Scientific idealism

INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS

INTRODUCTION

Now, we have to come back to the daily life and focus on the individual subjects such as you or me. The previous lesson does not explain the reality of the self that human and upper animals enjoy. Our self or our reasoning is neither an idea nor a mathematical form.

Firstly, how can we explain the existence of our own self? Secondly, how can we describe our thinking activities such as sensation, perception, reason and knowledge?

By the end, what is the nature of our mind body relation regarding notably our actions.

1-FORMS-SELF 2-MIND-BODY 3-REASON 4-CONCLUSION

1- FROM THE FORM TO THE SELF

11- Forms

As we explained it in the previous lesson, your body is a mathematical form. It includes billions of programs. Its most complex part corresponds to the brain. According to Bergson, the brain could be compared with a violin. A violin does not produce the symphony by itself (except in the materialist theory!). The subject produces the symphony in using the violin. Of course, when the violin or the brain form are damaged, you have neither symphony, nor sensations or thought. It is the same when death occurs.

Finally, we shall see later that the mathematical form of your body is reflected as sensations in your own consciousness and hence, you get the feeling to posses a body, a leg, an arm that you can see (visual sensation) or touch (tactile sensation). As a result, "your body" is whether a mathematical form in the thinking system, whether a sensation in your own consciousness. The next drawing illustrates this explanation.

DRAWING 1

In short, since forms and sensations are mental products, you do not have a bit of matter in your body!

12-Self

The process described above does not explain the reality of the self that human and upper animals enjoy. How can we explain the existence of our own self and consciousness?

According to materialism, there is only a material universe and a unique matter. Of course, that matter may have different modalities. For example, matter transforms itself in energy that is just a modality of a unique matter. For the same reason, there is only one thinking universe and one thinking system. However, this unique thinking system has different modalities. Therefore, we may posit that our selves are just the modalities of a unique thinking system.

The materialism does not pretend explaining everything and we are in the same situation. We cannot exactly describe the emergence of these thinking system' modalities. However, we may suppose the following process: Confronted to the highly complex forms of the living, the thinking system concentrates its thought and becomes their specific subject. For example, when you are dealing with a very complex matter, you have to concentrate your thinking. In doing so, you forget yourself and you get the feeling to become the real and specific subject of the thing you are studying.

Anyway, it means that your self, your subject and your own consciousness are just some modalities of a unique thinking system. When I say "I ", the thinking system is speaking through me (1). Obviously, your neighbor too says "I". Does it mean that you and your neighbor share the same self? Going further, we cannot limit the problem to men. Some upper animals even if they cannot say "I" because they ignore the language have certainly the inner feeling to be "I". Does it mean that men and upper animals share the same self?

In fact, we may think that the degree of concentration of the thinking system depends on the complexity of the form. The higher degree in concentration (gold in the next drawing) determines the capacity of the conscious self of the individual subject. Since every human form is different, the modalities are different too and you do not have the same self as your neighbor! Since the form of a man is more complex than the animal form, the concentration is higher for a man than for an animal and their selves are different.

DRAWING 2

Moreover, a high degree of concentration is always preceded by a lower degree. As a result, the individual self is divided into two parts: The conscious part corresponding to the higher degree of concentration (In gold) and another part corresponding to a lower degree (Blue in the drawing). This second part is the subconscious. It belongs to my "individual self" but I do not clearly know it. We shall explain further that the subconscious plays the role of a transmission belt between my "conscious self" and the thinking system.

This description is in accordance with what we observe: the specific conscious self differs according to individuals and species. The ability to be conscious, to act and to reason is strictly limited. Vegetables have no consciousness and their tropisms obey to some chemical or mechanical process like the minerals. Lower animals such as insects register excitation and impulse but are hardly conscious. Finally, only upper animals including men can be depicted as "individual subjects" because they all share the ability to get sensations and to manage them trough actions and elementary reasoning. In short, the unity of the thinking substance in all the subjects does not contradict the evidence regarding their differences.

13-Death

The thinking system gradually thinks a new complex form corresponding to a living creature, through association and dissociation (development of the fertilized ovule, Embryo development and so on). In the same time, it concentrates itself and makes appear one self connected to the new form at its early beginning.

By the end, the thinking system ends to think the form and gradually returns to simple steps. As a result, the individual experiences the fall of sentient and intellectual activities. It does not mean that his self is disappearing. It just means that the tool (body and brain) is downgraded. Finally, the thinking system terminates to think the individual form, and reduces it to the simple forms (particles). That is the death.

However, the death means the end of the form but not of the self . Of course, without any sensations, and any possibility to reason, you could think that the self is dead too. That is impossible because the individual self is just a modality of the unique and eternal thinking substance. With the end of the form, two solutions only can happen: the self is whether reintegrated in the thinking system, whether used for a new form. We shall explain this topic at large in the last lesson: Human destiny.

Materialists have always had the difficult task of explaining the mind body relations. Our theory shows how the forms in the thinking system are reflected as sensations in our individual consciousness. Due to this process, we may describe sensations and actions that constitute our daily reality.

Science perfectly describes the excitation: How an object excites another object such as an eye or a brain. However, it cannot explain how the excitation gives the color, the bitter, the pain or the pleasure!

We have seen that the forms were associated and dissociated according to some laws. These operations bring new properties. Likely, the thinking system associates the complex forms corresponding to the human body with simple forms. For example, there are some forms representing the atomic structure of your eyes, nerves, brain and so on. These forms are constantly associated with other simple forms (The form of the table ). All these associations produce new properties that you can describe like electrical waves or the firing of neurons in your brain. This simple explanation is perfectly in accordance with science and just corresponds to the anatomical and biological phenomenon of the excitation . However, there is not a bit of matter in this process. All is performed by the thinking system.

Forms are only made up of units and relations that our reason imagines as particles and forces with some objective properties. On the contrary, the objects we experience are compact, colorful, and tasteful. Just take the example of a table: the table you see is a compact object with a black surface. Now the table that exists outside your mind is neither big nor black. It is only a dust of particles in the materialist theory or a mathematical form in our theory. It means that we only experience the objects through their secondary qualities such as color, odor, and sound and so on. As we have seen in the first lesson, these qualities do not exist in the external objects and into our organs such as the brain.These qualities just exist as sensations in our consciousness. This point is very difficult to get, because most of people think that the objects (and thus their sensations) take place in an external space.

In fact, this space, and more largely the space-time framework just exists into our own consciousness. For example, looking and touching are sensations. When we reach out toward this table, the effort undertaken is a sensation and the sight of our outstretched arm is yet another one. When you say that there is a distance between the tree and the flower, it means that you superpose to these two sensations another sensation. It could be your own step (The act of stretching out your leg to take a step is a sensation in itself). Then, you count the number of steps and you get a measure of a distance. It means that the distance is only a representation of a quantity of sensations, that is to say the number of steps, separating two different sensations: the tree and the flower. Of course, our reason extracts from the step a normalized representation such as the kilometer or the mile (1km = 1000 steps). When you say that a no visible star is distant by three billion kilometers, it means that there some forms which could be reflected in your consciousness on the condition that you firstly realize 3 trillions sensations of one-step. This fact does not change any calculations or predictions. The distance is just a number of normalized and homogeneous sensations applied to a specific sensation.

Just like the forms, sensations appear and disappear in our mind. Each sensation, whatever its nature or complexity, is a unit. Consequently, a portion of this homogeneous flow is always a defined number of units, which is duration. For example, this water molecule corresponds to a form (or rather a group of forms). As long as the form lasts in the thinking system, we get a series of identical sensations, and we have the feeling that a thing has duration. As the movement of the sun is a constant series of identical sensations, all the other diverse series of identical sensations are superposed to this referent series and we can calculate the duration. The speed is just like in our calculus a ratio between the distance and the duration.

You could object that if our sensations and the space are only some mental events into your own consciousness, it means that each individual consciousness contains its own sentient universe. How could we explain that we perceive the same things? Moreover, let us suppose that I push somebody: I see him fall in my sentient universe, and he sees himself fall in his own sentient universe. Since each sentient universe is different, and since a sensation, never gets out from the consciousness that contains it, how could we explain the relations and communications we experience? The answer is easy: The forms in the thinking system (or the atomic reality in the materialism) are external to our consciousness. Since the thinking system is unique, it produces similar sensations into the consciousnesses of similar individuals. Considering actions, the thinking system establishes the communication and the results are reflected through sensations in our individual consciousness (report to the detailed explanation below).

You can also ask the next question: Let us suppose that we admire today a small stream. We deduce that in a far off geological time, this small stream was a deep river whom bed covered the valley. At that point however, there were no living beings and consequently, no sensations and neither valley nor river. So, how could we explain the geological evolution described by science? Once again, we answer that the forms follow an order in the thinking system. We have sensations of the final effect of their procession but if a hypothetical observer, gifted with the same senses as us, had been at its beginning, his mind would have had the sensations of a valley and a powerful river exactly like the scene we can reconstruct. There is not any change regarding to scientific explanation .

Of course, I do not get sensations from the furthest galaxies. Does it mean that these galaxies do not exist? Once again , we do not say that nothing exist outside our sensations. In the thinking system, there are some forms that you call galaxies when you get a representation of them. The fact for these forms to be far is only related to the logical order of the forms in the thinking system.

You could also invoke the scientific experiments with detectors that identify material particles in a cloud chamber. The scientist observations are conscious experiences and do not carry outside of the mind. The experimental equipment such as cloud chamber is something that looks or sounds a particular way. They are nothing more than sensations. It does not mean that these experiments are fruitless: More we analyze our sensations and more we can know the forms (report to the detailed explanation below).

Finally, just suppose that a knife kills a man. His consciousness seems abolish. Since a knife is a sensation in the consciousness, how can I explain that a single image in a consciousness can destroy its own receptacle? In fact, the real sequence is the following. The knife corresponds to a form. Then, this form is associated with the form corresponding to the body and their contrasted properties lead the thinking system to dissociate the form corresponding to the body. Hence, the subject of the body does not receive any more sensations. It means a sudden death.

Considering these facts, we have seen in the first lesson that the materialism was very disturbed with the cause of these sensations. On the contrary, our theory explains how the forms are transformed into sensations in our individual consciousness.

You have to recall that your self is a modality of the unique thinking system. In short, the modality is by itself the cause of the sensations. Otherwise, if properties were not transformed in sensations it would be impossible to distinguish the thinking system from the individual. Indeed, the modality can be compared to a border. When a property crosses the border, it is immediately transformed in a sensation in your consciousness. For example, the form of a table becomes a compact and black table. What is more, as long as you are living, the sensation of your body is constant (Sensations of arms, legs, and so on), and this fact explains why you have the feeling to be constantly associated with one body. That is why we believe in a material world. Consider the next drawing.

Pain or pleasures are the result of contrasted or complementary properties. For example, the same fire can be a pleasure if it just brings heat during a frost or a pain if it burns you. The property and the excitation are the same, the sensation of fire as a colorful warm moving thing is the same but pain and pleasure may be quite different due to another property resulting from a convenient or inconvenient association of forms regarding our body form.

Our explanation of the sensation process does not change anything to your daily reality. We do not say that nothing exist outside our sensations (2). Clearly, the forms in the thinking system correspond to an “external reality”. We only posit thet nothing exist such as a matter!

Action is just a complement of the sensation but it implies two new elements: the freewill and the subconscious.

Since there is only one unique thinking system, it could mean that the individual subjects have no will at all and behave like automat. However, the thinking system only follows some logical laws while its individual modality has to balance pain and pleasure through actions. It means that there are two distinct processes. Moreover, not all our desires are realized. Our failures are indeed the best proof of the existence of a will independent of the thinking system.

The real problem is the connection between our will and the thinking system. I say: I want to stand up and then I am standing up. In fact, there is between these two events a complex mechanical process of nerves, muscles and so on. For the dualist the will launches this material process but it conducts to the impossible communication between a mental substance (the will) and a material one (the nervous and muscles process). The materialists have the same problem and they can only reduce the role of the will: The will should be an illusion or a material process by itself.

In our explanation, and although the will and the forms corresponding to the nervous and muscles process are both mental events, I cannot claim that my will moves these forms. It means that the thinking system must launch these operations on the forms. How does it know my will? Our theory of the subconscious solves this problem.

We have seen in a previous chapter the origin of the subconscious. Confronted to the highly complex forms of the living, the thinking system concentrates its thought and becomes their specific subject. Moreover, a high degree of concentration is always preceded by a lower degree. As a result, the individual self is divided into two parts: The conscious part corresponding to the higher degree of concentration and another part corresponding to a lower degree is the subconscious.

It plays the role of a transmission belt between the two modalities, global and individual of the thinking system. Firstly, it receives orders from the global thinking system: For example, the calf that feeds for the first time is not seeing a situation it has already lived through. Outside reality, that is to say the thinking system informs it through its subconscious. This fact explains all the impulses. Secondly, our will send orders to the thinking system through the subconscious because it constitutes the common ground of the two modalities (global and individual) of the thinking system. It means that the transmission belt operates in the two ways. Look at the drawing

However, the global modality (The big blue rectangle) of the thinking system only moves the forms that are in accordance with the logical laws. It means that some wills and actions succeed and some other not. As the individual subject does not exactly know these logical laws, errors are frequent and quite unavoidable. In order to limit errors we have to know these laws. That is the goal of Science.

2-The sensation is analyzed. I discover that it is the fire which is burning me.

3-This analyze leads to a will: I give an order to myself to stand up and ward off from the fire.

4-This will is transferred in the subconscious, which is the transmission belt. Being modified by our will, the thinking system changes its thinking program of the forms. This change gives new forms

5-The result of this process appears in my individual consciousness through a new sensation: I make the effort to stand up (sensation of effort). I see myself standing up (visual sensation); I go away from the fire (effort and visual sensation). Look at the drawing:

At first glance, fabrication is just a particular mode of action. The objective is to produce new sensations that are useful for our comfort (For example a Combustion engine). We shall describe the process steps by steps.

1-A sensation appears: A coconut and as I am hungry, I want to eat its milk. Beside the coconut, there is another sensation: a flint pebble.

2-The sensations are analyzed: I realize that the only way for opening the coconut is to use a flint axe. The image of the flint axe is a representation and my goal.

3-This analyze leads to a will: I give an order to myself to seize the pebble and to hit it with another stone. This will is transferred in the subconscious that is the transmission belt. Being modified by our will, the thinking system changes its programs and produces new forms.

4-These new forms induce new sensations in my individual consciousness: I make the effort to seize the stone (sensation of effort) and I see myself hitting the pebble (effort and visual sensation). In daily language, it means that I am performing a manual work.

5-Now I compare these new sensations with my representation of the project: The flint axe. Obviously, there is yet a difference: the pebble does not yet look like a flint axe. Consequently, I give a new order to myself: hit hard! As a result, we find again the process described in 3 and 4.

6-I will go on with this process and finally I will get a sensation corresponding exactly to my representation: the flint axe. When looking at this new sensation I can assume that I have fabricated a new tool.

Any simple or complex manufacturing process obeys to the scheme we have just described: An aircraft like a flint axe. There is an interesting point to note: Usually, any sensation corresponds to a form created by the thinking system. Regarding a manufactured object, the process begins with a knowledge-representation in our own mind (the image of the flint axe or the sketch of the combustion engine-See below). Through the different actions, the thinking system combines some existing forms in order to create the form reflecting our knowledge-representation. By the end, there is really a new combination of forms corresponding to the manufactured object.

The cause of my ability to reason is just the same as the genuine ability of the thinking system (3). Since the thinking system is mathematical, it is not surprising that our own reason is obviously mathematical: Aristotle explains that the syllogism is just a replication of a mathematical calculation. Kant also argues that the mathematical concepts are the basic of our reason. The only difference is that the global reasoning is universal while our own reasoning is local.

This fact enables us to know the ultimate reality and to create tools and symbols. As our reason is mainly based on numbers, we apply a numeric analysis to every sensation. For example, we try to decompose every sensation into a multitude of elementary sensations. Once we have attained the limits of our sentient perceptions, we continue this decomposition by forming the representation of smaller particles and then of units and numbers and finally we get an abstract knowledge-representation.

These knowledge-representations are the third mirror of reality. The Thinking system thinks the forms (first mirror). They are then reflected as sensations in our own consciousness (second mirror). Finally, these sensations through reason are transformed in knowledge-representations in our mind (third mirror). Consequently, we understand the mathematical structure of the nature. We get closer to the truth but we never reach it, because we have not a direct access to the forms. The problem of knowledge is only to organize our own thought in order to get a good communication with the thinking system. The solution to this problem is that we call education.

Now let us suppose that material objects really exist. Since we only know these objects through sensations in our mind, how could we know such a material thing? The mind body problem does not only affect sensations or actions. It applies also for knowledge. On the contrary, since there are only mental things, it is clear that a thought can know another another thought. Scientific idealism is the sole to answer to the following question: How could we know an external world. Since the world is by itself a thought, the answer is obvious. As a result, the theory of knowledge demonstrates in turn the validity of our system.

Now, let us suppose that you are in your office, managing people, suppliers, customers and so on. Obviously, you have sensations of your own body, of your desk, of other people as living bodies. You have sensations of the sounds when they are speaking to you or of the physical shake hand. However, could you say that all these sensations are just sufficient to describe your job? Of course not. It means that societal relations are specific.

These specific relations are represented in the sentient world, through symbols. The human Language is certainly the first symbol. An idea is attached to a voice sound and becomes a word. A bank note is an idea attached to a specific piece of paper (the paper is a sensation). We are living among symbols and they dictate our social life. Clearly, these relations are created in our own mind and in other people minds. However, our own mind is just a modality of the thinking system. It means that the thinking system also knows these relations through our consciousnesses. In other words, and as said leibniz, our consciousnesses are the lucarn of the thinking system on the sentient universe.

We observe that our theory does not change anything to our daily perception of the reality. It does not jeopardize the practice of science. Moreover, it brings a more elegant and comprehensive explanation than the materialism.

However, the validity of a philosophy depends on its ethics. We shall describe the ethical knowledge in the next lesson.

1- . The Pythagorean professed that each individual was by itself a God or a part of the unique God. Averroes too thought that any individual subject was identical with the ultimate subject.

2 -The scientific idealism differs of the subjective idealism of Berkeley. According to Berkeley, we only have sensations and there is nothing outside our own minds. However, sensations hold in the thought of God. Then, God printed sensations in our own mind. Of course, it was easy to contest such an idealism based on a supernatural hypothesis.

3 - Some philosophers think that our reason comes from the sensations. With the flow of sensations, men observe regularities, can anticipate and finally form some abstract concepts. It is true that without sensations, a reason cannot exercise. We get sensations in first. A young child seems to have only sensations and his reason appears with age. However, we can observe that a sensation is not a thought by itself. Sensations just bring sensations. A sensation never brings the tools for analyzing it. Clearly, this dispute comes from confusion between the conditions of the reason to exercise and the cause of the reason by itself. Without sensations, reason cannot work but the sole sensations are not the reason and cannot generate it. Our logical ideas do not come from sensations. The reason holds into the thinking system and consequently into its individual modality, that is to say you and me.