or ‘blends’ with the indivisible substance of the other. In ancient atomism, the existence of contact, collision, and influence are not explained by the size, shape, and motion of atoms, nor are they explained by the nature of void or substance. Democritus noticed this absence, and posited the relation of antitupia or mutual resistance between atoms, which is, as above, the limitation and change of motion that occurs when atoms are spatially adjacent. Without antitupia, ancient atomism falls apart.
Leaving much aside, we see that ancient atomism, rather than being a theory of a solid, material world; is a theory of a world composed of individual objects that influence each other through contact.
One might assume that modern physics as solved the problem of interaction. Certainly our physical theories of the fundamental interactions within the Standard model equip us with models for predicting situations. Given one description of the world in the language of quantum physics, we are able to predict a description that will follow.
But like Democritus, we still cannot explain how an interaction or transition takes place. Our best theories of interaction, those of quantum field theory, still explain interaction as arising from the exchange of one type of particle (atom) with another. We are told that electrons, for instance, uphold the electromagnetic interaction by exchanging virtual photons with one another. Electrons both accept and emit virtual photons, although we still cannot describe the process by which a virtual photon is ab-sorbed or emitted. After a photon exchange, we may speak of a change in energy or momentum or particle production, but we can say nothing about how that exchange comes about—it just does (perhaps as a matter of symmetry), thus it is a fundamental interaction. Absorption, emission, 52
and exchange of virtual photons are, like antitpuia, necessary metaphysical additions to our understanding of interactions. When attempting to understand photon absorption we are perhaps drawn to macroscopic analogies, such as the absorption of water by a sponge, but in this analogy water simply moves from the outside of the sponge to the inside.
Photons do not obviously move from the outside of an electron to the inside in the same way, so absorption and emission have no classical mechanical analogies, yet we also speak as though classical mechanical energy is exchanged quite readily upon contact, a contact mediated by the non-contact forces of quantum physics that rely upon metaphorical electron-photon contact.
Material exchange, which requires directedness into an object and directedness at an object, plays an important role in our physical theories. Feynman diagrams, for instance, graphically make use of this directedness to help explain the evolution of quantum particles. In these diagrams, geometric direction and path have little meaning, yet the concept of directedness remains. Outside of perturbation theory, when the quantum field is considered as a whole, we still speak of the creation and annihilation of particles within the field. Conceptually this field must be open and receptive to particle creation and annihilation. In a direct sense, the quantum field is similar to the void of Democritus as the yielding substance that may be filled with particle substance. We say that the quantum field permeates all of space, which is expected as this field is trying to take over the role of void. Physicists may point out that acts of creation and annihilation are well-understood as linear operators on quantum states. Again, while an operator may model the numerical changes of a field, it says nothing about the act of creation itself. Within today’s physics, the movement from the absence of a particle to the presence of a particle is completely suppressed, and is analogous to pulling a rabbit out of the magician’s hat, except that within physics, we no longer wonder about how that rabbit came to be, but rather take it as a mundane fact that rabbits come out of hats and seek no further explanation.
Openness, receptivity, and acceptance play a foundational role in fundamental interactions from Democritus to today. While our mathematical descriptions describe a situation before and after, when pressed for how, we must fall back upon directedness. It would be quite easy to avoid the how altogether and to not look beyond the math. So what if a non-measurable directedness plays a role in explaining our world, what is the loss to me? Yet directedness is empirical; it is evident wherever we 53
go; as well we have placed directedness in our scientific theories at the start. Directedness is a natural feature of the world, a feature that is not a fundamental interaction but one that makes interaction and distance comprehensible. Fundamental particles are relatively limited in their capacity to partake in directedness, and they must do so nearly symmetric-ally, meaning that for particles, inward (intentional) and outward (attentional) directedness occur in near reciprocal pairs.
Particle directedness is quite limited, which brings us back to our concern about medical problems and forceful medical interventions.
When we view ourselves as collections of parts, as material parts modeled after atomic aggregates, then the only directedness available to us derives from particle directedness in geometric space. This view is particularly appropriate when we want to remove other atomic aggregates from a geometric body (cutting out a cancer, removing a bullet, draining an abscess). It is also appropriate when we want something to collide-against and bind-to other atomic aggregates (antibiotics, dopam-ine receptor antagonists, insulin, and many other medications) for a purpose. Particle directedness, however, does not exhaust the possibility of directed medical interventions. One can, for instance, direct attention at or away from a pain, or become receptive to a pain as a source. These directed interventions can change the quality of the pain. Of course, we differ in our capacity to wield directedness, and I am not claiming that we should forsake the particle directedness of today’s medicine that helps alleviate suffering. I only start with pain because most of us have witnessed the relation between directedness and pain, although do not infer that directedness is limited to so-called subjective experiences.
It is possible, for example, to direct attention to one’s stomach, and to welcome one’s stomach as a source of intention. Your stomach, to you, is largely unknown and exists as a theoretical object within your attentional field. Even if you view your stomach only as an aggregate of particles, you are still not acquainted with this aggregate, empirically or otherwise. When bi-directional directedness begins between oneself and one’s stomach, it can be said that one is communicating or coming-into-contact or exchanging with one’s stomach. The objects here are the self-object and the stomach of the self-object. It follows that the self-object and the stomach are then influencing each other, or giving rise to ‘real changes’ in the world, just as particle exchanges bring about change in the world. What is the relevance of such exchanges? I suspect, for example, that many cases of adult gastroesophageal reflux disease are not due to mechanical problems of the esophagus—although such things 54
may correlate with the problem—but due to distancing oneself from one’s gastroesophageal tract, or to a lack of contact between oneself and one’s stomach and esophagus. You cannot be in contact with your stomach if you only view it as a material part of the body, or worse, as a dys-functional material part of the body to be whipped into shape. The stomach desires contact with the whole, as do all the parts of the body, and they can achieve this through bi-directional directedness with the self-object.
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1.8 Necessary degeneracy of communication One thought may crowd out or push away another thought. One feeling may prevent another feeling from arising. Like ancient atoms, thoughts and feelings manifest mutual resistance or antitupia between each other. But unlike ancient atoms, which possess a degree of directedness relative to each other, the directedness of thoughts and feelings is less clear. Thoughts do not partake in geometric directedness (although some physical theories dispense with geometry as well). How is one thought directed at and into another thought?
A traditional explanation of the mutual resistance between thoughts may go something like this. A person has a thought. While some thoughts are selected in attention for only brief periods of time, others persist as selected for longer durations. The self-object directs attention at the thought, but more than temporary selective attention, the thought tends to maintain a large value of the attentional field across time. We are preoccupied with this thought. We ruminate and obsess about it. If we are not purposefully attending to this thought, then we can assume that this thought has a large attentional rest mass relative to other thoughts, and it is the mass of the thought via the self-object that gives rise to resistance between this thought and another. We are pulled to massive thoughts more so than others.
Although attentional mass may explain why one thought pushes out another thought, attentional mass is a relational property between the thought and the self-object, therefore this antitupia between thoughts is not independent of the self-object, whereas the antitputia between ancient or modern atoms depends only upon atoms, independent of outside features of the world. Thoughts pull or push on the self-object.
Atoms pull or push on each other. The interaction between atoms allegedly has nothing to do with things outside of those atoms.
When talking about thoughts (or emotions), we tend to focus attention on the selected thought of attention, and although that statement is mostly tautology, it bares consideration. We believe that for a thought to exist, the thought must be selected within the attentional field. We imagine that there is a particular place, like an empty room, that may be filled up with a thought. Thoughts magically appear in this room, and then evaporate to be replaced by subsequent thoughts, one after another. In some cases the thought occupies the room for extended periods of time—it is difficult to displace. When the thought vanishes from the room, it is gone. Like images on a digital screen, thoughts are transient 56
pictures that have no existence apart from the screen, that only exist so long as they fill the screen. The molecules that compose the screen are different. They may leave the screen yet continue to exist.
When we recall that the attentional field contains much more than the selected object of attention, we can begin to see how thoughts might be directly related to each other, partially independent of the self-object.
First notice that multiple thoughts may occupy the attentional field, just as multiple visual objects occupy the attentional field—I may not be selecting all of the visual objects at once; I likely am not, yet each object is associated with a degree of attention. Of course, if you believe that attention concerns itself with one and only one object at a time, and that your attentional world is a sequence of selected, isolated objects of attention that flash before you like pictures: “thought of a tree”, “thirst”, “the computer in front of me”, “pain in my back”… then you will have difficulty understanding how multiple thoughts—or multiple objects of any kind—can exist in the attentional field.
Thoughts, like every other topic, are associated with a degree of attentional directedness, which is approximately the attentional distance between the thought and the self-object. One thought may be attentionally selected, yet others may exist in the attentional field. Can we also speak of the relative distance, or directedness, between thoughts without using the self-object as an absolute reference? Such a language would allow us to ‘look at’ multiple thoughts at once, just as we look at multiple objects or atoms in space.
There is some evidence that thoughts are directly related to each other, in that one thought often ‘leads to’ another thought, and that this leading-to is not directly dependent upon the attentional mass of the subsequent thought. Some led-to thoughts are quite unexpected, and may have never before been attended-to, which is a backwards way of saying that the attentional mass of the thought is likely small. One thought may be directed at another thought, where this directedness between thoughts becomes apparent through triangulation with the self-object. The thoughts are directed to one another in that they move through the attentional field together. When one thought is selected in attention, the other thought is found to be attentionally close-by. Outside of attentional selection, we assume that the relationship between those thoughts persists, for attentional selection does not explain the existence of the relationship in the first place, although selection does enable us to notice it.
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With practice, I imagine we can learn to see multiple thoughts at once, becoming aware of the manifold of relationships that exist between thoughts. One thought may be open or receptive to another thought, thoughts may lead to other thoughts, or thoughts may make contact with each other to produce new thoughts in the interaction. Once we learn to see the multiplicity of thoughts interacting together, the act of thinking changes. Thinking is no longer the step-by-step progression of isolated thoughts that transiently manifest on a digital screen, but becomes the act of observing, anticipating, and constructing the field of thoughts and their intimate, directed relations. Even serial logical argument, like this, becomes an approximation of meta-logical thinking.
What has separated atoms and thoughts is not mind-independ-ence—for mind has always existed as a unknown object, of which thoughts have no need—but the belief that thoughts cannot exist without being selected in attention. As we know, many things exist outside of selected attention, so this concern is easily pushed aside. We then might agree that thoughts need not be selected, but still, they cannot exist outside of the attentional field altogether, or at least you cannot prove that they do. But this criticism can be leveled against any object outside of attention, material or otherwise. Dogmatically asserting the extra-attentional inexistence of thoughts will not do. We can next fall back upon the solidness of atoms as compared to thoughts, but solidness plays no role in materialism apart from its relation to antitupia and modern interaction, which we have taken to be dependent upon directedness and the ability of distinct objects to communicate, exchange, or make contact with one another. Thoughts, too, may interact with one another, and it has been the job of logic to describe how these relations might be, as a first step, with respect to truth. Logic is our attempt to describe the physical relationships between thoughts when thoughts are projected onto an exterior value space. Logic is an approximation, a dimensional reduction technique that reduces the complexity of thought.
We might still argue that thoughts, whatever they are, are dependent upon a person, or a mechanism capable of thought for their existence, and that atoms are dependent upon nothing, but this conclusion need not follow. Atoms may be dependent upon our world for their existence, and may be dependent upon specific, galactic mechanisms that have yet to be imagined. At its core, materialism may be the belief that there are objects in our universe that do not depend upon the universe for their existence; put simply, the belief in whole-independent parts. Materialism may be the belief that atoms—or strings, or whatever objects—are 58
self-sustaining objects that maintain a ‘free-existence’, that have the capacity to exist outside of our universe, or in no universe at all, as they are in our universe. A philosopher might say that materialistic atoms in our universe exist in every possible universe and nowhere else. Opposed to this position, physicists have imagined how different inflationary
‘bubble’ universes may manifest different universal constants, physical laws, and particles. Universes need not be physically similar with respect to particular content, a content which depends upon the structure of the universe as a whole. Both our atoms and our thoughts are likely dependent upon something else for their existence.
Whereas atoms are directed and open to each other, and thoughts are likely directed and open to each other; we continue to suspect that thoughts and atoms do not participate in this sort of bi-directional directedness. Thoughts and atoms are not thought to make contact or interact with one another, and this belief gives rise to the separation between thoughts and atoms. It is no coincidence that philosophers speak of the unbridgeable gap between mind and body, for the opposite of a gap is making contact or bi-directional directedness in our language.
Although we suppose that thoughts and atoms do not interact with each other, we tend to accept that thoughts may be directed at atoms, a capacity that has classically been called the reference of a thought (or expression). A thought may be directed (refer) at an atom, or at a collection of atoms, such as my thought of the banana I ate for lunch today. In this case, however, my thought is not directed at the atoms that compose the banana, but at my memory of what that banana was like in terms of its weight, smell, color, taste, texture, and so forth. The directedness of my thought is at least two steps removed from the atoms of the banana.
First, it is directed at the memory of the banana, and not the banana itself; and second, it is directed at the perceptual qualities of the banana and how the banana interacted with my body and other bodies, and not the atoms of the banana. We may presumptuously lump perceptual qualities and bodily interactions into the same category, and then take bodily interactions to be the bi-directional directedness, or contact, between bodies and the banana.
Thoughts are not directed at atoms, although thoughts may be directed at the contact, or the memory of the contact, between atoms.
Contact does not imply touching, geometric spatial adjacency, collision, physical impact, or any other material concept. Despite similarities, we are not repeating the perceptual theory of Democritus which assumes that atoms communicate perceptual properties through material 59
collision. Contact does not require spatial proximity in a geometric sense. Most of all, contact requires a receptivity between objects, which may be the opposite of collision. Contact is the bi-directional directedness between objects, and may be a relation between the entire body as a whole (rather than just the tip of my finger) and the complete banana.
Thoughts, then, may be directed at atoms via the bi-directional directedness between atomic collections. This does not imply that thoughts are only directed in this way. We have already discussed how thoughts are directed between each other, and we presume that they may be directed at memories given the above discussion.
Thoughts are not directed at material atoms, but they may be directed at the contact between atoms. This contact is degenerate in the sense that different collections of atoms may interact to produce the same or similar contact. Consider human communication which we have taken to be a canonical example of contact as bi-directional directedness. In communication, we often express one idea in multiple ways, or different people express similar ideas differently. The following expressions potentially communicate the same thing: 1+2, 7-4, and 21/7. While three distinct expressions typically communicate three distinct things, here the communication coincides, and in this sense, communication of 3 is degenerate. I am not claiming that 1+2, 7-4, and 21/7 are the same thing or refer to the same content or meaning; perhaps these expressions are distinct—they most certainly are—but content is not our concern at the moment, only degeneracy of communication.
The above 3 expressions may each communicate multiple things in addition to 3, but again, our focus is upon those aspects communicated degenerately. Perhaps by 1+2, 7-4, and 21/7, I was intending to communicate ‘arithmetic operation’ and not three. There is no way for you to know what I intended to communicate in advance given only those expressions. Suppose I say 1+2, 7-4, and 21/7 again—what did I communicate by that last expression? Let me be specific, I am not simply claiming contextualism of meaning. The context of that previous expression—and you don’t even know what expression I am referring to—reveals little about the intended communication. In fact, the meanings of 1+2, 7-4, and 21/7 have been partly irrelevant with respect to what I have been trying to communicate. I have been trying to communicate that communication entails necessary uncertainty, partially because of the degeneracy of contact. Even when we understand the meaning of a message, we still may not understand the relation between the message and its source, or understand anything significant about the 60
source at all. The same communication may arise from disparate sources, so how are we to differentiate one source from another when we only possess the communication at hand?
Analytic philosophers have been exceptionally sensitive to the degeneracy in communication, which is why they work so hard to formu-late conditions, rules, and logics aimed at removing the degeneracy. Yet the reason philosophers create theories of meaning and knowledge is not for the sake of truth, for being not true was never a problem in the first place, but to remove the degeneracy in communication. Even denying the possibility of knowledge or meaning has this purpose. Let me try to say it another way. People who conjure up theories of knowledge are not doing so because the true theory of knowledge does not exist. Lack of a true theory has never motivated behavior, and we would not even recognize a true theory if we had it. Yet people are motivated. Assuming the motivation of intellectuals is more than fame, prestige, a job, respect, etc; there should also be a motivation arising from an actual problem in the world. Perhaps they simply cannot tolerate disagreement in the world and want to construct theories they can all agree upon—but I doubt that. People often create disparate theories for the purpose of creating disagreement. Or rather, without disagreement, whole depart-ments of philosophy would not even exist—can you imagine an ethics without moral disagreement?
The context of communication may help us to pin down a source, but contexts are communicated as well and are therefore subject to degeneracy. Nor is there a clear dividing line between a piece of communication and the communication of its context. We may attentionally bi-as some communication above other surrounding communication, or value some communication—either morally, pragmatically, epistemolo-gically, etc—above others, but this prioritization need not be natural or objective. Science has progressed, in part, by carefully accounting for environmental contexts, by systematically varying these conditions, and by observing the communication that follows.
Scientific theory and
bridging protocols then become the source of this communication, even though indeterminacy still plagues science as multiple theories and practices can account for the same communication. Scientists thus invoke external limits of simplicity, mathematical elegance, severe tests, and other things in an attempt to further reduce degeneracy, but these attempts are ad hoc and send us back to metaphysics.
Descartes’ worry that an evil demon creates our perceptions, perceptions that can be degeneratively created by ‘actual objects’ and 61
dreams too, is nothing more than acknowledging a fundamental characteristic about communication in our world. Virtual reality simulators mimic our perceptions of the world. An infinite variety of electromagnetic spectra are perceived as the same color. Disparate materials feel and taste the same. These are but a few examples where degeneracy of contact can be collapsed by further investigation, yet how many more situations exist where we assume that the communication is determinate, but further exploration would reveal that our assumptions of determinacy were incorrect? Philosophers like Descartes have not recognized the benefit of degenerate communication, but rather have feared that our perceptions underdetermine what our theories of the world must be. I suggest that communication, whether linguistic or perceptual or otherwise, would be impossible without some degeneracy; otherwise everything received in communication would be a cacophony of noise or nonsense and communication could not be at all. I have difficulty expressing why this so. It has something to do with our inability to simultaneously recognize two things as different members of the same class. It has something to do with my suspicion that language and communication would be impossible without indecipherable differences and classes or kinds of the same; and that a science that attempts to remove all degeneracy is a performative contradiction. It has something to do with the idea that a class can be no more complex than any of its members, for each member possess the attribute of the class in addition to other attributes. Most importantly, it has something to do with seeing science as the process by which the world attempts to communicate with us, rather than an activity by which humans study the world.
Communication is partially uncertain; it is supposed to be this way, for now and perhaps always. But the degeneracy of contact, although thought to be a fundamental problem, is more likely an adaptation that has a purpose. It would not be difficult to contrive a story about why degenerate communication is good, for this sort of evolutionary story-telling is possible about every feature of the world, and therefore not helpful at all. Degeneracy of contact as an adaptation is of course a metaphor; it is a way of saying that the unknown is not all bad. And I am not saying that we should stop trying to reduce the degeneracy of communication, although perhaps we ought to spend more time trying to understand sources in other ways.
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Death and Dreamless Sleep
“What do you think it is like to be dead?” asked Abel.
“It won’t be like anything. It will be like dreamless sleep,” Cain replied.
“But what is dreamless sleep like?”
“Like I said, it is not like anything at all. It is nothing.”
“If it isn’t like anything at all, then how can you describe it? You shouldn’t be able to give any sort of description. To say it is like nothing requires you to be acquainted with it. How can you be acquainted with nothing?”
“It is empty and absent, like a perfect void.”
“How do you know that? Do you remember dreamless sleep? But if you claim to remember dreamless sleep, a sleep that was absolutely like nothing, then you must be able to identify dreamless sleep among all of your other experiences. Dreamless sleep must stand out in some way for you to be able to describe it as nothing, but that is a contradiction. Perhaps you believe that you were aware of having dreamless sleep while you were having dreamless sleep?”
“No, I wasn’t aware that I was having dreamless sleep while I was having dreamless sleep. When I awaken from sleep, I can’t recall anything during the period of time when I was having dreamless sleep. It wasn’t like anything at all. I have no memory of it. It is empty time. Being dead will be like that.”
“You seem to be saying that you do not remember anything that took place while you were sleeping. But the fact that you do not recall anything during this time period of sleep does not imply that it is nothing, or is like nothing. Perhaps during dreamless sleep you are entirely aware and active and alive, yet for some reason, when you awaken, you have no memory of this time period. Perhaps it is impossible to create memories during certain periods of sleep, but this absence of memory does not imply nothingness.”
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“I agree. In the present, right now while I am awake, I lack memories that would account for the time during dreamless sleep. The time during dreamless sleep is like a hole in my memory. Before bed and after I wake up, I have memory and can tell you a story about what I was experiencing, but during the time in dreamless sleep, I have no memories.
In this sense, when I am describing dreamless sleep ‘like nothing’ I am actually describing my void in memory. The reason I can describe the void in memory is that I recall the before and after the void, or the edges of the void—so it is more like a hole—but I cannot describe what is in the hole, if anything.”
“I agree. So what is dreamless sleep like?”
“I don’t know what it’s like; I only know that I don’t have any memories about it.”
Thus Abel asked again, “So what is it like to be dead?”
“I don’t know,” said Cain, knowing that his brother would soon find out for himself.
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Part 2
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2.1 Newness
Today, or at least in materialistic society, communication