlation. This is what the relation between mind and matter is. But because the preceding experience that lead to the upset mood follows rule 3 and sort of "morphs" into the upset mood, the upset mood can sustain itself even after whatever experience caused it disappears. This is an aspect of experience I call "momentum". Every experience has it (or, in the case of sensation, produces it). Experiences, always leading from one to another, are always in motion. There is no such thing as a static mind. This must be so since it is the interaction of several components of a physical system that give rise to mind. Without energy, there is no mentality. Even when you sit there staring blankly at a white dot on a television screen, that visual experience has momentum. It is not changing within the visual domain of experience, but it does lead to higher functional experiences such as thought (i.e. I know the dot's there...I know it will soon go away...you know, it kind of looks like it‘s twinkling). It could even go so far as to lead to an emotion: boredom! For this reason, I also think of experiences as vectors; they have a magnitude and a direction dictated by their momentum. Momentum is what give experiences their self-sustaining ability. That is, each experience passes on its momentum to the next so that the next can continue to go on and pass it onto yet another. It is like a life force. Since momentum is the tool of self-sustenance, it is also the reason for which rule 3 exists. So we know the dynamics behind this process on top of the relation. This is the actual cause, not the physical matter that corresponds to it.
This does very well to bring us half way to mentalistic eliminitavism; we agree at this point (I hope) that mental experience is the true cause of all its following mental experiences. Now, if we could just argue against the existence of matter, we will go the other half. And indeed we can-quite easily. We only know matter to exist by the information our senses bombard on us. Everything that indicates to us that the material universe exists can be reduced to a mere sensation of such. So what does this mean, besides the fact that we have reason to be skeptical ŕ-la-Descartes about the authenticity of the physical world? Well, according to the correspondence rule, there must be something beyond the human-collective that emits these sensations. I believe that is true, but it's not the physical world it presents itself to be. The only sure fire thing we can say about our sensation is that it is like a door bell ringing, letting us know there are other antecedent experiences or events or whatnot having an effect on our minds. And not one single detail that can be discerned, even subliminally, within the whole tapestry of sensation is exempt from this rule. Then what is left to say about materialism? Simply, it is no more actual than any of the other experiences we have. They are nothing but sensation. Therefore, the experiences or events or whatnot that correspond to them beyond the human-collective are actually just more experiences. Whatever physical object I see before me is an indication of something beyond my mind effecting it, but according to this theory, I know this: the something is an experience that, if I were to be cognizant of the experiences within the universe-collective, I would be able to perceive as such (similar to how I do emotions-i.e. in mental model form). Speaking in physical terms, when I see an object, it is the light emitting off that object, striking my retina, and sending an electric impulse to my occipital lobe. And because my mind-matter theory suggests that all physical systems have a form of consciousness of one type or another, it is their minds that the perception of the physical object corresponds to. Physically speaking, the object has a physical effect on my brain. Mentally speaking, there is momentum that leads the experience I perceive to be the object to the experience of vision within me. In the universe-collective, it is all one fluid experience that depends on time for completion. But because the human-collective is individuated, it can not perceive it that way. Instead, it has this visual experience of a material object that "exists" beyond its mind. It doesn't perceive a mental experience continually morphing from the point corresponding to the object right up to the visual experience. It doesn't experience the momentum being fed to the visual experience, and this is what causes visual experiences not to have momentum at all, and which is also why it doesn't seem like it could be self-sustaining (sensation seems pretty dependent on the real world instead of other experiences or free will).
So, as you see, I've kind of resolved the mind-matter problem in a sneaky way. I said to you "I have a theory that answers this pressing question: What is the link between mind and matter?" The way I went about doing it, however, was to eliminate matter from the picture, and therefore imply that the link need not be made in the first place, a very similar approach as the materialistic eliminitavists. I make it sound pretty trivial, but I do think my reasoning is quite compelling, enough so that it serves my theory justice. So there it is, the advanced version of the mind-matter theory. In a short sentence, it can be stated as such: All the universe is mental, not physical, and preserves itself (self-sustains) via its momentum. Therefore, I would like to refer to this mentalistic universe as the "mental cosmos," a vast sea of interacting experiences (if that can even be fathomed).
Of course, there still is an obvious problem: it might be necessary to make reference to antecedent experiences and their momentum to explain consciousness, but is it sufficient? We could keep referring to antecedent experiences to explain each one, but at some point, we're going to have to explain how the first experience came into existence and what exactly it is. Whether we prefer to buy into materialism or mentalism, we have to face this question. In the case of materialism, each and every state of the universe can be traced back to the Big Bang, but beyond that we are left only with unanswered inquiries (except for the quantum physicists whom I believe have some trick up their sleeves for solving this puzzle). Associated with the Big Bang would be the "original experience," and neither does it lend a hand in explaining itself to us. So rather than answer the question "What's the link between mind and brain" I'm diverting the question to "What started the whole mental cosmos? What's the link between mind and 'pre-mind'?" That question, I'm afraid, I do not have an answer to. However, I can make a few speculations, which is what I would like to do in what follows.
In resolving this dilemma, most people will no doubt consider the origins of time to be in the past, at the point of the Big Bang or some variant thereof, and have been preceded by a lack of time. But, as I usually do, I would like to meditate through some alternatives to this paradigm. We shouldn't be so hasty in accepting this philosophical backdrop in such a priori fashion. One proposal I have in mind is that, since time is a dimensional phenomenon like space, it should share a number of characteristics with it. One in particular is that its beginnings should not be so blatantly obvious. When we consider a set of spatial coordinates as a point of origin, we are generally dealing with an actual object that travels in a certain direction. Its point of origin in space is that point which it was at when it first embarked on its displacement. But when we are dealing with the spatial dimension itself, not an object in motion, we have no way of settling where its point of origin is. We do have a limited number of choices, however, either in one direction or 180 degrees from that, but the choice one would make is completely arbitrary. This is the one specific characteristic of spatial dimensions that I think temporal dimensions should be thought of sharing. We assume that the point of origin of the universe is in the past because we are dealing with an object (i.e. the physical universe) that perpetually travels at a constant speed through time. Even if the universe didn't exist, there would at least have to be a changing observer in order to establish a point of origin for him/herself. But, just as in the case of spatial dimensions, if no universe-not even an observer-existed, the origins of time would be undetectable for they would not exist. That's kind of hard to imagine, but only because we can't picture a vacant universe without even an observer, for any attempt to imagine it would necessarily place an observer there to do the imagining. But, take my word for it, logic mandates that the past and future would be totally indistinguishable and outright identical. Because of our limited imagination, we are forced to conceive of a universe in which something must go on, even if its just an observer making observations. Since something is going on in our mental models, it is to be expected that we are inclined to perceive the origin of time at the start of the whole process. This is a crucial difference between how we conceive of time versus space. With space, we can imagine the dimensions themselves separate from the objects that may move along them, and when we do, space doesn't give off any signals or indices of where its front or end is, just that it's there. In order to understand time in the same way, we must forgo picturing it in its true form and think of it more like a spatial dimension. To do this, you could draw a line representing time with an arrow head on each end. The important thing to note here is that the line is infinitely continuous on both ends. What makes time seem so one directional is that there is an object (the universe) that travels along it in one direction at a constant speed. We can neither alter its direction nor change its speed, and at no point has it or will it ever change these by itself. But if we keep in mind the time line we have drawn (in our heads or on paper), we can imagine that the past is generated, not by the essence of what time is, but by the direction this universe-object is traveling. It may be intractable, but its only due to this factor. Now, because we are playing with an imaginary scenario, we can break all the rules we want. So let's say the universe-object suddenly changed directions. What then? Then the future becomes the past and the past becomes the future. And if it stops all together? Well, despite the fact that there being no future or past is quite impossible to imagine (even imagining everything physically frozen, you must admit you're memories still serve to inform you that in the past it was all moving and in the future it will all move again), past and future would become meaningless. We could say that in the past, it was moving in one direction, and it was to change directions in the future at that point, but that would be to forget we transferred our model to a spatial-like dimension in which past and future now refer to areas on the graph depending on the direction the universe-object travels. It does, however, properly represent time in its true form. So what? What does all this mean? It means that our only reasons for looking to the past for the origin of time is because of the direction the universe travels.
Could the origin of time be in the future? How much of an oxymoron is that? But the fact is that time has no ends or beginning in either direction. If you want to talk about origins, you have to limit your discussions to the origin of the universe as an object (or a mental experience). That is, time may have no beginnings or ends, just as space doesn't, but the contents of these may. But now that we've argued for symmetry in time (the concept of past being interchangeable with the concept of future), any point of origin which we pin-point can also be thought of as an end as well. Scientists even decree that the universe may be headed towards the "Big Crunch," a point at which gravitational forces will pull all matter together in an enormous compression. Put this process in reverse, and we have a Big Bang. So anyway you look at it, forward or backward, the universe begins with a Big Bang and ends with a Big Crunch.
Even though this is what science says, it is not a necessary fact of logic. Instead, it is an inference based on empirical evidence. Therefore, we can still imagine our universe, and the contents therein, to have no origins nor any final destinations. I think most of us can do that easily for final destinations, but many of us find it difficult to imagine that no point of origin exists. Everything has to come from something, we're used to thinking. Pool balls chaotically ricocheting off each other or a bullet fired from a gun come from the striking of the pool cu or the pulling of the trigger, respectively. They were not perpetually in motion. But fire a gun off into deep space, and Newton would tell us all that the bullet would go on forever and ever. We would have no need to infer that the bullet must come to a halt eventually (for those of you who don’t know, usually objects come to a halt because of air resistance or gravity). If there is one reason why we would expect eternal motion, it would be that bewilderment would follow the sudden arrest of the bullet’s travels. Objects don’t suddenly stop; that would be uncanny! So the only thing that makes sense is if there is no end. Pool balls on the other hand are a little bit more complicated, but not an exception. We certainly do, I admit, expect the pool balls to come to rest eventually, but no one in their right mind would object to the suggestion that the balls motion could have ongoing effects to the surrounding environment that carry on a series of perpetual events. For example, suppose one of the balls slams into my fingers causing internal bleeding. That will cause people to take me to the hospital, which might cause me to run into an old friend, which might get me affiliate with a club he’s in, which might lead to an attitude change further down the road, and maybe even an entire life style change. Could happen. The point is that it’s conceivable that every event that occurs could have unending effects. The future doesn’t seem to necessitate a final destination.
However, for whatever reason the future has this potential to go on forever, the past should be considered under the same light. If we think of future travel and past travel as interchangeable, they should not differ in anyway other than with respect to the direction its contents travel in. True, it will never happen, but neither will we be able to prove conclusively that the universe indeed had an origin. These are hypothetical questions that must be met with hypothetical answers. So, if the future does not necessitate an end, then since it could be thought that our universe is in reverse and the past is really the future, it too shouldn’t need a point of origin. You are probably aching for me to touch on a certain monkey wrench in my argument: How would the laws of nature work in a reversed universe? First of all, I’m not suggesting that reverse universes are possible (although I will later). I’m just asking the reader to imagine one, and then pointing out the implication that has for the existence of the origin of time. It’s this, the origin of time in the past, that my arguments are funneling into. The reverse universe was just an imaginary tool to get us there. Secondly, if you want to imagine a reverse universe in which the laws of nature still work, just reverse the laws as well. Why not? We only expect natural laws to work the way they do because we have deductively experienced them that way. When Newton described these laws, he was not unraveling a new or never-seen set of laws. We have known these laws since the beginning of our time on Earth. Newton just gave them fancy names and used sophisticated language (what I call “pretty poetry”) to describe them. Hell, my sister knew at 3 years of age that a force of certain magnitude could be counterbalanced by an equal or greater force in the opposite direction, as she tried to keep me out of her room by pressing against the door. Maybe the laws we know of seem so necessary because we’re just used to them. Could you imagine a ball that was previously lying peacefully on the ground, flying up and over until it lands perfectly snug into my hand, which itself is on a backwards swing over my head? I’m not even so sure this would be a reversal of laws. After all, the ball didn’t “suddenly” start flying towards my hand. It was given the energy to do so by the Earth. See, in forward motion, the ball would fall on the ground, and its kinetic energy would be absorbed by the Earth and propagate like a wave. In reverse, this energy wave would be converging towards the ball, and when it makes contact, it would be directly channeled into the ball, its position on the ground being so perfect. Once absorbed, we’d see the funky behavior of the Earth spitting it out like a watermelon seed.
So, there lie the possibilities: no necessary origins in either the future or past. If the mental cosmos is eternal in either direction, it might be possible for some point somewhere along its time line to be the point of origin. Mentality would begin there and propagate in both directions and slowly cover the whole spectrum. But one problem with this is that any point you choose seems absolutely arbitrary. It wouldn’t really explain why mentality began at that point. The only way it would, or at least appear to have the potential to, is at a point that the whole universe was in a state unique to all the rest, one that differs right down to its very nature and essence. The Big Bang serves as a case in point. And if scientists are correct in predicting a Big Crunch, we might even get away with assuming a cycling universe in which its time line is circular. And if the point of the Big Bang/Crunch is unique in that it has some very special relation with mentality, this might be the point at which mentality sprung and propagated in both directions (“propagating”, in this context, has nothing to do with movement, for movement requires time as a medium, and this model is set outside of time).
That’s one possible model, but what if the universal time line is linear instead of circular? And supposing there are no origins in either the past or future, the arbitrariness of any point in the middle to be an origin poses a conspicuous problem. But how about this: mentalistic eliminitavism, applied to my theory, eliminates matter, but not necessarily everything that’s not mental. There could still be an absolute universe beyond experience, in some form incomprehensible to us, that acts as a constant while everything within the mental cosmos changes. One reason for assuming an absolute universe is that an origin or a supporting basis for the mental cosmos could be found, not at the beginnings of time or a unique point in time or the like, but constantly present throughout all its existence. Two things occurred to me that pushed this view on me. First, throughout all my contemplation of time and origins, I always kept in mind that time is experienced, and therefore could be considered as an experience that doesn’t exist beyond the mental cosmos. Secondly, if the absolute universe is beyond time, it does not morph, or in other words, it is constantly there, always with the same characteristics, at every point in time for the mental cosmos. Therefore, this type of absolute universe is a perfect source for searching for the “origins” of the mental cosmos. So here’s another term for you: omnipresence. I didn’t make this word up, of course, but I use it to refer to the quality of being static and absolute that the absolute universe possesses.
All these hypotheses, of course, are deterministic in that we are not accepting a more existential view like, perhaps, the mental cosmos has no origins or bases, and that it just exists as it does without reason or explanation. I prefer to think in deterministic ways simply because it is a more parsimonious view of the universe. Existentialism states: there is not always (or never is) an explanation for certain phenomena, whereas determinism states: there is always an explanation for every phenomena. Now, which would you say is a better explanation for the universe? I judge determinism to be, therefore I believe in it.
Now, taking away the experience of time from mentality surely makes it seem necessary that there must be an absolute or omnipresent form of the mental cosmos. Once time is subtracted, all experience from every creature and system, big and small, future and past, all seem frozen and simultaneous (using that word lightly), and so perhaps it should be considered as the true essence of the absolute universe. But every experience in the mental cosmos can be subtracted in the same way. There’s nothing special about time as an experience. If we were to strip the mental cosmos of all experiences, we’d be left with nothing at all. So much for that theory.
Here’s what I think: if you recall from my original paper, I spoke about the whole-is-greater rule. This is the rule that in a physical system, each component has its own individual mind, and the system as a whole also has a mind, but the system’s mind is not simply the collection of the minds of its components (for the reason that it has to follow rule 3, especially since the will to behave is involved). But that was the original paper, when I had not fully developed the advanced version of my theory. So what light does the advanced version shed on this rule? Well, when matter is eliminated from the picture, you can’t really speak of “physical systems” anymore. However, their corresponding minds still work with the model. So what do we end up with? Instead of physical components of a system, we have component minds all interacting and effecting each other, and they all correspond to different experiences functioning as components of a larger mind. That’s all fine and dandy, except that now these lower and higher order experiences are associated with some kind of constant link. This didn’t used to be a problem since we could easily explain this link as the matter that both levels of mind share in common. But that’s gone! So what is the link according to the advanced theory?
I can’t really explain what creates the link, but I can give it a name and, after extensive philosophical study of it, I can generate a list of characteristics and rules about it. I think what we have discovered here, really, is just a space or a container for experience to exist in. First, I want to give it a name: modules. So apparently, there is an indefinite number of experiences, whether they are components of a larger collective or a whole mind themselves, that can occupy the same module, “overlapping” in a sense.
I know I said earlier that experiences are self-sustaining, but we’re talking across different levels now. The self-sustaining aspect exists because of rule 3, which leads one experience to the next and the next and so on. But rule 3, or momentum, does not occur across different levels, so the experiences that are found in different levels cannot account for each other in the same way that they can on the same level. Therefore, some construct like modules must be implemented into our theory.
Remember that modules are what replace matter in the advanced theory, so every law and everything that happens to matter has a corresponding law or behavior for modules. In that case, I’ve made up a list of behaviors typical of matter and paired them with a description of how I think modules would behave. There are 8 of them, depicted in figure 1 below: 1) matter is composed of fundamental, subatomic units called particles, therefore modules must also come in fundamental units which can be called “fundamental modules”. 2) Because physical systems are composed of smaller parts or subsystems, collections of modules should be able to interact together in like manner. However, as we know from the whole-is-greater rule, the mind associated with the larger system is not the same as the collection of sub-minds associated with the smaller systems or parts. Thus, a “supermodule” exists for every collection of smaller modules, and the area in the mental cosmos that this supermodule corresponds to is exhausted by the sum of the areas occupied by the lower level experiences. The supermodule is not simply the sum of the smaller modules within it. If they could be pictured, you’d have a collection of modules all huddled together, fitting snugly within the borders of the supermodule. 3) Because it is completely arbitrary where the borders between one physical system and another lie, a set of physical, interacting components can be considered to comprise an infinite number of systems. For example, my body could be considered as one whole system or a collection of interacting systems such as the digestive, nervous, circulatory, resperatory...systems. Therefore, one area of the mental cosmos contains an infinite number of modules and supermodules. 4) A physical system could be considered to be composed of several overlapping systems in which case the systems share certain parts in common. For example, a computer could be considered as composed of the motherboard-monitor system and the keyboard-motherboard system where the motherboard is the common factor. Therefore, supermodules can overlap as long as they share some submodules together. 5) Physical objects have physical locations relative to each other, and these locations change relative to each other. Motion and physical action-reaction phenomena are what bring mentality to life. Therefore, any movement that happens within a system corresponds to experience morphing in the module associated with that system. 6) The movement described in 5) can result in physical contact. When two systems have effects on each other (contact), this is a process whereby a supermodule associated with both systems as a super-system goes through a sudden change in experience, and this change is accompanied by sudden changes in each submodule (possibly sensory). 7) Objects at rest correspond to modules without experience occupying them but with the potential to have some. 8) Physical systems can collapse, such as when a light bulb burns out. In this case, something in the system had the effect of halting all activity in the system. This would be associated with a module containing a certain experience that has the effect of making its supermodule inactive (such as described in 7)). It can also have the effect of deactivating several submodules, but not necessarily, such as when a car breaks down: almost all components come to a halt except the radio which might still work.
So you must imagine these modules in every combination possible. You could have fundamental modules in pairs of two, each pair being found in a supermodule, and those supermodules could come in pairs of two, each one found in yet another supermodule, and so on. You could also have a supermodule containing two smaller supermodules of disproportional size: one containing trillions of submodules while the other is but a fundamental module itself. For example, as weird as it may be, I could consider myself to be composed of two bodily systems, one comprising every particle in my body except for one on my pinky which I consider to be the other system, and that would be perfectly legitimate.
The first characteristic is one worth dwelling on because there are a few implications and problems that it brings up. For example, it should be made clear that the disciplines of chemistry and physics consider the fundamental unit of matter to be the atom. But, despite ancient Greek philosophy, scientists of today firmly believe the atom to be divisible. You can get protons, neutron, and electrons out of them, and then these divide further into quarks, gluons, and speculation has it that the reduction may not end there. The catch is, however, that these scientists refrain from calling these particles units of matter because when they are separated on their own, you get a whole different substance: gamma rays, neutrino rays, proton beams, electricity, etc. It follows that, as contrary to common sense as it may seem, when we envision these fundamental particles, we must keep in mind that they are not necessarily “solid” in the sense that matter is solid. Nor should we necessarily think of them as material or tangible. There is even a fair degree of skepticism in the school of quantum physics about their positions and motions having exact numerical values (that is, they may not even have precise velocities or coordinates in space). There is an entity there at the subatomic level, but solid matter as we know it only comes about when a certain combination of these particles come together and relate to each other in a certain way (form atoms). And when a collection of atoms or molecules combine, the matter that appears to form is but a perception. That is, whatever entity is created out of the particles, atoms, and molecules, it interacts with our sensory receptors, which are themselves variants of the same entity, and have reactions with them that eventually effect our brains in such a way that the experience yielded by this process is that physical matter exists. When these subatomic particles combine in a different arrangement than matter, say as a proton beam, they can still interact with our sensory receptors, but in a different way, such that the resulting experience is that something other than physical matter exists. All this should not disturb my theory that much since all that is required for a mental collective to be associated with matter or modules is that some kind of entity exists there whether it’s equivalent to solid matter or not. This also suggests that mentality might not only be associated with matter, but electromagnetic radiation as well, as long as there’s an entity there.
The only concern I have is that, according to my theory, physical systems possess mind, and active physical systems at that, not objects on their own. Therefore, should a lone fundamental particle be considered to possess mind or should there be at least two particles interacting? Well, I definitely think at least two are required before a mind can be said to be found therein, but the real question for me is this: given that we have a physical system of at least 2 particles, is there one mind per particle that depends on its behavior relative to the other particle, or does the whole system of 2 particles possess one collective mind? If mind only exists in a system of 2 or more fundamental particles, then there is no module that corresponds to only one particle. The fundamental module corresponds to 2 fundamental particles. Furthermore, according to 4) above, one component of a system could be a common factor of a multitude of systems, and there is no reason to exclude one particle from other particle-pair systems just because it is already paired with another particle. Therefore, there could be trillions upon trillions of particle-pair systems with one particle in common, and these would correspond to trillions upon trillions of overlapping fundamental modules. If, however, one fundamental particle can possess its own individual mind, dependent on its relation to other particles and systems, the fundamental module is associated with the fundamental particle. However, there still are similar caveats to keep in mind. For instance, its relation will differ from system to system or particle to particle. One example, taken away from the context of fundamental units, is that of Earth relative to the Sun and the Moon. Since the Earth orbits the Sun, then relative to the sun, it must have some kind of experience that entails the need to run circles around it. Relative to the Moon, however, the Earth does rotations around its axis (the Moon’s rotation is such that one face always faces the Earth). So relative to the Moon, the Earth must be experiencing something that entails the need to rotate, not orbit. The point with which I want to conclude with is that there must be several overlapping modules still, but they would be fully overlapped (i.e. they share everything in common), and each one corresponds to a mind possessed by the fundamental particle, depending on which other system or particle it is behaving relative to.
Which one of these possibilities do I endorse? Well, I’m not too partial on the relative particles view because it depends on 2 false assumptions: 1) that the particle can experience some kind of change going on due to its behavior, and 2) that the motion of one particle relative to another is a behavior the particle willfully carries out. The first assumption is a fallacy in situations where the particle moves linearly and without acceleration. It may move at a certain velocity relative to some other particle, but if its path is perfectly uniform, it is not effected by any other particles or systems. Therefore, it cannot be made aware of the existence of anything else but its own experience. It can only experience its own behavior which is uniform motion. Now, in order for this motion to be translated into an experience, it must follow the three rules that are essential for all experience, one of which is our good friend rule 3, and this rule will demand that it change constantly, for all experience must have momentum in order to be self-sustaining. But every physical state you find the particle in is the same, so there is never a change in the corresponding experience. It couldn’t continue to exist through time. In the second assumption, I emphasize “willfully” because a very inconspicuous inconsistency in my theory would appear if that assumption were true. The will of any system to behave must be carried out upon another system. If you recall from my first paper, I said the will to behave is the result of a system having an effect or passing its energy onto another system or its environment. And if there is no system that can be acted upon (such as in the case of the universe collective), the mental collective therein never leads to the will to behave, only on a perpetual stream of flowing experience. In the case of our particle, it does behave relative to another particle, but it does not act upon it (influences from particle charges are another matter). It does not act upon anything. And if it does not act upon anything, it does not have the will to behave. It does carry out a behavior, but this is not out of a decision to do so. This behavior is only the corresponding physical activity to the mental experience (like the behavior of your neurons). It’s not being passed out to another system. Therefore, its experience has got to be something other than whatever would entail a decision to behave relative to the other particle. An experience which entails something other than the need to behave in some way, or which entails nothing but a proceeding experience, is descriptive of the internal workings of the system. And in the case of our particle, it is fundamental so it cannot have any internal workings. The only way it could manifest any behavior (other than uniform motion) is if external forces act upon it, but as I will tell you later when I discuss sensation and will, implemented experiences due to external forces are not derived out of rule 3. Furthermore, since the particle has no internal workings, even if an experience was instigated due to external forces, it couldn’t go anywhere via momentum. All its behavior and experience is due to external forces which aren’t linked by momentum. You might think that its momentum leads to the will to carry out the behavior it manifests, but as I said earlier, this is not the type of behavior corresponding to the will to behave. The will to behave comes from passing energy out, and this has nothing to do with action-reaction exchanges of energy as I’ll explain later. So we have here a situation in which the experience necessarily must change because it has momentum, but it necessarily can’t because there is no way for the particle to internally change. This boils down to a logical paradox. Therefore, it can not possess a mind. That’s why I believe in a collection of at least two fundamental particles as a prerequisite to possessing mind.
“But what about the fact that particles do act upon each other?” you ask. For example, in a hydrogen atom, one electron orbits one proton. The proton’s positive charge attracts the electron with its negative charge and causes it to carry out an orbiting behavior. Just for the record, whereas anything that acts upon another system is carrying out an act of will, I consider sensation to be an experience for which something is acted upon by a system (I will go into detail about the rational behind this in a little bit). So let’s say that when the electron is acted upon (attraction), a sensation of some sort is induced, something that tells the electron “There is an entity physically out there that is acting upon you.” At first, one might assume that the orbiting behavior of the electron in response to this is its willfully carried out behavioral reaction to this: I experience sensation (pull), therefore I will orbit (not quite with the same meaning, of course). But Newton would have to disagree with this. See, this is a case of cause and effect. The attraction forces are the cause, but is the effect the orbiting of the electron? Doesn’t being under the influence of this attraction force mean the same thing as orbiting? It would be just like saying “Being under the influence of gravity causes one to fall” which is true, but only because falling is being under the influence of gravity. It’s not like one happens first, then the other. This type of cause and effect is one of ideas or semantics (i.e. If it’s water, that causes it to be H2O). Newton would be the first to point this out. The real effect of being under the influence of the attraction forces, he would say, is the resistance the electron would manifest to being pulled. Yes, it would resist, because every action has an equal but opposite reaction (Newton’s 3rd law). It’s the same law that causes a gun to pull back when fired, or a baseball bat to bounce back when it hits a ball. In the case of the electron, it is constantly resisting. Anything with mass, Newton says, will display inertia (resistance) when accelerating, and being in orbit, physicists will tell you, is a form of acceleration. So what? So resistance is the true effect. How is this a problem with the relative particle view? It is a problem because regardless of whether we understand the effect to be the act of orbiting or resisting orbit, this effect is occurring simultaneously with its cause. That is, it doesn’t quite fit the formula “I experience pull, therefore I will resist” because this implies that the experience of pull happens before the decision to resist. And in the grand scheme of my theory, when experiences lead from one to another they must do so in a temporal order (thus rule 3). It’s not like the pull takes hold, time elapses, and then resistance starts. The reason I wanted to clarify that this was a case of Newton’s 3rd law is because this is a general rule of thumb to remember in any case of action-reaction cause and effect: i.e. the cause and effect occur simultaneously.
There is a different type of cause and effect though, one in which the process from cause to effect is a continuous flow rather than discrete events that don’t even occur over an interval of time. Say, instead of a hydrogen atom, we had a helium atom in which there is a nucleus and 2 orbiting electrons. And let’s say the electrons are orbiting the nucleus in harmony with each other for a while until their paths lead them on a collision course. Because similar charges repel, they will be forced to diverge and change directions. Now, if I were to describe this situation according to the temporal cause-effect paradigm mentioned above, I would attribute the two same-charged particles streaming towards each other as the cause, and their repelling of each other or moving away from each other afterwards as the effect. All this occurs in a smooth sequence through time. The point at which the cause ends and the effect begins is, of course, a valueless point in time, but rule 3 can take care of that. Rule 3 would say that the last experience associated with the cause entails the first experience associated with the effect. You see, throughout the whole process, the experience is always changing. It is a misunderstanding of my theory to assume that throughout the whole interval of the electrons approaching each other, there is one and only one experience corresponding to that event. It should occur to us that even a pair of events such as the electrons being a great distance from each other followed by a smaller distance shortly thereafter is an example of cause and effect itself. Even if the flow of experience abruptly changes at the junction point between the cause and the effect (as if they bounced off each other), there is still a link, or an entailment, not only allowing for such a change, but mandating it. It simply means that such a change could not be entailed unless the gradual change before that lead to a certain state at which it could. But such critical analysis is not even necessary in our electron scenario since their change of direction is not that sudden. They do not change their course on a sharp angle, nor do they instantaneously stop. They decelerate and slowly curve and then accelerate away and slowly straighten out their curve, a perfectly smooth process. The point in time we were talking about was just where we chose to stop calling it the cause and start calling it the effect.
This is the type of cause and effect that corresponds to mentality. The cause of their repelling is not some “pushing-away-force” like the effect similar charges have on each other, but the fact that they were decelerating towards each other first. The repelling is not the Newtonian reaction to the action of decelerating before. When they were decelerating towards each other, the action was the resistance to continue on course, and the reaction was the failure to do so abruptly. When they were accelerating away, the action was the attempt to be as separate from each other as possible resulting in acceleration, and the reaction was the inertia which resulted in the failure to do so in instantaneous time. The experience of this electron pair is not dependent on how they behave relative to the nucleus either. As a system, the pair is not acting upon anything, only internal workings are occurring, and this doesn’t happen relative to anything in particular. In order to move relative to something, an exterior force would have to act upon the system. Finally, the cause and effect do not happen at the same time like it would if each electron had its own personal mind. In that case, the decelerating behavior would be due to the experience enforced on it from the repelling forces of the other electron. Both the experience from that and the conclusion that avoidance behavior should be carried out would occur at the same time, so it couldn’t really be said that one was entailed from the other.
Anyway, all this scrutiny is so that we can all concede that fundamental modules correspond to 2 particles, and they all overlap to some degree. But once we go with that, a whole new slew of problems need to be tended to. Not to fear, though; I’ve already thought through them all thoroughly, and I can easily guide us through. First of all, if the fundamental module corresponds to two particles, how would we make sense out of the hypothetical universe in which only one particle exists? Would we have to say that’s impossible, that if anything is to exist at all, it must be at the very least a pair of particles? We could. But it just doesn’t sit right, does it? I mean, each particle must correspond to something, doesn’t it? Well, even if they both corresponded to the same module, they would at least have to correspond to different parts or aspects about it, wouldn’t they? After all, if fundamental modules overlap partially, they must have components. This means they can be broken down. Therefore, how can we say they’re fundamental?
One thing to remember, first of all, is that no one has ever seen a subatomic particle. They are simply constructs, theoretical entities that we believe to exist based on some rational (and scientists often veer away from attributing physical traits to them, mind you). Now, I know I said that modules are what replaces matter in the advanced theory, but because subatomic particles have never been more than constructs, they don’t apply to this rule in the same way. See, what I said about matter really being a representation of another experience having an effect on our minds had to do with matter as a sensation. The matter that we sense indicates the presence of modules and the experiences they carry. Because we sense them, and experience them to be matter, we develop concepts out of them. We imagine that matter must exist in smaller forms too, small enough that we can’t see it, and there should be a unit of matter that is the smallest it can be. Well, that actually may be true: the atom is the smallest component of matter that can still be considered matter itself. But when atoms are further broken down, the particles that result may be ingredients for matter, but not necessarily matter themselves.
Nevertheless, we have not been able to reason that they’re not real entities. So they’re still their, and that leaves us with the same problem. Two fundamental particles, whether tangible or not, have a relation with each other. Even if they have no effect on each other, they still have a certain magnitude of distance between them, and rates at which they are moving towards or away from each other. If there are more than two, they can even have three dimensional coordinates relative to each other, using the third as a fixed point. This relation would represent the module because it determines their behavior relative to each other. We’re still at a point where we have to admit the particles are real entities, but what can we say about the relation between them. Is a relation a real entity? Is the distance between them a thing that exists? I’m not so sure, because if you took the particles away, the relation would not remain. If it was a real entity, you’d think it is at least imaginable that it exist without the particles. Maybe the relation between them is a construct the human mind finds itself compelled to conceive for one reason or another. However, we have come to agree at this point that in the absolute universe, modules are actual entities, and seeing as how they correspond to the relation between the particles, perhaps then it is the relation that is the real entity that’s supposed to exist.
But there's still the matter of overlap. Overlap means that the fundamental modules have at least two components, and these must correspond to the particles. Are they real or aren’t they? I was able to conjure up two possibilities when dwelling over this problem: 1) there are two modules that are always inactive within each “fundamental” module, or 2) there are two entities that are something other than modules. The problem with 1) is that I defined modules as spaces for experience to occur. If no experience can ever occur there, this defies the definition. This lead me to consider 2), which I didn’t really find a fallacy in, but soon thereafter I thought of a better possibility.
There may be no such thing as a fundamental particle. Particles may be infinitely divisible, in which case there is no fundamental module either. They too keep dividing and dividing. Although I could probably argue something against this, I only rejected it in the final analysis because, again, something better popped into my head.
We have been arguing so far that relations between particles, which must be conceptualized as constructs, are actually real entities in the absolute world. The problem seems to be that, while relations between particles go from constructs to real entities when brought over to the absolute universe, we are preserving the status of particles as real entities during the same transition. So why don’t we change them? Why don’t we say particles are abstract concepts in the absolute world? But how? Well, how is it done in the world of matter? When it is only a relation between real entities, of course. So then why don’t we say that particles represent relations between modules in the absolute world? This would solve our problem by ridding our model of overlap. Relations are not inside modules, but between modules. They represent the effect modules have on each other, not components modules share with each other. Note: only in the context of fundamental modules is there no overlap. Overlap still exists when we have more complex systems being shared by several larger systems. In a system with only 2 particles, there is only one relation between them. This translates into one module with zero relations. You see, we don’t have to assume that because, theoretically, there are 2 particles, they must correspond to something in the absolute world, even if it is a relation. We only infer that there must be at least 2 particles because of the way we understand the nature of matter. But I’m presenting a different way to conceptualize matter here, and at this most fundamental level, you could have one module in the absolute world, corresponding to nothing in the physical world. It doesn’t have to correspond because this is mentalistic eliminitavism: the physical world isn’t real. The mental world is real, and this is what it corresponds to: the experience that exists in the module. When you have two modules, theoretically there should be three particles such that there are at least two relations that one particle has with the others. In the absolute world, there is only one relation. Of course, you’re probably imagining that all three particles are moving relative to each other making for three modules and three relations (triangular), but never mind that condition for now; we’ll get to it later. For now, just imagine consecutively increasing numbers of modules with the least number of relations possible (try imagining a big long snake of modules with “relations” for joints), and you will quickly figure out the formula: relations = particles-2.
I have created the “gluey bottles” analogy to help us understand the nature of matter in the context of this idea. Imagine that you are at the fare and you want to win a prize at the Knock-Over-The-Bottles booth. But the carnie there is a conniving trickster because he glued all the bottles together so that you can’t knock them down (imagine they are stacked in pyramidal form). You only find this out when you throw the ball and find none of them fall over. In this analogy, the pyramid of bottles represents a body of matter, the bottles represent fundamental particles, and the glue represents the bonds between them. The glue also represents the relation between them, and therefore the modules. So what’s keeping the bottles from falling over. Is it their solidity? No because they would be just as solid even if they weren’t glued. It must be the glue. This goes to show that when you knock on something solid-a rock, a table, your head-it seems so impenetrable, not on account of the particles being so solid that they permit nothing to pass through them, but on account of the bonds holding them together. The quality of solidity, in other words, is in the bonds. We could very well assume that the particles were as vapid and empty as space itself (i.e. nonexistent), but nevertheless occupying a position in space such that they don’t move from there due to their bonds with the other particles. In that case, we could also modify our analogy by getting rid of the bottles all together, leaving glue stuck to glue. We could imagine that where the bottles used to be is nothing but a division between the glue pieces, a plain that marks where one glue piece ends and the adjacent one begins. You could imagine the glue pieces in different colors just to make their individuality emphatic. Furthermore, this makes it evident that the division is still there, but in this case a “division” is just a mental construct. There really is nothing there between the glue pieces, but because each glue piece is an individual piece, we are forced to imagine the division as an existing entity, and hence the construct. In this modified version of the analogy, the division represents the particles or the relations between the modules: they may not actually be there as an entity, but they are there as a function which is to act as the effect modules have on each other. To describe how the effects modules have on each other work, let’s change glue in our analogy to elastic bands. Let’s reintroduce bottles into the picture too. Let’s imagine three bottles linked in a straight row by two elastics. The one in the middle moves closer to one on the edge. As it does this, the elastic between it and the bottle it approaches shortens. Meanwhile, the other elastic elongates. Thus, the bottle represents the effect the shortening of one elastic has on the other: elongation. In terms of modules, as one module changes its experience, the other changes in proportion and maybe even in the opposite direction.
An additional implication about this is that if relations between particles are the real entities and particles are not, we can rightfully say that particles have no dimension, and the relations between them (which come down to distances in space), are not separated by a gap the size of the particle. Particles would be just geometrical points. This would conclusively make them truly fundamental.
Now, let’s regress a bit by assuming that one fundamental module corresponds to two particles as opposed to there being no need for particles with this few modules. A special kind of relation exists between the number and activity of particles that exist in a physical universe and the number of modules that corresponds to it. That is, if we were to envision a universe in which zero particles existed at first, and we successively kept adding particles one by one, the number of fundamental modules corresponding to that universe would not increase in likewise successive manner. The same applies to a universe in which we keep adding successive modules: the number of particles does not increase in synchrony. I’ll show you:
Let’s begin with an empty universe and add modules. Immediately, you’d have to start with two particles in the physical universe, one of them moving relative to the other. Before we get any deeper, I want to make one principle clear. With n particles, there is no difference in the absolute sense whether n-1 particles are moving or all n are moving. If n are moving, you could always pick one and move in synchrony with it, thereby making it stationary relative to you. And if n-1 are moving, maybe it’s because you’re already moving in synch with the stationary one. The truth is, according to Einstein, it’s not either one or the other, it’s both, for they are not two situations, but one situation with two ways of looking at it. So for the rest of our discussion, we’ll treat both situations identically. Now, there is the possibility that the two particles could be stationary relative to each other, in which case you’d have one inactive module, but let’s assume for the present that fundamental modules must be active (we can deal with more complexities later). So one module requires two particles moving relative to each other. With two modules, you need three particles, but two of them must be stationary relative to each other. Since the relation between these two is null, there is no experience, and for now we’re assuming this means no module can exist for them. This leaves the relation between the moving one and each of the stationary ones. That’s two relations for two modules. Now it gets tricky: for three modules, would we have 4 particles? No, we’d have the same three as before but now they’re all in motion (or n-1, whichever you prefer). Now, how about four modules? Still not 4 particles, but five with only one moving relative to the rest. We skipped 4!!! Furthermore, you could also get 3 modules out of 4 particles with 1 moving. Likewise, there are two particle systems that can correspond to 5 modules: six with 1 moving or four with 2 moving. It appears that some of the steps in increasing the number of modules in successive order over on the physical side is not adding more particles, but stopping and starting their motion. Interesting.
Well, I actually bothered to make a table below (table 1) which shows the pattern. Furthermore, I can decode the pattern. We have the number of modules along the top, and that’s meant to read number of active modules. The number of moving particles-self explanatory-is along the side. Then values in the cells represent the number of particles in the system, moving or not. Note the first row: it starts at 2 (can’t have a module with only 1 particle) and goes up successively. This signifies what I call the row of “basic combination”, and that just means a system of particles in which all are stationary except one. For any number of modules, you can always revert to the basic combination which would equal the number of modules plus one and that one would be moving. The next thing to notice is that we have the same increasing sequence in the second row, but there are particle systems only for the odd number of modules. You cannot have an even number of modules corresponding to a set of particles with only 2 moving. The next row shows that it’s every third number of modules that has a system of particles with 3 moving, and again it increases in successive order. Now, in the fourth row, there is a system for every fourth but this time it starts at an odd place: six. Same pattern for the fifth row, except it starts at 10. The sixth row starts at 15. The pattern basically is that the spaces between the values of total particles equals the number of moving particles, and the first simplest system always contains the same number of particles as moving particles and begins at the same number of modules as the system in the previous row with the same number of total particles. The reason you see the simplest systems in each row paired up with a number above it of equal value is because these are the pairs of conditions in which either n or n-1 particles are moving (depending on your perspective). The name “all-particle-motion” will be given to these pairs. Since I believe the modules to be the real entities, we can assume they’re the ones to be capable of increasing in successive order, and we have to accept that the same successive order does not apply to particles.
If you’re set on figuring out a pattern for the possibility of inactive modules between the motionless particles, here it is: take the full number of particles, minus the moving ones, then find the all-particle-motion pair with the same number, and the number of modules you find it under is equal to the number of inactive modules for that group. But the possibility of inactive modules is not something I think we have to even consider, at least at the fundamental level. The reason is that all this time, we’ve been open to the possibility of motionless particles which, if you ask any chemist, is practically never the case since all particles have either a positive or negative charge. Therefore, particles necessarily must influence each other no matter how far apart. This means that no matter how many particles you have, as long as there’s more than one, the modules corresponding to their interrelations must be active to a degree.
Now, let’s reintroduce the idea that there is no need for any particles with only one module. This would not violate the necessary-motion rule just mentioned per se; it would just mean that the existence of modules in the absolute universe is necessary for particles to exist in the physical universe, but the existence of particles is not necessary for modules to exist. That’s the case, unless we have at least two modules, in which case a particle would (but not must) theoretically or conceptually exist (remember that particles are just concepts), and this particle would not necessarily be moving (although it would be an all-particle-motion situation in which case you could consider that it’s moving). With three modules, you only need two particles representing two links (three modules in a string). So, what’s happened here is we’ve incorporated a few new rules: that fact that all particles have charge means that all modules must be active, and the fact that since particles represent relations, they are not necessary (in certain cases) for modules to exist. The result: we must devise a new pattern for the successive additions of modules. Thinking about it, most of the combinations we had in table 1 contain stationary particles. Moreover, we must start the table at 1 module and zero particles. Something else that should be taken into account is that since modules don’t necessarily require particles, you can have limb-like modules. That is, modules that are linked to the rest of the group at one end, but free at the other end. Such cases appear with one and two particles in which case two modules, adjacent at one end, are not attached at the other end, or three modules, with two sandwiching a third. Another implication of the necessary-motion rule is that when you have three particles, necessarily three modules, at the least, must triangulate. All three particles must move relative to each other, and so there are three active relations, and each one effects both others. Table 2 shows the modified pattern.
12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15...
Note that I included diagrams just to illustrate visually what the numbers mean. I represented modules with lines and the joints represent where the particles would be (looks a lot like chemistry, doesn’t it). The first thing to notice is when you have 3 modules, you can either have 2 or 3 particles. With 2 particles, you have 2 limb modules with a module between them. With 3 particles, you have a triangle of modules. Now, notice for 4, 5, and 6 modules, the system can be supplemented with limb modules, one per joint, and therefore, no increments in particles are necessary, so they stay at 3. However, the sixth column (6 modules) is just like the third in that it can be formed out of n or n+1 particles. Similarly, the n particles situation contains limb modules and the n+1 particles situation doesn’t. This is due to the necessary-motion rule: if a limb module was to be added to an already existing limb module (i.e. one corner of the triangle extended with a limb two modules long), this would imply that a particle that corresponds to the joint between them exists but does not move relative to any of the other particles except one. Therefore, a rule must be followed by the process of successively increasing the number of modules: once all joints have a limb module attached, the next step in the succession is to join the limb modules. This is represented by the columns with n and n+1 particles. The main pattern that exists in this table is that when the number of particles increases, the number of module systems possible for that many particles also increase (by a ratio of 1:1). In other words, when you have 3 particles, you have 4 possible module systems, and with 4 particles, you have 5 possible module systems, and with 5 particles, you have 6 possible module systems... One peculiarity about this pattern is that it doesn’t start out this way. With 0, 1, and 2 particles, there is only one possible module system. However, you could consider zero particles with one possible module system as consonant with the pattern, but it is also consonant with the n particles to 1 module arrangement pattern.
Now, there are still difficulties and alternative possibilities to consider. We are dealing at a very abstract level, and so far we have been treating it very concretely. For instance, the diagrams in table 2 are based on an assumption that modules act the same way as geometrical shapes, but the truth is, we have no idea how to even conceptualize modules. We don’t even know if they follow the laws of logic. In any case, there are numerous things to consider: what if two modules could connect at both ends, such that under two modules in table 2, you could either have 2 limb modules or a closed module system that loops around. Would that entail that 2 particles existed? Maybe not. Remember that whatever happens in the absolute universe does not necessarily have to have a correspondence in the physical universe, but visa-versa is not the case: whatever happens in the physical universe must correspond to something in the absolute. You’d never be able to tell anyway: whether particles exist or not must be inferred conceptually, not visually. And since the physical universe is subject to eliminitavism, why should we even bother with the question. Focus should be paid only to the absolute where the real entities are, and in the absolute, all you have is a relation between modules, not particles. No, a particle would not have to “exist” for a loop of two modules to exist. What about the possibility of there being an infinite number of limb modules attached at one joint? The only rule that would be required in that scenario would be that whatever happens in one module, it effects all limb modules. This would put into question the joining-limb-modules rule represented by the n and n+1 pairs in table 2. Instead, this modified version of the rule must replace it: if any limb modules are to join, they all must join. Or how about this: two module systems coexisting but unattached-say, two triangulates without connecting modules? At first, you might think that the necessary-motion rule prohibits this from happening, but think about this for a minute: isn’t the reason we believe all particles must have a charge that we’ve experienced them to? If two module systems were separate, whatever happens in one will have no effect on the other at all. This means that any physical matter that corresponds to one system necessarily cannot interact with matter corresponding to the other system. If it doesn’t interact, there would be no way of telling that it exists. If there is no way of telling that it exists, there could be particles without charge relative to particles we know to exist. All these questions suggest a plethora of other possibilities, and that’s just fine. But I wish to leave analysis of these alone for now. Perhaps I’ll write about it in another paper. For now, just keep in mind that we are philosophizing on a very, very abstract level, and all my thoughts here are very, very new. I could find numerous flaws later that I don’t see now, so don’t feel hesitant to criticize the advanced theory of mind and matter.
For the rest of this paper, I would like to touch on some miscellaneous matters. Specifically, I would like to keep my promise about discussing some of the rules and nature of will and sensation, a bit on rule 2 and what that has to do with the “unity of mind”, some apparent contradictions to the 3 rules, and finally, I will end with a discussion on time again.
Will and sensation: using our own brains as a standard to make inferences, it seems logical that the act of will comes about when energy is passed on from the system to an outer system. By the same token, it appears that sensation comes about when energy enters the system. But countless exceptions to this can be fathomed. For example, the law of action and reaction implies that energy can not simply be poured out from one system to another. Because all motion is relative, there is just as much reason to assume that it is the outer system acting upon (or moving towards) the system of interest. Therefore, when the system of interest passes energy out to another system, an equal but opposite reaction will have the effect of reflecting energy of equal magnitude right back into the system. Another problem, one having to do with sensation, is that there are examples of energy entering the human brain in the form of chemicals or drugs without inducing changes in sensation. For example, caffeine raises anxiety levels, and it is only experienced as such.
The latter problem can be resolved by suggesting that all sensation corresponds to foreign energy entering the system, but not all energy entering a system induces sensation. You could very well have a drug, or an electrode, or whatever, interfere with the brain anywhere you want, and you will get the expected experience. Remember that rule 3 is stated: every experience entails the following one. It is not stated: every experience is entailed by a preceding one. Spontaneous appearances of experience are possible due to links between modules. This wouldn’t be a direct link either. You see, when one module has an effect on another, like a computer effecting the brain with electrodes, the larger system, or supermodule, that comprised the computer-brain system allows for passage of momentum from one mental component to the other using rule 3. The recipient experience of the momentum will correspond to the change in experience of the brain-system on the lower level using module links. What makes sensation unique in its relation to exchanges of energy is that, unlike other experiences which may or may not appear spontaneously due to the introduction of energy, sensation must appear spontaneously, hence the rule stated at the beginning of this paragraph.
Now, before I go into explaining the will to behave, I should make one thing clear (if it isn’t already). The human collective does not correspond to the entire body. It corresponds only to those physical parts associated with consciousness (i.e. only certain parts of the brain). We are, I’m afraid, only a strange looking chunk of neuro-matter. This shouldn’t pose any difficulties since matter is to be eliminated anyway (i.e. what we see in the mirror every day is only a sensory image corresponding to nothing even close to what it resembles). This should also serve to clear up any confusion about honest and deceptive behavior that we often display. That is, because we know our intentions to be dissonant with our behavior at times, it becomes hard to see how the behavior of the system, our bodies, can determine the corresponding mental experience. At times we’re honest, at other times we’re not, but in either situation, we act the same. But if all we are is a certain area of the brain, then it is the behavior of this brain area that should determine the mental experience. What behavior now comes down to is neurological processes, and since different cognitive process go on between honest and dishonest intentions, then different neurological processes correspond as well.
What this has to do with expending energy is that it makes a difference how the energy is expunges depending on what form of energy we’re talking about. The energy the brain uses to process information is electrical impulses, and because they’re impulses they act like waves (brain waves). The special thing about waves is that once they are expelled from a system, they don’t exert a reaction back onto the body from which they are emitted. It does have its own way of reacting, but that would be resistance once again. When an impulse travels down the axon of a neuron, it experiences the push forward (action) and the resistance due to density (reaction). But both these occur simultaneously, and together make up the whole behavior of the neuron. The impulse travels from neuron to neuron until it reaches the edge of the system where it is “expelled”. Since its reaction is occurring simultaneously and indistinctly with the action, no further alterations of the system are enforced from exterior agents. Kinetic energy, on the other hand, has objects actually moving, and therefore, the only way they can expel energy is by making physical contact with another object, at which point they will undergo the reaction: bouncing back or decelerating. It is hard to say whether it was exerting its will onto the other object, or experiencing an unforeseen impact in the form of sensation. We could say that both occurred, but then we’d have the problem of which came first, the sensation or the will. In fact, both occur at the same time, and that poses a problem for rule 3 as we saw earlier. We might be able to get away with assuming the will occurred first and the sensation thereafter since the impact occurred instantaneously whereas the reflection or deceleration continued on for a certain period of time after, sort of implying that the will was an intention to induce the sensation onto itself. However, the problem with this is we have no way of explaining how the experiences lead to the decision to enact will, for the object could have been going about its business in the same way without having collided with the other object, and there is no good reason to infer that a different series of experiences are there just because the object is on a collision course. In fact, what series of experiences could you infer from an object, like a fundamental particle, that is not behaving internally, let alone unaware of the obstacles in its path? No, the only way energy could be expelled from a system corresponding to will is when the reaction associated with the action of the energy is not incarnated back into the system expelling the energy. Energy waves travel through matter all the time. You could slam a baseball bat on the sidewalk, and the energy would propagate throughout the streets. These waves do bounce back, however, but that’s only when the medium through which it travels changes density. But if you hit your baseball bat on the sidewalk, the energy that would be passed on through the side walk would propagate down the length of the sidewalk. Assuming uniform density therein, we could consider one segment of the sidewalk as a system, and an adjacent segment as a system for the first one to pass its energy onto. The first segment would have a changing mental experience throughout the whole time the energy wave travels through its body, and when the wave passes from it to the next sidewalk segment, the original segment experiences a decision to enact its will onto whatever world it perceives. In cases where energy is expelled due to physical contact and kinetic energy (like the baseball onto the sidewalk), the only experience I could conceive being associate with it would be sensation, that’s all. But as we said earlier, sensation is not the only experience that can be induced in this manner. I guess any experience would do.
Now onto other matters: one of the difficulties that are bound to surface when one reads the three rules I laid down in my first paper is that, immediately, counterintuitive examples spring into mind. As for the first rule-that all experience occurs unconsciously-I have another paper in which I go into this in detail (see central-self theory). Rule 3, which by now we should all know states that all experience makes sense to the beholder and therefore has meaning (and from this we get the quality of entailment-that is, if it has meaning, what does it mean?). However, experiences pop to mind that don’t seem to emit any meaning whatsoever, such as color perception, and there are even some experiences that fly in the face of the idea of conveying sense, such as confusion or surprise. The latter two experiences, I’ve already dealt with in the first paper. Basically, I described a model in which, whatever experience seems to emanate the antithesis of common sense, it is to be understood as a separate experience that is actually entailed (makes sense out of) by a preceding experience. The nonsensical aspect of this preceding experience is actually a quality not to be found in it at all. If it is found there, this is due to confusion (or whatever the proceeding experience is) following rule 2, and when any experience follows rule 2, it becomes superimposed on any other experience from the same collective also following rule 2 (which, in effect, is the unity of mind I wish to speak of soon). But, I seem to have contradicted myself in another paper of mine, for I adamantly contented that experience, even thought itself, is void of meaning. What I meant there was that an experience, when considered not to be in tune with anything exterior because the exterior world is of a form completely indescribably by experience, cannot convey anything meaningful about the “real world”. In other words, when rule 2 is revealed to be a deception, rule 3 will follow suite. You see, rule 3 is the basic rule. Because experience is endowed with “meaning”, it must be projected onto a “real world”, for whatever its meaning-truth, reality, the state of things-it cannot be unless a reality exists for it to be grounded in. Therefore, rule 2 is generated from this. Rule 1 exists because of rule 2, for if the experience was to be aware of its true essence, it would not be projecting its content onto a “real world”. If it was able to see itself for what it really is, it could not follow rule 2 nor rule 3. It is only when a few specific kinds of experiences (i.e. cognition) evaluate the status of other experiences, that these other experiences appear to lose their “meaning” (although this is not an authentic case of an experience become self-aware). This was the context I wanted the reader to understand my contention that all experience was meaningless in that other paper. In fact, because the only way to do this, to look at experiences under the analysis of cognition, is to transform them into mental model form, they misrepresent their true form. But we have no other choice but to undergo this method if we want to analyze them, for the only way to understand and behold their meaning is to have them present to be experienced. This would not be a problem, except that we must sacrifice cognitive analysis in order to directly experience them since putting them in cognitive form is to transform them into something they’re not (mental models). No, unfortunately, they must remain unconscious, but necessarily possessing meaning. Perhaps a better way to say what I wanted to say in my paper “The Destruction of Realism...” is that the meaning in thought is equivalently meaningful as that found in a bland visual experience.
But there is more to it than this, and more needs to be said. Take color for example (once again)-as I just said, it doesn’t seem to carry any significant meaning, does it? But the basic meaning behind any visual perception is what can be said once we see it: that it’s there! If I experience the pungent iridescence of red, it means to me that the object is itself this color. You can see how rule 2 derives out of this. It can even go further than that; if an experience truly has meaning, it should potentially lead to the will to behave. What can color do to influence our behavior? Well, it actually can have gigantic effects. Since different colors are so disparately distinguishable, you could quite reliable get an individual to enact extremely different behaviors depending on whether the card, light, spot on the wall, or whatever is one color or another. Colors, it should not be denied, are more pleasurable than monochrome. Everyone has a favorite color. So, colors have some power on approach-avoidance behavior. Even the effect of making us think “ah, it’s blue” or “ah, it’s yellow” is a behavior at the neurological level of the cognitive centers. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that sometimes the meaning within an experience is so obvious that it bypasses us all together, and it’s these types of experiences that are the most vulnerable to being overlooked as meaningless. But it is still conceptually difficult to come to an answer: is this meaning really there, or is it an illusion since the reality beyond the mental cosmos can never be the substance of perception. I think the trick to this dilemma is to realize that the “real world” beyond perception is also beyond “real”. That is, the whole concept of what’s real and what’s not real is restricted to the domain of the mental cosmos. “Reality” is a mental construct, we must confess. Asking “Is such-and-such an experience real, or does it have meaning?” is analogous to asking a color blind individual “Is sky is really black or white?” This is actually similar to the point I was trying to make in that same paper I apologized for a moment ago (“The Destruction of Realism...”) when I argued that the mental cosmos could be thought of as absolutely real in every corner or completely and utterly illusionary. I also think that, because the essential quality of experiences get lost when they are converted into mental models, special constructs have to be invented in order to compensate for this. The essential qualities were the 3 rules and that’s why I had to come up with them when analyzing mentality. So at this point, I’m aiming to derive a general formula that can act as a solution to all the counterintuitive examples that come up when the 3 rules are delineated. I think a formula can be constructed since the counterintuitive examples all seem to follow a certain trail of reasoning and can be met with by similar solutions. Usually, as it seems to be, the counterintuitive examples turn out to be cases of some secondary experience or an experience of a higher order. In the case of thought seeming evidently to be conscious, thereby contradicting rule 1, it was argued that thoughts possessing self-awareness are actually aware of some first order thought, or something other than themselves, but because they follow rule 2, they don’t realize themselves to be thoughts about other thoughts. In the case of confusion or surprise seeming evidently to be counter to the experience of common sense, thereby contradicting rule 3, it was argued that confusion or surprise conveying nonsensicality are actually making sense out of other lower order experiences, but because they follow rule 2, they project themselves onto the lower order experience, and therefore perceive their essence of nonsensicality as a quality of the lower order experience, not the very thing that they themselves are. What this formula seems to boil down to is that these counterintuitive examples have the function of opposing the 3 rules as theoretical constructs by following the rules themselves. Their counterintuitive nature is the meaning within them (rule 3), their logical merit is their authenticity (rule 2), and the fact that they don’t realize these things about themselves is what preserves them (rule 1). I think if we apply this formula to some of the counterintuitive examples of rule 2, we will be able to churn out some evidence for the skeptic. But first, let’s discuss what exactly these counterintuitive examples to rule 2 are.
I have two examples in mind. One example, as I made mention of in “The Central Self and Mental Models”, is the imagination, or in other words mental images. The curious thing about this faculty is that it appears to be experienced as mental, not physical or in any way exterior. This is directly in opposition to rule 2. However, words fail me when I try to explain what rule 2 really is. I am in the habit of expressing it as the generation of an outer world for experiences to be projected onto. But I have found this rule, like rule 3, to be elusive to perfect translation into words. It has to encompass more than just the physical or material world, for thoughts and emotions have a form of actualization into the real world. I prefer, therefore, to call the world that is generated by rule 2 a “real world” rather than an “outer world”. But even this is not enough, particularly in the case of mental images since these are highly questionable as “real”, let alone “outer”. We could argue that the object that is envisioned in one’s head is not real, but the envisionment itself, or the image taken as only a picture of an object, is real and exists in the head. But I have a problem with this: the image may be real in this sense, but no more real than any other mental entity in the human collective. Why this is a problem is because, as mental entities, we are evaluating their status without the effect of rule 2-that is, just as we think of emotions, thoughts, sensations, and such as “merely mental entities” under the illusion of reality that rule 2 produces, we are thinking of mental images in the same way. Therefore, this is not a justification for their status as “real” but a falsification of it. But what, then, is the alternative? If they’re not real, their mental, we seem to be saying. Thus, we are sliding these experiences along a real-mental dichotomy. This is also saying that if it’s mental, it’s not real. Is this justified? At this point, we can still argue that, whether the “object” of the experience is real or not, as long as we have a perception of it, that perception is real (it’s there in our heads). And if these experiences are of images in the head, their “objects” (i.e. whatever we are imagining) are not supposed to be taken as real. We know images are just in the head; that’s their very essence. What this means, however, is that the “object” of the experience and the perception of it are one and the same. I think what we have here is a special kind of experience that, by virtue of rule 2, makes possible the conceptualization of “mental entities”. We assume images, and other mental experiences, to be confined to the head, but nevertheless existing there in a state of realness. And this assumption is, itself, a perception among them, and as such it follows rule 2 which makes it appear to be stating real facts about them.
Another way of looking at it is to realize that this assumption is actually a mental model. How so? Well, what do you think of when you think this assumption? What do you imagine when you think about images and the like? Most likely, you have a mental picture of something that’s suppose to represent images, right? So what does this mean? It means that it does not represent images in their true form. Anything mental can not be imagined or conceptualized in its true form, for they are not material for the imagination or the thought component of mind. Think about it: imagining something like pain or pleasure lacks the essential quality that makes these experiences what they are. If not, you would either exclaim “ouch!” or “aaah!” merely by bringing to mind the concept. If this were possible, you wouldn’t be able to call them only thoughts or images, for they would be the real deal; you would have to call them pain or pleasure, or the rightful name of any experience you fancy. Where does this line of reasoning lead us? We can draw the same conclusion as we did in the previous paragraph, namely that images in the head are not necessarily “mental entities” as defined by our mental model of this concept or by the “mental” end of the real-mental dichotomy (which, in effect, is generally the same mental model). One thing to note about our mental models of mental entities is that they are envisioned as not using rule 2 (or without rule 2 as an essential characteristic). This is why such things as emotions, sensations, pains and pleasures, ideas, memories, dreams, colors, and, yes, even images are thought to be “merely mental” as opposed to “real” entities.
So then the next question is “What is the experience of images like if not as our mental models would have it?” Well, the answer should be as obvious as it is ironic. Any attempt to explain what they would be like would inevitably be to construct another mental model, for such things are by definition unimaginable. We can say one thing for sure, though. If I am correct in asserting that all experiences must follow the 3 rules, then images must be experienced as “out there”. How could they? Well, try to think of imagining as day dreaming. And like a real dream, day dreams can become intense enough to be mistaken for reality. Could this also occur with low density images? When you sit there and dream about the opposite sex during a boring school lecture, don’t you forget about the real world to a degree? Don’t your sensory channels cut back on registering information? I know this is kind of a flaky way of arguing my point, but at least this can be said: if you don’t ever say your images are real at any point during the day dream, neither do you say they’re fake. And if you do say they’re fake, this is just another case of a higher order thought evaluating a lower order thought (the image), and by accepting its evaluation as true (a fact), it unconsciously follows rule 2. I think it would confuse the issue again if we pondered on whether we think of our day dreams as real or conjured up, for I don’t believe we experience them in either way. We just have them and go with them. This is what I mean when I say that words fail me in attempting to express rule 2 because to say “we consider our experiences to be real instead of mental” conveys the mistaken implication that we evaluate them in this way as well. No evaluation occurs though (except as higher order thoughts).
So if we “just have them” without evaluating them, then how do we take them to be real or out there? Well, it would be fitting at this point to distinguish between experiencing something as real and thinking about it as real. To evaluate an image as real would be to think of it as such, but simply to experience it as real means something else, if it means anything beyond what it says flat out. Experiencing something as real would mean not thinking of it as fake or mental. If we could incorporate this phrase into rule 2, we would state it as “all experiences are not taken to be fake or mental”. This would be the most accurate translation yet, but also the most disappointing. Why disappointing? Because it means that we have to forgo any hope of understand what it is taken to be. So when we try to explain that the sky is blue to a color blind man, the best we can do is tell him “It’s not black.” In other words, the quality of “realness” that experience possesses becomes impossible to define, and why should we expect otherwise?
Now, the other example I was thinking about is actually a counterintuitive example of the “unity of mind” that is associated with rule 2 in a very intimate way. In order for all experiences within a collective to be part of the same mind, they must all be projected onto the same reality. This is how mind achieves unity. But what does unity mean in terms of modules? It means that the module that contains all the experiences of one mind must have them overlap with each other. Space doesn’t exist for mental entities, and neither does it exist in the world of modules. Therefore, they can’t be kept separate if they all fit in the same module. Mind you, this does not mean that they must effect each other in any way, although some will, but it does mean that they must taint or supplement each other in how they are manifested to the beholder. It’s like paints mixing, but unlike paints, we don’t get a different color somewhere midway between the factor colors. Each experience is still its own unique brand, but it becomes a building block in the larger collective mind as a whole. It’s like mixing auditory and visual experiences in the same brain. Individually, they are not anything other than what they are together, but together they paint a different picture of reality, a more complex reality in which, not only are there people around us, but they can speak to one another too. Therefore, the “mix” or “overlap” of experience creates a unification of all the experiences within such that, under the influence of rule 2, they all appear to be coming from the same exterior source.
The counterintuitive example is of cases in which different experiences seem so blatantly to be separate. Two objects, let’s say two trees, for example, will always appear to be separated by a certain distance. What is the overlap or unity of these two experiences? In cases like these, there is no way the separateness can be noticed without awareness of the coexistence of the two. Therefore, their separateness can be considered a third experience, a cognitive one, that most certainly has some overlap with the two. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how the two perception of the objects overlap. Well, without the third cognitive experience, what would there be to join the two perceptions in one united mind? Am I suggesting that the two perceptions would not exist relative to each other? Maybe I am. Or at least, they would have to exist in separate collectives. It even makes sense physically: think about what it means in terms of the brain if we removed the cognitive recognition of their coexistence. It means that certain brain areas, those responsible for thought and the recognition of such things, to be physically separated from the visual centers. I would guess that the thing that makes these brain parts responsible for this function is that the electric impulses that are sent from the visual areas are united in these cognitive areas such that this process corresponds to two coexisting visual experiences uniting into one cognitive experience. So in the case where the cognitive experience no longer reacts to the visual experiences, the corresponding brain area must either be removed or out of commission. As such, the visual brain areas, although possibly still in contact with one another, do not have any effect on one another, and therefore their corresponding experiences not linked with momentum.
Now, I would like to argue about what can be said about one physical system with components having absolutely no effect on each other later, but for now let’s take another special kind of experience into consideration: space. With these two tree perceptions now separated from cognition, is there any possible way we can conceive of their unity continuing on? Sure. You don’t have to be thinking about their coexistence in order for them to appear separate, as long as we use the term “appear” to refer purely to the sensory level. That is, that the visual perceptions of both trees are seen on some kind of backdrop, with a ground beneath them, and so on. With visual material completely saturating the scene, a sort of “grid” has been created in our minds. And with the addition of depth (an experience in its own right), a 3 dimensional coordinate framework is also created. I hypothesize that “space” as an experience is generated in this way. That is, if we have all these visual experiences set up in such a pattern, rule 3 would entail the perception of space. Of course, this requires that the corresponding visual system in the brain send signals to a common “space perception” center not unlike it did when sending signals to the cognitive center. Perhaps, then, the very first experience to unite individual visual experiences is this space-grid perception, and from there it goes on to inform our cognitive centers. Nevertheless, we are not really dealing with a physical system in which the behaviors of each component are having no effect on one another or are not converging at any point. If we were to remove the “space-perception” area, which we won’t, the only way we could conceivable argue for the separateness of minds is for every little speck of visual information to be part of a separate collective. Not only does that jar the intellect, but I don’t even think we can distinguish a “speck” in the whole visual apparatus. After all, what would you correspond a speck to in the physical system? A neuron? A fundamental particle? Even if you could, we have to bring to mind the whole-is-greater rule which would tell us that, now that we’ve broken it down, I don’t know if we can continue to call it a visual experience. But whatever experience you want to consider it to be, just because the components of the physical system they correspond to don’t have effects on each other doesn’t mean you have to consider them all as separate minds. They can still be part of one collective. The reasons for this, I’ll explain later, but for now, let’s just go with the assumption that it’s true.
The key point in my reasoning thus far is that when there is no convergence of momentum of the two visual experiences, they remain separate only if they exist in different collectives (no surprise), but when they exist in the same collective, their separateness is only in virtue of the space-perception. “Separateness”, in this case, becomes an experience, that of space, and not an actual feature of the perceptions. This, you may notice, seems all too similar to trying to define “reality” as we did a few paragraphs ago, and for exactly the same reason. Defining what “separate” would mean as an actual feature rather than an experience may be impossible. Again, words fail us. In the present context, it is a concept wrongly labeled with the word “separate” for lack of a better one. I guess the closest we could come to defining “separateness” as the opposite of “unity” is by saying “experiences are separate when they exist in different collectives”. But what about the case in which we remove any converging experience such as space or recognition of coexistence? How are they in “unity” then? They are in unity in the sense that they are not separate as just defined. Therefore, “unity” means “existing in the same collective”, which in turn means being perceived to coexist in the same reality. Remember that space is an experience, and for this reason the mental cosmos is not spread out into a spatial volume, nor are modules in spatial locations. Spatial distance has no meaning other than an experience. Being in unity or being separated just means being part of, or not being part of, a collective. So in the case of two visual experiences in a system that doesn’t converge, don’t think of them as either spatially distant from each other or overlapping in the same place at the same time, but simply as being simultaneously experienced by the beholder. It would be similar to how we can simultaneously experience emotions and thoughts. They both pertain to the same reality, and that unifies them, but they can not be said to be located anywhere relative to each other. Spatial location simply does not apply.
As for the coexistence of two visual experience in the same collective without the perception of space or any other form of convergence, well I believe it’s already been explained. Convergence, we must conclude, has nothing to do with unifying experiences. Convergence, on the contrary, brings some kind of higher order awareness of their coexistence whether it be by giving them two distantly separate locations in a space-grid or by cognitive perception of their simultaneity. Without convergence, however, we have two experiences unconsciously coexisting. There is one implication that is worth mentioning: if no convergence exists, rule 3 doesn’t link them. Therefore, the existence of one never depends on the other. Would the experience of one be felt any differently if it was isolated? No, but the whole mind collective would. Although it doesn’t consciously recognize their coexistence, it does experience each one simultaneously, and they are both plastered on the same reality via rule 2.
Okay, then, by now we’re ready to formulate the formula for counterintuitive examples. Interestingly, they all arise because of rule 2. Each examples turns out to be an experience in its own right, and its quality is such that it appears to be a counterintuitive example when rule 2 is followed. Therefore, the formulaic solution is to understand what they would be without the influence of rule 2. Only then would we see that there is really no contradiction to the 3 rules, or in other words, the counterintuitive aspect of the example would no longer be projected on the experience it puts into question. So color becomes an exterior object without any internal mean, confusion becomes the inconsistency and nonsensicalness sometimes found in incompatible ideas, perceptions of space become the distances separating visual objects, and mental models of the imagination and other such mental entities make them mental “objects” that are real just like physical objects.
So now that we’ve said all that, I must make a disclaimer. When I was talking about our introspective findings of our own mental entities as really just mental models of such things, I kind of left the floor open to assuming that whatever these mental models represent in our heads may not even be there, or that if they are, they could be a thousand times remote from what the mental models present them to be. This open-ended assumption should not go any further by implying that we don’t even really experience them, for I certainly don’t believe that we have never felt our own emotions or seen the visions our own eyes bring forth. Our awareness of their presence is as authentic as Déscartes conviction that he must exist if he is to think, and furthermore, the way we perceive them during our experience of them is a perfect depiction of their essential qualities. But this is also where we must be careful in our understanding of this process, for what I mean by “perceiving” can take on an ambiguous meaning. I do not mean the perception of our mental models of them. Although these can occur during the actual experiencing of them, it is not an actual “feel” of them but an cognitive analysis of them. It’s a thought, basically. It’s the unification of all our experiences together that allows for perception of them in the other sense. In this sense, perception merely means feeling them as how they are meant to be felt. And the best way to think about it is to realize that both perceptions go on, sometimes at the same time, but they’re not the same thing. However, if the mental model of them is the only way of conceiving of them, and if this is not all together an accurate picture of them, then how do we know for sure that we have them? Well, that’s really the trick, the use of the word “know”, because we can’t really “know” about them beyond the use of a mental model, seeing as how to know is an experience in its own right, but one thing that’s for sure is that we definitely feel them, and we do so in their truest form.
However, one point I want to make on this topic is that there is a level, or a point of reduction, at which we lose even our mental models of our own mind. We still have our experiences at this level, no less clearly as at the more global level, but we lose our ability to keep a cognitive eye on them. What level is this? At the microscopic level where we start dealing with the experiences found in each individual neuron and potentially even less. The reason is that, like I made clear in my first paper, there is only a finite number of sites on the cerebral cortex for incoming data, and I’m sure evolution did her best but she couldn’t bestow us with enough sites for each and every piece of neuron or particle in each and every brain part. Not even the visual center is an exception, for although the experiences it offers are so fine and detailed, even the smallest specks it picks up correspond to a small bundle of neurons. Keep in mind that the whole-is-greater rule does not play a part here. I’m still talk about things on the same level, not across levels, but I am getting down to some very elementary units on this level. This is certainly a concern for most of the emotional areas, for they are, I assume you’d agree, pretty broad and homogenous experiences relative to most other experiences in the human collective. But this is nothing like a paradox, I assure you. In fact, there is a very simple reply (if this were an objection). All this means that the experiences associated with these microscopic levels are not accompanied by cognitive awareness of their presence as the macroscopic levels are. This would help to explain, if you were wondering, how the brownian motion of the molecules smothering our neurons doesn’t seem to have any baring on the experience associated with that neuron. So it should be assumed that experiences, variant and heterogeneous, do exist there, but then we must implement a couple of rules: 1) that, together, their sum must equal the known experience they are found in. That is, just like thought, emotion, and sensation make up the human mind, thought, emotion, and sensation must be made from components that make them up too. It would be similar to mixing paints again: a can of orange, although uniform all throughout to the appearance, is made from yellow and red mixed together. 2) By virtue of rule 3, they cannot exist independently. If they do, then they don’t really contribute to the larger component they are meant to help build, and therefore they aren’t really components of it.
The second rule is quite interesting because it must also be applied to the components of mind that are known (thought, emotion, and sensation). If so, then more needs to be said about the types of collectives I spoke about earlier, those that contain coexisting but independent components. Therefore, I’d like to introduce the idea of whole experiences and partial experiences. Partial experiences would be those like thought, emotion and sensation, i.e. they require the coexistence of each other. Suppose sensation were isolated (just the experience, not the physical brain parts). Then, due to rule 3, it would entail thought and emotion automatically (time may elapse but nevertheless...). I call it partial because it may just be that the real experience in this case is the mind as a whole, or life itself. Thoughts, emotions, and sensations may be necessary components of it, but perhaps that’s all that they should be considered, components. And, of course, you should already have figured out that whole experiences are such ones like the whole mind. They can exist independently and alone. A physical system with components that have no effect on one another will correspond to a collection of whole experiences, one per component, but within each component where you have smaller components that do effect one another, there will be correspondences to partial experiences. Of course, this means that coexisting whole experiences cannot be cognitively aware of their coexistence. Such a cognitive awareness would bring the two together, forcing them to become partial experiences of one new whole experience. Of course, as I said before, no matter how many whole experiences there are, they still comprise one collective, one mind, and therefore their presence is simultaneously felt by the beholder, and their content is projected onto one reality. Thus we have three levels: partial experiences, whole experiences, and whole mind (I guess we could consider the unconscious microscopic experiences as a fourth level, although it should be noted that they don’t necessarily have to be microscopic).
Finally, the last thing I want to tie up is something we started with at the beginning of this paper: time. Is it like space in that it is only a perception, or is it more absolute in that it is the medium through which rule 3 works its magic? On one hand, the nature of time should be no different than that of space, for even Einstein equated the two as different parts of one spacetime continuum. Saying time is something different than space in this case would be analogous to saying that one of the spatial dimensions is wholly different than any spatial dimensions 90 degrees from it. On the other hand, how can experience exist if not for time? Isn’t it necessarily the product of rule 3? What is time in absolute world of modules? Just another experience in one of them or an independent entity that transcends the mental cosmos?
Before answering this question, I want to set one thing straight. The way I think about time may disconcert many a-physicists, particularly those who grasp so firmly onto the all venerable theory of relativity. These physicists, God bless them, are accustom to thinking of time as completely indistinguishable from the 3 spatial dimensions, and for good reasons I must admit. But I think even Einstein, if he were still alive to dispute these things with me, would agree (because I remember certain readings that said the same thing) that this paradigm of spacetime is for our intellectual convenience only. It is justified by the way it works consistently with understanding the true nature of reality, but no one in their right mind, not even the physicists, would tell you that, by virtue of our experience of time, there is a crucial difference between the very essence of time and that of space. There’s no way there couldn’t be. Maybe this difference is inconsequential to the theory of relativity or the laws of physics, but where conscious experience is concern, it is bound to have resounding effects. So in answering our question above, we have to remember to outline the implications it has on spatial dimensions. That is, if time is concluded to be something more than experience, a similar conclusion must be drawn about space. If time is concluded to be no more than an experience, then we need not worry about the implications this has for space (as we’ve already picked apart space and theorized it into an experience). However, we would be unjustified in doing so if we don’t explain the peculiar relation time has with rule 3. If we are successful in meeting this intellectual obligation, the new constructs and ideas that come out of it would have to mirror themselves on the side of spatial dimensions. We’ll see what we get.
Well, to tell you guys the truth, I’ve thought all this through way before now as I sit here writing about it (naturally), so I’ll get right to the point. Time is both an experience and an absolute entity, but they are two different things. Time as an experience, I have come to conclude, is based on three experiences: change, memory, and the concept itself. By change, I mean the transitions you notice when one experience goes from one form into another. And it’s the transition itself that you notice, not the initial and final states. For this to be an authentic experience of time, the transition must be felt directly. If it were the initial and final states of another experience, sure you would experience both at different times, but in order to realize that the one has become the other, you would literally have to rationalize it. You would have to say something like “Hey, I remember it being in one state, but now it’s in a different state. The only way I can explain this is if there was a continuous change that it went through from the initial state to the present state. Therefore, some kind of change occurred.” But I’m sure our experiences of such changes as seeing objects move, hearing sounds dilate, feeling temperatures getting warmer, or maybe even the flow of thoughts running through our heads, etc. are acknowledged without as lengthy an analysis as this. In fact, it has been shown that the brain has special motion detectors that correspond to the experience of motion over and above seeing objects in one location at one time and then a different location at a later time. Now, I’m not that knowledgeable about whether every experience in our heads comes with specialized change detectors, but there are a lot of other changes, mostly at the sensory level it seems, that appear to be conspicuous enough to be considered direct experiences themselves. With the flow of our own thoughts, this statement might be questionable, but that is beside the point. This point is that change, whenever it’s experienced directly, is a unique experience onto itself, and I think we can get away with attributing our experience of time, partially if not fully, to these. The second experience is memory. Again, this is not an experience that we have to rationalize in order to realize time has gone by. Memory falls under the category of cognition. It is a certain kind, of course, one whose unique and essential quality is to be perceived as a factual event whose occurrence takes place other than in the present, and more specifically “before” the present. I say “before” in quotations because I believe it is our experience of memory that helps to create the very concept of “before”. In other words, “before” is the quality that all memories share in common; it is the mark of the subcategory they fall under. But the concept of “before” is not the same thing as the experience of it, as it’s found in memory. The concept is the third and final experience of time. Unlike the other two, it is rationalized. It is usually taught to us at a very young age, but even if it wasn’t, eventually we would be faced with the construction of it. It would probably be quite a profound and breathtaking insight at first, but certainly not uncommon. We probably came up with the concept based on the other two, but however we think about it, one thing must be for certain: it can’t be anything more than a mental model.
Now, in order to conceptualize time as an entity beyond experience, let’s try to imagine a human collective without the three aforementioned experiences. So no notice of change (although experiences can change and we should imagine that they do), no recollection of cherished memories, and don’t even begin to think about time. Although such a degenerate being would seem no more than a vegetable, maybe even a lively one, it would have a flow of experiences that go through their changes. No recognition of such changes would exist, if you can imagine that, but logic would mandate that, because rule 3 must exist if the experiences do, they must still be morphing through time. So there is this channel the mind goes through that we call time. We’re handicapped to figuring out what it is since it’s not an entity we can discern. Is it still an entity at all? well, no more an entity than rule 3. In fact, rule 3 is synonymous with time when its defined as something other than an experience. The only difference is one of perception, or our concept of time. When we imagine time, we necessarily must imagine it in mental model form like I said, and the form it takes in this state is similar to that of spatial dimensions (hence the concept of spacetime). When I introduced rule 3 to you, it too was conceived as a mental model. The truth is, however, that these two concepts, in their true form, are the same thing. And, unfortunately for us, this means we are up against incomprehensible stuff, so don’t try to solve the question of what time really is if not an experience. Just be content with the answer that it’s the same as rule 3 (i.e. momentum of experience) whatever that is.
However, I don’t want to give up at this point due to our limited imaginations. Since all we have to work with are mental models, in these cases I just keep working with them despite their inadequacies. We know what time in its true form is not: an experience. So let’s add that to our mental model. If time is indeed a real entity, it must exist in the absolute world. And if it is to be equated with rule 3, then it is the link between successive experiences. Of course, it would be a mistake to hold onto our old intuitions and concepts of time in the absolute world of modules. That would be to keep our attention on time as an experience or a concept. But before we replace the concept with another that represents time in its absolute form, we might as well imagine the absolute world without time at all, which is what should have been assumed all along. Modules don’t only exist beyond space but beyond time as well, time as we know it that is. Now, to get back to rule 3, although there is no time sequence (as we know time) that they fit into, there must still be some kind of order that does the same service. It would have to be a linear order, one that allows each experience to be linked with momentum. So if you could imagine a module with experiences X, Y, Z, and A, B, C, picture them linked together like a snake. Time in the absolute, therefore, is the thread that joins each of these experience. And always remember that we are talking about rule 3 every time we mention time, so this thread is also the collective’s momentum. If there is any difference between time and rule 3 at all, it is that rule 3 is the link between each experience and time is the sum of all the links. The next step in our model is to recall that modules don’t exist in space either, so this “snake” cannot extend in any direction. For every module, all the experiences therein are overlapped. Thus, the links should not be discernable but the order is still there. I understand that without spreading them out like beads on a string, the meaning of their “order” becomes just short of meaningless. But “short” is the appropriate word, for there can still be a certain order that relates them together that has nothing to do with spatial or temporal positions. I’ll leave the imagining up to you.
So this is the absolute form of time, an order. What about space? I believe I can reduce space, as an experience, to the same thing, but as you’ll see, the only difference will be that space is an order in some other collective, not our own. This is how it’s done: Any physical system that you see moving around in space corresponds to an experience that belongs to it. Moreover, if you consider yourself as a coexisting physical system, then a super-system comprised of you and the original system corresponds to a super-mind in a supermodule. Now, the spatial movement that you see in the physical system becomes a temporal movement in the system’s collective. Also, the movement you see the system undergoing relative to you (i.e. the change in distance between you and it) becomes a temporal movement in the supermodule. When either the system or the super-system moves through space, it’s actually moving through time, a sort of time that belongs to it. Remember that since space is an experience, visually seeing the object move about is only to have a change in experience. So in the final analysis, there are three “snakes”, three sets of experience linked by momentum: there’s your own experiences, the experiences of the other system, and the experiences of the super-system.
Something we can say about this order is that it has a certain direction. Time goes in the direction it does because antecedent experiences entail consequent ones, and rarely is the reverse ever the case. So the logic of our own thoughts is what starts the engines of time and gets it going (also, the flow of every other experience, but that’s implicit). I say “rarely” and not “never” because if the logical order of our thoughts determines which ones appear before others, then what kind of an effect on time do “if and only if” premises have? To elaborate, “if and only” if premises are conditional statements that can be said in either direction. For example, the statement “It is a square if and only if it has four right angles equidistant from each other” means that it can also be stated “It has four right angles equidistant from each other if and only if it is a square.” You would think that these kinds of premises would have the effect of reversing time. It probably would if some exterior agent were to trigger a change in direction (remember: whether or not it’s an “if and only if” premise, its momentum is veered in one direction only). Even if this happens, there would be some restrictions: in order to experience time in reverse, the whole mind, not just a portion of it, would have to be reflected in the opposite direction. In this case, you couldn’t really notice the reversal of time since you’d just go with it. And if it were just a portion of the mind, you wouldn’t actually recognize it as a reversal of time either. Remember what we said about the direction of time way up there? We said that time, like space, was just a linear dimension without a designated direction. It’s contents determine the direction, and it’s only when the universe as one object moves through time that time itself appears to have a direction. But if a portion of a system, mental or physical, was to reverse its direction of processing, it would just seemed to be moving backwards. That is, the object or experience would reverse, not time itself. Another restriction to note is that “if and only if” statements, if put into reverse, would only go on that way until the first in the series is reached. At that point, because the next one is not an “if and only if” statement, the momentum can’t continue on in that direction. Statements like “If it’s a bird, it’s an animal” are just “if” statements (we’ll call them that), and the reverse, as you can tell, makes no logical sense: “If it’s an animal, it’s a bird.” Rule 3 can’t allow for such entailments, and so if anything, the momentum would “bounce” back in the original direction (like a wave in a rope that reached the end).
But why all this talk about “if and only if” statements? I’ll let you guys know what I have in mind in a second. Listen to this first: the thing about “if” statements that interests me is that with the antecedent you can predict the consequent. That’s just like taking a physical cause and predicting the effect. It’s for the same reason too, because the “if” statement would correspond to such a physical process. The conditional link between the antecedent and consequent statement is the law of nature that links the cause with the effect. However, with “if” statements, the antecedent statement can’t be predicted from the consequent one. Similarly, a physical effect can come from indeterminate causes. Broken glass on the floor could be from a ball, a mis-coordinated punch, maybe a window installer dropped it, someone could have thought it was a good place to dump his garbage... The list goes on. But with “if and only if” statements, it doesn’t matter whether you have the antecedent or the consequence. Either one is predictable from the other. What physical system can present itself in a state such that all the clues we need to determine its cause are there? It would have to be a system in which no exterior influence can have an effect. If we see broken glass on the ground, and somehow the only other thing in existence is a ball, we must conclude it had previous encounters with the glass. In fact, if we know the exact position of the glass and the ball and we know their exact direction and velocity (or acceleration), we could trace their histories back to the point where he see the ball smashing through the glass. In this case, not only have we made a good guess as to the cause of the present state, but we can conclusively state that we know it. But we live in a universe of great complexity, and every system around us is surrounded by other systems that can interfere with each other. If we were to trace the path of the ball (considering we know its momentum and all that), we might trace it back to the window, but how do we know it wasn’t really thrown by some kid who, at the time, was between it and the window. It would be a failure not to consider him as part of the system. Any prediction of this sort would be a failure without taking every other coexisting physical system into consideration. Anything can interfere.
There is only one physical system that is immune to this type of failure, and it is the entire universe-object. Nothing exterior interferes with it. So what? Why am I going on such a rant about this? Now I’ll tell you. Do you think the entire universe-object experiences nothing but “if and only if” statements? Every state you can find it in, physical or mental, can determine every other state, and this is true for any point in time. But the direction of momentum! It’s already been decided, right? True, but why in this direction and not the other? Don‘t say because of the order of cause and effect in the natural laws we know of. We already argued against that being a necessity (go back and read it again if you’ve forgotten). The reason why the one direction was instigated and not the other would probably be revealed by revisiting our favorite issue, the origins of the cosmos. Let’s not go through all that again. Let’s skip ahead to the conclusions we pulled out of it. We reasoned that it might be found at either the beginning or end as long as there’s some incident there to ignite the first spark, the Big Bang or Big Crunch for example. It was also reasoned that if no such incidents were to be found, the origins could be traced to a source outside the spacetime continuum that has a static correspondence to the mental cosmos at every point in time. Furthermore, the latter possibility was chosen because, since there are several levels with constant links joining them, an absolute entity we called modules had to exist in a timeless and spaceless state. But in either case, I can argue for the possibility that the universe collective is actually traveling in both directions.
What? At the same time? Well, no, not at the same time, at least not in the sense that whatever you’re experiencing now is also going on in a parallel universe but in the opposite direction in time. If that were the case, why would it have passed your point in time at that very moment? If the mental cosmos began with some incident, it might have propagated in both directions, and the only thing we can say about its simultaneity is that both mental “waves” are equidistant from the source (and even “equidistant” would have to undergo a revision of its definition). If we are talking about a mental cosmos with no beginnings or ends, just corresponding modules, then the mental wave, which is at the point in time we call “now”, could still have a corresponding wave in a parallel mental cosmos, but at no particular point in time. Remember that the absolute universe is outside time. Therefore, there is no point we can call “now”, and so the waves aren’t at any particular spot. Somehow (and don’t bother trying to understand how), the waves are nowhere and everywhere along their respective collectives. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the waves are not just single impulses, but a never-ending stream of momentum such that once you’ve passed a certain point in time, that point still contains consciousness, your ever lasting echo. Just think of the momentum as a smooth but continuous stream rather than a quick wave. Anyway you want to think of it, there is perfect symmetry in the universe.
But, when you think of it, this is not really possible for lower level collectives, for not every experience on every level is an “if and only if” experience. But this is where the whole-is-greater rule comes in handy. Not that we are talking about how components relate to the whole, but how different minds and experiences can occupy the same place and time. For every experience that is merely an “if” experience, there could be another “if” experience that’s qualitatively different in a reversed parallel universe corresponding to it. All you’d have is a correspondence though, not simultaneity since time is meaningless in the absolute world. This experience, of course, would make sense out of its place in the whole order of the cosmos.
So from all this, I perceive three possibilities: 1) The universe is traveling in only one direction, but with the potential to travel in the opposite direction. But if this were true, the question of why the momentum of the universe travels in the one direction remains a mystery, and we’d have to complicate our models with extra constructs representing whatever does mechanize the momentum. It just seems that balance quenches the need for answers somehow. 2) The universe has two minds (a mind and an anti-mind), one whose momentum is in one direction, the other whose momentum is in the opposite direction. If these minds are indeed separate, it would mean that every module comes with a twin, and they overlap perfectly, and in them, of course, our twin universe-minds. 3) The third possibility is like the second: there are two opposite minds, except that they’re not minds, but whole experiences. They coexist in one mind, or in terms of the absolute universe, they coexist in the same module. Therefore, you have twin whole experiences but only one module. The paradox in this third possibility is that if they are coexisting whole experiences, there must be some kind of simultaneity between them. If they are both in one and the same mind, they are both experienced by the mind. How can this be, though? How can they when they travel in opposite directions? I can see this happening if the mental cosmos began at some "original experience". If it did, and that experience being an "if and only if" experience, it entailed in both directions, and I can conceive of both waves being experienced simultaneously. And the use of the term "simultaneous" might not even be so twisted either, because time as an absolute entity is the same thing as rule 3, and so all it means is that the original experience entailed two things literally at the same time. Mind you, you would have to conceive of two mutually exclusive physical states for the universe, but like fundamental particles, this only develops into no more than an inference. Although these two streams of mind may coexist in the same module, it doesn't make much sense down at the microcosmic level where experiences are merely "if" ones. In this case, we would have to assume that for every experience, it's twin experience is in a different module. Now, the real difficulty with this third possibility is when no "original experience" ever existed. In that case, no experience in one universe corresponds with any one particular experience in the other. There is no "original experience" to compare their equidistance with. In effect, they must exist on two separate time lines. Is it possible to experience two time lines? It might. Remember that time, in the absolute world, refers to a certain order between experiences. If you can imagine those snakes again, all you have to do is imagine two of them with no connections whatsoever. This would be the mental model for a mind with multiple whole experiences too. It means that two time lines not effecting each other are experienced by the one mind. It still makes very little sense though, for what does it mean to experience the state of both minds? You would think they should be experienced at the same time. This is not such a problem for coexisting whole experiences in one mind if they’re traveling in the same direction. The whole experiences would correspond to different physical systems that go through their states simultaneously. That makes sense, but when they travel in opposite directions, it’s nearly inconceivable. It might even be wholly inconceivable, but I don’t want to go that far yet, because we do have the mental model of the two snakes in the absolute universe to make a scintilla of sense out of it. According to this model, they exist in different temporal dimensions. But there is a one to one correspondence. That is, even though there are two mental streams for the universe, each point in either stream corresponds to one particular state in the physical universe. There is only one order of physical states in the physical universe, and each one has a correspondence to a point in both mental streams, and this means an indirect correspondence between the two streams. So since they have a one to one correspondence, perhaps this is how they coexist in the same mind. Maybe they experience each other in some incomprehensible way. Or maybe all this jargon means that the second possibility has more merit (or maybe the first). After all, we used the whole-is-greater rule to explain their overlap, and this rule was originally meant to explain experience on different levels. Experiences on different levels exist in different modules, so it probably should be used the same way for parallel universes: twin modules all throughout. Furthermore, experiences are supposed to make sense out of the behavior of a physical system, and the behavior a physical system is factored primarily by the direction of motion of its components. The opposite direction comprises a different kind of behavior. Therefore, one mind, although it may contain several whole experiences, cannot correspond to both directions. Anyway, I’m just leaving them as possibilities for all you readers to rack your brains over. I’m vouching for the second one, although it would be very interesting to see if the third one can pan out somehow.
There is one more thing I want to suggest, but only as food for thought. At this point, I’m too tired to add anything more onto my theory, so I don’t even want to try and justify the following. Everything that’s essential to the advanced version has been said. Here it is anyway: If you have an object traveling along a spatial dimension, that doesn’t mean that’s the only spatial dimension there is. Why should it be any different in the case of the universe traveling along the time dimension? There could be an infinite abundance of temporal, or even spatial, dimensions. The implication: there could be an infinite abundance of parallel universes traveling in different temporal directions. But this is not something I want to get into now, so I quit. I’m done.
I’m done, but I’m not vanquished. I like to be silly in my writings sometime, so don’t take this as a defeat. I enjoy rambling on about my theories, or just the simple things in my everyday life. I have fun doing it. I’d like to write other papers in the future. Particularly, one about the “now” of time because there’s something about it that strikes me as peculiar, almost like every point of “now” in time is the same “now” as every other point, but the exact meaning behind this sense I have won’t jump off the tip of my brain. Another paper I’d like to write would be long after I’ve versed myself deep into the physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. I wonder what kind of roll I can make up in my theory for light and the oddities about its velocity. But that’s for later.
In all these papers, I’ve made talk about my ideas as though they were “facts” about the absolute, but of course I realize that facts and truths are limited to our infinitesimal microcosm. They are reducible to mere thoughts, but under the guise of rule 2. I make no apologies for this (I had to do it), but I wish to make these clarifications now. Any taste of the absolute (if that were possible) is bound to shock and bewilder anyone, even me, the one who claims to have the best insight of it (that is, the best insight of my own theory). It won’t be, and can’t be, prepared for or expected, not at all. All we know to exist beyond our minds is the immediate world of sensation. Beyond that, we could be a brain in a vat. The true universe could have as bizarre a form and nature that nothing of our contemporary science could ever hope to make sense out of. Even logic itself might change radically. How do we know that other minds don’t exist out there, other beings, alien life forms or spiritual entities, or even things we can’t imagine, that think with a logic that would tie our own in knots and tangles should we try to match it? After all, the logic we use is just the momentum of cognition. Yes, momentum is not only time, but the reasons for why one experience leads to the other. You should know rule 3 is another name for the human logic system. So how could we ever know other thought networks which construct contradictory theories and conclusion to our own aren’t possible. If they are possible, my own theory about the mental cosmos and the absolute world could be challenged. And if it loses, that would contradict the whole reason for believing in these adversary thought networks. That may seem paradoxical to our logic, but it might still work since the justification could be found in the other system. As long as they’re linked in a coherent flow somehow, they’ll seem “logical” to the beholder that thinks them.
To be totally honest with you though, I like the not-so-advanced theory better. Not that I have any doubts about the advanced theory, but the simple version feels just that much more “colorful”. I mean, talking about the absolute and all its modules just seems so dull because the absolute means the realm above qualitative diversity, and that’s just too gray for me. I think I’m a bit of a romantic in that respect. Keep in mind that the advanced theory is new, very abstract, and most likely not totally free of flaws. I encourage you to find them and write to me. I always like arguments (not so much face to face though-I am, I must confess, a shy fellow).