Deconstruction Of The Physical

During my absence from Hipforums I spent part of the time in a cabin deep in the Rocky Mountains. We didn't even have much of a signal on our cell phones (and when we went to town, while I had web access on the phones, I stayed off of HipForums because I don't like using the cell phone to do long responses to things, and you know how my responses are here). I worked on my books and wrote some other pieces.

This is one of the pieces I wrote, Deconstruction of the Physical, which is more or less several excerpts from several chapters of one of my books put together into a single essay.

Derridean deconstruction, while initially liberating and positive, eventually turns into a repetitive, potentially fatal blow, to philosophy. It is very representative of the Post-Modern Crisis. In this piece I deconstruct the Void which is at the center of Derridean deconstruction, and demonstrate that the void, nothingness, and all that it represents is not actually a negative, as philosophy has always treated it, but is in fact, in terms of multidimensions, a positive. I then offer a way through and beyond Derridean deconstruction, Nihilism, and the Post Modern crisis.

Here it is:



Derrida’s philosophy of Deconstruction seemed for many to be the death of philosophy. Post-Derrida, any position one would take would undoubtedly stand out as the binary opposite of another position, and therefore be subject to deconstruction. Then that opposite position would be subject to deconstruction back into the original position. The deconstruction back and forth could then become a dance circling round and round, one side always deconstructing into the other. At first, it provides meaning, insight, liberation of the marginalized, but as it continues adnauseum, it becomes simply an exercise in futility. Deconstruction was therefore the perfect philosophy to carry us into the meaninglessness of Nihilism, which now defines this stage of the Post-Modern crisis. But in this capacity it has still played an important role in the progress of cultural evolution. As old values and paradigms were deconstructed it has given credence to the rise of marginalized groups. It has helped break down the old weltanschauung, an action which,despite representing a nihilistic dynamic, nonetheless opens the door to something new. But the real problem of deconstruction, mirroring the problem of the Post-Modern Crisis itself, is how to move beyond it. If we cannot move beyond Deconstruction and the current nihilism on a culture-wide basis, it truly will be the death of philosophy.

As his dance of deconstruction circles round and round, it surrounds an empty center. Derrida described this center as the void where Western man has always tried to place, what Derrida called, a Transcendent Signified—in other words, God, or any other transcendent guiding principle, which Western man has always identified by a capital letter in order to exemplify its significance as the core basis to all meaning. But it was not the word, or the symbol of this Transcendent Signified that Western Man tried to place into this center. In other words, it was not the signifier that we thought we were placing there but the actual signified object itself. But because it is a void, a nothingness, all we could ever place there was the label—a signifier. Therefore the dilemma of this central concept is, to quote the ancient words of Lao Tzu, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.” In other words, the signifier could never be the actual signified, for it is nothing but a word or a symbol. Unfortunately, and at the risk of becoming redundant, whatever we place in that center is, in the end, nothing more than a signifier, because we perceive nothing more than nothingness. Derrida understood this. He argued that we could never fill the void because the actual Transcendent Signified was beyond anything we could prove or understand. We could never identify the actual signified thing-in-itself. Therefore, anything we try to place in the center to represent it, becomes itself a binary opposite, and is therefore subject to deconstruction. The Christian God for example is deconstructed into the Devil. Like all other binary opposites, whatever we place in the center becomes a duality with one side dominant and the other marginalized.Thus the void or nothingness in the center remains.

Coincidentally, in the year before Derrida was born, the German existentialist, Martin Heidegger, explained in so many words that we needed to face the nothingness in order to counteract nihilism. Heidegger saw the ground of our being within the nothingness, and that our existence stands forth from the void.The question of nothingness was the key question to metaphysics for Heidegger, and metaphysics was the key to what he felt was the most important question of all, ‘What is Being?’ Derrida’s deconstruction did not face the nothingness, instead it moved around it, anddirectly mirrored our Post-Modern nihilism in that it enabled deconstruction of all the concepts around the void without ever questioning this void—the nothing, and therefore in the end, we are only left with nothingness—nihilism.

But what is the void? To Western Man, obsessed with the material world, it is the dreaded nothingness—the negation of physicality; the nonphysical. It is that part of reality, which during the Dark Ages, became associated with evil, darkness, death, and even,mental illness and the irrational; elements which all naturally equate and associate with each other. The darkness was even believed to be the source of disease and fatal afflictions as in the ‘night airs’ of early beliefs in miasmatic theory. We may no longer believe in the dangers of the night airs, and the need to protect ourselves accordingly, but the fear of darkness and the void has certainly made its way even into the Modern Age. After all, who doesn’t feel at least a bit spooked by unexpected or strange sounds or, even just spooky or uncertain feelings, in a dark place? One doesn’t have to believe in ghosts, for example, suspecting that a person is hiding in such a place suggests just as much, if not more, nefarious intent.

ObviouslyWestern Man, according to Derrida, would argue that this center between all binary opposites, being the source and core of meaning,had to represent a transcendent object or concept. But it was, nonetheless, a void; in fact, ‘The’ Void. We may elevate it as the center to our concept of being and the foundation of all meaning, but this does not change this fact of its being as nothingness. We could therefore respond that perhaps Derrida lost sight of the fact that it too is a binary opposite. It will always stand opposite to man, to physicality, and to the existential physical reality we assume to be the most real.Obviously Western man long ago placed this nonphysical void into a marginalized position against the dominant physical world.

Therefore, perhaps the real problem then, was that even as man was trying to fill the center void with a capitalized transcendent signifier, he had already marginalized the void. The physical/material/body/conscious/light/rational became dominant for Western man while the nonphysical/void/mind/subconscious/darkness/irrational became the shunned and marginalized side to reality.It is natural that man would try to fill this central void with an absolute that transcended all of his reality, but Western Man simply failed to realize that he had already doomed any conclusion or potentiality to this Transcendent Signified by marginalizing the very side of reality it represented.

After all, the Modern Age was man’s attempt to overcome that feared darkness of the Dark Ages. The rationality of the Modern Age would surely have overcome the evil forces of irrationality, death, and the void, or so one would have thought. But rather than face such fears, Western man simply repressed them. Therefore it should be no surprise that the rationality of the Modern Age would find itself collapsing into its own irrationality, wallowing in search of lost meaning, truth, value, and authenticity. Even scientific empiricism, which was so grounded in the concrete physical world, now faces relativism and a superpositioned reality of quantum uncertainty.And as for mankind’s own existential reality, we may have extended the lives of men, but we have not overcome death, in fact, we have only exaggerated its sense of finality.

What Modern Western man fails to recognize is that nothingness does not necessarily equate to non-existence when we are speaking in terms of a multidimensional manner of being. Because anything of a dimension that is higher than your current frame of reference for existence will be nonexistent within the context of that current frame of existence. But this does not mean that it is absolutely nonexistent, as it does exist within the higher dimensions where it is found. If you were to take a three dimensional box of clothes, for example, and stick into the 4th dimension, it would completely disappear from your 3-dimensional world. But does that mean it is completely gone? No, it is just not visible from our 3 dimensions.

Despite its scientific validity this sounds like fantasy, or fairy tale stuff, because we are unable to access higher dimensions. But consider waves of light that are light minutesinto the future of being perceived by you. For example, if you were to look up at the sun, we could argue that there is a stream of light approaching you from the sun which stretches about 8 light minutes long. But you don’t see that stream, you only see the light one set of photons at a time, as they are absorbed into atoms within the vision cells of your eyes in the present moment that you look up to the sun. This means that there is quite a bit of light between you and the sun that you cannot see. In fact, in terms of that present moment, that light does not even exist, because it is something of the future. At the same time, it would be wrong to assume that it absolutely does not exist. If you continue to stare at the sun (ignoring the fact that it could blind you) you would continue to see more of that light as it moves into your present. The light that is in your future may not be a part of your physical present, but it does exist within the 4th dimension. It is a positive. It is there, even if it is in your future. (Classical or Newtonian science tells us that the light we cannot see is in physical space between us and the sun, but Quantum Mechanics tells us that as a light wave, it is superpositioned, meaning that, as we shall see, it is located everywhere until it collapses into a particle. In any event it is in our future, and therefore from our perspective it is 4th dimensional.)

To illustrate this a little further, consider a quantum parable I call the Dead Friend Paradox.Imagine that you have a close friend who is on a space mission 5 light years away. You are in constant communication with each other, with one caveat, because of his distance your communications are delayed by 5 years. Nonetheless you continue to send and receive messages to and from him and he does to and from you.

At 5:00 pm on a Friday evening, you are sending off a transmission to him, telling him what is happening on earth and responding to questions he asked when he sent his current message about 5 years ago. At the very same time, 5 Light Years away, your friend is sending a transmission saying that his mission is accomplished and he is coming home. But right after he sends it, his instrument panel suddenly lights up with warning lights and sounds as a cataclysmic event has occurred on his ship. He immediately sends out a distress signal back to earth, and then his ship is consumed in a massive fireball. Your friend is now nothing more than ash and traces of organic charred material floating in deep space among the burnedand exploded debris of his ship.

However for the next 5 years you will continue to communicate with your friend as if he is alive. It will take 5 years for you to receive his distress call along with disastrous telemetric data, after which there will be no further communications from him, leaving you to conclude, that he is dead. But for that whole 5 years you had carried on a conversation with someone you understood to be very much alive. Philosophically, then, we could ask from the perspective of your reality, when did he die?

The answer, of course, is that he died 5 years before you received the distress signal, back on that very Friday evening. We know this because we know that it took 5 light years for the distress signal to reach you, and with the telemetric data, you would probably know what exactly happened to him and his ship. You now know that your belief that you were still communicating with a living individual over the past 5 years was an illusion.

However there is a much deeper significance to this problem then whether he was dead or alive. As soon as the distress signal left the antenna or dish of his ship, it did so as a radio wave. In other words, it did not have a specific position in space-time but instead, from what we know through Quantum Mechanics, was superpositioned. As mentioned earlier, this means that as a radio wave the signal was all over the universe, including in your room while you were sending your communication to him 5 years ago, in the radio, and even inside of you, not only that evening but all along those 5 years. Quantum physicists say that thissuperpositioned state is the state of a wave, and is as much like a field, as it is a wave. They have a hard time describing this, let alone, even understanding what it really is, therefore they stick to the math which demonstrates this superpositioned wave side of the wave-particle duality. They will tell you that the superpositioned reality is like that of a wave, or a field, or both a wave and a field, yet it is like neither. (And that is why it is up to a philosopher to determine what this means from an ontological standpoint.)

But even though the distress signal was superpositioned and therefore all around you and even within you, you were still never able to receive it until 5 years later, when based on the speed of light, it suddenly had a defined position as a particle on your antenna, in your radio, and finally the speakers where it became sound (which, according to the old 1930’s science fiction cliff hangers would have sounded like, “This is Bob’s spaceship. Emergency! Emergency! My spaceship has a malfunction!) (…Ok, ok, his message will appear on your computer screen, but that is so 2017…)Until then all you could receive were his previous transmissions, in the order they were sent, at a delay of 5 years.

But if all these transmissions, as radio waves, were superpositioned in a wave-like field-like state, and were all over the universe, including right where you and your radio were located, why couldn’t you receive them sooner? In other words, through out that 5 year period, did that distress signal even exist? We have already answered that your friend died 5 years ago, and we now know that he sent the distress signal. Obviously for him, the distress signal existed 5 years ago. But from your perspective, in your ongoing moment of now, it had no physical existence. If it did, your radio would have picked it up right away because, after all, it was right there.

If it did not have a physical existence, then this superpositioned state must have represented a higher dimension—the 4th dimension to be exact. Because the 4th dimension is higher than the 3 physical dimensions, our only perception, or peek, into this dimension is the almost infinitely small point of Now. In this particular case, your point of Now represents a point that is always 5 years delayed from your friend in terms of receiving his transmissions. None of those transmissions could be received earlier because as radio waves they did not have any physical existence in your present. Because it is easier for us to understand the universe in classical Newtonian terms, you would picture that distress signal as having traveled across space for 5 years from your friend’s ship to your radio on earth. In other words, even though you did not receive the distress signal, you would still understand that it did exist from the very moment it was sent, because from your understanding, even if you had not received it yet, it was still travelling through space to you.

Therefore, even though this distress signal, from your perspective, had no physical existence within your present throughout that 5 year period, it was still a positive even as a nonphysical higher dimensional thing. It existed somewhere, even if that somewhere was in another dimension.

We have been talking about radio waves, but every quanta, in other words every particle and subatomic particle in the universe, is both a wave and a particle. Light is both a photon and a wave of light. Atoms, electrons, protons, gluons, higgs bosons, whatever quanta you name, all exist as both a particle and a wave. It is easy to understand that a particle with a momentary single position in space-time is a physical particle. But the superpositioned wave is a different matter. Scientists all speak of and treat the wave as if it is a physical thing as well, but it makes far more sense that the wave, superpositioned as it is, is a thing of the 4th dimension, which would explain why, from our limited 3 dimensional perspective of the universe, a superpositioned thing is everywhere and in every time. Since it does not have a specific point in space-time, in other words, a point within our physical three dimensions, it is difficult to actually define it as physical.1 If you think about it, every attempt to measure, identify, or in any way, experience a wave occurs only after that wave has collapsed into a particle—a physical existent. The needle on a wave meter does not move by a wave but an electron. Radio waves do not move a speaker or move down your antenna, only electrons. A light wave does not generate an electron as it is absorbed into the atom of a photocell, a photon does. The superpositioned state of the wave does not fit very well into space-time because it lacks a single position in both time and space. It therefore makes much more sense that it is of a higher dimension—a dimension where time and space equate to zero, just as it does for light traveling at the speed of light, in other words, it fits the 4th dimension which we perceive as time, because time moves at the speed of light. A light wave collapses into photons at the speed of universal time.

Just like our friend’s distress signal, we know that photons and other particles appear in our universe at certain times, and we know that wave-like fields, or field-like waves, that collapse into these photons and other particles must exist as well, therefore we must conclude that both waves and particles are positive things in terms of their existence. For example, we know that the radio waves from your favorite radio station must exist, even though you can’t see them, feel them, or experience them in any other way than the electrons moving through your radio that creates the sound you enjoy.But as I mentioned earlier, anything that exists in a dimension higher than those of your current reality will be entirely nonexistent to you, unless it appears as a physical object within the dimensions that form the context of your reality. You will only experience a 4th dimensional object, if and when it appears in your 3 physical dimensions—which is what everything in your current point of Now is doing. All of physical reality, with its concrete physical objects, exists in the Now. Otherwise, everything is nonphysical.

But philosophy has always treated the nonphysical, spirit, mind, the nothing, as a negative. It is a dualism. But it is not a duality as matter is to anti-matter, for both matter and anti-matter are physical things, and they are so opposite that if one comes into contact with the other they obliterate each other. Nonetheless, the nothingness of nonphysical things, by virtue of being negative, is deemed antithetical to physicality. Such nonphysical things are an inverse and therefore opposite to existence. Consider Hegel’s concept of Pure Being, for example, he stated that if we try to conceive of Pure Being, all we can think of is nothingness. By declaring it as nothingness, Pure Being immediately became a negative to Being. Even if Hegel did not mean this to be a binary opposite to Being, it has certainly been treated that way ever since.

A more significant aspect of the nonphysical as negative is the fact that in today’s Modern World, anti-metaphysical as it is, anything of a nonphysical nature is immediately deemed an impossibility. As the common argument goes, ‘How can anything nonphysical exist?’Of course, we have just demonstrated how a nonphysical thing can exist. However, if you need more convincing, there is another very common example: by definition, the mind is nonphysical.

Let’s consider the individual mind. We cannot explain it away as not being there, because, after all, I think therefore I am. This First Principle of Descartes does not refer to the physical being of one’s body. In fact, to Descartes, the body was the start of the objective world that surrounds one’s subjective self. He saw it outside the thinking, perceiving self that is I. This difference between the mind and the body represents the mind-body duality, which is a spiritual-physical duality or a physical-nonphysical duality. Over 350 years later, and science has still been unable to prove any different in its attempt to argue that consciousness is an illusion, or that it emerges from physical organic structures. Regardless, despite its definition as nonphysical our a priori experience of it is that it is a thing, it is there. It is therefore a positive.

There is a PostScript to the Dead Friend Paradox. We all know that there are plenty of cases of people who realize that something bad has happened to someone else, even when there has been no physical communication between these people. This may have happened to someone you know or even to yourself when a loved one has been hurt or worse. It is therefore very possible then that in the story of your friend dying in a massive fire ball 5 light years away, that in that same moment, you may have felt that something happened to him. You may even have this gnawing sensation, or bad feeling all through those 5 years and are therefore not at all surprised when 5 years later, you received his distress call. This is undeniably a phenomenon of mind. We write it off as intuition, but how could this really happen?

Archephenomenalism, as I have already demonstrated, posits that physicality only happens in the present moment of Now. As I said, it is only in the present moment that all the positions of all the quanta currently manifesting in your reality are defined, in other words that all the necessary waves have collapsed into the existing particles that gives everything existence in the space-time of your present reality. But we experience more than just that present moment of Now. We experience each present moment, and they all run together as the flow of time. We also remember past moments and anticipate future moments. Therefore Archephenomenalism posits that mind transcends the physical present, in other words, it represents a dimension higher than the 3 physical dimensions.In the postscript of our paradox, it is possible that you may have had a feeling that something bad happened to your friend out in deep space; something that you would have had no way of knowing for 5 years. In other words, you have picked up on a nonphysical reality that you had no way of understanding from physical phenomena. This would make sense if the mind is also higher dimensional, and therefore potentially able to pick up on nonphysical ques present in such higher dimensions.

If mind is of a higher dimension then it must be essentially nonexistent within the 3 physical dimensions unless, and except, for that point within which it passes through the physical dimensions. Such a point would be our subjective center—the point at which we find our individual self; the center of our physical presence. Therefore mind is impossible to physically measure, and detect, except in such ways in which it is reflected in physical phenomena, such as brain waves, and the electrical impulses through nerves. But brainwaves and electrical impulses do not tell us the content of the mind—the images, concepts, and ideas, which can only be experienced subjectively.In this manner, mind can be nonphysical, and of a nature that is unquantifiable and abstract, and yet as a higher dimensional object, it is still a positive.

Let’s now turn to the physicality of the distress signal. Since it was superpositioned and existent all over the universe, from a philosophical standpoint we must ask, why didn’t it collapse into particles the evening that it was sent, or any other time prior to the 5 years that Einstein’s science tells us it would take to receive? The answer lies in the term Quantum Mechanics uses to describe the quantum wave that it was superpositioned as: a ‘probability wave.’ The math of quantum mechanics tells us that a superpositioned wave can collapse into a particle anywhere in the universe, but that it has the greatest probability of appearing at a time and place based on the encoded probabilities in the information it carries—quantum information. It is possible that random particles of that distress call did appear at other places and other times in the universe, but individually these particles were insignificant. Most of the particles appeared in your receiver on the date and time five years after it was sent, because that is where the quantum information determined it would appear. That moment when it appeared was the Now in your reality when you were to receive it. The implication here is that quantum information, like mind, also represents something of a higher dimension. It is not a stretch by any means to argue that quantum information performs a function much like that of Form (or essence) as understood by Plato and Aristotle. This then gives us an argument that essence is of a higher dimension. After all, if every quantum is superpositioned, there must be some form that enables them to collapse into particles such that all physical objects and contexts manifest as they should based on the rules of the universe. And that these objects and contexts remain consistent from one moment to the next, and that if something changes, that this change now remains consistent from one moment to the next until another change takes place. If quantum information determines where a particle will manifest, then it must provide the essence to our reality.

We have therefore described mind, and essence or form as positive nonphysical higher dimensional realities. In essence, we have been answering the deeper questions of Why, toLiebniz’ Principle of Sufficient Cause. Through this Principle he argued that all questions of why lead to deeper and deeper questions of why, until they finally end at the deepest Why—the meaning to all of existence. To Liebniz, this was God, to Derrida, it is the Transcendent Signified. If we are unable to come upon this deepest Why, then Liebniz argued that the why’s would continue ad infinitum, and existence was therefore absurd.

If Quantum Information as a controlling principal transcends the wave, just as mind transcends the 4 dimensions that create our physical reality, and if mind and quantum information both play their own parts in forming and shaping our reality, then it stands to reason that there are things of yet a higher dimension that would coordinate, structure, or somehow enable, both mind and quantum information to be and thereby create the reality of the universe. In other words, we are now approaching the nonphysical reality of the Transcendent Signified—the deepest Why, whatever we may define that to be,and it too can be seen as that reality of a higher dimension which is nonetheless a thing or presence—that is to say that it too is a positive.

As we head down this path of logic we are actually deconstructing the physical by turning the tables on the dominant physical and its relationship to the marginalized nonphysical. Suddenly the nonphysical, representing a reality of a higher dimension, dominates the physical in the sense that it is the very form that makes the physical possible and continuous from one moment to the next.The physical, representing a brief moment when all quanta manifest as particles, has now become the marginalized side of the duality. Quantum Mechanics has demonstrated to us that the physical reality we think we know is more illusion than reality.

Those in favor of a metaphysical view of reality might conclude that the problem is solved; we have turned the tables and now the marginalized nonphysical is the dominant and the dominant physical has been deconstructed to become marginalized. But they both represent binary opposites, therefore, as pointed out in the very first paragraph, the nonphysical is now subject to deconstruction. In other words, now that we have deconstructed the physical and recognized that the nonphysical is now dominant, it only makes sense to protest and say, “Well, even if the nonphysical represents the wave function of particle-wave duality and that quantum information determines when and where a particle is most likely to appear, and therefore provides us with the form or essence that has long been considered the hidden internal reality of all being, we still experience physical reality as the primary mode of our existential experience. To elaborate, physical reality, whether illusion or not, is the reality we experience in our daily lives, and is therefore the being upon which defines the reality we know. From a conscious standpoint, it is the world we live in, know, and experience. Therefore we have now deconstructed the nonphysical back into the physical.

And so the dance begins—the Derridean dance around the center of void wherein we attempt to place the Transcendent Signified. Only this time it is a bit different. The void is the nothingness of the nonphysical which has now become a part of the dance, and therefore has been deconstructed. As Heidegger pointed out, we must face the nothingness—the void—in order to combat Nihilism. This must therefore include the nihilistic dance of Derridean deconstruction. All along, for Western Man, this void has been the epitome of the negative, the antithesis of physical being, and an incomprehensible impossibility to which we tend to assign our ego-ideals or use to attempt to explain the unexplainable. But in terms of inter-dimensional reality, and from the standpoint of Archephenomenalism, we understand it to be higher dimensional realities of quantum information, the superpositioned reality of the wave-field, and finally mind and Hegel’s pure being. It is therefore a thing—representing a nonphysical object in its own right—and thus a positive.

Facing this void, as Heidegger suggested, we therefore transcend the dance of deconstruction, and it no longer represents a dance of futility. Instead it has become both a singularity and part of a multiplicity. It has become a singularity because both sides are a positive, therefore essence and existence represent two sides of the same coin. Existence cannot exist without form or essence. Likewise, from an existential standpoint, which is the current basis of all of our existence, essence has no meaning, unless it manifests in a physical sense.Next, this dance of deconstruction has become part of a multiplicity because it has become a trinity rather than a mere duality (in other words, the void has been added to the two binary opposites); represents a multiplicity of nonphysical dynamics—mind, quantum information, the particle, the wave-field, along with multiple dimensions; and because there are many deconstructive dances around the same void. Finally, the validity of nihilism collapses because, as Heidegger implied, every physical point of reality has existence as it stands out from the void, and yet it does so with a reason. As we now know, quantum information determines that every quanta that manifests as a physical particle with a specific position in space-time does so because of that information, which is its essence—in other words every particle of existence manifests with a purpose and a meaning.

But to speak of essence in today’s world is akin to inciting the ire of the Spanish inquisition. On the very first page of Sartre’s, Being and Nothingness, for example, he declared that philosophy has extricated itself from the embarrassment of the notion of essence. Existence has become the ground of being rather than essence as that ground. This is befitting of a world that embraces objectivist thought, and it justifies the way we objectify every single thing into mere objects. But this same objectification drains away any intrinsic value. Without any deeper meaning to fall upon, what authentic value is there for any object, whether a manmade object, an object of nature, or even man himself? As Leibniz determined would happen some 300 years ago, when we stopped trying to answer the deeper questions of why, life become absurd.As the Modern Age turned away from essence, the value of any and all objects became determined entirely by abstract human constructs, which were entirely superficial, and subject to negation as need be. After all, an abstract constructed value can rise or fall, and just as easily disappear entirely. If this is the only kind of value an object has, then there is no absolute intrinsic value. We were therefore doomed to fall into the Age of Nihilism.

It is therefore significant that science now provides an argument for essentialism—even if it takes philosophy to formulate it. But we can take the argument deeper still. The 19th Century philosopher, Franz Brentano, pointed out that thought is always a thought of some thing. It is impossible for us to think of no thing, as there must always be an object within our thought. He therefore determined that all thought has an ‘intentional object.’ Now that we have seen that Quantum Information provides essence by determining the probability of when and where in space-time a quantum will manifest as a physical particle, we can conclude that it too has an intentional object. Having determined so, we can then wonder if Sartre is now turning in his grave, because we have not only returned philosophy to the concept of essence, validated by science, but we have alsothrust it right back to its original intent as described by Plato—intimately linked to the concept of thought as idea; to mind.

To move further down this rabbit hole, we must understand that the term ‘intention’ by definition refers to meaning. The intentional object of a thought is something we ‘mean to’conceive of, or, if it is passively induced, something we mean to perceive. This intentional object is therefore the focus of our thought, or as Sartre would say, what we positas the object through positional consciousness. Quantum information likewise ‘means to’ manifest the being of an existent at a specific position in space-time.Intention, by definition, implies a plan or a design, as it is a determination to be or do a certain thing. In other words, the intention of an intentional object is the ‘form’ of that object. Because quantum information carries its own intentional object, each and every particle that manifests as a physical existent in the present moment has its own intrinsic value. It is meant to be within that point and time. The very particle that manifests does so with meaning and purpose, and this in turn gives intrinsic meaning to every structure, and content of every object in that moment, and therefore meaning to the object itself.

But it is at this point that Archephenomenalism breaks away from Platonic form for if each quantum carries its own quantum information, then there is a natural subjectivity structured into the universe. After all, even the math of the quantum wave is one of probability rather than certainty. Therefore, the table in my dining room is not a table because it has tableness—the essence of a table according to Plato. Rather it is my table because it has its own unique essence. For example, my table is made of cherry wood, and therefore contains a different substance and source from some other tables. Despite quantum uncertainty, this never changes from one moment to the next. The tip of one of the legs is broken and has been fixed with a screw to hold it in place. Likewise there are nicks and scratches in various spots, particularly on its sides. In other words, despite quantum uncertainty it has its own unique history which continuously manifests within each moment in my dining room. In fact, even its position is unique as it is located, as I write this, in my dining room, where it has been every single moment since my wife and I bought it and brought it home from the store. At a quantum level, and therefore at a physical level, it has its own unique essence.

These are ground shaking revelations for Western philosophy.If Archephenomenalism is to be accepted it would provide for the existence, so to speak, of the nonphysical, and thereby present it as a positive. It would deconstruct the physical and transcend the philosophy of deconstruction. It answers Heidegger’s call to face the void and thenallows a path beyond nihilism. Finally it turns Modern philosophy on its head by returning essence as the ground of being—but an essence which gives meaning and subjectivity to each and every point of physicality.

But such things shouldn’t really be too surprising. We are only coming to terms with the void, unlike in the Far East, where the void has always been a point of ecstasy and deep unfathomable meaning. Lao Tsu, for example, could have taught us centuries ago that the binary opposites of yin and yang dance around the very same void—the Tao that is eternal and cannot be spoken, and that it is this same transcendent Tao, and the yin and the yang, that give meaning and existence to all things.




1 You might be inclined to argue that if an object located at a position in space-time represents a physical existent then what Einstein labeled as time, in other words, the 4thdimension, must also represent a physical dimension. But as you will see shortly, time in the sense of space-time represents only the physical present and not the past or future, which are the unseen and unperceivable parts of the 4th dimension.

 

I will read this when I can "find" the time...

 

Perhaps a mathematician would help the philosopher here . I believe the representation should oh comma date
teleporting people having no desire for a machine .

 

In deconstruction, the word "Host," meaning someone entertaining you, also implies "Parasite."

 

The following is an absolute word , perhaps one of one of its kind :

ztee

translation : extremely , exactly this word

 

Deconstruction has exploded into ways that Derrida did not intend it. In fact, its a bit of a buzz word and is often used today in ways that are not really deconstructionist.

In a way you could look at it as a modern zen koan---we all know, for example, what two hands clapping sounds like, but what does one hand clapping sound like (the koan).

Deconstruction is a break down of dualism. Derrida said that the world is full of opposing concepts---good/bad, light/dark, male/female, mind/body, intelligent/stupid, etc. etc. etc. He called these concepts binary opposites, and said that one side of these binary opposites becomes dominant which in turn marginalizes the other. Consider male and female---as the male took on a dominant role, somewhere about the time that our ancient planter culture ancestors were turning small planter villages into the first city states, the gods rebelled against the goddess---in other words, the masculine became the dominant side of the duality. Women have been a marginalized part of society ever since, being treated as property, having limited rights, and so forth.

Derrida claimed that the dominance of one side is always subject to deconstruction, meaning that it breaks down and there is a switching of roles, a point where the one becomes the other and the other becomes the one---as in the pictures where there are two simultaneous images, like that picture of a candle stick that is also two faces facing each other. But you can only focus on one image at a time so they switch back and forth. You can see this today with the feminine rights movement, and the fact that women are taking on traditionally male roles, and males are even taking on traditionally female roles. This is followed by an inversion where the other opposite becomes dominant. If this plays out in the social dynamic of men and women, it would mean that women would become dominant and men would then be marginalized. (This is what the far right fears but I honestly don't think it would happen, and besides...)

Derrida, for the most part, did not mean for this to apply to social situations, for example, because it was really meant to be a way of re-examining literary texts. He was after all a post-structualist, and the structuralists and post-structuralists dealt with words---the signifier versus the signified (the word versus what it represents). So his actual work mainly involved deconstructing novels and literary pieces to gain new meanings and contexts from them. I say, for the most part, because he spoke out against using it to apply to the world around us, but then he himself did this. Then we must consider that whenever we approach literature in a philosophical manner, it is to reflect the world around us, and therefore it is about life, and the meanings we gain from it, and he knew that, and he used it that way.

There is a good example of deconstruction that is true to Derrida in many ways. I don't know if you saw any of the Fox series, Lucifer. It is about Lucifer who gets bored in Hell and decides to come live in Los Angeles, where he opens a night club, has sex with all kinds of beautiful women, and lives the hedonistic lifestyle that someone would if they had no conscience, and were in fact the Devil. But this show Deconstructs the God/Devil or Good/Evil constructs. He happens to meet a detective who he knows of because her real claim to fame was a topless scene in a major movie when she was a teenager. She has no interest in her own fame (and I think she was the daughter of an actress so she could easily pursue movies, but...) and is very serious about helping the world through her career as a dectective. Lucifer is intrigued by her and starts helping her. He ends up continuously doing good things, even as he acts in a self-centered, devil-may-care attitude and carries a grudge against his father (God), who becomes even more nefarious as the first season went on and into the second season (I haven't seen the the 3rd, or know if they continued it). He saves the detective's life, he saves the world, he does all these good things. Even his brother, an angel from heaven played by an African American (a deconstruction of traditional race dynamics), comes down to get Lucifer to go back to Hell so that universal order can be restored. He represents justice, order, and all that is good, and by Victorian standards he is good--no drinking, no sex, a strict sense of what is right. But that gets deconstructed. By the end of the first season his meddling caused something bad to happen (I forget what) and then a sexy female demon that hangs around Lucifer, watching his back, got the brother to drink, and then seduced him into having sex with her. Meanwhile it becomes more clear that Lucifer is not an instigator of evil but simply provides justice for an eternal order, a job he hates. In time, he begins to lose his powers resulting in a deconstruction of the Devil/immortal-man duality, or the deity/human duality and then even becomes susceptible to death (deconstruction of the immortal/mortal). The second season begins with his mother escaping from Hell--the Goddess--and at first she is seen as evil, but she wants to simply bring her family back together, and God begans to seem more evil through her (not only the good/evil deconstruction, but also a deconstruction of God/Goddess and Male/Female). But by the end of the 2nd season, you are still not completely sure of her intentions, and she could very well be a vehicle of a post-inversion, new deconstruction. Anyway---I enjoyed it, and that is how it applies here.

Philosophy and its progress does play out in the real world. Derrida's philosophy took the philosophical world by storm in the 1960's. But it didn't really impact academics until much later--probably the 80's or 90's---I don't know. Now its becoming a pop cultural thing with movies and TV shows like Lucifer and so forth. But more importantly we have seen it play out socially beginning in the 70's with feminism and gay rights. It has been liberating to anything or any group that is marginalized.

But here is the problem----once the marginalized side becomes dominant, then it too is subject to deconstruction. So while deconstruction is initially liberating and gives us new insights, in the end it becomes meaningless, becomes the other side will once again raise to dominance, and so it will continue--a dance of deconstruction. Therefore in the end it becomes a force of nihilism. Many critics have said that it will be the death of philosophy, for as I said in the original post, any position one takes will be subject to deconstruction with its opposite position, and then that opposite will be subject to deconstruction back to the original, and back and forth the dance will go, until it is all meaningless.

This dance of deconstruction plays out around a center void, and as I explained in my piece above, Derrida said that this void is where we try to place that key truth or source of meaning---so important that we capitalize it. It could be God, or Science, or Logos---whatever we define that primary source of meaning to be.

Anyway----that is deconstruction in a nutshell---I hope that helps.

 

Well, if you are French and talk philosophy...

But I did give it to you in a nutshell, and so there are more aspects of it, and then there are the ways he applied this to the literature that is a part of Western thought. But yes---you are right.

Though I was reading your thread on the different truths this morning and came upon this:

and I thought----empty, like the sound of one hand clapping.

Like deconstruction-----which for Western culture, trapped as it is in a materialistic rationalism, and a Cartesian objectivism, rapidly moving into an ever increasing abstract and artificial reality, is that very same empty concept designed to point the way to that truth that can't be known, as it forces a catharsis through nihilism, allowing us to look into that void from which being emanates.

Of course it first took Derrida to point out the void within his own philosophy, and connect it with the Transcendent Signified. Then it takes the concepts I relate in the original post (or at least some kind of dialectic along those lines) to hopefully move the culture in the direction of that truth that can't be known.

 

In a way yes---but as you read further you will see there is more to it then just that.

 

Can't you simply your ideas, Jesus. You're not. You're just

a wolf

that thinks it's a bunny that

thinks it's a lion

turning how how

 

From our 3 dimensional perspective a box in 2 dimensions would appear as a single face. But consider what a 2 dimensional life form would see----something that takes up an entire area of space within its universe. They would only see an infinitely thin cross section, but it would take up that whole point of the universe. They could go over it, or under it, but never around it. But then if we take that box and move it to the side of that 2-dimensional universe, it would completely disappear.

What you are saying would be correct if the box was still partially within our 3 dimensions (which is an interesting concept to play with as a thought-experiment----it would have to be moving at the speed of light (for the portion that is 4th dimensional) and standing still (the portion that is 3 dimensional)---and if the 4th dimensional side stayed as a 3 dimensional object it would have to move at the speed of light without undergoing the infinite increase of mass (as one approaches the speed of light) and conversion to pure energy, and it would have to move in all the same vectors in time as our present moment so that the 3 dimensional side continues to stay present. I will have to play around with that idea...)

Because Archephenomenalism states that only the present exists, or any science or philosophy that states that for that matter, then 3 dimensional objects do this in a sense anyway---according to Archephenomenalism this is the reality of the wave-particle duality. Our 3 dimensional universe appears from the 4th dimension in the almost infinitely small moment of Now. Our view of the 4th dimension is the infinitely small point of Now, just as that view of the 3 dimensional box is the infinitely small cross section of the box in a 2 dimensional world.

Remember, we perceive the 4th dimension as time---so what this amounts to is taking that box and placing it in yesterday, or tomorrow, or 5 minutes ago, or 3 days from now... Mathematically we can calculate that it is still there, and even describe as you do here what it would look like. But in actuality---excluding the potential paradox I described 2 paragraphs up---taking the box and placing it in the 4th dimension means that in the one infinitely small moment of Now where we placed it, we would see it as a 3 dimensional object---but everywhere else it would be somewhere in time.

 

I have found that when I write philosophy, I have to write in the language of philosophy first, then I can go back and simplify it. I don't mean this in a better than thou manner or to be a show off. but when I am writing philosophy, I am also reading philosophy, and going over notes made while reading philosophy, building on the precedent of other philosophers, and agreeing, modifying, or disagreeing with what other philosophers have said. I used to try to start out by writing as simplistically as I could, but then I am talking about this philosopher or that philosopher, or building on their point, and the next thing you know terminology is required, concepts have to be broken down and simplified, and then I end up with a mess that is somewhere in between-------so I finally realized that I have to write the complex philosophy first, and then I can write it in a simplified form (I hope).

I am actually working on 30 minute podcasts which I hope will present Archephenomenalism in a very simplified format. But when I have some time this weekend I will summarize the original post.

 

***Hi Meagain---we were posting simultaneously---please read my next post which responded to the one you just posted before reading this one---if you haven't already done so...***


I apologize----I missed this, and thought Neonspectraltoast's post was next.


Here you are thinking in terms of Newtonian or Classical Physics. But according to Quantum Mechanics, the wave is superpositioned. Scientists still think of this superpositioned wave as being physical. They also think of it as something we experience, or can measure---but the truth is, whenever we measure or experience a wave we are doing so through the manifestation of a particle.

That is exactly right, when we are talking about physicality, which is why I state that the wave is a nonphysical thing of the 4th dimension. The photon is the carrier particle of the electromagnetic wave. People think that if they are listening to their radio, that electrons go up the transmitter antenna, and electrons go down the receiver's antenna, so radio waves must be electrons somehow. In actuality, it is a photon that strikes the antenna of your receiver, and causes an atom within the antenna to release an electron. Wave-particle duality in Quantum Mechanics tells us that the radio wave is only a photon particle at the points where the probability wave (the radio wave) collapses--in other words on the transmitter antenna when it was transmitted, and on the receiver's antenna when it was received. Otherwise it was a wave, which means that it was superpositioned (Meaning that it is simultaneously in infinite positions in time and space, i.e. everywhere in time and space). Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity also tells us that at the the speed of light, time = 0, and therefore, space = 0. A superpositioned reality is the same as having no position, which is why I say that it is of the 4th dimension----which, by the way, would mathematically appear everywhere and every time, even as it represents 0-time, 0-space.

When it was sent, it had a position as a particle. The same is also true when it was received. But in a quantum world, Newtonian physics is useless when it becomes a wave--except to help us make sense of the world we experience, even if that experience is not true to the actual reality.

Physical things have a position in space-time, therefore your statement would be correct if the wave was physical. There is another requirement--and that is that time must exist as we conceptualize it. But the only point of time we can actually experience is the present. If time does not exist except for the present, then space-time (i.e. physicality) only exists as a continuum within the present moment. This is space-time as a hologram emerging from the 4th dimension. If it is not travelling through the space-time continuum then it must be somewhere else--the 4th dimension.

Einstein labeled time as the 4th dimension--but I argue that 1.)since time moves at the speed of light (Einstein's calculations--time as it relates to the universal constant), a velocity which represents zero space, zero time, 2.) that the wave is superpositioned and therefore has no position in time and space, 3.) that only the present can be demonstrated to have physical existence and positions in space-time, and 4.) that from a 3 dimensional perspective, our infinitely small peek into the 4th dimension (as I described in my previous post to your previous response), as it represents the speed of light, would appear to us as time, even though it only represents the infinitely small moment of Now, then the space-time continuum is really a space-present continuum, and the 4th dimension is in reality a wave-field greater than the 3 physical dimensions and represents Planck's Constant (basically it is the realm of energy).

We think of a wave as moving through space-time like an undulating snake. But if you were to ask a quantum physicist what a quantum wave is, they would answer that it is a wave, but also that it is a field, and that it is neither. The truth is they really do not know what to make of it (and obviously they certainly don't want to call it nonphysical, hence their quagmire), all they do know is that the math is undeniable in its explanation of wave-particle duality, and so they simply stick with that. But in my last response to you, I pointed out how mathematically we can describe an object, such as a box of laundry, that we have placed in the 4th dimension as if it is still visible, even when that object cannot physically be present.

If the wave were moving through space as an undulating snake, it would not be superpositioned, because there would be vacant points of space---those points opposite the peaks and valleys of the wave. But it is superpositioned so that cannot really be the case.

Planck's constant is the universal constant to Quantum Mechanics, just as the speed of light is the universal constant to the Special Theory of Relativity, and the gravitational constant is the universal constant to the General Theory of Relativity. Now here is something interesting----you may be familiar with Newton's Law of Motion: F = ma. Mass (m) can be said to equate to physicality. It relates energy to movement, and in order for there to be movement, something has to move--mass. Planck's equation relates energy to frequency: E = hv. But h is referred to as the quantum of action--it is not a thing as mass is, it is a nonphysical number. But just as F = ma defines action in the physical realm, E = hv describes action in a nonphysical realm----the 4th dimension

This is all fine in a classical or Newtonian sense. But when you add in Quantum Mechanics, you are suddenly dealing with a superpositioned wave. If the superpositioned wave was physical as scientists try to maintain--then the question becomes 'Why can't you receive it sooner?' Because, by definition of 'superposition,' the wave is already at the receiver regardless of space-time and the speed of light. Therefore the wave must be nonphysical if it is superpositioned, and only becomes physical, when and where it can be received based on the quantum information of that wave.

 

We are actually saying the same thing, except that I was using up-down, front-back, as the 2 dimensions, and you are using front-back, and left - right. While the cube would appear as a line, you have to remember that a line (using your two dimensions) would have an up - down measurement, even if very small. Therefore it would have to be an almost infinitely small line that would still take up his whole perceivable universe at the points that it extends through. In your case he could go around it, but not over or below it. If it is moving through his dimensions in an up - down direction, he would not understand it to move through his dimensions---instead it would simply appear and disappear.

Actually I wasn't referring to the tesseract. The tesseract is interesting, and I agree with your comments on it. But the tesseract is based on a mathematical simulation of a multidimensional reality.

We are unable to move from dimension to dimension in the independent realm of time. The implications of the Special Theory of Relativity tell us that in order to do so, we have to break the light speed barrier. We can slow time down by moving faster, but we are always within the three physical dimensions. Initially time was not concieved of as an actual dimension, but just a mathematical explanation. But for most it made sense as an actual dimension, especially today when we now understand there to be multiple dimensions to the universe.

But I don't actually use time as the 4th dimension, except to say that it is how we perceive the 4th dimension. If we use the Special Theory of Relativity to define time as the 4th dimension, then we could use a beam of light moving into your eye. Each photon would represent a moment in time. If you were to perceive each photon individually, you could only perceive them one at a time (which is how it works anyway we just cannot perceive that it is what is really happening). Each subsequent photon is in your future. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY for you to detect them in your present. They are therefore in a dimension we recognize and understand as time. We would have an argument that they are still somewhere in your present, you just can't see them---if they were present---but Quantum Mechanics tells us that they do not even exist as particles but are still as a wave.

The 4th Dimension is actually that of energy---as I will demonstrate---actually demonstrated in the last post.

There is a human experience of time, because mind transcends the physical----but physically there is nothing more than the present---because we transcend the present, the physical, then we experience one physical present after another. But in each physical present there is nothing else---no future, no past, only the present. Therefore the space-time continuum is actually the space-present continuum, as I explained in the previous post.

If you go back and read that response in the context of actual dimensions with a light-speed barrier, rather than in reference to the tesseract, I think it will make more sense.