An analysis of how the combination of memory and intuition comprise the principal constituents of consciousness by incorporation of principles of randomness and quantum entanglement
Circumstances for enquiry
Consciousness is a subject I have never set out to analyse or define. Possibly this is because it is such a nonspecific and general expression of the mind’s operation, that nobody ever seems able to agree as to its description, constituents and workings. Philosophers have been wracking their brains and disputing their different interpretations of the subject, ever since such individuals were presumably recognised as sources of wisdom and intellectual ability. There has been no agreement yet as to how best consciousness should be defined, never mind explained, and now the physicists have also become increasingly involved.
Before I describe my views on the subject, I now give a brief synopsis, of how and why I came to consider the problem. Without any formal academic background in the subject, I start with a short autobiographical account followed then by more specific detail which might serve to qualify my unorthodox approach. I also summarise on page 2 my definition of consciousness as a combination of the way in which memory operates combined with that of the intuitive process. I define intuition as a process which allows very rapid conclusions to be made without first having been able consider all possible alternative answers to a particular problem under consideration, physical or conceptual. The element of intuitive ability is the principal difference between human and artificial intelligence. My explanation also shows how recollection is achieved by both short, and long term, memory processes whereby the former comprise physically stored engrams which serve to trigger longer term memory sequences, or rather series of them in abbreviated form to allow rapid reaction to circumstances as they occur.
I studied law at university, a dull subject albeit necessary retain a stable society, but in order and to restore failing family fortunes, then became a chartered surveyor in London specialising in the development of commercial property. By my late twenties, having never taken my student years at all seriously as a time for intellectual advancement, I was starting to reconsider somewhat. I realised that perhaps other more intriguing interests might be a welcome contrast and relief from the materialistic life style in the world of commerce required to make a comfortable living. Once the exuberance of youth had been dulled by submission to nine to five office disciplines and competitiveness in pursuit of self-advancement, a sense of curiosity inclined me to consider some alternatives.
It occurred to me that questions tackled by philosophy might give me some insight to the problems of existence and the human condition, and probably out of a sense of lack of accomplishment I began to try a few of the better-known names of authority in the subject, and I bought a compendium by Bertrand Russell ‘The History of Western Philosophy’ which I bought and skipped through, as good an introduction as any, or so it seemed to me. It was hard going but I was able to single out a few whose approach seemed preferable to the rest, and from memory these were Spinoza, Leibniz and Schopenhauer of the earlier generations, but I never managed to develop much interest on more contemporary experts. I was also fascinated by the more eccentric lifestyles, such as that of Schopenhauer, or indeed Wittgenstein, not that I could make much of the latter’s content, although it was his other accomplishments that I found so attractive.
I did most of such reading, sitting or strap hanging on the way to work and back on the tube, where there was less chance of being distracted by more pleasurable domestic pass times in shared flat existence with friends in Notting Hill where I lived for a decade from 1970. My problem was that I was not absorbed enough to be able to commit to memory any rationale as to why I preferred Leibniz’s monadology, for instance, to other approaches, and today am unable to recall almost anything of the detail. Such studies were of interest but not motivated by anything other than mild curiosity and slight horror of office politics. However, things must have changed by the time I was newly married and in my early thirties, when in 1977 I managed to let my flat and move into my wife’s flat very cheaply rented from the Church Commissioners in Bayswater, W2. I thought I could write a novel and took two years away from the office to spend time in the wonderful reading room of the British Museum, as it then was, in the attempt to do so.
Rationale for research into Memory
As part of a time transference narrative that I was attempting to write as fiction, I learned to my amazement there was no accepted explanation to describe the operation of memory. I read whatever I could find on mind and memory and came up with a modus operandi of sorts which I called Duplication theory, and which was due in part to experiences in the early 1970s with lysergic acid and from a fascination with the trance state having been involved on stage with a professional hypnotist. My hypothesis was based on the way in which complex structures of firing neurons and synapses registered from an earlier time, would resonate with the structure physically stored as an engram in the present provided that both structures were similar enough to near quantum levels of accuracy. When and if achieved, then after the initial prompting of the engram, the later structure would then continue to duplicate the sequence of motions of the earlier near identical structure, provided the latter was adequately complex and left unperturbed by extraneous other input. This gave an explanation in principle for eidetic memory effectively based on perfect recall under trance, via a system of resonance.
This thesis had some support from a few sources of authority to whom I had written over the next few years (Arthur Koestler, Henry Margenau, and Karl Pribram being the most eminent) but it was not until 1981 when Rupert Sheldrake published his first book on morphic resonance, that I experienced some sense of possible vindication. His conclusions of how “morphogenetic fields of all past systems become present to any subsequent similar systems by a cumulative influence which acts across both space and time” were remarkably similar to my duplication theory. He uses morphic resonance to rationalise unsolved problems in biology where an organicist approach would provide satisfactory answers to problems of morphogenesis, evolution, and the origin of life.
My conclusions were reinforced by his rationale, albeit from a very different approach and gave some explanation in some detail of the way in which this resonance effect acts over time, via principles of physics, amended by an assumption or two. Sheldrake does not attempt an explanation in any detail using physics, but observes there has to be one, and we have been in regular contact and correspondence over the years since then. I also consider a corollary effect, which he does not, of the resonance of similar intervals in time over all space at one moment in the form of the regular oscillations of identical charged particles such as electrons in an alternating current. This is not that dissimilar from David Bohm’s proposals for a non-local version of quantum mechanics, and also some aspects of the Absorber theory of Wheeler and Feynman, into which I shall not delve in this paper.
On the subject of memory, modern technology has the capacity for vast amounts of information to be stored electronically in very small volumes of space, but this does not allow such an electronic storage system to be described as equivalent to human consciousness. Neither can such an electronic system give any sign of how such a store of information can be reviewed and decisions then taken to deal reliably with a situation which human intelligence can rapidly do by comparison with recollections of similar events and circumstances in the past. Well, there are algorithms that will allow some degree of this, but how would any such resulting conclusions be then expressed with necessary force to convince others into some form of certainty or agreement? This seems unlikely, if not impossible for achievement by mere algorithm, to advance our understanding of nature, although if an intuitive state of sudden comprehension as I propose (see later below) was mastered, and could be emulated by systems of artificial intelligence, then such modified algorithms would perhaps become more equivalent and closer to the real thing.
There is one other subject closely connected with consciousness and that is qualia. My limited understanding of the latter is that they are individual sensations, resulting from the consciousness of each individual being different from all others. All humanity will experience colour, pain, music, beauty or whatever, in individual different ways, so that qualia are just aspects of consciousness which will be slightly different according to not only the genetic composition of each, but also depending on their different recollections of such past experiences. It is therefore a very subjective subdivision of consciousness, but I might have missed something here, never having been able to grasp why others seem so absorbed in the subject, and never having seen the great significance of such discussions by so many, other than of course qualia certainly do exist.
Outline of the roles of Memory and Intuition combined as Consciousness
In summary therefore, my position currently is that there are two main elements involved in consciousness, the first being due to the fact every individual will have his own singular memory bank of past experience. This is combined with the other principal component of consciousness, that of intuition, which I regard as the ability to reach conclusions very rapidly without necessarily having to produce a conclusion by a lengthy process of deductive elimination. This is not easy to explain since it will involve incorporating a mechanism whereby the components of the brain act in such a way that reality, or the true state of a particular phenomenon under consideration in nature, is capable of being very precisely duplicated in holographic form by the brain. These holographic images, as first posited by Karl Pribram, are created from interference patterns created by the firings and motions of connections between synapses, neurons, dendrites and any other elements of the brain’s cognitive abilities. How, and why these images are created to be near perfect replicas of reality, and not necessarily in just external representation, depends on a conjectured application of quantum entanglement. This is explained outline further below and in more detail in a number of papers on the operation of various aspects of Duplication theory posted on ResearchGate and academia.edu, which resulted from my earlier assumptions and thesis on the operation of memory.
In 1979 I was initially able to develop a possible sketchy rationale in principle for both intuition and long-term memory which depended in part on the conclusion that absolute randomness of the firing of the brain’s cognitive components would be impossible, and was therefore classifiable as a singularity state. I had earlier made an observation that whenever close approaches were made to any singularity state, such as for example, light speed, or absolute zero of temperature, there would result changes in the way that nature acts which had not been previously been recognised or understood as such. Therefore, before I go into more detail on memory, the next few paragraphs explain a pivotal quality of singularity states that has not yet been recognised as far as I am aware. This is that the advent of a new such state indicates that some existing laws of physics as currently understood, will need to be amended.
The Role of Singularity States
Very many advances in scientific knowledge have been initiated by the discovery of singularity states, the significance and consequences of which do not seem yet to have been sufficiently appreciated, perhaps due to their being phenomena relatively recently recognised. Briefly, major breakthroughs are often heralded when the existence of a condition, impossible to achieve, is not only recognised, but that also close approaches to that condition are found to be physically possible. Examples of this are light speed, quantum dimensions, absolute zero of temperature, perfect conductivity, perfect randomness, and this also applies to concepts such as infinity.
When it has been established that a certain state is singular and cannot be achieved, then it is most likely, assuming that technology has developed adequately to allow close approaches to be made thereto, then the latter will start to be accompanied by effects that will require laws of nature as previously understood, to be seriously amended and revised. This has been a process repeated many times in the history of the development of scientific knowledge. At the time in the late 1970s when I was considering the significance of singularity states, it occurred to me that due to the uncertainty principle, it would have to be impossible for one structure in space to be exactly identical to another, either at the same time, or at any other time. They could be very similar but never perfect duplicates of each other, especially on the microscale, and certainly not at anywhere approaching near atomic or even quantum levels, where everything would on that scale, be in perpetual motion in motion relative to its neighbours. In which case here was another singularity state in that two similar structures could never be duplicated, although close approaches could be made.
I am not sure how Heisenberg concluded his Uncertainty Principle. I assume it was initially realised via mathematical calculation, but my own interpretation of his insight was that particles at microscopic levels will be in some degree of motion, relative to their own scale of dimension. So, by the time the light from a tiny particle has reached an observer on the macroscale, which would be comparable to astronomical scales in relative terms, the particle under observation will have moved on somewhat. Thus, the observer can never be certain of its original location a fraction of a moment later, and thus identical and/or exactly similar structures are a non-achievable singularity state. If so, then it would, ex hypothesi, be reasonable for some unanticipated results to be experienced when close approaches at near quantum levels were achieved. This presented to me the beginnings of an equivalent explanation as to why perfect impenetrability of matter was impossible, although when close approaches were made as in two molecules of hydrogen being compressed together, they would eventually fuse into a single molecule of helium.
Possible Resonance over Time as a singularity effect
The result would be an emission of EM radiation, otherwise known as binding energy, which effect was well established from the fusion process of hydrogen in nuclear explosive devices. But this was also consistent with my observation of what always happens when close approaches are made to singularity states, and an alternative rationale for fusion resulting in binding energy emission. Here was a direct parallel as to why similar structures could never be perfect duplicates, although that would not prevent very close approaches being made. In which case, since evaporation on the macro scale of part of such component masses into radiation energy has never been experienced, perhaps there was some other hypothetical and singular resonance effect operating here that might result from near perfect duplicates over distance and/or time. I concluded that this might present a not impossible modus operandi for an earlier thought structure in the brain to be repeated at a later time, given a sufficient instigation for the later thought structure to very closely resemble the earlier structure. This would be a resonance effect over time, and would present a rationale for perfect reproduction of at least one single frame of recollection. But if so, perhaps this duplication effect would have a potential to transform some of the later duplicate’s mass into radiation energy, being an equivalent effect to the fusion process?
It had also occurred to me earlier that perfect randomness might also be a singularity state and if so, with near approaches to near perfect randomness of synapse and neuron firings in the brain, there should result an unanticipated side effect, and that this might be connected with holographic images registered in the past of certain circumstances which were similar to those being experienced currently, to precipitate via a resonance effect, a repetition or duplication of those earlier holographic images. I was also aware that under hypnotic trance, the mind could be regressed so that previous experiences could be evoked and recalled in great detail, ad it had occurred to me that the trance state was not more than and ability of the brains neurons and synapses involved in cognition, to be induced to fire absolutely randomly.
At that time, I had no rationale to justify such a resonance effect, but it was a possible basis for conjecture into the way in which specific individual and relevant memory frames (holographic structures) from earlier times could be evoked, to be duplicated in the present as instances of recollection. These would then continue to resonate and reproduce the original sequence of events experienced as perfect recall, also known as eidetic memory, which is known to exist in various different guises. Such a scenario would require a device to instigate sequences of eidetic or long-term memory, and this is the role the ‘engram’ or trigger cells which would have recorded and been possibly physically stored as single instigation frames of similar earlier circumstances. The most similar of these to circumstances observed in the present would then stimulate a sequence of these earlier experiences. This ensuing flow of sequential recollection would not be stored physically in the brain and would effectively be long term memory.
But in order for it to be converted down to more useful and more rapidly recalled working memory, I made the following assumptions. The resulting flow of holographic images projected from the brain, which I describe as holocepts, stimulated by engrams, are able to be curtailed and run through in a rapid series of later single shorter holoceptual interludes as a rapid synopsis of the original full-length similar experience. For this to take place these engrams or single memory frames which trigger these long term holoceptual flows, will have been stored physically within the brain as molecular structures, or cells. These will probably be similar to DNA whose molecular structure is highly efficient at storage of information. At risk of repetition, it being crucial, these engrams would serve to instigate or trigger abbreviated sequences of the original full-length episode of a similar earlier event, and/or other events. This encapsulates the difference between short-term working memory and long-term eidetic memory, the latter being an external quantum process of resonance through time. However, the subject of the difference between eidetic and working memory is discussed in more detail in another section below.
Holographic Images
In the absence of such a fusion radiation effect in memory’s action, the potential to release energy from such an equivalent effect might manifest itself in another way. For long term memory there is a need to generate just sufficient potential energy to move the component particles of the later holoceptual structure, already in motion, to move to duplicate the continuing motions of the earlier holographic structure. This might be rationalised to be in line with the Aharanov-Bohm effect which couples EM potential with the complex phase of a charged particle’s wavefunction illustrated by interference experiments. Furthermore, it would also be in accord with the fundamental minimum energy principle, with result being the production of a continuing sequence of near perfect duplication by the later structure of the original earlier version if left undisturbed by other external perturbing factors. If the neurons and synapses of the later brain were otherwise firing neutrally in random motion with no other thought structure in place, then there would be no reason for this duplicated later sequence of similar actions to cease. So here would be an explanation of how perfect recall in trance, or possibly eidetic memory might operate, given an adequate source of instigation for the later brain: a sort of resonance effect across time from one holocept to another identical version in the present.
This scenario was also reinforced by my reading of Pribram’s theory of holographic images being projected from the interference patterns created by the highly structured firings of the brain’s neurons and synapses, and with whom I had corresponded and later met at a conference in the late 1970s. Pribram posits that the brain projects highly detailed holograms in three dimensions, and I have assumed that such holocepts are principally based on visual images of the external world received via the retinas into the brain.
Forty years ago, I knew nothing about entanglement, but as explained below, when I first started to grasp Bell’s Inequality theorem in 2016, I learned that randomness was an essential element in quantum entanglement. The connection here to justify a possible basis for the workings of intuition, is a characteristic that has not yet been achieved or even contemplated as far as I am aware, by artificial electronic or any other means, although there would seem to be a not impossible rationale for its existence. There is also the further major problem in how and by what process these holographic images are registered by the individual concerned. The answer relies on a conjecture that gives a remarkably simple answer, but which is not yet easy to describe in convincing detail and requires further analysis and discussion. However, the central tenet of Duplication theory demonstrates how two separate complex structures in space, similar to very precise levels of indecipherability, will develop an increasing potential to interact or resonate over time. The rationale involved is very similar to, and indeed was originally inspired by Schrodinger’s book ‘What is Life’ and his intuitive observations as follows:
‘It appears that there are two different ‘mechanisms’ by which orderly events can be produced: the ‘statistical mechanism’ that which produces ‘order from disorder’, and the new one producing. ‘order from order.’……. We must be prepared to find a new physical law prevailing in it. Or, are we to term it a new nonphysical law? No, I do not think that. For the new principle that is involved is a genuinely physical one: it is nothing more than the principle of quantum theory over again…….’
Duplication theory is effectively the embodiment of Schrodinger’s ‘order from order’ principle, which for him was an explanation in principle of the way in which life originated and was propagated. It is similar in result to, albeit simpler by far than, the mathematical approach described by Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle which shows how the brain operates in a self-organisational manner, to counter the dispersive action of entropy. Such a principle is necessary if we are to achieve an explanation for the way in which rational thought and memory bring about order, an essential component of consciousness. My intention is now to show how the two separate but linked mechanisms of memory and intuition, both complex, are combined together to produce an answer to this problem of consciousness where there has been little agreed in resolution between the many different theories put up over the years. There is the possible difficulty in the minds of some that intuition is not a subject which is properly defined and might not even exist, but I shall attempt to dispel that illusion, after I have further outlined duplication theory’s description of memory’s operation in principle.
Intuition
I was first introduced to the subject in the late 1960s by the books on the mind’s operation by the perceptive and very lucid Arthur Koestler. He gave many examples of how major breakthroughs in scientific understanding had been suddenly precipitated after months of failure to resolve a conceptual problem in a moment of sudden understanding, usually when the progenitor was completely relaxed and thinking of nothing much in particular. Then suddenly at a stroke, the answer becomes apparent as an eureka moment. This is recorded to have happened in the cases of various ground-breaking insights by such eminent scientists as Friedrich Kekule in the shape of the benzene ring, Henry Poincare, Karl Fredrich Gauss and Werner Heisenberg, in their respective fields.
In such circumstances the cognitive part of a researcher’s mind has been wrestling with the problem in a logical manner, attempting to fit almost endless variables of an infinite jig saw into an acceptable order without result, after many hours of mental effort. But when an individual’s mind is thinking in a relaxed manner about nothing much in particular, firing neutrally, and perhaps momentarily considers this major problem, then there is suddenly an increased potential for the actual structure of the problem, as it occurs in the real world, to resonate and form a duplicate image in the mind of the researcher. The latter will know it is correct from the pleasure at once sensed. This was my rationale I had speculatively developed in outline in 1979, as mentioned above when I first realised that perfect randomness was an unachievable singularity state
A synopsis of my conclusions at that time runs as follows. If very close approaches were made to perfect randomness in a system, the rules of nature as they are currently familiar, would prove to be inadequate and would have to be amended, as was the case with relativity and light speed. A convenient conjecture suggested itself to me as follows. If a particular brain was in semi or near trance state, thinking about not much, very relaxed with mind in neutral, then that individual’s component neurons and synapses would be firing randomly, lacking any structure, being without any particular intent. If then suddenly his/her mind chanced upon the troublesome problem that for months of fruitless consideration had been infuriatingly incapable of resolution, then perhaps the sudden realisation of the correct solution, almost out of nowhere, would seem to have to be connected with the effects that might be anticipated from a close approach to a new singularity state.
Perhaps an approach to near perfect randomness would enable such a mind to adopt the least course of action and duplicate external reality as an image projected from his brain holographically, which would also defer to the minimum energy principle. These early conjectures also assumed that the more complex the structure in question and the more random the state of the relevant individual’s mind, the more likely would such a result transpire. This assumption was then bound in with a few other assumptions on short-term working memory made over the next few years to form an outline explanation of the subject and how it tied in with intuitive ability. Obviously, it was all very provisional and although at the time it seemed to me not impossible, I did not expect to be taken very seriously.
However, I was pleased in 1979 to have reached a modus operandi for intuition for which there was not only a lack of any explanation of which I was aware, but was also a subject that seemed pretty much ignored as part of the mind’s operation. My conclusions did seem to present such an almost effortless way to achieve answers to otherwise impossibly complex problems, almost suspiciously so. Having said that, even though I knew very little about Vedic and Eastern mystic beliefs, I realised that many of these well-established religious structures did seem to have a common theme in having to empty the mind via techniques of contemplation. This and other similar disciplines were apparently taught and exercised in order to gain insight and deep understanding of the universe, via an almost trance state, about which I had always wondered.
Support and Reinforcement
In 1981 Rupert Sheldrake published his first book ‘A New Science of Life’ in which he described that “The morphogenetic fields of all past systems become present to any subsequent similar system: the structures of past systems affect subsequent similar systems by a cumulative effect which acts across both time and space.” He qualifies his thesis by stating that this morphic resonance, for the sake of simplicity, takes place only from the past, and then uses his thesis to explain a large number of problems otherwise unanswered by current beliefs in the biological sciences, such as memory and the inheritance of form and inheritance. I corresponded with and met Rupert in early 1982, after which I started to take my own proposals more seriously, and have been regularly in contact with him ever since.
There is another side to Duplication theory which shows how there is a direct corollary effect of transmitting similar intervals of space (information) though time. This indicates how similar intervals in time, similar to near singular levels of accuracy, will tend to resonate through all space at one moment in time. The best example of which is an alternating current in a conducting material which transmits action in the form of photons as EM radiation. The higher the frequency of such oscillations, the stronger will the transmission effect be over distance. However, this other rationale would only complicate the issue at hand, that of memory, so I will not go into that here, other than to say it has similarities with David Bohm’s theories, together with the absorber theory of Feynman and Wheeler, as a non-local effect.
In 1979 Ilya Prigogine was awarded a Nobel for his dissipative structure theory that demonstrated how as a systems’s state of disorder was accelerated, it would become self-ordering. This reinforces the effect of close approaches to the singularity state of prefect randomness will produce a highly structured result.
As briefly mentioned above, further reinforcement for that part of my proposals which support the role of intuition in the mind’s operation came as a surprise to me in 2016 when I first read quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger’s book ‘The Dance of the Photons’, which is written for the benefit of non-technical readership who know little about quantum theory, and which I found very heavy going, since the level of mathematical comprehension required is more than I can retain. However, the conclusions that I was able to make from Zeilinger’s expert conclusions and his explanation of quantum entanglement as one of the leading lights in the field, were a revelation for me. In 2004 he teleported a photon from one side of the Danube river 600 meters to the other side instantly, not limited by light speed via the process now known as quantum entanglement. In 2012 he carried out a similar experiment to the same effect over 143 kilometers between the Canary Islands. These experiments were inspired by a paper written by John Bell in 1964 which became known as Bell’s inequality theorem and which shows that instant connections over distance were possible mathematically.
Of all these striking advances in quantum physics, the one that seemed relevant to my conclusions was that the randomness is a fundamental feature of the quantum world, and in experimental work the transmitting source of photons has to be able to fire them in a way as close as possible to perfect random motion. Furthermore, their ensuing detection has also to be carried out in a completely random manner. I had always considered that the transmission of images over time had to be a quantum effect but had no supporting evidence until I read about the work of Zeilinger and others, and although there is as yet no palpable proof that such an effect is quantum based, perfect recall in regression under trance does exist, and this indicates that memory requires some non-internal source of storage. Furthermore, in 2013 experiments were carried out by Eli Megedish and team to demonstrate that entanglement could be carried out across time, as well as instantly across space, which information was very encouraging for my proposals.
None of the foregoing is proof of Duplication theory but the role of randomness I first conjectured forty years ago with the accompanying rationale which seems to be more than fortunate coincidence in that it coincides almost seamlessly with Bell’s theorem and the accompanying explanations of elements of quantum entanglement. Furthermore, if there exists any other proposed explanation in some detail for a new principle to explain the operation of memory and intuition, then I would be fascinated to be so informed.
Summary
The intuitive process in problem solving (and thought also in general terms) can be described as follows. Having absorbed and committed to memory the relevant factors of a particular problem, these are materialised as holocepts and combined, or parts superimposed over the top of each other in holoceptual palimpsests. The more variable components there are, the more combinations and permutations there are, so that the mind might have to shuffle through an impossibly large number in order to get a chance of hitting on anything like the right sort of combination. This could take an inordinate length of time without some external guiding force or tendency. But we have this guiding tendency from duplication theory. If circumstances can be made sufficiently random, with no external perturbations to disturb the randomicity of the neurons’ firings, then the structures of the holocepts created from the interference patterns, will tend to form in the way that emulates most accurately reality, in the form of structures in the external world. In other words, the mind in trance will tend to form holoceptual structures that duplicate those in nature, when given an initial prompting by an enduring interest in a particular subject, and also driven by a strong degree of curiosity and dissatisfaction with existing explanations.
It also seems not unreasonable to postulate that the brain has some form of mechanism for detection of this resonance, whereby it becomes aware that one particular combination of possibilities gives a valid answer for problem resolution. This would apply also for memory as well as problem solving, in that as two structures approach perfect duplication, they will tend to interact so that a minuscule percentage of the rest mass of the later duplicate will demonstrate an increasing potential to convert to radiation as described above, even though such conversions never transpire. Instead, the holoceptual replica in the present will tend to continue the duplicate the motions of the earlier in time as recollection. I am also suggesting that the nervous system of the individual concerned detects this potential for energy release as a glow of wellbeing: the thrill of aesthetic pleasure, or just the pleasure of accomplishment when the correct answer to a complex intellectual problem has been achieved through such an equivalent process of resonance with external reality. I fear I cannot otherwise better explain the pleasure such a sense of achievement brings and certainly exists.
Self-awareness and consciousness
Duplication theory explains how the mind produces these holocepts but there is the further major problem of how these holographic images are viewed or registered. Amongst other descriptions, this was called by Eddington the problem of the homunculus: the identity of the little man inside the brain which involves yet another little man within the latter’s head and so on in an infinite recess. The explanation above of intuition does away with the need for the homunculus as an internal viewer, or any other viewer for that matter. When an increasingly accurate state of the structure and events in the external world becomes duplicated as a holocept in the mind and/or understanding of the beholder, there is an increasing potential for the material particles of the involved resonating structure to convert to radiation energy. If so, then this leads to a postulate that a dominant purpose of the intelligent individual, or indeed any animal organism, is to recognise and detect this resonance, which represents a lower energy level and an increased level of stability, and therefore more desirable to nature.
This would bring about a tendency towards a more ordered state of affairs, a negative entropic tendency, especially so since the concept of order depends on pattern and duplication. The physical body and brain of an intelligent organism exists to detect pattern, duplication and order, and indeed to exert itself on the external world to bring about increase in the degree of order. This activity is in itself the operation of self-consciousness. There is no need for the homunculus as a viewing mechanism. Increasing self-consciousness is nothing more than an enhanced ability to duplicate in holocept form the structure of the external universe. The latter process is also another way of increasing understanding generally.
When an answer to a problem is sought, and then found, its resolution produces not only intellectual pleasure, but also a physical sense of wellbeing and achievement, depending on the extent and complexity of the problem, or so I have found. All human beings strive to increase their pleasure or enjoyment in life. Thus, it could be argued that if the resolution of the truth represents the highest form of pleasure, then the purpose of human intelligence is to detect more and more truth in the universe. In this respect ‘Truth’ means, in general terms, the accurate mental portrayal, in holocept form, of the structure of the external universe. In the same way the concept of understanding is no more than a duplicate holoceptual image formed in the mind of the mechanisms of a certain part of the external world that is under consideration. This is accompanied by a sense of pleasure or achievement (potential to release energy) thereby created in that particular organic and intelligent system.
Nicholas Greaves
18/01/21
ngg@champerty.net
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