Monday, September 6, 2021

Four Categories of Being

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Abstract:  Everything that exists in the universe at this instant, all matter, energy, fields, life forms, everything we perceive, remember, imagine or do, can be rationally assigned to one of four mutually exclusive, metaphysical classes of extant entities:  These four classes are: a) the physical universe, b) life forms, c) mental activity in the minds of higher order animals and d) beings and actions in an unseen spirit realm.  Each has its own characteristics, and each can only be described and explained with its own particular form of analysis and language framework, viz. physics, biology, psychology and metaphysics or religion, respectively.

 

Introduction:  All roads in philosophy lead back to the mind as their natural starting point.  Rene Descartes published his Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641, not long after Francis Bacon published his Great Instauration in 1620.  The latter precisely described the scientific method in English, while the former clearly and concisely describes in Latin the ultimate nature of one’s mind.  Descartes translates his own phrase, “I think therefore I am”, to a more useful “I am a thinking thing”.

As thinking things, living social animals, we try from birth to make sense of the world and its constant stream of perception.  Instinct guides us to dive right in with the task of fitting in with those who raised us, mimicking them as best we can, eventually learning one or more disciplines in order to make a living.  Reality is confined to the present.  The past no longer exists, except in our records and memories, and the future exists only in our imaginations, e.g., science fiction.

Many moderns living in industrial societies pursue knowledge and a profession in one or more major scientific disciplines.  Note that in the 400 years since Bacon and Descartes dropped their Enlightenment bombshells on the world, these disciplines have grown into multiple, distinct branches of science and inquiry, each with its own language framework used to describe and ultimately explain its chosen phenomena and ideas. 

No longer can a philosopher like Descartes claim to have an expert knowledge of all the intellectual pursuits of their peers.  These lines of modern specialization between the various intellectual pursuits, in particular, physics, biology, psychology and metaphysics or religion are a reflection of the four fundamental categories of being which I describe herein. 

Such an effort at categorization is accurately called an ontology, in this case a metaphysical scheme of four definite categories needed to sensibly separate and describe all possible entities extant under the general category of Being and Nothingness.  All entities in the universe at this instant, observable, remembered or imagined, can be strictly accounted for in this four-part ontology.  Thus, the metaphysical problem of universals is neatly resolved.

 

The first category is the immense universe of physical entities such as energy, matter, fields, quarks, et al plus their physical attributes such as motion and inertia.  As near as physical scientists can determine, the laws of nature within this category apply uniformly, regardless of time, location or inertial frame of reference.  Many of the blessings of modern life clearly stem from our ever-improving understanding of the physical universe. 

The common context for us “thinking things” in this physical aspect of the universe, is Euclidean space (up, down, sideways, etc.), the so-called 3 dimensions, containing entities which are constantly moving in predicable ways, as expressed by our concept of time.  Human understanding of this first category and its entities seems clearer and more definite, less mysterious than the other three.  The experts in this category are physicists, chemists, material scientists, engineers, etc.  They each have their own language framework to use when discussing matters within their respective disciplines.  If you sit in on a Zoom meeting with a conclave of particle physicists discussing the daily news from CERN, most of us could not keep up; we are unfamiliar with the language framework they routinely use.

 

The second category is the more limited universe of life forms.  Obviously, life forms consist of physical materials, carbon, water, etc.  It's called biomass and our planet is blessed with it.  Individual lifeforms have attributes such as heat, momentum, etc., just like other entities in the physical category.  But they are also fundamentally different and display characteristics unlike those found among inorganic entities.  They grow, reproduce and evolve in ways unknown to physicists.  Compare organic chemistry to its inorganic relative and note that Biology uses completely different methods of analysis when studying life forms, and a different linguistic framework.

Part of the mystery of life forms is their origin.  Because modern scientists are confirmed materialists, they cling to the belief that life is unique to planet Earth and somehow life began through an accidental combination of matter and energy.  They imagine a primordial soup of the right ingredients, struck by lightning and coaxed in action. **

However, a close examination of the most primitive single-cell life forms, bacteria powered by heat or light, we note they contain internal structures and processes so complex they defy complete description, let alone explanation.  They are encoded with precise information that suggests an intelligent design and thus an original designer.  This design includes a specialized facility for evolution.  Every generation exhibits diversity, by design.  It’s quite possible that long ago, a sentient being created life as we know it on Earth, perhaps after that same being created the entire universe, even existence itself.  It stands to reason, IMO.

**It’s possible the first life forms came to Earth from an external source (Panspermia), sometime after our planet cooled down and its hydrosphere condensed into standing water. 

 

The third category consist of those entities produced by and contained in the minds of high-order animals.  Mental activity is every bit as real as massive physical bodies moving through the interstellar medium.  The so-called problem of universals is a by-product of materialists refusing to accept Descartes’ dualist claim that there is such a thing, your mind, which has a different kind of “substance” than physical matter, separate from the body which hosts it. 

It seems obvious that computers are an analog of our minds.  Most neuroscientists believe that all mental activity can be directly traced to action by a neuron, which is no doubt true.  That claim implies we are not in control of our activity, no free will, just electro-mechanical responses to stimuli.  Cartesian dualist like myself, maintain there is more to mental activity than a mere collection of neural actions.

Homo sapiens’ recent invention of a worldwide network of connected computers has revealed cyberspace, which exists inside these computers.  Cyberspace is a perfect analog of the separate “substance” Descartes called his mind.  Such is the mystery of mental activity.

Like our minds, cyberspace behaves in ways its builders don’t understand, particularly in the sector called “learning machines”.  It is a perfect analogy to the mind, a model for cognitive science.  Unlike the machines we’ve created, the mind is alive, it is constantly moving, observing, thinking and deciding.  Our ability to make independent decisions is fundamental to free will and inherent in being a living higher-order animal.  Our free will, including our conscience, is the crux of mankind's collective assessment of the nature of our minds, in my opinion.

So where does that leave those of us who are curious about the real-world nature of individual minds?  First, we must recognize the inner workings of an individual's mind are hidden behind privileged access.  Other than our own introspection, first-person reports are all we have for observing the mind, this is what psychologists have to start with in their analysis, along with observed behavior. 

Physics, chemistry and biology are of little help.  Neuroscientists are trying their best to relate behaviors to neural activity and I predict they will succeed in a few years by being able to read an individual’s raw feels like anger, jealousy, deception, etc.  Very useful, but still far from understanding a subject’s stream of consciousness bouncing around, dwelling on memories, making decisions on what to do next.  Only the “thinking thing” knows its own thoughts at this level.  Only psychologists, using their primitive methods and linguistic framework, can help those who cannot help themselves maintain a semblance of mental health.  The rest of us well-adjusted members of society must do our best to maintain a steady course in life.  Sorry, but that’s all we have, it's part of the human condition.

 

The fourth category, the spirit world, is so controversial it can hardly be described without heckling from materialist disbelievers.  An examination of it rightfully starts with the so-called big bang, the beginning of all matter, energy and space itself, in real time 13.8 billion earth years ago.  Physicists believe before the big bang began, its singularity was surrounded by, and likely preceded by, Nothingness, the opposite of Being. 

Most major religions explain this inferred inception of the universe as caused and designed by a sentient being, an immortal Creator.  Religious adherents typically believe the Creator maintains order in the universe and occasionally intervenes in its history.  Even ancient religions, dating back to the Paleolithic era, recognized this spirit world, if not a single creator and caretaker.

Materialists, of course, categorically reject the reality of entities assigned to this fourth category.  According to their scientific, positivist principles, if you can’t experience and measure it directly, on demand, it does not exist, it is pure imagination, in their opinions, its non-existent.  According to Aristotle's logic, they are on fairly firm ground. 

Conversely, religious people, modern and ancient, actually perceive supernatural phenomena such as visions, healing miracles and possession by spirits.  Ancient Shamans preceded Hegel's "Phenomenology of the Sprit" by thousands of years.  These spirits, good and bad, seem to work strictly through human minds.  We can safely assume other higher-order animals are too focused in their minds on the 3Fs, feeding, fighting and fornicating, to take notice of supernatural phenomena.

So which is it?  Is religious belief mere superstition, or are believers on to something that is outside the interest of materialists and beyond the immediate reach of the scientific method.  We can’t know for sure, that’s the nature of the real or imagined entities in this category of being. 

One area of interest to investigators are the accounts of exorcists, people who actively confront demonic spirits which supposedly have invaded the minds of hapless victims.  They report all sorts of supernatural phenomena like cold rooms, levitating bodies, poltergeist-type flying objects, etc. 

One particular exorcist’s account I read supports the idea these demonic powers have limited ability to move the physical world, but they can trick the minds of observers into perceiving paranormal phenomena.  One demon referred to these phenomena as “parlor tricks”.  In one recent exorcist’s account, when the demon took over the possessed person’s consciousness and spoke in a peculiar voice, it distorted her face to look just like the head of a serpent.  Several witnesses reported this marked effect, but when they played back the video tapes taken for liability purposes, the effect was absent.  

In every case reported by Catholic church authorities, the demons were only able to overcome the victim’s natural defenses by being “invited” in.  One’s involvement in communing with the dead, playing with Ouija boards, etc. leave you open to possession.  Some people even seek out the Devil.  Scary.

I for one am a believer in the religious account.  There are just too many credible reports of miracles and interventions by angels and encounters with demons to ignore.  I have personally witnessed phenomena of the angelic type.  For me there is no other rational explanation.  Also, the accumulated knowledge of physics and biology clearly indicates there is far more to the universe than we little humans can understand.  For every new discovery in astrophysics and particle physics, a dozen new questions arise. 

If the religious account is unfounded superstition, it’s a harmless one in most respects.  In the meantime, this fourth category is a convenient place in my ontology of Being, to park such entities as are claimed to exist in the spiritual realm.