Consciousness and Quantized Space

Something for everyone!

Sculpture by Alexander Girard

For just the next few minutes, think of consciousness as an immaterial reality, an abstraction. This notion relies upon the more primary idea that space comes in bits; a quantized space in which tiny grains of space are set within a background that’s neither spacial nor temporal.¹ These same immaterial, non-spacial qualities belong to all truly abstract objects including mathematics, particle properties, the laws of nature, and possibly consciousness. Because we don’t find abstract objects here in space, could abstraction itself provide the non-spacial background for a quantized space, a background in which our consciousness resides? If so, what is the mechanism by which our brain activity in space corresponds to the activity of our mind in the background?

it begins with space . . .

A relatively small amount of our universe consists of material things. These things are made of particles, and particles undergo a kind of existential activity.² Simply put, particles vibrate, and each cycle of vibration is a unique, or “discrete” event. If the non-spacial background is one of awareness, then for each event in space, an idea of that event is inevitably created in the background which envelops it. That is, the activity of every particle leaves an abstract impression of its activity in the abstract background, a “vibrational idea,” if you will, of its measured property values from moment to moment.³ These values are updated by the particle’s activity in each moment of its evolution. Vibrational ideas also exist for coherent objects made of particles such as atoms, molecules, various organisms . . . and your brain.⁴

Abstraction is not a space-time property—it cannot exist in space. For every thing in space, a vibrational idea (vi) of that thing exists between grains of space. A thing evolves in space when its vibrational idea blends with the most likely grains, setting the grains’ abstract values to the discrete values of the vi whereupon the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature. If there’s a “miracle” here, it’s the double nature of the grains; a cosmic emulsion of unmeasured properties (abstraction) with discrete volume.

After objects, grains of potential space-time make up the remaining emptiness of the universe. By potential, it is meant that each grain is itself an abstraction, an idea of particle properties, but these properties are without measured value . . . except for volume.⁵ In this way, you could say the grains are a kind of cosmic emulsion of abstract properties with physical, or discrete volume. In each moment, and by means of Probability, the vibrational idea (vi) of each particle (or coherent object) blends with the potential space-time of the most likely grain where it will next emerge in space. During the blending, the unmeasured property values of the grain are set to the measured property values of the vibrational idea whereupon the grain can no longer maintain its abstract nature and collapses down to the newly-measured properties of the discrete particle. That is, the vi of the particle in the abstract background emerges here in space-time as a material object.⁶ And, like all vibrational ideas, the vi of your brain is updated in each moment by the activity of its material object, your brain.

the awareness of brained creatures . . .

The vibrational idea of every object and thought that ever existed, or ever will exist, always exists in the abstract background. This is because an idea is an abstraction, an immaterial, non-temporal, non-spacial reality completely free of a location in space or time. It may be more convincing, however, to consider abstraction’s non-temporality with the help of Simultaneity, the relativistic effect which shows how events that occur at specific moments, also occur at every moment!⁷ However you wish to think of it, the non-temporal property of the backgroound enables your mind, which begins as the vibrational idea of your brain, to acquire ideas, or meanings whose origin may be well in your past . . . or in your far-distant future.

Your mind, in the abstract background, acquires new ideas by blending with those with which it best fits based upon its experience.⁸ In the simplest cases, your brain is stimulated by some physical event which brings about a change in brain activity. As previously described, the activity updates your brain’s vibrational idea. Your vi then blends with a purely rational idea, or meaning for the stimulation in the abstract background. Probability enables the enriched vi to blend with the most likely grains that will evolve as your brain. The grains collapse and your brain emerges in each moment with an activity reflecting the newly-acquired idea. This activity works its way back into your body where it brings about bodily motions, or feelings, however subtle. These physical feelings further evolve your brain’s activity which, in turn, further updates its vibrational idea. The vi then blends with an irrational idea in the background for the physical feelings. This important secondary blending is the emotion and its purpose is to lend significance to the earlier, rational idea. The combination of rational idea with an emotion (irrational idea) always yields a complete thought, an experience.

what’s doing the blending?

The vi of your brain is, more specifically, the vibrational idea of your microtubule network, or MTN.⁴ It’s the smallest structure capable of bringing about an avalanche of brain activity yet it’s the largest structure whose vibrational idea of its many measured property values will easily blend with other ideas or grains of potential space-time. Because the vi of the microtubule network is continually updated by the network’s activity, it exists in the form of its measured property values; values which represent the many sequential sets of constituent protein conformations (“brain activity”) which occur during any particular thought. Likewise, when the MTN is stimulated by a phenomenon of either a physical or mental nature, it’s the enriched vibrational idea of the MTN’s activity that blends with meanings in the background, meanings for the phenomenon which already exist in the form of the MTN activity patterns of those creatures who firstly thought them.⁹ It’s an abstract process of “best resonance” between MTN values of similar measurement.

The interaction of an abstract mind with a physical brain is integral to your mental life. The vibrational idea of the brain (MTN) and its object (the MTN) are shown above in the onset of self-awareness. Every idea is an awareness, and the vibrational idea of your MTN was previously aware of only the present tense, “is” (each moment with no memory of a previous moment). It achieved the present-perfect tense, “I am” (I have been and continue to be), through the inevitable awareness of its own update process. This elevated your vibrational idea to the status of a mind; the self-aware, abstract entity known as you. A newly-emergent mind continues its initial development in this manner by noticing its own evolution through time and resonating with additional tenses of the verb “to be.”

Self-awareness, for example, was brought about through this process when the vibrational idea of your MTN noticed-its-self-noticing the world around you as it was updated by your brain’s activity. Your updated vi blended with some previously-established rational idea (meaning) of self-awareness and this meaning was expressed in the (above described) evolution of your brain whose activity worked its way back into your body, bringing about bodily motions, or feelings. These motions altered the activity of your MTN which further updated its vibrational idea. The enriched vi then blended with an emotion, the irrational meaning of “I am.” The blending of the rational meaning with an emotion brought about your first complete thought. With that thought, the vibrational idea of your MTN became your mind.

Your mind works through the blending of resonant abstractions and physical feelings, none of which would be possible without a background-dependent quantized space. You can find a more detailed description of this idea here.

Notes

1. This is a background-dependent space, as opposed to the background-independent sort in which the quantized bits make up the entirety of nature.
2. Electrons, photons, quarks, and other particles are identified by their measurable properties which undergo states of change, or motion, as they “evolve,” or exist through time.
3. The bold type distinguishes the vibrational idea (vi) of an object from other kinds of ideas like thoughts and memories. A vibrational idea consists of a particle’s measured property values in each moment of its evolution.
4. The vibrational idea of your brain is, more accurately, a vi of your brain’s microtubule network (MTN), a wispy, filamentary structure (aka; the “cytoskeleton”) within each neuron that “reaches out” (axons and dendrites) to connect with other neurons (via synapses), thereby forming a network. The brain’s function as manager of your body means that the vibrational idea of your MTN is, essentially, a vi of your entire physical body. Regarding coherent objects; according to this idea, entangled particles are a single coherent object which evolve (with opposite spin) by means of a singular vibrational idea such that vast s/t separation is unimportant, and superluminal “communication” irrelevant.
5. Discrete volume is what puts the space in “space.” Grains also have a discrete relative position to each other.
6. This is, essentially, the “Observer Effect” and it’s how objects, including your brain, evolve in each moment. According to this idea, the effect’s double-slit experiment demonstrates a blending of abstractions: your mind’s expectation of the particle’s location updates the particle’s Probability. The enriched vibrational idea of the particle then blends with the most likely grain, setting the grain’s unmeasured values to the measured values of the particle’s vi resulting in its collapse, or space-time emergence as a discrete particle.
7. Although Simultaneity pertains to space-time and not to abstraction, it still shows (through their correlative brain activity) that ideas exist as much in all moments as they do within our familiar flow of present moments.
8. Experience is the number of ideas which your mind has acquired, while wisdom might be a measure of their increasing complexity.
9. Because meanings exist in the form of measured property values of MTN activity patterns, the MTN is the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC).