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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