Multisense Realism

(This last diagram shamelessly stolen and modified from a paper called Natural World Physical, Brain Operational,and Mind Phenomenal Space-Time.)

The key insight is that rather than an ideal or material primitive which all things share, it is the capacity to sense (to discern and participate) which is irreducible and universal. Through this framework which highlights the symmetric qualities of public and private, cardinal and ordinal, generic and proprietary, spatial and experiential, etc, the big picture comes into focus as a flexible, self-involuting experience of experiences. Sense is the authentic presentation in which we participate directly, within which indirect experiences are re-presented as public bodies within bodies.

Multisense Realism is a set of ideas about how consciousness can be integrated with the physical universe. It is rooted in a consideration of what is ultimately necessary for a universe such as our own to exist, without disqualifying subjectivity. If we acknowledge from the start that all subjective experiences are by definition phenomena which are part of the cosmos, then we can dispense with the prejudice of contemporary approaches which rely on an assumption of ‘illusions’. In reducing the universe to basic concepts such as function, substance, and experience, it appears that beneath any possible function or substance there must be a capacity for discernment and experience of any functions or substances. When compared with the other two possibilities – of a universe of substance which gives rise to experiential functions arbitrarily, or a universe of functions which gives rise to substances and experiences superfluously. In both cases, it appears that there is no plausible explanation for why either substance or function should generate any sort of experience. The remaining possibility is that the universe we live in is fundamentally based on experience (aka sense, or perception-particpation) rather than substances or functions.

Looking at sense in this new way, as a universal version of ordinary afferent and efferent experience, a new view of the universe is revealed. In this view, both  ‘information’ and matter are derived from more fundamental values of generating sensation and significance. This then, is an attempt to help others who may be interested in understanding the surprisingly simple (though convoluted to discuss) relations between ordinary awareness, matter, energy, time,  and space.