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Matthew Forrest: Linear time is an illusion
Great video Matthew. I agree mostly, but I don’t think that we need to conclude that linear time is (only) an 𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣, any more than we can conclude that photons are 𝒏𝒐𝒕 an illusion.
I see illusion itself as more illusory, a function of the perceptual sense of realism which is a hierarchical, power-law relation across multiple modes and scales of perceptual access.
For example, in the perceptual reality of all small flying insects such as a mosquito, the surface tension of water allows one to stand on top of a pond. The world at that scale is just a different world than it is at the scale of a human body.
I propose that in addition to having access to different qualities of the exterior (seeming) world by virtue of that world’s body size scale differences, mosquito experience also likely includes access to a corresponding set of interior (seeming) features (such as sensory and perceptual qualities) that human experience does not. The mosquito may not experience the world in anything like the stunning degree of aesthetic richness that human consciousness affords.
The mosquito’s life may be devoid of deep pain and pleasure as we know them, of a sense of self as separate from all of mosquito-kind, etc. It’s a different game of life at that scale – possibly more about geometry of feelings rather than the geometry of crystal clear objects we can touch and see with human scale sense.
Our scope of access changes as we grow and age, but also remains the same as far as it remains the experience of an individual human being, which is divided out of a larger collective experience of family, species, order, class, phylum, kingdom, etc. I propose that experience goes beyond biological kingdoms even, and into geo-chemical and astro-nuclear scales of 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 size and relative sample frequency rate.
It makes sense to me that because perception or consciousness is necessarily and literally 𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙧 than reality, and includes sole access to all facts and fictions, facts are literally a localized/localizing subset of universal fiction rather than the other way around.
What we perceive to be stable facts (and which 𝙖𝙧𝙚 stable facts 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚, physical constants etc,) can be understood as established, ongoing fact-fiction experiences of a greater or lesser scale of significance than our own ongoing fact-fictions.
I propose that the relation of the scales of significance are the basis of the perceptual quality of realism, as well as gravity, both of which are the same power law relation of universal perception only interiorized and exterioirzed respectively.
We can have dreams that are more realistic or less realistic than our waking experience, but within any given dream or period of waking awareness, we can accept any degree of strangeness and surreality as factual reality. Only the experience of waking up, which is a perceptual shift in perceptual context, can change the relations to cast one set of experiences as dream and another as reality.
If you never wake up from a dream, that dream is your real life. The only difference is that real life is a dream that shares more context of common sense (sense that is literally common across more relative scales and sample rate frequencies, modalities, and quantities of individualized experiences).
TSC Science of Consciousness Retrospective
2012
Abstract
40 The Elephant in Every Room: A Proposed Theory of Multisense Realism
Craig Weinberg
Multisense realism defines a new approach to bridge the Explanatory Gap between neurological observation and first hand conscious experience. This is a hypothesis of consciousness, elementary physics, and ultimately cosmology which requires no belief in non-ordinary reality yet which honors the full spectrum of the psyche and self. It consists of new interpretations of established scientific and common sense observations rather than a contradiction of them. It is proposed that consciousness, rather than being either a metaphysical epiphenomenon of matter, or a Cartesian dualism alongside matter, is more like a frequency range within a continuous spectrum which includes both subjective and objective phenomena. Rather than a simple graduated continuum like the electromagnetic spectrum, it should be conceived of as an ‘involuted continuum’ which twists into an interior and exterior topology like a Möbius strip. The common denominator (the strip) is the sense which arises from through symmetry, similarity, circuity, and divergence between the various nested perspectives on interiority and exteriority. Sense is the underlying primitive. That is what the cosmos, and we ourselves are “made of’”. Not mind or matter, but the capacity for the two to be both separate in one sense and the same thing in another. Sense is a universal dance of presentation and representation. Without either subject or object – there cannot be a sense of ‘reality’ or realism. Realism arises from this involuted continuum between opposite ontological expressions.
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Slide Deck: The Elephant in Every Room
2014
Abstract
23 Consciousness: Intrinsic, Primordial, Multisense Realism
Craig Weinberg (multisenserealism.com, Durham, NC)
Multisense Realism (MSR) is philosophical hypothesis which is intended to pick up where panpsychism leaves off. Consisting of an informal framework of core concepts developed from diverse influences such as semiotics, information theory, and anthropology, MSR proposes a united continuum of physics and phenomenology which is fundamentally aesthetic. MSR addresses five problems (The Hard Problem of Consciousness, The Explanatory Gap, The Combination or Binding Problem, The Symbol Grounding Problem, and the Mind Body Symmetry Problem) as a single Presentation Problem, while exposing critical flaws in popular competing approaches. MSR aspires to be a reality theory which reconciles the plausible and the absurd under the umbrella of a single irreducible synthetic a priori, and in the process reinterprets the number one, the Big Bang, and the ontology of light.
I don’t have a digital copy of my poster for 2014, but I did get this cool souvenir poster signed by a lot of great people:
2016
Abstract
47 Diffractivity and Multisense Continuum
Craig Weinberg (multisenserealism.com, Durham, NC )
In the science of consciousness, one question that we must eventually ask is, What is the event horizon of consciousness? Where does the rubber hit the road? Are all sensations, feelings and thoughts derived from a common source? Many theories offer ways to correlate consciousness with formal systems such as neurology or information processing, but the accomplishment of correlation itself is taken for granted from the start. I think that this is a problem which turns out to be identical to the Hard Problem. Without an explanation of precisely what is doing the actual relating in Relativity or the actual integrating in IIT, we have not solved the problem, only hidden it from ourselves. The hypothesis of Diffractivity begins by rejecting emergence-based theories on the grounds that they provide no explanation for their own origin. Diffractivity inverts the assumption of an unconscious universe which produces consciousness so that it is the appearance of unconsciousness which is proportional to dissociation by insensitivity. Diffractivity is intended as a philosophical conjugate to Relativity, but it can be adapted to any theory which reduces to a formal system. In Hameroff and Penroses Orch OR, the Diffractivistic conjugate to the Objective Reduction would be a Subjective Inflation. In Tononi & Kochs IIT, Information Integration would be preceded an Aesthetic Disintegration. Bohms Implicate and Explicate Order would be diffracted from the order-transcending Multisense Continuum. Any system based on structures, including mathematics and logic, would find new roots beyond formality and extend to fusion with the Continuum. This is not intended as an appeal to supernatural metaphysics but a logical extension of the proposition of ordinary sense as fundamental. By grounding all substances and conditions into a foundation which is purely aesthetic, we gain insight into the philosophical and technological issues of the 21st century. The empirical observations of science and math remain the same, only their interpretation changes. Diffractivity proposes that objects, dreamed or real, are produced by the same filtering, but with a different scale of experiential density or significance. Time and space emerge as limits on awareness rather than axioms of existence. We can see and understand white light as a colorless brightness which reveals color through diffraction of light itself. Diffractivity proposes that all phenomena are fragments of a universal experience, and that the maximum degree of fragmentation within any given frame of perception constitutes its math and physics. Electromagnetic effects would be affects of effectiveness, in the same way that light is a seeing of seen-ness. What we experience as physics, chemistry, and biology is suggested to emerge from fundamental levels of diffraction. Our sense of subjectivity provides a limited unveiling, or re-acquaintance with that which has been alienated by time, space, and entropy, giving the brain a new identity as an aesthetic diffraction engine.
Diffractivity slide deck
Poster:
2018
Abstract
68 The Hard Problem of Signaling.
Craig Weinberg (multisenserealism.com, Durham, NC )
As we struggle to understand consciousness scientifically, we should take care to avoid errors resulting from anthropomorphic projection and assumptions of bottom-up emergence. My presentation focuses on clarifying the differences between physical form, logical information, and sense experience. I propose that common terms such as ‘signaling’ and ‘sense data’ are deceiving approximations which rely on pan-semiotic, anthropomorphic biases that lead us away from understanding and toward an echo-chamber of fallacies and false presumptions. What is the difference between a physical chain reaction and a signal? What is the difference between sense experience and sense-making? What is the role of tangibility in differentiating between objects, concepts, and percepts, and what is the origin of tangibility? In light of the accelerated pace of AI development and the heightened intensity of debate about its implications, it is important to go back and re-examine the foundations of computation from a philosophical perspective. By doing this, at least some of us will see that science and technology have not solved the hard problem of consciousness, only miniaturized it to the point that it can be easily overlooked. In my view, recognizing this mistake and the gravity of its consequences is critical to any deep understanding of consciousness or simulated intelligence systems. Without such a deep understanding, I think that we will tend to assume human or superhuman sentience for any unfamiliar results, and to ultimately cede authority to systems which only reflect our own desires for certainty and leadership. C13
Hard Problem of Signaling slide deck
2019 Interlaken, Switzerland
Abstract
- De-Simulating Natural Intelligence
Craig Weinberg, Multisenserealism.com
In recent years, scientific and popular imagination has been captured by the idea that
what we experience directly is a neuro-computational simulation. At the same time,
there is a contradictory idea that some things that we experience, such as the existence
of brains and computers, are real enough to allow us to create fully conscious and intelligent devices. This presentation will try to explain where this logic breaks down, why
true intelligence may never be generated artificially, and why that is good news. Recent
studies have suggested that human perception is not as limited as previously thought,
and that while machines can do many things better than we can, becoming conscious
may not be one of them. The approach taken here can be described as a Variable Aspect
Monism or Multisense Realism, and it seeks to clarify the relationship between physical
form, logical function, and aesthetic participation.
Wai H. Tsang: Science and Technology. It’s origin & convergence back to Renaissance Religion – Zoom talk 31/03/21
Great stuff from Wai H. Tsang. I’m about halfway through listening to this talk. Here are my comments:
I propose an additional clarification that the fractal, cyclical, and mathematical properties of the Totality are aspects of the Diffraction process or Diversification of the Unity into Universe.
My point in the comparison image is that I think that purpose – the participatory aspect of the Totality in general is not part of mathematics, fractals, etc. To the contrary, counting, and by extension math, computation, geometry, physics are passive instruments of purpose.
Specific purposes are clothed in algorithmic-geometric form, however only as a vehicle for expression of the true Unity of the Totality, which is more like the inversion of mathematics.
I was also inspired by Wai’s discussion and inclusion of this image. Talking about a teleological universe in which a retrocausal attractor is pulling us toward the originating singularity. I agree but to clarify, only in the Uni/Holos sense and not in the Verse/Graphos sense.
It’s complicated but…mortality is like a bubble of conscious perception within the Totality of conscious perception. The perception of the Totality from within that bubble varies from states of transparency, translucence, reflection, refraction, diffraction, and opacity to the Totality.
It’s a focus thing. As we change our focus (or our focus is changed for us), sensitivity to the Totality can be increased so that the self identifies with the Totality and sees no separation. This is profound and true, however, while consciousness is conditioned with mortality, the loss of separation is akin to mania/psychosis. The idealist is correct in the ultimate sense, but impractical and deluded from the mortality-dominated perspective.
As awareness contracts, focus shifts from the Totality to the Locality, and then to the bubble itself – the separation. It’s complicated because I think that what Wai and others are on to is a Unity of Graphos rather than Holos. All separations use similar schemas, but that similarity itself is maximally dissimilar to the true Holos/Absolute/Totality, which we experience mentally as imagination, perceptually as qualia, emotionally as love, somatically as pleasure, egotistically as success, etc. Physicality and mathematics are inversions of sensitivity…they are the concrete and abstract qualia of quanta.
The Haptic Universe
If I’m on the right track in thinking of existence as an irreducibly sensing phenomenon, then the idea of particles can be replaced with the idea of coordinated sense happenings, or haptics. Haptics, not atoms or quarks or data, form the skeleton of realism, uniting the sense of touch and tangibility with the sense of causality, proprioception and any other aesthetic sense modalities that are available.
Whether we are dreaming or awake, the properties of realism are conserved. Rupert Sheldrake’s idea of Morphic Resonance can be modified as Haptic Resonance. Possibly electromagnetism can be reinterpreted as electrohaptic and magnetohaptic properties – which are properties of haptics rather than of disembodied force-field perturbations of vacuum spacetime. The universe is not an empty container within which matter and energy happen, the universe is an eternal multisense happening with material and energetic sense qualities.
There Has Always Been a Better Case for Matter Being Imaginary Than Imagination Being Material
Appeal to the Stone (Argumentum ad lapidem) “The name of this fallacy is derived from a famous incident in which Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed to disprove Bishop Berkeley‘s immaterialist philosophy (that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds) by kicking a large stone and asserting, “I refute it thus.”
I suspect that even now, this fallacy secretly remains the foundation of physicalism. Of course, the problem with Johnson’s demonstration is that kicking a rock could occur just the same way in a dream or in our imagination. We can understand that a rock in a dream has no need to seem to be composed of physical substances like silicon or basalt. A dream rock may be ‘composed’ of one’s hard feelings toward the menial tasks being assigned to someone at work. Just being able to experience kicking a rock says nothing about that rock, or any rock being real in some other way besides the reality of the experience. All dreams are real dreams.
Being open to the idea of matter as imaginary in an ultimate or absolute sense does not have to bring us to solipsism or creationism. All that we know is that we can dream or imagine matter, but we do not know that it is our imagination that is responsible for all dreams, nor do we know that any person or super-person including ourselves or God is not also “imaginary”. All that we know is that imagination itself is real.
If I were to rewrite Decartes’ Cogito, I would leave “I” and “think” out of it and just say something like “everything can be an illusion of conscious experience except conscious experience itself”. From there, I might derive “Therefore there can be no escape from conscious experience except into another conscious experience.”. After all, if we say that we experience unconsciousness, we cannot have been completely unconscious. If we were, then we can only infer such a non-existent experience as an inference when we return to consciousness.
To sum up:
- Everything – including ourselves, God, matter, space, time, even mathematics can be “imaginary”.
- Imagination cannot be imaginary.
- Imagination can potentially exist beyond ourselves, God, reality, etc.
- Nothing can be shown to be beyond imagination in a way that could not also be imaginary.
On 0.999… being equal to 1
We can revise our understanding of numbers such that each number is not a noun but a verb. The numerical value comes not from the digitization, which is only a snapshot representation, but from the act of counting. In other words, quantitative value may ultimately require a direction of flow. In this case, the “…” refers to a positive direction of flow that is unbounded so that it must be considered identical to the value that it reaches by its own definition.
All numbers are parts of a continuum and therefore always ‘almost’ the previous and successor numbers just as orange is defined as the color between almost red and almost yellow.
One interesting possibility from making this fundamental shift is that zero could be understood as an imaginary number between two real numbers “-0.000…1” and “0.000…1”.
Once we have that, we no longer need to see numbers as digital entities added on top of nothingness, but as diffraction bands breaking the continuity of a fluid spectrum of ‘everythingness’. Numbers do not connect to form wholes, they break wholes into parts. This has enormous consequences for our understanding of existence, consciousness, and AI.
Us, the Virus, and Multisense Metaphysics
In my view, there are three distinct, contrasting layers of causality:
1. Subpersonal (mechanical, generic, repetitive, statistical, meaningless)
2. Personal (dualistic, intentional, autobiographical, semi-meaningful)
3. Transpersonal (transcendental, synchronistic, archetypal, super-meaningful)
For most individuals, I suspect that we are here primarily to participate in a personal experience. This consists of a human lifetime which combines both elements that are tailor-made for us as conscious subjects, and elements that are arbitrary from a subjective perspective and are instead brought about statistically by relatively objective and inevitable conditions. We are the union of the intentional and the unintentional. One of the consequences of that union is that our ability to participate consciously tilts the balance toward the intentional, even if only in the fact that intention is conceivable. I think that playing this role of person necessarily requires us to act as a gatekeeper between the levels above and below our own personal range of experience. The person is like a transistor, modulating the flow of cause and effect between the subpersonal (bottom-up, unintentional) and transpersonal (top-down, super-intentional), as well as initiating their own unique causes on a personal and interpersonal level. We are choosing, little by little, whether to support broadly inclusive, sensible qualities of experience (what I call Significance) or to support less-significant, ‘lower’ agendas that are purely selfish and insignificant. We have the privilege to decide whether to emphasize the ‘better angels of our nature’, or to indulge in ego glorification, or to descend further into dehumanization (the subpersonal/impersonal).
In the context of my Multisense Realism metaphysics, I use the term significance in a formal, and somewhat neologistic way. The idea is that since the universe is made of conscious aesthetic (feelings, sensations, qualities) experiences rather than something like information or physical mechanisms (anesthetic forms, functions, numbers), there are some interpretations of physical law that need to be updated. If my view is on the right track, then what we understand through the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only addressing the lowest, subpersonal/impersonal layer of nature. When we run scientifically controlled experiments using tangible objects as instruments to exert and record tangible influences over other tangibly measurable phenomena, then by design we are going to exclude the personal and transpersonal layers of causality to a large extent. The very methods we are using to inspect nature are specifically suppressing the influence of higher consciousness in the service of science, however, without higher consciousness, what remains of science is, like the phenomena that are being studied, ultimately entropic and meaningless. The point of science is to assist higher consciousness, and where it fails to do that, it is a net loss for civilization. Optimizing financial profit is not a feature of higher consciousness, it is an agenda within personal and interpersonal consciousness.
With Multisense Realism I have attempted (in a somewhat lazy and half-assed way) to propose ideas for rehabilitating our worldview on a philosophical level with a model of nature in which mechanism, personal participation, and transpersonal phenomena are integrated as parts of a single ‘aesthetic’ spectrum. It now appears to be time to take a shot at applying this philosophical project more to real life, and perhaps specifically toward strategies related to coping with the ‘long emergency’ that humanity is currently entering.
What then might the MSR philosophy suggest that we can do personally during this time?
1. Be a good gatekeeper. It is our personal responsibility to negotiate between our body and emotional needs (subpersonal and intrapersonal levels of experience) and our higher guidance of interpersonal and transpersonal awareness (thinking, informing ourselves, intuition, empathy, inspiration, divinity). Being a good gatekeeper means being a good leader to your body and a good citizen to society and the cosmos. It means asserting the significance of higher agendas over lower ones, however, there is also a danger in allowing raw transpersonal impulses to fill us with false hopes, superstitions, myth and drama. Sanity is the mid-range between the overly autistic and overly artistic. The place in between is the best place for most of us to build our psychological house-of-bricks. The key to being a good gatekeeper, IMO is to get into the habit of addressing sensations and impulses, emotions and thoughts in an intelligent way: To sort out which experiences are caused by automatic mechanisms that can be ignored or adjusted, and which rise to the attention of our personal and participation. We should ask ourselves, how does sanity work? This becomes more important in a time of mass crisis and prolonged isolation.
2. I think that we are here because there are some things that can only be experienced directly from the perspective of being a particular, unique person. It is important that to ‘be yourself’ to a greater extent during these times and resist the pressure to degenerate into stereotypical roles and behaviors that fill the vacuum during a low-level crisis such as a war or pandemic. The virus event is forcing us to choose, with our actions, whether to dehumanize or rehumanize.
3. Understand and practice self-healing. This gets into some potentially dangerous speculation. I am not a qualified expert by any means, and I would never suggest that anyone ignore medical realities. What I offer here is an interpretation of the placebo effect which gives us mental license to intervene on our own behalf and potentially on behalf of others. I think that the ‘placebo’ interpretation of medically inert intervention is based on the mechanistic, sub-personal worldview described in the first paragraph. If my view is on the right track, this is a biased misinterpretation that effectively cuts off our access to half of the available resources for wellness and healing. Without getting too far into the weeds, I will just say that while we must collectively focus on mechanical, functional solutions to public health and social crises, we can also personally stretch our sensitivity into the transpersonal levels of intuition and synchronicity to discover new paths of healing and support. Again, ungated access to the transpersonal can and will by default lead us into magical thinking and superstition, so it’s important not to abandon our post with uncritical thinking. What I am suggesting is that what we think and feel are powerful, reality-altering influences, which we can also have power over to some degree.
Ok, now I’ll get into the weeds. Feel free to ignore the rest of this.
A more technical justification for how personal consciousness can alter subpersonal realities comes from the idea that ’emergent properties’ are a negentropic influence on physical phenomena. That is, conscious perception and attention have the effect of simplifying complex physical phenomena and consolidating fine-grained details. Even from a materialistic perspective, that is the function of consciousness – to winnow ‘sense data’ down into a manageable stream.
My thinking is that because the details being eliminated and summarized by perception are microphysical, they are skewed toward disorderly, entropic tendencies. The second law of thermodynamics applies to physics, but not to perception, and not to physics that is under the influence of intention.
When we look at a video screen, for example, we don’t see an ocean of photoelectric and biochemical effects, we see an orderly visible image, with legible words and sentences. We are using the sub-personal ocean of meaningless-but-tangible events as a medium through which higher level, less tangible perceptions and understandings can take place. Our participation is having an effect on the balance of entropy and negentropy as well as in the selection of which negentropic resolutions are emphasized. When we look at an optical illusion such as the duck-rabbit ambiguous image, we can, through our attention, choose whether to see the duck, the rabbit, or neither. (Negentropic resolution 1, Negentropic resolution 2, or unresolved Entropic state). We may be able to even create novel, proprietary perceptual gestalts (Negentropic resolution X).
What I am suggesting is that part of what is going on in the placebo effect is that when we participate in an intervention from higher levels of consciousness onto lower levels, we are changing the momentum of entropy and negentropy in our own experience, which includes our body. Just as the Safety Match meme illustrates how social distancing can interrupt the domino effect of the exponential spread of disease, so too can our conscious interventions interrupt or accelerate automatic body processes.
(image by Juan Delcan and Valentina Izaguirre)
We can see more and do more with our body than our body can without us. As spectacular and complex as the human body is, it is by itself, just programmed to grow, reproduce, and die. It is our personal consciousness, and its power to channel transpersonal genius into the world which makes the difference. All that we have to do is to channel wisely. We have to choose when and how to choose.
Multisense Realism 
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