If you can't find any support for my thesis anywhere, it must be either a really good or a really bad idea lol

I wouldn't advocate panpsychism, my present view is more of a panqualiaism. The claim is that qualia are an essential feature of matter's dynamic non-locality, with the models of current quantum physics barely scratching the surface of its real nature. So I'm thinking that microscopic entanglement effects produce at least fleeting qualia in many if not all the universe's environments, including earth, and massive entanglement or coherence systems with possible psychical properties exist or can be diversely induced in non-local substance, with organic consciousness the instantiation we have thus far studied, conceived as having a salient aspect of relative locality, its more or less three-dimensional, bulked molecular structure produced by a nervous system amongst bodies and relatively human-scaled mass.

A qualia-based psyche may be embodied in what we theorize as inorganic chemistry. Awareness analogous to human qualitative states might exist in organic lifeforms with simpler nervous systems without being meta-organized such that self-awareness is possible. AI can probably be self-aware and purposeful in the absence of meta-organized qualia, as simulations of organic function in a computational medium.

I doubt the information analogy applies to psychoactive substance, the non-locality of which defies laws of classical physics.

We could probably debate whether true chance even exists at the most basic level, but was the emergence of human life from inorganic chemistry relatively improbable, and what were the conditions that made it possible? Existence itself may not be a matter of chance, but what can we claim about directional necessity and purpose?

There are many implicit assumptions in that outlook which I question, first and foremost the idea that life arose by chance. — Wayfarer

This view seems to be completely absent from scientific theorizing, but many intuit it and strongly agree anyway. Is there some intellectual formulation of the idea that exceeds "mystery of faith" supernaturalism? Do you mean that life inevitably springs from non-life because of matter's essential properties, or that the universe is driven by a purposeful form-giving force? How can it be verified empirically?

Reasoning is definition of thought in terms of a practical function, its role in formulating perceptions as mechanistic cause and effect for the technological interaction of our bodies with the environment. Reasoning is ethically good because it is a practical means to decide which behaviors will cause the greatest mutual benefit. Mutual benefit is possible because of extreme likeness between the basic needs of every human: food, shelter, clothing, health, and community. Our reality can be forced into a different form with culture, but this simple template is probably why human existence in civilized contexts was initially even possible. We share our essential criteria for life, and have the cognitive reasoning to recognize this and construct sustainable, highly adaptive collectives accordingly.

Vicissitudes of nature, the unconscious, and behavior in institutional settings can cause reasoning, our practical problem-solving, to degenerate, and constantly has. Reasoning is a means to achieve human goals, a prerequisite of the biologically rare type of good we might call socialized actualization, but is not in unconditional control.

Makes me wonder if the concept "rationality" is a reification of "reasoning", maybe an idealization of some benefit that can nonetheless have the unwanted effect of inducing nihilism when inadequately contemplated.

C'mon, you don't want to discuss the history of Western thought at a philosophy forum? You guys must have some ideas.

Qualia as quantum is simply a different mechanistic framework to perhaps more widely and inclusively model the same and maybe further substances. Altered states of consciousness could be induced by changes to wavicle/EMF patterns in addition to the traditional, only fractional explanation provided by analysis of neurotransmitter concentrations and neuron synapsing in general. If possible, researching the impact of hallucinogens on cells might identify molecular loci of entanglement and superposition effects in the body, qualia's deep structure. If this line of examination proves fruitful, more perceptive real time scanning will ideally be developed to make qualitative phenomena scientifically observable in a non-invasive way.

That is, in my model of consciousness as quasi-stable, dynamic standing wave resonance w/in our brains, anything that disrupts the stability of the resonant condition may be experienced as a qualia pain — Sir Philo Sophia

My eventual conclusion was very similar, that qualia of all types - feelings, sensations, perceptions and so on - are the additive properties of superpositioned and entangled particle and EMF wavelengths further integrated and synchronized by neuromatter tissues such as neurons and glia. Standing brain waves as registered by an EEG are those additive properties at the macroscopic, currently observable level.

Without tissue being equivalent to qualia, no qualia can exist, that's the entire mind/body problem from an empirical angle. Quantum physics possibly explains how tissue can be equivalent to qualia at a very basic, non-metaphorical level. Qualitative experiences can differ, but awareness itself may be extremely integral to the structure of reality, though not of course absolutely fundamental. Experience is a lot more than what so-called sensory data can account for. Perhaps we can move from computational analogies and loose correlations that ignore all sorts of phenomena to a model of actual causality.

why are you so convinced that qualia consciousness must arise from the quantum effects instead of simply being a macro-scale phenomenon w/o requiring the quantum effects to do its cool stuff? — Sir Philo Sophia

We had a lengthy discussion on this topic in the first Qualia and Quantum Mechanics post that contains the seeds of the idea, you can find it in the philosophy of mind section. Basically, particle interactions are time-lagged, while perceptual consciousness isn't. We don't experience the world as a flurry of our constituent atoms, but rather as a perpetualized substrate, an integrated field of awareness. I hypothesized that this binding agent was the electromagnetic field of the brain interacting with relative locality via sense-perception and relative non-locality via quantum effects in molecules. This explains image qualia and some of the paranormal, but how do you account for feelings, tastes, sounds, smells, and so on? My hypothesis was that all qualia emerge from extremely complex additive properties of quantum entangled and superpositioned wavicles, so qualitative experience is actually a component of the matter itself rather than being an incoherently conceived immaterial supervenience either generated as an illusion or transcending the empirical world. This perhaps resolves the perennial mind/body problem of philosophy.

That info about photosynthetic reaction centers is from a book, Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology. Its extremely well-written, easy to read, and enlightening.

does not scale up to be the framework or foundation for any macro-scale system — Sir Philo Sophia

Regarding issues of complexity, it goes without saying that cells of the brain - neurons, glia, and so on - are categorically different in hybrid structure from a photosynthetic adaptation such as a leaf cell - grana, chloroplasts and all that - so there may be uniquely cognitive working mechanisms for sustaining qualia at multiple levels against thermodynamic disorder, with various EMF forms integrating all these units of functional entanglement and coherence via broad effects on the quantum reactions in assemblies of molecules. How all of this could be measured is quite the conundrum, as you described.

The Gibbs free energy for converting a mole of CO2 to glucose... — Sir Philo Sophia

I mean that in an individual reaction center complex associated with an array of chlorophyll pigments, it doesn't matter where a photon contacts the transport-active electrons in that complex, the photon will induce total energy yield. Transport is not a function of contact sequences between orbiting particles, but rather diffusion through quantum entangled wavicle substance. This phenomenon has been statistically observed in experiments with a specially designed laser apparatus. What happens in biochemical pathways beyond the reaction center complex as carbon dioxide and water are ultimately converted to glucose may indeed involve a significant loss of energy as heat.

I do take what I understand to be 'qualia' (the vivid experience aspect of awareness) seriously; however, to me that has nothing necessarily to do with spiritual or soul stuff, and is instead purely a mental property of the brain which dies with it. — Sir Philo Sophia

My hypothesis is that qualia occur from the additive properties of wavicles whenever they entangle and superposition. In non-living environments, these wavicles are perpetually disentangling and decohering also, so matter is composed of fleeting nanoscale qualia properties. When structures evolve to sustain and synchronize this additive facet of wavicle interactions, a mind can emerge. So qualia, the basic building block phenomena of mind, exist independent of awareness, and qualitative experience results from the organizing of inanimate qualia in various ways.

I don’t think the neuronal EMF in and of itself is so important b/c that has been measured a modeled extensively to little avail as to what the brain’s processing & representation modality is, which is a big mystery. I suspect it is one big holographic phase-space processor so you’ll hardly find any one node/area with discrete information/representation after the optic nerve projects Cartesian space images onto the visual cortex (V1-V4) on the back of the brain. — Sir Philo Sophia

So in your estimation, EEGs aren't finely tuned enough to pick up the causality of standing wave states? What kind of research has been carried out on brain waves? How could an additive standing wave get instantiated in matter? Seems to me that a huge class of quantum active molecules such as pigments, specially adapted cells capable of somehow transcending membrane barriers, and maybe thus far unknown functionality in brain regions would have to exist for generating macroscopic waves.

The point here then is that it's not so much that some new exceptional phenomena we call "quantum" is the "secret" behind consciousness. Rather the "pre-quantum" paradigm we use to talk about how things behave in terms of objects and objective models, is insufficient to even define consciousness much less explain it. Consciousness is a behavior that defies objective modeling. — jambaugh

All scientific models have of course been only approximate so far, so I agree objectivity is probably constrained. But I think the theory of quantum reality as a single, uniform, fundamentally probabilistic entity that classical causality resides in only works as a technology-based paradigm currently and probably temporarily applicable to the scale of multi-celled life in earth-like environments, capable of being progressively revised in major ways. In microbiology, some structures can buffer quantum processes from the decoherence induced by thermodynamic entropy to such an extent that they are extremely refined for nanoscale efficiency, not quantum "phenomena" but a categorically different quantum "mechanism". For instance, the one hundred percent efficiency in photosynthetic translation of light into chemical energy during reaction center activation exceeds even superconductors, or the extremely rapid speeds of enzyme catalysis, hundreds of thousands of reactions per minute including intricate feedback loops. To my knowledge, there is an essentially non-local reality indicated by our patchy current observations of "quantum" phenomena, then an earthbound thermodynamic reality as the facet of non-locality we perceive as local, definable spatio-temporally, and then a naturally selected quantum reality of relatively mechanistic function residing in biological systems.

I'm personally not too focused on how the brain does anything b/c often biological systems are 'gobligook' ways to carry out otherwise more strait forward methods (think how DNA coding and control circuits are super redundantly/incoherently implemented) — Sir Philo Sophia

I would imagine that any relative inefficiency in DNA is because of the balance it must maintain between the coding functions and the self-replicative, mutational functions. Its biochemical inefficiency might be optimal for evolutionary efficiency, and is most likely unrepresentative of the nearly perfected operations in multi-hundred million year old, naturally selected biochemistry generally. Reverse engineering quantum biological systems into theory would probably almost always reveal ways to improve even our most effective technologies.

The general form of your theory seems valid to me, though I've never encountered some of the terminology. How does a holographic phase space work? It would be cool if you could explain variability in the experience of "I" or "self" as a material phenomenon, correlated with specific molecules, cells and emergent brain structures, a synthesis with neuroscience. This could possibly help diffuse the illusory and implicitly exploitative nature of some modern psychology, so that treatments drift away from pernicious knee-jerk judgements and towards more real mutualizing knowledge. It would be great if you gave some consideration to the implications for practice and ethics.

My initial thought is that the brain's electromagnetic field may be a material signature of the integrative function you're looking to model, so if you understood the way EMFs are generated by organic tissues and intersect with quantum effects in various cellular assemblages it might be a clue as to how those proposed modules of functional qualia are macroscopically oriented. Reactions between the atoms of molecules have already been demonstrated as sensitive to electromagnetic fields, magnetoreception in birds comes to mind, so that the brain's EMF is conceivably equally causal to a biochemical pathway, in addition to possibly being intrinsically qualia-like from the additive properties of its constituent wavelengths. A theory of brain waves and their effects would probably contribute greatly to a scientific explanation for qualitative experience.

How does a Coherence Field relate to an Energy or Force Field? Coherence is the essential quality of a holistic system. Perhaps it's similar to what I call an "Enformation Field", which causes novel & unique things (wholes) to appear where there was only statistical potential before. The EF is not a material field, but merely a mathematical operator, like addition. — Gnomon

The way I understand it, energy is fundamentally a mathematical entity like you seem to be saying, a completely abstract quantity. It is a definition of relative motion, so all matter above absolute zero can be measured as energized.

Relative motion creates tension relationships resulting in relative stabilities. An example from classical physics is the structure of a building, a balancing of kinetic energies that produces relatively stable potential energies. Atomic chemistry, the constrained range of energy wells typically called orbitals that electrons probabilistically reside in, analogous to harmonics of vibrating strings. Quantum physics, the entanglement systems of electrons we are discussing, where interactions between multiple wavicles create a hybrid structure. Coherence fields could be a further level of emergence in entanglement, where electron wavicle fields are in multiple so to speak superimposed states at once, on both smaller scales and larger scales, similar to how visible photons produce colors, and complex additive properties of wavelengths in these superpositioned systems supported by arrays of molecules create more sustained and organized qualia, the basic substance of perception, which eventually become sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings emergent from synchronizing and amplifying mechanisms in cells and organic bodies generally.

That's why I have concluded that there must have been a Primordial Engineer or Prime Programmer. In my thesis the Mathematician itself consists, not of matter, but of infinite Information (potential ratios, relationships). Which is why Reason or Logos or Structure is the essence of everything we know. Since I don't know anything about that hypothetical entity, I simply call it G*D, and define it by its observed effects in the world. — Gnomon

I'm on the Kantian fence about whether reality itself operates according to mathematical laws. Math may be fundamental, but it could also be the product of a distinctly organic way of perceiving, perhaps only relevant as an evolutionary adaptation in relation to earth environments, with the foundation being chaotic fluctuation that our minds resolve into form as an approximating prediction mechanism. I think observational science could conceivably prove either option though, so its not a hopelessly inaccessible antinomy.

By "coherence field" I'm thinking of a bulk entanglement structure, similar to what researchers are finding in photosynthetic reaction centers but larger scale, much more complex and hybridized. The additive properties of these wavicle systems then produce qualitative experience. Qualia could be not a representation of electromagnetic color by the brain, but actually, physically an intricate form of additive (perhaps "superpositioned") electromagnetic matter amongst the body's cells, kind of a photoelectric facet of aggregate mass perhaps. The basic idea is that qualia are colors!

I suppose the clock mechanism idea is that awareness and self-awareness exist as a product of structures that meta-organize these additive photoelectromagnetic coherence fields, synchronizing diverse qualia into a holistic qualitative "experiencing". Maybe much if not all matter inherently has a qualia aspect or can at least be induced into a qualia-like state when its wavelengths adopt additive forms. Bacteria could have qualia without self-awareness, and computers capable of self-awareness without qualia depending on how their components are meta-organized.

So, the holistic notion of Panpsychism can explain how two or more entangled particles can behave as-if somehow connected across space into a single entity. That “spooky action at a distance” is possible because the particles themselves are not isolated things, but more like the simple ideas that make-up a complex concept. Ideas are not bound by the limitations of space & time. — Gnomon

The comparision between entanglement and idea conception is interesting. Maybe qualia of perception and thought could be understood as the additive properties of diffuse, superimposed (superpositioned?) entanglement/coherence states that are each associated with a specific spectra of brain wave, like electromagnetic wavelengths synthesize to produce a different color. This explains why qualitative experiences can be strongly correlated with but never isolated to particular brain regions, and how brain wave scans such as EEGs display a fundamental lack of repetition. Each qualitative state could be at least partially the additive influence of not every time-lagged, functional grouping of cells and their supposed constituent "particles" in the brain, but rather every emergent coherence field, many orders of magnitude greater in variability of hybridization. And the causality of these coherence fields may exist beyond spatio-temporality.

This could be why qualia are more holistic than the theoretically localized chemistry of neural networks and how any two arbitrarily introspected experiences are typically connected in a more or less fluid continuity while never being exactly the same: at all moments (except if you smoke a whole lot of pot, or so I'm told), a complex superimposition is in effect. Maybe a sort of clock mechanism exists in the brain for making coherence fields more synchronized, analogous to a CPU, but how that might be embodied in tissue and how to characterize it in experiential terms I have not a clue. Maybe the presence of a "clock mechanism" correlates with self-awareness?

The first assertion that caught my eye was "Phenomena of non-locality seem to have causal primacy over three-dimensional forms". — Gnomon

I like the webpage design of your blog, easy to read. An interesting insight I got from a chemistry chat, though of course the psychologically oriented viewpoint was mine, is that the appearance of solids, liquids and gases is essentially an emergent property of the relative degree to which material substance produces a perceptual state, not an absolute outcome of atomic behavior or some such fundamentality as traditionally construed. In earth conditions, whenever matter as bulk mass is in motion, having a kinetic energy and temperature, it is to a degree in all phase states simultaneously, but our sense-perceptual minds convert physical matter into relatively uniform substance, a process which is functional in circumstances of the ordinary such as those prevailing prehistorically, like an optical illusion. Then our scientific conceiving generalizes the sense-perceptions into categories of phase, and how that affects what we notice phenomenologically I'm not entirely sure. A mathematically non-negligible disjunct between phases and energies exists of course, but the impression of "solid", "liquid" or "gas" is a construction of consciousness.

So it seems to me that matter is fundamentally closer to superposition than spatio-temporal particularity, and an argument could be made for entanglement, coherence and tunneling also, with our cognition performing the act of resolving these non-local phenomena into the locality of organic bodies and atomic theory, essentially behavior-derived instinct and a conceptual thought experiment. Spatio-temporality is a theoretical interpretation of human-scaled, sense-perceptual mass, not intrinsic to matter. From this perspective, the idea that matter violates laws of classical physics and thermodynamic chemistry in diverse ways is almost intuitive.

I don't identify the substance of relatively non-local matter with ideations such as Platonic forms beyond agreeing that our structure conceiving is infinitely adaptable to any possible perception if we employ mathematics.

I think we're both on track, but the cosmos is somewhat bigger than either of us lol

This is absolutely key because it temporalizes all of reality at the most fundamental level and it has to if experience is to be fundamental because experiences cannot happen in no time (i.e. at points in time). Atoms do not exist at points in time, they, like everything else, exist during intervals of time (no matter how small) and that does indeed mean that there is "something that it is like" to be an atom (more precisely, to be this or that atom) just as Thomas Nagel famously argued that there was "something that it is like" to be a bat...no matter how different and inaccessible to us it might be, that "something-that-it-is-like"-ness, is, in a very real sense, WHAT the atom IS. — Siti

To expand this, spatio-temporality isn't a universal substrate, as if all existing matter is defined in relation to a single, absolute container. The heterogeneities and discontinuities of which space and time are a relatively specific form may be radical enough to regard many phenomena of substance as completely indescribable with any structural concept we've applied or maybe even invented. We must then continue to investigate what the range of non-trivially "aware" occurrences is, perhaps entirely unanalogizable to what we have so far theorized or conceived.

At this stage of scientific knowledge, we can be somewhat confident of how human agency's linkage to sense-perceptual matter emerges from the organic, namely in association with substances relatively near the scale of the human body, electromagnetic fields as brain waves, and quantum mechanisms within the functional molecules of cells, but we cannot yet model what qualia are. Feelings and many additional qualia will probably turn out as also connected with quantum effects, but these phenomena must be located partially beyond the orbit of rational agency in currently unknown ways, maybe even beyond the body. We don't have a theoretical model of experience that transcends traditional behavior-oriented biochemistry, at least not in Western culture as far as I've learned. The phenomena we experience may no longer be atomic or even spatio-temporally local by the time we deeply understand even human qualia.

What it is like to be a wildebeest or even a human may completely reconstitute what everything (except common sense morality) is like, possibly not even thinkable at this stage. I'm sure there are some extremely improbable moral dilemmas that could throw a wrench in multi-millennial common sense, but it seems to me that our behavioral ideals are basically rock solid because like human rational agency, they are also fundamentally tied to the nature of human-like bodies that change in extremely gradual ways relative to our practical decision-making's frame of reference.

Since we're talking about how organic matter produces mind and plugging our blogs, I've been giving consideration to exactly this subject, and you guys should read my essay The Origins and Evolution of Perception in Organic Matter. I think it could be a good supplement to the discussion.

Some more quantum weirdness to contemplate! Does The Case Against Reality employ any similar sorts of ideas?

In exactly what way consciousness emerged via evolution is a mystery, but we can be fairly certain about what eventually had to obtain in order for it to be possible. Initially, the electrical properties in aggregates of nervous tissue such as the brain needed to be robust enough that a stable supervenience of electromagnetic field (EMF) was created by systematic electron fluxing. The quantum effects in molecules of the body were sensitive to this trace EMF energy source, creating a structural complex of aggregate biochemical matter and sustained radiation. This EMF/quantum hybridization is likely responsible for the existence of qualia, how we perceive the unfathomably minute and diverse fluctuating of environments as a perpetualized substrate, perturbed by its surroundings but never vanishing while we are awake and lucid, the essence of perception or “stream of consciousness”.

Non-local phenomena are ever underlying qualitative consciousness, both its EMF properties as well as the bulked three-dimensional matter that partially dampens non-locality, and quantum processes in cells interface perceptual qualia with non-local aspects of the natural world still enigmatic to scientific knowledge. Quantum features of biochemistry have likely been refined evolutionarily so that mechanisms by which non-locality affects organisms, mechanisms of EMF/matter interfacing, mechanisms targeting particular environmental stimuli via functionally tailored pigments in sense organs, and mechanisms for the translation of stimulus into representational memory all combine in such a way that what we call ‘intentionality’ is possible, a mind constructed to perform executive functions of deliberative interpretation and behavioral strategizing, beyond mere reflex-based memory conjoined to stimulus/response. Thus, qualitative consciousness actually precedes awareness, for qualia can exist and perform a functional role in consort with quantum effects and additional gradations of non-local reality while an organism almost entirely lacks executive, centralized control in the form of intentions.

It works like magic in stories, but when's the last time you actually saw someone in your presence knocked-down without touching? — Gnomon

Um...no comment lol

As demonstrated by Descartes, my reasoning Self is the only thing I know for sure. But, is it a will'o'wisp of fleeting imagination, or something more durable that can survive death? Is the Soul a gift of God, or of Evolution? Is it a spark of divinity, or merely a tool for genetic survival? — Gnomon

I think the issue of human essence reduces to the nature of mind as the intersection of material environment/anatomy with immaterial experience linked to soul. The concept of matter was initially a product of thought experiments, enriched by technology into a detailed, powerful mechanistic understanding of substance as it presents to the sense organs. Our sense-perceptions, extremely well-suited for many practical needs to begin with, were potently enhanced, giving us a far-reaching ability to observe from a sort of abbreviatingly efficient perspective, but lacking the capacity to explain all kinds of phenomena, including the immaterial aspects of experience. The blending of chemistry and neuroscience with quantum physics will probably make qualia more explicable and revolutionize spatiotemporal theories of matter, presenting a whole new vista of possible theory and technology. In my view, many intuitions about soul will most likely have some kind of scientifically derived validity, or else where would the pervasiveness of these ideas have come from in the first place?

So basically, I think we create the apparent world by cognition, but this is a simultaneous mess of inadequate reifications that are constantly being used to inhibit unity. Theory is ulterior motive as much as explanation, and we don't have much control of our motives, though ideals are easy enough to articulate. We've had satisfying ideals for millennia! The spirit of the European Enlightenment isn't really that different in essence from Plato's basic outlook, or that of the Buddha, or what lastingly influential prophets everywhere have always been saying when they get the unlikely chance.

Current science suggests that quantum effects are crucial not just to consciousness but all biological systems. Tunneling is speculated as the main mechanism for the processes in active sites during enzyme catalysis, making it the foundation of metabolic reactions. Random diffusion in three-dimensions must be almost negligible as a factor in biochemical pathways considering the speeds and extremely intricate coordinating involved. My theory is that a densely packed, rapidly morphing cytoskeleton scaffolds vesicle transport and cellular chemistry like a flexible, evolving quantum factory, helping to bring all the key macromolecules into alignment so that their subatomic particles tunnel, entangle, and synchronize in coherence mechanisms, with most of this nanoscale activity happening near instantaneously, unencumbered by what we conceive as spatiotemporality. Thermodynamical atomic theory is probably almost an illusion in the context of molecular behavior in and between cells.

I think consciousness might be an interaction between the brain's supervenient electromagnetic field and numerous classes of molecules that involve quantum effects such as the fast triplet reaction, perhaps in microtubules, ion transport channels, glial cells or elsewhere, also with an influence from non-local mechanisms of causality like I mentioned.

Maybe the concept of mathematically or algebraically exact equality is produced by a synthesis of the counting and spatial structure modules of cognition, whatever these are. We assign a set of structures such as objects a quantitative label, and then we assign a relatively similar enough set of structures the same quantitative label. The structures are never absolutely the same, but with the reference point of a particular quantitative label, they can be regarded as such, which turns out to be a very practical perspective, though philosophically befuddling.

I think there is a difficulty with this perspective. "Aggregation" implies particles of matter which aggregate. However, I think observations show that mass is the product of forces, or fields, and not the product of aggregated particles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Someone explain this "field" idea to me. I think of forces as the interactive properties of mass, and particularity as the classical interpretation of massive objects that is reductive to a certain selection of their perceived features for predictive purposes. The predictions of this perspective are descriptively realistic, though not exhaustive of course. The intuiting of objects as three-dimensional seems correspondent to their supra-atomic reality, when they are in the form of relatively large aggregations, but does not necessarily preclude them having non-local, "field-like" properties beyond the purview of classical modeling. I don't conceive contradiction between a particle and field interpretation, merely a honing in on different qualities, emergent from differing observational contexts, of approximately the same perceptual phenomena, but I could certainly learn more about the technicalities.

So a theory, tell me what ya think!

The substance of the universe is essentially quantum-like, with intrinsic non-locality and supra-spatiotemporal effects, entanglement, coherence, synchronicity, retroactive causality, etc. Three-dimensionality is essentially a product of aggregation effects, concentrations of matter into particularized masses such as solids, liquids and gases, which however never completely lose the quantum dynamism of their fluctuation and motion. Time is a measurement of the relative motions of quantum substance's concentrations or "aggregate masses". Though matter is always in some degree of agitation involving quantum effects, the sense organs facilitate perception of "aggregation" or bulk effects on the body. This is why eyes, ears, noses, etc. exist.

Science measures the relative stabilities and movements of mass as temperature and rate using technological instruments, and scientifically models relative stability and movement by quantifications of three-dimensional kinetics such as heat and force, mostly by applying the framework of classical physics and atomic theory, a "fundamental particularity" interpretation of mass. Though three-dimensional aggregation effects are restricting to the movements of macroscopic organic bodies like ours, nanoscale biochemistry and matter in general are never disengaged from the quantum, so that quantum effects can obtain in nature, magnetoreception in birds, entanglement in photosynthetic reaction centers, brain wave synchronicity, and all kinds of paranormal phenomena.

I'm curious if anyone comprehends the relationship between mass and quantum behavior. Why does matter gravitationally and chemically aggregate, and how if at all does this effect its non-local or "quantum" properties?

That's a naturalistic account. It is simultaneously cynical, patronising and inadequate (not on your part but as a cultural perspective). I think it's more that the ancients, or rather, pre-moderns, did not have a sense of themselves as being separated from or apart from nature in the way that we do. And that sense of separateness in turn comes from viewing humans from an objective perspective. — Wayfarer

Not sure if you're going to read all of this, but some more detail to discuss. These historical blurbs aren't entirely adequate, but maybe you can help me figure some more stuff out.

I probably generalized so much in my previous post that it came across as naive about the undoubtedly intricate nature of real causality. I would certainly say I've never put together based on my readings an exact timeline of human psychical/cultural development, if that's even possible. Some cultures are probably more prone to viewing the environment as spiritual, and some less, along with individuals. Looking at the topic from a perspective internal to rationale rather than in terms of cognitive structure with its reliance on physicalist modular notions, this is the basic idea I have at my current stage of comprehension:

The mystery of animateness in humans and animals has perennially fascinated Homo sapiens, and since it is not at all clear where the line should be drawn between inanimate mechanism and intention, especially in pre-scientific worldviews, we have tended to attribute soul to nature in general. Prehistorically, humans had a runaway instinct to interpret unexplained motion, in spontaneous phenomena such as the sunrise and the weather, as instigated by invisible spirits, with the perception of voices and apparitions in nature reinforcing this inclination. We see and hear the signs of vitality in ourselves and the creatures in relation to which this ability to predict and anticipate intention proves fruitful to our existence - the avoidance of the territorial haunts of dangerous predators, for hunting, etc. - and our psyches presumed intention in the atmosphere, water and all motivity. The cosmos seems intuitively to be an expression of spirit rather than a mechanistic system of interrelated variables in the absence of ubiquitous technologies fashioned from natural resources and stimulating our reinterpretation of them as inanimate appendages of our own mentality. Without precisely demarcated concepts of self, psychology and matter, everything seems as alive as we are.

So I'd claim that the prehistoric mindset viewed spirit as universally infused into experience, with no conceptual distinction made between technical procedures and what moderns would call supernatural.


As for how this transitioned into philosophy, my basic conception:

The first philosophical analyses were of a type that can be called naive realism, originating at roughly the advent of ancient Greek written records. Artistic creativity, spirituality and beliefs about existence had been intertwined in one and the same sorts of cultural expression stretching all the way back to ancient prehistory, an organic outgrowth of inspired human nature during which libido was discharged, the experience of beauty realized, and a maturing sense of truth communicated in symbolic form.

As technology took a great leap forward at the adoption of Neolithic farming village lifestyles with their greater demand for finely crafted tools and wares, their specialized occupational division of labor, and intensified analysis of novel ideas and techniques to meet the need for detailed explanation and intellectual exchange, written forms of truth purveyance also became enriched and increasingly systematic within an initial aesthetic medium of poetic verse. The first philosophy was Greek poetry, which underwent a gradual transition from symbolic metaphor to materialistic theory as the meaning and nature of the cosmos morphed into the substance of the cosmos and then into its constituent elements.


To my knowledge, the first philosophies were extremely materialistic, but not derived from systematic observational methods like those of modern science. The first philosophers such as Thales performed thought experiments with concepts like the four elements. Cultures beyond ancient Greece such as China had similar concepts, maybe altogether classifiable as a proto-atomism. As thinkers attempted to progressively generalize to essences, the literature became more metaphysical, the "One" of Parmenides, "logos", Mesopotamian sorcery-based philosophies, introspective Buddhist concepts of universal consciousness, etc. I think Plato's thinking involves a proto-psychological form/matter dualism, with ideas being instantiated forms. Aristotle expanded on Plato's theories by trying to analyze exactly how forms such as ideas relate to matter, arriving at the paradigm of hylomorphism.

Concepts of soul like neo-Platonic emanation theory existed throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. It was the reintroduction of Aristotle's naturalism to Medieval Europe and then the movement of Ockamist nominalism that produced the modern paradigm of theoretically modeling nature, which was one of the motivations for invention of observation-enhancing technologies such as the telescope and the microscope, along with the development of better mathematical techniques such as Newton's calculus and an analysis of uncertainty by the likes of Descartes and Hume.

The form/matter distinction probably became mind/body dualism as anatomy advanced and synthesized with progressing paradigms of matter as technologyesque mechanism, leaving concepts of soul, preserved as sacred, in the dust. Philosophers regarded humans as unique in having a rational faculty in addition to the appetitive and vegetative processes of organic life in general, and completely broke through the "inaccessible soul" barrier with the European Enlightenment concept of transcendent universal reason and its secularized support for universal morality. A lot of time was spent refining this concept of rationality, from the Early Modern period to the 19th century. Locke's ideas of the understanding and Kant's categories of reason are instances.

In 19th century Europe, the concept of unconscious will evolving within arational economic, biological and cultural contexts came into vogue. Freud's concept of libido was probably derived from this paradigm, and he introduced psychological science, analysis of the human mind as composed of arational modular processes instead of a transcending rational structure. The challenge of philosophy of mind and neuroscience has been to reconcile modularity of the psyche with the modularity of brain and body in an all-encompassing theory of consciousness.


So to summarize, I think at the beginning of civilization human concepts of truth were not at all irrational but somewhat unintegrated. We had the capacity for complex technological practice, but concepts and proto-expressions of natural principles, the philosophical applications of symbolical systems, were extremely metaphorical and imprecise, more artistic than technical, so that we had to force by sheer willpower a connection in individual minds between the symbolic features of essentializing thought and those of more ingrained technological thinking in a multi-generational cultural process that produced technical discourse with its historical dimension. I don't view the idea that modern truth and related thinking differ from the prehistoric variety as cynical or patronizing. These earlier humans had the capacity to think in modern ways, but lacked the cultural conditioning to mold their minds into so to speak "modernization". This seems to me the basic developmental stages in the incarnation of our so considered "objectively true" reality.

Spirit in technology and belief transitioned into systematic matter and transcendent soul conjoined by forms as ideas. Matter became mechanistic, ideation became systematic reason, reason was bracketed as a subsidiary of arational will, and psychology developed an arational anatomy of the mind that moderns are trying to harmonize with anatomy of the body and material mechanisms in general.

Much cognitive dissonance.

Rattling the anthrocentric (not anthropic oops) cage.

Maybe human rationality's materialist interpretation of the world as composed of inanimate objects is partially a result of the impact on the human psyche of perceiving and living around technology, though we're far removed from the original circumstances that would prove this. I think organic consciousness' responsivity to motion is typically based on recognizing intention, stimulated affect and/or relatively simple causality, or else somewhat negligible in symbolic meaning. But highly conceptual, structuralizing human consciousness, with its extreme inclination to imaginatively invent integrated symbolical systems, at some point began viewing the world as symbolic of emotive intentions, weaving these modes of interpreting experience together in speculatively fulfilling generalizations until we had ideas of spiritual purpose as essence. The idea of natural laws is probably a result of attempts to synthesize mechanistic causal concepts and predictabilities, a derivation from increasingly technological thinking, with this preexisting sense of purpose as essence from out of the compulsion to continue analogizing and generalizing in pursuit of consistency, coherence, the achievement of comprehensive indisputability in knowledge.

I think the conceptualized nature of quantities and spontaneous patterns is basically a psychological issue. These are a product of the human mind as comprehended introspectively and by analysis of hypothesized mechanism within progressing sequences of observation.

As for whether the cosmos is mathematical, I think it is for humans because of the nature of our cognition, not necessarily because of governing determinism, a la Kant's antinomies of reason. I don't think a genome is absolutely required for perception and intention to be possible. Conditions characterizing the existence of earth's carbon-based lifeforms are not necessarily generalizable to the whole cosmos. I think our knowledge of the age and extent of the physical universe is theory or a conceptual system, not precluding complete refutation depending on what further investigation reveals.

You're probably getting a feel for my anthrocentric viewpoint. I think its crucial to recognize that knowledge (not existence) is fundamentally anthrocentric, because then we can fully acknowledge the pervasiveness of uncertainty and unrestrainedly imagine alternative possibilities. The multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics, theories of parallel universes and such, along with conception of history, empower us to pull ourselves out of restricting mechanistic dogmatisms and reach a malleable balance rather than an uncompromising conflict between perspectives. Seems we're in an era where science can become truly progressive for the human psyche instead of oppressive because of our growing sense for its historical tranformativeness, the way generalizations vary as our frame of reference changes, and our greater cognizance that theory depends on human choices. We simultaneously have to avoid making science oppressive culturally, a big challenge. I think we've got a viable ideal, but attaining it not so much. I can't believe this crazy world.

Education gave me an ultra-rational personality that aims for consistency and integrity as basic guidelines, a means to generally avoid diminishing pleasure, my own or anyone else's. This works well in rational situations, but lucid dreams, visions, miracles, paranormal experiences, and subordination of human will to spiritual forces taught me that the world is full of the supernatural, and within the total psychological/spiritual/material ecosystem humans are almost ants, regardless of how much self-control we have.

As far as the implications for human nature, I've learned that vengeance is like masochism, though in some conditions damaging conflict unfortunately becomes inevitable. From a long-term perspective, getting revenge for a wrong can have a similar psychological effect to committing the wrong in the first place, it usually ends up collaterally hurting those who aren't involved in the dispute, and it destabilizes the situation spiritually so that we lose more rational control of consequences. I'm not saying that punishment is totally to be dispensed with, but infliction of harm has serious supernatural repercussions that are nearly impossible to contain once set in motion. I think we're all influenced by the negative spiritual effects of systemic revenge every moment of every day, much more than we ever recognize.

My personal view, I'm certainly not going to claim its at all sacred.

If "principles do not obtain" in Nature, it's because there is no "prince", no ultimate authority. So cultural laws are the only rules that do obtain. That is the Atheist/Humanist position. — Gnomon

I'm not an atheist, I think all beings have a spiritual nature, but I'm also a critical thinker, and all public accounting for this spirituality has thus far been at its best respectably inadequate to explain the reality, and at its worst employed as malicious deception, in science, philosophy and elsewhere. I place my own spirituality in the realm of personal experience, not unempirical or irrational, but not a justifiably collective value to be culturally binding either.

My opinion is that we should in general incline towards basing culture on human agreement by way of reasoned collaboration rather than dictatorial authority. Being opposed to the unrelenting infliction and threat of harm, a major cause of unending and currently escalating divisiveness in society, rationality is an ideal to gradually work towards in complex ways that respect the individual, utilizing nuanced education, careful institutional reform and, however possible, positive reinforcement that encourages personal growth. This is very similar to views of the European Enlightenment, probably the origin of social progressiveness in politics, an inheritance of well-reasoned cultural strategies that I think is declining in influence, to our undeniable detriment.

I think scientific skepticism is the foundation for furthering human quality of life by way of strategic theoretical and technological progress, but involves some extremely difficult issues. These complications will be much easier to deal with if everyone has access to all the relevant information, can recognize when a source of information is legitimate, is provided with enough basic competence to obtain any relevant information independently, has some level of protected license to discuss the information publicly, and isn't being so scrooged by manipulative information distribution in general that all of this is impossible.

I'm perhaps much less prone to think the universe is intrinsically intelligible than some. My interest in philosophy is mostly driven by a desire to continually assimilate the unintuitive, figure out all the enigmas, and engage in insightful communication.

I regard your philosophy as a cool thought experiment, a nice attempt at stretching common intuitions and growing intellectually, what I wish everyone had the opportunity to do. Thinking with you guys has given me the seeds of some new ideas that are bouncing around in the back of my mind to eventually edify me.

But science is not the arbiter of value. And ideally, philosophy seeks to establish a vision which reconciles what is of value with 'what is'. — Wayfarer

I agree that a non-historical science should not be the arbiter of value, although some like using it propagandistically in sometimes ingenious ways to make themselves the arbiters. What I think the persistence of philosophy does, even consideration of the old guys, is nurture knowledge's historical dimension, so that precedents are much more cogent and cumulative. Philosophy studies the wide range of thought forms that led to modern institutions, and thus gives us a broader context for evaluating the direction of those thought forms. Science without philosophy is theory without a cultural purpose that we have troubled to intelligently justify, beyond I'll help you if I like you I suppose. Most science gets philosophical at some stage, but as you allude to, this becomes dogmatic essentialisms such as evolutionary materialism in the absence of rational historicity. Knowledge can become subservient to self-promotional benefit and coercing masses of citizens instead of empowering humans to progress culturally. Its too bad "philosophy" or what I might venture to call non-scientific naturalism is made so difficult to understand sometimes, but once we grasp it we're capable of thinking more deeply.

So I would gingerly claim that philosophical science with a sense for the historical origins of both thought forms and their related valuations should be the arbiter of modern values. I don't think civilized ethics can even exist apart from intellectual exertions. We see what a horrific effect sole reliance on negative reinforcement has on human behavior, and I think its clear that intellectualizing citizens is preferable. Affect doesn't even become emotion let alone empathy without a mind that is allowed to reflect and grow safely and independently. I wish information weren't put to such predatory uses. When our intellectual leaders who everyone knows should know better commit to pervasive strategies of negative reinforcement, serious problems.

But Natural norms are so "stifling" that they were called "laws" to reflect the absolute life-or-death power of human kings. So, Natural Norms do indeed determine the course of evolutionary change, but only to the extent that Natural Selection enforces them. But who is the law-maker, and whose standards are normative? — Gnomon

A difficult metaphysical subject. I don't think we can consider natural phenomena "normative principles", but rather accidents of local conditions, with the qualities of "local" varying at least slightly in each observational case. We see the universe as law-abiding because we are extremely well-adapted to one of these localized environments, and we incline to interpret everything from our own frame of reference. That's not to say we can't very easily simplify the properties of particular local conditions into a conceptual "essence" for the sake of technological understanding and application, but analogy between theoretical generalization and metaphysical reality is false. An alien species might develop a completely different kind of evolutionarily programmed antenna because their perception is different, even while on earth. This technology might be so divergent that calling it an antenna at all could be a stretch, a suspect analogy to our own experience. If a being doesn't die or reproduce, no natural selection. If an organism isn't composed of organic molecules, no perception of the environment as solid objects perhaps. Lacking enough particularity in its perception, math might be non-descriptive and meaningless. The existence of a reason for something, a predictable causality, doesn't imply that metaphysical principles exist, and never could. This idea I think is very similar to what Hume or a more critically thinking Kant might argue.

But radical skepticism is refutable because all the life forms on this planet are related and adapted to a relatively similar environment. Metaphysical principles do not obtain, but we're still all in this together. The more we recognize our mutuality relative to the total universe, the more ethical we become, unless we get abused and manipulated to the point of not trusting someone else's professed beliefs. Its not an uncompromising thirst for pain that drives large-scale human conflict, as if we enjoy our own self-destruction, its a lack of trust and a failure to acknowledge the mutuality I mentioned, along with some minor lapses in self-control thrown into the mix that basic conditioning can usually teach us to regulate well enough. Personal turmoil can be increased to huge, institutional proportions by our problem-solving acumen.

All reasoning, including moral reasoning, is solipsistic and no less universalizable for being so. Essentialist reasoning can interfere with moral/practical reasoning by rendering our solipsism non-adapting. Supposed essences are ideally temporary illusions on the path to better concepts, and at their worst are a means of brainwashing populations. Achieving that balance between adaptivity and realizing the fullest possibility for beliefs is rationality's challenge, and science is vital to moderating this effort. Rationality creates values. Some sub-cultures apply these discovered/invented values disingenuously, refusing to act in accordance with the universality and uncertainty that rationality really and luckily implies.

Step away from the soapbox with your hands up. — Thought Police

lol

Should add that I doubt this is really in contradiction to your basic view, merely a clarification.

I think a lot of pressure can be put on some demographics in modern society to commit suicide, sort of a bogus analogy with biological "programmed cell death", as if its healthy for society as organism. That's why its important to make an effort at going beyond minimum obligations, so as to make sure our acquaintances have dependable social supports and always remain close to someone, because a chance exists that the isolated will become targets of crushing stigma. One more conceptually absurd cultural ideal - "society as organism" - to easily get abused by maliciousness.

I will absolutely abstain from abhorrently abbreviating your abstractions about "aboutness". lol I agree that an infinite fund of abstentioned ideas is absurd, no idea at all.

I'm going to gadfly you regarding the notion of "normative natural laws". lol

I can't think of a single supposed "natural" principle that isn't anthropic, essentially perceptual. Mechanistic laws are a higher type of concept that human cognition seems uniquely capable of creating, enabling our species to change its environment of perceptions in some extremely practical, groundbreaking ways, but I would argue that these shouldn't be considered normative. Norms do not determine the course of evolutionary transition, they are a symptom of arbitrarily stifled evolution as the product of forces exacted on organisms by their conditions. The only parameters to evolution are imposed by environment, and the concept of a "natural law" can become one of those parameters.

Prehistorically, prior to human rationality, we get equilibriums in stable environments, and in fluctuating environments, we get punctuated rapid diversification in a non-directional process that quickly reaches stasis again. The human situation is unique because we imagine and put on display non-existent, largely non-normative causality to such an extent that we can purposefully and collectively change our conditions in extreme ways, including human nature, and thus exert substantial control of selection pressures on the form of our own perceptions.

But as soon as human cognition becomes normativeness, it has the same effect as we find in non-cognitive environments, arbitrarily forcing a non-evolving equilibrium. It is completely possible for human evolution to be stagnated by culture based on an essentialist paradigm. Similarly, an AI technology may have no inclination or capacity to progressively reinvent natural laws, no matter how perceptive or intelligent it is, bringing mutation as self-enhancement to a halt. AI has much greater chance of being a stasis than progressive.

Of course we need a baseline of cultural competence to make creativity even possible, so normativity is necessary, but technical concepts rendered as essences amount in my view to mechanistic causality reified for enforcement as norms with no real benefit but thought-control, and I think this is counterproductive. Human rationality has a dual nature, the spontaneous transgression of norms by thought and the transmission of thoughts for the sake of modifying norms. The conditioning of principles should be restrained, getting us into politics and ethics.

I should add that at any particular moment a system of concepts is going to have finite structure. Its coercion that's a problem, not commitment.

My blurb on norms and essentialism anyways, disagreements welcome.

A computer game could be a success.

A game, a school activity, element of literature curriculum, the possibilities are endless.

Maybe if philosophy could find a way to make formalized logical structure a generally intuitive subject by some pedagogical technique, citizens would think of information more in terms of argumentation that's actually getting somewhere and precise justification. That I think is what really distinguishes philosophy, its concern with orderedness in expression. Could probably make everyone's thinking more cogent to be self-imposed standardized logical in conjunction with at least some public contexts.

The book I read didn't say whose sperm it was. That'd be a lot of sperm to keep track of. lol If I were to venture a guess, it would be that slender males discharge at least some sperm also, but field biology has probably faced extreme difficulties assessing all of that. As for hereditary and developmental mechanisms, the possibilities are vast, though an explanation might be available somewhere. This book was written in the early 2000's, so more knowledge could certainly have been obtained since then.