Section 62 (last updated 4.05.2021)
Internal external view
How one conceives the other
Two views on how reality is conceived
Whitehead explains the two ways reality is conceivable, he says;
“For example, we can conceive nature as composed of permanent things, namely bits of matter, moving about in space which otherwise is empty. This way of thinking about nature has an obvious consonance with common-sense observation. There are chairs, tables, bits of rock, oceans, animal bodies, vegetable bodies, planets, and suns. The enduring self-identity of a house, of( 175) a farm, of an animal body, is a presupposition of social intercourse. It is assumed in legal theory.It lies at the base of all literature. A bit of matter is thus conceived as a passive fact, an individual reality which is the same at an instant, or throughout a second, an hour, or a year. Such a material, individual reality supports its various qualifications such as shape, locomotion, colour, or smell, etc. The occurrences of nature consist in the changes in these qualifications, and more particularly in the changes of motion.
The connection between such bits of matter consists purely of spatial relations. Thus the importance of motion arises from its change of the sole mode of interconnection of material things. Mankind then proceeds to discuss these spatial relations and discovers Geometry. The geometrical character of space is conceived as the one way in which Nature imposes determinate relations upon all bits of matter which are the sole occupants of space. In itself, Space is conceived as unchanging from Eternity to Eternity, and as homogeneous from infinity to infinity. Thus we compose a straight-forward characterization of Nature, which is consonant to common sense, and can be verified at each moment of our existence. We sit for hours in the same chair, in the same house, with the same animal body. The dimensions of the room are defined by its spatial relations. There are colours, (176) sounds, scents, partly abiding and partly changing. Also the major facts of change are defined by locomotion of the animal bodies and of the inorganic furniture. Within this general concept of Nature, there have somehow to be interwoven the further concepts of Life and Mind.” (Whitehead nature lifeless)
These two differences in the relation between line to circle indicates two distinct ontological viewpoints on how reality is viewed. First, the ontology which attributes randomness as the initial condition of situations, an event is viewed as the result of a set of objects coming together and occupying the same reference frame without knowing the cause of their coming together. This view is passive because a conception is seen as objects being in the same space to which they randomly came to occupy, things congregate at the same space and at the same time and that’s why there is an event.
The argument that an event is random provides a causal explanation to events, that the occurrence of event randomly came into being, however the notion of randomness stops short here because once an event is into being the relation between the objects that randomly came to bear a relation, now exhibit a non random structure, an ordered relation. Randomness can be maintained as every time objects change configuration, that change was random, but it cannot be said that what they change into, the result observed by their change, that exhibits some order.
Second, an event is not viewed as the random circumstance of a set of objects simply relating by their occurrence of occupying the same space disclosing the same reference frame, but rather this form itself is part of their conception, or rather how each conceives the other, the space which appears to be outside of each disclosing both, is really the conception of one by the other. An event is rather the conception of each object by the other. Each object conceives the other. This conception which generally disclosed the objects together into the same circumstance, area, or space, is in part implicit and within each part that makes up the general relation. Each part in the event conceives the other by a a general scope where the other is disclosed within. In this view we are not brought together by the mere fact we share the same space, but rather each object within that space has the capacity to conceive the other object, I conceive my girlfriend, and my girlfriend conceived me, even my cat I conceived and in turn my cat conceived me. In this sense the identity we call the self is simply a collection derived from the set of all relations conceived by the single component in that complexity.
For example, the identity of my self is given to me, my name given by my parents, my genetics belongs to a long lineage of people, my country made by a collection of other men throughout history, and even my spouse is likewise given by her own version of these details given to her. And so who I identity with as “myself”e.g, my name is “John”, in the external sense has been given to me by all aspects of my conception, but who I really identity with as my self which lacks any of these identities, my pure capacity to conceive and disclose a set of identified objects, lacks any particular identity, is not given but determinate, coming out to pick out and select what to conceive. We can call this unconceived aspect of the self, the active side, is the conception which I identify with more, but cannot claim to be “myself” as it lacks the particular identities given to me by my other self which I associate as my self, how I look and where I am from, which is not really my self, as it is passive to whatever circumstances that is conceived by the other self, the unidentified aspect, which I “feel” like is more my self as it is the driven determinate force, while the other is the pre determined.
if we reduce the nature of the power of the conception to what is immediately perceived here, now and then, the concept develops a limited definition. The function of definition itself is to provide the best possible way of stating a particular interpretation of a phenomenon common to an array of different abs distinct people with different conceptions. The conception is therefore not subjective because it consists of being infinitely different across all different people, but rather it is objective because it is the power that we are trying to argue lead to the present moment the observer finds themselves in. The conception of the immediately present here and now and then must also include a prior condition which lead to its determination, the moment that lead to the moment is not just another moment, because this infinite regress takes back to the power that organized these moments into a sequence where one results in the other. Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” is the grandiose notion to this primary power of the conception the observer uses to determine the moment they are presently in here and now and then. This is the same process happening in the way our mind organizes information, as for example, when I state a general concept like “conception”, “time”, “event”, “moment”, “self”, etc., these bring about with them an innumerable array of different meanings related under a recognized idea. But the mind takes these different meanings and organizes them into the context the word is used to form a sequence of meaning, I.e., which definition is more likely to be the true reflection of that word in the context in it used in. The mind during its power of conception asks a similar conception, which moment is more likely related to the particular context of the present, and this is how the next event is determined as a future moment occupying the present for the observer.
An event is defined as a thing that happens
Event Entangled quantum state
An event is defined as a thing that happens, but this vague definition does not answer when an event occurs and it is assumed that the event is what happens at the present. However we also take past occurrence as events in the case of historical events and we also take future occurrence as events in the case of ‘preparing for an event or a party’. And so we are back to the vague definition of an event as simply an occurrence without an answer of when it occurs. The question may not matter when it occurs so long it occurs, however it matters for an observer as there is a sequence of events occurring right after another and when one takes the place of the other the other appears not occur . In physics, the definition of an “event” is more specific in the sense it means “a single occurrence of a process” and so a process may be indefinite in occurrences but an event is defined as an abstraction into a defined happening, like the ionization of one atom, but happens for through an innumerable other kinds of events.
An event can be viewed as a result of objects whose origination is not explained but are merely given as they randomly come together occupying a space disclosing them to bear a certain kind of relation; or we can view an event as a general conception implicit in each distinct components making it up that conceive each other into the identity they maintain as themselves,
One being conceives the other and is conceived by the other, you are my conception and I am your conception, and the event is the entangled quantum state where these two objects meet each other and interact. We are taking this notion of conception to the outermost extent of speculation and we do not mean only that one witnesses the other, but at an ultimate point, one being has brought the other into being, and the other being is brought by the one into being, that I am the man who my girlfriend conceived me to be, and she is the women I conceived into being, and this is true for every one that occupies the complexity of your most immediate relations, and beyond.
If we view events as a reference frame filled with components that conceives each other into being, how would that view differ from seeing the event as the circumstance where a set of already given objects come into being? the view that the event is the random coming together of already given objects does not explain how and why these objects generate into being, only that there are objects that are present, and we move on from that and presuppose that they randomly come into each other’s frames, like billboards bouncing off of each other. This view must presuppose the objects to be eternal otherwise it fails when we introduce the element of time as a degenerating principle and ultimate force for change, that an event cannot be the simple change in configuration of its objects because eventually the structure of the objects themselves change by degenerating out of being. If the objects are eternal and change is just their reconfiguration, we have to ask why than there is a limited conception of the object? This is true from an observer conceiving an object external to itself, I see something and not everything, and from the things internal point of view, it maintains a particular kind of expression outwards. If in my view I only perceive a set of finite objects in a very specific event, converges into the objects forming that event.
and has no place to explain their regeneration into some newly found form to continue the process, and that if this process has at one point deceased, there is no explanation as to why it springs back up into being again. Moreover if there is an infinity of these objects that endlessly become deceased and never rise up again, and the process is just indefinitely objects going out of being, than we still cannot explain how this infinity is maintained or where there is infinite energy is coming from to never be exhausted. In either case there needs to be an explanation for what
There is a space between the mind and it’s object, this space is filled with reality, and is ultimately spacetime, and at the end experts of this gradient there is the limit of consciousness, which is infinite potentiality, beyond the horizon are all things in the universe, and behind my eyes in my mind, there are all possibilities of events, these two end points constitutes the gradient and the limit of reality, where they meet off each other.
There is a mediation between thought and object. The distinction is between the consideration of possibilities any of which is indeterminately real; as opposed to a specific object at the present moment being directly observed. When looking at an object that triggers the thought about it, while on the other hand, a thought may trigger looking at an object. The mind does not only perceive objects that fall within its reference frame but also searches and looks out for objects and finds them. In this latter process the mind has to have a preconceived idea on what the object is like in order to go out and search for it.
But as to whether the mind has the concept of an object due to prior experience of coming into contact with it and therefore accessing memory, or whether there is some kind of innate tendency towards a notion of an object that later becomes evident. In both cases This forms a gradient of the same duration, a mixture of thought and the world, where on the one hand, in the world there are all possible objects simultaneously present and out there and the mind comes in contact with them one at a time; while on the other hand, there is the world in thought, that in my thought, the world is a potential and uncertain place constantly changing, never stable, about one object I have any infinity of thoughts, and in the world there is an infinity of objects I can have a single thought about each;
and there are no objects existing on their own as a synthesis of qualities only the qualities come up that group along with them a class of objects. The two different senses of possibility is that the world exhibits a limit for thought, that I see a set of distinct objects and beyond that I know there is an infinity of them. While thought exhibits a limitation to the world, that the world is infinite in holding all objects, thought comes in and limits that to particular conception of objects.
There is a relation between all possible objects as given and all possible objects as not given, in the former all objects exists simultaneously at once, while in the latter, and at any single point in this gradient is a particular object that is directly conceived. the infinity possibilities of objects beyond any direct conception converges with the infinite possibilities of identifying these objects. Beyond any particular conception at a given moment there is an infinity amount of objects and infinite amount of way of identifying these objects, these are the same thing in substance.
Models of universe
(Add to geocentric model)
Modern ideas of the Big Bang posit that the universe is ever expanding and one day objects will be far apart enough where nothing is sustained and the world will be a cold dead place. This idea explains how the universe originates into being, is opposite to how it will end. The universe began with a dense cosmic blowout of energy and mass, but that will eventually be exhausted. This model measures the direction of the universe by way of a quantitive method means that the ontological presupposition concerning the relation between quality and quantity is such that one governs the other. In the purely materialistic ontology, quantity governs quality, and this is a method on how to make judgments of the world and its order.
This is taken from the simple observation in the world whereby because qualities seems to be derived from objects with certain measure of quantities that means they are byproducts belonging to them, in other words, qualities belong to objects not the other way around. Moreover because any single object can be measured in a potentially innumerable way, it is concluded that a finite numbers is first before an infinity, we begin counting from 1 to infinity, the common logic is not the other way around, where we began from infinity to get to 1 because the assumption is that you would never get to 1, but would go on counting indefinitely. And so because we have as our immediate observation objects as single things of which many qualities belong to, we conclude that the world is measured as quantities and then qualities.
attributes rather seem to first exhibit themselves as a whole matter of mass, density, weight, and that determines the extent of their qualities like colour, symmetry, behaviour, form, and reason.
To quantitate quality- scientific materialism
The problem is not the reductionism of quality to quantity because a quality is only qualitative, or that the quality of a quality is that it is quantifiable , but that a certain logic is adopted which views one to be more primary than the other, which in itself is not a problem also because it is necessary to view which is more fundamental in the sense of which governs the other in which way, however a mistaken notion can be adapted as the correct one , in the materialism case, quantity more primary than quality, the world is given as a set of quantities to which qualities belong to, means that it gives justification to propose onto the world a selection of certain qualities over others in certain ways, quantitate the world, where once the universe is compact, it will be dispersed, where it was once hot, it will be cold etc. It makes distinction between qualities by placing them into certain order but not by explaining how they are different, because a quantity just concerns that it be given and that it is ordered, that there is a set differences that are modulated not how they come to be difference, for that coming to be different must be explained in terms of a quality not a quantity as the moment of the change can still be endured by the same quantity, .
The ontology of scientific materialism does not see the numbers making the universe in terms of the diversity in qualities they exhibit but rather by the way they can be ordered together to make a hierarchy for a single unifying model of the world. But so far as they are concerned with trying to have one model to explain the world, is derived from the intuition that the world is an object, and therefore maintains a single identity, and this is how it is discerned as the same quantity. However this assumption overlooks the essential quality of the object, that it is also not an object, the universe is an activity, and whatever endured that may not be distinct from the activity itself. that a quantity is first and foremost itself a quality, it is a quality to be an object. In other words, what it means to be a “quality” is simply the standard defining the identity of a thing that makes it distinctive, and whenever we speak of the quality of something, we are defining a certain quantity by making it distinctive. A quantity is however not what makes something distinctive, this is the quality of being a quantity, it is distinctive in that it is shared among all different objects and therefore bears no identity of its own other than bearing qualities. This defines what it means to be “external”, or rather external relations, the relation where a thing maintains itself against other entities maintaining themselves against their relations.
“Atomism embraces all those ontologies which assume these relations are external, meaning by this that the essential qualities of an ultimate component (an “atom”) exist independently of its relations and that an ultimate component possesses qualities without being itself a quality” (ted)
This is what it means to be a quantity, that it possess qualities without itself being a quality. Of course it does not escape that a quantity is also a quality in being not a quality, but that is maintained as the essential worldview of the universe in the materialist ontologies, that qualities are quantities because their qualities are merely given as such and do not need to concern with someone already given as to how it is given, only how to quantify it, . They say that ‘all objects are material’ for example, to denote that matter is the quantity of everything in the physical universe. If quantity is what is shared means that it is also what it means not to be an object, and the universe is both the change of object, and also an object enduring change.
(Add to whitehead function of reason)
Ontologies like atomism that depend wholly on observations studies of external relations fail when it comes to provide a conclusive understanding of evolution. If evolution is viewed as wholly a process of external relations, than it can only provide the following inconclusive account of development: in any environment there is a given set of distinct variables, that after a certain period of time passes, due to the function of time, come to ‘yield’ together and form a fully functioning organism, synthesizes distinct and separate entities into a whole form operating under a common goal in the environment, whether the aim is reproduction, consumption, novelty etc., ontologies of external relations like in part Darwinian evolution explain nature as a series of components maintaining their own identity against each other and against the environment they share, which is only common in that they are maintaining themselves against it as well. In this idea time is said to be the factor for why things develop intelligence but it does not explain how time does this, or whether time is itself a quality of some other substance modern physics todays say that it took the earth around 4.5 billion years for complex life to develop, along with the age of the universe which is 13.8 billion, this means that the development of life to this stage constitutes roughly 33% of the entire world history according to modern physics, and only in the last 10 thousand years, life has developed more in that period than ever in the last 13.8 billion, which means that within 0.0001% of the entire time of history, life has developed more than 99%.
If time, in terms of longitivtiy, which is what is assumed by ontologies of external relation as defining time, as that is the only form of time to be quantifiable, is the only function for development, than mathematically speaking it is entirely insufficient factor for explaining development. Which if we get down to the most fundamental root of Darwinian evolution and ask why do things develop, after saying they survival against their environment and against others, and behind the theory of adaption, we are left with the only dead end answer of, time is the reason why things develop, that naturally just out of a certain amount of time passing by, things develop. This is not in itself wrong but it explains nothing about why development is present or in relation to what is it there, only that it exhibits a duration of happening having an upward trend of complexity . Even if we say that time is moving more rapidly, in the sense that within the last percentages of universe lifetime, the highest amount of development will occur, than still remains unexplained why at a certain portion of a duration, there is a greater need for push for complexity?
Even if the universe is truly 13.8 billion years, which is a fact only derived from the extent of how far we can measure cosmic radiation dating back to the earliest moments after the Big Bang, which potentially can always be pushed back with newer discovers that may perhaps make the universe older, even if only by 1 or less billion years, than we are not so close to finding the initial so called “bang”. This fact is not all that consistent with the other claim that takes this long period of time for life to develop to this present stage it is at. It is inconsistent that because the universe is this and this age, this means that it must be at this and that level of development.
This is what is wrong with trying to formulate understanding of quality from a purely quantitive account, or in other words, to derive how complex something is by simply how long it exists.
Internal relations,
Time itself is the adjective of its relations, and so time is just how long has this thing been going on, which does not tel is the cycle and changes it might have undertaking within an eternal framework. From an eternal standpoint there may perhaps been an infinity amount of cycles of development, and if time is indivisible from spacetime, that merely the change is spatial position changes the time, that from one position it is at a different time than the other, not necessarily meaning that moving from one position to another makes that last position ceases to exist, and the new position the moment which now exists, but rather both maintain the same duration of time, than one can only imagine that an endless activity within an eternal timespan falling into an infinite space, this is the fabric of spacetime.
a unifying model of the universe as an object is just but an abstraction
All modern cosmological models of the universe depict it as a cone like structure. The model where the universe is infinitely expanding, the singularity is said to be the first point and all other cosmic bodies expand away from that point over time, in other words expand away from each other. The present earth is therefore labeled as somewhere in this expansion as furthest away as possible from the singularity. But the earth is a quality for life, and as a quality, it is a single point to where the expansion of the universe is collapsing to. other models where the singularity is not the furthest point away from the present, but it found in the present and the point to where the expansion of the universe is going towards.
It is important to explain how the singularity is in every point in time, not just a factory in the past that initiated the universe, or a point in the future where the movement of the universe is heading towards, but how it is in every part at every moment in the present as well.
These models of the universe are taking as absolute ways that describes the structure of the universe, for example, some proponents say the universe is only expanding or only collapsing, however these features belong as parts of any single component picked out from the whole of the universe, any object in the universe we are allowed to associate two opposite features to be simultaneously happening, stars grow than shrink, etc., however
when it comes to an explanation of the whole, we are suppose to only give one account of a single direction, it is ironic that a single object picked out from the whole is allowed to be given an infinite ways of acting, but the whole can only be given a set way, we cannot for instance say the universe is as dynamic as the change in someone’s hand when they move it, it is only the instantaneity which is difference, one happens fast the other happens slow over long period of times, but as a result of this difference in the extent of the duration, we are meant to say that the form is different as well. If we take for example the critical universe model;
Where we illustrate the initial beginning of the universe labeled as “Big Bang” is just simply the extent of the reference point of the observer, to what extent and how far did the observer conceive the magnitude of the universe, and this conception is made into an abstraction for an originating point for the universe. When we see that the universe is extends out from this initial point, the moment of the Big Bang, or the singularity, this is just the recognition of the most infinitesimal point in the universe, the concentrate infinitely dense point, with the most dispersed far out scale of the universe. This is a conception of scale concerning the magnitude relative to their point of conception, known as the observer.
“Minute” means “mini-unit” or the smallest unit, this is what a singularity is, or what it means to be singular can of which there is infinity of and this is why a singularity is infinite because there is an innumerable amount of units.
In the re-collapsing universe model, there is the recognition that out from single dense minute point of infinity, it is dissected into a dispersion of all the particular parts forming it taking up the most expansive scale, but that all originates back into the same point. The model however does not explain how the universe collapses back to a singularity, it is a purely quantitive account that just simply exhibits the motion of the universe as coming out than back in. However it is presupposed in this model that the singularity is somewhere still in the infinite expansion point away from the initial bang, and unlike the expanding universe model, which has no aim other than to eventually die out, the singularity remains throughout the entire expansion as the aim and goal to where the universe will return to, its regeneration process.
If we apply the light-cone model to the recollasping universe model, synthesize them, than we have somewhere in the most extensive form of the universe, furthest away from the singularity that initiated it, a particular point that is akin to the singularity, potentially like it in nature. The singularity is the theoretical model where the whole of everything can be disclosed within one part of it. In this way the universe itself is an abstract model, meaning that it is whatever that can be conceived
A purely theoretical substance does not need a specific place in the universe, just that it can be anywhere, and anywhere it is placed, it can operate under the same model. We have anywhere in the universe, the capacity to disclose where the universe should be. The point in the centre characterizes any random place in the known universe, having the capacity to disclose the beginning and end of the universe, as both extremes and limits of its conception, and an actual starting and finishing point of a natural duration.
and self consciousness acts as a particle state which jumps back and forth in this spectrum, like a pinball, between the abstract state inwards the mind where possibilities are considered and back outwards into what is directly real and present as the specific object beforehand. The point of this duration is to develop a conception of universality in particularity, to condense all possibilities into one real instance.
Behind the head, is more spacetime because there is more potentiality, more reality in a possible state, and that extends into a particular and definite reality, which extends onwards in that particularity infinitesimally into infinite possibility, which is a return to reason.
On some level the conception of any finite sets of objects within a present moment, includes beyond that conception as its limit the infinity of all things. This means that when the observer abstracts from infinity a finite moment disclosing a set of particular objects, these belong as a minute part in the whole of things. This mean both the particular conception is an instant and occupies a relativity confined small place at that instance. But in that confined moment which only a particular structure is picked out, there is still the infinite structure of all things expanding out beyond that conception in two inverted degrees of magnitude, there is an infinite structure expanding ‘out there’ into a macroscopic scale which defines the cosmological structure of the universe, and there is an infinite structure inwardly ‘in there’ constituting the microscopic structures sustaining any macro object forming just one object of an infinity of macroscale.
(Add to light cone)
(Add to reality ideality)