Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Readers, to begin, my sincerest apologies for such a break in time between this and the previos blog. The 32nd dimension just has higher degree manifolds (including 64-D manifolds if we take into account configuration space!).
As our first exercize, consider the mind. Plainly, you, the reader, have a mind or else you couldn’t read this far. What is it, though? Can you touch it? Can you smell it? Your mind can sense all sorts of stimuli… but can it sense itself? A large question in both philosophy and cosmology (which should be intertwined anyway) is the idea of matterless minds. That’s right, minds that exist without technically “existing.” The idea may also appeal to theologists, who carefully study the idea of God and his presence among human beings. God, according to some points of view, is the omniscient, omnipotent force that governs all, and sublimes all material nonsense below Him. It is indeed humbling to think that a person has no complete control over his or her life. I shall not state my point of view on God, but I will venture to say that He is a prime example of a matterless mind.
All humans have brains, and therefore have minds. I suppose this is the reverse of a famous quote by Des Cartes, “I think therefore I am.” To the best of what I know, the mind is a form of self-referring energy. It calls itself “I.” “I” has no meaning beyond a person’s self-reference. My brain may be subconsciously calculating all my actions, but my mind continues to loop the calculations inside itself. I would exist with only a brain. But without a mind, I cannot write this sentence (or at least it won’t mean anything to me). Notice how the previous sentence refers to itself. Notice how the previous sentence referred to the sentence before it. Even though these sentences are products of my mind, they have become their own loops as soon as they were typed. They are very simple “selves.”
I dare to use “I” even in non-self-reference. On planet Earth, there are well over six billion Is. Each I is independent of every other I, in that is an I. By its own definition, it makes itself. Such begins a “strange loop” (Douglas R. Hofstadter, GEB). The fact that I refers to itself implies that it exists. Consider the following:
The following sentence is false.
The previous sentence was true.
Now how in the Hell does that make sense? Notice I just referred to the previous set of sentences as “that” implying at the very least it is its own entity. By the fact that it encloses itself and will not allow any further information (if you don’t believe me, go through the two sentences again), it is a self.
Here are some principles on selves:
1. Each self is independent.
2. Each self has its own perception of reality.
3. Each self is eternally self-referring.
Perhaps this leads into what some call “souls,” i.e. what lives on past the body. The brain may die, but the mind has no beginning or end, just like a Mobius Strip (see A x B = -B x A). To conclude, reader, consider how I refer to you as “you,” whilst technically you are an I.
Arthur Hovinc's Port Manteau 