Our World can often seem a special place. In recent posts we have been exploring this Sensation and Judgement (See posts: The Strange Sensation and An Enchanted World). In this post let me present another outstanding case; for really, everyday and every moment is itself a bedazzlement of consciousness.

Let me quickly interject, this efflorescence (to use William Blake’s word) of the world around us is Not always a pleasant thing. I seek to avoid the status of “Pollyanna.” Often the world is lit in tragedy and pain but even then, it is our world, our Quality-Filled panoramic creation. As several philosophers and psychologists have testified, as much as the Natural Scientific Description of the world holds, Our Practical Vision and Belief in the world will be at least Something More or Other Than that hard science description.

Philosopher and theorist extraordinaire, Dan Dennett has championed what has become known as “Illusionism.” The theory that Evolution has created and sanctioned for us a highly oversimplified, but efficient, take on the world. Let’s face it, our Common Sense approach to the world ‘chunks’ microscopic things in very peculiar and interesting ways— like persons, animate things, macroscopic functioning solids (like carbon and washing machines), liquids (like Chardonnay and water), gases (like oxygen and ‘air’). This way of seeing Phenomena has not done too badly. We have science, democratic rights and values, art and The Ohio State Buckeye football team. Granted, that characterization of Common Sense is selective; Common Sense is also full of bull shit, like belief in gods, ghosts, most Republican Party politics, and sasquatch. Common Sense, though, is also always under the process of revision.

The goal, here at naturereligionconnection, is to update and rationalize Common Sense. This will involve a demystification of many concepts, such as free will, value, quality, reason, personhood and nature. We must “save the phenomena;” which is the world and ourselves in the way they seem to us, but we must revise our thinking about these SEEMINGS in the most reasonable way. Much of that has already occurred throughout History.

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Another Cool Example of Enchantment: more Bird Song, but now with Stravinsky

The Nightingale, who plays the opening role in a morning’s bird-song in Europe and other parts of the world, sings in a manner inspirational to the early Modernest Classical Composer, the Russian, Igor Stravinsky. Here is his Song of The Nightingale.

(This performance lasts over 21 minutes, do not feel obliged to listen to the bulk of it, but it is a worthy piece. Interestingly, this video shows the Musical Notation, the score itself. A Bird’s Song transformed into Human Musical Sound but also into our Written Representation of musical sound.)

(These sounds can also be displayed on an Oscilloscope which changes sound into electrical signals and then displays their pattern graphically. We, humans and other Conscious Creatures, are capable of recognizing, modifying, using and creating Patterns in Nature that are significant to us. We really work Nature over. It’s An Enchantment! Afterall, the story you tell about yourself is who you are, in many ways. It, too, is a Pattern constantly maintained and developed.)

Our Latest Songster: The Nightingale

(More melodic than the Lark, but not nearly the profusion of sound and effort. The Nightingale is known and named for its habit of song starting before The Break of Dawn. It is the first bird to sing each morning in its European, African and Asian habitats. But can it be worthy of Stravinsky or he it? You be the judge, but I can hear the resemblance!)

Bird Song

Do birds enjoy singing? Do birds appreciate the melody of their particular song? Is “song” a good thing? Similarly, do dolphins enjoy swimming? Do dog pups like to wrestle? Does“Play” and “Art” exist to non-human animals? In many ways we would say “Yes, it seems so,” and we would have good grounds for saying that. Afterall, we enjoy singing and melody; we often like to swim and dive, wrestle and frolic. We have the insight to “see” these feelings and activities develop in the creatures of the Tree of Living Things. They seem to grow from some incipient stage to more explicit and full-blown forms. These qualities are a Reflection of ourselves; “They are nature singing our song,” says psychologist Nick Humphrey (see post, A Strange Sensation).

But how does nature sing our song? Nature starts simply and often with other motives. In biology, it is generally acknowledged that Bird Song starts for very venal reasons. Birds want to attract mates and establish territories. Bird calls do much the same, but they may also warn of danger as with the Blue Jay. These are very Functional motivations. They are not about an enjoyment of the song for the sake of the song itself. Yet as one famous biologist put it, “Nothing transcends itself like nature.” The ‘enjoyment’ of song, for the sake of song itself, is pioneered in birds and maybe realized in humans. We may also add that the enjoyment of color may start in insects, but is more fully realized in the human visual arts.

In Chapter 3 of Dan Dennett’s book (Breaking the Spell, 2006) on the scientific explanation of Human Religious Practices, Dennett askes “Why Do Good Things Happen?” That is a strange question! He is not asking about some specific ‘good’ occurrence, like the end of WWII for which we know many particular events; he is asking why anything “good” ever happens or exists. “Why do humans fight wars?” begins to get sufficiently broader; but also, “Why does Color exist?” one of our favorite fascinating phenomena here at NatieRel.

Is there an answer to such broad questions? Well, Philosophers have traditionally thought so (see the post series What is a Philosopher.) Religions have also posited Reasons for the occurrence of good things (and bad). In The Iliad, Homer wrote that King Agamemnon offended the goddess Artemis and she prevented the winds from blowing and the Greek fleet from sailing to start the Trojan War. He was forced to sacrifice his daughter to appease the goddess and start the winds, but instigating the ire of his wife. To religion, it’s the gods that are responsible for both good and bad.

Coevolution is the reason good things happen, proposes Dennett, not gods! Coevolution, and not just Evolution, because coevolution involves a specific circular relation or feedback of causes between specific kinds of organisms that stimulates a series of adaptations on each of their part. Dennett cites “the bargain” struck by some plants and animals around 600 million years ago. Seeds happened to become housed in something vaguely like a fruit, something that stored some sugar, an easy energy source for the animal. Over eons, fruits and the animals that sought them, both evolved in sophistication. That is Coevolution. Dennett cites several other examples.

Coevolution is an important cause of increasing complexity in our world. It is in Complexity that Good Things lay. It is also in the break-down of complexity that Evil and decline occur. It is in highly complex Brains that an experience of color occurs along with neural activity. It is in groups of cooperating humans that Language arises and is perpetuated, and then complex Ideologies grow — with gods, democratic rights, free choices, art, and even supposed ethnic and national superiorities.

In what we would call empty space, it really is rather empty. No good thing or bad thing happens there, that is the least we can say; maybe we should go further and say, Empty Space is a bad thing if Evil is the degradation of complexity, then this is the bottom layer. So, yes, by comparison to Complex Things and Events, no events at all is really bad. (So, The Holocaust was better than empty space? Maybe what makes The Holocaust massively evil is its disappointment, its betrayal, of all the wonderful accomplishments of humanity at and up to that point in history. We feel a tremendous Guilt with the Holocaust —how could persons have done that to other persons? We feel no such disappointment or guilt concerning empty space.)

Stay tuned for more on The Nature of Goodness———————————————————————–The famous Alfred North Whitehead takes a crack at it.

I don’t know about you, but my “Soul” could sure use some revitalizing! I have felt rather exhausted, not so much physically, but mentally and “spiritually.” It is not that I am depressed, just worn out; beleaguered by a world in which too much has gone wrong recently. I am looking for some hope once again, and maybe that is all that it is, Feeling Rather Hopeless.

British psychologist and philosopher, Nicholas Humphrey, has offered some help in the form of two books: A History of the Mind (1992) and Soul Dust (2011). Metaphysical Hope, we might call it. True, both books are rather old, but still good, and each about 200 pages long. Nice that Humphrey, in writing a history, has respect for our time and forbearance. I hope to follow his example.

A “Soul”? Surely it is farfetched to think that this ancient and regrettably ongoing superstition has any modern beneficial use. Could it possibly accurately help describe our Human Condition? Could it help me shake these blues?

I will go out on a limb, with Humphrey, and suggest that it does. “Soul” has helped return some sparkle to my outlook. This rehabilitation is based (somewhat) in the belief that we humans often ‘know’ or ‘sense’ more than we realize about these “deep,” philosophical and religious issues. The turn of the 19th century German philosopher, Hegel, certainly thought so. He argued that mythology and traditional religion were a dim and eerie form of what an accurate philosophy of the world would look like. Humphrey contends something similar, that philosophical thought and awareness is natural to human beings, at least in some rudimentary forms.

 

Our New Soul

So, Humphrey attempts to revitalize this familiar concept in a rather straightforward way. Of course he jettisons the idea of the soul’s immortality and its immaterial character, but hangs on to what may be the true point of these, the Soul’s Transcendent Character.

The soul is the self, initially “a core self” and then eventually “the Ego” which is a larger and more complex self built from the core. Any self must transcend. It most last from moment to moment, day to day, year to year. It must transcend time, not totally as if godlike, but definitely forming a fairly durable duration. Also, it must transcend space and particular events and bodily faculties. The self is a unifier, an integrator in time and space. “I” have a toe, and the pain in it is equally its pain and mine. I see red, and that sensation is equally an activity at the surface of my retina, various events in my brain, and in general an experience of mine.

This general transcendental character of the self, and especially its supposed immaterial character, is demystified by Humphrey by postulating a Neurological Loop and a progressive sequence of development in it.

But if a Self is a “Soul,” why not just stick with “Self”, why up the rhetoric to soul?

Surely some magic must be added, and that is where Quality and diverse qualities enter the story. Humphrey contends that about 300 million years ago, our reptilian ancestors —predecessors to all birds and mammals— evolved a Brain complex enough to “have” Phenomenal Experiences. In other words, it was “like something” to them (these creatures) to be them and to live their life. If they were damaged, they now felt pain, that is what damage was for them. They now experienced color, for example; or even enjoyed the taste of a juicy insect just devoured. Red was no longer just an electromagnetic wavelength responded to, but an experience of “redness” and also a behavioral response. Food was no longer just a biochemical necessity and a series of biochemical reactions but an activity “savored,” a satiation “appreciated,” a “craving” mitigated. That is what it was “like to them.” It was a new situation—an experience—for any “thing,” at least in our section of the universe.

An “interiority” was now introduced, contends Humphrey! It was the dawning of not only “selves” and “souls” but also “Minds.” A kind of “interior theater” was established where not only the events that happened to a thing were recorded but they were interpreted and represented as something to me or for me. Qualities “appear” in the world. Perspective was created, and with that a variety of perspectives appeared. There is no perspective without differences of perspective.

Neurologically, the perception of the soul’s or self’s continuity and transcendence is naturalistically understood as an ongoing looping event occurring among the neurons in the brain. “Specialized neural circuits” exist and were selected by nature for their form as shown above. A flowing and continuous reverberation in the brain that takes time and potentially builds on itself. One that thickens and quickens at some points, but also relaxes, slows and thins at others. A loop and series of loops that may possibly offer in physical terms a kind of diagram for what an ongoing self may look like in brain activity, and what self-reflection may be based in. These kinds of self-reflective, varying but continuous events, can be mathematically described; they are called “discrete delay differential attractors.”

Humphrey admits that, in some ways, these neurological contentions are highly speculative and unusual. In effect, he is suggesting a neurological hypothesis based on its logical form, a logical form that has characteristics that seem to resemble the “shape” that consciousness and self-consciousness could take physically to be what it seems to us to be phenomenally. This is unusual, the logic of the problem of consciousness is leading the search for physical, neural, patterns.

In the above diagrams, let us say a sensation has occurred and is recorded in one small section of the brain, some small set of neurons. Its significance is ‘judged’ by the ongoing reaction of neurons around it. If it is a significant sensation, the initial pattern of responding neurons will be repeated and expand into larger sets of neurons that still maintain some of the basic pattern. Somewhat like the flower of a plant, a side-shoot of this activity may split off and ignite a repetition of that pattern in different parts of the brain. All eventually echoing back, returning to the initial sensation, as if a determination of its character and judgment of its significance. In a less significant experience, far less activity would occur but it would still maintain the above continuous, flowing and recursive character.

 

But the magic continues and escalates when a final observation is added. The self is better described as a soul when its absolute uniqueness is recognized. At no other point in all of history — past or future — will the same perspective exist that is The Basis of You. What the world seems like to you, who you seem like to yourself, seems to us to be a complete and irreplaceable creation. Not immortal in its physical existence, but immortal in its uniqueness. It is comparable to other Souls, but incomparable to them in strict identity. A Soul is a world-historically unique collection of Seemings and observations of Seemings themselves. Each is a perspective all its own. “The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself,” writes Douglas Hofstadter. This self-reflective loop is what we have come to highly value.

This Unique Approach

This approach was pioneered years ago by Artificial Intelligence researcher Douglas Hofstadter and philosopher Dan Dennett. They co-authored a successful book called The Mind’s I in 1982. Previous to that, Hofstadter wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning and NYTimes Bestseller, Godel, Escher, Bach in 1979. Each book features the new insight that a self, and any “product of Mind,” has a looping, continuously self-referential but varying character.

Godel: Mathematics Turns in on Itself

In about 1930, Kurt Godel (last name pronounced with a long “o” and short “e” and equal emphasis on each syllable) proved that self-reference was impossible to avoid in any theory of the basis of mathematics. In response to Bertrand Russell’s and Alfred N. Whitehead’s voluminous Principia Mathematica, which tried to show math as built up from the bottom based on self-evident principles in a kind of pyramid form. Godel proved that all theories of math’s foundations could not have this form, but contained Self-Referential Statements. They seemed to ‘hold themselves up by their own bootstraps,’ we could say.

Yes, self- reference or self-reflection is a strange kind of thing. It often leads to paradox. Hofstadter contends Godel’s work was an application to math of linguistic puzzles such as the statement “I am lying.” How are we to take this? Standing alone, and on its face value, it cannot be either True or False! Or, how do we take this pair of statements? “The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.” They are “Strange Loops” that throw us out beyond them in search for further Context, or indicate to us a closed and circular form that is both logical and paradoxical.

 

M. C. Escher: Reality as if Turning in Upon Itself

 

A Dutch graphic artist working in the early to mid 20th century, labored in obscurity until he was almost 70 years old. His works are an exploration of the concepts of infinity, symmetry, reflection, perspective, and tessellation, says Wikipedia. Hofstadter values them as powerful portrayals of the effect of Self-Reflection. Each is a demonstration of a Strangely Looping Process.

Hofstadter contends Print Gallery displays three kinds of “inclusion.” The seaside town is “in” the picture being viewed by the boy, the boy and the picture are pictured “in” Escher’s work, and the entire idea of it is “in” Escher’s mind as represented by the void.

Bach: Bouncing a Theme Back Upon Itself in Many Different Ways

Hofstadter uses Bach’s piece A Musical Offering and its historical context as the background for his final example of Reflection, Variation, Recursion, and Self-Enclosure as displayed in his book’s title, Godel, Escher, Bach. I can barely begin a description of this piece’s musical character, but I will try. In the end, I will present a simple example of this musical form that will make sense to all, as it did finally for me.

A Musical Offering is a Fugue involving six parts! Reportedly even a four part fugue is difficult and a five part is rare; Bach himself only accomplished several of these in his collection The Well-Tempered Clavier. In a Fugue, each part, or ‘voice’, has a distinct melody to play, but all melodies are craftily designed to fit with each other as all are played at some points simultaneously. In this sense, each note of each part has multiple roles to play; it has its primary role in its own part, but secondary roles in relation to all the additional voices. A Fugue is an intricate work, like a finely woven tapestry.

A Canon is the simplest kind of Fugue, explains Hofstadter, and the simplest kind of Cannon is The Round. We all should be familiar with singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a round. That is the simplest Cannon, a variety of voices sing the same song over against and in contrast to itself. It creates a delightful effect.

Hostadter’s point is, in all these cases, Nature and Human Nature has ‘twined’ and intertwined itself about itself, and Reflected back itself, in ways that has set a foundation for more complex phenomena to appear to occur at what is called Higher Levels. New Things Happen, based on The Foundations of The Old. Hofstadter: “a higher-level view of a system may contain explanatory power which is absent on the lower level.” Like music, like art, like ethics, like science, all happen at levels beyond the microscopic. Its a more interesting life at this “chunkier” level!

Stay Safe, Stay Connected. The naturereligionconnection.org

 

(A follow-up to the post The Strange Sensation, where psychologist and philosopher Nicholas Humphrey contends that we should think of this world as “painted in our soul dust” or “singing our song.” Yes, he believes that the Qualities of our world — its color and smell; its goodness and badness; its joy and sorrow — are all added by Conscious Beings, as if we are painting atop a canvas of molecules, waves and atoms. These Qualities include Complex Actions like singing and writing poems, but also creating scientific theories and testing them. Here, a little bird that is a powerful songster and one of my favorite poets will be featured; both of them helping to recoup some positives in our world already painted in too much sadness and tragedy. Please try to Enjoy!)

Yes, the world is an amazing place, often. And as amazing as it is, our human response to it is amazing, sometimes. Case in point, The Lark (Eurasian Skylark) and William Blake’s poem, The Lark’s Song. As amazing as this small bird is, Blake’s poem is its equal.

But, it is not an easy poem to read. Let me walk you through it, as I have had some experience reading poems, and teaching students poetry, and have worked with this poem for a while.

Its punctuation is very important. Closely watch the commas for only a slight pause, but a period is a full stop. The semicolon at the end of line two is much the same as a period. Interestingly, there are only two periods; the first occurs at the end of the 13th line. Yes, the first 13 lines are one sentence and should be read as such! No punctuation at the end of a line is no stop in reading at all. So, the spacing is peculiar and important (and I fear it may be distorted on a cell phone), but then so are many things about Bill Blake (Englishman, 1757-1827). Why is “Spring,” “Corn-field,” …”Expanse” and “Bird,” all lines unto themselves? Why is each capitalized? This poem is visual as well as linguistic. It must be read several times, to develop its full impact.

So, here it is. I just love the ending where “the awful Sun…With eyes of soft humility and wonder,…stands still” to watch this little bird sing.

The Lark's Song

Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of
          Spring;
The lark sitting upon his earthly bed, just as the morn
Appears, listens silent, then springing from the waving
          Corn-field, loud
He leads the Choir of Day-trill, trill, trill, trill,
Mounting upon the wing of light into the Great
          Expanse,
Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining
          heavenly Shell,
His little throat and breast and wings vibrates with the
          effluence Divine.
All nature listens silent to him, and the awful Sun
Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little
          Bird
With eyes of soft humility and wonder, love, and awe.

Can the lark’s song live up to this hype? Is it an “effluence Divine” to which “All nature listens silent”? Judge for yourself.

(It often seems as if too many sounds are coming from this one mouth! The second section of this video starting at 1:00 is the most convincing to me. A true “effluence Divine,” “His little throat and breast and wing vibrates” with each sound.)

Common across Europe, it is the male Skylark that sings. Hovering at about 150-300 feet (50-100m) is where much of the singing occurs (“Mounting upon the wing of light into the Great Expanse,”) and lasts for as much as a minute (“Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining heavenly Shell”). More prolonged outbursts occur while perched. Many a person is surely correct in NOT finding its song beautiful as much as impressive in its vigor, variety and effusiveness. Surely we must agree, it is a true outpouring!

A small bird, about the size of a robin; it is around 7 in. or 18 cm. It nests on the ground and thus Blake’s line, “The lark sitting on its earthly bed.” Settlers to North America have tried at various times and places to introduce the bird to this continent, but with almost no success. A small colony was established on Vancouver Island in Western Canada, but today it is in serious decline. The skylark is abundant in Europe and Asia, and is not endangered.

The world is often a marvelous place, especially when persons seek to enhance it. Persons or selves can be called “Souls,” contends psychologist and philosopher Nick Humphrey, because of our psychological and metaphysical ability to convert the seeming raw materials of matter into “an enchanted” and “magical” display of Qualities and Abilities. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Skylark; thank you Mr. Blake! Thanks for our physical and metaphysical situation that offers so much and potentially offers more!

No atom ever sings, And though we may roughly associate A Group of Atoms to an event we call Singing, the heart of the song is lost when we do so.

Stay Safe!

Well, my metaphysical speculations hit a high point in The Details Revised post. Many readers will be happy to hear that ‘my thirst has been quenched’ and we can return to more mundane topics. But first (!), I need to think about what was there said. After all, “Strange Talk” should be made “PLAIN TALK” for that series, or at least what best can be done.

I write this follow-up as much for myself as anyone. Our MetaPhysical situation has always been a strange one, so to write a recap of my position for “clarity’s sake” is as necessary as it may be unattainable. Here goes.

The Infinite Mind

Well, surely this gets me off to the wrong start, the odds are against me “making sense” of an “infinite mind.” Yet, Physics does have a traditional place for this idea! Physicist Sean Carroll* makes this clear in his use of Simone Pierre Laplace’s famous thought experiment ‘commonly’ known as “Laplace’s Demon.” Laplace knew Newton’s Theories better than Newton himself, contends Carroll, because he was born a generation after Newton and studied and thought thoroughly and solely in the Newtonian tradition. The French thought of Laplace as “France’s Newton” and he contended that this Newtonian Point of View assumed a Grand Intelligence that existed outside of the universe and ‘gazed’ at it knowingly and dispassionately.

“The Demon” was able to know the position and the velocity of all the particles of the universe at any single instant. That indeed was an infinite capacity that yielded an infinite payoff: Knowledge of the particle’s positions For All Time, past and future! And moreso, as if that was necessary, this knowledge rendered the Idea of Time irrelevant. Since all was known at once to this Infinite Intelligence, Time was really not a basic part of it. So, No Time, and Everything Worth Knowing about these participles was known at that instant to this “Mind.” It was a Complete Determinism, and if you should happen to feel that The Future existed, it was all locked in and nothing was new about it! Many of his commentators (physicists and philosophers), then and now, thought it frightening and so the infinite intelligence became known as “Laplace’s Demon.”

It is worth noting that our access to this exulted Perspective occurs only through Mathematics. Though the mathematical relations were not all that complex in Newton’ s time, they surely represented a New Paradigm and a reframing of the old problem of motion both in the “heavens” and here at home. Today, some highly abstract and very complicated math is almost entirely the means to our understanding of the modern physic’s world. “Picturing it” in our normal everyday categories does not work, it is contended.

Physics does take seriously the universe it presents us (and so do I), and often also acknowledges its Paradoxical Character. Carroll makes clear to us that even among physicists there is great disagreement about how to think about, especially, the Quantum Mechanical Theory that they all agree is “accurate” or “true.” Carroll says his favorite is The Multiple Universe Proposal, that Q-Mech works because there are…?

But even for the classical Newtonian Mechanics, its implications were controversial. Laplace’s Demon was a product of that theory’s implications extended beyond our planet and Solar System to the universe at large. Carroll tells us that there never was, nor will there ever be, a mind capable of knowing enough information about the particles of the entire universe, at one moment, and also having the computational power necessary to analyze it. That if we think of that mind as a computer, it would “have to be a computer as big as the universe itself”, he says!

The value of “Laplace’s Demon” was always the point it made “in principle” about our metaphysical situation. Physics has shown us something “true” about the universe that is very disruptive to much of what we also want to believe is “true”. So, don’t blame only me for my “strange talk” and lack of clarity!

A Finite Mind

But if we play along with this idea of The Infinite Mind and The Universe it presents to us, we then have an interesting contrast that can clarify Our Predicament as “Finite Minds.” What might be our limitations, for surely they exist?

If that expansive mind understood the universe as sub-atomic particles and a quantum wave, then A More Limited Mind such as Ours “sees it and understands it” in a more limited yet still effective way. Why would it still be effective? Why not totally illusion?

…..It Is Still A Perspective

The Finite Mind would still be a perspective on the world, but a more limited one. It is, therefore, grounded and not just illusion. It has a limited scope and is not universal in its purview. It is “an innocuous-seeming but secretly profound idea that there are many ways of talking about the world, each of which captures a different aspect of the underlying whole”, writes Carroll.* It does not have the capacities of the Infinite Mind to absorb all the data and process it, so it must Economize and Rationalize. As a Limited Perspective it must only respond to some things as “stimuli” and not to others, and those are what we call “The Information” that is pertinent to it (contends philosopher Dan Dennett). Limitation is the ability to be automatically Selective! And surprisingly, that becomes A Very Good Thing because Why Should We Be Only Interested In The Most Universal Perspective On Things?

…..It Is From A Different Position

No longer would a Mind have the entire universe As Its Object and therefore ‘stand’ outside the universe to understand it and view it all. A Finite Mind is within the Universe and is, therefore, a Participant in it. First, this means it has more limited Objects apparent to its limited Point of View. Second, a finite mind also has Larger Things of which it is a part. It must function in both of these contexts. Ultimately, the largest context is that of the physic’s world, but there may be other mediate contexts. Persons function in their own ways, but also in the ways of all Biological Creatures, and then finally as physical objects of chemistry and physics. For the Finite Mind to be Effective and therefore Real, it must maintain a variety of compatibilities.

There is even the possibility that from a redefined Religious and Moral Perspective a Finite Mind participates in these larger structures. Morality is our participation in, what I have called, The Human Social Organism. Humans are a herd species by design. This is true not only biologically but culturally. “Persons” are formed in a society and are intrinsically connected to other persons even if they are directly removed from their immediate company.

Religion can be our sense of our intrinsic connection to the universe and to reality itself. As much as we modern, secular, educated individuals have learned to appreciate (and dread) our own irrelevance and insignificance to “things” in the broadest sense, it is not completely true! To think and feel ourselves as irrelevant is to, once again, fall prey to confusion. We are not removed from ‘the world’ and gazing at it dispassionately, we are participants in it and full of passions and poignant with a sense of the direction to go and of activity worth accomplishing. This can be our new found religious sense!

…..It Creates A Phenomenal World

The World as It Exists to Physics is not immediately Apparent or Understood to a Finite Mind. Atoms, sub-atomic particles, quantum waves are hidden to it by Perceptions of its own. Things Look Different to us!

Our scope as minds is limited by Our Size and Our Duration, not to mention geographic and historical traditions. Atoms and particles behave far quicker than we do and are much smaller. Finite Minds live in worlds with “Objects of Their Own.” We are well aware of our world of Macroscopic Objects, but also consider that of the paramecium. It is most directly Designed to be aware of its other little competitors, consumers, and food stuffs; when a bulldozer covers over its wooded wetland to prepare for a new housing flat, it will only very indirectly and obliquely have a sense of that monstrous machine and the consequences of it. A Finite Mind has a “Phenomenal World” composed of the objects it is immediately aware of, and surrounded by, in its own terms. In biology, this has been referred to as “the Umwelt” (the self-centered world) of a plant or animal by biologist Jakob von Uexkull in the early 20th century and later adopted into Communication Theory.

…..It Is a Designed Object

But living things are not the only objects we can think of as having a phenomenal world. Computers are designed with great sophistication today. They play winning chess against chess masters and write music in the vein of Bach and Beethoven, and can more competently ‘understand’ language. If a computer attains the point of “seeming” to have sufficient Personality, then will it be a Person? That seems like a totally redundant question. I mean, how do you you known that I am not a computer? I sure seem to be a Person, but am I really?

But to defer the answer to that question, the broader issue is the similarity of a Finite Mind and Any Designed Object. We design and make many functional objects. Each is given its own Limited Perspective of ‘the world.’ Each uses that to Function appropriately and to have a Structure organized to do that. Hell, even my door lock carries out its function rather well! But in the terms of physics, my door lock, and myself, have no particular or significant individuality in the great causal background presented to us by that science.

But clearly, here we are. We are a ‘seeming’ whose reality seems hard to deny. If we are to accept the significance of an Infinite Mind, as physic’s would suggest, then we should accept ourselves as more limited Minds with a world and a mode of operation worth regarding.

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