Posted on 05/23/2009 3:12:02 PM PDT by betty boop
An excerpt from
ROBERT ROSEN: THE WELL POSED QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER — WHY ARE ORGANISMS DIFFERENT FROM MACHINES?
By Donald C. Mikulecky
Department of Physiology
Medical Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University
The Well Posed Question and Its Answer
Science, perception and measurement: The role of the modeling relation
In order to be able to deal with some very confusing issues, it is necessary to formulate just what it is we think we are doing when we carry out this function called “science.” In a very real sense what we mean by science is the ultimate version of what humans do quite regularly, namely the perception of their world. The “perception of the world” is merely the way humans turn sensory information into awareness. What is that all about? Here's one idea that will serve the purpose for this discussion (Fischler and Firschein, 1987, 233)
“No finite organism can completely model the infinite universe, but even more to the point, the senses can only provide a subset of the needed information; the organism must correct the measured values and guess at the needed missing ones.”... “Indeed, even the best guesses can only be an approximation to reality — perception is a creative process.”This simple observation is fraught with meaning. So much meaning that it is worth examining its implication in some detail.
The traditional view of science: the role of measurement
Science is the way we have developed to avoid our perception’s being “creative” in the above sense. Science is a creative endeavor, but the creativity must not cloud our sensation of the world in any way. In order to accomplish this we have developed a methodology that is supposed to prevent our minds from tampering with the sensory information. We call this measurement. Often the methodology that insures this “objective” view of the world is called the scientific method. It should be clear that our notion of objectivity is intimately associated with this concept.
Rosen's treatment of measurement
Since Rosen devoted at least an entire book to this topic (Rosen, 1978), it will be necessary to give a summary here. The process of measurement is something Rosen saw as related to a number of other important concepts that will be involved in this development. Along with measurement are recognition, discrimination, and classification. It is impossible (even if desirable to some) to reduce the issue of measurement to something independent of these other factors as we shall see.
Two propositions are axiomatic in the formalization of the role of measurement in our perception. Bear in mind that what is being developed here is a way of dealing with the traditional view of science.
PROPOSITION 1: “The only meaningful physical events which occur in the world are represented by the evaluation of observables on states.”
PROPOSITION 2: “Every observable can be regarded as a mapping from states to real numbers.”
Rosen warns us that the consequences of adopting these propositions as a mode of operation are very profound. They are, however, the kind of price science is willing to pay for its claim to be able to minimize the role of the conscious mind in the perception of sensory information. It should be clear that the act of measurement is an abstraction. We will return to this point shortly. The trade off is in the belief that, by making this abstraction, the “world” has qualities which, when measured properly, are common to all objective observers. A quote from Fundamentals of Measurement sums it all up very well:
“It is essential to realize at this point that the formalism to be developed, although we cast it initially primarily in the framework of natural systems, is in fact applicable to any situation in which a class of objects is associated with real numbers, or in fact classified or indexed by any set whatever. It is thus applicable to any situation in which classification, or recognition, or discrimination is involved; indeed, one of the aims of our formalism is to point up the essential equivalence of the measurement problem in physics with all types of recognition or classification mechanisms based on observable properties of the objects being recognized or classified.”
The modeling relation: how we perceive
The modeling relation is based on the universally accepted belief that the world has some sort of order associated with it; it is not a hodge-podge of seemingly random happenings. It depicts the elements of assigning interpretations to events in the world . The best treatment of the modeling relation appears in the book Anticipatory Systems (Rosen, 1985, pp 45–220). Rosen introduces the modeling relation to focus thinking on the process we carry out when we “do science.” In its most detailed form, it is a mathematical object, but it will be presented in a less formal way here. It should be noted that the mathematics involved is among the most sophisticated available to us. In its purest form, it is called “category theory” [Rosen, 1978, 1985, 1991]. Category theory is a stratified or hierarchical structure without limit, which makes it suitable for modeling the process of modeling itself.
Figure 1. The modeling relation.
Figure 1 represents the modeling relation in a pictorial form. The figure shows two systems, a natural system and a formal system related by a set of arrows depicting processes and/or mappings. The assumption is that when we are “correctly” perceiving our world, we are carrying out a special set of processes that this diagram represents. The natural system is something that we wish to understand. In particular, arrow 1 depicts causality in the natural world. This idea will need some additional explanation further on. On the right is some creation of our mind or something our mind uses in order to try to deal with observations or experiences we have. The arrow 3 is called “implication” and represents some way in which we manipulate the formal system to try to mimic causal events observed or hypothesized in the natural system on the left. The arrow 2, is some way we have devised to encode the natural system or, more likely select aspects of it (having performed a measurement as described above), into the formal system. Finally, the arrow 4 is a way we have devised to decode the result of the implication event in the formal system to see if it represents the causal event’s result in the natural system. Clearly, this is a delicate process and has many potential points of failure. When we are fortunate to have avoided these failures, we actually have succeeded in having the following relationship be true:
1 = 2 + 3 + 4.
When this is true, we say that the diagram commutes and that we have produced a model of our world.
Please note that the encoding and decoding mappings are independent of the formal and/or natural systems. In other words, there is no way to arrive at them from within the formal system or natural system. This makes modeling as much an art as it is a part of science. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the least well appreciated aspects of the manner in which science is actually practiced and, therefore, one which is often actively denied. It is this fact, among others, which makes the notion of objectivity as defined above have a very shaky foundation. How could such a notion become so widely accepted?
The Newtonian Paradigm and the modeling relation
Traditional science as described above is the result of many efforts, yet it has a core set of beliefs underlying it which Rosen refers to as The Newtonian Paradigm. There is no strict definition of what this is, but it is the entire attitude and approach that arises after Newton introduced his mechanics, especially, his mathematical approach. It certainly embodies the ideas of Descartes and the heliocentrists, for example. It also embodies all of the changes brought about by quantum mechanics. It is so much what modern science is that it could almost be used as a synonym. For these reasons, it has had a profound effect on our perception. It is so powerful a thought pattern that it has seemed to make the modeling relation superfluous. For The Newtonian Paradigm, all of nature encodes into this formal system and then can be decoded. All our models come from this one largest model of nature. In the modeling relation, the formal system lies over the natural system and the encoding and decoding are masked so that the formal system is the real world. The fact that this is not the case is far from obvious to most. The task then, is to understand why.
Putting it all together: the modeling relation is the key
Rosen calls the results of our sensory experiences as they manifest themselves in our awareness percepts. If all we did were to use measurement to objectively become aware of what our senses pick up, the situation would be simple. We would be like a piece of magnetic tape or computer memory filing away this information as it comes in. The key word in the definition of percept is awareness. There is more to that awareness than a mere entering into memory. The first thing we would have to do, even to merely file the information correctly, is to discriminate and classify. In short, we form relations between percepts. What is fascinating about this is the fact that these relationships between percepts can be matched by relationships between objects used in the formal system. Here is the place where semiotics and other aspects of our thought process get mixed into the process in an irreducible way (Dress, 1998,1999). [Itals added for emphasis in this passage.]
The confusion that arises from the failure to recognize this process at work is immense. Rosen’s whole concept of the modeling relation is the explanation for why words like complexity and emergence have become so popular. The suppression of awareness of the process by the Newtonian Paradigm resulted in some real problems, surprises, and errors. It was not until there was widespread recognition, consciously or unconsciously, that this paradigm was inadequate that these words became widely talked about. The world as modeled by the Newtonian Paradigm was but one possible picture of the world. Rosen named this world the world of simple systems or mechanisms.
There is another world, namely the one containing the natural systems we seek to understand, which cannot be totally captured by the Newtonian model. This world, in fact, cannot be captured by any number of formal systems except in the limit of all such systems. The name of this world is the world of the complex. Emergence then is the phenomenon of being surprised when the real world doesn’t conform to the simple model, in other words, the discovery of its complexity. Since the entire real world is complex, discussions of degrees of complexity refer to the nature and number of formal systems being used to create models within the modeling relation. Unless this is realized, the amount of confusion generated trying to classify things by their complexity can be immense. There are many other definitions of complexity (Horgan, 1996) that exemplify this confusion.
Given the modeling relation and the detailed structural correspondence between our percepts and the formal systems into which we encode them, it is possible to make a dichotomous classification between various models of the real world. These models are either simple mechanisms or complex systems. It then becomes possible to formulate the “what is life” question in an entirely new way, one which leads immediately to an answer.
Complex systems and machines: why are they different?
The answer to this question is implicit in the discussion of the modeling relation above. In order to make it explicit, there are some very important epistemological prerequisites that must be accepted. This acceptance may be for the sake of the argument or it may be a total change in direction for anyone seeking to do science in the future. The case will be made systematically.
What is a machine?
The discussion of the modeling relation established that the world of the Newtonian Paradigm is a world of simple mechanisms or machines. As Rosen began to apply this idea to the world, he saw that it had an extremely general categorical application. To say it as concisely as possible, this world was the world described by Church’s Thesis. In other words, it is a totally syntactic world, one that can be constructed by algorithms and simulated. It has a largest model from which all other models can be derived. Its models have the nature that analytic models and synthetic models are the same. This leads to their reducibility, the whole is merely the sum of their parts. The machine which becomes a prototype of this general description is the Universal Turing Machine. Thus all of computer simulation, Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence are part of this world. The fact that these are not part of the world of complex systems is directly contradictory to the claims being made by most that have espoused the “new science” of complexity. Church’s Thesis says that all effective systems are computable. Rosen’s work says that Church’s thesis is false. There is no middle ground here. The difference is one of profound epistemological significance. There is still another distinction that must wait until the subject of causality and entailment is discussed. For it is in that discussion that the most profound epistemological change will be realized. Before delving into that matter we will compare complex systems to machines.
What is a complex system and why is a complex system different from a machine?
A complex system falls outside the formalism called the Newtonian Paradigm. That is not to say that complex systems cannot be seen as machines for limited kinds of analysis. This is, in fact, what traditional science does. Using Rosen’s general characteristics to separate the two kinds of objects, we see that complex systems contain semantic aspects which cannot be reduced to syntax. Therefore they are not simulatable even though, when viewed as machines, the machine model is simulatable. They have no largest model from which all other models can be derived. This is simply because complex systems, by their very nature, require multiple distinct ways of interacting with them to capture their qualities. Their models are now distinct. Analytic models, which are expressed mathematically as direct products of quotient spaces are no longer equivalent to synthetic models which are built up from disjoint pieces as direct sums. Using this formulation, every synthetic model is an analytic model, but there are analytic models which are not synthetic models. In other words, these analytic models are not reducible to disjoint sets of parts. This is a most profound distinction and requires some elaboration, for in it lies the essence of the failure of reductionism. In the machine, each model analytic or synthetic, is formulated in terms of the material parts of the system. Thus any model will be reducible and can be reconstructed from its parts.
This is not the case in a complex system. There are certain key models which are formulated in an entirely different way. These models are made up of functional components which do not map to the material parts in any one-to-one manner. The functional component itself is totally dependent on the context of the whole system and has no meaning outside that context. This is why reducing the system to its material parts loses information irreversibly. This is a cornerstone to the overall discovery Rosen made. It captures a real difference between complexity and reductionism which no other approach seems to have been able to formulate. This distinction makes it impossible to confuse computer models with complex systems. It also explains how there can be real “objective” aspects of a complex system that are to be considered along with the material parts, but which have a totally different character. Finally, this distinction between functional components and parts can be realized with an appropriate formalism. This formalism is called Relational after Rashevsky's Relational Biology (Rashevsky, 1954). [Itals added for emphasis in this passage.]
* * * * * * *
End of excerpt. Read at the above link for details of Rosen’s profoundly important (it seems to me, FWIW) insights.
Scientists who may be inclined to resist this new direction (which is tantamount to putting the formal and final causes which Francis Bacon banished from the scientific method back into the mix) perhaps need to be reminded that recent developments in the biosemiotics field (not to mention complexity and information science) increasingly point to the idea that meaning (formal cause) and purpose (final cause) really do operate in Nature. In Rosen, the semiotics (also called semantics) — the science of definition, or meaning — belongs to the “formal” system. The material system expresses the “syntax” — or “rules of the grammatical road” (so to speak) that express the meaning of the formal system, particularly as it refers to the question, “What is Life?”
Please go to the above link for an edifying, fascinating discussion of these issues that are rising to the fore in the natural sciences.
Betty wondered, “I don’t know why the materialists haven’t figured this out yet”
Spirited: The answer to Betty’s question points to the reality of man’s fallen state, what Christianity calls sin.
For many materialists-—perhaps the greater percentage— the answer is: “Pride of Mind.” For others it is both “Pride of Mind and Pride of Flesh.”
For a smaller yet profoundly significant few, it’s what Voegelin called the ‘gnostic spiritual disease,’ which at its most extreme, is such complete rebellion against the Father that there is refusal to even be “in His image.” Karl Marx is one primary example of this disease; today’s Transhumanists are another. Here we see a longing to escape the hated ‘meat machine,’ even if escape means somehow transferring one’s ‘essence’ to machines.
“Vain fantasies” is but one way in which God summarizes these philosophies.
Was out zotting a carpenter ant nest in the shed, and within a few days they had flyers out by the dozens.
Talk about a microprocessor. How do it know?
Truly I suspect some of those suffering from the spiritual disease were given over to illness because they realized that God IS and willfully chose to worship the creature instead of the Creator.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.– Romans 1:20-32
“Truly I suspect some of those suffering from the spiritual disease were given over to illness because they realized that God IS and willfully chose to worship the creature instead of the Creator”
Spirited: You’ve ‘hit the bullseye’! Marx did in fact know that “God is.”
LoL... also true..
Some identify with the flesh, some identify with the spirit.. yet others with the Spirit..
Tied up in identity are the roots of who you are..
Little wonder, "You MUST be born again"- Jesus..
Its not about what you believe but Whom you Are that counts..
Jesus came to make a family.. some family members think screwy things.
Unless they are indoctrinated and dogmatized.. i.e. John ch 10..
The answer, from a reading of what Jesus taught is related to being 'born again'. The consciousness of/in the soul is created with the physical body, but the consciousness of the spirit is achieved through an act of being 'born again of the Spirit', His Spirit enlivening our human spirit component.
So, the soul is not bound to linear temporal perspective and is in fact an ongoing 'thing' which exists even after the body has rotted away. Jesus taught that the spirit too is not bound by linear temporal perspective and shall continue in existence, but for those not 'born again', the spirit of man will continue endlessly in a dead state, void of the LIFE of God in the human spirit.
Perhaps that helps to explain why I want to differentiate between soul and spirit every chance I get. Everything that is alive has a soul of greater or lesser complexity, but only humans have been given a spirit component to their soul which differentiates them from all other live as physical, soulish, and spiritual.
And here's another notion to ponder: the fifth chapter of Daniel reveals an interesting aspect about that 'other realm' where beings dwell and reach 'down' to our linear temporal realm ... when they manifest in our realm, they have physical appearance, even if only the hand of the physical.
Good question.. if eternal life is possible..
then is eternal past and eternal future possible also?..
What is "spirit/Spirit"?.. We really dont know in a material way..
We tend to look at life carnally(flesh)..
Where did our/the spirit come from..
Is it possible that our spirit is a evil angel getting a second chance?..
A second to reject Satan and his gospel..
Which is, "Eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and YOU will be like God"..
Can a man decide good and evil himself?..
Often, The good can be evil and the evil can be good..
The observer problem trumps a proper diagnosis..
What IF, an recalcitrant (evil)Angel had his "mind" blanked/cleared/occluded before being injected into a human body at conception.. You know.. to make the test (of being human) legitimate.. And that "angel" grows into that body identifying with the body instead of the spirit that he actually is.. thinking that he is merely flesh?..
That would make us all prodigal sons.. and provide a good test of our real spiritual proclivities.. Some opting for evil or good and opting to allow God to diagnose that..
If SO, then God is a genius.. what a plan... What a wonderful plan..
i.e. a second chance for Satans minions.. and for Satan himself..
besides that; if true; being born again is absolutely tangible..
Sorry, pure Bovine scatology ... when you were created in body, your soul contasining a spirit component also came into being.
What is a spirit?..
Pre-mortal existence (other than Christ of course) makes a good backdrop for a novel, movie or television script. And it is LDS theology (and a minority view in Judaism and Islam.)
But it is not Scriptural:
Actually this supports my speculation..
The mechanics of the forming is not mentioned..
What is,is, and what ain't, ain't.. Spectulation is fun..
I think I will not be judged on how accurate my spectulations are..
There may be some Mormons in heaven.. I say God bless them..
We are no doubt not judged on how smart we are..
If we were, many smart alecks will not be there..
You know like Peter, Thomas.. etc..
If christ is God?..
Then christ is unknowable..
since God has 3 or more iterations.. i.e. seven spirits of God..
God is not to be known but experienced/obeyed.. i.e. "tell them I AM sent you"-Ex ch3..
Deducing good/evil is eating from the wrong tree..
Truely, some worship Jesus human body/flesh instead of his Spirit..
How can the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit be one?..
It is(should be) quite easy for Spirits to be One.. not so human flesh..
I believe Jesus existed before his human flesh was conceived..
The Holy Spirit enlived "the protoplasm" with Gods "sons" spirit..
Being God it must be so.. Is Jesus Flesh or Spirit?.. is God carnal?..
Which brings me to the current problem/side bar..
Where did OUR spirits come from?..
Are "WE" flesh or spirit?.. Or is the flesh a metamorphic stage?..
Gotta admit.. its an interesting dilema/question/morphology..
Also; why did Jesus walk on water, go thru walls, appear in forms not easily recognized?..
Heal, read peoples minds, and any number of other strange events?..
Was it not to wean the deciples of carnality toward their spirit's?..
I think so..
Truely it is a matter of identification..
What do you identify with The flesh?.. or the spirit?..
Your whole world view lies in the matter..
Most I think try to merge the flesh and the spirit.. and make them one..
"God is Spirit and those that worship him MUST worship him in spirit".. a verse of scripture I believe.. Many try to worship God in the flesh.. because of identity, they identify with their flesh..
Which is OK with me because that is WHY? they here on this planet, to determine that.. Do you love the flesh or do you love the spirit/Spirit.. The Kingdom of God is in Spirit.. as far as I can determine..
LOLOL!!! That's a great insight into Descartes, Texas Songwriter! His famous "Cogito, ergo sum" is the description of the process that led him to conclude that he had "found" that very center of himself, called the immaterial soul, which is the very foundation of immaterial consciousness, and thus of all our human knowledge. He wrote in (Meditations):
Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am — I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be.In saying this, Descartes is not declaring man or his reason to be "king"; but only that the fact that he thinks is the only "objective" proof he has of his own real existence. It's a terribly profound statement. But to me, certainly not the most profound thing that Descartes ever said. That would be his decisive argument that the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the mere possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.
Descartes was a world-class philosopher and mathematician, the founder of analytic geometry. More importantly for our purposes, he was also a deeply religious man, one committed to the Christian understanding of divine creation — as referring not only to the original creative act, "in the beginning"; but also to God's eternal continuous creation of Nature, throughout space and time.
Truly you wrote: "Consciousness, excepting life itself, is the single most important fact about our existence." I absolutely agree. (As evidently Descartes did as well).
What is really fascinating to me is that science increasingly confirms that all life forms possess a form of consciousness. Even amoeba and bacteria have been found to display a rudimentary type of learning and remembering in replicable experiments. Indeed, one could say that consciousness is the hallmark, the sine qua non of what it means to be "alive."
Increasingly (though often reluctantly), scientists are beginning to admit that consciousness itself — like life itself when you boil it all down — is immaterial. The challenge the naturalists and materialists face is they have to show how nonliving, material objects bootstrapped themselves into life and consciousness. There is nothing in the physical laws of nature that affords any principle by which this can have been really accomplished.
In short, the hypothesis does not rest on anything rational, but only on something that is irrationally hoped for: an explanation of Life and the Universe that rules out God a priori, thus to conclude that all natural events must have wholly natural causes.
You quote Searle as saying the Darwinist (materialist, naturalist) "holds an unshakable faith that science will eventually discover a completely naturalistic explanation for consciousness." And you are certainly right to point out that this is a faith statement, not a scientific one; there's no testable evidence that could render this "unshakeable faith" true or false. Yet this faith statement is clung to so desperately that any evidence that does not conform to it will be screened out in advance, dismissed, disregarded — and ridiculed when necessary or convenient.
But as you note, this is not science, it is a faith operation. And it seems to me that it has no prospect of ever becoming "reasonable." Or rational. The problem is its correspondence to actual reality is doubtful in the first place.
Thank you oh so much for that brilliant description of how Dr. Moreland answered his little daughter with regard to the difference between machines and living organisms. It is simply brilliant!
You wrote: "Geoffrey Medell said consciousness is a mystery which seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the aftereffects of the Big Bang." Yep. It sure does look that way, and other scientists have acknowledged this as well. As the Kineman article referred to above put it,
The origin of perception, or the perceiver, remains an unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question. Like the epistemological limit in explaining the origin of quantum particles or the origin of the universe, not much can be said prior to a mutual causation. It is a mutual causation [i.e., "mutual" between the "intangible" abstract universe (formal cause) and the "tangible" material universe (final cause). Or to put it another way, the dynamic relation that Heraclitus and Leibniz recognized as subsisting between the "changeless" [Heraclitus — ~500 B.C. — called this Logos) and the "changing" or "changeable" (the free potentialities of the natural world).]Thank you ever so much, Texas Songwriter, for your outstanding essay/post!The results of common observation are associated with a "space-like" world and the results of abstraction with a "time-like" world, even though these acts themselves involve both aspects. Space thus appears tangible to us and time does not. With some introspection, we may come to appreciate that abstraction is time-like.
Oh really???? LOLOL! Dear brother in Christ, you are a master of understatement!
But then you wrote this fascinating essay, proposing to fill in some of the details using what looks to me like a very promising model involving some striking and sophisticated notions regarding time, associating them with different intangible levels of consciousness. Our "ordinary" consciousness — direct perception — operates at the level of linear time. Time on this view is seen as an irreversible succession of "moments" moving from past to present to future. Yet activities of the soul are not confined to this level, or perhaps we should say dimension. So you differentiate two other "levels" of time, the planar and the volumetric.
Correspondingly, with respect to consciousness, you distinguish it according to different aspects of "soul": ordinary consciousness, a/k/a direct perception (the lowest ranked), the soul itself (concept formation and decision making), and Spirit (expressing that which is universally divine, and thus "timeless" in life and consciousness), the soul being intermediary between the other two. I'm not sure this is a good way to frame it. But in any case, for the sake of discussion, we need to define our terms here.
Just some thoughts about possible definitions. When I think of "soul," I think of "formal cause" of the particular human person, preeminently including his bodily expression in "matter." Of Spirit, I think of "God's thumbprint" (so to speak) — that human quality summed up under the term imago Dei. It is that which shows us to be innately, distinctly, essentially human and which marks us apart from the beasts, even quite "smart" ones such as Albert.
It seems planar time is required for decision making. The "step-by-step" process inherent in linear time affords no way to make choices. At best all it can offer is a model of a determined system that inexorably consists (looking backwards) of a virtually limitless chain of cause and effect that is utterly beyond human control because, to us human observers, its is a string of past events relative to our present "position" in time. Which quickly becomes past for us. In short, linear time cannot account for free human choices. And yet it is plain that human beings do deliberate and decide choices regarding their own future actions. (Note that "future" in linear time is not yet created relative to the present; so future considerations can have no real meaning or possible bearing on the present in which human beings decide.)
For all these reasons, we need planar time at minimum to understand the human ability to make free decisions. Man is not "bound" to linear time, and cannot be "explained" in its terms. As the only truly free actor in Nature, something more than the concept of linear time is required. To me, your planar time is an excellent candidate.
Perhaps we could say that planar time is the natural temporal habitat of the human soul — which is a divinely created unique, particular "self." But the stamp of imago Dei is common to all humans by virtue of their created nature. The dimension planar time cannot capture this distinction any better than linear time could capture the idea of a soul at liberty to choose.
But it seems to me your "volumetric time" fills the bill here and quite nicely. It comprehends the "time of all times" involving the human kingdom of Nature. In this superior "time of all times" are enfolded the linear and the planar.
Thus it appears the nature of time is not as we directly experience it (linear time), but has three expressions or dimensions. Or maybe we could say that linear and planar time together constitute a complementarity (in Niels Bohr's sense) that can be reconciled only in the "mother system," which in your model would be volumetric time.
Just some food for thought. It seems to be consonant with some of your own conjectures. But you are the best judge of that, dear brother in Christ!
You raise some truly fascinating issues, MHGinTN. Thank you ever so much for this outstandingly marvelous essay/post!
What’s the difference between a Volkswagen?
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