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Paper for 'Philosophy As' Conference, Nov 2002
A radical new metaphysics: a vision for building a new bridge between
philosophy and science
No part of this paper is to be reproduced without the author’s permission
Tom Milner-Gulland
Presented at the 'Philosophy As' Conference, 30th November, 2002, as a sketch of the full thesis
It may be a hackneyed line of analysis to take everything apart and reduce it all
to threes. This is the thrust of the Hegelian triad. I have made it my
intention to bring renewed significance to the Hegelian triad and develop the
strands that I create in my argument into a broad-ranging investigation into
the mind, the cosmos, the development of life, physics and the meaning of life
generally. What is presented here is only a portion of my fuller argument.
The process of intellectual categorisation speaks of an
inherent deference, in the mind, to the relationship that is antithetical
opposition. What is at the basis of it? My suggestion is that the mind utilises
the continuum between pleasure and extreme displeasure. Left is ‘sinister’
(this being its Latin name), and right, virtuous. The subjectivity involved in
categorisation is intrinsic even to the most immediate observations that are
relevant to science, one of its inevitable products being, I contend, the
tri-dimensionality of space. And this is the area that I focus upon, as a
vehicle for conveying the metaphysics that I hope to have created.
A key concept in understanding dimensionality is the right-angle. It signifies limitation in the terms by which one can refer to the link or separation between any two entities. It is my thesis that it is not only in geometry that the right-angle can be deemed meaningful. One might, for example, analyse a novel in terms of an axis of characterisation being perpendicular to the axis of plot, as analysis aims to be penetrative through the separation of one basic attribute from another in such a way as to enable some quantifiable understanding of their relationship, such quantification implying a system that is analogous to data correlation through co-ordinate plotting. This in consonance with the fact that the concept of cross-section is meaningful in both a spatial and an analytical context (as it is applicable to ranges of data taken from surveys). And just as space has three distinct axes, a novel will incorporate a third axis, albeit that this will be more difficult to pin down than the other two, but it will bear relation to the way in which one might define a novel.
In the same line of thinking, the right-angle is an analogy
for the axiom. Two different ideas inherently link together by virtue of the
relationship between their root conceptualisations, and links can be visualised
in linear terms. If the purest representation of logic is in mathematics, then
geometry – specifically the connecting of lines to form closed shapes by way of
the implicit or manifest use of the right-angle – is decidedly closer to
reasoned verbal discourse than is at first apparent. Mathematical equations,
indeed, can be analysed as though they were three-dimensional objects, in so
far as they are self-contained units that defer to simple principles, these
being in essence parameters, just as the faces of a material object could be
said to be representations of the parameters by which it has acquired its
specific volume. Hence, to apply dimensionality in a new framework, with
relation to mathematics read ‘essential principles’, and to material objects,
‘concerns that are structurally limiting or structurally defining’ – this being
interpretable on a number of different levels, but most fundamentally in terms
of the universal constants in physics, by virtue of which nature’s thresholds
are realised.
The very concept of separation between ideas, and hence
parameters that serve to categorise ideas, is the foundation of what one might
term a dimensional divide. In forming intellectual constructs, to cross the
dimensional divide once is to make a descriptive statement; twice is to derive
a set of concepts that are useful purely as an abstract depiction, but if one
crosses it three times and one is not perfectly back where one started – if
one, in other words, draws conclusions about reality by applying a derived set
of assumptions to the abstract depiction, one is in the realm either of
tautology or of specious argument. Of these three distinctions, the last I tend
to apply to modern developments on Einstein’s General Relativity wherein
spacetime is apparently conceived as an objective, mutable form that may
incorporate so-called ‘wormholes’. I’d press the same criticism for the
manipulative use of the term ‘dimension’ more generally in theoretical physics,
as the definition adhered to is merely a self-referential one, ultimately
enabling such speculative concepts as a ten-dimensional reality. To my mind,
the concept of dimensionality is more usefully employed in cosmology when it is
acknowledged as being the basis of the separation between the fundamental
quantities of mass, distance and time.
Scientific definitions of dimensionality employ such terms
as 'parameter' and 'independent direction' without lending us any further
insight into these ideas. A self-supporting scientific definition is elusive, I
suggest, precisely because dimensions are the very tools by which we form
intellectual categorizations. Removing myself, as I have, from a purely
geometric definition, I offer the following definition of dimensionality: the representation, manifest exclusively in the form of the intellectually sustained systems of mutually contingent, and, accordingly, ultimately threefold categorization, of the very most essential pre-existent conditions, including one’s own being, that from a subjective point of view pervade the totality of existence, this totality including any realm that transcends mortal existence. While, in discussing the material world, this applies specifically to the process of self-orientation, it will be irresistible in the final analysis to associate tri-dimensionality with Trinitarian theology, particularly that of Aquinas. The threefold aspect will be explained in due course.
In The Birth of Three Sides: a theory of dimensionality, Ashgate, 1997, I develop the following
thesis. The up-down axis owes its meaning to gravity, which is a property of
material objects and is therefore external to one's mental system of
self-orientation. The very tangibility of objects that possess inertia, and
therefore gravity, testifies to their being external to the sensory system. Its
antithesis is the left-right axis which, being manifestly a product of the
mind, since left and right are subjectively imposed labels, I term the internal
dimension. That the left-right distinction is a useful analogy for chirality,
as is realised by mirror symmetry, should not distract us (as it does for those
puzzled by the idea that mirrors reverse ‘left’ and ‘right’ but not ‘up’ and
‘down’); it is the role of left and right in self-orientation that is of
interest. Even if the body were not symmetrical, we would still need the
internally held left-right distinction in order to self-orientate. The reason
the body is fairly symmetrical, I suggest, is down to the fact that there are
two sources of impetus in physics: gravity and energy. Evolution has
conditioned our form such that we develop our features in both the vertical
axis, against gravity, and also in the back-front axis, the latter representing
our mobility – the capacity to move by virtue of the flow of energy around the
body. It would be biologically inefficient for the anatomy to develop features
through a third axis. Symmetry signifies the local constraint of energy. There is a third source of impetus in nature, but I suggest, in consonance with my
positing an internal dimension, that this is spiritual rather than quantifiable
through physical actions.
Clearly, if the two quantifiable forms
of impetus are made manifest through consciousness, space cannot be an
independent reality and the assertion made here is that it is a subjectively
imposed ordering. Kant, reasoning along different lines but in a similar field,
invoked the concept of the
enantiomorph, which is an entity of a pair whose two elements together are left-and right-handed forms of the same shape. The phenomenon seems to signify the properties of continuity and constancy in nature. Hence a lathe will produce a form that has mirror symmetry through a central axis by virtue of its sustaining rotational energy in the object it shapes. The capacity to store energy on the basis of location characterises nature’s inherent order, this enabling duplication and structural cohesion.
This brings us to the third and final
of the three axes of space. The backwards-forwards axis could be termed simply
the ‘forwards’ axis. ‘Backwards’ is nothing more than an intellectual
projection of our intentional frame of thinking. The laws of motion do not
distinguish between a vehicle moving in reverse and a vehicle moving in forward
gear. The back-front axis is representative of motion, with the so-called arrow
of time suggesting an irreversible forward progression of events. Since time is
implicit in this axis, I suggest one cannot, as in the Minkowski
conceptualisation that was adopted in Einstein’s General Relativity, simply
append time onto the three axes of space, as a fourth dimension.
Energy has no form, and therefore no
independent constitution. In so far as it can be said to be real, it must be a
synthesis of conditions the basic constitution of which are undetectable to the
senses. Energy must consist in a reality that is inextricably linked with the
very substrate of the senses – hence it is present in all sensory intuitions.
This reality is veiled from us by the filtering effect of the sensibility.
Now, the Hegelian triad is concerned
with conceptual progression. If the back-front axis is qualitatively associated
with the other two axes, while at the same time embodying its own, unique
attribute that signifies a conceptual progression from the antithetical
opposites of internality and externality, then it is a matter of congruity to
regard it as transcendental. Indeed, I term the back-front axis the
transcendental dimension. It is through the senses that we experience a flow of
energy, and if energy and the sensibility are two different aspects of the same
dimension, it follows that the distinction between them is collapsed at death.
Although the ubiquity and intangibility of energy signify
the transcendental quality in the back-front dimension, asymmetry is basic to
the development of natural features. But if we deem space mentally imposed,
geometric symmetry is a superficial concept. We need to recognise the existence
of an arbitrary component among the forces that distribute matter, in virtue of
which energy assumes its fluidity, and nature its diversity. To use Bergson’s
terms of phrase – though applying a different conceptualisation – a life-force
can be considered to exist, as a subdivision of the transcendental dimension,
to supply the elements of the design. Here, we may invoke the concept of a
transcendental decree, by which specific aspects of the arbitrary component are
rendered permanent features of the life-force – our life-force, which in
this thesis constitutes our universe, being one of an infinite number of
possible such creations. A universe, I contend, exists to produce life, energy
being inherently life producing. This would not be an unpopular stance among
many physicists, given that if any one of the fundamental constants of nature
(such as the gravitational constant or the charge on the electron) were
infinitesimally different – taken in isolation from the others – from its
actual value, the conditions for life to emerge could never exist. By the
thesis proposed here, were it that a single arbitrary ratio, representing a
fundamental constant of nature, was decreed, a priori, by a transcendental
mind, the other such constants would fall into accordance with the balance that
will bring life into being. Such a primary ratio could very well be taken to be
that between the rest masses of the two subatomic particles, the proton and the
electron, these being of equal and opposite charge. Indeed, one could consider
the proton-electron pair, as I term it, the smallest unit in nature, all other
subatomic phenomena being a mere filling in of the gaps by way of the
connection, as presented in this thesis, between mind and nature. The
life-force provides a holistic system for conditioning natural and mental
phenomena in its representing a link between mortal minds and a transcendental
mind.
If one considers the other basic
subatomic particle, the neutron (which decays into a proton, an electron, and a
massless particle), as a proton-electron pair that is ‘turned through a dimension’,
such that its existence is represented in a different form of encapsulation
than is the manifest proton-electron pair, then we can avoid such stumbling
blocks in physics as the concept of inertia. Self-evidently, if every subunit
of a body of mass is identical, then each will respond in identical fashion to
a gravitational field, such that all massive bodies will freefall at the same
rate of acceleration. Further, the conceptualisation of the proton-electron
pair as being the basis of all chemical operations suggests that charged
particles represent impending proton-electron pairs, and that it is in the
nature of energy to operate holistically in its creative impetus.
It is the very rigidity of the
fundamental constants of nature, that renders matter concrete. The external
dimension exists as a boundary, physically separating various different aspects
of a metaphysical totality. As part of a transcendental decree, it is a locking
device, securing the proton and electron, universally, in their rest mass
ratio, thereby imbuing nature with fundamental thresholds between which
specific physical phenomena are possible. One such threshold, a biologically
based one, is the boundary between life and death. We may posit, now, the
concept of what may be termed a birth-to-death cycle, this being the vessel for
the life cycle. As a metaphysical construct, its internal manifestation is as a
container for memories – and I consider there to be a pure memory to which the
mind has imperfect access – and its external manifestation is the balance
between the fundamental constants of nature.
This balance is dictated not solely by the rest mass
ratio, but also another axis of the life-force, into which is emplaced a value
that we could term a cosmic number. Together, these values serve to give the
universe a unique identity. The cosmic number quantifies the amount of energy
in the universe, lending it at any time a specific number of galaxies, total
biomass, and so on. I suggest that its value is unknowable, being comparative
to the energy content of all other existent universes.
The third and final axis of the
life-force is one I term the judgement axis. It is not scalar. It embodies all
those aspects of nature, save the values associated with the two previously
mentioned axes, that cannot be deconstructed by way of reason. These include
the era within which one lives, one’s location within the cosmos, one’s innate
biology, the characteristics of one’s immediate environment, and so on. It
reaches into the mind of the individual being, lending that individual, and
their actions, an identity in the totality of things, thereby linking in with
the concept used in theoretical physics of frame of reference. Associated with
it are the intricacies of an individual’s life cycle. Life cycle may be
regarded as an essentially timeless, pan-anatomical phenomenon which is to some
extent individualised to the single organism. Life cycle does not develop on an
arbitrary basis; it is somehow implicit in one’s immediate biological make-up.
Part of this make-up (albeit not usually associated with the hormonally induced
developments that define phases of life) is to be found in the configurations
that constitute the neurological system. It is the enigma of the processes in
the cell that will give us our link between life cycle, the birth-to-death
cycle, and the mind. The body’s biological tolerances – and recall that any
threshold is sustained by virtue of the pervasion of the external dimension –
represent a complex extension of its pre-existing birth-to-death cycle, and
these thresholds condition such critical factors in perception as whether or
not a neuron will fire under any particular circumstances.
In the model of the mind proposed, the
activity of visualisation constitutes an essential precondition for all mental
operations; when experienced in conjunction with nonvisual sensation, a ‘plane
of cognition’ is synthesised, this constituting conscious knowledge. The mind
subdivides into the ‘will’, which is the inner self that has feeling as well as
intent, and the sensibility, which is the arm of the transcendental dimension
that is concerned with the inbuilt organisation of the senses. In accordance
with Berkeley’s identification of a touch-vision distinction, the dimensional
divide, by virtue of which we make conceptual distinctions, is represented in
the fact that consciousness serves to separate visual data from the faculty of
feeling, in the same way that it superficially separates space from time.
Space, in this model, is intuited, while, to contrast with Kant, I suggest the
experience of time is synthesised as the most basic intellectual process,
occurring subconsciously and in accordance with the pervading transcendental
decree that secures the multitude of mortal beings within a common timescale.
In attempting to understand the flow of energy within the
mind, one can make an analogy with a liquid in a tank. Non-visual sensory
signals penetrate the body of the ‘liquid’ – though not, in this model, through
the surface – and generate disturbances, or kinaesthetic sensations. The
disturbances surface in a 'welling up' effect that is the initial process of
cognition, and visualisations result. The visualisations occur at the interface
with the transcendental dimension, which also serves as a conduit for direct
visual data. The surface of the liquid characterises the 'plane of cognition'.
‘Cognitive connections’, across it, are mental associations. All that is
appreciable at the plane of cognition, and nothing more, is recorded in the
pure memory.
The mind’s immediate feeling of a raw
sensory signal represents its faculty of visualisation, in its preconscious –
rather than pictorially conditioned – form, being momentarily and involuntarily
directed towards the point within the body image at which the sensory signal
arrived. The body image, to take an idea used by Merleau-Ponty, is the
intuitively accessed, preconsciously existing construct that gives cognizable
spatial form to the body’s sensory arrangement. Self-awareness becomes a
tri-dimensional condition through the stimulation of sensory nerve cells.
Critically, as a development
upon Plato, the model identifies three eternal needs, each of which represents
a metaphorical socket in the unconscious into which the plane of cognition
plugs. These are: novelty, the build and release of tension, and, thirdly, that
intangible aspect of nature that leads many to a belief in God and which
signifies an essential unity between mortal beings, together with the mind’s
realisation of its own attributes through nature’s richness. All forms of
pleasure are unified within the last of these eternal needs. When this conduit
is appropriated – and I imagine this to occur, fleetingly, perhaps thousands of
times per seond – contact is made with a transcendental realm, just as the
vector of the build and release of tension ultimately translates into such
terms as the drive to achieve, and the vector of novelty, to all that is
external to one’s eternal being, in particular, displeasure.
It is by virtue of the fact that life
cycle and, implicitly, birth-to-death cycle, pervade the mind that we
subconsciously place rings around aspects of perception to make them ideas.
Hence cyclicality lies at the foundation of understanding by context.
So, why did I use the term ‘judgement
axis’ to describe one of the facets of the life-force? Well, it is through the
judgement axis that the mind makes its intuitive and intellectual judgements,
as this axis is concerned with context. But also, it links in with the idea of
the birth-to-death cycle’s being an ever-present, idea-encircling
influence. One could conceive
conscience as being more than merely a faculty that imbues us with a sense of
morality. Rather, it generates conflicting feelings with every nuance of the
thought process. The reason, I suggest, is down to what happens when life comes
to an end.
To revert to the conundrum of the
arrow of time, the idea of natural processes would be meaningless were it not
that birth necessarily precedes death. But what, then, is meant by ‘precede’?
While time is integral to the back-front, or transcendental axis, it is the
very transience of life that renders the world tri-dimensional: the triad of
birth, death and life illustrates that all conscious experience embodies
something of birth, in nascent naivety, and something of death, in judgement,
as administered, I propose, by a transcendental entity. Our assuming, as if on
loan, the ability to make judgements, by virtue of the conscience being rooted
in the ultimate transcendental judgement upon the soul, is the basis of our
identifying a world of physical processes: we recognise process by way of
judgement. But there would be no identifiable physical processes were it not
for their adhesion, by statistical mean, to what we as intellectual beings
interpret as equilibrium. To relate to the triad that is mortal mind,
transcendental mind and, their synthesis, nature, equilibria could represent
our preconscious intuition that for every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction, which in turn is a derivation of the intuition that ultimately willed
actions will be judged to perfection on a moral level. Hence the equality
between souls is inextricably linked to physical equilibrium by way of a
pre-existent decree that is transcendental in origin but physical in
manifestation.
If conscious awareness is linked on a
very fundamental level with the essential components of nature, then what are
the raw materials for nature’s producing a diversity of phenomena? Our
discussion of time has revealed that wilfulness, which is implicit in the
intentional mind, is a critical concept, and the thesis advanced here is that
time can be said to be the very substance of will, whether it be the will of
individuals or of a transcendental mind.
There are two forms of intuition:
sensory intuitions represent absoluteness, while associativity is relational.
The relational element is founded in a very complex aspect of the
transcendental realm, comprising what I term, for want of a better expression,
‘qualities of spontaneity’, these representing the raw resource for creation.
Wilfulness is a concomitant to instinct. We need not be speaking, here, of
basic, or ‘animal’ instincts; rather, it seems there is greater analytical
value in concerning ourselves with those ‘instincts’ – surfacing as hunches and
inexplicable feelings of the heart – that underpin the idiosyncrasies of each
and every individual. Here, the proposition is that there are aspects of
wilfulness that are instinctual in character, in the sense of the individual’s
having some intuitive basis for even the most minor of deliberate actions, and
that, by contrast, so-called ‘animal’ instincts are shaped rather more strongly
by physiology. The creation of a soul is the encapsulation of a specific,
unique collection of qualities of spontaneity, the artistic mind embodying
manifold such qualities. The attribute that is represented by the uniqueness of
the underlying personality, which is based neither in genetic conditioning nor
environmental concerns, is one I term simply an intrinsic instinct.
The idea of linking
intrinsic instinct with sporadic, creative impulses issuing from a
transcendental mind, leads to the standpoint that all material objects, as
creations, can be conceived as inert extensions of instinct. From it arises a
depiction of an external reality, invoking solar systems as being the basic
unit of creation, whereby instabilities in their gravitational relationships
implicitly represent the creational processes that brought into being even the
smallest feature of our tangible reality, with the implication that the
conservation of energy resides in the permeation and continual relocation of
influences that amount to instabilities between gravitational relationships
caused by the motion of matter in the cosmos. Creation consists in the bridge
between the mind of mortals and the mind of God. And the bridge that we should
construct between philosophy and the natural sciences is one which sees
consciousness as a perpetual state of self-orientation.
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