It’s nearly, if not totally, impossible to remove our deeply held biases, values and contextual history from our raw, sensory perceptions of the world. The difficulty to sense more objectively is what perpetuates so many non-truths about the world. Nearly everything we sense and think is distorted by the biological patterns shaped within us by the world and our interaction within the world. It is within this frame of reference I seek to put down, in an obviously flawed ways, what I think to be at least less non-truth than other theories and thoughts floating about out there.
Our most basic means of communication, the words, sounds, gestures and pictures, we use are so filled with bias it’s impossible to commit to their use in an objective way. The best hope I have is to present as many variations across mediums so that what emerges from these communications is perhaps, if not objective, at least more fully representative of various perspectives that at least the trap of obvious one-sided subjectivity is avoided.
And with that warning, let us proceed.
A first exercise is of definitions and clarifying of terms.
Everything is information. From the most basic particles of existence to governments to rocket ships to the abstractions of mathematics – everything is information. Information looped and entangeled within other information. Information trapped within patterns of information by other patterns of information. Particles trapped into behaviors dictated by the laws of physics. Proteins and chemicals replicating into biological entities by the encodings of genetic instruction. Objects of pure quantity expressed in combinations dictated by rules of provable logical inference. Symbols imbued with meaning combined to form words and sentences and stories that stick in the brains of people and come out of their mouths to be reinterpreted over the eons. Faintly remembered events strung together by stories to form history and imagined events of some time that has not come to pass forming a future hope.
More fundamentally… space and time and causality and logic and being itself. All are matters of information. The casual ordering of events in relation to what is different based on the difference of another entity forming the conception of time and space. The coherence within a frame of reference of words strung together with symbols for equal, not equal, for all, and the such coalescing into logic. What is and what isn’t in reference to what’s logically or causally sensible to us becomes the notion of being.
But this is not quite enough.
Recently various categories of research, science and/or philosophic discussion have added ’emergence’ and ‘complexity’ to the pantheon of fundamental concepts from which we can chart our maps of existence and meaning. The unseen in the parts that only shows itself in the collective – the multitude – the interactive, this notion of emergence.
All in – meaning. Meaning is a vague notion of symbolics and representation within the ontological dimensions of space, time, cause, logic, emergence and being. Meaning is proximal, local phenomenon of pattern. In totality, all things considered, that is all of infinity, there is no meaning – there is no pattern. That is, all patterns at play is pure entropy and no meaning is possible on a universal, infinite scale. (As if we can even imagine such a concept). On a local, limited frame of reference meaning emerges from patterns (people, computers, plants, etc) pattern matching (sensing, perceiving, transforming, encoding, processing).
I propose a phrase: existential equivalence. Every investigative thought, every scientific gesture, every act of art, every attempt to send a message, every ritual, every interaction at all with the world at any level is all of similar thing: the encoding and decoding of information within information. This is not a reduction or a reductionist exercise. Quite the contrary. The varieties of symbolic expression in all of existence is REAL, it is a thing. That existence is expressible in an infinite variety is necessary. and it can only be known, even in a limited way, by actual variety of expression. If anything is to exist, it must exist in infinite variety and multiplicity. Everything that exists has existential equivalence. The entirity of existence is relational.
For instance if there is such a concept and sensation of color it must have expression in physical and artistic and literary terms. It exists at all levels implicated there. If a wavelength of light is able to generate a visual and neuronal concept we called red, then red isn’t just the wavelength, nor the wave of light, nor the eye, nor the brain, nor the word… it is all of those things and all of the things we do not yet think or talk or gesture about.
Or consider a computer program. Its existence is a string of words and phrases transcoded into 1s and 0s and into physical logical gates transmitting electrons and back around and on itself into monitor LEDs into human eyes and brains into motor movements of mouse and keyboard and so on. A computer program is the interaction of all the information.
But surely there are such simple things that do not have a universal relationship – an existential equivalence? what is the simplest thing we can think or speak of? a boson? the number 1? a dot? just an abstract 1? It is impossible to wipe the complexity of existence from even these pure abstractions. We only conceive of their simplicity in relation to other concepts we find complex. Their simplicity must be weighed against everything that isn’t simple.
And so here we have a collosal contradiction. Patterns are a local phenomenon. They aren’t the entirety. And yet I’ve suggested that patterns are existence – all that exists. Unraveling this I am directly saying that patterns interpreting/transcoding/sensing patterns is what exists – creates th world – at all levels. Pure relation, which is only possible at a local level, is existence. Particles only exist in relation to other particles – a gradient. Humans to other humans, to animals, to the planet, to particles. Planets to other massive bodies… and so on, and on, up and down, left to right, back and forward, in and out….
herein lies a beautiful thing – mathematics and computation are a wonderfully efficient symbolic translation methods. This is why computers and mathematics always creep their way into our efforts to make things and make sense of the world. It is why our brains are so damn useful. complex abstract pattern recognizing patterns – these networks of neurons. It is why DNA is so proficient at replication. a “simple”, resilient substrate carrying everything necessary to generate and regenerate these networks of neurons that can then make synthetic networks of pure relation. Whether particles or quantum or digital or biological or chemical there is pure relation, pure patterns among patterns – there is math. It matters not and is completely the point that math and computation can be done in any substrate – between proteins, with pen and paper, on a calculator, in a quantum computer.
AND
why is that? WHY?
In a feat of complete and utter stupid philosophy and unlogic… because it cannot be any other way. Positing a god doesn’t escape this. Positing a multi-verse doesn’t escape this. If any of those things are to exist, they must exist still in relation – they are relation! It’s borderline mystical. Of course it is!
And why does any of this matter? is this just another sound of one hand clapping? a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound? Yes. yes indeed. Those, while used to dismiss the question from the outset actually do call attention to the entirety of the situation. What we conceive of as existence and existing is usually reductively done in by our discrete categorization and our failure to continuously review and revise our categories. The practical implications of this adherence to categories (zoology, isms, religion, gender, nations, science disciplines, etc) is what stunts our path towards knowledge and keeps us in fear.
If we don’t lean into the idea that everything has an existential equivalence we are simply deciding to be ignorant. And in that ignorance we trend towards non-existence. In every day terms if we see the human population only by the color of skin we diminish human existence. If we say and take for truth all of the -isms, reductions, and arbitrary definitions we snuff out relation. If we make any assumptions at all and refuse to question those assumptions, even what we think are so obvious and so simple, we move closer to entropy. If we want to exist at all, we must be mystical and fanatical about sensing relation, resensing it, re-interpreting it. This is not a moral argument. Existence is no more moral than non-existence – except as a local conception.
It really does come down to this (and this is very Camus-like):
If you care at all to exist as you, you must question/express/relate to everything as much as you can before your pattern is fully transcoded into something not you. (we are just food for worms…)
So yes, ask yourself and answer it in infinite variety over and over “if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?” This is life – it is your existential equivalence to everything else. You relate, therefore, you are. I relate, therefore I am. X is, therefore X relates.
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