My Synthesis1

(GldnRule . . . here is the first installment on my attempt to present a cogent summary of my synthesis on the philosophical side. This thread seems like the place for it.) Allen . . . this should put us all on the same platform in addressing this consciousness stuff philosophically. My first two cuts exceeded the post length . . . and probably the reading patience of even the more philosophical of readers . . . so I have split it into two posts. The second will address the light speed question more directly . . . though you can probably guess where this will be going.

Reality Re-Orientation

This post is primarily for those philosophical individuals who have respect for scientific knowledge and writers but who do not completely dismiss anything to do with God. The early philosophers dealt with God extensively. (In short . . . open-minded scholars). It has been my experience that those most often critical of spiritual things are people who are only somewhat knowledgeable about many of the philosophical and scientific aspects of our reality. But, because a little knowledge truly is a dangerous thing, they frequently make unwarranted and hasty judgments about the validity of beliefs or concepts that have less "scientific" origins. This bias is so potent among scientists that Cosmologist George Smoot felt it necessary to defend his much-quoted remark about what it was like to see the structures in the COBE data, the “wrinkles in time” in our universe. The widespread quoting of his remark apparently was so intellectually embarrassing that he felt compelled to point out that it was merely metaphorical! . He had said,

"If you're religious, it's like seeing God."

Actually, George's one "metaphorical" remark contains more truth than all the other speculations and rationalizations taken together that he and the scientific community have made about his wrinkles in time!

A little reality reorientation is absolutely essential to counteract the effects of such unreasoning bias against consideration of God as a viable component of philosophical understanding. Consequently, I intend to show that there are plausible scientific bases for the assertions that are made in what might otherwise be considered my more "Scripture-based and spiritualistic" arguments.

Unfortunately, it is not feasible to present even a summary of the philosophical implications of contemporary science in a single post. Consequently, a considerable amount of knowledge on the part of the reader has been assumed in the descriptions that follow. Hence the choice of this thread. Consequently, despite my attempts at simplification and analogy, you might find this post a bit tedious and overwhelming.

If you are well-grounded in a particular subject matter you should find my simplifications, analogies and speculations reasonably accurate (if boring) but the implications somewhat provocative. If you are only somewhat knowledgeable, you might want to use the discussion as a stimulus to further study and understanding. If you are not at all knowledgeable about the scientific basis of our reality, you probably don't have any problems accepting the spiritual explanations of human existence, anyway.

From Milic Capek:

. . . It is clear that the future conception of matter ought to be devoid of all sensory qualities, even those . . . present in seemingly abstract mathematical notions. The search for imageless models of matter will become imperative. . . In this search, the observed isomorphism of psychological duration and physical becoming will constitute one of the most significant clues.


Consciousness: Our Link to Infinite Becoming

Our thoughts are the place to begin and end our introspection of our existence. Unfortunately, since thinking is inescapably basic to knowing about the process of thought, it is not thought about as a process to be thought about when thinking of processes to be thought about. I think!

It is usually very difficult to unlock our mind from its conditioned perspective long enough to speculate about the various products of thought, let alone about thought itself.

One exception can be found in the musings of a famous mathematician, Richard Dedekind. He made the following observation about our ability to think and its relationship to our use of mathematics,

. . . If we scrutinize closely what is done in the counting of an aggregate or number of things, we are led to consider the ability of the mind to relate things to things, to let a thing correspond to a thing, or to represent a thing by a thing, an ability without which no thinking is possible. . . So from the time of birth, continually and in increasing measure we are led to relate things to things and thus to use that faculty of the mind on which the creation of numbers depends; by this practice continually occurring, though without definite purpose, in our earliest years and by the attending formation of judgments and chains of reasoning, we acquire a store of real arithmetic truths to which our first teachers later refer as to something simple, self-evident, given in the inner consciousness; and so it happens that many very complicated notions (as for example that of the number of things) are erroneously regarded as simple.

In the various reasoning methods of logic we must relate elements to some basic premise. Even our intuition requires that we be able to relate the current experience to some base experience. Einstein was a remarkably insightful and creative physicist who understood that:

. . . the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

But, as Dedekind so cleverly pointed out, our ability to engage in the phenomenon of thought itself requires a juxtaposition of temporal relations. In other words, the very existence of thought AS A PHENOMENON can be seen to depend upon the possession of a superordinate base of reference to all experiential levels of becoming. We are capable of detecting past and present becomings of this and all subordinate levels of becoming and of abstracting potential becomings beyond our own. For that to be possible, however, we must have access to A BASE OF REFERENCE IN INFINITE BECOMING (our inner consciousness in a non physical substrate).

In plain English, in order to be able to consider the past, the present, and speculate about the future, we need to have the capacity for creating "thoughts." This seemingly obvious conclusion should not be written off without serious consideration of its more profound philosophical implications. It is not simple! It will be addressed in more detail later.

Abstract Human Consciousness. Becoming a human being can be seen to rest irrevocably on becoming an entity capable of creative abstract consciousness -- a unique feature of our brain that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from the conditioned cortical reactions of other animal species. In short, it means becoming capable of thought as we really know it to be, and as distinguished from all other cortical activity in all other life forms, so far as we currently are able to determine.

Most people intuitively know that our human consciousness is unique and does not appear to exist in any other animal on the earth. Our consciousness is markedly different from the awareness that even the most "intelligent" of the animals seems to have of its existence. This is not to minimize the wondrous advances that are happening in our attempts to communicate with other species, where the appearance, at least, of rudimentary cross-species language analogues are being developed.

Concrete Animal Awareness. Animal awareness, like our consciousness, can be very responsive to the environment, but it cannot be abstract. Like humans, many animals can learn from their experiences and influence their future behavior as a result. They even can be conditioned to learn sequences of symbols that produce concrete outcomes, but they cannot form pure abstractions. They cannot develop attitudes or interpret their experiences in abstract fashion.

For example, you cannot insult an animal. An insult is an abstract interpretation of a situation that requires our peculiar brand of consciousness. All debates can be boiled down to this fundamental difference between abstract human consciousness and concrete animal awareness, and no amount of intellectual demagoguery can mask it.

Consciousness: The Fire of Mind

Consciousness has many formal definitions that depend upon each theorist's particular psychological research design or problem, and their preferred beliefs about the human mind. But, when all the intellectual debris is cleared away, it is really a very straightforward and readily understood phenomenon.

Hugh Elliot, a staunch defender of materialism and no friend of spiritualists or mystics, described our mind, the process whereby we become conscious of anything, in the following very clever way,

. . . The mind is the cerebral processes themselves, not an imaginary accompaniment of them. . . . The difficulty of grasping this proposition will be largely mitigated by the fact that there exists a phenomenon from the inorganic world which furnishes a remarkably true and precise analogy to this strange product of the organic world. The phenomenon to which I refer is the phenomenon of fire.

Consciousness is the result of the mental "burning" of energy in the brain cells, and as with any burning, the result is never the same as what originally was burned. This is, at best, the worst of oversimplification. However, it is the fastest way of communicating the general idea.

Two Forms of Energy

Consider the following two descriptions carefully:

Fire, or “burning,” is merely energy change that produces light and heat. Light and heat emanate from the burning of physical substance. Light and heat appear to leave the source, but in the totality of the universe, they remain as energy. The two forms of energy, light and heat, possess different characteristics.

Consciousness, or “thinking,” is merely energy change that produces thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings emanate from the “burning” of mental energy. Our thoughts and feelings appear to leave us, but in the totality of the universe, they continue to exist as energy. The two forms of consciousness, thoughts and feelings, possess different characteristics.

The particular kinds of thought processes you employ determine which kinds of overall consciousness are produced. The mixture should be the focus of your concern.

You are familiar with the fact that there are processes that can produce heat without light, and similarly, processes that produce light without heat. A similar principle governs the production of consciousness.

There are certain things you do with your mind that involve feelings but little or no thought, such as that warm glow when you see a loved one. The feelings that we experience in our consciousness are analogous to the heat form of fire. This is probably as close as we come to matching the conditioned cortical processing of the other animals referred to above.

Similarly, there are thoughts you have that involve little or no feelings. These thoughts exist as sequences of words that evoke an abstract sense of meaning and understanding within us. This is analogous to the light form of fire. To our knowledge, the other animal species do not experience this form of cortical activity. That is why it is not possible to actually have a real human (read philosophical) conversation with animals, even on the most rudimentary levels.

We seldom engage in a pure form of either process, it is almost always some mix of the two -- thoughts and feelings -- and that is precisely what we were created to do. The particular mix you create of these two forms of consciousness is what is important to your spiritual development. (The opposing of the negative with the positive consciousness energies is at the heart of the process we are to perform . . . which makes self-control paramount).

I believe the significance of Elliot's analogy of consciousness to light and heat as the way to understand our relationship to the universe, parallels the significance that the wave analogy of light and heat had as the way to understand energy in physics.

The Conservation Principle

One of the tests of abstract ideas in physics is whether they obey the conservation principle. Prior to the acceptance of wave theory, light and heat had been explained by unobservable physical phenomena. Heat was thought to be an invisible, weightless fluid termed caloric that was produced when a substance was burned and that could be transmitted from one body to another by conduction.

The caloric theory violated the conservation principle when applied to heat produced by friction during the application of mechanical energy. Mechanical energy was not conserved because it was continually used up and caloric was not conserved because it was continually being created. (Remember this idea of “continuous creation,” as it will appear in later discussions of theories about the universe.)

Today it is recognized that the process is not the disappearance of one thing and the appearance of another, but merely the transformation of energy from one form to another. The transfer of heat by radiation was determined to be an electromagnetic phenomenon. It was further determined that all electromagnetic radiation was at the same speed as light, the differences being in the wavelengths.

Light was thought to be a stream of corpuscles that traveled outward in straight lines from light sources. The corpuscular theory of light proved inadequate to explain the interference and diffraction of light in liquids, so electromagnetic wave theory became the primary explanation of light and optical phenomena. However, classical electromagnetic theory failed to account for photoelectric emission, the electric eye used in security systems and light switches. A compromise was reached by suggesting that light was dualistic in nature. Light propagation was explained by electromagnetic wave theory and the interaction of light with matter was explained as a particle phenomenon.

Since light appeared to be dualistic in nature, it was thought that the same might be true of matter. That is, electrons and protons, which were supposed to be particles, might in some circumstances behave like waves. This led to the development of wave mechanics, or quantum mechanics, which is considered to be a secure base for atomic theory.

Essentially, quantum theory has eliminated the idea that electrons revolving around the nucleus were in specified orbits that were not subject to the rules of general electromagnetic theory. It also asserts that "particles" (quanta) of matter are endowed, like light, with wavelike properties.

Energy - The Substance of Soul

Actually, the only thing that exists in our universe is energy. It is merely stratified into differing states. The separation of these states is determined by the relation of their vibratory "speeds" to each other. (Remember this notion when we refer to String Theory later) Matter, or mass, is energy decelerated from the square of the speed of light.
Conversely, energy is matter accelerated to the square of the speed of light. This is Einstein's famous equation in words.

To understand the philosophical significance of energy, we must change our basic notion of speed as a characteristic of getting somewhere. Speed illustrates relativity and will be useful in simplifying the concept, as Henri Bergson observed, "percevoir signifie immobiliser."

You can visualize the relativistic nature of matter and energy by imagining the passing of a tremendously fast automobile close to you on the highway. If you are stationary, the car as it passes will be an invisible blur, in essence, pure motive energy. Now picture yourself on the same highway in another car traveling at an identical speed. The other car will now be a solid object to your eyes, not a blur of energy.

All matter is in continuous molecular motion. The speed of this molecular motion determines the state we view it in. All our visible matter is that which is traveling at relatively the same range of molecular speed that our bodies are. This is the normal range of molecular activity as it contains those energy states that we can sense as solids or composite entities. This is a limitation of our bodily senses.

Our senses are limited by the speed of the molecular activity that comprises their very existence. We are not equipped to sense as a composite any substance that exists at the square of the speed of light. When the speed of molecular activity reaches the square of the speed of light, it becomes pure energy to us because it exceeds the normal range.

Essentially, those things with molecular activity at similar speeds to ours are the living forms of substance, both animate and inanimate. Animate life forms are the ones whose molecular speed is identical to ours. Inanimate life forms are slower, but still living. The things whose molecular speeds are so slow relative to ours that they appear immobile are the lifeless (inorganic) forms.

The forms of substance with molecular speeds faster than ours appear less and less solid, from the fluid and gaseous states to the speed range designated as energy. As long as the molecular speed of our body and senses remains fixed, we can never see the fastest substance as anything but a blur of energy.

Solid Matter is Energy. This concept is vital. Therefore, I shall emphasize it and put it in the plainest possible terms. Solid matter and energy are NOT different phenomena. They are IDENTICAL, which is a primary source of confusion in our mathematical depictions. The only difference is their relative range of speed on either side of our molecular speed.

The harder a substance is to our senses, the slower is its molecular speed in relation to ours. The less solid a substance is to our senses, the faster its molecular speed is to ours. Energy is the term we use to describe substance in the speed range that we can no longer sense as a whole in this time-space. This does not mean it is any less "substance."

For the majority of us, whatever form of energy we consider, we always think of it as a power source that should be used to accomplish something. Eliot’s own implicit confusion about light and heat in his analogy to consciousness epitomizes the problem of subconsciously connecting energy with use. Eliot obviously believed that nothing of “substance” is created by fire.

Ever since we acquired the ability to create fire, the results associated with this phenomenon have been considered destructive and wasteful, unless the energy was used in some way. The normal opinion is that any substance that is burned is destroyed, when in actuality the process of burning is merely the chemical acceleration of energy from its current "slow" form to several alternate "faster" forms of energy, especially light and heat.

The easiest result of this acceleration to comprehend is the ash that remains after a solid has been burned. It is quite obviously less dense than the original substance, indicating faster molecular "speed." Therefore, it is a simple matter to accept the fact that the original substance was merely speeded up to less dense form. So too, it is not difficult to accept that the various gases and vapors are even faster (even less dense) forms of the original substance.

Light and heat, on the other hand, cause many to struggle unsuccessfully with the abstraction that they are simply faster forms of the original substance, because they do not consider them substance at all. Similarly, while we experience consciousness as a "substantive state," we, like Eliot before us, do not consider it "substance" either. However, our consciousness is both substantive and substance, since it provides the field within which our perceptions (observations and measurements) of our experienced reality exist. Without it, we would not experience anything.

The major obstacle to understanding the preceding equation of consciousness with energy, hence substance, arises from the most commonly used forms of energy, e.g. physical activity or potential physical activity reflected in Motion. Kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, all dilute the abstraction of energy because they, like light and heat, cannot be thought of as substance. An explanation of Motion in time-space might help to clarify some of this confusion.

Motion as Energy. Motion is a complex phenomenon because of its inexorable link with the complex notion of time-space. As Reichenbach suggested,

. . . Space is completely filled by the field that defines its metrics; what we have hitherto called material bodies are only condensations of this field. It makes no sense to speak of a movement of material parts as a transport of things; what takes place is a traveling process of condensation comparable to the movement of a wave in water.

We shall deal with Time-Space later in the discussion. At this point, perhaps an analogy will help to correct the basic misunderstanding of Motion .

A simple experiment with buttons may help. If you cannot visualize it, find several small white buttons and one large black one and try it. Arrange the white buttons so that the black button is in the center of a white square. You now have a simplified two-dimensional universe with the different size and color buttons representing different localized quantities of the basic substance: buttons. Make sure all the buttons are as close together as possible so that moving one moves the others next to it.

Now, try to move the position of the black button in this mini-universe up from the center without creating a space or hole. You will have to keep all the buttons together. For example, slide up the buttons on the bottom of the square directly under the black button. All the buttons in that area will move up and some will bulge out the top of the square, but the black button will be moved. In order to retain the square shape of the universe you will have to remove those buttons bulging out the top and add them to the dent in the bottom. Only in that way does your universe's structure (square) remain unchanged.

This two-dimensional analogy simplistically illustrates the basic operation of our universe. In order to "move" substance from its current position in the universe to another position we had to "add and remove" equal amounts of our "measured" buttons, the basic substance of this mini-universe.

In our universe, the "measured" basic substance is energy, and it must be added and removed in equal amounts to achieve "motion" in our universe as well. The essential concept is the same. To change the "position" of any substance in the universe, substance must be taken from another part of the continuum and added in place of the substance moved. It is on this principle that the law of the conservation of energy rests.

Naturally, our universe is four-dimensional and considerably more complex and flexible. Unlike buttons, the larger more dense substances can be broken down into smaller ones and the smaller ones can be grouped together into denser ones. The measurement of these densities is called Mass and the limitations of that measurement add to our confusion in understanding energy as substance.

Mass - A Matter of Significance

Mass is a concept that is the result of man's practical nature. Physics is concerned with physical phenomena for which it is necessary to have practical explanations. Every physical substance has mass, or its essential existence. Its mass is what is pushed, pulled, spun, or just allowed to lie there, in terms of the practical aspects of our reality. It is an excellent "measurable" abstraction for use in the mathematical models of our world.

We have used measurements of mass in our mathematical models to accomplish technological miracles, which is all we should expect from science according to the spiritual skeptics. They believe that what is done or how it is done are the only things man can know about the various phenomena around us. They feel that any other aspects of existence must remain indeterminate. This is why it has always bothered me when they “theorize” so freely about these “indeterminate aspects” and even present them as “scientific” explanations,(e.g. our Origins, no God) without according any similar courtesy or credence to “spiritual” explanations of these same “indeterminate aspects”!)

Indeterminate or not, we continually attempt to explain our world. Mass was a first approximation. The empirical nature of science requires that theories be supported by experimental observations. The methodology for measuring and assigning the characteristic of mass to "particles" requires a significant quantity of substance before it will register as possessing mass. This is an empirical limitation of the term and has no other justification.

Our early inability to refine the method for measuring mass required that we create a new term, quanta, to describe the smaller localizations of energy that we were encountering. Mass and quanta are interchangeable terms in their reference to the characteristic we are considering. They are both "cohesive localized energy events" (remember this phrasing) within the overall fabric of the universe. They merely describe different “amounts” of the same phenomenon and one of those amounts, a quantum, was not measurable as mass.

Quanta - The First Creation

Quanta are the first localized (massed) packets of energy with a given frequency. I should point out that light is quanta. In Genesis, light is the first creation. Even more interesting, light is represented as the first creation in the Indian, Greek, and Phoenician cosmogonies; and freely interpreted, is implied in the ancient Babylonian writings because they ascribe the creation of the world to the sun-god Marduk. Strange that all these sources should place light, alias quanta, first in the sequence of creation. Why wasn't it placed second or third or even simultaneously with darkness? What intuitive (right brain) insights underlie such consistency?

Quanta are the first localizations of the basic energy and their frequency is very high. Frequency is an expression of the internal "speed" of oscillation. As more quantities of energy localize the aggregate "speed" decreases. The frequency lowers because of wave interference.

Basically, the appearance of mass comes about by the merging of energy quanta into packets of energy events with slower aggregate frequencies that we can detect called "particles." These slower packets congregate into slower event systems we call atoms which congregate into even slower event systems we call molecules. The molecules congregate into even slower event systems we call substance. The more molecules in the system the slower the aggregate frequency and the harder the substance.

The Los Angeles freeways provide an crude analogue to this slowing because of frequency interference. A single auto approaching the outskirts of the traffic is free to maintain a respectable speed. As it progresses further into the city, it encounters more and more cars. Its speed diminishes until its forward progress is limited to the stop and go spurts by the massing of cars in the lane.

The average speed of each lane is determined by the average frequency of forward motion of all the cars in the lane combined, even though the individual rates vary. The individual frequencies that comprise each lane determine the frequency of the lane. The frequencies of all the lanes determine the frequency of the freeway. The frequencies of all the freeways determine the frequency of the Los Angeles system, and so on.

Perhaps a more precise analogy between energy systems and transportation systems is possible, but you should get the general idea.

Atoms - Reiterated Energy Events

Most of you are familiar with the generalization that atoms are the basic substance of all matter. Well, energy is the basic substance of all atoms. Quantum mechanics provides the frame of reference for the stratification of energy substance by acceleration. The "speed" is determined by the wavelength. The shorter the wavelength the higher the frequency and, thus, the faster it vibrates.

At the heart of the quantum theory of atom formation is the mathematically expressible phenomenon of the spherical standing wave. A standing wave pattern is permanent for any frequency, despite the transience of the propagated waves that comprise its becoming.

An atom is merely a gathering of smaller localized energy events in the form of waves that gather together and act like separate particles that have mass. Our scientists have named these localizations protons, electrons and neutrons. They are comprised of waves of energy at differing frequencies. Particle physicists are obsessed with finding ever-smaller localizations by “smashing” them in particle accelerators, hoping to find the smallest, most fundamental “particle” amidst the "splashes."

In much the same way, the surf of coastal areas is a localization of the ocean into swells that have "mass". Any surfer who has been wiped out by one of these localizations knows that they act like separate, quite solid, and massive particles of the basic ocean.

The individual wave disappears in the act of accomplishing its experiential effects but the surf remains. It is an interesting mental exercise to try to explain the true nature of the wave without referring to your experience with it. It would be cheating to identify it as the "one that wiped me out."

Perhaps after such a workout, understanding the nature of pulsational becoming and the standing wave patterns that underlie the permanence of existence will be easier. It might become more acceptable not to view "particles" as composite solids retaining their identity indefinitely nor simply as vibrations in a quasi-solid medium. The individuality of such elements is in the separateness of events, not things.

Existential permanence is in the reiteration of events through time, not the existence of particles through time. Unfortunately, the persistence of "particle" imagery has masked the essential significance of quantum mechanics to our understanding of reality.

The Non-Existence of Particles

The most revolutionary aspect of quantum mechanics has been variously ignored or vigorously denied depending on the author's particular preference ---- the fact that the existence of "particles" is no longer supportable. DeBroglie attributed a vibratory nature to matter and Planck assigned a corpuscular character to radiation. If both Einstein's and Planck's equations are valid, and they have been found so in virtually every physical arena, then E=hf and E=MC-squared mean that MC-squared =hf.

Unfortunately, our current mathematics fails to accurately represent the hypothesized wave interference derivations of "particle" creation because an expanding "beat" seems unavoidable in Schrodinger's wave function. This anomaly in the mathematical representation is used to justify retaining a "particle" orientation. However, the Rayleigh principle unambiguously states,

. . . an individual 'particle' is a whole train of waves of different frequencies which together form a wave packet. The velocity of these packets is a function of the waves comprising it.

We see that all energy is vibratory and Bachelard suggests the crucial connection with Time that our "measurements" mandate,

. . . From criticism delivered by wave mechanics, it follows that the particle has no more reality than the composition that manifests it. There are temporal events at the very foundation of its existence.

but it is Eddington who points out the fundamental conundrum of objective indeterminacy,

. . . to recognize h (Planck's constant) is to deny subjective indeterminacy and accept objective indeterminacy. . . The suggestion is that an association of exact position with exact momentum can never be discovered by us because there is no such thing in Nature.

A material particle thus loses its character of a substantial entity existing in space and enduring through time. It is revealed as simply that which we identify when we perform a particular process event in Time called "measurement," or observation.