Integrated Cosmos and Humanity.
Vsevolod Smirnoff There are many religious and philosophical conceptions of coexisting material and immaterial universes. However, there is none scientific. The seeming cause is that there is missing an acceptable explanation of their interaction. The present essay is a philosophical attempt to provide that explanation and its consequences. It is impossible to decide whether a hypothetical conception is right or wrong. However, it has to be at least consistent. Anyway, a model is not a copy of the real object.
Contents.-The hypothesis.- (Summary.- Matter and mind.)- Organism and the life.- (The life.- Morphogenesis and biological complex.- Life and evolution.)- Brain and the mind.- (Perception and psychological complex.- Psychological complex and the brain.- Mental self.- Consciousness and attention.- Information.- Death.-)- Three worlds.- (Material world.- World of life.- World of mind.) - Science studies interaction with immaterial world. Summary.- According to the interpreted experience of the reality, cosmos is the universe of material and immaterial entities existing and interacting, by transmission of energy, within the four dimensional space-time. World of the inert material entities is dominion of science. But live being is not an inert organism. World of live entities is considered in what follows. A live being is union of a (material) organism with occult (immaterial) biological complex. That complex, connected to the genome, directs the specific biological process of life, from the conception to the death of the union (of somatic self). Brains of advanced kinds of living beings interact each with a psychological complex, immaterial analogy of material computer, united with the mysterious spiritual Ego [i]That union (mental self) is fully developed only by the humans. It is the mind of individuals. Matter and mind.- We live in the macro-world, world of entities composed each, according to holarchic order[ii], of innumerable quantity of the primary particles of matter. These entities interact by exchange of energy. Energy is the work of a force. So the material entities interact by transmission of the work of a force. In the macro-world are operating two forces: gravitational and electromagnetic. Energy is discriminated according to the changes produced in the entities. With help of our sense organs and scientific devices we do not detect in the space time of cosmos anything that is not material. However our mind, immaterial cause of sensations, perception, intelligence and consciousness, exists. Explanation of it, adopted for the hypothesis, is that immaterial entities do not have the same forces (gravitational and electromagnetic) as the material of macro-world. But arises the question: how can interact material entities with immaterial having no common force? The answer is that matter of organisms of live beings has, apart the forces of matter, also a force of immaterial entities. Possession of that force of mind, occult for the material world, is hereditary. Life comes only from life. The life.- Life was defined above as the union of a material organism with an immaterial biological complex. The general trend of life is towards the diversification by the increase of complexity. Evolution of living organisms occurs by mutations and natural selection. Random mutations, produced in the DNA by some harmful influences, generally are useless if not destructive. Useful changes are sometimes the viable products of a set of coordinated mutations, each one of which alone is useless. They are “accidental”, i.e. due to a group of indiscernible or ignored causes. However, it may be that one of these causes is the “artificial intelligence” of the biological complex, programmed to search the progress in the mentioned direction by the method of trial and error. Morphogenesis and biological complex.- Differentiation of cells of an organism growing from a zygote requires regulation of the production of specific proteins. It has to occur in an exact location within a group of cells, and in a precise stage of development of the organism, essentially identical to that of its parents. Genes of DNA encode information for production of whatever proteins required for the structure and the functioning of the organism. There are also mechanisms for switching those genes on and off. However, there is nothing in the living matter to what could be attributed the general spatial-temporal coordination of the processes of morphogenesis of an organism. In view of the above, it is proposed here that any living organism is associated and interacts with an immaterial analogue of a material computer that will be called biological immaterial processor and memory (IPM) complex. This association is a fundamental characteristic of life, and constitutes the difference between a living and a dead organism, or with an inanimate thing. The memory of biological complexes stores “software” and data for the coordination mentioned above, accomplished by their processor interacting with DNA of the cells. Biological complexes are like computers controlling operation of machine tools giving form to raw material. They are united with respective organism for life and therefore may be called ontogenetic. Life and evolution.-Inert matter never becomes living. Life in whatever form always proceeds from life. However, life is not eternal and exists, because at least once did occur the miracle of conversion of inert matter in live. The hypothesis is that the instrument of that conversion was a biologic IPM complex. Existence of the (material) organism of the future living being required a “fortuitous” sequence of many “fortuitous” chemical processes. [iii] It may be assumed that in the meantime in the mental world was growing the future ILM (immaterial life and mind) complex of the species. That complex consists of three parts: origin of biologic complexes, origin of psychological complexes and origin of consciousness. These parts become active with the progress of the development of the respective species. According to this hypothesis, union of the first material organism with the first mental ILM (immaterial processor and memory) complex and multiplication of the first live organism were commencement of life on earth.It may be assumed that in the meantime in the mental world was growing the future ILM (immaterial life and mind) complex of the species. That complex consists of three parts: origin of biologic complexes, origin of psychological complexes and origin of consciousness. These parts become active with the progress of the development of the respective species. According to this hypothesis, union of the first material organism with the first mental ILM complex and multiplication of the first live organism were commencement of life on earth. The primitive organisms multiplied by fission, so there were no differences between individuals. The biological complex of the origin of life, so far the same for all live individuals, became complex of the first species. Diversification of species meant diversification of that complex. With the sexual reproduction and the consequent differentiation of individuals of the same species, appeared the personal biological complexes, inherited from parents and composed of two parts. One of them is the first part of the ILM complex of species; the other is a selection of other factors from the complexes of fathers. With the further progress of evolution of some species of the animal branch of life begins the development of brains associated with the psychological complexes composed of the second part of the ILM complex and other inherited factors . These animals not only exhibit greater diversity of automatic reactions. Besides appears the instinctive behavior: the innate drive and capacity to perform some vital activity, and sufficient intelligence for selection of the appropriate local conditions and adaptation of the activity to them. The instinctive behavior of animals is rather similar to the human skilled behavior. The difference is that the instinctive behavior is subject to the natural drive and is stereotyped, while the skilled is learned, subject to the will and flexible. Both are combinations of the automatic and the mentally controlled actions, and require training. Processes in the psychological complex and in the brain of an individual are correlated. Therefore, characteristics of these entities remain mutually dependent in course of their evolution. In the nature changes do not occur instantaneously. It can be presumed that the first mental processes were few, simple and uniform. Therefore, psychological complexes of the individuals were all the same collective psychological complex of the species (second part of the ILM complex). With the progress of evolution, the individual complexes became diversified. They consist now of an inherited main component, enriched by a selection of the factors from the psychological complexes of parents and supplemented in the memory by additional contents acquired in the course of life. Therefore, the character and capacities of a person depend both on those of parents and on the influences of life. The last stage of the evolution of life is the union of the human psychological complexes with ego (through the third part of ILM) and further development up to the level reached by the humankind. Animals with sufficiently developed brains do experience pain and pleasure and do have emotions. It may be presumed that they experience them consciously, though their experiences are not apprehended in terms of concepts, and so cannot be communicated in a language like the human [iv] Anyway, that consciousness means some kind of interaction between the psychological complex and “animal ego”. Perception and psychological complex.- Sensory perception is a process initiated by the excitation of sense organs. The produced nervous impulses are transmitted to the brain, where they excite groups of interconnected neurons. Changing patterns of the firing neurons are changing states of the brain. Likewise, sensory images are changing states of the mind. States of the brain are changing organization of its matter. Mind is an entity that is not perceptible to our sense organs or scientific instruments. I.e. it does not exist in the material world. However, it does exist! It does, because we perceive its activity through introspection. The mind experiences sensory images caused by the states of brain, but not directly. An entity receives from the brain and processes information before it will become in the mind a sensory image with its accessories. Indeed, there are images in the material world that, while being observed continuously, are seen as two different alternating images. I.e. the same configuration of neurons can be interpreted differently in an intermediate entity and perceived as, optional images by the mind. This phenomenon looks like one of identification, and it is it. Other phenomenon confirms it. It occurs sometimes that a picture at the first glance looks nothing but a chaos of spots of different colors. However, as soon as is recognized some object in it, the chaos transforms instantaneously into a perfect image. Identification in the process of sensory perception presumably consists of comparison of the input from the brain with the contents of a store of typical imprints, products of many former processes of perception, in the memory of the intermediate entity mentioned above. In case of coincidence of the input with some of the items of that memory, it becomes identified. Intermediate entity is an IPM complex. These complexes interacting with the brain will be referred to in the following as psychological IPM complexes. It is to be mentioned that while the immaterial memory stores mental information, a somatic memory of the central nervous system is a store of the procedures of automatic behavior, instinctive and of learned skills (e.g. waking or absent-minded recitation from the memory). That memory is a system of permanent neuronal circuits, product of more or less long training and, to my knowledge, is located in the cerebellum. Psychological complex and the brain.- If IPM complexes are a kind of immaterial computers, it may be presumed that the development of a process in them is incomparably more rapid than in the brains, like what occurs in the material world. This difference is a necessary condition for the feedback treated in the next paragraph, but it complicates the interaction between a brain and its psychological complex. Processes in the complex proceed probably in steps separated by intervals. State at the end of a step is witnessed by the brain. When the state of the brain becomes corresponding to it, complex makes the next step. So to say high resolution of the mental process becomes reduced in the brain. In the inverse direction, processes of the brain are followed in the complex almost simultaneously with their development.
Activities of the brain and the psychological complex are correlative. Activity of the brain influences processes in the complex, which in turn influence the activity in the brain. That interdependence, acting as feedback, explains qualitative dependence of the activity of psychological complex (even in case of purely mental processes, like thinking) on the anatomical and physiological characteristics and the health of the brain. This assertion is consistent with the common evidence and the neurological experience. Let it be supposed that somebody tries to reason. If the brain is well, states in it induced by the psychological complex will be due reflection of the states in the complex. Those states in the brain, sensed by the complex, will coincide exactly with the states that gave rise to them in the process of reasoning, which will continue undisturbed. On the contrary, in a damaged brain the induced states may become distorted. To them would correspond in the psychological complex distorted states of the process of reasoning. Superposition of the original and the distorted states in the psychological complex would create increasing confusion. That correlativity between the brain and the mind for the orthodox science is identity.. Mental Self.- A person observing material objects or their interactions experiences the corresponding sensory effect, recognizes the meaning and associates it with the name and the concept: It perceives it. It can react emotionally, think over, desire, judge, decide etc. It is conscious and intelligent. These phenomena are not of the material world, and there are no analogies in it for them. Neither are they of the psychological complex, which is mere processor of information, probably in abstract language, like a material computer. Then there must exist the immaterial entity interaction of which with the psychological IPM complex gives rise to the phenomena of conscious intelligence mentioned above.
That entity is the ego. Conjunction of a psychological complex with an ego is the mental self of a person (the conjunction of its organism with a biological complex is its somatic self). Mental self is the “I” of a human being. “I” perceive the external world, “I” feel and command “my” body, “I” am conscious of the processes in “my” mind and "I" am controlling them. Without ego, the human individual would be a live automaton. It can be proposed hypothetically that the role of ego in the mental self in part is converting the unconscious activity of the psychological complex into conscious intelligence of the mental self: information into perception, processing in thinking, presence of contradictory alternatives in hesitation and decision. The other part is guiding the activity of the complex and exerting the will: electing from alternatives and initiating the actions. However, these activities of ego are not continuous, nor all-inclusive. They depend on the state of consciousness and on the object of attention. The above means that the independent unconscious activity of the psychological complex includes, apart the storage and processing of information, reactions through the brain to all stimuli, except the perceived consciously. Processing of the latter and reactions to them are controlled by ego. Ego operates exclusively with what is available in the psychological complex, i.e. with information processed with help of the inherited “software” and character (“data-base”) of the individual, in part inherited too, and in part product of all influences and experiences to which he was exposed in course of his life. This product is multifarious and often contradictory. So is then the behavior of people too. Consciousness and attention.- A healthy person is always in one of the two alternative states: awake (conscious) or asleep (unconscious). Objective criterion for the discrimination of these states is that a person reacts reasonably to the stimuli when awake, but not when asleep. Subjectively a person does exist when it is awake only. Being awake, it perceives what occurs in the external world and, by introspection, in its mind. Besides, there is a sense in the background of being alive. Unless one awakes gradually or with the remembrance of some dream (dreams become conscious experience only while one is remembering them), awakening from a profound sleep is like coming back from absolute nothingness. There are two (related) meanings of the word consciousness. One of them is the considered in the preceding paragraph. Evidently, transition from one of those two states to the other is due to connection or disconnection of the communication between the psychological complex and the ego, because functioning of the complex continues during the unconsciousness (e.g. while dreaming). The other meaning of the name consciousness is the state of ego experiencing qualitatively and apprehending the sensory and non-sensory (from the memory) information in the psychological complex, and reacting to it. Voluntary reactions from the ego (or involuntary, from the complex) are processed in the psychological complex and, when corresponds, transmitted to the brain for action. Interaction of the ego with the psychological complex is limited and specific. Attention is the capacity of ego to select the object of interaction. Attention can be diffused or concentrated. Diffused attention does not interfere with the reception of stimuli that would concentrate the attention on some specific objects. Concentrated attention is less permeable. However not all contents of the psychological complex are accessible for the attention. Inaccessible part is the "unconscious mind" of psychology. Above unconsciousness was attributed to disconnection between the psychological complex and ego. Beginning and end of this disconnection surely are due to stimuli proceeding from the brain according to the state of the organism, which is controlled by it. The act of disconnection is carried out by the complex. Response to the impulse for doing it is not automatic: to a certain level of intensity ego can resist it. To the contrary, reestablishing of the connection is independent of ego, which, disconnected, cannot learn when it can be done. The question arises: what is unconsciousness for an ego? The everyday experience gives the answer: probably nothing! For ego, the sequence of conscious experiences and reactions to them seems to be uninterrupted. Intervals appear only on the scale of astronomic time applied to that sequence. Information.- Perception is a process at the end of which in the consciousness of ego appears information, i.e. some knowledge about the object of perception. Information is obtained through a chain of phenomena. This chain is causative, initiated at the observed object. Its phenomena occur according to natural laws of the corresponding world (material or immaterial). Existence of information is fleeting. It lasts only while it remains in the consciousness of an ego. However, it can be saved represented in the memory and be remembered. It can be recorded on material objects with help of symbols (characters, figures etc.) for the purposes of preservation and communication. Recovery of that information occurs by the perception of its material carrier (e.g. text in a book), or of the imprint in the memory, followed by the apprehension of its message. Thus, information returns to exist, as long as it is again in the consciousness of an ego. Therefore, the
nature of information can be defined as the apprehended meaning of a perceptual experience in the consciousness of an ego. The word information employed loosely may mean also: "latent knowledge accessible for human mind”. Communication (transmission of information) in the material world requires material links. However, in everyday life occurs also transmission between persons of certain kinds of information without that mediation. This phenomenon, called telepathy, is inexplicable in terms of the material world. In the context of the proposed conception of cosmos, it is transmission of information between psychological IPM complexes mediated by entities of immaterial world, like it occurs in the material. Death.- The state of an ontogenetic complex is correlated with the state of the organism with which it is linked. This interaction means life. Death means its termination. The organism disintegrates, and the ontogenetic complex also. Free existence of a useless component of a whole that ceased to exist is improbable. Belief in the immortality of soul (mental self) is predominant within the humankind. Nevertheless, it is controversial. Many people do not believe it. There are missing incontestable objective proofs of it. Mystical visions are no proof: certain drugs produce similar (except may be their contents) phenomena. Experiences of the revived from clinical death are like ordinary dreams. Besides, clinical death is not the definitive. It is consequence of the lack of oxygen in the brain when the hart stops beating. Nevertheless, the brain does not die immediately and simultaneously in its totality. Unless the brain stem is dead, the hart can be restarted. The rest depends on how much damage suffered the brain in the meantime. Possession of the mind of a living person by the mind of a deceased some time ago, and certain cases of communication with the dead could be the required proof, but they are still controvertible. According to the present model, the survival of the mental self is not impossible. Indeed connection with the brain of the psychological complex is nothing but the mutual exchange of information and correlation of their activities. Death of the brain ends that intercourse between entities of distinct universes, but there is no reason to believe that it destroys the mental self, a discrete entity of the immaterial world. The probable is that the subsisting mental self becomes an entity of the universe of free mental selves. So then, it may be supposed that, at least for some time, the mental self continues to exist, free from limitations imposed by its past connection with the brain. Now it is deprived of the sensory input. It does not suffer any more periods of the unconsciousness, due to the physiological phenomena or physical traumas. Its existence now is like being asleep and dreaming, but in a state of consciousness. There is no awakening to the reality of sensory experience. Therefore, dreams are held for the reality itself (it may be the subjective reality of paradise or hell). Conscious dreams should not be confounded with hallucinations. These are a mixture of the sensory input with the non-sensory from the memory, due to transitory malfunction of the brain. It may be that the subsisting mental selves can receive telepathically sensory information from living agents, and so experience the external world around the agent, or that the living can receive from the dead stories about their (dreamed) life. There is also no reason to exclude the possibility of mutual telepathic communication between the surviving mental selves. The information is presented by the mind of receptor to its ego as occurring to persons having the aspect they had in life (corresponding data recovered from the memory). However, these telepathic contacts presumably could not be discriminated by surviving selves from the subjective reality of their dreams. There are three worlds in the space time of cosmos and in the structure of a human entity: of inert matter, of life and of mind. Material world.- .- Objects of the material world are inert matter. Life finds in the material world the appropriate ambient, matter for the organisms and elements for maintaining and development of living beings. World of life.- objects are live organisms, i.e. somatic selves: combinations of inert matter organism with immaterial biologic complex. These complexes do not exist by themselves. Each one of them comes to exist together with an organism, e.g. at conception of an animal, and it disappears at the death of the entity, i.e. at the separation of its components. Organisms of living beings are inert matter. However, they are very different from other objects of the material world. They are very complex and delicate products of the biological processes beside the physical and chemical. With the progress of life, organisms of many species began to possess a new part of them: brain, accompanied by immaterial psychological complex. While biological complex provides programs for the biological processes, the psychological does it for the progressing processes of instinctive behavior. World of mind,- Life is progressing with the progress of the immaterial complexes. Conversion of hominids in humans can be attributed to the establishing of connection and interaction between the psychological.- complexes of individuals and ego, mental entity of consciousness, perception (particularly in form of images), intelligence and will. The change was not abrupt It was a stage in a durable process of advancement of the psychological complex (there are species of animals more or less advanced in that process). The above means that the site of humankind is all three worlds of cosmos. It may appear impossible, but not in the present hypotheses. According to it, substances of inert matter and of immaterial complexes do not have common forces, and in consequence are reciprocally inexistent. Of live organisms only genomes and brains interact with the respective immaterial complexes. And of these complexes only the psychological interacts with egos of the world of mind. A person is combination of two entities: somatic and mental selves. According to the hypothesis, death of a person is separation of biological complex from the organism y consequent perishing of both components of the somatic self. But the mental self, ego with adjoined immaterial world, remains intact intact, as an entity of the “immaterial humanity” in the world of mind, up to the disappearance from it. Evidently, if three worlds humanity will disappear, the “immaterial humanity” will do it also. Above in the present essay and in the essay 3 was considered “life after death” from the different viewpoints. For the hypothesis it is being of the mental selves in the world of mind. Worlds of matter and of life are familiar to us, because we live in ambient of them, But this is not the case with the world of mind, To begin with, a cuestion: is ego an entity different from psychological complex, or is a transformation of it, and what it would mean? There is no information for the answer. Above was said that science ignores the immaterial world because its instruments do not discover anything that is not material. It is true that they cannot do it because hey are made of inert matter. Contact between material and immaterial objects is interaction between them, which requires possession by them of a common force. That condition is satisfied only by the immaterial biological and psychological complexes on one side, and material genomes and brains on the other, as is explained above. The conclusion is that the only possible “instruments” are living beings, particularly human.. And science uses them for biology and psychology,
[i] Dagobert D.Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1966. 1989 – June 2011.
[ii] A whole in one level is a component in the next higher.
[iii] See Christian de Duve, Vital Dust, 1995, Christian Renč de Duve Trust.
[iv] According to paper of Dr. Paul MacLean quoted in Arthur Koestler,
The Ghost in the Machine, Gateway Edition, 1971.