Are You an MP3 Player?
Learning to play the iQuad Coin language game at an advanced level
This blog is for folks who have moderate to advanced knowledge of UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge. It introduces a way to see the core lines of the iQuad Coin intersecting with each other and connected to an everyday, real world event. The intersecting lines are the: 1) psyche; 2) physics; 3) philosophy; and 4) mathematics. This is the “MP3” reference in the title. A player in this context is someone who can play the iQuad Coin language game at a high level of competence. Finally, this blog shows how these lines further connect to the iQuad origin point, which embeds the network of claims in the everyday world of human persons, linked to a specific time and place in 1997.
UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, diagnoses the Enlightenment Gap (EG) as the core descriptive metaphysical problem that arose in the wake of modern empirical natural science. The EG refers to our collective failure to develop a coherent philosophical system that places mind in relation to matter, and scientific knowledge in relationship to social and subjective knowledge. Its consequences are ubiquitous, and everywhere you can see philosophers, physicists, psychologists, mathematicians and other scholars struggling with making sense of it.
Erwin Schrödinger’s Struggles with the Enlightenment Gap
A recent blog by Gerald Baron summarizing the philosophy of the famed physicist Erwin Schrödinger allows us to see a brilliant mind wrestling with the EG. Schrödinger’s solution is a philosophical position known as dual aspect monism, the idea that reality consists of an underlying singular foundation that manifests in the two aspects of mind and matter.
In his blog, Baron described how Schrödinger struggled with the problem, which he framed in terms of the problem between the self and the world. This paradox, as framed by Schrödinger, can be stated as: We only know of the world through our mental constructions, and thus, in many ways, the world exists within us. And yet, we exist in the world and our selves die while the world continues to exist.
Baron reviewed Schrödinger’s analysis of how to understand a tree, which Schrödinger used as an example of objects in the world relative to our perceptions of objects in our conscious experience, and the puzzle of putting them together into a complete account. An extended quote from Baron’s blog enables us to delineate the how Schrödinger wrestled with the paradox. [Note the italics are Schrödinger’s words, as quoted by Baron in the blog].
The tree “does not enter the observer, but only certain effects proceeding from it.” The events occurring in our nervous system would not be described as the tree. But we do not perceive these events any more than we perceive the tree.
“This one tree, then, is the one datum we have: it is at one and the same time the tree of physics and the tree of psychology. As we observed at an earlier point, the same elements go to make up both the Self and the external world, and in various complex forms are sometimes described as constituents of the external world — things — and sometimes as constituents of the Self — sensations, perceptions.”
This is one of several comments [from Schrödinger’s book My View of the World] that point strongly in the direction of dual aspect monism, the idea that reality consists of an underlying foundation that manifests in the two aspects of mind and matter. [Schrödinger] also commented that this does away with the argument that feeling and consciousness come from the movement of atoms — the physicalist paradigm.
But, what if we are standing in front of the tree with several others? Is their datum the same as mine? Are they perceiving what I am perceiving? He says the one complex of elements — the tree — is [all emphases his]:
“simultaneously a constituent of several consciousnesses, that it belongs simultaneously to several selves, that it is held in common. Not, note, that it is a common object of perception, but that it is a common constituent of perception.”
This leads to a rather remarkable conclusion that supports Schrödinger’s inclination toward the philosophy of Vedanta. Following on the philosophy of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarias, and Wilhelm Schuppe, he argues that this common experience of consciousness shows that this content is actually one and the same. While traced to events occurring in each individual Self, the content is one. He quotes Mach:
“The same elements [Mach’s emphasis] cohere at a number of points of combination, which are selves.”
He also quotes Schuppe:
“What I am most anxious to emphasize continually is that, while a good deal of the content of consciousness is in this sense subjective, not all of it is; rather, a part of the contents of the consciousness of various selves is not merely qualitatively similar but is and must be their common content, being numerically one and the same, being in the strict sense common to them.”
From Dual Aspect Monism to iQuad Aspect Monism
What, exactly, is Schrödinger getting at here? What is meant by the “common constituent of perception”? At some level, he is claiming that there is a nondual oneness between the seaming duality of our perceptions of the tree and the tree in the physical world. And he is looking for that unity in the common content of consciousness, which is partly but not totally subjective.
To understand this from a UTOK vantage point, we need to make a shift from Schrödinger’s dual aspect monism to UTOK’s iQuad Aspect Monism. In both formulations, monism refers to the fact that we live in a single world, and it can be contrasted with a substance dualist approach to ontology.
The aspect refers to the epistemological frame on and within that world. Dual aspect monism emphasizes splitting our epistemologies into objective-matter versus subjective-mind dichotomy and seeing how they can be aligned. This is where UTOK differs. UTOK does not limit itself to the subjective-mental versus objective-physical split. Instead, it expands the epistemological frame. Indeed, UTOK’s three philosophical pillars of the Tree of Knowledge System, iQuad Coin, and UTOK Garden means that UTOK starts with the objective science, subjective psyche, and intersubjective collective systems of justification as three fundamentally different epistemologies. UTOK extends the objective/Tree, subjective/Coin, and intersubjective/Garden further with a transjective relational view. This is the epistemological stance that Henriques and Vervaeke emphasize in their Cognitive Science Show series Transcendent Naturalism.
Here is a description of iQuad Aspect Monism from the iQuad blog series:
UTOK identifies different frames of reference that aspectualize different features of the monistic reality. In particular, it suggests, at the very least: 1) an objective natural scientific behavioral frame, and 2) a subjective personal experiential lens, which are placed in relation by the Tree and Coin. In addition, we would need to add 3) an intersubjective, socially constructionist lens of cultural systems of justification, as well as a 4) transjective, participatory complex dynamic relational frame across time.
What is opening up here is an insight to solve the riddle that confronted Schrödinger. That is, we need to move beyond dividing the world up into “the tree of psychology” (i.e., the subjective-mental) and the “tree of physics” (i.e., the objective-material). As he notes, they are both, in some ways, the same tree, in that they both reside in human consciousness. But they but also are separate from it, in that not everything reduces to human subjectivity. But how do we put them together and resolve the self versus world paradox?
The first move we need to make is to expand the subjective-mental versus objective-material to include the intersubjective vector of shared systems of justification. Consider that the tree of physics in Schrödinger’s formulation can be referenced as the knowledge system we have of the physical tree. This knowledge has been built by the common constituents of human perception that have then been enhanced and organized by the epistemology of science. In other words, we have developed an intersubjective system of understanding that evolved further into an objective system we call scientific knowledge. Notice how, when it is framed this way, our knowledge of the “tree of physics” is still grounded in the network of human selves knowing about the world. [Note, if you are scratching your head a bit here, it is because there is potentially another tree here, that is the “ontic” tree, which is the tree that exists completely independently of all human thought; however, we need to bracket this for now, because this was not clearly specified in the formulation.]
This is a good start. iQuad aspect monism extends it further. It moves from the intersubjective into the transjective, which refers to the dynamic relations between epistemological frames across time. This loosens the “dual” of subject-mind versus object-matter claim even further and allows us to see different frames as different systems of justification that should be interrelated.
If we expand our view, we can see that we need to consider more trees than Schrödinger’s analysis might suggest. We need a philosophy that can coherently frame what we might call “the ontic tree” (i.e., trees in a world without human selves), the “tree of physics” (i.e., the tree described by the sciences of physics and chemistry), the “tree of biology” (i.e., the world of organisms and neurobiology and living processes), the “tree of human psychology” (i.e., the neurocognitively perceived tree by humans in general), and the “tree of anthropology and sociology” (i.e., the intersubjectively, socially constructed tree described by propositional networks and shared by cultural groups of persons), the “tree of philosophy” (i.e., the tree through the lens of our understanding of ontology and epistemology), and the “tree of the psyche” (i.e., how each unique particular individual subjectively perceives the tree).
UTOK’s iQuad Coin, situated in relationship to the Tree of Knowledge System, allows us to see all of these different aspects, as well as how they are all connected into a coherent whole.
Marry the Coin to the Tree
The core mantra that defines UTOK is “Marry the Coin to the Tree in the Garden under God.” Our focus here is on the first part of the mantra, marrying the Coin to the Tree. We can reframe Schrödinger’s reference of the “tree of psychology” and the “tree of physics,” respectively, with the tree as framed by the iQuad Coin (i.e., experienced by the individual psyche) and the tree as framed by the ToK System (i.e., as described by modern empirical natural science, as it should be organized into a coherent naturalistic onto-epistemology).
The iQuad Coin starts with the unique, particular individual in the world, having a moment of ontic-epistemic awareness. The general domain of subjective conscious experience is what UTOK calls the domain of Mind2. The self-recursively aware aspect of the human mind that can narrate that experience is the domain of Mind3a. So, the iQuad Coin starts with the specific self that can experience the I-me relation of being in the world (i.e., the specific individual saying “here I am, experiencing this tree”).
The iQuad Coin then invites the individual to play a language game. Specifically, it invites individuals to label their experiences in the domain of Mind2 into Mind3a loops as the human identity functional matrix. This is the process of being aware of one’s identity and of making identifications in and with the world. This move enables us to create a bridge between the unique particular experience and a common language for that experience (i.e., a functional identity matrix making identifications). From here, the language game moves to bridge with the Tree of Knowledge System.
The ToK System divides the natural world up into five different orders of existence, which are as follows: 1) the Energy-Information Implicate order; 2) the Matter-Object plane; 3) the Life-Organism plane; 4) the Mind-Animal Plane; and 5) the Culture-Person plane. From here, we can then set up the standard way of marrying the Coin to the Tree. This to see one’s self as an Energy-Information, Matter-Object, Living-Organism, Mind-Animal, and Culture-Person observing behavioral wave.
The beauty of this frame is that it allows one to see one’s self clearly, both from the inside out view (i.e., the iQuad Coin perspective, which is the self from the vantage point of the psyche) and the outside in view (i.e., the ToK System perspective, which is the self from the vantage point of a coherent natural scientific ontology).
With this move, we can really start to see a network of understanding coming together that helps us make sense of Schrödinger’s tree of physics and tree of psychology. The picture gets even clearer when we make the more “advanced” move, which we label here as the “MP3” move. The move refers to the process of rotating the Coin.
Rotating the iQuad Coin to align the Knower with the Known
As described here, the iQuad Coin is a nexus point that pulls together many strands into one. At its most basic, the 90-degree rotation of the iQuad Coin results in the shift from the H, which stands for Human, into the I which stands for Identity.
This embodied move then extends into symbolizing the lensing functions of the iQuad Coin. The 14 lenses were outlined in this four-part blog series. Marcia Gralha (who is an MP3 Player) organized the lensing functions in the following diagram, which now allows us to extend the rotation of the Coin to represent the knowledge of these 14 facets of how the Coin frames the self in relation to the world.
The MP3 move enables us to see another meaning of the rotation. Specifically, it can be thought of as an intersecting point of the subjective psychic experience of being with physics, philosophy, and mathematics.
We start with the psyche, framed as the unique subject’s conscious experience of being in the world. We can frame moments of conscious intentionality as particular instances of “ontic-epistemic awareness.” So, look at the iQuad Coin and have that as a moment of ontic-epistemic awareness. The beauty of subjective knowing is that it is purely empirical in the original sense of the world. The downfall of subjective knowing is that it is potentially solipsistic (meaning that it is trapped within itself) and cannot differentiate in anyway between the subjective appearance of reality and reality as it is mapped by other epistemological frames.
Philosophy, mathematics, and modern empirical natural science, grounded in physics, provide us ways to transcend the psyche. We can think of philosophy as a refined intersubjective system of justification that divides the world up into the ontically real and epistemically known/knowable. At the very least, philosophy tells us the difference between the ontic and the epistemic, and it orients us to develop a refined analysis of both and place them together in a logical, coherent way. That is, philosophy is about developing a descriptive metaphysical system that gives us an epistemology that describes ontology in a way that includes both first person and third person empirical regularities.
Modern empirical natural science is grounded in an objectivist, third person behavioral perspective. Empirical in the natural science sense has a fundamentally different meaning that is almost antithetical to the meaning in the subjective psyche sense. Of course, natural science grounds out in physics. UTOK frames physics as the science of behaviors in matter and energy across the scales of space and time. Behaviors can be defined as observable patterns of information. And, given the ToK’s descriptive metaphysics, we can collapse the Matter-Object dimension into the Energy Information Implicate Order. Ultimately, this means we can frame physics, the base of the natural sciences, in terms of energy and information.
Mathematics is the study of logical, quantifiable patterns in categories and sets. In number theory, as described in this excellent video series on imaginary numbers, the largest set is the set of complex numbers.
Complex numbers are a combination of real and imaginary numbers, which makes the complex grid. The primary representation of the complex grid is the complex unit circle. The iQuad Coin doubles as a complex unit circle.
An “MP3 player” is a person who can use the iQuad Coin to situate themselves as a unique particular human psyche and align that phenomenological perspective with the refined, intersubjective justification systems we call math, philosophy, and physics.
Seeing the MP3 Lines in the ToK Original Diagram
Does this formulation amount to something real? That is, all this sounds very abstract. Is there a way we can place this in the real world and align it across communities that could form a “common constituent of perception”? I think so.
Recall that Schrödinger used the example of a tree as a stand in for something concrete in the world that we can perceive. It could have been a rock, a river, or a cat. Here, instead of using a tree, I will use a point. We can start with a generic point, say the period at the end of this sentence. If everyone reading this blog where actually in a room and we had this text printed out in a single copy, we could then use the point as the stand for the tree. Now, paralleling Schrödinger, we can think of this point as “the point of physics” and the “point of psychology.” The point of physics refers to the fact that this little dot on the paper is made up of certain atoms and molecules and has a certain mass and temperature and all that. Of course, as idealists like Bernardo Kastrup points out, these physical claims are, well, ideas that people generate.
From here, I want to shift to a different point. This is not a generic point, but a very special point, at least in the UTOK language system, called the iQuad origin point. The iQuad origin point is the nexus point on the original ToK diagram. Here is the original ToK diagram, and the arrow is pointing to the point.
We can now fully engage in the MP3 move in a way that starts to generate MP3 players. We can start with the phenomenological experience of seeing the point. Orient your eyes and experience the intersecting lines on the page and look at the small space encircled by black lines.
This is your psyche connecting with this point. Now, zoom your perception out and follow the lines. Go down the center to see the line of physics, representing the trail of energy information that grounds the point in substance. Then shift to the right to see the line of knowledge construction or philosophy, that allows us to consider epistemic and ontic processes and generate a coherent onto-epistemology. And then there is the mathematics line, whereby complex numbers map the categories and sets of logical patterns.
Now let’s connect this to the every day world. To do so, let’s just note that, about 25 years ago, a person living in the world drew out that diagram. This is the world of commonsense social realism. Some stoned dude drew a picture, such that black lines intersected to form a point in the world. This connects us to the “normal human historical timeline”. By this I mean that we can place that human event that took place at a point and time (i.e., a small apartment in Winooski Vermont in the summer of 1997) into the common sense, lifeworld that we humans navigate in our everyday lives.
Finally, placed in the language of UTOK, that point symbolizes the 5th joint point, this time between worlds that calls on us to make a fundamental shift in our identities and collectively wake up to the potential of Humanity.
What is the bottom line? If you are an MP3 Player, you can see that UTOK gives us a clear, descriptive metaphysical system for objective, subjective, and intersubjective empirical realities that help us bridge, dissolve, and resolve the Enlightenment Gap. And if we are able to get enough players together, we might be able to be good ancestors for Humanity for the back half of the 21st Century.
