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                Subject: re: Time's Arrow                 Date: 11/30/96 12:14 PM

'Experiences. Its all translations and experiences.'

Roland Cook on 11/30/96 8:27AM PDT:

>What point wasssssssssssssssssssss that?????????????????

That I am prophetic ... accurately predicting the deterministicALLY evoked event of new RCisms in my brain within a day!!!

You know, RC, my natural impulse is answer you tit for tat (which I will probably get around to at some point <in time>), but I want to share with you first that I understand all your forceful Cartesian pronouncements that experience resides only inside our skulls. There is merit in that model. But just as you seek the mechanisms/processes which get the "outside" inside us to "become" experience (making sure you always distinguish the two), that "connectedness" demands a continuum of information/energy transfer ... whether you focus concern on the neural dynamics and transductions and hierarchic
transfers where one kind of event-reality transforms into quite another altogether, or, you extend that to include the energy transfer dynamics that are "out there".

You see, I am a biologist by training. I envision all activity as "behaviors", which occur in "environments" (not isolated), and, that our language called mathematics is an information translation of our experiences of the external world. One of the principle reorganizations I have accomplished with that language is to add some components and relationships that bring it more in line
with our range of experiences.

Let me rephrase that. I've taken existing math relationships and applied them in ways previously un-considered. The math model I use now includes the relationships called "environment", "relational hierarchies", and a continuum of dimensions which I term "fluences". {My reason for doing these wierd manipulations will become obvious, as I continue explaining.}

When we look at all the universe's nested levels of activities such as atom to atom photon transfers, molecular metabolic pathways, organized cellular structures, cell colony conglomerates, coherent organisms, social order, et al., (the "assemblies of assemblies" of Al Scott), we note that each level has its own distinctive behaviors, while at the same time being interactive with and interdependent on the hierarchies which they are built of, and which they in turn build. That means that information/energy flows not only "within" a hierarchy, but also transcribes up through and down through those adjacent levels of organization.

It seemed to me that mathematics needed to be re-thought and adapted to model that openness of information transfer and environmental-ness. Just the fact that we apply similar formulae (such as wave functions) to very diverse levels of existence (animal speciation formulae are nearly identical with proton distribution formulae; the bell-curve is pandemic) shows us that there is a connection that links the dynamics of these hierarchies. They don't just "emerge" novel and different from their "sources".

The re-organized math must allow for these nested levels, allow for their independent evaluations, and allow for their continuity, and permit transduction of info up and down the ladder. The key is to de-quantize the concept of "dimensions". We use the linguistic math notation of "exponent" to represent "dimension" when the value is a positive non-complex integer. But, now we go further. Instead of that restrictive condition, we allow that *any exponent* be "dimensional" (even as we explore just what that means and implies). Every exponent expression (complex or simple) creates a full and complete non-quantized numberline, which can now be the "base number line" for secondary and tertiary exponent relationships. That can be continued diagonally in its own (super-power type) series of Nested Cantorian Infinities.

Now at least, we have a math structure where rules and formulae are applicable equally to any given level or hierarchy, any hierarchy can be seen to exist with a brace of environments that can be internal-to or external-to "itself", and information functions within and between hierarchies. The "behavior" of any one level can impact and become (quite different) behaviors of adjacent hierarchies.   This is a more complete pathway which can include "spontaneous" emergence such as produced by fractal dimensions.

The way I envision our "consciousness", RC, is that 'green' is indeed an experience unique to our hierarchy of organization, but that the information derives from transductions through neurons and molecules and atoms which carry the information patterns through the various hierarchies along the way. So, yes, our reality is unique and internal, but is built on the transmission of information/energy patterns which independently exist "out there". Our consciousness is a translation of those patterns. In some aspects separate, yet fundamentally "identical" because the behavioral patterns are applicable to diverse levels.

Let me quote Descartes for you. I just came across this recently and was blown away, because it appears that ALL western philosophy has totally misinterpreted him and pidgeon holed us into the bizarre un-real mind/matter dichotomy...which led to Chalmers' Hard Problem, and the effort to re-attach that which was never really separate in the first place.

"After I inquired in general into what is essential to the truth and certainty of a proposition; or since I had discovered one which I knew must be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground for this certitude. And as I observed that in the words "I think, therefore I am <Cogito, ergo sum>" there is nothing at all which gives me assurances of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that I might take, as a general rule, the principle, that all things which we clearly and distinctively conceive ARE TRUE, only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive." {Discourse on Method}

He grudgingly admits that our "inner reality" is not the "only" reality, and that the challenge is to find the paths of translation between them.  In other words, existence is not "isolation", it is Buber's "I-Thou". Without a (prior) stream of interactions, self-awareness never gets created. No "cogito" arises in the absense of some environment which provides the information. In
one sense, the "environment" is our sub-structure which is the foundation for our sentience; in another, it is all the information that our assembled hierarchy can encounter and re-organize and hold and react to ... even if it is a "translation".

In order to interact and exist within this embedded mix of infinities, existence requires compatibility on all levels and the *potential* to interact.

(RC) Null geodesics are a problem only for those who want to project their time and space into the physical world. Experience is of a different order of magnitude, and dimensionally does not duplicate the physical world, nor vice versa.  Otherwise we'd never have to experiment with nor interpret our experience to know what the physical world is like. We'd just *know* what it is, through our experience. We'd know that everything in the physical world is "instantaneous" except for time, like Newton.

This is just my point. The "out there" IS a duplicate of the "in here". They are translations. We are limited by the efficiency of translation through the various transductions. We are limited by the sensitivity and acuteness of our (and intervening) hierarchies. I was watching a Learning Channel program recently on the massive amount of dust mites and microbugs that live on our skin and in our pores at this very moment. Now, exactly how attractive would your wife or date be if you were acutely aware of the insects crawling all over her body and lips. Do you think you would rush to embrace her if you knew that you
were about to plant your lips on a cesspool of bug infestation loaded with bugshit? Reality is what we know and what we ignore. We act on the information we are capable of and the information we choose to focus on.  Existence is a soup of environments and we live out what works and what is available. All our science is merely exploring new channels to get the
available information and ttranslate it into our storage/access units ... from one hierarchy to another.

......(stuff)....
(RC)Not devoid of energy E = hv...and the "relational dynamics" are slowed down by the limited velocity of light, which we know -- just the "universe" doesn't "know" it, except through us, assuming we are part of the universe.

See, here's the twist, if "we" *know it*, the universe "knows it", because we *are* the piece of the universe that knows the rest of itself.

>>(JR)Roland Cook's "physical world of events" (which you remember, doesn't *really* exist)

(RC) *Does* really exist -- how else do we get our sensory impressions about it? It's just that the world of experience (physical world) and our experience of the world (conscious experience) are not the same worlds. You cannot account for (explain) conscious experience in terms of the physical world. Since there's nothing in the physical world "like" conscious experience ("green" e.g.) just what parameters are you going to use to explain conscious experience of the physical world? That would be like "explaining" mass in terms of time. Just can't be done.

[see opening discussion]. In fact, with the new math, (organized with the interpretation that exponents of (t) represent (translate) as distinct dimensions), the relationships (gradients) which can arise (like elastic tensors) *are* the emerged qualities we traditionally labelled "gravity" and "mass" in the past. Remember, there doesn't have to be "green" in any other hierarchy, there only has to be information/energy which can re-form and translate to "green" ... which is an experience of/within our assembly
structuring.

(RC)Ergo the references of words are to experiences in your brain, that originate "out there" -- let's get these items in the proper order and relationships.

This is why I am a devotee of the linguist Benjamin Whorf. His thesis was that experience transcribes into sounds, gestures, correspondences ... "words", if you will ... which become "experienced" themselves, even at the moment of their "creation". Our minds are molded by two sources of experience: the external AND the internal. So our thinking structure and patterns are molded by both types of experiences equally. Human cerebral structure and complexity now allows us to use those internally transduced translations as primal, where as less cerebrally complex organisms rely on external stimulation/interaction. We have built civilizations and cultures based on convention and agreement, that the codes and representational energies and information are at least close to one another's, if not always exact. We can share and support each other in "existence", while free to explore the wondrous potential of "ideas", nuances, possibilities, points-of-view, perspectives, values, concerns and aspirations; an environment of language(s) with all the reality and impact of the forces of physics. I don't see a Platonic universe. I see infinity in all directions. And connections beyond anything we typically imagine. Linguistic Relativity (Whorf). Space/Time Relativity (Einstein). Information Relativity.

....
>Roland Cook

Ceptualist
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