Reality and Perception

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Introduction

Caves,Bubbles,

andChambers

TheChamberMetaphor

ProblemSolving

With TheChamberMetaphor

Intra-RealityDescriptions

Determinants andNon-Determinants

MentalModels

and OtherMinds

Denial

Truth,Fact, and

ThePhysical

World

Inter-RealityDescriptions

The Relativityof Reality

TheTransience of

Reality

TheHierarchy of

Reality

The InfiniteRegressProblem

The Nature ofThe Problem

Is The TheoryConsistent?

Conclusion MoralRelativism

Final

Remarks onThe

DescriptiveApproach

Reality and Perception

ABSTRACT: The approach taken in this paper is not toargue for or against a particular theory about what's real,but to show how any theory which has as its central tenetthat reality is dependent on experience changes thedefinition of "reality" to such an extent that it becomespossible for two contending theories about what's real notto conflict. This proposition is made with respect, not toMM-Theory in particular, but to a whole class of theoriescalled dependent models of reality or subjectivist theories . A metaphorical model akin to Plato's CaveAllegory is presented to help the reader conceptualize howdependent models portray a reality consisting of severalsubjective realities. A set of descriptive tools is then

provided for how one goes about describing the contents of a given reality. The first tool provided helps one describehow something can exist in a particular state or acquireparticular properties without a percipient to know orperceive those states or properties, such as the position of the moon on the opposite side of the planet. Other suchtools cover mental models, other people's minds,semi-conscious states such as denial, and the differencebetween visualization and conceptualization. A second setof descriptive tools is presented which are to be used indescribing the relation between realities. The designanalogy, which compares perceptions of reality with adesign for reality, is offered as a means of understandinghow these tools work. The first such tool is to neverdescribe reality as consisting of more than one instance of itself. The second tool is to always specify which reality aproposition is true for, and it is shown that no propositionthat fails to do this makes sense. The third tool is to alwaysdescribe moments when one realizes one's beliefs arewrong as having made a reality transition. The fourth andfinal rule is to always describe one's own reality as thehighest. With these tools, the subjectivist can articulatehis/her theory in such a way that no pseudo-paradoxesarise. What is called the infinite regress problem is then

M-Theory - Reality and Perception http://www.mm-theory.com/reality/reality.htm

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addressed. This is the problem of positing a subjectivisttheory as reality even though such a theory explains itself as having created that reality in virtue of being believed.The solution involves the understanding of what it meansfor a subjectivist theory to be right given that it adopts asystem-of-experiences model of consciousness. Namely, atheory's correctness, under this model, is grounded in itsown internal logic. The solution also involves thedistinction between a theory's being right and its positingof the things it is about beyond the mind that believes in thetheory. The infinite regress problem continues to plague thelatter, but as such, it makes no difference to the correctnessof the theory. The paper concludes with a look at ways toavoid a radical moral relativism as well as the use towhich the tools outlined above can be put to debatesconcerning all walks of problems from metaphysical andreligious ones to political and practical ones.

Introduction

Meaning

It is assumed that the reader has read the Basic Theory and the Advanced Theory of Mind and Matter.If this is correct, then the reader understands how deeply into the essential notion of realityMM-Theory is entrenched. Let us begin this paper by pointing out how much of an understatement thisactually is. This is no mere theory about what reality consists of. Almost all philosophies or religionstake positions on what reality consists of - which is to say that they aim to propose what is in reality.For instance, a theist and an atheist might squabble over the existence of the almighty God. The theisttakes the position that God is real, and therefore exists in reality. The atheist, on the other hand,believes that God does not exist, and therefore does not exist in reality. MM-Theory, however, takesa position on what reality is . It is constituted in such a way that it redefines the word "reality" itself. It

says that reality is ultimately meaning and that meaning is not the sort of thing that exists in reality,like an object, but is the basis for reality. This twist redefines reality in such a way that it takes anentirely different approach to issues about what's true and false, what's correct and incorrect, what'sreal and what is not. It doesn't take sides on philosophical or religious debates about Truth, at leastnot in the traditional way. In regards to the dispute over the existence of God, for example,MM-Theory would say that it depends on whose reality we take into consideration. In the theist'sreality, God quite naturally exists. In the atheist's, He obviously doesn't.

We can talk about reality in this way - that is, as there being "a" reality for one person and "another"reality for a different person - because of precisely how MM-Theory redefines "reality". Crudelyspeaking, it redefines it as a "multiplicity" - that is, it redefines reality as capable of taking on amultitude of forms, each form constituted by a different set of real entities (and not just as a functionof time, but even in a single instant). This idea will become more clear as we proceed through thispaper. A couple important caveats we will address very soon are that, 1) even though we might getaway with calling reality a "multiplicity", this is not meant to be interpreted as there being manyrealities coexisting at the same time, and 2) even though we might get away with talking about "a"reality, this is not meant to be interpreted as though reality were an object or thing. It is meant to beinterpreted, however, as a reconciliation to the plethora of debates over what's in reality. The theistand atheist mentioned above, for example, cannot reconcile each other's views in this way because of their understanding of the definition of "reality". They, like almost every other person on this planet,understand it to be a domain of sorts of which there can only be one - that is, they view reality asbeing the One, Absolute, and True realm of existence. In this case, there can only be one set of entitiesthat exists in this realm. So if the theist is right, and there is an all powerful, all knowing God, then theatheist, in virtue of arguing over the same realm of existence, cannot be right in supposing that Goddoesn't exist. And if the atheist is right, and there is no God, the theist, by the same token, cannot be


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right. The view that there is only one absolute reality follows directly from the idea that realitysustains itself independently from perception and experience. So long as this view is shared by anumber of people, they will be in agreement about what reality is and will then proceed to debatewhat is in it. As the reader knows, however, MM-Theory takes the opposite approach, proposing thatperception and experience create reality. This obviously calls for a re-thinking of the very definitionof reality - dispensing with the absolute or independent definition and adopting one of dependence onperception and experience. By this definition, the theist's view is the basis upon which God existswhile the atheist's view is the basis upon which God does not exist.

Of course, putting it that way leads to a myriad of questions - or worse, paradoxes! For instance,when we say that the theist's view is the basis upon which God exists and the atheist's view is thebasis upon which He doesn't, it sounds as if we're saying that God exists and doesn't exist at the sametime. How can this be? I will admit, the view espoused in this paper is of such a radically differentsort that it will take a lot of getting used to in order to resolve these kinds of paradoxes. For example,the reason why the above notion sounds paradoxical is because we unconsciously assume the picturebeing painted is of God existing and not existing in the same realm of existence . We really do have touse a different model to make sense out of this - one in which we imagine two distinct realities. In onereality, God exists, and in the other, He does not. We do this with all the necessary precautions, of course - namely, without taking the coexistence of many realities too literally. How is it meant to betaken if not literally? Well, that is the whole point of this paper. There are many other pseudo-paradoxes that emerge from this perplexing view of reality, and this paper will address as many aswe can think of. For example, if our beliefs determine what is real, then what do we say about thosemoments when we are shown to be wrong? Also, how are we to think of the existence of otherpeople's mind? We have no way of perceiving or experiencing the minds of anyone other thanourselves, and so it stands to question how other people's minds can even exist unless independentlyof our perceptions and experiences. What should be kept in mind throughout is that the great majorityof pseudo-paradoxes only appear to be true paradoxes because we are so accustomed to thinking of reality as absolute, independent of perception and experience, and as one and only one. This view isso deeply engrained in us that we often use it unconsciously - and this can result in a lot of unnecessary confusion in the territory that MM-Theory covers.

Definition: Independent vs. Dependent Models of Reality

1) Independent Models of Reality: Theories aboutreality as having an existence independent fromperception, consciousness, or experience.

2) Dependent Models of Reality: Theories aboutreality as having an existence that depends onperception, consciousness, or experience.

Essence of Realness

Projection

One thing to note - because dependent models should never conflict with the dependent status of reality as they purport it, they will ultimately have to come to terms with why we perceive the worldas possessing its own independent ontology. In other words, dependent models need to address thequestion: what accounts for the virtual independence of the things we perceive if they ultimatelydepend on perception? MM-Theory, for instance, would say that this is the manifestation of theessence of realness - that is, the essence of realness is the essence of independent existence itself.But then we run into an issue - if the essence of realness endows our experiences with a sense of independent existence, then that which we experience must actually be independent of perception (if not, then the property of independence that they appear to possess has failed to project , and so ourtheory is flawed in that regard). Our solution to this puzzle is to appeal to the independence of experiences themselves vis-à-vis the self-sustaining power of meaning . That is to say, experiencesthemselves really do have an independent existence, as meaning needs no reductive account in orderto ground its own existence. We know this from the principle of Meaning as a Self-Sustaining Basis .The independence we perceive in that which is experienced is really the true independence of the


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Meaning

Meaning as a

Self-Sustaining

Basis

experience itself. The phenomenon of projection reassures us that the experience and that which isexperienced are one and the same, and so the independence of the experience via meaning is notindependence from perception, as an independent model would have it, but independence period(independence from prior experience is another matter). This is the particular solution thatMM-Theory brings to bear on this question. Other dependent models might also find it useful, but itdepends on the structure of the theory underlying the model in question. Independent models, on theother hand, require separate accounts for each phenomenon - namely, the phenomenon experiencedand the phenomenon of experience itself.

George Berkeley

MM-Theory is the basis for just one dependent model of reality - there could be any number of othertheories. The idealism of George Berkeley comes to mind as a case in point. Examples of anindependent model of reality are the views espoused by objectivists and materialists , as well as all of the major western religions. They depict reality as having its own independent existence that wouldgo unchanged should all perception, consciousness, and experience cease to be (although theists mightobject to this in the case of God's consciousness disappearing). As we said, the latter class of modelsrarely encounters paradoxes of the sort we will be dealing with in this paper due to how accustomedwe are to them (instead, they encounter mind/body paradoxes). Dependent models, however, areunfortunately all too rife with what appear to be paradoxes, and so it is up to us, in that we hold sucha position, to reveal how these paradoxes are only virtual. That is, we need to articulate ourdependent model in such a way that MM-Theory doesn't come off as fraught with paradoxes. We willdo this by answering a set of questions that make just such potential paradoxes evident. These

questions will be considered the most troublesome ones for our theory, and so if we address themdirectly with enough intellectual scruples, we can confidently reassure ourselves that MM-Theory isrigorously coherent.

The major questions we will address are as follows:

How can a belief be true and not true at the same time? We gave acrude answer to this already, but it does need elaboration.

How can certain things exist when we don't know their states orproperties? For example, I don't know how many stars there are in the

Milky Way, yet I believe there is a definite number. But how can therebe a definite number when I have no way of perceiving or knowing it?And what if we only know something probabilistically, like the rollingof a dice? How is the outcome of rolling it determined if we don'tperceive or know the factors that go towards determining it?

How can we ever be wrong? It's one thing to declare others wrongbecause we don't agree with them, but what about cases in which wecome to realize the mistakes in our own beliefs? To confess our ownmistakes is to declare our own beliefs wrong and having always beenwrong. How, then, could they have ever determined reality?

Why doesn't reality always accommodate our beliefs and perceptions?What if I believed I could walk on water? Why, then, would I surelydrown with every attempt I make? If my beliefs determine reality, thenI should be able to walk on water. Why doesn't reality turn out thisway?

What do we say about the existence of other people's minds in ourreality? As we pointed out above, we can't have other people'sperceptions and experiences - we can only have our own. So, then, do


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their perceptions and experiences exist or not?

If there are many realities, why not just think of the whole set of realities as the reality? In MM-Theory, we call it "Reality" and allother personal realities we call "subjective realities". There is a point tocapitalizing the "R" in "Reality". But, then, if we call the entire set of subjective realities "Reality", how is it not a subjective reality itself? It

is just another theory after all, another human perspective of whatreality is. How could it rise above that status and become the reality?

This is not an exhaustive list, nor is the entirety of this paper devoted solely to answering thesequestions. Nevertheless, we will consider these the most pressing questions that our new perspectiveof reality brings forward, and in answering them, we propose that, for the most part, all majorpseudo-paradoxes will be resolved.

What will be central in our approach to answering these questions is that we will refrain fromdisputing the contents of reality - that is, we will not argue about what things are real and what aren't.Instead, we will work with a new perspective on the things we perceive or experience as real. Forexample, if one perceived or believed in X, we will not concern ourselves with whether or not X isreal or true, but we will offer a new perspective on what must be said about reality should X be realor true. Obviously, the simplest thing we must say is that reality consists of X. In other words, ourapproach hinges on the acceptance of what is considered to be real, true, existent, actual, "out there",etc., on the basis of its being perceived or experienced as such. Its realness or truth (or whateverother term comes out of this lingual domain) is sanctioned, and from there we aim to uncovered whatthe nature of reality must be, given this sanction. Note that we are not sanctioning any one person'sperceptions or experiences over another's, but any perceptions or experiences in virtue of their beinghad period. What would we necessarily have to understand about the nature of reality if allperceptions and experiences were of real things? We've already considered one answer to thisquestion - namely, that reality must be a multiplicity - and we will draw other conclusions like thisusing the same method.

As an analogy to help make this more clear, wemight compare the Ptolemaic and Copernican

models of the solar system. In either model,someone here on Earth looking up at the sky on aclear night would see exactly the same thing - ablanket of stars that slowly moves from east towest. In the Ptolemaic model, it is the starsthemselves that are considered to move, whereas inthe Copernican model, it is the Earth that rotates.The observations of the stars, however, remain thesame in both cases. This is analogous to theperceptions and experiences under consideration. In

either model - the single reality or multiple realitymodel - our perceptions and experiences of realitywill be exactly the same (save the modelsthemselves, of course, which constitute a cognitiveperception of reality). We do not question whetheror not one is having them, or whether they feel anydifferent from one model to another. What isdifferent is the perspective we take on how theseperceptions and experiences relate to, and morespecifically, determine reality. In a similar way, the


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Ptolemaic and Copernican models are differentperspectives on how observations of the stars relateor determine what's actually going on in our solar system. In other words, nothing changes vis-à-visone's perceptions, beliefs, and understandings of what reality consists of.

Retrograde

Motion

Of course, the Copernican model has certain advantages over the Ptolemaic one. For one thing, theCopernican model offers a much more elegant explanation for the motion of the stars. With thePtolemaic model, one had to explain the bizarre retrograde motion of some stars - that is, thetendency for some stars to double back for a few months every year and then resume their course fromeast to west. The Ptolemaic model couldn't explain this very well whereas the Copernican modelexplains it nicely (see link for explanation ). But there is a subtle difference between the theorybehind the model and the mere descriptive elements of the model. The theory behind the Copernicanmodel is that the Sun exerts a powerful gravitational force over the tangentially moving Earth and thiskeeps the Earth in orbit around it. This is similar to the theory behind our dependent model - namelyMM-Theory. With a good enough theory backing it up, one model will offer a lot more explanatorypower than another. Nevertheless, the descriptive elements inherent in one model may remainuntouched by the explanatory power of another. For example, even though we accept the Copernicanmodel as having more explanatory power, there is nothing wrong with describing the motion of thestars as moving across the sky while the Earth stays still. That is to say, so long as we're clear thatthis is what it looks like, then there is truth in what we say - of course it looks like the stars aremoving across the sky! But it also looks like we're rotating. Without an explanation for what's actuallygoing on, there is no standard by which to choose one description over another, and so either onegoes.

We can attribute the same kind of descriptive power to either model of reality. We could take themodel of an independent reality and say that it looks like there is a difference between reality and ourperceptions of it, recounting the numerous times we've been deceived by our senses or believedthings which turned out to be false. By the same token, we could take the model of a dependent realityand say that it looks like reality changes every time our perceptions change, recounting those exactsame occasions of deceived senses and false beliefs. Of course, we wouldn't emphasize theirdeceptive or false status - a status they acquire only after reality has changed - but their seeming to betrue or feeling so real at the time. If we wanted to take this description one step further and say, notonly that reality looks to be changing whenever our perceptions change, but that, in fact, it is changing,then we would need the help of an explanation to justify this statement. We might try this with thePtolemaic model, attempting to explain retrograde motion. No such successful attempts have beenmade in recorded history, leading to the abandonment of the model. The same cannot be said,however, about our dependent model - not when we have MM-Theory under our belts.

Of course, there will be no rehashing of MM-Theory - that was done in other papers - but with it inthe background, we can go ahead with building an elaborate description of reality consistent with adependent model. Falling back on our explanation, it won't take much, after that, to step away fromsaying reality looks like it changes when perceptions change, and step towards saying reality doeschange when perceptions change.

Einstein's Theory

of Relativity

Having It Both

Ways

Another good analogy is Einstein's Theory of Relativity . One need not understand this theory in fullin order to see how the analogy works. It will suffice if one can understand the following scenario.When you walk down the street, you naturally assume it is you moving and not the sidewalk.However, if you take a relativistic perspective on this scenario, you could imagine that it is really the

sidewalk moving backwards beneath you (along with the rest of the world). Is it you or the sidewalk that is moving? Of course, the answer is that it depends on which one you take to be fixed. This is anexcellent analogy for how we're going to think about reality. Like the motion of physical objects, weare going to talk about reality using relativistic language. This analogy also shows how, even thoughwe have a choice between two perspectives - either you or the sidewalk is moving - and either of these is a perfectly valid perspective, we can't have it both ways. That is, it can't be both you and thesidewalk moving at the same time (but see aside ). Similarly, we can't have more than one realityat a time, but we have several options, each of which are equally valid (this will become more clearlater). Einstein's Theory of Relativity is such a useful analogy that it will show up more than once inthis paper, and for more than one purpose - that is, it is an excellent analogy for a whole number of things concerning dependent models.


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As there is a difference between a model's descriptive and explanatory power, we wil l be alternatingbetween describing a dependent model and explaining it. For the most part, this paper focuses ondescribing such a model, but at various points we will show how MM-Theory ties into thedescriptions outlined. We will be sure to be explicit when making such transitions. Furthermore, inbeing descriptive, there should be a fair degree of dissociation from any explanation - that is, as adescription of the way things seem to be, one should expect that such descriptions are open to anynumber of explanations. MM-Theory is just one out of an indefinite number of potential explanations.This means that the descriptions outlined in this paper could work for an entire class of explanations -an entire class of theories. Therefore, unless we need to make exclusive reference to MM-Theory, wewill refer to "subjectivist theories" in general, and to those who believe in such theories as"subjectivists". A subjectivist theory is any theory that explains the relation between reality andperception or experience as dependent upon each other - that is, its central tenet should be that realityis created or sustained by one's perceptions and experiences of it. Contrasting with subjectivisttheories are objectivist theories, subscribed to by, obviously, objectivists. Objectivist theories arethose that adopt an independent model, thereby taking the perspective that reality has an absolute andindependent existence from perception. Any subjectivist theory, if it aims to be understood coherently,should adopt a descriptive language much like the dependent model delineated in this paper - in fact,we might even say that this model should be adopted as the model for all subjectivist theories, butsuch a bold statement is surely debatable.

Definition: Subjectivist vs. Objectivist Theories

Subjectivist Theories: A class of theoriescharacterized by at least one of their major tenetsespousing a dependent model of reality.

Objectivist Theories: A class of theoriescharacterized by at least one of their major tenetsespousing, or at least agreeing with, anindependent model of reality.

In addition to this introduction and the conclusion at the end, this paper is divided into four majorsections. The first major section introduces an elaborate visual metaphor that the reader can use as aguide in understanding how to think about the multiplicity of reality. The second major section dealswith the internal structure of any reality as dependent models would have them. The third majorsection deals with the external structure, or the interrelations between realities, as dependent modelswould have them, and only dependent models can have them. The fourth major section addresseswhat I have called the "infinite regress problem", which dependent models appear to suffer from. Wewill then recap everything we have touched on in the conclusion, including a revisit to the questionsposed above. We will also say something about moral relativism as that will certainly be a concernfor some.

Perception

Projection

As you read through this paper, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, we will be using theword " perception " in the same way as we have been throughout this website. Recall our definition:"the form experiences take, namely realness, upon being projected." What's different about thisdefinition from that used in the ordinary English dialect is that, ordinarily, perception refers to howwe interpret the world we sense - that is, it applies to vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Butbecause MM-Theory lumps these together with all other experiences, and says of them that they allproject their content onto what appears to be an independently existing world, we generalize thedefinition of "perception" to all experiences. What this has to do with the current paper is just areminder that we will be using the word "perception" in just this sense - so we might talk aboutperceiving the Tooth Fairy to exist when we really mean believing in the Tooth Fairy. In this way, wecan talk about one's perceptions of reality for anything we might want to consider to exist.


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Reality

The

Objectification

Process

Second, there is ample risk of taking the thing-likeness of several concepts herein too literally. Forexample, imagining the universe populated by a number of "sub-realities", as we might call them,certainly makes for a model depicting many coexisting realities. As the contents of the ultimateReality , these "sub-realities" are consequently made out to seem like objects or things in the ultimateReality. If the reader has read the paper The Inconceivability of Consciousness , then he/she wouldknow that the objectification process is responsible for this. The objectification process takesabstract concepts such as "time", "melody", "charity", "accomplishments", "order", and so on, andmolds them into a form suitable for contemplation. Our minds so happen to be built such that we needto think of abstract concepts as "things", like physical objects, in order to contemplate them, and theobjectification process does this for us. Of course, most of the time, we aren't fooled by the characterof "thingness" in these concepts. We usually acknowledge that they are not things, but we arenevertheless capable of carrying on with our contemplations unhindered by their objectified aspects.We would do well to keep up this practice when it comes to dependent models.

Projection

Third, we should keep in mind that the only way we experience reality qua reality - that is, asopposed to experiencing the things in it (even collectively) - is by bringing to mind the concept of reality - and it is quite an abstract concept to say the least. In other words, without the concept of reality, there would be no reality - not for us in any case. Does this pose as a paradox? Does it makesense to suppose there can be all manner of real things but no reality? Well, we ought to be careful inhow we phrase this question. Without the concept of reality, there would surely be no reality as itsown entity - that is, apart from the myriad things within it. Recall our discussion on the self from theAdvanced Theory and of what we said about the manner in which concepts project . Concepts projectas essences we said, as definitions, as what things are. We also said that essences can be given realexistence by being infused into something that already exists. This is what we do when we look around at our surroundings and recognize them as reality. In that sense, the concept "reality" is like alabel we attach to the sum total of real things we experience. Infusing its essence into all real things,reality becomes an entity that rises above the sum of its parts. Each part therein already has its ownessence, and thus the addition of another one, although still shared by all the parts, makes for an entitythat has its own distinct identity. Rather than a collection of real things, reality becomes the "box", soto speak, in which we find them. But if the concept "reality" were lacking, what would happen to thebox? It would dissappear, of course. Without an essence, reality can't be its own thing. This doesn'tmean for a second, however, that reality wouldn't exist. It only means that it doesn't have its ownessence, its own identity that is, apart from the sum total of things within it. Without the concept"reality", reality is merely reduced to the sum total of its parts - nothing more. It still has an essence,of course, but that essence is simply the collection of essences of all real things it is composed of. Of

course, without the concept, one would not recognize this collection as "reality" but that makes nodifference to its being reality. We still recognize it as such, even in an imaginary scenario where thesubject fails to appreciate "reality", but only because such a concept is indespensible for us. But evenif it weren't for us, reality, being the mere sum of its parts, would still exist in virtue of those partsexisting.

The Paradox of

Individuality

Acknowledgements

Finally, it will be very useful to keep in mind our treatment of the Paradox of Individuality coveredin the Advanced Theory , particularly what was said about how reality, or "the world", is ultimatelyperceived and known, along with how the experience of selfhood stems from that. This will beimportant in the third major section of this paper where we discuss the relations between realities. Itwill be important to note how reality qua reality is only experienced once all our non-cognitiveexperiences are passed into the cognitive database via acknowledgements , and binding occursbetween them as a means of creating the overall experience of "the world". In other words, it will be

useful to keep in mind that reality qua reality is a cognitive phenomenon - as opposed to the things inreality (i.e. things based on sensation and other non-cognitive experiences) even when consideredcollectively - and thus whatever we believe or say about reality is delimited by the boundaries of thecognitive realm of our experiences. This will be key to understanding the relativity of reality. Wewill make this notion more clear as we come to the relevant sections of this paper.

Caves, Bubbles, and Chambers


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Reality

Let's make one point very clear right off the bat. It is a mistake to talk about many realities coexistingat the same time. Even though MM-Theory depicts Reality (note the capital 'R') as consisting of everyone's subjective realities, we cannot rightfully call these subjective realities "reality" in theproper sense. We've already designated that term to Reality itself. That is, we can't refer to anythingas "reality" unless it is what we've designated that term to. What this means, however, is that anyonewho takes their own subjective reality to be the reality has already assigned that term to theirsubjective reality. This gives them the right to call it that. Also note what this entails about other

subjective realitiesor any entity outsidethe subjectivereality in question.It entails that theydon't even exist -that is, to thebeholder of thesubjective reality inquestion, everythingthat is real or couldbe real exists withinthe boundaries of his/her subjectivereality. Anythingbeyond it is utterlynon-existent.Therefore, the point

we want to make right now is that, whatever we consider the reality to be, whether right or wrong, inorder to remain consistent in our beliefs and the way we talk about them, we must consider anythingthat falls outside its borders to be non-existent. So to someone who designates the term "reality" to anindependent model such as materialism, for example, no other subjective realities exist beyondhis/her material universe. The materialist may believe they persist in other people's heads but only inthe form of beliefs, perceptions, and experiences - that is, they only exist as mental entities (or "brainevents" as the materialist would sternly insist ) with very little bearing on the real world. If wekeep this rule of thumb in mind - that nothing other than what is designated to be "reality" can bereality - then it should be clear why we couldn't have many realities coexisting at the same time.

The Universal

Mind

That being said, there is a fair degree of flexibility over what we take reality to be - that is, onto whatwe designate the term "reality". Any dependent model should allow for the freedom to do this. Thiswebsite, for example, designates the term "reality" to what we call the " Universal Mind " or simply"Reality". This should be kept in mind when we talk about subjective realities - that is, because wehave already designated the term "reality" to the entire set of subjective realities, plus any extraneousexperiences the Universal Mind might be having, we cannot apply that same label to any onesubjective reality. Instead, we need to think of them as collections of real things whose existencedepends on the percipient's awareness of them. In other words, we need to distinguish between"reality" and "real things".

Definition: Real Things vs. Reality1) Real Things: anything that exists in virtue of its

being perceived to exist.

2) Reality: the set of all real things.

Perception

Note that because of the way we defined " perception " (namely, as any manner of experiencing reality- not just sensory), real things, in incorporating "perception" into the definition, span far beyond theset of physical or tangible things we ordinarily attribute to the word "things". In other words, realthings denote abstract concepts like "joy" and "elegance", or emotionally laden attributes such as"goodness" or "badness". Real things denote anything that experiences can project themselves as. Thedifference between real things and Reality is simply the difference between (respectively) a member


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of a set and the set itself.

As an example of this difference, consider three "wild men" - that is, three men who grew up in thewild and never had contact with the civilized world. Imagine one having lived all his life on theSavannah planes of Africa. Another one has lived all his life in the Red Wood forests of the RockyMountains. The third has lived all his life in the cold wilderness of the Baffin Islands. They havenever seen each other nor visited each other's worlds - in fact, they have never ventured far beyondthe lands they call home. Now, because none of these men have seen any world other than their own,they would, in all likelihood, assume that the rest of the world is just like the environment they seeevery day. The Savannah man would assume the world is one big African plane, the Red Wood manwould assume the world is one big mountain range covered in towering trees, and the man livingamong ice and snow would assume the world is one big freezer box. Of course, all these men wouldbe wrong, but only in a certain sense. That is, they are wrong in the sense that the world isn't just planes, forest, or snow and ice - the world is all of these and more. But they are right in the sense thatthe worlds that they know are the real world. More accurately speaking, they are right in assuming theplanes, forests, and snow and ice are real things , and as real things, they are right in pointing to themand saying "That is reality". That is to say, it is never a mistake to point to a real thing and say of itthat it is reality, so long as you refrain from pointing to everything else and saying of it that it is not reality. In other words, assuming these men don't say of their environments that it is reality and nothing else is , then they are correct in calling it "reality". So real things, even if limited to a smallenvironment or a single subjective reality, still constitute reality if only in part. Therefore, what thebeholder of a subjective reality is looking at and believes in is reality in that all real things he/sheperceives really do go towards making up Reality.

Acknowledgements

The difference between real things and reality is made clear by this scenario. Everything that isexperienced is a real thing. Not everything that is experienced is the totality of reality. The wild mencannot be mistaken in taking the things they perceive to be real things, but they can be mistaken intaking them to be reality. The latter is still conditional, of course, upon whether or not they refer to allthat they experience as reality in the exclusive sense. But it is impossible for the real things they referto not to be part of reality. We see, then, that "reality" is, in a certain sense, a label for which thethings labeled can vary greatly. There is no such variability when it comes to the realness of realthings - so long as they are experienced, they must be real. But reality is a very broad term whichaims to encompass a wide variety of things from the concrete to the abstract, and what exactly isencompassed depends on the individual and his/her perspective on what reality consists of. This canonly be true for something of an abstract nature. We pointed this out in the introduction to this paper

when we reminded the reader that "reality" is an abstract concept, not a real thing that exists among itscontents. We also pointed out, in the Advanced Theory , that the concept of reality is so deeplyingrained in the nature of our psyche, coming with all our acknowledgements , that it is more or less anecessary construct, one we cannot possibly disregard, and one to which all our other thoughts andbeliefs are necessarily attached - that is, we necessarily take all our beliefs to be true of reality . Wealso saw that, as a concept, reality, in its pure form, projects as an essence, and that we infuse the realthings we experience with their essences. Therefore, we infuse the set of all real things we experiencewith its essence, which is namely reality itself. Thus, reality, in the final analysis, is the ultimateessence of all real things we experience, as a set, and a necessary one which, in virtue of our nature,we can't help but to attach, like a label, to this set. But what varies from one person to another, andover which we have some degree of control, are what things we experience as real. So whereas thereal things each wild man perceives are unconditionally real, the reality each one perceives is quiteconditional, not only upon which man we are considering, but upon what each one has decided tolabel

"reality".

The Chamber Metaphor

Plato's Cave

Allegory

The reader might find the above scenario strangely similar to Plato's cave allegory (see link ). Iconfess, the cave allegory was the inspiration for the above story. I'd like to invent another allegory -or rather, a symbolic model - having to do with "chambers" instead of caves. The reader might alsofind this one to be similar to the bubbles in a sea of paint blobs described in the visualizationexercises from the Advanced Theory. Like caves and bubbles, chambers are another construct moreor less the same as subjective realities, but more suited to the concepts in this paper. Needless to say,


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we are delving back into the explanatory elements of our dependent model, mapping a world of "chambers" onto the universe as MM-Theory would have it. We do this for the sake of having a model- or a visualization of sorts - that we can work with when sorting out the pseudo-paradoxes we willbe facing. Although what it represents has a lot to do with MM-Theory, as a metaphor and avisualization tool, it should be useful across all dependent models.

Imagine your subjective realitysymbolized by a chamber - that is, a room.You can imagine this chamber as large asyou want, complex as you want, andconsisting of a wide array of decorativessuch as furniture, artwork, items on tables,and so on. These decoratives represent allthe real things in your subjective reality.Since a subjective reality consists of anything one perceives and experiences,these real things don't only representphysical objects but all walks of thingsthat are perceived as real, true,independent, "out there", etc. For example,one's belief in an abstract principle suchas moral right and wrong would berepresented by something in, or at leastsome aspect of, the chamber.

Everyone's subjective reality is a chamberin this scenario, so we should imagine awhole network of chambers all scattered about. Each one houses one person. Each person is like theprisoner in Plato's cave or the wild men living on the planes, forests, and ice lands. Each one knowsno other reality than his/her own chamber, and no one can venture beyond his/her chamber.

The Universal

Mind

The area between each chamber is filled with"transcendental entities". What this obscure phrasemeans to convey is that, in the context of MM-Theory, there are extraneous experiences of all

sorts that exist between our subjective realities,filling the "empty space", so to speak, and makingus all one with the Universal Mind . Whereas eachsubjective reality corresponds to the activity inhuman brains, these extraneous experiencescorrespond to all other physical systems in theuniverse. These include computers, householdappliances, vehicles, rivers and lakes, and all of nature herself. If the reader recalls from thevisualization exercises in the Advanced Theory,these experiences are like the paint blobs that exist beyond one's bubble (i.e. they make up no part of the bubble's surface). We also pointed out, in the 3D scenario, how these experiences are best thoughtof as transcendental - that is, as existing beyond the physical universe that one experiences his/her

subjective reality to be. We place them beyond our physical universe because the objects theycorrespond to exist beyond our brains, which in turn are the objects that our subjective realitiescorrespond to. We call this place they have been relegated to, the place beyond our physical universe,a "transcendental realm". Calling it transcendental conveys more than just an existence beyond ourphysical universe, but also an existence that is utterly inconceivable to us. The experiences therein arehad by a completely foreign mind, one fit for having such experiences. We can imagine theseexperiences as things residing in and filling up the space between our chambers.

Real Things

Insofar as our scenario goes, we are imagining all these chambers existing beside and among eachother. It is difficult to imagine a transcendental realm, and therefore, one would naturally imagine thespace between them as literally physical space. This is okay as far as visualizing our model goes, butwe need to remember that this region does not represent physical space - it represents a


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transcendental realm. All metaphors and allegories aside, this is how we ought to imagine the sea of experiences that constitute Reality and that all subjective realities are suspended in. That is, physicalspace resides within our subjective realities, but beyond them, there is no space. Rather, there areonly relations between subjective realities and the extraneous experiences being had by the UniversalMind. These relations suffice, MM-Theory says, to sustain each and every experience, and allsubjective realities, in the existence that is Reality. Since some real things can take on transcendentalforms, they don't necessarily need space in order to exist. Space, however, as a real thing itself, needsthe support of transcendental things, and thus the transcendental realm itself, in order to exist. Space,in our chamber model, exists within each chamber, but the chambers themselves exist on atranscendental landscape. We can visualize this landscape using spatial imagery, but in regards to ourunderstanding of what this represents, it is not space.

One important implication this has is that if one is to believe in a transcendental realm - that is, a formof non-physical existence that coexists with the physical universe beyond its boundaries - then onemust acknowledge this realm to exist. That is, the transcendental realm itself is real. Therefore, itforms part of what the believer takes to be reality. In other words, reality need not be confined to onlythe material, physical, or spatial forms of existence. A theist, for example, in bel ieving in anon-material, metaphysical, transcendental God, believes God to exist, and therefore must reside inreality as the theist sees it. God is one of the items in his/her subjective reality. Therefore, byacknowledging the existence of this transcendental region in our chamber model, we must accept thatwe have taken the entire set of chambers, along with the transcendental region between them, asreality. Effectively, we are saying that reality not only consists of all these chambers with theirphysical and spatial properties, but it has a transcendental component to it. This is fine as long as weremember what we're calling "reality". How would this change, however, if we took one of thepersons residing in a particular chamber and ask, "What does he/she call 'reality'"?

For one thing, we would have to disregard the existence of the transcendental realm - there is no suchthing within the chamber. The chamber's host may have his/her own ideas and beliefs abouttranscendental extensions of existence, but it wouldn't be the same transcendental landscape as thatbetween the chambers. Likewise, we would have to disregard the existence of all other chambers.This chamber is reality and reality is the chamber. Nothing else exists.

What about the existence of other people? Each person lives in his/her own chamber, and for theperson in question, all other people don't exist. But is this really a fair statement to make? After all, if these chambers really do represent reality as we see it, then there must be more than one person

residing in each one. We all have friends, families, acquaintances, and even strangers who we see,talk to, and share our lives with every day. Who are these people if not residents of the samechamber, regardless of whom it belongs to?

P-Zombies

One quick fix to this puzzle is to think of these extra people as zombies or automata. That is, they aresimply non-conscious machines that so happen to give off the impression of being alive. We couldimagine that billions of such creatures exist in a single chamber (a huge chamber it would be ), andthe chamber host would never be the wiser. This is less than satisfying of course, not only because of the loss of social connection we'd feel with this perspective, but because hardly anyone reallybelieves this. The belief that other people really are conscious and alive must play the same role inour chambers as any other belief does - namely, to be the basis upon which the thing believed in isreal. We indeed believe that others have minds and so those that live with us in our chambers mustalso have minds.

The Problem of

Other Minds

The real solution to this will have to await the next major section where we address the "problem of other minds" as it is known in philosophical circles (see link ). A key point on which this solutionwill depend is the fact that we conceive of other people's minds in the form of mental models , whichis starkly different from the actual form their minds take. For the sake of the chamber model, however,let's imagine that other people take a physical form in our chambers and carry with them anon-physical mind. After all, the fact of the matter is, even though most people bel ieve in theconsciousness of others, they don't see this in the context of a dependent model. Instead, they see otherminds as, well, minds - that is, as some kind of non-physical, maybe even spiritual, essence thatsomehow exists with the body. This is not always the case, of course - there are indeed some who dosubscribe to the automata model. But even those who don't subscribe to this model have widely


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Mental Models

varying views - some view the mind as a product of the brain which will cease when we die whereasothers equate the mind with the eternal soul which will go on existing after death. Whatever the casemay be, the great majority of people hold an independent model, and therefore minds, to them, arethings in reality, not the grounds upon which reality comes to be. Therefore, in the chamber model,there is nothing wrong with imagining other people, along with their entire mental life, coexisting withthe one whose chamber it is.

Real Things

This is not to say that a few caveats aren't warranted. For one, we need to distinguish between otherpeople's minds as real things in a chamber, and the chamber whose existence their minds are thebasis for. That is, we need to recognize that even if a given person's mind exists as a real thing in onechamber, it still corresponds to another chamber - one that the person experiences him/herself residing in (the reader might recall the "invisible threads" from the bubble scenario ). This is notproblematic per se , so long as we realize that, in recognizing this correspondence, we have switchedperspectives again - we have switched what we are labeling "reality" - namely, in order to recognizethis correspondence, we have to treat the entire set of chambers, along with the transcendental regionsbetween them, as the reality. If we restrict our label of "reality" to one chamber in particular, we sti llhave the right to posit other people's minds in that chamber, including the host's, but there is nochamber to which those minds correspond, not even for the host's - that is, there is nothing more to theperson's mind than the real thing , whatever form it takes (mental, neurological, spiritual, etc.), that itis believed to be.

So for every person who exists in a given chamber, save the person whose chamber it is, there isanother chamber which this person experiences as his/her reality. There may be exceptions to this, of course - for example, a child whobelieves in Santa Clause has Santa therein her chamber, but unless there really is a

jolly old fat man in red up at the northpoll, the Santa in the chamber doesn'tcorrespond to any other chamber. Instead,he might correspond to something else inthe outer transcendental landscape orsome other person who isn't Santa (suchas her parents). By the same token, theremay be plenty of chambers for which thereis no corresponding person in anotherchamber (we don't know everyone in theworld). Therefore, each person that existsin one chamber, save the person whose chamber it is, acts as a "representative" of the person in thechamber they correspond to. Every action the person native to a particular chamber initiates ismimicked by his/her representatives in every other chamber.

The Abstraction

of Reality

Even the objects that decorate each person's chamber have multiple copies of each other in allchambers. They constantly mimic each other's actions as well. Unlike people, however, these objects

correspond to entities in thetranscendental region outside thechambers. That is, given a particularobject, there is no one chamber thathouses the "original" one - they are all

copies representing something outside allthe chambers. It is the same withMM-Theory. The physical objects that wesee in our subjective realities correspondto systems of experiences that exist in noone's subjective reality - no human atleast. Whether or not these experiencesconstitute their own subjective realitydepends on if the conscious being theymake up recognizes them as "reality"

proper, but this is not necessarily the case (see sidenote ). What is the case is that they can haveeffects on our subjective realities, injecting physical representatives of themselves therein. It is


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therefore the same in our chamber model. Entities in the transcendental region have effects on theobjects in our chambers in such a way that we can think of them as "representative" of these entities,

just as we think of the people therein as "representatives" of other chambers and their hosts.

Entailment

Flow

Epistemic

Awareness

How do people communicate in our world of chambers? Simple. One person in one chamber, byinitiating speech, has an immediate effect on the transcendental region surrounding his/her chamber.This effect propagates throughout the local area, affecting other chambers in turn. Inside these otherchambers, the effect manifests as vocal sounds coming from the mouth of the "representative" of theperson who initiated the speech. We can see how this works according to MM-Theory. In that theory,the act of speaking begins by an idea that yearns to be expressed. This corresponds to brain activity.Then the idea is vocally expressed. This corresponds to activity in the larynx, mouth and tongue.Since these organs are not the brain, the experiences therein are not those found in the human mind -that is, as MM-Theory would have it, these organs, in virtue of undergoing activity, will correspondto an experience of some kind. This experience came from the idea originally wanting to be expressed(i.e. they were entailed by, or flowed from, the idea), but now that it has flown beyond the set of experiences recognized as common constituents of the human mind, we have no more epistemicawareness of them, and so we cannot rightfully describe them as "ours". What this means in terms of our subjective reality is that these experiences constitute an existence, or a set of real things, that,although originally from things within our subjective reality, have now taken on a life outside oursubjective reality - in a transcendental realm as it were.


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Figure 1: The parallels between the physics, the experiences, and the chambers of inter-personalspeech acts.

The process doesn't stop there, of course. After the larynx, mouth and tongue have done their work,sound waves travel through the air, enter the ears of anyone close enough to receive them, getprocessed in the inner ear structures, get processed by neural structures in the hind- and mid-brain,and finally impinge on the cortical structures of the dorsal temporal lobes. All the while, thesephysical processes correspond to experiences of one sort or another. They are experiences that

continue to be had in the transcendental realm, of course, but as their physical counterparts comecloser and closer to becoming cortical processes, the experiences morph more and more into theforms a human can recognize and thus gain epistemic awareness of. We can imagine this happening inour chamber model as the effects the transcendental region has on neighboring chambers - that is, theeffect impinges on the chambers, creating the vocal sounds emanating from the mouths of representatives of the original speaker.

And what about visual forms of communication such as body or sign language? How does oneperson's actions in his/her chamber get translated into the actions of his/her representative in otherchambers? What about just seeing another person in your chamber? Same way as for speech. That is,their actions, including visual communication, have effects on the transcendental region immediatelysurrounding their chamber, which in turn have effects on many other chambers in the local vicinity,which in turn have effects on the events within those chambers. In the context of MM-Theory, one's

actions, which are essentially movements of the body, correspond to experiences in the transcendentalrealm outside our physical universe. Photons, or light, are emitted from the body, carrying informationabout the image of the body at the moment they were emitted. These photons enter the eye of anotherperson whereupon they are transduced into electric signals that head towards the occipital lobe at thehind end of the brain. All the while, the experiences in the transcendental realm that correspond to theoriginal movement of the body morph and transform. The emission of photons from the body marksone abrupt transformation whereupon the experience acquires a different quality. The absorption of these photons by the other person's eye corresponds to another abrupt change in experience quality, asdoes the signal traveling towards the brain. When it finally reaches the occipital lobe, it goes throughits final major transformation whereupon it becomes vision - and more specifically, the sight of aperson's bodily movements, the very ones that initiated the whole process.

Figure 2: The physics of visual communication.

This process is obviously the same as that for speech, except that instead of sound waves travelingthrough the air, we have photons traveling through space. Figure 2 shows the physics behind thisprocess. Figure 1, although customized for demonstrating speech, also shows the parallels withexperiences and chambers for either visual or auditory communication. The same process can begeneralized to all sensations. An experience originates in one's mind, like an event that originates inone's chamber or one's brain. It morphs through transcendental forms beyond one's mind, like theeffects propagating through the transcendental realm between the chambers or the physicalenvironment outside one's brain. Finally, it becomes a sensation of one kind or another in someoneelse's mind, like the resultant events in the recipient chamber or the recipient brain.


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Mental Models

No one's subjective reality extends into the transcendental region. That's what makes it transcendental.It includes real things that no human has epistemic or experiential awareness of. How, then, does oneincorporate a transcendental realm into one's subjective reality as is often the case? How, forexample, do we, as subscribers to MM-Theory, getto label the entire set of chambers, along with thetranscendental region, as "reality"? Well, we don'treally. As subjectivists, the best we can do is labelour own chamber "reality", but within it, refer to amodel of all chambers and the transcendental realmas what's "out there". We will talk more in detailabout the relation between the mental model thatMM-Theory is and the world it depicts in the fourthmajor section of this paper. In the chamber model,however, we can imagine that everyone's reality isa chamber, and some of us have "maps" of the outertranscendental landscape with all the chambersupon it. We never refer to the chambers themselvesor the transcendental landscape - instead, we referto the map, treating it as the reality. That being said,we do not have to persistently recognize it as amap. Its purpose is to represent the transcendentalregion outside our chamber with all other chambers therein, and so we will continue to talk about it assuch.

This, more or less, covers what needs to be said about the chamber model. The standard disclaimersare, of course, implied - namely, that we don't mean to portray our physical universe, or any universe,as rooms in a literal sense, or that each person's universe is separated by a finite distance along ainconceivable landscape, or that the most abstract of beliefs like platonic truths or moral values areliterally objects in a room like furniture and china. This is just a model, a visualization tool. Thefunction it serves is to make it easy for the reader to work with the ideas it represents. The ideas,which are meant to be taken literally, can be narrowed down to the following. A chamber representsthe universe, or reality, as one person perceives it. Although, in the model, the chamber is spatiallyfinite, the universe it represents is not. The transcendental region represents any kind of existencebeyond the subjective reality of the person in question. For that person, this existence is not evenexistence - it is not real. But this is only for that person. Someone else, who perceives and believes

differently, will define a different reality. This is represented by the multitude of chambers, one foreach reality perceiving person. We conceive of multiple coexisting chambers in our model becausethis is how we define our reality - that is, how MM-Theory defines it - and the price we pay is torecognize that each chamber is not a reality unto itself, but a real thing in reality. We recognize thissymbolism to mean that the physical universe that we perceive and believe in is not reality, but a realthing, even as infinite and eternal as it may be. What we recognize as reality is the Universal Mindand all i ts experiences, one of which is the experience of our physical universe - i n fact, establishingits existence as a real thing - and others which are also experiences of the same, or at least similar,physical universe, but had by other people.

Now, even though we should refrain from calling one subjective reality or chamber "reality" whenwe've already designated that term to the Universal Mind or to the entire set of chambers witheverything between, we will, at times, use the word "reality" somewhat loosely. For instance, we

might say "Such-and-such is going on in my reality, but in your reality, this-and-that is going on." Wedo this for the sake of convenience in speaking. It needs to be remembered, therefore, that this kind of talk should not be interpreted too literally. That is, when we say something like "my reality" or "yourreality", we really mean "my subjective reality" or "your subjective reality". At least, this is what wemean when we've already designated the term "reality" for something grander, something that containsboth your and my subjective reality. We will talk more about the rules governing how we ought todesignate the term "reality" to one subjective reality or another in the third major section of thispaper.

Problem Solving With The Chamber Metaphor


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One problem the chamber scenario resolves right from the get go is the problem of conflicting beliefs.For example, if one person believes there is life on other planets while another person doesn't, it mayseem paradoxical to say that there is and isn't life on other planets at the same time. But if we use thechamber model to see how this plays out, we see that the extraterrestrial life that the one personbelieves in is a real thing in his/her chamber, whereas, in the other person's chamber, there is no suchlife. The lesson we learn from this is that whatever real things one perceives or believes in, he/she isthe only one who has perceptual access to those real things, and only he/she can refer to them.Everyone else will perceive and refer to their own real things that exist in their reality. No one canrefer to anything outside their own reality. Since many things from one reality to another are identical,an illusion is created whereby it seems that all people are referring to the same re al thing. For

example, when I point to the clock and say "look how late it's getting", it would be typical to assumethe clock that I'm pointing to is the same clock that I draw your attention to. It is indeed paradoxical torefer to one thing, like the clock, and say of it that it is real and not real at the same time. But it isperfectly valid to refer to one thing, say of it that it is real, refer to another thing, and say of it that it isnot real. Using the chamber model, we'd say that I point to the clock in my chamber, but myrepresentative points to the clock in your chamber. The chamber model makes this evidently clear,and so we must recognize the way in which it resolves conflicting beliefs, perceptions, andexperiences.

Subjectivist

Theories

Now, this works nicely for particulars - that is, when we refer to a particular real thing and commenton its existence. But what about universals - that is, when we refer to something that must exist orcan't exist in a universal sense. In the example above, we considered the existence of alien life onother planets. We showed how it is not a problem for one person to believe in extraterrestrial life andfor another person not to. But if we break down the phrase that expresses this belief - that "there is [orisn't] life on other planets" - we find the segment "on other planets" refers to physical objects, ratherlarge ones, in one person's universe. Therefore, we can easily imagine that there might be life on theplanets of one person's universe, but not on those of the other person's universe. However, supposethe doubting person's belief was expressed as "there is no extraterrestrial life anywhere " or "therecan't be extraterrestrial life - in principle! " That is to say, suppose the scope of the disbelief wasuniversal rather than particular. Can the chamber model handle this situation? It would be like oneperson in one chamber saying "There are no other people... period!" Obviously, this statement isblatantly wrong. There are as many other people as there are other chambers. Note the problem is notabout what we're calling "reality" - that is, the problem is not resolved by treating the one person'schamber as reality, thereby rendering all other people non-existent. The reason it is not resolved thisway is because the statement should remain true, as mandated by any subjectivist theory , even whenwe designate the term "reality" to all chambers and the transcendental region between them.

The full solution to this problem will be explicated in the third major section of this paper. For now,let's introduce a principle that will be very important throughout the rest of this paper. This principlemight work as a "patch" solution to the above problem, but a much more effective one will bepresented two major sections from here.

Principle: Referential Monopoly


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No conscious being, finding itself in a subjectivereality, can make reference to anything, whetherphysical, abstract, or any other form, beyond itsown subjective reality.

What this principle means to convey is that anything we make reference to, anything at all, so long aswe believe in it or experience it as real, must occupy a place within our subjective reality. The merenotion of referring to something not within our subjective reality is a contradiction in terms. It wouldentail that we know, or at least are thinking, of something for which we have no knowledge orthoughts. To know or to think of something places it, in whatever form it so happens to be experiencedin, within our subjective reality. This goes for any experience whatsoever - sensory, emotional,cognitive, or anything else. Try as we might, we will never thwart this principle. In fact, let's try it.Let's think about our subjective reality. Let's imagine all the experiences within it and the experiencesbeyond it - those belonging to other subjective realities or the Universal Mind. In this very act of imagination, we have already referenced experiences beyond our subjective reality. Or have we?Actually, the fact of the matter is, the only reason we referenced these outer experiences is becausewe believe in them. We are subscribers to MM-Theory, are we not? Therefore, wouldn't oursubjective realities include these extra experiences to begin with? Perhaps they wouldn't include theirinternal qualities (for those are inconceivable) but many things exist within our subjective realitieswithout our knowing their internal qualities (for example, the chemical composition of the gasoline inyour car). The latter peculiarity will be addressed in the section Determinants and Non-Determinantsbelow. The bottom line of the above principle is that any attempt to refer beyond one's subjectivereality only incorporates that which is referred to into one's subjective reality - often without one'sknowing it.

This could be used as a quick fix to the above problem - the one about a person in his/her chamberproclaiming that "There are no other people!" If the person cannot refer beyond his/her subjectivereality, beyond his/her chamber that is, then he/she really ought to be saying "There are no otherpeople in my chamber" or "There are no other people in my reality". He/she could not possibly havein mind the absence of other people in some region outside his/her chamber. He/she cannot evencomprehend such an extension of existence, let alone refer to it. Therefore, he/she must mean, "Thereare no other people here in this chamber".

Well, does the person mean it this way? Do we even have the right to put words in other people'smouths, saying, "You don't mean that, you mean this"? It seems less than convincing that universalstatements like "There is no X" - plane and simple - could be reduced to particular statements of theform "There is no X in what I think is reality" without changing the meaning somewhat. Can we justifythe claim that statements of the form "There is no X" are equal in meaning to statements of the form"There is no X in my reality"? We will return to this question in the section Inter-Reality

Descriptions below .

Intra-Reality Descriptions

Dependent and

Independent

Models of Reality

The descriptive approach we are taking in this paper can be applied to both dependent andindependent models . With independent models, a description of reality, based on what one perceivesto be real, is seen as somewhat fruitless. That is, with an independent model, one wants to get at whatreality is , not what it looks like. Nevertheless, we could go ahead and describe what we see i n realityeven with an independent model.

Subjectivist

Theories

Of course, with a dependent model, this is the most useful way to get at precisely what is real. Butwith a dependent model, it stands to question which reality we are describing. Take a subjectivist -one who would be using a dependent model - into consideration. He/she could go about describinghis/her own reality or those of others whose models of reality are of the independent kind. Eitherway, the subjectivist would deem the perception of the reality in question to be sufficient in depicting


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exactly what that reality is. Of course, there is another level of complexity if it is the subjectivist'sown reality being described. The reason for this is, of course, that the subjectivist perceives reality asa domain that houses a multiplicity of realities. Just as in the chamber model, the subjectivist's realityis the sum of all realities plus anything extraneous. Of course, we've already dealt with the fact thatthe multitude of realities the subjectivist sees are not true realities - at least, not in the full sense of theword - but it remains a heavy task for the subjectivist to describe his/her reality in terms of otherrealities. He/she is sure to run into lingual problems and confused semantics - and ultimately, thepseudo-paradoxes we alluded to in the introduction to this paper.

A couple terms that would therefore come in handy are "inter-reality descriptions" a nd "intra-realitydescriptions". Intra-reality descriptions are those descriptions that apply to the contents of one reality.They are most useful with independent models, but they can also be used with dependent models. Anexample would be to describe the night sky as "very starry". This would be a description of thecontents (stars) of one reality. Note that it does not matter whether the perceiver of the stars assumesthem to be real independently of his/her perception or because of his/her perception - they are stilldescriptions of what he/she sees as the contents of reality. Inter-reality descriptions, on the otherhand, are descriptions applying to the relations between realities. An example, taken from thechamber scenario, would be the relation between the host of one chamber and his/her representativesin all other chambers. When we touched on this, we were describing how the events that occur in onechamber (speech, for example) affect the events that occur in other chambers (the mimicking of speech by the representatives). Obviously, these kinds of descriptions cannot work with anindependent model. Therefore, inter-reality descriptions are exclusive to dependent models, and onlymake sense to those partial to subjectivist brands of theories.

Definition: Intra- vs. Inter-Reality Descriptions1) Intra-Reality Descriptions: Descriptions of the

contents of one reality.

2) Inter-Reality Descriptions: Descriptions of therelations between realities.

We will be dealing with intra-reality descriptions in this section of the paper. If our goal is to resolvethe many pseudo-paradoxes that arise from inter-reality descriptions, then this is the most logicalcourse of action. We are better off learning to describe, in as clear a manner as possible, what oneperceives in one reality, whether based on a dependent or independent model, before moving on tointer-reality descriptions. One might note that inter-reality descriptions are actually a special kind of intra-reality description anyway. That is, if intra-reality descriptions are defined simply asdescriptions of the contents of one reality, then the subjectivist, in describing the contents of his/herreality, is engaging in descriptions of the intra-reality sort. This shouldn't be a cause for confusionthough. It just means that there is a bit of overlap between inter- and intra-reality descriptions. Thepoint, however, is that the rules we will learn to use in making intra-reality descriptions will come inhandy when we delve into inter-reality descriptions, and so we examine the former first.

Before we get started, however, let's introduce a principle that might be considered sage advice. Theadvice comes as a response to a question the reader might be asking at this point: why go to all the

trouble of delineating the methods for articulating intra-reality descriptions? It comes quite naturallyto most people, after all, does it not? I see a chair in my living room, I describe what I see as "a chairin my living room". I feel ill this afternoon, I describe what I feel as "an ill feeling in my stomach". Ihave strong feelings for the woman I'm dating, I describe this as "falling in love". What's there toexpand on? Well, I wish all such descriptions were as easy as these - and these are indeed easy - butthere are other examples that are not so simple. For example, how does one describe the position of the moon when it's on the opposite side of the planet from where one is standing? Without consultingastronomical documents, one has no way of perceiving the moon or knowing where it is. Yet, one stillbelieves the moon to have a definite location somewhere in the opposite hemisphere. What are we tosay? Are we to say that the moon has no definite location due to the lack of visual perception of it, orare we to say that it must have a definite location due solely to the belief that it does despite not beingable to say what that location is? And what about the existence of other people's minds? As we noted


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above, in the chamber model scenario, this is not a problem for those who hold an independentmodel, but what about those of us who hold a dependent model? If we truly believe that other people'sminds constitute the basis for a whole other reality - one that we must place beyond the boundaries of our own - then how are we to describe our beliefs in them? After all, to describe what we believe isto describe what we perceive in our reality. And what do we say about states of denial? Suppose, forinstance, one was feeling miserable, but was in total denial about it, announcing to everyone, andeven him/herself, that he/she was exceedingly happy. How would we describe his/her mood - happyor miserable? These are the kinds of questions we will be tackling in this section of the paper, and itwould be a great help to us if we kept in mind the sage advice that we will now present as aprinciple.

Principle: The Transparency of ExperiencesExperiences are exactly what they feel like. Thereal things they project themselves as are exactlywhat we perceive them to be.

This principle can be forgotten easily. There tends to be a difficulty in articulating exactly what ourexperiences feel like. The main reason for this, or at least one of them, is that we have difficultykeeping an experience, like a thought, in mind while, at the same time, trying to contrive the rightwords to express it. It's like the familiar conflict between doing something and thinking about it. Thatis, we often find that performing an action that comes as second nature to us can become stifled whenwe think too much about it. A dancer, for example, knows the moves and the steps to his/her routineand can perform them without thinking. But if he/she was to suddenly think about it - asking whatmove comes next, if he/she is stepping in time with the beat, if his/her posture looks right - then weare sure to notice the degradation of his/her performance. The reason being, of course, that the mentalenergy required to think and worry about this takes away from that required to perform the dancegracefully. The same dynamic of mental energy applies to feeling our experiences and thinking abouthow to express them in words. That is, when we try to come up with the right words to express them,this takes mental focus away from the actual experience of them. Thus, what we are left with is theattempt to extract words from an experience that isn't even there anymore - or at least, is paid muchless attention.

What we must do, therefore, is watch out for too much distancing between the experience and thecrafting of words to express it. If we find that we are working foremost on inventing complex ways toexpress something for which we are losing grip on the actual feel, this is a good indication that we areleading ourselves astray. There shouldn't be too much distance between an experience and itsexpression.

John Locke

A good example of this, one that we saw in The Inconceivability of Consciousness , is Locke 's articulation of the concept of infinity. Locke says thatwe acquire the concept of infinity bycontemplating the perpetual addition of quantities onto each other. That is, when weimagine a certain quantity of something, saya stick 2 feet long, and we add another stick,

also 2 feet long, to the first, we see that thetotal length amounts to 4 rather than infinity.If we do this again, we see that it amounts to

6, and then 8, and then 10, and so on and so forth. Locke says thatwhen we notice that this process will go on ad infinitum , alwaysacquiring a finite quantity, we will have conceived of infinity.Locke sums this up by describing our concept of infinity as an"inexhaustible remainder from which we remove all bounds",and it is only after performing this thought experiment that we see this.


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We challenged this notion, of course, demonstrating how the concept of infinity (or eternity) had to beunderstood beforehand in order for one to make the leap from repetitively adding quantities onto eachother to apprehending that the entire process was infinite (or eternal). In this paper, we will add thefollowing - that in missing the mark in his attempt to describe the concept of infinity, Locke actuallyhit the mark squarely if the question concerned what a good example of an infinite process would be.That is, adding quantities onto each other perpetually certainly is a good example of something thatwould take an eternity to complete, and Locke describes precisely why. But there is clearly adifference between describing an infinite process and the concept of infinity itself. What I wouldsuspect is that Locke spent too much time trying to invent a description of the concept of infinity, or atleast how we come to acquire it (sticking to an empirical paradigm) and not enough time merelythinking of infinity itself. So rather than describing infinity, he ended up inadvertently describingsomething else instead - an infinite process. I also suspect that if he had focused on the concept itself,he would have seen that there are some concepts that cannot be explained by empiricism, which mightbe why he felt more comfortable fabricating the description he did come up with.

Mental Models

The concept of infinity is a very particular one. We would probably fill out a whole book if we listedthe entire gamut of concepts that proved descriptively challenging. Therefore, what we will do in thissection is offer some descriptive tools, or rules of thumb, that work with the most generalized classesof concepts. We will touch on what it means to believe in something taking a definite state withoutknowing what that state is (like the location of the moon on the other side of the planet), probability,mental models , other people's minds, denial and other semi-conscious states, and finally thedifference between visualization and conceptualization. The reader might recognize the latter fromThe Inconceivability of Consciousness . In that paper, we focused mainly on proving that there is adifference, and if we described the qualitative differences between them, we did not do so formally.In this paper, we will not only formally describe the difference, but outline the rules of thumb fordoing so. We will do this for all classes of concepts above. Although this probably isn't an exhaustivelist, it should serve as a set of examples for how we adhere to the principle of the transparency of experiences , and thereafter the reader can use this as the most general of guidelines for describingmore specific concepts.

Determinants and Non-Determinants

Real Things

Determinants are what allow real things to have determinedstates or properties in one's subjective reality. For example,if I see a glass of milk on the table, its determinants might beits color (white), its being mostly full or mostly empty, itslocation on the table, and so on. Its very existence is also adeterminant - that is, we can say that its being there on thetable is a state which is determined. All determinants comewith values. A determinant's value is what the state orproperty of the determinant so happens to be. In the case of the glass of milk, its color is a determinant and its value iswhite. Its fullness is a determinant and its value might beeither mostly full or mostly empty. Its position on the table isa determinant, and its value is, say, near the edge. We maythink of a determinant as an algebraic variable, like X or Y,and its value as the quantity the variable stands for.

Definition: DeterminantA state or property that is determined, in virtue of the perception that it is determined, of a realthing.


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Definition: ValueIn the context of a determinant, its value is whatthe state or property turns out to be.

Even though a determinant is a state or property, we might talk about an object or entity being adeterminant. For example, I might say that my television is a determinant. What I mean by this is thatthe state of existence of my television is a determinant and its value is "existing". That is, mytelevision is in a state of existence. By the same token, I would say that the Tooth Fairy is also adeterminant and her value is "non-existent". That is, the Tooth Fairy is in a state of non-existence. Soeven things that don't exist can be determinants in that they determine the contents of one's subjectivereality just as much as those things that do exist therein.

Determinants can be defined or undefined. A defined determinant is one for which the state orproperty so determined is perceived. An undefined determinant is one for which the state or propertyso determined is not perceived but is still believed to be determined. If the glass of milk were in frontof us, for example, we could say that its being mostly full or mostly empty is a defined determinant.That is, we believe that it is either definitely mostly full or definitely mostly empty, and we can seewhich of these it is. If, however, we were simply told that a glass of milk was sitting on the table, butwe could not see it, then supposing we believe what we are told, its being mostly full or mostly empty

is an undefined determinant. Yet, it is a determinant because we still believe it is definitely either or.That is, just because we don't see it, and thus have no knowledge of what the value of its fullness stateis, this does not mean its state has no value. The fact that we believe it has a definite value makes itso.

Definition: Defined vs. Undefined Determinants1) Defined Determinant: a determinant for which

its value is perceived.

2) Undefined Determinant: a determinant forwhich its value is not perceived.

This carries over to the question we posed about the moon - that is, what we would say about theposition of the moon in the sky on the other side of the planet. Does it have a position because webelieve it does, or does it not because we don't perceive or know it? What we would say is that themoon's position, if we don't perceive or know it, is a undefined determinant. That is, because it isbelieved to have a definite position, it is a determinant, but because we don't perceive its value, it isundefined.

Well, this is all well and good insofar as identifying and categorizing the real things we perceive - wenow have some nifty labels - but does this actually describe in what way the moon's position or theproperties of the glass of milk can be thought of as real things? That is, does the idea of determinantsanswer our question about how unperceived things like the moon's position can be determined even

though it requires perception for such determination? It doesn't qualify as an answer, but it doesqualify as a useful tool for devising an answer. To get the answer, let's revisit an independent modelof reality.

Objectivist

Theories

As we said at the beginning of this section, independent models, although having very little need for adescriptive approach, can be described just as easily and accurately as dependent models. Moreover,from a subjectivist's point of view, describing a reality based on an independent model is sufficientfor outlining exactly what that reality consists of. Therefore, it would, in all probability, serve us wellto investigate the ways in which an objectivist would describe the position of the moon when he/shecan't see it. After all, the objectivist has no trouble understanding how the moon can maintain an exactposition independently of anyone's perception. Let's take this understanding and carry it back over tothe dependent model and see how it answers our question.


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Kepler's Laws of

Motion

The objectivist would say that the moon is guaranteed to have a definite position at all times becausethe laws of nature take care of this. The laws of nature are also determinants (they are believed toexist) and their values are perceived. That is, the objectivist knows the laws that govern the moon'sposition - namely, Kepler's three laws of motion . The objectivist may not call them "determinants",but we as subjectivists looking into an objectivist's reality will call them "determinants". These lawsdetermine exactly where the moon is at all times. Therefore, the answer to our question, as far as anobjectivist is concerned, is that a defined determinant (the laws of nature) maintains the status of themoon's position as a determinant.

Projection

Does this work with a dependent model? It surely does. Even though the moon's position is notperceived, the laws of nature are (they are believed in). Moreover, they are a defined determinant. Itis also believed, furthermore, that these laws are what allow the moon to have a definite position.With a dependent model, this belief is enough to create the laws of nature as real things, and if it isalso believed that they maintain the moon's position, this is what they will do as real things. Thisanswers our question. Even though we don't perceive the moon's exact location, we do perceive, and

therefore project , the necessary mechanism by which the moon's position is determined. The generalform this answer takes - a form that works as a tool for answering all questions concerning undefineddeterminants - is that an undefined determinant remains a determinant due to its dep endence onanother determinant that is defined. Furthermore, an undefined determinant may rely on a whole seriesof undefined determinants, but at the end of this series, there must be a defined one. We can extractthis series by inquiring into the objectivist's reality - or any reality that captures our interest - askinghow the objectivist him/herself would answer the question being posed (in this case, how the moonmaintains a definite position). Imbedded in the answer are all the determinants we need along with theorder in which they depend on each other.

Principle: Understanding The Determinacy of Undefined Determinants

To understand how undefined determinants aredetermined in one's subjective reality, ask of thesubject how he/she accounts for them him/herself.Imbedded in the answer are the determinants onwhich the one in question depends, as well as theorder of their dependence. Assuming the accountgiven is complete, there should be at least onedefined determinant on which the others depend.

Note that the relation between determinants is one of logical dependence, not causation. Undefineddeterminants logically depend on defined ones. The reason why the objectivist believes the moon tohave a definite position despite the fact he has no inkling as to what it is is that he believes inKepler's laws of motion, and it logically follows from the latter that the former is necessarily thecase. This is precisely what we want. We want a description of the objectivist's reality in mentalterms, in terms of his/her experiences - in this case, in terms of the reasoning behind his/her beliefs.That an undefined determinant should be traceable, directly or indirectly, to a defined one is thegeneral formula that such descriptions take. Insofar as descriptions go, this suffices for thesubjectivist. For the objectivist however, this description, at least when put in non-mental terms, alsoserves as an explanation, just as how the Earth rotating about its axis serves as an explanation for anysubscriber of the Copernican model of the solar system, even though such an explanation works just


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as well as a description for any subscriber of the Ptolemaic model. Of course, we might point outthat, as an explanation, the Copernican model conflicts with that of the Ptolemaic model, just as theobjectivist's explanation for the moon's definite position conflicts with the subjectivist's. Thesubjectivist doesn't put it in terms of Kepler's laws or independently existing physical objects withdefinite positions like the moon; rather, the subjectivist puts it in terms of his/her own theory of mind.In the case of MM-Theory in particular, we would account for the moon's definite position in terms of the non-human experiences that correspond to the moon-Earth system. So although at this point, weare only concerned with describing the objectivist's world, therefore making any conflict of explanation inconsequential, we will eventually have to come to terms with this conflict. When itcomes to solving conflicts of this kind however - namely, two or more contending explanations - weare contrasting two or more different realities. Needless to say, we need additional tools - namely,inter-reality descriptions - and so we will await the appropriate section to return to this issue.

Now, a non-determinant is any state or property that does not have a definite value. For example, thetruth of the following sentence cannot be determined:

This sentence is false.

If this sentence is true, then it's false. If it's false, it's true. So which is it? It's neither, of course. Itstruth or falsehood cannot be determined. It has no value. Thus, it is a non-determinant.

Determinism

Quantum

Mechanics

Outcomes that are due to random chance, such as the rolling of dice or who will win the lottery, arealso non-determinants. Of course, if one is a stringent determinist, one's subjective reality will neverconsist of such non-determinants. That is, one has to believe that some things truly are random, not

just that their outcomes are unknown and too complex to predict. Even scientists - at least, the greatmajority of them - believe in the truly random. The field of quantum mechanics is widely accepted asa domain of science that studies the probabilities of random outcomes. So we must make room fornon-determinants in our intra-reality descriptions, as there are a great many people who believe intruly random occurrences and other such things whose values cannot be determined.

Definition: Non-Determinants

A state or property whose value is not determined,in virtue of the perception that it is notdetermined.

Needless to say, non-determinants cannot be classified as defined or undefined. These two terms onlymake sense when the value is thought to be definite. It can be definite and known or perceived, inwhich case it is defined, or it can be definite and unknown or unperceived, in which case it isundefined. But the very definition of non-determinants is that their values are not definite. They arenot set to anything. Therefore, it is meaningless to talk about a defined or undefined non-determinant.For this reason, we will not formally define such terms.

Things that are random are referred to as probable. That is, we say that there is a certain probability

of some random outcome turning out one way or another. The probability of turning up heads on acoin toss, for example, is 50/50. The probability of a thunderstorm tomorrow, the weatherman says, is80%. Now these probabilities are not themselves non-determinants. They are determinants, anddefined ones moreover. That is, the fact that there is a certain probability is quite determined, and if you know the statistic of this probability - 50/50, 80%, 1 in 4, and the like - then its value is known,making it a defined determinant. Of course, its value might not be known, in which case it would bean undefined determinant. In any case, the probability should not be confused with thenon-determinant itself. The non-determinant is the actual outcome of the random event. That is, forexample, what side a dice will land on (assuming we believed the rolling of dice was indeedgenuinely random). There are six possibilities, and which one it will be is, not only unknown, butundetermined. However, each side has a specific probability and we do know their values - 1 out of 6for each. So all non-determinants come with a determinant - namely, its probability - which can be


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defined or undefined.

Anubis

And finally, there are non-extants. A non-extant is anything that does not makeup any part of one's subjective reality. For the most part, they are things that thepercipient is not experiencing in any way whatsoever. For example, the ancientEgyptian god Anubis was well known to the Egyptians, and therefore was adeterminant for them, but to a common person in the modern world, he is a

non-extant.In mostcases, hehas neverbeen, norever willbe,imaginedby thecommon person, let aloneconsidered to exist. An evenbetter example would be anexperience that one not onlydoesn't have, but can't have. Forexample, music is a non-extant

to those born deaf. The intricacies about multivariate calculus are non-extants to monkeys.Non-extants should not be confused with defined determinants for which their value is "non-existent",as in the example of the Tooth Fairy given above. In that example, we pointed out how it is the lack of the Tooth Fairy's existence that is a determinant. This lack of existence does make up part of one'ssubjective reality in that they would describe their reality as consisting of such a lack. To a child,however, the Tooth Fairy would exist as a determinant whose value is "existing". As with thechamber metaphor, of course, the Tooth Fairy who exists in the child's world is a different entity thanthe lack thereof in the adult's world. It could be said, therefore, that the Tooth Fairy, although adeterminant in the child's world, is a non-extant in relation to the adult's world. That is, although thelack of the Tooth Fairy in the adult's world is a determinant, the existence of the Tooth Fairy in thechild's world is a non-extant to the adult.

Definition: Non-ExtantsAnything that does not determine the existence,states, or properties, of the contents of one’ssubjective reality.

Obviously, a non-extant is only a useful concept for subjectivists. That is, one can only talk about anon-extant if there are real things that can exist beyond a given subjective reality and only in relationto that subjective reality. This requires that one take the perspective that there are coexistingsubjective realities within a larger framework. This is the subjectivist's view. The objectivist mighthold a similar view - namely, that there are real things that exist beyond one's perceptions of theworld, and these things might even be incomprehensible, but these wouldn't be non-extants. If

anything, these would be undefined determinants - the reason being that the objectivist would havealready settled the matter on whether these things exist or not. He/she holds that they exist, andtherefore are not beyond his/her subjective reality (or just reality, as he/she would see it).Non-extants do exist for the subjectivist as well, but the subjectivist can see the relations they have toother subjective realities (which don't exist for the objectivist) and he/she would depict theserelations as ones of non-existence. That is, they don't exist in relation to any subjective reality thatdoesn't house them, and therefore are non-extants only in relation to those subjective realities.Needless to say, we are getting into inter-reality descriptions, and so we will return to this point inthe appropriate section.


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Mental Models and Other Minds

Mental Models

Transparency of

Experiences

The Problem of

Other Minds

Referential

Monopoly

The Shapes of

Fundamental

Particles

Nirvana

Enlightenment

When it comes to understanding the forms mental models take, nothing comes in more handy than theprinciple of the transparency of experiences . So we must ask ourselves "How do we describe theforms mental models take?" We have answered this question at length in the paper TheInconceivability of Consciousness , and so we need not reiterate it here. We will refresh ourmemories, however, by running through a brief overview of it. Afterwards, we will apply the concept

to the problem of other minds. The problem of other minds is the philosophical problem of how oneknows that minds other than his/her own exist. This problem takes a slightly different tinge in ourtheory - namely, as the problem of how we can posit the existence of other people's minds withouttransgressing the boundaries of our own subjective reality. That is, we seem to be faced with twomutually exclusive options - we can either accept that other people have minds but only as theconventional notion of "minds" would have it (i.e. not as MM-Theory would have it) or we canaccept that other people's minds constitute their own distinct subjective realities that necessarilyexists beyond our own (in which case we would be in violation of the principle of ReferentialMonopoly ). The aim in this section is to resolve this problem, and we do so with the aid of mentalmodels.

At bottom, mental models are cognitive experiences. Theyare conceptual representations of real things. The current

model of the atom is an excellent example. Scientists teach usthat the atom consists of three particles: protons, neutrons,and electrons. The protons andneutrons are tightly boundtogether in a compactednucleus while the electronsorbit the nucleus at a distance.As novices, we are told thatwe can imagine these particlesas tiny billiard balls (moreadvanced teachings describethem as point particles or even

smeared out regions of probable existence - see sidenote ). If we

seek the teachings of Buddhists, we will encounter other mentalmodels. We might be told of a plane of existence called Nirvana thatcan only be reached by deep meditation and the acquisition of enlightenment . Whether we believe these teachings or not, they are allmental models. The atom is a mental model in virtue of the fact that weare engaged in a visualization of an organized system of particles(balls, points, smeared out regions, or whatever). The actual atomitself may not resemble this mental picture precisely, nor is itnecessarily something that our mental pictures can resemble precisely - it may be totallyinconceivable. The same applies to Nirvana and enlightenment. But we do make use of these mentalpictures and they help to make them conceivable, imperfect as they may be.

As we saw in The Inconceivability of Consciousness , thislack of perfect resemblance is typical of mental models.Because of this, we fail to appreciate the true forms that somephenomena take - such as infinity, consciousness, quantumphenomena, etc. - and instead believe in what the mentalmodel presents itself to be. So long as we keep in mind thatmental models are representations at best, we avoid beingfooled by their pretentious forms. Being aware of this,however, does not make it any easier to conjure up a moreaccurate portrayal of the phenomena they stand in for. Thereason for this is that in our attempts to contrive moreaccurate portrayals, we are stuck using cognitions. That is,the very act of coming up with a conceptual model for


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something requires the use of ideas. Conceptual models cannot be made from any other experiences.Mental models are a unique artifact of cognition - of thought. Therefore, to answer our question above- how do we describe the forms mental models take? - we must say, at the very least, that they take acognitive form.

More needs to be said about this, of course. We might use an analogy. Suppose a sculptress wished toexplain exactly what she was feeling emotionally by using visual experiences. That is, she wanted toreplicate the emotion in other people's minds by showing them the emotion. Using her talents as asculptress, she molds her clay into complex forms, hoping to obtain exactly the form her emotiontakes. She settles on one form, but quickly becomes dissatisfied. It only looks like an irregularlyshaped rock, not an emotion. So she tries a different form. Again, it fails to match the emotionalexperience. This time, it only looks like a crumpled up box. She tries a third form, and for the thirdtime she is disappointed. Why can she not mold the clay into the form that her emotion takes? Becausean emotion is not a visual experience. Nothing visually apprehended would match the exact form anemotion can take. Our sculptress may create a piece that invokes emotions, but this is only an effectthe piece has on the viewer. In exactly the same manner, there are some phenomena whose formscannot be captured by "molding" our ideas into the different shapes we call mental models.

Visualization vs.

Conceptualization

Of course, there are a myriad of things that we can model quite accurately. Most of our sensoryexperiences are very amenable to cognitive representations. We can imagine many things fromordinary life, such as houses, trees, vehicles, people, shoes, etc. We can also imagine commonplacethings that we sense in non-visual ways, such as voices, traffic noises, the smell of good food, thetaste of candy, the softness of fluffy pillows, the warmth of fire, etc. The concepts of these are allmental models that so happen to mirror the phenomena they represent quite reliably. We explainedthis in The Inconceivability of Consciousness by pointing out what purpose visualization andconceptualization evolved to serve. Visualization (and the simulation of at least two other sensoryexperiences - hearing and touch) evolved to mimic the behavior, in a mental laboratory so to speak, of the physical world. That is, it evolved as an approximation of our visual experiences. Therefore, ithad to represent the world as we experience it visually as accurately as it could afford to. At a laterpoint in our evolution, conceptualization emerged and grew beyond visualization. This becameimportant when the need for abstractionemerged. That is, when it becameimportant for us to understand certainabstract characteristics about the world.The need for this, we hypothesized, came

with the advent of civilization, and was aresponse to the ever growing complexityof the social and political climate. Nevertheless, conceptualization retained its roots in the traditionalfunction that visualization served before it, only now it was modified to simulate, not physicalphenomena per se, but the logic of "things" in the most abstract sense. It still recruits the aid of visualization as every concept seems to come with a visual representation of one sort or another, andtherefore can still represent visual experiences - and every other sensory experience for that matter -quite reliably.

So mental models have a sensory component and a conceptual component. The sensory componentcannot transcend the sensory form it takes whereas the conceptual component can, and does. But theconceptual component also has its limitations - it cannot transcend its conceptual form - hence itsgreatest shortcoming. We referred to mental models as taking a cognitive form overall, and we can

refer to the conceptual component as taking a conceptual form. We might also say of the sensorycomponent that it takes a sensory form, but this is not to be confused with the form that actualsensations take (there is still a difference). Whether sensory,conceptual, or cognitive in general, none of these capture thecomplete pool of forms that real things can take. There arethings out there - experiences in the subjectivist context -whose forms are none of these, not even remotely. Thesethings will never take part in our subjective realities. Themental models we use to represent them, however, alwaystake part in our subjective realities. In fact, the forms theytake therein are exactly what we perceive them to be(vis-à-vis the principle of the transparency of experiences). If


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we think that consciousness, for example, is a "ghost in themachine" so to speak, then that's what it is in our subjectivereality. If we think it is an emergent property of neural andchemical activity, then that's what it is. It is even an utterly

inconceivable phenomenon of which we haven't the faintest inkling, if this is what we think of it.

All these models seem rather innocuous when it comes to the problem at hand - the problem of howsubjectivists seem to refer to things beyond their subjective realities when subjectivism clearlydenies them the right to do so. This is a problem for subjectivists in particular because they putforward a model of consciousness that necessitates its placement outside the boundaries of theirsubjective realities. With our understanding of mental models, however, this problem, which is noneother than the problem of other minds, can be resolved. We first note that we cannot conceive of otherpeople's minds other than as a mental model - a cognitive construct that portrays them as a "thing" inreality. We can rise above any sensory imagery this mental model offers us, acknowledging that otherminds cannot take sensory forms, but we can't do the same for the quality of "thingness" theirconceptual component exudes. This much is for certain. How, then, do we reconcile the fact that theyconstitute their own realities? Well, seeing as how the mental model only represents the actualphenomenon, what we as subjectivists conceive of when we think of other people's minds is not thetrue foundation for a whole other reality distinct from what we take to be reality. What it is thefoundation of is a subjective reality which, when all is said and done, is really just a collection of real things in what we call "reality", not a complete reality unto itself. To the subjectivist, thiscollection exists within his/her own subjective reality as one among all the other real things therein.In other words, we as subjectivists don't believe that other people's minds constitute realities beyond our own. Rather, we believe they constitute subjective realities within our own.

Referential

Monopoly

But even after having said this, we still find ourselves referring to the "actual phenomena" that ourmental models represent. That is, because we acknowledge that our mental models only representother people's minds, we have imagined, not only the representation, but their minds beingrepresented. One cannot talk about a representation without implicitly acknowledging that somethingis being represented. This is clearly a violation of the principle of Referential Monopoly . To fullyresolve this problem, we must keep two things in mind. 1) Any reference to the "real thing" (i.e. not the mental model) can only be made by substituting another mental model for the one we attempt torefer beyond. That is, if we want to put aside our mental model of other minds in favor of the realthing, we are inevitably going to construct another mental model - maybe the same, maybe different -without fully realizing it. In fact, we can do this an indefinite number of times, building up a chain of

mental models, each referencing the one posterior to it as the "real thing". Although the one at the endof the series will always seem like the true phenomenon, it can be recognized for the mental model itis just as easily as all its precedents. We will be in no better position to get beyond our mentalmodels than we were at the beginning of the series. Therefore, when it comes down to it, we neverreally violate the principle of Referential Monopoly. 2) Because other minds constitute their ownreality, if weactually couldapprehend them intheir true form, wewould have todispense with ourown subjectivereality and enter

into the one themind in questionupholds. That is, tobehold anothermind in its trueform is to behold awhole otherreality. A mind, after all, is a reality - not a mental model - and as such will not tolerate thecoexistence of other realities. In other words, there would be no subjective reality for those minds toexist beyond. The mind in question would constitute its own subjective reality of which we cannottranscend or refer beyond. It would be a different subjective reality than the one we had to start with,but it would still be the only one we can behold. Therefore, we have no opportunity to violate the


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principle of Referential Monopoly in that case either.

Principle: Ontology of Other Minds1) Within one's subjective reality, other people's

minds exist as mental models representing realthings.

2) Beyond one's subjective reality, other people'sminds exist as perceptions of other realitieswhich are mutually exclusive with one's own,and therefore cannot be experienced except byfirst dispensing with one's own subjectivereality entirely.

Again, we are gettinginto inter-reality

descriptions here, andthe rules of discoursehave not yet been laidout. So beforeelaborating on thisfurther, which wesurely ought to do, weneed to await thesection on inter-realitydescriptions. Inaddition, the section onThe Infinite RegressProblem below will shed enough light on the subject to make a much more satisfactory solutionevident. For now, we will deem the above two points sufficient for answering the question of otherminds insofar as intra-reality descriptions are concerned. In short, we believe in other people's mindsas mental models, and this renders them fit for inclusion in our own subjective reality (assubjectivists), and since the subjectivist is one who believes in other subjective realities ascollections of real things, thereby permitting him/her to include them in what he/she has labeled"reality", other minds still constitute their own subjective reality. If we want to refer to the "actualmind" - not the mental model - we have to accept that the mind in question is its own reality, and willtherefore substitute itself in place of our subjective reality. This doesn't make the foreign reality anymore conceivable - or at least believable - but at least it offers a way to imagine actuallyaccomplishing a feat such as experiencing another's mind as it truly is.

As much as this may solve the problem of other minds - which is the problem of how the subjectivistavoids violating the principle of referential monopoly - it may be at the cost of incurring anotherproblem: we would like to go beyond the infinite regress of mental models. We would like to stop

building the chain of mental models, each one inadvertently referring to its successor, and startreferring to something outside our minds, something "real". This is an all together different problemfrom the one the current section concerns itself with - I call it the "infinite regress problem" - and wewill return to it in the fourth major section of this paper.

Denial


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The

Transparency of Experience

Freud

Defense

Mechanisms

A corollary of the principle of the transparency of experience , or perhaps just a different way of stating it, is that if we experience something - anything - then it constitutes a part of our subjectivereality. This is obvious when we assume that all experiences, if had, are felt at a conscious level. Butwhat about the unconscious? What about defense mechanisms like repression and denial? Well, if wedon't believe in the unconscious, then this question really doesn't stand in our way. But we ought toconsider it just in case it does exist - that way, we will be prepared with ways of describing theexperience. Freud tells us that the human mind protects the ego - theself that, at the conscious level, we feel we are - from psychologicalassaults (i.e. emotional trauma) by using defense mechanisms .Examples of defense mechanisms include denial, projection,sublimation, reaction formation, repression, and so on. They are meansby which we eradicate or invent beliefs and emotions other than by therationalist or empiricist method (i.e. by reason and sensoryexperiences). So, for example, if I am unbearably hurt by a recentbreak-up in a relationship, I may deny that the relationship is reallyover, telling myself that she is just upset and will return to me whenshe comes to her senses. Freud reassured us that the use of defensemechanisms was a normal thing and occurred all the time in healthyindividuals. This means that if they are fully functional, defensemechanisms should work quite effectively. One who engages in denialor reaction formation, for instance, should be completely oblivious tothe fact that they are doing so. No indication so much as a faint thought or slight emotion should signalthe workings of such defense mechanisms. But then there are cases in which the defense mechanismsdon't work completely as they should. In such cases, one does retain a slight sense of what feels likethoughts or emotions being repressed or disguised in the conscious mind. We may only experiencethem in a sort of semi-conscious state, but if we really pay close attention - listening to the voicescalling from the nether regions of our minds, so to speak - we can feel them. Seeing as how we canfeel them, even if only in a semi-conscious state, what ought we to say about their role in oursubjective realities?

Epistemic

Unconsciousness

Needless to say, we are not concerned, in this section, with any mental state or element that is fullyunconscious. That sort of phenomenon is not experienced at all, and therefore will play no part in oursubjective reality. We needn't say a thing about it. We did say something about it, nonetheless, in theAdvanced Theory when we defined epistemic unconsciousness . Mental states or elements that areunconscious might still go on in one's brain - and MM-Theory says they would - but unless we have

knowledge of the experience that goes along with such activity, we will have no epistemic awarenessof it. It will be epistemically unconscious to us. When something is epistemically unconscious, itplays no part in our subjective reality. In these cases, therefore, the question of how to describe suchexperiences is a non-issue. The question arises most relevantly when it comes to semi-consciousexperiences.

We will deal mainly with denial,sometimes using that wordinterchangeably with "repression". Whatwe say about it may apply equally well toother defense mechanisms, but it is denialthat seems to be most pertinent. In theBasic Theory , we split the human mind

into three basic categories - sensation,emotion, and cognition - and it is emotionand cognition that defense mechanismsseem to work best on or at all. This meansone can defend the ego against eitherthoughts or feelings. If the defensemechanism brought to the task issomething other than denial or repression,then something is done with the thought orfeeling other than simply blocking it out of the conscious mind. The only other thing there is to do with it would be to transform it into somethingelse. For example, one may undergo projection (the psychoanalytic kind, not the kind MM-Theory


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defines) in which case certain feelings or desires are projected onto a target other than what theynaturally would be projected onto. Someone who hates his boss, for instance, might project thathatred onto the family pet and kick it when he gets home after a bad day at the office. What the defensemechanism of projection does, in this case, is transforms the anger he has for his boss into anger forthe pet. Whatever the transformation and whatever the defense mechanism, the matter of how todescribe the reality it ends up creating is simple. We describe it in terms of what the emotion orthought is transformed into. When it comes to denial or repression, however, especially the kind thatdoesn't render the emotion or thought fully unconscious, such descriptions can't be made quite aseasily.

Mental Models

Projection

Let's make something clear to start. Whenever wethink about any mental state, ours or someone else's,we are bringing to mind a mental model of thatstate. That is to say, our thoughts about our mentalstates come in the form of a cognitive representationof those mental states. It is because of this that weare able to defy the nature of projection thatMM-Theory says all experiences undergo,reflecting on our own experiences as purely mentalentities. Of course, we are not really defyingprojection. We are simply recognizing arepresentation of these experiences as taking amental form. But as such, these are what occupy ourconscious mind when we are, as we would say,consciously aware of our mental states. To knowabout our mental states is to be able to think aboutthem, and to think about them is to bring mentalmodels of them into the spotlight of our consciousmind. Therefore, to be unconscious of our mental states is to block any such mental models out of ourminds.

Thisdoesn'tprecludeour

experiencing of such mental states. It seems it should since barring any mental model of them fromconsciousness would eliminate any possibility of epistemic awareness, and hence remove them fromour subjective reality. But consider this. Even though the mental model that represents them is barred,these mental states will still project themselves. And if they project themselves, they will beperceived as real things in the world. When this happens, we may permit mental models that representthese real things. Such mental models need not bear any resemblance whatsoever to the "mentalentities" that the real things were prior to projection, and so we can be fully conscious of them.

This may be the best way to describe forms of denial in which the experience denied is still present insome form other than "mental", and is therefore not totally unconscious. For example, suppose Samwas depressed, but he denied he felt this way and told himself and others that he was happy. What ishappening in his conscious mind is that a mental model of a happy mental state is brought in and


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attributed to himself. What is happening with his actual emotional state is that it is being projectedonto the world in some way. Sam might express this as "It's an awful, awful world we live in, but Idon't let it get me down. I'm still happy." That is, the misery he feels unconsciously, orsemi-consciously, is perceived as a state of the world, not his mind. Consider Judy who, for the thirdtime in a row, had a man she was eyeing stolen from her by her sister Jessica. But Judy doesn't hold agrudge - she's happy for her sister. She'll even tell us "I'm not upset. I mean, many people would be.After all, this is the third time in a row that she's stolen a man from me. And it's not like she didn'tknow I was attracted to him. I told her over and over again each time. And it's not like she even askedif it was okay. She just jumped right in between us. She has no sensitivity whatsoever! She just thinksfor herself, taking whatever she wants from whomever she wants, even her own sister! You know,sometimes I wonder if she does it just to spite me - like she isn't even interested in the guy! She reallycan be cruel and heartless!... But I'm not upset. I'm happy." Anybody listening to this rant will surelyget the impression that Judy is repressing dangerous levels of rage. This rage is projected onto hersister, painting a picture of someone who "has no sensitivity", "thinks of herself", "is cruel andheartless", and so on. That is, the emotion becomes attributes of the person instead of the mental stateJudy is feeling. Such attributes can easily come to mind as thoughts, but no thought depicting these asher own emotions will enter Judy's mind.

Let's suppose Sam was not only in denial, but an optimist. Therefore, he wouldn't say such cynicalthings about the world like how awful it is. If we're still talking about semi-conscious experiences,then the emotion he feels would still have to be projected in a form he perceives. Perhaps, then, Sammight say, "The world is a wonderful place, and I am so elated to be in it. But I must say, there aresome vicious people in the world who would turn it all on its head if they had their way. Thank goodness they are far and few between." Basically, Sam is projecting his misery onto the "viciouspeople" of the world instead of the world itself. Perhaps Sam would say "The world is usually awonderful place, and I am grateful for that, but today has really been one unholy day. It's just my badluck, I suppose." Instead of the world or anybody in it, Sam projects his misery onto the day he hasbeen having. He also seems to attribute it to his bad luck, which must mean he's been through someperilous events. Some of his misery would therefore be projected onto these events too. In any case,his misery, or any emotion, will be projected onto something or other. If it is being felt, but denied, itwill have to find something in the world to be projected on. He will recognize that instead of hisemotion, and insofar as his subjective reality is concerned, he would be right. If his emotion was sorepressed that it could not be projected onto anything, it would have to be completely unconscious, inwhich case it has no place in his subjective reality.

Now, is it possible that Sam or Judy could be wrong? After all, they say that they are happy, but thefact is they are miserable and just won't admit it. Well, we need to be careful with our choice of words. What do we mean by "miserable"? This word refers to an emotion, and the mental model thatgoes along with it is one of an emotional state of mind. We, as observers of Sam and Judy, do not feeltheir emotion, and so we rely on the mental models that we label with words like "miserable" or"angry" or "happy" to depict their emotional states. If it is true that they are miserable, it is onlybecause it is our mental models that are projected onto them. Sam and Judy, however, do not projectany such mental models onto themselves. For them, it is not true that they are miserable. Instead, thetruth is that Sam's world is a miserable place and Judy's sister is a miserably cruel person. In otherwords, what decides whether a person is miserable or excited or content or in any other emotionalstate is the mental model that is brought to bear on him/her. The emotion itself will not be experiencedas an emotion - that is, not as something mental - but as attributes or states of the world or somethingin the world. So if Sam's misery is projected onto the world and Judy's resentment is projected ontoher sister, there is no emotion left for them to be wrong about. That is, they can freely believe they arehappy without contradiction.

So there is no misery for Sam or Judy to be wrong about. But are they right about being happy? Thatis, can they legitimately tell themselves they are happy even though there is no happy mood in theirminds? This question can be answered by the very same token as that posed in the previousparagraph. That is, if we consider what it is that makes one happy, sad, afraid, elated, and so on, fromsomeone else's point of view, we see that it is a mental model again. That is, one must use a cognitiverepresentation of someone else's emotional state in order to be aware of it. And in the context of adependent model, this makes it so. The same is true for someone reflecting on their own emotionalstate. If they bring to mind a mental model of a mood which they take to be descriptive of what theytruly feel, then it doesn't matter if they actually are feeling it or not, this makes it so. We needn't worry


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about whether the actual emotion is present or not because, if it is, then the true form in which it existsis in its projected form, and this is not a "mental" form at all - it is a state or attribute of the world orsomething therein. The mental model justifies its own validity - there is no need to measure it upagainst the thing it represents.

Principle: The Projection of Semi-ConsciousEmotional States

In semi-conscious emotional states, such as denialor repression, the emotion is recognized only in itsprojected form - namely, as attributes of the worldor something therein - and not as somethingmental. A mental model of a different emotionalstate may stand in for the denied or repressed one,and the percipient, in believing in this mentalmodel, renders it valid and descriptive of his/hersubjective reality.

Now, before we leave this section with the impression that there are no such things as emotions inmental terms, let's put this very question on the table. We've said that emotions, in their truest form,are what they appear to be when projected - namely, attributes or states of the world or things therein.What MM-Theory does not say is that these things are by no means mental. They indeed are, as theyfeel like they are, and as they always have been. But when we say of Sam's or Judy's denial of theiremotional state that there is no such emotion for them to be wrong about, we only mean this in thecontext in which their mental models make sense - that is, the emotional states that their mentalmodels would depict, whether permitted into consciousness or denied, aren't quite accurate. We'vebeen over this before, and we know that mental models of any mental state or element are alwaysgoing to be off somewhat, and we know why - because mind, in its true form, is something that mentalmodels can't capture. What MM-Theory says about emotions, and other mental states, is that they aresomething - a "substance" for lack of a better word - that are both perception and the thing perceived,both real and mental. To deny feeling an emotion, in the case of the semi-conscious experience, is notto deny the existence of the emotion as it truly is, but to deny the mental model of it. SinceMM-Theory does this anyway - that is, with respect to the conventional model of mental things - wesay that Sam and Judy don't possess such mental entities as these. They possess something slightlydifferent, something that is better described as what it projects itself to be. We continue to call this anemotion, and we insist that emotions still feel exactly as they always have, but that when we think about them, we'll never really hit the nail squarely on the head.

Truth, Fact, And The Physical World

Visualization vs.

Conceptualization

Another topic that was covered in The Inconceivability of Consciousness was the difference betweenvisualization and conceptualization . We title this section "Truth, Fact, And The Physical World"because it is the same difference that exists between truth or fact and the world of physical objects.We will argue, in this section, that the best intra-reality descriptions of visualization are akin to thosewe would give our sensory experiences, and thus the world of physical objects, and the best of conceptualization are truths or facts. Obviously, there are still some distinctions that have to be madebetween sensory experiences and the sort of visualization that goes on mentally, and we will beprimarily concerned with these. Although we will be talking primarily about visualization, we notenow that what we say applies equally to all sensations and their mentally simulated counterparts. Wewill be less concerned with the distinctions between conceptualization and truth or fact (foremostbecause we don't recognize any), but we will be centrally concerned with the distinction betweentruth and fact and the manner in which we posit truths and facts in the outer world. More specifically,we will point out the difference between something being true and something being "out there".


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Essence of

Realness

Projection

What's the difference between our sensory experiences and the type of visualization that goes on inour heads? Three key differences come to mind. 1) Sensory experiences are a lot more vivid thanvisualization. Sensory experiences are so opaque that there's no mistaking them when they are present.It can take effort, on the other hand, to produce a clear picture of a mental image as we often needsilence and closed eyelids. 2) We have very little control over what we sense whereas we have fullcontrol over what we visualize. When I look at a red balloon, for example, the only color I can seeupon it is red. I cannot choose to see it as yellow or blue. If I was visualizing this balloon, however, Icould switch from red to yellow to blue to green or whatever color I like. 3) We experience thesensory world as existing in an outer spatial medium whereas the things we visualize are experiencedin an inner mental world. In the Basic Theory , we even went so far as to say that visualization (orfantasy) was the basis upon which we recognize our own minds. What we meant by this is that tovisualize something is to simulate sensory experiences in a mental medium that we know to beimaginary. We also noted that, in this context, the mental doesn't lack the essence of realness , butlacks the form of realness that actual sensory experiences assume. That is, when we visualizesomething, we experience it as being not in the outer world of physical objects. Rather, our mindsseem to have evolved to produce this experience of "mental things" which contrast with the outerworld. They feel unreal in the sense that they contrast so starkly with the vivid outer world of physical objects that we can't make go away (unlike visualization). But they do feel real in the sensethat, when we have them, we know they are there in our minds. The latter is the proper way of describing their projected form vis-à-vis intra-reality descriptions. They are the foundation uponwhich all our mind-talk rests - at least, mind-talk according to the conventional notion of "mind".

That being said, we can use our mental imagery to envision what we believe to actually exist in thephysical world. For example, I am currently sitting in my living room, which is one floor directlyabove my garage. In my garage is my car. I know that my caris directly below me right now, and if I look down, I canvisualize my car through the floor. I superimpose, in a mannerof speaking, my visualized car over top my actual car (this isespecially true if I can visualize in 3D - peering right passedmy living room floor). The sense I get from this exercise is alittle more than seeing merely an unreal mental image. Thesense I get is that what I am visualizing is actually there. Sothe questions that arise are: does this call for a differentintra-reality description? And is this or is this not a different

kind of experience? Well, insofar as visualization stands, wecan say this most certainly is not a different kind of experience. We are using the same mental faculty to envisionthings like my car as we do to envision things like a flyingrhinoceros in a pink too-too. The difference in the case of mycar is that it is accompanied by an additional experience - knowledge. More specific ally, knowledgethat what I'm visualizing is actually there. I know that my car is in my garage exactly as I'm picturing itin the exact spot where I'm picturing it. If I wanted to imagine that a chimpanzee was sitting in thedriver's seat ready to take it out for a spin, I could do this too, and it would appear just as vividly asthe image of my car. But it would not leave me with the same impression because, unlike my car, Iknow there to be no chimpanzee. I'd have to concede that this is purely a piece of fiction, and shouldbe described just as any other unfounded visualization I spin. So what makes the visualization of things like my car - that is, things which really do exist in the form we visualize them - feel more real

than unreal is not to be found in the experience of visualization itself. It is to be found in theaccompanying knowledge that what I'm visualizing is an accurate depiction of what ac tually exists.

Projection

So when we consider knowledge apart from visualization, we enter into the domain of facts andtruths. Visualization always helps by providing an experience similar to sensation so we may imaginewhat it would be like to actually sense the thing we know about. Nevertheless, visualization alone isexperienced as nothing more than a mental simulation. And without it, knowledge alone is

experienced as nothing more than fact or truth. If Ichoose not to visualize my car, or at least ignore thevisualization, I still take it to be a fact that it is inmy garage. Now when we consider facts and truthsapart from the world of physical objects that our


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senses perceive and our visualizations simulate, weenter into a domain of reality that is quite detachedand unlike that of physical objects. We might call itthe world of pure abstraction or metaphysics.Materialists and other non-Platonists recoil at thethought of regarding such things as a domain of reality - they prefer the description of the unreal asthese are no more than fabrications of our intellect.There is some truth to this - namely, that they are notreal as objects in the physical domain are real - butwe as subjectivists regard them as having the samepower of projection as any other experience. Werecognize that they maintain the impression of independence from the observer just as any other

real thing - that is, facts are facts and truths are truths whether we believe them or not, are informed of them or not, or understand them or not. I regard my car's existence in my garage as a fact, for example,even if I had mistakenly assumed my wife had taken it out to go shopping. It is this independence fromperception, or at least the impression of such, that measures facts and truths up with all other realthings and all other domains of reality.

The

Transparency of

Experience

There may be some difficulty in seeing the essence of facts and truths in this way. It can be difficult totear one's mind away from the visualizations that persistently come with our comprehension of factsand truths - visualizations that, quite relentlessly, seem to place the fact or truth in the domain of physical objects. When I talk about the fact that my car is in my garage, for example, I have troubledismissing the impression I get from this experience - the impression that what I'm perceiving isactually there in my garage as all the physical objects around me are here in this room (this is a goodexample of where the principle of the transparency of experience comes in handy - the difficulty Iam having is due to my attempt to visualize a fact without paying attention to the visual aspect of it).To get around this problem, let's consider something more abstract. Consider the following truth: If Ais greater than B, and B is greater than C, A must be greater than C. Anyone who has even a scintillaof logical sense will see that this is a true statement, and istherefore a truth. Furthermore, due to its abstraction, we arenot fooled by any visual image that might come to mind whenwe think it. There surely might be some - I imagine the lettersA, B, and C in white bold font before a red background with

the greater than symbol between them. I don't know why thisparticular imagery pops up - the mind is funny that way - butthat's what I see. Others may imagine something different likethe letter A being bigger than the letter B that in turn wouldbe bigger than the letter C. Whatever the image, we knowvery well that there are no such entities anywhere in thephysical world. A's, B's, and C's don't physically exist bynature. Nonetheless, we cannot deny that A being greater thanC is a logical consequence of its being greater than B and B'sbeing greater than C. We understand this to be true on its own- that is, independently of our knowing it. It is much easier tosee the abstract essence of truth and fact with this example because it is so much more obvious thatwe ought to ignore the visual features that come with it. When we do so, we clearly see what it means

for something to be true (or factual). It is an abstraction whose sole domain of existence must beseparate from the physical domain.

With this perspective in mind, we come to realize that truth and fact cannot exist except by way of conceptualization. We've argued more than once that conceptualization transcends the physicalaspects of visualization, and so it must be responsible for our grasping of abstract truths like A beinggreater than C. We've been attributing this to knowledge, however, and so it stands to ask howknowledge and conceptualization differ. There is a subtle difference. Knowledge (or belief) iscomposed of concepts. Take, for example, the knowledge that the world is round. That knowledgemakes use of the concepts "world" and "roundness". So long as we understand what the world is, andwhat its being round means, we have a firm grasp of those concepts. It's a small difference betweenthe grasping of these concepts and the belief/knowledge that the world is round - that difference being


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that we have this knowledge when we recognize the relation between the concepts "world" and"roundness" as holding true of reality (and that relation being denoted by "is" in the statement "theworld is round"). So whereas concepts project as essences (as explained earlier), belief/knowledgeprojects as truth/fact about those essences, and insofar as those essences can be attributed to things inthe outer world, the latter truths/facts are about those things.

Yet, there is always a way of translating the conception of something into knowledge. That is to say,even if we don't take a stance on the truth or falsehood of a statement whose meaning we can easilyconceive, we can always say that we know what the statement means. To conceive of it is to know itsmeaning. But this sort of knowledge bears a different relation to the conception in question than theknowledge of its truth or falsehood. Take the statement "the world is round" again. The knowledge of what this statement means is a stance being taken on the truth or falsehood of the slightly differentstatement "'the world is round' means that the world is spherically shaped." If we know what a roundworld is, we would deem this statement true. If we didn't know what a round world is, we wouldn'tknow what stance to take. In other words, knowing what a statement means is not the same as knowingwhether that statement is true or false. The relation between knowing what a statement means andwhether it is true or false is the same relation as between conceptualization and knowledge of thatconceptualization's truth or falsehood.

TheCosmological

Arguments for

God's Existence

When we consider the realm of the purely abstract - namely, the domain of truths and facts - we notonly see that they exist there, but we see that there is a flurry of interplay between them. We typicallycall this "logic" - that is, when we bring to mind two or more facts or truths, there is a tendency forthem to logically entail another fact or truth. The classic example of the Socrates syllogism is a casein point: fact/truth 1: All men are mortal; fact/truth 2: Socrates is a man; fact/truth 3: Socrates ismortal. This is basic logic. This may seem trivial, but it is important to note. It would not beuncommon for one to mistakenly describe his/her beliefs as something he/she takes to be "out there" inthe same sense as physical objects are out there. For example, if one believed in God, he/she mightdescribe reality as containing God either physically or transcendentally. But really, if he/she stood

back and thought about the basis for this belief,he/she might realize it is the logic upon whichhe/she believes in God that he/she perceives asreal, not the reification of God Himself. That is,supposing for example that one took thecosmological argument for God's existence to bereason enough to believe. This argument states that

there has to be a first cause for there to be anythingat all - that is, you can't have a universe unless therewas an initial, and divine, cause to bring it about,and this we can call "God". Now, without being toocritical about the fortitude of this argument, we cansay that this person's belief in God is grounded inthis argument, and therefore is a logical conclusionhe/she draws from it. And when it comes to logical

conclusions, like Socrates being mortal, what we experience to be independent of our awareness isthe logic of the argument itself, not the object, if any, that is deduced in the conclusion. That is, whatseems to exist on its own, for a theist, is first and foremost that God's existence logically follows fromarguments like the cosmological one. God Himself existing on His own is secondary. We shouldalways keep this in mind, stepping back once in a while, and ask ourselves what we are really

perceiving when it comes to beliefs - and hence what we take to be true and factual - the object of thebelief or the logic that underlies it?

Determinant

To make the distinction between these two answers even more evident, let's consider an argumentwhose logic is undeniably valid, but whose content is utterly absurd. Premise 1: All grass is green;Premise 2: All men are grass; Conclusion: All men are green (we saw this argument before - in TheBasic Theory ). The very suggestion that all men are grass is absolutely absurd, I'm sure the readerwill agree, but if we considered just such a case in which it were true, then all men would have to begreen. The logic holds without question. It holds even in the face of completely absurd premises. Butunless one is mad, there is no way for this argument to create such a determinant as green men inone's reality. Nevertheless, one should see that the logical structure of this argument is indeed valid.One should see that it is valid independently of his/her perception of such . That is, one should see it


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as being a valid argument regardless of whether anybody was even conscious to behold its validity.So here we have an excellent example. Green men are not projected, but the logic of the argument is.This demonstrates the difference between perceiving a belief as a consequence of logic andperceiving it as a "thing" in some form - physical or metaphysical - in the outer world.

Principle: The Projection of TruthThere are two ways in which belief and knowledgecan be projected:

1) As a "thing" in the external world: the objectof the belief or knowledge, such as God, isperceived to have some physical ornon-physical form in the world "out there".

2) As a logical necessity: the argument supportingthe belief or knowledge, such as thecosmological one, is perceived to hold

unconditionally and independently.

Of course, after all is said and done at the level of pure logic, we usually bring the conclusion back into more concrete realms. Even though a theist might have a rational argument sustaining his/herbelief, he/she will still take that extra step and posit God to be a thing in reality. This is notnecessarily a fallacy or a trick of ill conceived mental models (although this could be the case). Inmany cases, this is simply our thought processes doing what they were designed to do. For example,when trying to figure out what we can afford to buy with the amount of money we have, wetemporarily withdraw from the concrete world and focus on mathematical calculations. Thesecalculations involve logic - albeit applied to numbers instead of propositions - and they lead to aconclusion - namely, what we can afford to buy - that we have every reason to perceive as applying tothe concrete world. The way this works, obviously, is that whatever the ontological status of thepremises, this status is carried through to the conclusion. In the example above, the premises are 1)we have X amount of dollars, and 2) the goods cost $A, $B, $C... Since these premises are aboutmoney and goods - two tangible things - then anything we conclude about them, like what we canafford, is also about tangible things. If we consider the cosmological argument, the premises are 1) allthings that exist must have either a physical or a transcendental cause, and 2) the universe exists.When we conclude that the universe must have had a first cause, and we label it "God", thisconclusion implies that God is either physical or transcendental. Either way, He exists "out there".Because the conclusion depicts God in this way, we are inevitably led to perceive God to have thiskind of ontological status - we perceive Him as "out there".

It is nonetheless important to note that the ontological status of the object the conclusion refers tocomes after the logic that establishes that conclusion. That is, we must realize, in describing ourbeliefs and how they depict reality, when to describe them as logical necessities and when todescribe them as physical or metaphysical objects with an existence akin to physical objects.Furthermore, what we are arguing here is that the logical necessity of beliefs takes primacy over theirreification. That is, they must be logically deduced before their existence in an outer world, whateverform that might take, can be posited. This point will be brought up again in the fourth major sectionbelow . It will be necessary to make this distinction in order to resolve a problem that we willaddress in that section. But before we deal with that, let's take a look at a few inter-realitydescriptions.

Inter-Reality Descriptions


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Meaning

The descriptive approach we are using is very powerful when it comes to dependent models. Itallows one to describe what he/she experiences reality to be as a means of explaining or knowingwhat reality actually is. In fact, one way to understand MM-Theory is to realize that it ultimately leadsto the conclusion that reality is, at base, nothing but pure description. What do we mean by this? Let'sreview what the theory says about the meaning inherent in our experiences. It says that it is theultimate basis upon which existence rests, and for anything that exists, what it is dependent on is theessential qualitative character of the experience of it. The theory goes on to say that this essentialquality, in virtue of being experienced through-and-through, needs no reductive account in order to beexplained. That is, all that is needed to account for its existence is there in the experience - there isnothing "behind the scenes", so to speak, upholding its existence.

This is markedly unlike physical phenomena. Physical phenomena may be perceived, but what givesthem the form we see them in - that is, what sustains their existence in the form they take - is fully outof sight. The atoms that make up a spoon, for example, are not seen and cannot be seen by the nakedeye, unlike the spoon itself. We must go about discovering the atoms by some means (usually, thescientific method), and even then we can only infer their existence. In other words, in order for us tounderstand the structure and essential nature of the spoon, and thus what makes it the spoon weperceive it to be, we need to find or invent an explanation.

But experiences seem to explain themselves - they reveal their own basis for existence - and what wefind when we investigate this basis, MM-Theory tells us, is that it all comes down to meaning. Notonly that, but we find that meaning gives way to further meaning - it is a dynamic process - and so itcould be said that this is a process of description. That is to say, experience, or meaning, describesitself in an ongoing process of unfolding and ever more elaborate descriptions.

Of course, we are creatures of language, andlanguage is very limited. How does one describewhat the sight of blue is to a colorblind person?How does one describe the experience of sound tosomeone who is deaf from birth? How do wedescribe what love feels like? How do we describefear? The great majority of experiences cannot bereduced to a set of easily translatable properties.But if one could replicate a given experience insomeone else's mind with perfect precision, we

could say that he/she is describing the experience tothis person. If this were possible, why should it beany less of a description? The act of describing isnot limited to language. Any way at all that onefinds to expose another to the full and exact set of properties, structure, and essence of something,ensuring that such exposure results in the fullestapprehension of the thing so exposed, is a validform of description. This is what our senses and our minds do for us - they describe reality to us.

Thinking of it this way, we might say thatreality is, at base, pure description. Wedon't mean to say that it is the weaving of

fantasy - these very descriptions are alsothe basis for an authentic ontology, but itis the description that is primary, and onlyonce described (to a percipient in the formof an experience) does it take root as areal thing. Percipients make reality out of descriptions - they either receive them or

invent them in their own minds. There is no better way to articulate a dependent model than this.Dependent models say that experiences and perceptions, in virtue of describing a certainconfiguration of reality, will be reality for the percipient receiving that description. Independentmodels, on the other hand, say the opposite: there must be an ontology first, and only then can we goahead with a description of it.


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If reality is descriptive at base, this makes a whole slew of analogies available for a more lucidunderstanding. For example, we could say that reality is like a story. A story describes a world withcharacters and events different from the real world. It describes an alternate reality. Of course, it doesnot come across as the experience or perception of that reality, so it obviously falls short of establishan ontology for itself. When we read or listen to a story, we know full well that it is pure fantasy, andso the only real thing we could possibly perceive is that it is being told or that it has been written.Suppose, however, that we told the story to a group of children, and with their imaginations as freeand fertile as they typically are, we had them believe that the story was all true. It may be chock fullof pixies, unicorns, ogres, and other mythical creatures, the likes of which no adult would believe in,but if we are convincing enough, the children just may buy into it. If they do, then by the standards of adependent model, we have created a reality for them by the power of description.

We might say the same thing of movies. Naturally, we don't believe what we see on the big screen,but we could suppose we found someone who had been living in a cave all his life, and therefore isutterly unaccustomed to the artifacts of civilized life such as movies. If we brought him to the movieswithout preparing him for what he was about to see, he might be taken to believe that the images onthe screen were real things and real events. They would constitute a genuine part of reality for him.

These examples show two things: 1) the power of description to create reality (given a dependentmodel, of course), and 2) that even when they don't create reality, as in the case of adults listening to afairy tale, they still describe a reality - an alternate one. The latter point brings to mind anotheranalogy - the idea of blue prints. That is, when a description of reality fails to create reality for us,such as the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic, we might still think of this description as the "blueprints" for a reality. In architecture, blue prints are merely a model or a design for what will laterbecome a real building. Before this, the building does not exist, but the blue prints allow us to foreseeeverything that the building will be. In fact, it is possible that the building will never be built, yet theblue prints still describe the concept of it - they describe itsdimensions, its rooms, its plumbing, its electricalinfrastructure, and so on. In general, they define what thebuild is. So if one was to say, "The Royal View Estatesbuilding is 12 stories high" - supposing that's what we namedit - he/she could actually be right or wrong - even if thebuilding doesn't exist . There is already a description laiddown which serves as the very definition of what the Royal

View Estates building is - and thus, it is determined preciselyhow many stories it has. In fact, there could be more than onedesign. We could say that, according to design A, RoyalView Estates has 12 stories, but according to design B, it hasonly 10. It is exactly the same way for different perceptionsof reality. Whether it actually is reality or not, these perceptions are descriptions that define a realityfor which statements about it can be right or wrong.

Principle: The Design AnalogyOur perceptions and experiences of reality arelike a design in that they describe and define what

reality is.

All subjective realities are designs. Like stories, we don't have to believe they're real (althoughMM-Theory says they are), only that they are the only thing we've got. Thus, when we refer to reality,we are always referring to the design we, in part, are given, and in part, create. The sensorycomponent is the part we're given - it comes pre-built, so to speak - but it comes in such a way that itleaves much to the imagination. That is to say, it comes incomplete. We are given the material objectsof the physical world, but these come with a sense that we are not seeing everything, that there mustbe more - this "more" isn't necessarily non-physical, but nothing in our experience tells us this -hence, the tendency for the human imagination to entertain the metaphysical. The function of ourcognitive faculties is to fill in the rest - to complete the design. For this, we need to define the


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boundaries of reality - we need to decide what is real and what isn't, what can be real and what can't.Of course, we have a choice. We can choose, as many do, to remain agnostic about what more there isto reality, or whether its boundaries can be so easily defined. When we do decide to define theboundaries, we get reality designs such as materialism - which says that the "more" that's out there is

just more material stuff. We get reality designs such as the western religions - which say that the"more" consists, not only of more material stuff, but a metaphysical extension to existence that we call"Heaven" and "Hell" - but nothing more than this. The important points to take from this are, first, thatthe concept "reality" - of which we spoke near the end of the Introduction to this paper - is attributed,not only to the world of sensation (the part of the design that is given), but to the whole completeddesign, the creation for which we are partly responsible, and second, that it can rightly be called adesign in virtue of its being, at base, pure description.

Inter-Reality

Descriptions

The design analogy will be of the utmost importance for understanding inter-reality descriptions . Allsubjective realities are to be understood as "designs" for reality. Therefore, when we talk about agiven subjective reality being a reality, we mean a design - that is, a potential form reality could take- that the subject takes to be the correct one. This applies no less to our own model of reality -namely, the model depicted by MM-Theory - as we, throughout this entire website, are alsodescribing reality. Yet these descriptions are more than just "blue prints" but the actual edifice itself.That is to say, our experiences don't only describe a design for reality, they tell us this is reality.When we get descriptions of this sort - that is, descriptions telling us what's actually real - these arecalled "definitions". That is, when our experiences describe reality to us, they define reality. It is bydefining reality that these descriptions also take an ontological status. This still works with the designanalogy - a design for a building also serves to define the building. Better yet, we could also say thatthe building itself is its own design. Why should a design be ink on paper? Why could it not be brick,mortar, and other such building materials? What we are saying is that, by the standards of a dependentmodel, its being a design (which is a description) is more fundamental than its being a building(which is an ontology). There's no reason it can't be both at the same time. But therein lies the basketsfull of paradoxes. How can more than one design, especially ones that are mutually exclusive, both bereality at the same time? How can we claim our design for reality to be the correct one while allothers are wrong if they all define reality and thereby earn, each on its own terms, a full ontology?This is the section where the most pressing of paradoxes, especially the one just pointed out, are dealtwith - and we will do it with the design analogy.

When we go with one design of reality over another - that is, when we consider one chamber to bereality over another - we are not doing this haphazardly. We are doing this because we are

considering how one person in one chamber describes reality. Accepting that description, we thendraw inferences concerning what else must be said about reality - that everything in the chamber is areal thing and nothing outside the chamber exists. This is a perfect example of what we meant in theintroduction to this paper - that is, when we said that we would be more concerned about thedescriptive elements of our model than the explanatory ones. We are not interested, for the moment, inwhy the person perceives reality to be the chamber he/she finds him/herself in. Concerning the personwhose reality we are describing, we assume it is an independent model he/she holds, and thereforethe description warrants, first and foremost, that we treat everything outside the chamber asnon-existent. We then proceed to describe his/her reality based on the contents within the chamber.

That much should be clear by now. What if, however, we were to assume a dependent model of reality? First of all , we would have to designate the term "reality" to all chambers and everythingbetween. We saw at the end of the section Caves, Bubbles, and Chambers how this might yield

problems when it comes to statements of a universal sort, such as "There are no other people." Wecan take the liberty of assigning the term "reality" to whatever we want, but we cannot take the libertyof changing the meaning of these statements. Therefore, the statement "there are no other people" mustmaintain the same meaning independently of whether it's one chamber or the whole set of chambersand everything between them. When we broaden the label "reality" to all chambers and everythingbetween them, this statement simply becomes wrong.

What we will do in this section is establish a set of rules for understanding the meaning statementstake in a dependent model. They will help us resolve the above problem plus many others. Theserules will also be useful as a lingual tool - that is, they should be thought of by those subscribing toany subjectivist theory as a guide for how to speak coherently in the context of their dependent model.In other words, if these rules are followed, we should be able to avoid expressing what would


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otherwise come off as paradoxical. In fact, we will see that some of these rules are actually alreadyapplied by objectivists, but unknowingly. The only difference with dependent models is that they needto be made explicit, and this is not something we are used to.

As an example of these rules, we might consider the one already mentioned above - namely, the ruleabout not positing more than one coexisting reality at the same time. We posit this rule because onecould never consistently describe reality as containing more than one version of itself. Reality shouldbe understood to mean all that exists, and so nothing outside reality can exist, nor can anything withinreality that doesn't exhaust the entirety of reality itself be reality in full. This rule does not concern somuch what reality actual is, but how to be consistent in treating a chosen set of real things as reality.So an independent model, by definition, never allows for more than one reality regardless of what itconsists of, whereas a dependent model posits no more than one "grand" reality and any "sub-reality"therein is not a genuine reality but a collection of real things. Therefore, the first rule we willformally define is this one.

Rule: Only One Reality1) Never speak of reality as coexisting with any

other reality at the same time.

2) Corollary: given a reality R, never speak of "sub-realities" in R as they cannot be genuinerealities. Instead, speak of them as sets of realthings.

The Relativity of RealityIf we adopt a dependent model, then there is the potential for ambiguity. For example, if I say "Thereare unicorns", you, as a subjectivist, are likely to reply "In whose reality?" You would be right to ask this. This question should be asked any time statements of the form "There is X" or "Event Yhappened" or "Smith likes Z" (and so on) are uttered without specifying for which reality they holdtrue. Alternately, we could remember to make this specification clear every time we utter suchstatements. If we did that, the above statements would become "There is X in my reality", "Event Yhappened in the world we believe in", and "Smith likes Z in the universe depicted by such-and-suchstory". In other words, we need to learn to speak relativisticly about reality. A general formula forspeaking relativisticly could be expressed as "X relative to reality R" where X is an arbitrarystatement and R is the reality for which X is true. So if X were "the world is carried on the back of agiant elephant standing on an enormous tortoise" then a good candidate for R would be "the reality of ancient Hindu myth". We shall call this extension of statements - that is, the appendage "relative toreality R" - a "reality qualifier".

Definition: Reality Qualifier

A phrase appended to any statement X such thatthe reality for which X holds true is specified.

Rule: Use Reality QualifiersFor any statement X, one should always append areality qualifier R.


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Note that this rule does not imply that we are positing the coexistence of several realities. Rather, itimplies that what we are considering reality to be can be ambiguous. It is not clear which design weare dealing with. This rule clears up this ambiguity. If we didn't apply this rule, the ambiguity wouldrender the statement meaningless, at least in the context of a dependent model. It would be akin to

stating how fast your new Mustang goes by saying "It goes 300 km!" Anyone listening to this willalmost certainly ask "300 km per what? Hour? Minute? Day?" Without this crucial information, thestatement "It goes 300 km" is incomplete and therefore meaningless. By exactly the same token,statements made without a reality qualifier, in the context of a dependent model, are incomplete andmeaningless.

I'm sure this rule fills the reader with a sense of intolerable burden. We're sure to foul up on this ruleat least a few times. Do we really expect adherence to this rule for every single statement we ever make ? Lucky for us, the answer is no. For the most part, we can assume a "default" reality. That is,we can assume that when I utter a statement such as "It's raining today" I really mean "It's rainingtoday relative to the reality I'm assuming we share." The "reality I'm assuming we share" is almostalways the default reality we all implicitly refer to for every statement we make. We do not need tomake it explicit. The common, immediate, physical, vivid, here-and-now, every day world we areconstantly engaged in ever day of our lives and always taking for granted, is, for all intents andpurposes, the default reality that we implicitly refer to with every statement we make. So the rule isquite readily and habitually followed, however implicitly that might be.

The Design

Analogy

Subjective

Realities

Of course, if we bring in the chamber model, it might be hard to argue that we ever refer to the same

reality. If we each reside in separate chambers, and each chamber is a personal reality that none of uscan refer beyond, then we are always referring to different realities. This is where the design analogycomes in handy. Although we may all be living in different subjective realities , insofar as they haveroughly the same in content, they are the same design. It would be much like having multiple copies of the same design for a building. Each person may have a different sheet of paper in front of him/her,but insofar as they are copies, they are the same design. Of course, not everything about our subjectiverealities is the same. Our beliefs in particular differ greatly. But so long as these differences areirrelevant to the statement in question, we may still talk as if we are referring to the same designelements - that is, those components of our realities we share in common. Take the theist and theatheist, for example. If the theist says, "It's raining outside", he/she may be referring to his/her ownreality (his/her own chamber) while the atheist, in hearing this statement, assumes the reference is tohis/her own reality. Nevertheless, it is, in all likelihood, raining in both realities. Therefore, the factthat it's raining outside is a common design element that is shared by both designs and can be treated

as a single element. Of course, theological statements could be made - such as "There is a God" or"There is no God" - in which case it would matter which reality is being referenced. But in this case,each interlocutor, noticing the disagreement, should recognize this as the cue to start specifying areality (although it might take subjectivist eavesdroppers to advise them in this regard ).

The use of an implicit default reality brings to light a very interesting intimation. It suggests thateveryone, subjectivist or not, always makes use of implicit reality qualifiers of a default kind. Whowould argue with the proposition that a true statement X necessarily entails that X is true in reality ? If you, as an objectivist, tell me "I'm going to the Christmas party", and I asked "Do you mean to say theparty in reality?", you would reply "Well... yes... in reality." You might wonder if I forgot to take mymeds that day, but you certainly wouldn't say "no". The difference, then, between a subjectivist and anobjectivist is that the latter, in assuming one ultimate and independent reality, has no use for any


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reality qualifier save the default one. The subjectivist, on the other hand, finds use in a wide varietyof reality qualifiers. Because the objectivist has no use for anything other than the default realityqualifier, the qualifier is always implicit, and therefore may never be taken into consideration. Thatis, he/she not only uses it implicitly, but unconsciously - he/she never thinks of it. When one is anobjectivist, why would there ever be a need to? There can only be one reality for which statementshold true, and thus the use of reality qualifiers is not only redundant, but it can be thrown out of thevocabulary all together. Once you become a subjectivist, however, the reality qualifier needs to bepulled out from the vocabulary waste bin, and put back into practice. It now matters which realitystatements apply to.

Acknowledgements

We already caught a glimpse of this in the Advanced Theory when we briefly looked at howacknowledgements eventually lead to our perception of "the world". This gives us the concept"reality" which gets attributed, not only to those experiences being acknowledged, but to anything thattranspires afterwards within the cognitive database. The latter is nothing but our thoughts and beliefs -that is, anything with propositional content. What we are saying here is more or less the same thing -that any statement we make, which is an expression of our beliefs, pertains to whatever we haveattributed our concept "reality" to. The matter of this attribution is so fundamental and integral to ourpsychology that no belief could be held without it pertaining to reality as we conceive it. To put thisanother way, taking any arbitrary belief X from any human mind and translating it into words wouldyield "X is true of reality". That is to say, no belief can possibly be held without an implicit realityqualifier. This reality qualifier is innate and indispensable to our psychology.

What we also get, with the subjectivist view, are personal realities such that we can say, "X exists inmy reality, but not your reality." Can we say of this that it is also implicit in the context of independent models? That is, if I asked "Do you mean to say that you're going to the party in your reality?", would you still say "yes, in my reality", or would you be more inclined to say "No, not inmy reality, just in reality. What do you even mean by 'my' reality?" In other words, does putting thereality qualifier in a possessive tense actually change the meaning of the statement?

Well, first of all, the use of possessive terms is not meant to convey ownership. No one owns areality. Rather, it is used as one means, out of many, to specify a reality. The important thing is tomake clear which reality statements apply to. If we wanted to avoid the use of possessive terms, wecould say " this reality" or "the reality I perceive to exist". If we use these phrases, it would se rve thesame function, unlike if ownership had to be emphasized.

Secondly, even an independent model can make sense out of phrases like "my reality" or "yourreality". It is really no different than saying "my country" or "our planet". As we said, the point is notto emphasize ownership - no one owns their country or planet - but we can still call it "ours" in order

to make reference to it. It serves to singleit out from all other referents of its kind -that is, we can say "our country", forexample, as a means of singling it out fromall other countries, thereby making it clearwhich country is being specified. Thesame way of talking can be used to referto reality - even if there is only one and itexists independently of perception andexperience. That is, if we can say things

like, "Candy is sweet in reality" then wecan say "Candy is sweet in our reality".Both phrases explicitly specify the oneindependent reality that objectivistsbelieve in - the latter specifies it withpossessive terminology whereas theformer specifies it without. So eventhough my question to you about attending

the Christmas party in your reality may have confused you, it is only due to the fact that I inadvertentlyconveyed a notion of either ownership or that "your" reality is somehow different from the reality.But if you understand that I only meant to specify its occurring in the one independent reality that weall share and believe in, then you see that my choice of possessive wording makes no difference - it


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can be interpreted in exactly the same way as my non-possessive wording.

Now that we see the equivalence in meaning between statements like "X is real" and "X is real in myreality", we should reconsider a couple problems we left behind earlier in this pape r. One concerneda person in a given chamber who believes that "no other people exist". We left off asking whether itmade sense to equate this statement with the statement "No other people exist in my reality." We nowsee that the latter statement only makes the reality qualifier explicit whereas the former leaves itimplicit. That is, because both statements are made in reference to what the person takes to be reality,the former statement really does mean the same thing as the latter statement. The difference is not oneof meaning, but of different ways of speaking. More specifically, the person, in taking an objectivistposition, finds no use for the reality qualifier and so doesn't express it. But in the end, the person doesmean "in his/her reality". The other problem we left behind earlier concerned the conflictingexplanations for the moon's definite position despite the fact that one fails to know or see what it is.As we pointed out, the objectivist might appeal to Kepler's laws of motion and the independentexistence of the physical object we call "the moon". The subjectivist, on the other hand, might appealto MM-Theory and account for the moon's definite position in terms of the non-human experiencescorresponding to the moon-Earth system. Both explanations are true, of course, in the context of theirown realities. The objectivist's explanation is true of his/her reality . The subjectivist's is true of his/her reality . To say that either one is true without a reality qualifier is, according to a dependentmodel of reality, incomplete and meaningless.

Referential

Monopoly

Mental Models

We can also show theequivalence betweenthis rule and theprinciple of ReferentialMonopoly . In thecontext of anindependent model, allstatements are madewith an implicit realityqualifier. This meansthat no statement, if thought to be true, canbe made in reference to

anything beyond the one and only independent reality. Since this one and only independent realityconstitutes the subjective reality of its believer, no reference can be made by this believer beyondhis/her subjective reality. In the context of a dependent model, on the other hand, the reality qualifiershould be made explicit unless a default reality can be assumed. In either case, these realities are notto be taken as the reality but as collections of real things. For the subjectivist, they are represented inhis/her subjective reality in the form of mental models (or chambers if you like) that constitute realthings. If any one of them is used as the reality qualifier, then anything being referred to therein is stillwithin the boundaries of the subjectivist's reality. If the reality qualifier is the subjectivist's ownreality (i.e. the entire set of "sub-realities") then the argument is the same as for the independentmodel. That is, he/she is referring to something within his/her own subjective reality and cannot referbeyond it.

Only One Reality

Rule

Given the two rules delineated thus far, we can handle some typical objections a believer in the

independent model might have in store. For instance, suppose someone said, "I don't believe inmultiple realities"? Let's put aside the technicalities of whether something is real ity proper or acollection of real things. In other words, let's interpret this statement as a disbelief in what thechamber model symbolizes. We have to grant him/her the truth of this statement, for if he/she reallybelieves it, then, according to a dependent model, i t must be true. How can we make sense out of this?

Well, let's apply the rules. We first rephrase the statementwith the appropriate reality qualifier. This gives us "I don'tbelieve in multiple realities in my reality ." Remember, onecan never refer beyond his/her own reality. Then, inaccepting that we're now talking about this person's reality,we recognize, in accordance with the Only One Realityrule, that no other realities coexist with it nor do any


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"sub-realities" exist within it. For all intents and purposes, itis existence. In this case, the statement would have to becorrect. If this person's reality is the reality, defined exactlyas he/she perceives it to be, then there cannot be multiplerealities - there can only be this one reality. This does notconflict with the subjectivist's view because the subjectivist'sview holds for a completely different reality - that is, the

subjectivist, in expressing his/her views, would have to employ a different reality qualifier just forthose views to be correct. It would be like referring to two different designs - according to onedesign, there is only one reality, but according to another, there are many (though not full realitiesaccording to the proper sense). There is no contradiction as long as we remember to append"according to such-and-such design" to the end of the statements we make.

What if someone says, "I don't believe in any realities beyond mine?" This sounds like the person isindeed positing a "beyond" that coexists with his/her reality. But as we know, this only incorporatessuch a beyond into one's own reality, thereby extending the scope of his/her reality. It may still bebeyond one's physical universe, but the physical universe should be understood only as a domain of existence and not necessarily as all of reality itself. It therefore makes sense to phrase the abovestatement as "I don't believe in any reality beyond mine in my reality ". The first utterance of "reality"in that statement refers only to a domain such as the physical universe, or perhaps a metaphysical onethat coincides with the physical, and the second utterance refers to all of reality itself - the physical,the metaphysical, and all other domains. Now that we understand it this way, we can see that it issimply a different way of phrasing the statement in the previous paragraph - namely, that "I don'tbelieve in multiple realities". Therefore, the same reasoning can be invoked to show how thisobjection is met.

What about statements that refer to reality itself? That is,what about statements such as "X is reality"? Can we justifythis by appending a reality qualifier to it, making it "X isreality in reality X" or is this circular reasoning? It certainlysounds circular, but if we keep the design analogy in mind,we realize it's actually a tautology. That is, it's no differentthan saying "X is the case if X is the case". It has to be true,unconditionally! We see this with the design analogy whenwe imagine referring to a design, saying "This is Royal View

Estates according to this design". The qualifier "according tothis design" makes it clear that the design referred to definesRoyal View Estates, and so our statement is necessarily true.In other words, the qualifier "according to this design" makes

any statement describing what is demonstrable in the design, including what it is a design of, atautology in that the design makes it true. Therefore, appending a reality qualifier to any statementabout reality itself is just as valid as it is for any other statement.

Let's consider something more challenging. Suppose someone says, "I believe X absolutely!" That is,this person is proposing that the truth or realness of X is not relative - it doesn't depend, for its truthor realness, on any particular reality. To address this challenge, I'd like to take a moment to analyzethe meaning of the word "absolute".

Cartesian

Coordinate

System

What I propose is that the word "absolute" is not an antonym of "relative" but a special kind of relativity. Let me demonstrate this by showing how this is even true of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.Einstein's theory, in its more simple articulations, says that there is no such thing as absolute motion.Something similar is being said, in this paper, about the relation between a thing's existence andreality. But rather than discard the word "absolute" from our vocabulary, it would be better tocharacterize it as a special form of relativity. We can do the same for Einstein's theory. When we

wish to speak of the absolute motion of a physical object, we canunderstand this to mean movement relative to a fixed coordinatesystem. That is, we can imagine that there is a three dimensionalcartesian coordinate system that permeates all space and extendsinfinitely in all three dimensions. If we consider this coordinate systemto be fixed, then we could talk about the motion of any objects therein


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to be moving relative to it. So we see that these objects can be said tomove absolutely, but this means the same as moving relative to thefixed coordinate system. In other words, absolute motion is a type of

relative motion - relative to the fixed coordinate system. By exactly the same reasoning, we can speak of the absolute existence or truth of a statement or real thing X, knowing that this is equivalent tospeaking of the relative existence or truth of X to what is taken to be the one independent, absolute, or"fixed" reality.

This is not an equivocation. We would not be changing the meaning of the statement "I believe Xabsolutely". Before the advent of Einstein's theory, there were many debates over the question of relative versus absolute motion, but even the absolutists understood that absolute motion made nosense unless one assumed space to be fixed - or at least, that space could be represented by a fixedcoordinate system. In the same way, anyone who believes in an independent model, and therefore isinclined to agree with certain absolute statements, should recognize that these statements only holdtrue if there is a reality in which they can hold true. This one independent reality is like the fixedcoordinate system. Therefore, it is perfectly valid to rephrase any absolute statement, such as "X istrue absolutely", as "X is true relative to the one independent reality". Once the statement is rephrasedin that form, the rest is done as it was with the above examples.

Essence of

Realness

Mental Models

How do we handle this statement: "I believe reality exists independently of perception andexperience"? Well, the person who expresses this statement has brought in additional concepts -namely, "perception" and "experience" - so a word on these is in order. This person must have adifferent idea in mind of what perceptions and experiences are. As subjectivists, we maintain thatperceptions and experiences create reality, and are, in fact, one and the same. This means we musthave a special conception of what perception and experiences are. MM-Theory, for example, states

that all experiences carry the essence of realness withinthem, and this makes them one with the reality they generate.In other words, when one who holds an independent modeltalks about "perceptions" and "experiences", he/she hassomething completely different in mind than what asubjectivist would have in mind. We expanded on this in theprevious section where we looked at mental models andhow they determine the contents of one's reality. Based onthat, it is enough to say that one who holds an independentmodel has a much different concept in mind of what

perceptions and experiences are - most likely one of the moreconventional models such as an ethereal product of the brain,or an eternal soul, or even just neural and chemical activity inthe brain. In any case, the perceptions and experiences

referred to in the above statement are not the kinds of things that a reality, on the whole, could everdepend on. They are real things, but as such they depend, for their existence, on reality rather thanvisa-versa.

Having said that, we could rephrase the statement as "I believe reality exists independently fromperception and experience in my reality ", but it should be obvious at this point that the perceptionsand experiences this person speaks of only make sense in a reality such as his/hers. That is, byrecognizing the type of perceptions and experiences he/she is talking about, they are obviously thingsin his/her reality, and therefore it is needless to say that a statement referring to them finds its proper

context in his/her reality. Nevertheless, we could rephrase it this way and carry on with our argumentin exactly the same way as we did with the precedent ones.

In all the above challenges, our approach stuck to a particular pattern. We first took the statement,analyzed exactly what it meant, understood it in the context of a dependent model, rephrased itaccording to the rules, and found that its scope really doesn't expand beyond the reality (or thechamber) it takes to be the reality. We will not push on with potential challenges like the abovestatements, but instead proclaim that this method can be generalized to all such challenging statements.

The use of reality qualifiers may leave the reader wondering "It's all well and good to specify apossible design for reality when making statements, but what ultimately is reality proper such that wedon't have to make such specifications?" The entire point of a dependent model is that there is no


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ultimate reality. All designs are equally valid. This does not mean that there is no reality any morethan Einstein's relativizing of motion meant that there is no motion. Motion still exists, but it is nowseen as necessarily relative. Take two objects moving away from each other, for example. By lookingat them, you must perceive motion, but which object is moving is a matter of perspective, each oneequally valid. Furthermore, whichever perspective one chooses, it can't be any other perspectives atthe same time. In the same way, there is still a reality - there must be - but it is only reality relative toa percipient who experiences it as reality. The reality described by MM-Theory is no more ultimatethan any other, which is why we declared this paper to be somewhat independent from the theory.Unlike in all other papers in this website, we are not choosing one design over another. We arecomparing and contrasting dependent and independent models regardless of the theory underlyingthem. The rules we are presenting in this paper, such as the use of reality qualifiers, should beapplicable to, and usable by, any dependent model worth its salt. But to fully appreciate thecoherency of dependent models, we will need other rules, and so we now carry on with this task.

The Transience of RealityWhy are we sometimes wrong? How is it that we can go on for years, upholding a particular belief,and then one day have a life altering experience after which we adopt a set of utterly different beliefs?Almost all children, for example, believe in the Easter bunny. But at a certain age, they find out oneway or another, that the Easter bunny is really just their parents. This is explained easily by an

independent model - their beliefs, before becoming informed, were simply mistaken. But with adependent model, we have to say that their beliefs, before and after becoming informed, are true.How can the Easter bunny be real at one time, but not real at a later time?

Well, we might say that reality changes as a function of time - that is, the Easter bunny can be real fora while, but then at some point, ceases to be real. The problem with this is that the child, uponlearning that the Easter bunny is not real, also learns that the Easter bunny never was real. In otherwords, it is false to say that the Easter bunny was real for a while, because as far as the child isconcerned, there was no Easter bunny ever . This is how he/she sees reality now , and so we have togrant him/her the truth of this view.

A better way to describe this situation is to say that the child "migrates" from one reality to another.That is, he/she makes a transition from a reality in which the Easter bunny exists to one in which hedoesn't. Furthermore, the reality that the child migrates to - the one with no Easter bunny - never didand

never will contain an Easter bunny. In other words, every reality comes with its own future and past.If we look to the past of the reality that the child migrated from - the one with an Easter bunny - wewill see the Easter bunny. If we look to its future, we will still see the Easter bunny. This is consistentwith the child's views at the time. The child not only believed in the Easter bunny, but believed him to


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have always existed and to have a continued existence into the future. However, if we look to thefuture and past of the reality the child migrated to, we will see no Easter bunny whatsoever. This,again, is consistent with the child's view now - the child not only disbelieves in the Easter bunny, butbelieves he never did and never will exist.

Definition: Reality TransitionsA reality transition is what occurs when one goesthrough a change in how he/she perceives realityin such a manner as to make the new perceptionincompatible, within a single design for reality,with the old.

Of course, the child doesn't think of it this way. The child has an innate understanding of realityconsistent with an independent model. When he/she looks to the past, he/she sees only a mistakenbelief - that is, he/she sees that he/she once believed in the Easter bunny but was wrong. When onelooks to the past, there is no other past for which this can be done except the one, and only one,belonging to the reality he/she finds him/herself in. An entity whose existence depended on one'sbelief, even if it is now marked "mistaken", exists in another reality, and one does not look to thatreality by looking to the past of the current reality.

Principle: The Transience of Reality1) When one's beliefs are convincingly shown to

be wrong, this amounts to a transition from areality in which the belief holds true to one inwhich the belief does not hold true.

2) Every reality comes with its own future andpast.

And the rule that accompanies this principle:

Rule: Think Reality TransitionsRather than speak about a past belief as mistaken,say that you have made a transition from a realityin which the belief is true to one in which it isfalse.

To say that reality is transient may sound all well and good as a principle and a rule, but how doesthis play out in the chamber model? For that matter, how does it play out in MM-Theory? What does itmean to go through a "transition of realities" under these paradigms? In order to answer thesequestions, let's take a minute to think about what it means for a future and past to exist in a subjectivereality. Even though we are constantly moving through time, from the past into the future, the idea thatthere is a past and a future entails that we perceive a past and a future - that is, the only means bywhich a subjective reality can have a past and future is if it is experienced in some way. Morespecifically, the past and future are experienced as knowledge and memory, or more generally,cognition. That is, we know there is a future and a past - we foresee the future and remember the past.These appear to be cognitions that we can't do without - that is, it seems impossible to be ignorant of a future and a past - but they are cognitions nevertheless.


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Projection

Real Things

Consequently, they project themselves and become real things in our subjective realities. Now, thisnotion - that they are real things - gives us a perspective on the future and past by which we can seethem as existing, in a manner of speaking, in the present. It's not that we see future and past events as

occurring in the present, but that realitycontains a future and past now . It is thisperspective, a perspective that we can allappreciate, that allows us to say thingslike "there is a past" or "there is a future"(as opposed to "there was a past" or"there will be a future"). If a future andpast exist now , then we ought to think of them as real things that exist among allother real things in our subjectiverealities, and thus our chambers as well.We can think of all future and past events

as real things existing within them. If the reader likes, he/she can imagine the future and past to besections of the chamber wherein these events exist, or perhaps containers of some sort with theseevents inside. Even though the future, past, and all events therein are not literally things, as physicalobjects are, we have to recall that the definition of " real things " is not limited to physical objects,and that the chamber model is just a metaphor. What it symbolizes is the fact that any reality will havea future and past at all times .

If we really push this perspective, we could describe future and past events as existing now but in astate different from "occurring". What do we mean by this? When we take the perception of a futureevent, predicting it or expecting it, we perceive it now , but not as actually occurring - rather, we see itas "yet to come". That is, we could think of the event as real in the present, due to the fact that weperceive it in the present, but the state in which we perceive it is a "yet-to-come" state. We could saysomething similar about past events. We could say that they take a "came-to-pass" state.

Definition: Yet-To-Come vs. Came-To-Pass States1) Yet-To-Come State: the state future events are

perceived to take (as opposed to the state of

"occurring" that present events are perceivedto take).

2) Came-To-Pass State: the state past events areperceived to take (as opposed to the state of "occurring" that present events are perceivedto take).

What a "transition" means, insofar as chambers are concerned, is the following. Take the child whobelieves in the Easter bunny. Let's say it's a little girl. In her chamber, there is an Easter bunny in the

present, in the future, and in the past. Upon learning that the Easter bunny doesn't exist, she is instantlyteleported to a new chamber. The new chamber does not contain an Easter bunny in either of thepresent, future, or past. In fact, the chamber itself didn't exist until she migrated to it. That is, uponlearning that the Easter bunny doesn't exist, the chamber spontaneously popped into existence.Meanwhile, the chamber she departed from ceased to exist in the same instant, taking with it its past,future, and the poor Easter bunny. Because the future and past are real things that exist in one'schamber, we can imagine that the past spontaneously comes into existence with the new chamber.That is, upon coming into existence, the chamber generates its own past such that the little girl canlook back into it and see her mistaken beliefs.


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Why is this the best way to think about transitions? Why not imagine that the past and future simplychange in one chamber? If past and future events are just classes of things that coexist in the chamber,what's wrong with imagining that some of these things disappear and new ones take their place? Tounderstand why this can't be, we need to step away from the chamber model and understand what a"transition" means in term of subjective realities. The subjective reality of the little girl who believesin the Easter bunny goes through a change. It ceases to be a subjective reality containing the Easterbunny and becomes one without it. What happens to its future and past? They too cease to be futuresand pasts containing the Easter bunny. Now, because this process occurs in the same brain before andafter the transition, it must occur in the same subjective reality. Therefore, it only seems fitting that itought to be represented by one chamber with a dynamic future and past. What's the problem?

The problem with this is that the transition takes place on the same timeline as the past and futureevents in question. That is, when the child moves into the future, she approaches both the moment of transition and next Easter when the Easter bunny will pay her a visit. She will reach the moment of transition first whereupon the more distant future event, the visit from the Easter bunny, will cease tobe a future event. Likewise, all past visits from the Easter bunny will cease to have been, her parents'

visits replacing them. Therefore, when we look into her past, we not only fail to find an Easter bunny,but we fail to find that she ever was in a reality in which there was an Easter bunny. That is, we failto recognize that a transition ever took place. This is not a problem for the little girl since realitytransitions are not how she experiences these kinds of changes, but it is difficult for us, assubjectivists examining her subjective reality from the outside, to come to terms with whether or notthere actually was a transition. On the one hand, we recognize the past as a set of real things in thepresent (in came-to-pass states) finding no Easter bunny among them, but on the other hand, we're stillpicturing certain events, like transitions, occurring through time in the conventional sense (that is, not as real things in the present of her reality). By the conventional notion of the past, we do find theEaster bunny in her subjective reality (before the transition), and so we get a conflict of past events.

Therefore, the best way to understand this is to consider any change in future or past events asconstituting a change in realities, not just a change in the contents of its past and future. If one migratesfrom one reality to another, each coming with its own future and past, there is no possibility of conflict. Furthermore, both the owner of the chamber and we as subjectivists have a firm grasp of which past and future to be looking into for events.

But why destroy the departed chamber and spontaneously create the destination one? Simply put,because that's how it works with subjective realities. That is, when one discards an erroneous belief for a sound one, he/she does not leave a subjective reality behind - as if it continues to exist "outthere" somewhere. Rather, it ceases to be the subjective reality it once was and becomes a differentone. The one it becomes never existed "out there" either - at least, not before the moment of transition.It "popped" into existence, so to speak. And when it did, a new past was perceived by its beholder,thereby spontaneously creating it along with the subjective reality itself.

This is an excellent opportunity to make use of reality qualifiers. To be clear on whether or not theEaster bunny exists, we need to specify which reality this is true for. We'd say that the Easter bunnyexists in the reality the little girl used to believe in, but not in the one she currently believes in. Wedon't mean to imply that the Easter bunny maintains a perpetual existence somewhere "out there", butthat, as a design, there is the idea of a reality in which the Easter bunny exists, and in that reality, theEaster bunny does exist. According to the design analogy, realities don't get created or destroyed bytransitions. Although we said they would in the chamber model, the chamber model is a bettermetaphor for subjective realities in that subjective realities do get destroyed and created by


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transitions. But reality as a design is simply a definition for a given reality. Take the cousin of thedesign analogy: the movie. A movie has a beginning and an end. As engrossed in the movie as wemight become, taking every moment as a real event, we are brought back to the real world when thecredits roll. But what ends - the movie or the reality the movie depicts? Take Star Wars for example.When Star Wars ends, does the world we were temporarily suspended in end - the world of lightsabers, Death Stars, and the all powerful force - or did the movie end - a series of colorful blotchesof light projected on a screen? Supposedly, the heroes - Luke, Han, and Leia - go on with their lives.They live happily ever after, as the saying goes. This is supposed to be what happens to them after wesee the credits. This is what goes into constituting their world as an ongoing reality. This is whatGeorge Lucas wants us to believe - more, what he declares to happen! Therefore, we have everyright, given a particular reality, to make claims about the future events that are expected to happen inthat reality even if we end up experiencing something to the contrary . That is, even if, from ourperspective, such future events turn out not to happen, we can still say that given a reality defined asone in which those future events do indeed happen, they will happen - in that reality .

The Hierarchy of RealityWhat causes a transition? It could not be the fact that we are wrong in our beliefs - that is, under adependent model, all beliefs are true, and therefore cannot be wrong. Suppose, for example, that Ibelieved I could walk on water. If I truly believe this, then in my reality, I can walk on water. But if

this is true, then my venturing out onto the water should result in every inch of my body remaining dryas a bone save the souls of my feet. Yet, this is not what happens. No matter how much conviction Iinvest in this belief, I am sure to be submerged totally under water. What could cause this if it goesagainst the very makeup of my reality? This would indeed pass as a transition of realities, but this isnot a cause. This only describes what happens. The question is why did a transition occur?

The tricky thing about transitions is that, at the instant of transition, one is between realities so tospeak. Therefore, if there is to be a cause for a transition, it is not clear which reality it is to be foundin. If it cannot be found in the departed reality, we might want to look at the destination one. Takedreaming, for example. What wakes us up from our dreams? Most of the time, it's our alarm clocks.The alarm clock can be said to cause the transition from the dream reality to the waking reality. But aswe see, it is an object in the destination reality. From a first person perspective, transitions areusually caused (but not necessarily always) by some event in the destination reality. After all, we canonly legitimately say that a transition occurred once we've arrived in the destination reality. At thattime, the destination reality is, for all intents and purposes, the reality, and therefore any cause wewish to surmise, if it is to be real, must exist therein.

Of course, in the destination reality, nothing causeda transition per se. With the example of the alarmclock, what was in fact caused was your wakingfrom a dream. In the destination reality, this dreamis just a dream, not a reality from which you made atransition. To talk about the alarm clock causing atransition in the proper sense, we need to recruit theresources of the subjectivist theory behind thedependent model, and we will show howMM-Theory works this out shortly. Remember, we

are taking a descriptive approach, and so it sufficessimply to describe such changes in our perceptionsof reality as "transitions". As far as causes go, thisfalls into the department of explanations. In fact,they are synonymous - that is, to ask, "what is thecause?" is to ask "what is the explanation?"

Needless to say, we can think of the alarm clock as the cause of the transition in a crude way, but inthis sense, a better word than "cause" might be "correspondence" - that is, the alarm clock corresponds to the transition and its proper cause. As for what exactly this proper cause is - well -each subjectivist for him/herself.


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Overall, what this shows us is that some realities have power over others. In the dream example, thewaking world has a myriad of ways to obliterate the dream world - the alarm clock is one of them asare sudden bright lights, changes in temperature, the smell of buttered toast, and so on. Nothing in thedream world, however, can have the same obliterating effect on the waking world. We sometimesaffect the waking world in our dreams by way of sleep walking or sleep talking, but this hardly countsas such an all encompassing alteration that we are forced to think of it as a completely differentreality upon waking up. This tendency for some realities to preempt others tells us that some realitiestake precedence over others. Therefore, the relation between realities is really a hierarchical one -the more powerful realities taking a higher seat than the less powerful ones.

Principle: The Hierarchical Structure of RealityThe relation between realities is a hierarchical onewhereby more powerful realities are capable of preempting less powerful ones.


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Affective-

Cognitive

Consistency and

Thought-Induced

Attitude

Polarization

[PDF]

Affective-

Cognitive

Consistency,

Attitudes,

Conformity, and

Behavior [PDF]

We will call the power with which a reality can preempt other realities "gravity". We can even think of it in terms of planetary gravity where planets represent realities and their gravitational forcerepresents how capable a reality is at being one's reality. Studies have shown that it is much easier topersuade a person to believe a particular argument if that person has only superficial opinions on thematter as opposed to deeply entrenched and long held convictions (see links ). That is, supposingwe wanted to persuade two left-wing individuals to adopt a more right-wing ideology, it would bemuch easier to persuade the leftist who had not thought much on the matter either on left-wing orright-wing terms than it would be the leftist who had very strong opinions and had thought about the

matter thoroughly over a long period of time. Putting this in terms of gravity, we would say that ourright-wing reality, in which privateownership of businesses and liberalpolicies are among the highest of values,exerts a much stronger gravitational forceover the first leftist than the second. Interms of the planetary metaphor, we mightthink of the first leftist as orbiting his/herplanet quite remotely such that any nearbyplanet with a strong enough gravitationalfield can easily pull him/her away fromhis/her home planet. The second leftist, onthe other hand, is firmly anchored to theground, the gravity of his planet securinghim/her there much more tenaciously.Therefore, it is next to impossible to yank him/her away from his/her home planet.

Definition: GravityThe degree of power one reality has to initiatetransitions from another reality to itself.

The varying degrees of gravity realities can have answers our original question - about why we canexpect one to sink even though he/she may believe he/she can walk on water. They sink because thereality their beliefs uphold has a rather weak gravitational force while the reality that physics upholdsexerts a much more powerful force. In other words, the reality of physics takes precedence overhis/her reality (and, for the most part, over everyone's). When one attempts to walk on water, thereality of physics takes hold and a major transition occurs. He/she is yanked from his/her rather weak reality and into a stronger one in which there is no possibility of walking on water whatsoever. Oncehe/she arrives in the latter reality, he/she can find the "cause" of the transition therein - namely, firsthand experiences with the laws of physics.


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mailto:@:H



Although the reality of physics usually takes precedence over realities built on human belief systems,the gravity of an arbitrary reality will not be the same for each and every individual. It really dependson the idiosyncrasies of the reality the gravitational influence is being exerted on. For example,suppose a paranoid schizophrenic was frightened by the sight of black cars driving down the street,thinking that they were the secret police after him. The black car, in this case, is a trigger for thedelusional reality to exert a very strong gravitational force upon him. But any one else who sees thisblack car will not be affected one iota - it will exert zero gravitational force. Another point that'snoteworthy is that even though one reality might exert more gravity over another, the transition thatresults from this will not necessarily be a one time incident. That is, it is not uncommon for one whois persuaded to, or even forced into, a different perception of reality, to waver back and forthbetween both realities. For example, I may be persuaded by a anti-abortion group that I frequentlyencounter to believe that abortion is wrong. But after dabbling with this view for a few days, I mayfeel uncomfortable giving up my older pro-choice views, thinking that I'm betraying my own values. Imight then revert to my pro-choice position. But even this might only last a short while, after whichtime I am again persuaded by the anti-abortion group I find myself ever more frequently involved in. Iwill most likely settle eventually on one side of the issue or the other, but which side this is can bequite unpredictable. Whichever side it turns out to be, it is a good indication that this side, at least forme, exerts the more powerful gravitational influence.

Moreover, a reality's gravity can be strengthened or weakened by events that go on within that reality.For example, I can choose to take consciousness altering drugs whereby I would temporarily suspendmy usual reality and enter a world of psychedelic and magical happenings. This will only last awhile, however, after which time the chemicals in my brain - chemicals that constitute the factorcontrolling the transitions back in the sober reality - will wear off. I will be subjugated, once again,by the gravity of my sober reality. The act of taking drugs, therefore, weakens the gravity of one'susual reality, but also wears off allowing this gravity to rekindle itself. This also demonstrates howmore powerful realities don't always destroy less powerful ones - they can be made to create them. Inthese cases, the cause of the transition is not to be found in the destination reality. However, it is stillcaused by the more powerful reality, or at least a reality that was more powerful initially.

Entailment

How do we account for gravity? What is it about a reality that instills it with a more powerfulgravitational force? This is another way of asking, "What causes a transition?" Therefore, to answerthis question, let's see what MM-Theory would say. It would say, first of all, that transitions from onereality to another are due to the sudden emergence of experiences that entail other experiencesconstitutive of the destination reality. For example, when our alarm clocks wake us from our dreams,

the sound of the alarm is a sudden experience that emerges in our reality. But it entails otherexperiences that don't fit well with the dream reality - experiences such as "I'm here in my bed" or"It's 6 am" or "I've got to get up for work". These realizations only hold true in the waking reality, andso if one is having them, he/she must have just made a transition to the waking reality. WhatMM-Theory would say, therefore, about realities with stronger gravity, is that the initial experiencesthat lead one into them must have a much higher likelihood of entailing experiences from that realityrather than visa-versa.That is, supposing wehad two sets of experiences - one fromthe reality with moregravity and the otherfrom that with less

gravity - the initialexperiences thatinstigate the transitionwill be more likely toentail experiences fromthe set belonging to thereality with more gravity. Furthermore, once the transition is made, the experiences one has - that is,the experiences that constitute the reality with more gravity - are highly likely to continue entailingother experiences from this reality. In other words, the stronger the gravity of a given reality, the morelikely any experience from that reality will entail other experiences from that same reality.


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The Universal

Mind

We say that it is likely, but not guaranteed. It is always possible for experiences from a given realityto entail other experiences that can only exist as part of a different reality. The best example of this iswhen one, who believes in something, suddenly has an epiphany by which he/she realizes his/herbeliefs are wrong and a different set of beliefs are correct. However, most of the time, transitions areinitiated by extraneous experiences intruding on one's reality. The example of the alarm clock is acase in point. The sudden emergence of the loud rings of the alarm clock is not entailed by anyexperience from the dream reality. Instead, they are entailed by experiences elsewhere in theUniversal Mind (corresponding to the alarm clock itself), thereby introducing themselves into one'sreality unannounced. This actually happens all the time without resulting in reality transitions. We areconstantly bombarded by sensory information in the everyday world we take to be reality. Theseexperiences, by the very nature of sensation, are intrusions. They will always have the potential tobring us through reality transitions, such as when scientific experiments prove a long held theory to bewrong, but generally, they do not constitute different realities, or even samples of different realities,in and of themselves. For the most part, they are simply the common elements that make up oureveryday reality. There is no reason to assume, therefore, that sudden intrusions like this can't happeneven in the dream world. In other words, there is no need to explain how the sudden inundation of sounds from one's alarm clock, and the subsequent inundation of stimulation from all of the othersenses, can be experienced in the dream world. The sound of the alarm clock may havephysiologically triggered the other senses to wake up - that is, in the waking reality - but as far as ourexperiences in the dream reality are concerned, they are each independent intrusions unto themselves.Insofar as they intrude on our dream reality, we have not yet made a reality transition. We make thetransition only when such intrusions lead to the realization that one is no longer in the dream realitybut the waking one instead - and such a realization is quite inevitable when we are sooverwhelmingly flooded with the usual sensory stimulation of the waking world, making for a verypowerful reality indeed.

Upon entering a reality with more gravity, one will view that reality as the reality - which means thatthe reality he/she just left behind will be viewed as "unreal". This is easy to appreciate. When wewake from a dream, we look back on the dream as totally unreal. We still remember having theexperience, and so we don't deny that we perceived the dream world, but we generally don't regardthe things perceived therein as really having been there. Same goes for mistaken beliefs, insightsacquired while under the influence of drugs, temporary episodes of delusion, and any other basis for areality. One thing we might say, therefore, about the reality with stronger gravity is that, once entered,it is taken to be a "higher" reality. That is, it is a reality that is "more real" than the one left behind. Infact, in the majority of cases, it is the difference between simply being real and being unreal. Take

dreaming again - when we wake from a dream, we see the dream as "less real" and the world wehave woken up to as "more real", and in fact, the dream world is fully unreal and the waking worldfully real. This is what we mean when we talk about a reality being "higher".

Definition: Higher vs. Lower Realities1) Higher Reality: A reality that is more

convincingly real than another reality.

2) Lower Reality: A reality that is lessconvincingly real than another reality.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between something being convincing and someone beingconvinced. There are many cases of individuals being shown highly convincing evidence withoutbeing swayed in the least - and not always for good reason but out of willful ignorance. In the contextof our planetary metaphor, we would express this point as follows. There is a difference between aplanet exerting a powerful gravitational pull and things being anchored onto that planet because of thatpull. An astronaut on the moon is securely anchored there even though the Earth, which is not too faraway by astronomical standards, exerts a gravitational pull several times more power ful. It was evenpossible for that astronaut to start out on Earth and pull away in a rocket ship despite how tenaciouslythe Earth kept its grip on him. Furthermore, the astronaut can travel back and forth between the moonand the Earth as many times as he likes, just like the example of my wavering between theanti-abortion and pro-choice positions. So we should not expect that because a particular reality is a


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high one, it is bound to draw people irrevocably into it. And even if they are drawn to it, we shouldnot expect that they would never stray from it for a lower one.

Empiricism

The scientific enterprise has made much use of those experiences that are most convincingly real overthe passed four to five hundred years. What the central philosophy behind modern science is based onis just this. It seeks out those experiences that are most convincingly real and for the greatest amountof time. Empiricism is adopted as the guide in seeking out these experiences. Empiricism guides ustowards sensory experiences, and says of them that they are the most accurate and vivid reflections of the real world, if nothing else is. What makes this philosophy so appealing is the fact that our sensoryexperiences are indeed very convincing, and after having one, we can remember it all the days of ourlives. Therefore, the scientific method is a very powerful tool for building a reliable reality becauseit is a technology rooted in seeking out rich sources of gravity, which might be called "gateways" to ahigher reality.

Of course, this only proves that empirical reality is higher than reality based on reason and belief, butis it the highest ? That is, is there no more convincing reality than the one science has constructed, andis still constructing? Well, as we said before, the gravitational power of a given reality will alwaysvary from individual to individual, but let's suppose the individual in question is swayed foremost byscientific evidence. Is it possible for this individual to be given a set of experiences such that a newreality is revealed to him/her that brings him/her out of the scientific one for a sufficiently long periodof time? If it is, then these experiences would have to be quite unique indeed. After all, for someonewho is persuaded most by scientific evidence, no other experience from the human mind(philosophical beliefs, emotional influence, listening to the words of others, etc.) would be quite aseffective. However, in principle at the very least, there is always the possibility of havingexperiences that lead one out of the reality he/she finds most convincing. There is no a priori reasonto claim any one reality in particular to be the highest.

As convincing as empirical evidence is, we must remember that science is ultimately based onphilosophy. Empiricism is a philosophy. It postulates that anything experienced via the senses must bereal. Note the difference between this and our assertion that sensory experiences are highlyconvincing. The latter asserts only that sensory experiences have a very strong effect on securing us toa particular material reality. The former, on the other hand, takes the next step and asserts that thereality revealed by the senses is the reality whether we're convinced of it or not (taking theindependent model to heart). The latter does not deny the former per se , but it need not support iteither. The latter permits sensory experiences to ground us to a particular material reality, but insofar

as our more abstract thoughts on the matter are concerned, it regards this as a matter of philosophy.

The Universal

Mind

Therefore, for those whose beliefs rely more on a philosophical orientation, scientific evidence maynot hold sway nearly as much. For instance, one could assume that all life is just a dream, and so any

scientific evidence supporting any claim is being dreamt up just as much as any other experience. Someone may holdtenaciously to a religious view that flies in the face of scientific evidence, trusting that God reconciles suchenigmatic anomalies, and such reconciliations will one day,perhaps in the afterlife, be revealed to the believer (I call thisthe "God-works-in-mysterious-ways" defense). A thirdexample is one that doesn't resist scientific evidence at all. Itis MM-Theory itself. Empiricism, although not exclusively a

materialistic philosophy, opens the door to strict materialism,which is unquestionably in contrast to MM-Theory.However, it does not contrast with our theory in a mutuallyexclusive manner, but in a manner of scope. That is, ourtheory is capable of, and in fact must, incorporatematerialism, along with every other philosophy, into the body

of the Universal Mind . That is, far from rejecting materialism, it finds its proper place as a subjectivereality among all other subjective realities.

This enlightens us a bit more about the nature of higher realities. Although MM-Theory, or anysubjectivist theory for that matter, can only rightfully be called a "higher" reality for those who, afterdeliberating over several alternative possibilities, find it most convincing, it will undoubtedly be


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dismissed as wasteful drivel by those of other persuasions. Nevertheless, if it does pass as a higherreality for some, we note now that it doesn't do so at the expense of other realities - at least, not in atotally annihilistic sense. Rather, i t modifies them from anauthentic and full reality to a set of real things, among manyother such sets, in the universe of all real things whoseexistence is sustained by their being perceived. What thismeans, in other words, is that a higher reality need notobliterate a lower reality outright - it may consume it whilepreserving its function of sustaining the reality of the thingstherein. An animal like a dog or a cat, for example, willperceive its physical surroundings as real things, but have nocomprehension of higher, more abstract, concepts such as thebeauty of musical symphonies or the wonders of cosmological theories and discoveries. We as humans, on theother hand, have a great appreciation for these things, which,by obvious standards, places us in a higher reality comparedto the dog or cat. Nonetheless, we don't reject the physicalreality the dog and cat perceive. Instead, we take it into our reality, classify it as a set of real things,and reserve the label "reality" for something inclusive of these but much greater.

Now, what is the rule that comes out of this? Well, if we are to be consistent with the other rules, itmust be that one cannot presuppose a higher reality than the one he/she currently resides in. That is,whatever reality is for a given person, that reality is the highest of any he/she can suppose. The verysuggestion, if believed, that there is a reality higher than the one currently taken to be the realitywould put one in that higher reality, thereby making it the reality. To believe in it is for it to be real,and thus part of one's reality.

Rule: No Reality Higher Than YoursNever speak of a reality higher than your own.Think of the reality you currently reside in as thehighest reality there is at present.

In other words, when thinking about the hierarchy that is reality, one must always place him/herself atthe top of the hierarchy. This is always idiosyncratic, of course, for some realities will be higher forsome people but not others. If one ever postulates realities higher up than his/hers, he/she grants thoserealities their own genuine existence and is therefore immediately transferred up the hierarchy to thetopmost level.

The Infinite Regress Problem

The Essence of

Realness

The essence of realness that exists in all experiences may create a reality out of our perceptions, butwe nevertheless retain the ability to reflect on them as purely mental entities. When we do this, aglaring contrast becomes evident between those mental entities and the real world. For example, if Ilook out my window at the mountains, I think that what I'm seeing are in fact the mountains. But I amalso capable of reflecting on this experience as just a visual perception. When I do this, however, mymind immediately resurrects the real mountains in place of the ones that suddenly became only avisual perception - at least, it resurrects them as an idea. That is, I may recognize my sight of themountains as a visual experience, but I cannot help but to suppose that there must be real mountainsout there - otherwise, what gives rise to my perception of them? Of course, as subjectivists, we don'thave to substitute our vision of the mountains with yet more mountains, identical in attributes and

essence, but with whatever our subjectivist theories posit (inthe case of MM-Theory, more experiences). Now, we mayfeel comfortable with this, but the clever thinker shouldrealize that if one pursues this l ine of thought, an infinite


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regress awaits. Why is this? Take our supposition that theremust be real mountains out there. The only way I can supposethis is if I conjure up the idea of mountains. But this is anidea, and therefore just as predisposed to the treatment I gavemy visual experience - that is, it is just as much a mentalentity as my experience of sight. Therefore, the same thingcould be said about my idea of mountains - namely, that theyare just in my head, and beyond them, somewhere andsomehow, are the real mountains. Yet, again, to suppose thisis to conjure up but another idea. We could go on and on like

this ad infinitum , and this gives rise to an infinite regress.

Projection

The Universal

Mind

The

Correspondence

Rule

Mental Models

So far, we have not regarded this as a pressing problem. We recognize that even though the objectswe sense are real in virtue of their being projected , there must nevertheless be other experienceselsewhere in the Universal Mind that give rise to them. We called this the Correspondence Rule .We also noted, in The Inconceivability of Consciousness , that these other experiences are representedin our minds as mental models , and short of being full apprehensions of the experiences themselves,they are really just conceptual approximations of them. No doubt, when the reader hears this, he/sheenvisions the mental models juxtaposed with the actual experiences they represent, and this is anexample of the infinite regress in its first iteration. We settled the matter, however, by denouncing anyintention to actually capture the true form of these experiences merely by toying with our feeble ideas,declaring the concept of an "experience" to be just a representation. In fact, all of MM-Theory mustbe regarded in this light. Nevertheless, this light still makes the idea of what's "out there" contrast soconspicuously with the real "out there". That is, if our entire theory is just a mental model, then theremust be a real world that it is a mental model of. This certainly doesn't reveal any logicalinconsistencies in our theory, but it does spark the infinite regress - that tendency to want to get at the"real" stuff.

Referential

Monopoly

The infinite regress will be initiated whenever we talk about our theory as a mental model, asubjective reality, a design, or anything of that likeness. And our theory is all of these things. Is this aproblem? Not when the central tenet of the theory says that everything is fundamentally mental anyway- but when we also take into consideration that the theory is trying to make claims about the truenature of the universe and about what's ultimately real, we do run into problems. The reason is that toclaim any sort of truth or knowledge of reality is to assume we have risen above the curtains of perception and fog of experience and seen the world for what it really is. This is the light MM-Theoryhas been presented in. But by its very own precepts, it too must be nothing more than a foggyconglomeration of experiences and perceptions projected onto a curtain. We come to grips with thiswhen we call it a mental model or a subjective reality. It is at those moments when we suddenlyrealize that to get at the truth, to get at what the world really is, we have to brush the mental modelaside, and attempt to refer to the actual universe that it represents. We are always doomed to fail, of course, in accordance with the principle of referential monopoly - hence, the infinite regress. Ourtheory, although a fine design for reality, and infusing itself with an ontology, is neverthelessself-annihilating when its own precepts are applied to itself. This is a problem that needs to beaddressed, and this is the section to address it.

What makes for an infinite regress? An infinite regress is what happens when we attempt to solve aproblem, and the solution works for the particular instance of the problem in question, but recreatesthe problem in another instance, level, iteration, or generally some other context. This process repeatsitself ad infinitum , perpetually bringing up the same question for every new context that the problemis passed onto. Infinite regresses are a sure sign of flawed reasoning because any solution one bringsforward should never recreate the same problem it means to resolve. A good example i s the accountthe religious give for the origin of the universe. God created it all, they say. But then the question thatimmediately arises from this is: From whence did God originate? That is, the problem of origins issolved for the universe, but in the same stroke, it is recreated for God. A symmetrical infinite regresscan be seen on the scientific side of the same question. The scientific answer to the question of howthe universe originated is that it started with the Big Bang. But then the all too common question rears


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its head: From whence did the Big Bang originate? The fact of the matter is, the very question of theorigin of the universe is plagued by an infinite regress waiting to append itself to any answer one canoffer. It certainly is an excellent example of infinite regress problems if ever there was one. Anyanswer to the question of "From whence did X originate?" is going to be just as subject to the sameline of questioning as X itself was. So you can't solve an infinite regress by taking one more step inthe process. You have to solve it by starting with an entirely different solution at the beginning.

But are all infinite regresses problematic? Could we have an infinite series of ideas which don'trepeat because it's a problem that keeps cropping up, but for some other reason? For example,suppose we were to ask "Where do babies come from?" The answer is: from its parents. But then thenext question arises: Where did its parents come from? And again, for its grandparents, and again forits great-grandparents. Does this infinite regress result from a problem in our answer to the originalquestion? Is it even an infinite regress? Well, insofar as we treat it as a genuine infinite regress, wemight get away with saying no - that there is no problem in the original answer - because, for onething, we know that we will eventually get an answer that doesn't perpetuate the same line of questions - we will get to the first human being before which were only earlier versions of theprimate species we evolved from. But for another thing, the answer may come as dissatisfying sincethe same line of questioning can be directed at these earlier primates - and for that matter, at anyspecies along our branch in the tree of evolution, and indeed at any origin of any event in the universethat can be found along the chain of cause and effect starting from ourselves back as early as the BigBang - and, as we've seen, the infinite regress wouldn't stop there. This latter point can be addressedby getting clear how we want to define the problem. Are we looking for an origin that can beaccounted for without appealing to a prior cause, or are we looking for some particular origin thataccounts well enough for the phenomenon in question (in this case, babies) despite whether or not itsorigin is left unaccounted for? Most of the time, questions of origins are of the latter variety, and soeven though an infinite regress can be shown to follow from the answers given, it isn't really aproblem for the purpose of the question. But when the question turns on absolute origins, such as howthe universe began or what created God, the infinite regress that comes out of it ought to worry ussince it indicates that the answers given don't effectively give us an origin that is, in fact, absolute.The question that faces us now is: of what variety is the infinite regress that plagues MM-Theory? Is itinnocuous in that our theory can get by while brushing it aside as irrelevant, like brushing aside theinfinite regress that stems from the question of where babies come from, or is it fatal in that itindicates a profound flaw in our theory, like the flaw that answers to questions of the universe's originsuffer?

At first blush, it might seem as though the infinite regress under consideration is indeed fatal, for howcan we make any claims about the world beyond our minds, which is precisely what MM-Theorydoes, when those claims and their referents are found, in the final analysis, to be inside our minds?Putting the problem this way, it does sound daunting. But what I intend to show is that the very termsof the problem can be altered in such a way that it becomes more akin to the innocuous variety muchlike the question of where babies come from. I even intend to go so far as to show that it's not aproblem unique to dependent models like ours. In other words, although it may seem like the problemarises because of the dependent character of our model, it really is a lot deeper than that. It is aproblem with anything that is a theory or idea in general. To see this, we only need to appeal to theexample above about seeing mountains. In that example, we saw how the infinite regress can beignited even with an independent model. That is, you don't have to be a subjectivist to recognize adifference between your sight or idea of the mountains and the mountains themselves, and that you'renever going to get beyond the mere idea of the mountains. Anything that can be recognized as an idea,perception, experience, or anything mental, can potentially succumb to this. Nevertheless, some thingsdo need to be sorted out in our theory, and any dependent model, so that the dual character of realitydepicted by such models - that duality being the real/mental dichotomy - does not confound theproblem. More particularly, we will reduce the problem to one of seeking perfect knowledge of things that are essentially unknowable, and known to be so.

The Nature of The Problem


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The Window-to-Reality v s.

System-

of-Experiences

Models of

Consciousness

Distinguishing

Between The Models

The infinite regress problem will arise whenever a dependent model moves way from the window-to-reality model of consciousness and towards the system-of-experiences model without makingadjustments to how it is articulated (see sidenote ). In other words, with any theory, whether basedon a dependent or independent model, we tend to express it as though it was a mirror image of realityitself - that is, we express it as though our awareness of it came through the featureless "window" weimagine our consciousness to be. But if the window model is what the theory argues against, thismeans that we need to change the way we articulate it. For example, the theory that the world isround, when expressed in the context of the window model of consciousness, is expressed as "The

world is round." The proper way to articulate this in the context of the system model, on the otherhand, would be to say something like "The idea of the world being round makes sense , and workswell with our observations ." For a theory to be trueaccording to thewindow modelmeans that the theoryis a manifestation of what's really outthere. It meanssomething entirelydifferent for a theoryto be true accordingto the system model.

There's nothing dreadfully wrong with using the conventionalmanner of speaking (the window model) when it comes to dependent models or system models of consciousness, but we note now that such habits are what lead to the confusion that manifests in theinfinite regress. For consciousness to be a system of experiences, and for that system to project itself as a reality (as dependent models declare), means that one is always going to be able to reflect onreality, whatever it is perceived to be, and recognize it as a system of experiences which can bebrushed aside in an attempt to apprehend the "real" reality.

The Universal

Mind

So if the window model would define a theory's being right to mean that it matches up perfectly withwhat's, in fact, out there, how does the system model define being right? Before we answer this, weought to point out that, even with dependent models, there is a difference between what a theory is andwhat it's about. This is obvious when it comes to independent models. Take the theory of evolutionfor example. What the theory is is an idea - a mental construct about how life came to be on thisplanet. What it's about, however, is not mental at all - it's about those very life forms it explains. Thisis no less true of dependent models. MM-Theory, for example, is a theory we have constructed in ourminds - it is a cognitive model - but the Universal Mind and the plethora of experiences therein arewhat it's about, and these are not the mental construct we recognize as the theory. Nevertheless, as adependent model, our theory also says that reality is created from our experiences, which includebeliefs like the very theory itself. In other words, it sounds as though the theory implies that theuniverse it is about is created because we believe in the theory. Well, we certainly don't want it tolead to this - otherwise, we'll have to resort to saying "yes, our theory creates the reality it describes,but behind it is the real Universal Mind, and our theory serves as a perfect match of it in the sense of the window model notion of a theory's being right." What we will do to ensure that we don't have toput it this way is to, first of all, show what it means for a theory to be correct according to a systemmodel, and secondly, show that the distinction between what a theory is and what it's about can stillbe made. We will then show that what end ups suffering from the infinite regress is not the theoryitself, but what the theory is about.

The Essence of

Realness

So how does the system model define being right? Well, when it is based on a dependent model, itaccounts for a theory's correctness by appealing to the theory's own internal justifications. That is, it'ssomething within the theory itself - within the cognitive experience. In MM-Theory, we called this theessence of realness , but we can be more general than that, articulating the correctness of a giventheory in terms of all dependent models, and in terms that make sense to anyone regardless of themodel they subscribe to, or whether they understand MM-Theory or not. With a system model, thecorrectness of a theory depends on two things: 1) whether it makes logical sense or not, and 2)whether it agrees with empirical evidence or not. Let's look at each one of these separately.


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Projection

What it means for a theory to make logical sense is that we see the relations between the ideas thatmake up the theory as binding together in terms of their meaning and entailment. In other words, theideas project themselves in the same way we noted in the section Truth, Fact, And The Physical

World above . In that section, we made thedistinction between projecting beliefs inthe same manner as we do physicalobjects - namely, "out there" - andprojecting them as logical conclusions thatentail from an argument or some form of reasoning. In the latter case, it's not somuch the contents of the ideas which areprojected, but why one logically entailsanother - that is, it is their logicalnecessity that we experience as real or

independent. This is the proper way, in a system model, to understand a theory's correctness. We haveto ask, "Does it make logical sense?"

Richard Dawkins

Now, there is also the matter of empirical evidence - the second criterion for a theory's correctness ina system model. No matter how certain we may be of a theory, or how sensical the supportingarguments for it seem, at the end of the day, empirical evidence will have the final word. It will eitherconfirm our beliefs or destroy them (of course, there are some who persist with their beliefs no matterwhat ). So being able to predict empirical experience is a strong indication of a theory'scorrectness. This is the current scientific view. That is, the consensus among scientists now-a-days isthat a theory's predictive power is the best way to understand its correctness. It might seemcounterintuitive, but the way the philosophy of science is currently headed is more and more inlinewith a system model of consciousness than a window model. More and more leading scientists areemphasizing the model generating function of the mind rather than its reality perceiving function.Richard Dawkins argues this very clearly in his talk Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science :

What we see of the real world is not the unvarnishedworld, but a model of the world, regulated and adjustedby sense data, but constructed so it's useful for dealingwith the real world. The nature of the model depends onthe kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs adifferent kind of model from a walking, climbing, orswimming animal. A monkey's brain must have softwarecapable of simulating a three dimensional world of

branches and trunks. A mole's software, for constructing models of its world,will be customized for underground use. A water strider's brain doesn't need3D software at all since it lives on the surface of the pond in an Edwin Abbotflatland.

Of course, science doesn't sanction every whimsical model the mind is capable of generating ascorrect. It just recognizes that models are what theories ultimately are. Their predictive power

remains the deciding factor in establishing their correctness or flawedness. If the theory that happensto be most successful at this game also makes logical sense, that's a welcome bonus. With a dependentmodel, however, both are equally valid. Empirical experience still carries trumping power for themost part, but this says more about the effect it has on belief rooted solely in theory rather than what adependent model necessarily claims.

Obviously, our theory is very much on the extreme end of the scale of philosophical abstraction. It ishardly scientific. The keen scientific thinker is sure to point this out, undoubtedly emphasizing itsunfalsifiability. This is all right. A theory doesn't need to be falsifiable to be a good philosophicaltheory. All it needs is a firm basis in rationality and reason. It should be pointed out, however, that asit is untestable, our theory depends exclusively on its logical merit for its justifications. Somethingshould be said, therefore, about what this implies insofar as its relation to the "real" world is


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concerned. That is, if a theory is correct because it makes logical sense, then what does that tell us, inthe absence of empirical evidence, about its ability to match or mirror or capture the contents of theworld beyond our perceptions?

Well, as a mental model, we know for sure that it doesn't match the "outer" world. In fact,MM-Theory in particular, with its proposal that experiences come in a myriad of forms, not just thosefamiliar to humans, is most likely nothing remotely like what's in the outer world. Do mental modelsat least mimic what's out there? That is, are the dynamics or the processes that go on "in here"somewhat similar to what goes on "out there"? We know from neurology that, although neurons andneurotransmitters are very different in structure from the things in the outer world they aim to model,the activity and the algorithms they undergo probably mirror the activity of phenomena in the outerworld to a certain degree. Therefore, the same could be said about the relation between our ideas andthe experiences they aim to model. But without being able to verify this by actually exposingourselves to these experiences, it's impossible to tell. So one might be left asking, "If we can't test ourtheory empirically, and we can't even conceive of the experiences our ideas aim to model, how canwe ever know if our ideas are correct?" The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter at all. To ask this sort of question is to still hold onto the window model of consciousness, requiring that one'stheory take an identical form in the mind as the phenomena in the real world it refers to.

Let's put this another way. To accept the system model over the window model is to acknowledge thedifference between a thing and one's knowledge of that thing, not only in that they are two distinctentities, but that they are totally unlike in structure. One's knowledge of a flower, say, is nothing likethe flower itself. The former is a mental entity, the latter a physical one. Therefore, there is inevitablygoing to be a great degree of mismatch between them. This doesn't make the knowledge of the flowerwrong. The same can be said for beliefs, ideas, theories, and everything else from the class of cognitive experiences. The idea that everything in the universe is physical and behaves according tothe laws of physics, for example, is not wrong just because the universe is fundamentally different instructure from the structure of such knowledge. In fact, such knowledge gives no insight into exactlywhat the specific contents of the universe are. For example, it tells us nothing about whether there islife in neighboring galaxies - it just tells us that if there is life, it will be physical and adhere tophysical laws. Exactly the same can be said about MM-Theory. It posits that the universe iscomprised of other experiences even though this sheds no light on what these experiences feel like. Infact, the theory hinges on this fact as The Inconceivability of Consciousness makes clear. This is thecase for any system model of consciousness. Having valid knowledge of the world external to it hasnothing to do with the similitude between them.

Entailment

On the other hand, we do insist that whatever we believe and claim to know, it is imperative that itmatch up with our empirical experiences - or at least, that such empirical experiences don't falsify it.What is this all about? First, keep in mind that this sort of "matching" between belief and empiricalexperience is not the kind of match we have in mind. Even if an empirical experience confirms one'sbelief, there is still a very clear distinction between the structure of an empirical experience and abelief. The former is sensory, the latter cognitive. The requirement we are obliged to meet has nothingto do with matching - not in this sense, at least. It has to do with the fact that such empiricalexperiences entail their own knowledge. I see traffic on the road, I know there is traffic. It is thisknowledge that puts demands on our belief that they conform to its terms. Only contending knowledgecan decide whether the knowledge contended against is right or wrong, and the human mind sohappens to be built such that if the knowledge in question is derived from empirical experience, it hasthe final say.

This is an important point. The standardby which a belief can be judged as right orwrong is only by comparison to anotherbelief. If the belief in X is right, the belief in not-X must be wrong. As an analogy tothis, consider a high school history examconsisting of true/false questions. Supposequestion #3 was "Napoleon lost the battleof Waterloo in 1815?" You make yourchoice: true. After the exam, you go tocheck the answer key that is made


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available. You expect to see either "true"or "false" for question #3, knowing wellthat either one of these will determinewhether you got the answer right or

wrong. But suppose there was an administration mix up. Someone supplied the wrong answers on thekey. Instead of the answers to the history exam, someone mistakenly supplied the answers to the mathexam. So when you look up the answer for question #3, you find '24'. The question this analogy leavesus with is, does '24' entail that Napoleon did or didn't lose the battle of Waterloo in 1815? Can such astatement be judged right or wrong based on something that is neither "true" nor "false"? It surelycannot. Therefore, why should something which is not even conceivable, let alone verifiable,determine the correctness or falsehood of a theory. A theory is a cognitive phenomenon, and the thingsit is about are not. This mismatch makes any comparison of the two, like that between a true/falseanswer and a numerical one, fruitless. It is only if the thing which the theory is about can entailcontending knowledge that it is useful towards this end, for in that case, the knowledge yielded is fitfor comparison and a meaningful judgment can be made.

Quantum

Mechanics

Classical

Mechanics

Superposition

The Double-Slit

Experiment

The

Inconceivability

of Superposition

In fact, there are even scientific models, not just philosophical ones like ours, for which no empiricalexperience can pass as an authentic match in any sense of the word. A perfect example of this is themodel of the atom. It used to be thought that the particles that make up atoms - protons, neutrons, andelectrons - are tiny little balls much like those in a billiard game. Sometimes they'd be referred to as"point particles" in that one was justified in imagining them as taking up no more space than a singlepoint. Either way, they were thought to behave no differently from everyday solid objects. Butquantum mechanics changed all that. Now, particles are thought to behave in a completely differentmanner. This behavior is so different from what became known as classical mechanics that it taxesthe human intellect to this day. That is, so far, we have not been able to invent a model that accuratelyportrays what's going on down at the level of protons, neutrons, electrons, and all other fundamentalparticles, either through visualization or conceptualization. For example, particles are now known toexist in states called " superposition ". Sometimes this is defined as existing in more than one place atthe same time. For example, the famous " double-slit experiment " shows that a single electron, whenfired at a wall with two slits in it, will pass through both slits at the same time. Although one could

think of superposition in this way, the most accurate way of defining it is in probabilistic terms. That

is, we really should say that a particle in superposition has equal probabilities of being measured inone location as another (and even then, the probability isn't always equal). For example, if we tried tomeasure which slit the electron passed through, there is just as much a chance that it will be found inone slit as in the other. Once measured, however, it will definitely have passed through only one of the slits. If we don't try to measure it, the experiment shows, it will be as if it traveled through bothslits. Technically, we can't say for certain whether it actually did travel through both slits or notbecause we have no way of measuring states of superposition (measuring them results in such states"collapsing" into regular positions). This is suggestive that not even the more-than-one-place-at-a-time model is quite right since, if that was all there was to it, it would be measurable at all suchlocations simultaneously. Instead, the best model scientists have to offer is that superposition is astate of probable locations - that is, the electron really has no definite location(s), whether that be oneor many, but a range of probabilities of being located in one place or another. For all intents and


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purposes, therefore, superposition states are quite unimaginable.

Yet, that doesn't make the concept of superposition wrong. We can still rightfully say that the electronis in a state of superposition. It may not necessarily match the true structure of the electron and itsstate, but as long as it reliably represents such states, then it is a good model. In other words, itdoesn't matter if our models of fundamental particles and their behavior are mirror reflections of whatreally exists in the outer world; we judge the correctness of such models based on how well itaccounts for what little empirical observations we can make and how easily it can be digested by ourintellect relative to other models.

Should our mental models have no empirical evidence in support of it, we are obviously left wantingof this particular standard by which to judge it right or wrong (for it is the preferred standard), butlike the comparison of a true/false answer to a numerical one, this says nothing of the sort that themodel is wrong - at least, so long as we adopt a dependent model of reality. Furthermore, it is not asthough we are left wanting of any standard should empirical verification be out of the question, forthen we have the option of falling back on the model's own internal consistency. As much as empiricalevidence has the potential effect of fortifying our beliefs, the internal consistency of the logicalstructure of our beliefs also has this effect, and as far as dependent models should be concerned,either one, if not both, is an acceptable standard for a theory's correctness.

The Universal

Mind

One must allow for mental models to serve a representative function. This must be incorporated intothe model itself. For example, if we insisted that states of superposition had to be exactly what ourlimited imaginations visualized them to be, we would be pitifully wrong. MM-Theory is safe in thisregard as we pointed out in The Inconceivability of Consciousness . In that paper, the concession wemade was that our entire theory was just a mental model, but it still holds true in terms of itsrepresentative function. Now, we make another concession. We admit that our theory is not right inthe sense that it matches what's "out there" in its true form, but that its logical structure is valid. Thisis not such a bad concession to make since, as we've seen, the correctness of anything which is atheory or belief, whether based on a dependent or independent model, or in accordance with awindow or system model of consciousness, really should be understood in this way anyway. Whatwe're offering with our theory is a new design for reality, one that, we claim, is much more powerfulin explaining the fundamental fabric of the universe and existence in general. A design doesn't have tobe the thing it represents for it to be correct - a building is obviously different from blue prints onpaper. The design simply defines what the building is. In the same way, our theory defines a reality.We don't need to be fully exposed to the experiences our theory posits in the Universal Mind for it to

be correct in this sense; we just have to have a mental model representing these experiences, onewhose logical derivation is free from internal contradiction.

So if the correctness of a theory is grounded in its logical structure, then what does it mean for thetheory to create reality? As we pointed out above, dependent models seem to have the problem of creating the reality that they aim to propose. But we get a slightly more refined understanding of whatthis means when we consider the system model's take on a theory's correctness. It says, not that thetheory creates its own reality outright, but that it creates the logical soundness of what it's proposing.In fact, one could say that it is one and the same as its logical soundness. This should be triviallyobvious anyway, whether to an objectivist or a subjectivist. If logic is a property of thought and theway it unfolds in one's mind, then to create a theory from thought is also to create the logical "glue"that binds it all together. We also said that we could still mark out a distinction between what a theoryis and what it is about, and with this new understanding of correctness, it's easy to see how. What a

theory is is a set of ideas and their logical relations to each other, ultimately culminating in a set of logically deduced conclusions. What a theory is about, on the other hand, is something that isprojected after the fact. That is, it is what we end up perceiving in the world, on a cognitive level,given that our theory is correct. This was also mentioned in the above section Truth, Fact, And ThePhysical World - it is the other way in which beliefs can be projected. That is, it is the positing of theobject of our beliefs in an outer world. So even in a dependent model, this distinction can be made.

The latter form of projection is less something thatcan be characterized as "right" or "wrong", andmore an attempt to perceive the world according toour beliefs. Take atomic theory, for example - thetheory that all matter is made of atoms. One may


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come to this conclusion by way of scientificevidence and reason, but when one looks at a chairor a pair of spectacles and visualizes the atomswithin it, he/she is adapting his/her perception of the world in accordance with this conclusion(similarly to how I visualized my car through thefloor of my house). This is done after having settledthe matter of whether the conclusion is right orwrong. It is a way of coming to grips with the stateof the world, crafting the proper perceptions, under

the condition that one's conclusions are correct. It is not what makes them correct, it is a consequenceof it. It is important to realize this because, as we will now show, it is this form of projection thatinherits all the problems of the infinite regress. That being the case, it follows that the infinite regressis not a consequence of anything to do with the logical merit of our theory.

The positing of the objects of our theories still amounts to the creation of reality according to adependent model. In fact, it is what creates the "out there" of our theories. Foremost, it recruits ourvisualization faculties in order to picture the entities it purports to exist in the world - the atoms weenvision, as mentioned above, are a good example. But an "out there" need not strictly be visual orphysical or spatial, albeit we will always succumb to simulating it with visual imagery. MM-Theory,for example, does not mean to say that the non-human experiences that are "out there" are floatingaround in space or are separated from us by some physical distance. It just means to say that they arenot part of the human mind (you might almost want to think of it in terms of set theory). We mean "outthere" in a much more abstract sense. Nevertheless, it is still the positing of the existence of suchexperiences, and so the objection that our positing of them is just a mental act - that is, we create the"out there" of their existence - still results in the infinite regress. We are a little more out of the woodsat this point, however, because this kind of objection cannot be taken as a criticism of the logic of ourtheory. That was left behind when we moved into the realm of the "out there". That is, it is more acriticism of the positing of the objects that our theory is about rather than what our theory is. Itessentially points out that the things our theory is about cannot really be "out there" - they are "inhere". But when it comes to the theory itself, this is inconsequential - a correct theory is correctregardless of whether it's in the head or not (and, obviously, there's no other place it could be than inthe head). If one thinks about this, it becomes obvious that this sort of criticism can be leveled againstany idea or mental imagery, like the projection of atoms onto objects in the world, revealing them forthe mental structures they ultimately are. This, undoubtedly, has a lot to do with our visualization

habits, the shortcoming of mental models, and the simple fact that they will always be a product of ourminds - a product of a creature who can only conjure up cognitions in order to feel as though it has awindow-like awareness of the real world.

To put this in simpler terms, we might imagine the following scenario. Smith puts forward theargument "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." Jones, the skeptic,objects. "You may have drawn the conclusion that Socrates is mortal, but do you realize that this is

just an idea in your head? It is not a fact about the real world." If Smith was having difficultydismissing the window model of consciousness, he might be inclined to say, "Yes, it is true that myconclusion is just an idea in my head, but beyond that idea, somewhere in the real world, is the manSocrates himself, and it is a fact, whether we know it or not, that he is mortal." On the other hand, if Smith had no problem keeping a system model of consciousness in mind, he might be more inclined tosay, "Yes, it is true that my conclusion is just an idea in my head. So what? It's still valid."

So having said all that, are we in a better position to deal with the infinite regress problem? We are ina better position, but it obviously doesn't put a stop to it. In fact, it makes it more noticeable. That is,by depicting our theory as a mental model whose truth is rooted in its internal logic, we are almostbegging that it be juxtaposed with the "real" universe of which it is a representation. The up side tothis is that the infinite regress cannot be traced back to a fault with the theory - at least, not in thesense that we mean for our theory to be interpreted according to a window model of consciousness.By accepting the model likeness of our theory, and its truth being grounded in its own logicalstructure, we avoid the inconsistency of demanding that our theory be taken in the context of thetraditional window model while at the same time replacing that model with a system one. So then whydoes the infinite regress persist? As we noted already, the infinite regress will persist anytime atheory, belief, idea, and the like, is recognized as a mental entity. It will persist because these


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cognitive experiences, as with any experience, want to be taken as though they were windows throughwhich we see an independent reality. That is the nature of the beast. So when we deny them this bycasting them in a mental light, a sudden instinct within us kicks in, demanding that they be replaced bythe true form of whatever it is that they represent. In other words, we want to be aware of reality, not

just feel our experiences. This may be unique to humans, but it is only humans (as far as we know)who build constructs of "mental things" - that is, we, unlike other animals, understand the concept of something being "mental" as opposed to real. We are also unique in that we want to understand thereal world, to know it. We abhor the idea of not knowing. So when an experience gets relegated to thecategory of mental things, we feel a void in our knowledge of reality, and the urge arises to replace itwith bona fide knowledge whose only adequate description would be as the window model wouldhave it. This is not a problem with the logic of our theories, be they whatever they are, it is somethingmuch deeper and intrinsic to human nature. It is the incessant need we all have to know reality. Westarted out this section with a promise, not to rid ourselves of the infinite regress, but to change theterms of the problem. This is how we've done it. We have cleared up the problem of which model todescribe our theory under (window vs. system), and what remains is a problem of knowledge.

Standards, Not

Logic

Principle: Solution to The Infinite RegressProblem

The infinite regress problem can be resolved asfollows:

1) Even with dependent models of reality, there isa difference between what a theory is and whatit is about.

2) Given a system-of-experiences model of consciousness, what a theory is is a system of ideas whose correctness depends on its owninherent standards. What it is about issomething that is posited, after it has beendeemed correct, in a domain of reality wetypically call "out there".

3) Because a theory's correctness depends on itsown inherent standards that do not change byrecognizing the theory to be a cognitiveexperience, the infinite regress makes nodifference to the theory's correctness. Itcontinues to make a difference to the manner inwhich we posit what the theory is about -namely, phenomena in the domain we call "outthere".

4) The infinite regress problem cannot be resolvedfor what the theory is about, but so long as thetheory's inherent standards do not mandatethat the form in which we posit what it is aboutin the domain we call "out there" be taken


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literally or as the correct form, the theory canstill be said to be correct.

Notice that this solution could work for the problem of other minds as well. The problem of otherminds is essentially an infinite regress problem, and for exactly the same reasons. That is, we'd like tobelieve that other people have minds of their own, but because the only form in which their minds

could exist in our subjective realities is as mental models, there is the tendency to want to push themental model aside in order to apprehend the "real" minds of others. We pointed out that one way toget around this was, given another person's mind, to somehow acquire a perception of reality that wasutterly indistinguishable from how that person's mind projects itself - the only catch being that suchperceptions would have to replace our own completely. The solution we are currently toying withadds that our belief in the minds of others need not be faulty if we ground such beliefs in some kind of rational basis such that it is the logic of such a rational that upholds its correctness. The infiniteregress then applies only to the manner in which we posit the minds of others in an outer world of sorts. When it comes to theories of reality, this problem cannot be solved because our mental modelsare inadequate for capturing the true form of the real world (in the context of MM-Theory, we cannothave non-human experiences - we can only model them with our thoughts). When it comes to otherminds, however - human minds in any case - this is less of a hindrance. The suggestion that weacquire a perception of reality identical to that of someone else, although highly impractical, ispossible in principle because such perceptions are human perceptions, and therefore within the reachof any one person's experiential capacity.

Is The Theory Consistent?So it seems we have a solution; but let's not wrap this up too hastily. We have established that so longas the theory is consistent internally, the infinite regress problem is no problem at all - but is itconsistent internally? Well, it seems like an odd question to ask - what theorist questions theconsistency of his theory after having already argued for it consistently? - but the problem at hand -namely, the infinite regress problem - just may be revealing to us a point of inconsistency. If this istrue, then it does no good to argue that the infinite regress problem doesn't plague our theory onaccount if its being internally consistent. But we can be assured that no such inconsistency exists, as

we will now see.The so called inconsistency becomes apparent when we contrast these two statements - which arecentral to MM-Theory:

1) The Universal Mind consists of all human minds and all non-humanexperiences between and outside them.

2) No conscious being, finding itself in a subjective reality, can makereference to anything, whether physical, abstract, or any other form, beyondits own subjective reality.

You might recognize the second statement as the Principle of Referential Monopoly . Essentially, itstates that in uttering statement 1), we have made reference to something which, despite whatstatement 1) claims, is not really outside our minds. That is to say, if we are claiming that there areindeed experiences beyond our minds, then we are referring to them, implying they actually residewithin our minds. From this point, the infinite regress ensues. It certainly seems, then, that two of themost central tenets of MM-Theory conflict - that's a major inconsistency, and a major problem. Inother words, the whole reason why there's an infinite regress problem is because there's aninconsistency.


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But we can show that this inconsistency is only illusory. If we can show that, then we can fall back onour earlier solution - that so long as the theory is consistent internally, the infinite regress problem isno problem at all. How is the inconsistency illusory? It is illusory in virtue of the fact that the "mind"of statement 1) has a different referent than the "mind" (or "subjective reality") of statement 2). That isto say, insofar as each statement talks about human minds, they are referring to different things.

In order to see this, I will have to introduce two terms: the self-in-the-model and the self-presenting-the-model. What are the meanings of these terms? And what is the model? Well, the model simply isthe universe that MM-Theory depicts. It is the entire set of all experiences, including human ones. It isa model of the universe as MM-Theory has it. In this model, we have human minds. They exist amongthe totality of experiences. They constitute selves, human selves. They are the selves-in-the-model.But as a model, the universe as MM-Theory has it must be presented by someone - yours truly. I am aself. I am the self-presenting-the-model, as is anyone else who presents it.

The self-presenting-the-model is not in the model - the model is in it, along with the self-in-the-model(see aside ). This is the key to resolving the apparent inconsistency. When statement 1) refers to thehuman minds that are among all other experiences in the Universal Mind, it is referring to the self-in-the-model. When statement 2) refers to the human minds (or subjective realities) that all things werefer to are contained in, it is referring to the self-presenting-the-model (insofar as the model inquestion resides therein). Seeing as how the self-presenting-the-model is not even an element in themodel, then the two utterances of "mind" cannot possibly refer to the same thing. Thus, there is noconflict - no inconsistency.

Two Selves vs.Two Models

Definition: Self-In-The-Model vs. Self-Presenting-

The-Model1) Self-In-The-Model: Concerning any model of

reality, the self-in-the-model is the element inthe model representing one's self and the roleplayed thereby.

2) Self-Presenting-The-Model: Concerning anymodel of reality, the self-presenting-the-model


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is the self in whose mind the model resides, andwho is thereby able to present it.

Principle: The Self-In-The-Model andSelf-Presenting-The-Model Distinction

Concerning any model of reality, when we refer toelements of the model outside the mind, the mindin question is a self-in-the-model, and when werefer to the model itself inside the mind, the mindin question is a self-presenting-the-model.

The reader should note that the "mind" referred to in statement 2) should be interpreted as theself-presenting-the-model only insofar as it seems to contradict statement 1). That is to say, one could interpret it as a self-in-the-model insofar as it refers only to those subjective realities (or selves)implicit in the model already (that is, MM-Theory comes quite obviously and trivially with the whole

gamut of subjective realities, human minds, and selves that the model purports to exist in theUniversal Mind). But this goes without mentioning the important caveat that nowhere among thesesubjective realities are our subjective realities - that is, insofar as "our" connotes selves-presenting-the-model. In other words, insofar as statement 2) refers only to the subjective realities alreadyimplied as part of the model, it doesn't contradict statement 1), for none of selves in those subjectiverealities ever refer beyond their own minds. But if we find that statement 2) contradicts statement 1),this can only be in virtue of interpreting it as referring to ourselves - that is, as selves-presenting-the-model - and thus we would be advised to heed the foregoing solution in cases like this.

Kant and The

Thing-In-Itself

Yet, even bearing this solution in mind, one can see how the infinite regress begins. In failing todistinguish between the self-in-the-model and the self-presenting-the-model, we are compelled to takeall those experiences, which, when confronted with statement 1), we suppose to be outside the mind,and put them right back into the mind when confronted with statement 2). We then proceed to posit

that the "real" experiences are out there beyond them. But in drawing the distinction between theself-in-the-model and the self-presenting-the-model, we wipe out any apparent inconsistency, andwhen that is gone, and we understand what it means to be "right" according to a system model of consciousness, we can satisfy ourselves with a consistent model without worrying about matching itup part-for-part with entities in the "real" world as a window model of consciousness would imploreus to.

ConclusionHopefully, the reader can now more easily answer the questions we posed in the introduction to thispaper. Realistically speaking, however, the ideas in this paper will probably take some getting used

to before such questions can be answered with more fluidity (even I get confused sometimes ). Onemust not only remember the answers to the specific questions above, but all variants of them as wellas novel and doubly challenging ones. Nonetheless, we end this paper with confidence that the toolsand new perspectives provided herein are enough to take on any such challenge.

Just to be sure, however, let's supply the answers to the aforementioned questions. Our first questionwas:

How can a belief be true and not true at the same time?


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Reality Qualifier

Simple. We need to apply the appropriate reality qualifiers . A belief is not just true or not true. It istrue relative to reality R 1. It is false relative to reality R 2. To say that a belief is true or false, withoutspecifying for which reality it is true or false, is as incomplete and meaningless as specifying thespeed of your new car as "300 km".

How can certain things exist when we don't know their states or properties?For example, I don't know how many stars there are in the Milky Way, yet Ibelieve there is a definite number. But how can there be a definite numberwhen I have no way of perceiving or knowing it? And what if we only knowsomething probabilistically, like the rolling of a dice? How is the outcome of rolling it determined if we don't perceive or know the factors that go towardsdetermining it?

Intra-Reality

Descriptions

Determinants

Non-Determinants

Defined vs.

Undefined

Determinants

To answer this, we need some intra-reality tools. Specifically, we need to identify which things aredeterminants and which are non-determinants . As for the number of stars in the Milky Way, thiswould be an undefined determinant . That is, it is the belief that a definite number of stars exist, andtherefore a determinant, but it is undefined in that this number is unknown. It can be traced back to adefined determinant , such as the belief that for any finite set of physical objects to exist as discrete

units, like the stars, there must be a definite number of them. This determinant necessitates that thenumber of stars in the Milky Way also be a determinant, albeit an undefined one. That is how therecan be a specific number of stars without one actually perceiving how many. As for probabilities likethe rolling of dice, it depends on whether such outcomes are determinants or non-determinants. If onebelieves very much in the deterministic nature of the world such that the rolling of dice has adetermined outcomes, then it is an undefined determinant, in which case we answer this question inthe same way we did for the number of stars in the Milky Way. If one truly believes that the rolling of dice is a random event, then the outcome is a non-determinant, in which case there is no question toanswer. If it really is probabilistic, then nothing is predetermined. Whatever the outcome of the diceroll, it happens on the spot with no prior cause to guide it.

How can we ever be wrong? It's one thing to declare others wrong because

we don't agree with them, but what about cases in which we come to realizethe mistakes in our own beliefs? To confess our own mistakes is to declareour own beliefs wrong and having always been wrong. How, then, could theyhave ever determined reality?

Reality

Transitions

They determined reality because they determined a different reality. We can be wrong by goingthrough reality transitions . The mistaken belief is still true for the reality one leaves behind, alwayswas true and will always be. As for the reality we enter into, this belief is a mistake, always was andalways will be. The opposing belief that takes its place is true, always has been and always will be.

Why doesn't reality always accommodate our beliefs and perceptions? Whatif I believed I could walk on water? Why, then, would I surely drown withevery attempt I make? If my beliefs determine reality, then I should be ableto walk on water. Why doesn't reality turn out this way?

Gravity

Because the reality in which the laws of physics hold true is a much stronger reality than one in whichyou can walk on water. The former reality has more gravity and therefore more readily pulls us out of other realities with less gravity.

What do we say about the existence of other people's minds in our reality?As we pointed out above, we can't have other people's perceptions andexperiences - we can only have our own. So, then, do their perceptions and


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experiences exist or not?

Mental Models

Other people's minds do exist in our reality, but as mental models . These mental models docorrespond to their minds in their true forms, but the true forms they take are whole realities untothemselves, realities that can't be experienced simultaneously with one's own. Therefore, if onewanted to apprehend another's reality, they would have to completely dispense with theirs. On theother hand, we can logically conclude that other people's minds exist without being inconsistent. If logic leads us to this conclusion, we may still have trouble rising above the mental status of the

mental model, but if this mental model is supported by the logic we traced, we have every right toconclude with it anyway. Dependent models that invest in a system model of consciousness give usthis right in virtue of the way they redefine a theory's correctness.

If there are many realities, why not just think of the whole set of realities asthe reality? In MM-Theory, we call it "Reality" and all other personalrealities we call "subjective realities". There is a point to capitalizing the "R"in "Reality". But, then, if we call the entire set of subjective realities"Reality", how is it not a subjective reality itself? It is just another theoryafter all, another human perspective of what reality is. How could it riseabove that status and become the reality?

The first part of this question - why not call the whole set of realities the reality - has an easy answer.We do call it the reality, but only because we are subjectivists or subscribers to MM-Theory. That is,we have chosen the entire set of subjective realities, along with everything between, and assigned theterm "reality" to it. The second part of the question - how is this not a subjective reality itself - relatesto the infinite regress problem. To recognize that our theory is just another subjective reality bears noconsequence to its internal logical merit. Since we are going with a system model of consciousness,we mean for our theory to be taken as a model that makes sense or whose logical soundness isconvincing and intellectually satisfying - not that it mirrors the way reality actually is. Yet, we arestill inclined to posit the objects of our theory - that is, the things our theory is about - in a realm wecall "out there". This indeed is just a part of our subjective reality, and therefore not really "out there"(and hence, giving rise to the infinite regress), but this doesn't make our theory wrong - it just meansthat we have no adequate way of positing reality in its true form in an existence which is somehowbeyond our subjective reality.

It is easy to get confused when there is a whole smorgasbord of realities to keep sorted. Although thispaper set out to clear up a lot of the confusion surrounding this, it may have in fact created moreconfusion. This was anticipated. The hope is that if there is any confusion still lingering, it is of adifferent sort. More specifically, it is hoped that the confusion is not over the ps eudo-paradoxes thatthe above questions seem to revolve around, but over the unfamiliarity and complexity of this newway of thinking about reality. We have presented a set of conceptual and lingual tools the subjectivistcan use to sort out the aforementioned pseudo-paradoxes, and this should resolve any sort of confusion, but it may still be confusing how and when to use these tools. This is a matter of practiceand getting use to. It is not a matter of any logical inconsistencies. The reader may benefit fromreading this paper a few times over, and over time, he/she should find that this confusion will fadeand a clearer picture of how dependent models work will emerge.

Moral RelativismThere's no denying that dependent models are a form of relativism. Does it open the door to moralrelativism? This is something we ought to touch on before closing the chapter on dependent models. If the reader has followed me this far, either he/she finds the ideas herein appealing or is very tolerantof them. This says nothing, however, on his/her opinions about moral relativism. Many object to theidea that what's morally right for me may not be morally right for you, because if that were the case,anyone could get away with anything, defending their actions with their own customized moral

justifications. Therefore, I'd like to reserve a small section in the conclusion to address this. Althoughwe will not be able to uphold an absolutist view of morality, I'd like to show how the ideas inherent


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in this paper don't have to give way to a radically relativistic moral view.

First of all, let me just say that it is a misconception that moral relativism is a license to impose one'smorality on everyone else. Yet, so many people worry that if moral relativism is upheld, this is whatit will be used for - as if it is always someone else's morality that will take precedence over one'sown. At the very least, moral relativism means that one's own morality deserves just as much of adefense as anyone else's. Why should anyone play by the terms of someone else's perspective whentheir own perspective is so much more of a reality to them. So if one's moral values are beingtrampled over, there is no reason to excuse the offender by appeal to their moral values. One has justas much right to defend their own values. In fact, if it is to be consistent, this is exactly what moralrelativism should have at heart. In the end, there really shouldn't be any difference, in a practicalsense, between moral relativism and an absolutist view of morality. If one takes an absolutist stance,he/she will defend his/her moral values on the grounds that those values are unconditionally correct -not just correct for him/herself, but for everyone including the offender. If one takes a relativisticstance, on the other hand, one will (or at least, can) defend his/her moral values on the grounds thatthose values are conditionally correct, and that those conditions - namely, that the values in questionare his/her values - are met. The fact of the matter is, this condition will always be met, and so thereis no practical difference between how absolutist morality and relativistic morality play out.

Reality

Transition

Secondly, just because two people may not share the same moral perspective does not mean that theirvalues are not subject to debate. Someone who thinks it's always wrong to steal, no matter what thecircumstances, can be persuaded to consider it okay in special cases such as when one's family isstarving and one must resort to stealing food that's too expensive. If such a person can be convinced inthis way, we would call this a reality transition . That is, the person went from a reality in which it isalways immoral to steal to one in which it is okay under special circumstances. So again, the moralposition taken by one person doesn't have to be unconditionally sanctioned by all who wouldotherwise oppose such a position. The reality in which such moral positions hold true can beoverpowered by another reality by strong rhetoric, cogent reasoning, appeal to sympathy or emotions,or by any other means whatsoever.

Higher vs. Lower

Realities

Gravity

Real Things

But the real challenge for moral relativism given by this paper is the idea of higher and lowerrealities . This makes it clear that, although in one sense we say that all realities are equally real, inanother sense we say that some realities are more real than others. The only sense in which we cansay that every reality is equally real is that reality is whatever a given percipient experiences it to be,and that this principle is equally true for all percipients. But it isn't quite true for the amount of

gravity we find across realities. Gravity is not something that is experienced as a real thing , asthough it were one of the contents of a given reality. Rather, it is what we call the tendency of onereality to remain reality for a given percipient in the face of other contending realities. They contendon the grounds that the most convincingly real experiences get to constitute reality for the givenpercipient. We call the more convincing realities "higher" and the less convincing ones "lower".Therefore, the relation between gravity and higher/lower realities is that the higher a reality for agiven percipient, the more gravity it has for that percipient. What this means, overall, is that somerealities do take precedence over others, and when it comes to morality, some moral views, in virtueof constituting a reality, will take precedence over others.

In this age of global awareness, more and more people are beginning to realize the utmost importanceof basic human rights. What is a human right? It is a recognition of the unconditional moral worth of ahuman being simply because he/she is human. That is, it does not stop at national, ethnic, or religious

borders. It does not apply to an exclusive group or class of people. Such rights include the right tolife, the right to satiate hunger and thirst, the right to citizenship, the right to choose one's citizenship,the right to voice one's views, the right to abstain from pain and degradation, and so on. Might we say,then, that human rights are an example of a "higher" system of moral values? That is, should we saythat these values are indeed morally binding in reality, would this reality, then, be a higher one thanany reality depicted by a worldview - political, philosophical, religious, or whathaveyou - ascribingmoral precepts exclusively to a particular group or class of people, or held exclusively by aparticular group or class of people? After all, how much more universal could the aforementionedrights be compared to the sin of eating pork, or having not been baptized, or having no sociallyrecognized worth as a homeless person?


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Well, let's consider these questions more seriously. Let's consider them in the light of higher andlower realities? Are universal human rights a legitimate example of a higher reality than one in whichthe only moral precepts one should keep in mind are not universal? Well, there is nothing aboutuniversal human rights as a principle that makes them higher. They're just ideas, after all. All elsebeing equal, a given percipient might just as likely be convinced of universal human rights as he/shewould be of any other set of moral values. What we have to look at are the reasons why someonewould believe in universal human rights over other moral beliefs. We might begin by noting thegrowing outcry against human rights violations heard around the world. More and more of the world'scitizens are realizing that religious, ethnic, and ideological differences pail in comparison to theimport of the basic worth of human beings and the horror of its desecration. But this is just contingent.No one can say whether this trend will continue to grow or fade in the next 20, 10, or even just a fewyears. Opinions and attitudes change. So we cannot judge how convincing universal human rights areas a moral perspective based on how many people agree with it. There has to be something inherentlyunwavering about it, something that one could hold onto with more tenaciousness than one could withany other moral theory.

Let's take a few examples into consideration. Consider murder. Murder is an excellent example of aviolation of the universal human right to life. Now compare this to the Jewish imperative to keep theSabbath day holy. If one was raised Jewish, this moral imperative might seem intuitive, but noteveryone is raised Jewish. In fact, there are many around the world who are only vaguely familiarwith Judaism, and might not even know what the Sabbath day is. How are they to be convinced of itssacredness? The wrongness of murder, however, is something almost everyone feels one way oranother. It doesn't matter how they are raised or what culture they belong to - the atrocity of murder issomething we all have a sense for. It is not an unfair assumption by any stretch of the imagination tosay that we have an inborn instinct to abhor murder. This is not to say that this instinct cannot beovercome - such as in the case of soldiers at war or crime fighters taking down dangerous criminals -but it surely runs much deeper than a belief like the holiness of the Sabbath. Neither is this to say thatall humans have a disdain for murder - there are murderers, after all - but these represent theexceptions to the rule. Overall, we can reasonably say that those moral values that would qualify asuniversal human rights are those that we all have a deeply visceral and nearly immutable intuition for.

And if we have a deeply visceral and nearly immutable intuition for these rights, this is a good signthat it is hardwired into the brain. It is hard to imagine how a society could function well or at all if the need to respect the basic human rights of others was not automatically recognized. They would beextremely hard lessons to learn - even harder to understand the importance of teaching them. For this

reason, we will conclude that universal human rights are more convincing than other forms of morality.

Of course, to say this, we have to mean for this to be taken in a certain context. We don't alwaysrecognize the moral sanctity of these rights in our abstract thoughts and beliefs, but the power withwhich they enforce themselves on an instinctual level when we are faced with the choice of eitherupholding or violating them makes them most convincing indeed. We feel the wrongness or rightnessof such acts in the emotions that come alive in those moments. For example, suppose Tom, aself-serving hedonist, firmly believed that the only moral rule to be followed was self-gratificationand concerned himself with nothing but his own interests. On any other day, Tom wouldn't give theslightest damn about the lives of others, but on this day, he comes across a horrible accident - a carhas hit a tree. All the evidence points to the fact that it must have occurred in the absence of anywitnesses - Tom concludes that he must be the first - and upon peering inside, he finds the driver anda passenger, a man and a woman, dead in their seats, and in the back, a badly injure baby who barelyhas the strength to cry. It would take time out of Tom's busy schedule, and effort on his part, to take thebaby and rush it to the nearest hospital. It certainly wouldn't be self-serving. Yet, something within hissoul beckons for him to do just that. It is this moment of which I speak. It is in this moment, andmoments like this, with people like Tom or otherwise, that the universal human right to life is feltmost profoundly and trumps all other moral positions one might take on a more intellectual orcognitive level.

But on this intellectual or cognitive level, we can quite easily deny, in the absence of any contendingemotional sway, the universality of human rights. On a strict materialist/Darwinian account, one couldargue that there is no greater morality than the survival of the fittest - if that is even morality at all.This certainly is a challenging contention because, with a scientific theory in its background, it is hard


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to denounce as rubbish. Well, our goal is not so much to defend the sanctity of universal human rights(although, in my humble opinion, that would be ideal) against all other moral theories, but to showhow there are reliable grounds upon which to characterize it as a higher reality than other moraltheories. I think we have done so by comparing them to other, more exclusive and particular, moralstances such as those pertaining only to a specific religious outlook or group of people, but this doesnot mean that universal human rights constitute the highest moral reality there is. Indeed, we pointedout above that there is no a priori reason to assume any reality is the highest. No matter how high areality, there is always the possibility of contending realities equal or greater in gravitational potency.The idea of survival of the fittest is, arguably, an example of one of these. It is indeed a veryconvincing view, but it is grounded in something very different from the idea of universal humanrights - namely, scientific evidence and explanatory power. Another contender might be the utilitarianphilosophy of morality. This theory says that we know right and wrong by the experience of pain and

pleasure. This view, like that of survival of the fittest, is just as universal as human rights since itapplies, not only to humans, but to all sentient beings. So our point is made - there are some moralphilosophies which can rightfully be deemed higher than others, and so the kind of moral relativismthat dependent models condone is not one in which each and every morality is equal in justificationand truth, but one in which there are many, each with a chance for recognition as true and justified,but some with a better chance than others.

Final Remarks On The Descriptive ApproachThe difference between reality and perception has been known since the time of the ancient Greeksand probably before. Even then, ample instances existed by which this difference could bedemonstrated. The way sticks in water appear to be bent is a good example. Everyone in the worldand back through the ages has had dreams - this serves as the perfect example if nothing else does.People have been known to hallucinate or go ranting on about their delusional beliefs. Even beingwrong is evidence enough of the rift between reality and perception when the error of one's belief, atthe time, seems so convincing as to be virtually infallible. It is always more intuitive to assume thatthese mistakes and deceptions are not reflections of a changing and inconsistent reality, but that realitymaintains itself in a static or constant state regardless of its apparent flux. The stick in the water that

appears to be bent is assumed to be straight despite its appearance. It is much more intelligible toassume this than it is to assume the stick is indeed bent when submerged underwater and straightensitself only when it is lifted above the water. There may be any number of reasons for this: the need forparsimony, the need to understand, the need to perceive the world in a constant and stable way, ormaybe it is an assumption hardwired into our brains. Whatever it is, it will conduce much morereadily to independent models. The consequence of this is the invention of a model of mind assomething distinct from, but tuned into, reality. Thus, dualism ensues along with all its philosophicalquandaries.

Starting with this assumption, we proceed to build all our sciences, religions, philosophies, and so onaround it. We are still carrying on with this tradition today. In religion, for example, we believe in aGod who has an external and independent existence to us and who resides in a metaphysical plane of


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existence, perhaps parallel to the physical one, both of which are just as external and independent of us as is God Himself. We think of our sciences in much the same way. We believe in an external andindependent spacetime continuum in which all natural phenomena take place. We believe that all thescientific discoveries that come down to us through the ages are real in the same non-perceptual,non-mental way.

What if, however, we didn't start out this way? What if our ancestors of the ancient world went withthe assumption that all perception was always accurate and that there was no need to distinguishbetween perception and reality? What if all of civilization then on built its sciences, religions,philosophies, and so on around this view? Where would we be now? Would we have been able tocarry on with this assumption and built for ourselves a perspective of the world that sorted itself outintellectually, practically, and spiritually, such that, on the whole, we felt we had an understanding of reality that satisfied at least as much, if not more, as our current independent model does? The centralthesis of this paper proposes that we would. It presents the possibility that dependent models couldfair at least as well as independent models, given a good enough theory to play the explanatory role. Itdoesn't present dependent models as the right models and independent models as wrong - rather, itshows that dependent models are a viable alternative that work just as well.

The approach we've taken that allows us to say this is the descriptive approach. Centrally, we'vepointed out how, when one looks at the world, or experiences it in any way at all, he/she has twoequally valid ways of interpreting it: as a set of perceptions and experiences whose realness is rootedin how they feel, or as a set of existing things whose realness is root in themselves and not ourperceptions and experiences of them. Either interpretation is just as valid as the other because, on adescriptive account, they both capture exactly what reality seems to be. It is as if reality is anindependently existing thing, while at the same time, it is as if reality depends for its existence on ourexperiencing it. We provided an analogy to help make this more clear. We said it was comparable tothe Copernican and Ptolemaic models of the universe. When one looks up at the stars and notices thepath across the sky they travel, one could interpret this as though they were all revolving around theEarth or as though it was the Earth that was rotating about its axis. As far as description goes, eitherof these work.

The Design

Analogy

Going with a dependent model, we then continued applying the descriptive approach to the dynamicsof perception in order to yield rules for the dynamics of reality itself. For example, if reality dependson perception, and if different people have different perceptions of reality, then i t is as if there are amultitude of realities. It is important to use the phrase "as if", not only because it keeps us inline with

our intention to describe rather than explain, but because it is all too easy, given that there are severalways of perceiving reality, to misconceive reality as a "thing" of which there can be many. This iswhy such descriptions need to be refined with other principles such as the design analogy . Thedesign analogy reminds us that realities are, at base, descriptions, even definitions, and not "things".This helps us to understand what exact we are referring to when we talk about "a" reality. It is thebridge between a subjectivist's theory of reality and the descriptions of reality (any reality) he/shemight give while adhering to a set of lingual rules as a guide for making sense. When the subjectivistmoves from talking about his/her own theory, as if it were the ultimate truth, to talking about alternatetheories, using these rules and lingual tools, he/she makes use of the design analogy. In other words,the theory a subjectivist has in mind is one reality in and of itself - it is one design - and so to speak of "many realities", the subjectivist has to temporarily put aside his/her theory, and talk about otherdesigns. It is okay to put this in terms of a "multiplicity" of realities, but once in this context, thesubjectivist needs to realize he/she is no longer talking about what actually exists, as his/her theory

would, but about hypothetical designs for existence. So these "realities" aren't like objects coexistingin one "super-reality", but a set of ideas, models, perceptions, or descriptions of reality of whichhis/her theory is but one.

Intra- vs. Inter-

Reality

Descriptions,

Reality

Qualifiers,

Coming to grips with this, the subjectivist can go on with his/her descriptive approach and describeall independent models (or designs) of reality using the intra-reality description tools outlinedabove. He/she may also compare and contrast different realities using the inter-reality descriptiontools. The latter tools are the rules outlined above, and they too are derived from the descriptiveapproach just like the one about it being "as if" there are a multitude of realities. For example, theOnly One Reality rule describes the way reality appears to a given beholder. It is as if the reality thebeholder perceives is the only one and everything beyond it is non-existent. The use of realityqualifiers is also a way of describing dependent models. This is actual a glorified version of the


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Reality

Transitions, and

Higher vs. Lower

Realities

Only One Reality

Rule

"multiple realities" description, so to speak, with the additional point that nothing can exist or be trueunless it comes under the purview of a particular reality (so one must inquire as to which reality thatso happens to be). Going through changes in perception or belief end up being described as realitytransitions , most of which lead to higher realities, but on occasion, to lower ones as well - at least, itis as if this is what was happening.

Real Things

The use of the "as if" wording is not to say that these descriptions aren't what is happening, but it isnot to say that they are what's happening either. Rather, it is to take an independent stance of whatreally is happening. The subjectivist's theory plays the role of explaining what's actually happeninginstead, as do all other theories of reality. When we take an independent stance, we are left only withdescriptive tools, and so the "as if" wording is used because it is all we have. The advantage thisgives dependent models is that descriptions of what seems tobe happening in reality can be brought back into theexplanatory realm with very little modification. The onlymodification is that the design analogy should be put aside.We are no longer talking about mere designs at that point -we have settled on a particular design, namely thesubjectivist's own, and designated the title "reality" to it. Allother realities must now be taken to be collections of realthings (or what we call "subjective realities") that makeupparts of the subjectivist's reality. They can still be thought of as designs, but they have lost all chance of being selected asthe "correct" design. Other than that, however, what seemedto be happening at the descriptive level is what's happeningat the explanatory level. People still see their subjectiverealities as the only one, they still mean for their statements tobe taken relative to their subjective realities, they still maketransitions from an old subjective reality to a new one everytime they change their perceptions, they still see theirsubjective realities as the highest in virtue of its being mostconvincingly real for them at the time, and so on. This is what

makes the descriptive approach so powerful with dependentmodels. As we pointed out above , when it comes todependent models, ontology depends on description - on "asif"s - and so description is more basic to reality than ontology.

All of this helps the subjectivist to think clearly about his/her own theory and to explain what wouldotherwise come across as a Pandora's box full of paradoxes. The subjectivist needs to understandhow basic the descriptive approach is to his/her own theory - how it is better to describe what seemsto be the nature of reality if it is defined by perception. He/she needs to understand that to think interms of how reality actually does work, independently of how we perceive it, is to revert back to anindependent model, and this is the primary condition under which all pseudo-paradoxes crop up. If the subjectivist understands this, and understands the design analogy of reality that the descriptiveapproach leads to, then all he/she needs to do is apply the inter-reality description rules and he/she

will sail smoothly ahead, passed the pseudo-paradoxes and into clear waters.Yet the usefulness of the descriptive approach transcends the needs of the subjectivist. It can servemore purposes than the subjectivist's struggle to prove that he/she is making sense after all. Gettingback to moral relativism, it has the potential to, if not resolve social and political conflicts, bring us astep closer to dealing with them in diplomatic ways. With a dependent model in mind, one has far lessinclination to impose one's views on another in virtue of his/her not taking his/her views in anabsolute or independent sense. One can accept that another's view is valid for that person. This is notto say that dependent models never disagree with independent models, or even each other on specificpoints, but having the set of tools which come with the descriptive approach, one can make a choice:he/she can either argue about his/her dependent model being the correct one, or he/she can apply thetools to show how, within the context of the interlocutor's own reality, a context which he/she cannot


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disagree with, he/she is correct. For example, suppose a subjectivist was engaged in a debate with amaterialist. The subjectivist has a choice with how to proceed. He/she could say, "No, materialist, theworld is not exclusively matter, it is mental", or he/she could say, "Yes, you're right, the world isexclusively matter - your world." The materialist couldn't use the same approach towards thesubjectivist because, to him/her, the subjectivist's "world" isn't anything more than a mistaken belief -it is hardly a reality unto itself. The same approach could be used in debates of any kind, whetherthat's metaphysical, epistemic, or moral. It provides an opportunity to keep the peace betweendisagreeing parties.

Of course, one must not only be willing to use this approach, but it must work well with the views of reality one already has in mind. If one were a religious fundamentalist with a radically strict devotionto this view, there wouldn't be any doubt that he/she would reject the very notion of using adescriptive approach or a dependent model. To do so would amount to an outright lie about his/herown beliefs. Even if one was willing to go this route, once each person's reality had been laid out onthe table, there would still be the need to decide which one was the better or more valid view. Forthis reason, this approach is best put into the hands of those whose primary aspiration is to bringpeace between warring factions. It is most promising for those who, while maintaining a certain levelof devotion to his/her own views, is willing to put those views aside for the sake of peace. What thisapproach offers is a way in which one can do this without actually "giving up" his/her views. That is,because this approach is best understood as taking an independent stance of any theory about whatreality actually is, one does not have to treat the other person's views as the right views. One just hasto accept that another will see reality in a certain way, and temporarily accepting that such aperception indeed exists, even if it's not one's own, explore its contents and merit in partnership withthat person. In turn, one could express his/her own reality in similar terms - that is, one need onlycommunicate what reality seems to be according to his/her own perceptions. Both collaborators mustcooperate by being aware that it is a descriptive approach they are using and refrain from reverting toan ontological fight over whose reality is the reality. In short, with these tools, the subjectivist canagree with his/her contender without compromising his/her own views.

This approach doesn't promise that after such deliberations, all participants will come out havingresolved all their differences. As we said above, these debates are rarely ever satisfied unless onefaction has established his/her own views as being the correct ones, especially if the matter at hand isa life and death issue. They all may agree that one thing may be true in one person's reality but not inanother's, but this does no good if the required solution is of a more practical sort. TheIsraeli/Palestinian conflict is a good example - this is a war over land. Both parties may agree that in

the Israeli view of reality, they are owed that land, and in the Palestinian reality, they are not. But inthe end, one group of people will get that land and the other will lose it. No amount of debating willresult in the creation of two realities, one in which the Israelis get to keep their land and the other inwhich the Palestinians also get to keep it. So it is true that this approach has its limits.

Nevertheless, what this approach offers is an arena which is much more conducive to reason andpeaceful debate. Independent models are much less conducive to this, primarily because theyemphasize how only one view of reality can be correct, and so the question any debate ends upattempting to answer is who's right and who's wrong. With dependent models, debates follow adifferent course. The question becomes: what is so-and-so's view? An openness to exploration andinquiry into other people's views is fostered. The result of this is the same result as any atmospherethat encourages the use of reason and self expression over defensiveness and slander. Disagreeingparties begin to understand each other better and see the reasoning behind each other's views. Everynow and then, in fact, such enlightenment can change one's perspective unexpectedly. Resorting to"I'm right, you're wrong" tactics will never do this - not for one's self or one's contender.

There is a lesson to be learnt from this - namely, that it is often better to be interested in anotherperson's views than to insist that your own views are correct at the expense of all others. This is trueregardless of whether one takes an independent model or a dependent one to heart, but it is especiallytrue with dependent models. Those who uphold dependent models are far less likely to be interestedin other people's views for the sake of tearing them down because they're wrong. Rather, there is atendency for those who subscribe to dependent models to be interested in other people's viewsbecause they provide an opportunity to explore "other worlds" so to speak. There is so much to learnfrom the vast array of perspectives on reality that one will find across different people. When one'sconcern for which reality is the correct one takes a back seat, one becomes much more fascinated by


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other people's views for this reason. This may not be what contending parties have in mind when theygather for debate, but if their approach is along the lines of the descriptive one, then this is certainlywhat will happen. They will explore other views and perspectives on reality, and will come out of itwith food for thought - food that can bring both parties through reality transitions and consequentlyinto agreement with each other. They only need to be willing to let this happen.

Quantum Mechanics

IntroductionCaves,

Bubbles,and

Chambers

TheChamberMetaphor

ProblemSolvingWith TheChamberMetaphor

Intra-RealityDescriptions

Determinants andNon-Determinants

MentalModels

and OtherMinds

DenialTruth,Fact, andThe

PhysicalWorld

Inter-RealityDescriptions

The Relativityof Reality

TheTransience of

Reality

TheHierarchy of

Reality

The InfiniteRegressProblem

The Nature ofThe Problem

Is The TheoryConsistent?

Conclusion MoralRelativism

FinalRemarks on

TheDescriptiveApproach

TOP

Bookmark this page now!

© Copywrite 2008, 2009 Gibran Shah.


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i

Appendix

Having It Both WaysOf course, there is a sense in which you could have it both ways, saying both thesidewalk and you are moving at the same time, but not without changing thespeeds at which you and the sidewalk move. That is to say, supposing you werewalking at 10 km an hour. You could say it was you walking at 10 km an hour orthe sidewalk moving back at 10 km an hour, but not both you and the sidewalk moving at 10 km an hour each. You could, however, say you were walking at 5km an hour forward and the sidewalk at 5 km an hour backward, but the rate of separation between you and the sidewalk must remain constant.

The Abstraction of RealityThere is no doubt that a conscious being of some kind perceives real things invirtue of its experiences being projected, but this does not mean that such a beingwill perceive those things as constituting a reality. We see how this point isgrounded when we recall what we said in the introduction to this paper - namely,that "reality" is an abstract concept, and the things within it (the "out there"realm) are a collection of real things.

To drive this point home, consider a non-human animal such as a dog or cat. Wecan assume that a dog will perceive the concrete objects of the world in the sameway as humans. It will perceive trees, rocks, grass, rivers and lakes, the sky andthe clouds within it, and it will feel the air, hear the chirping of birds, sense coldand hot, smell all sorts of odors, taste either the repugnance or tastiness of food,and so on. But all of these are perceived as real things, not reality proper. Toperceive reality proper, a being must be capable of abstracting the notion of

"reality" from the entire set of all real things it perceives. As far as we know, thisis unique to humans.

This is not to say that the dog or other non-humananimals don't perceive reality, but that they don'trecognize it as such. It would be similar to howthe dog in our example perceived Venus. When itlooks at the brightest star in the sky, it perceivesVenus. But it is only we humans who recognize itas such. As far as the dog is concerned, it is only abright twinkly thing-a-ma-jig in the sky.

Nevertheless, what the dog sees and what we seeis indeed the same thing, but it is only us who arecapable of supplementing this perception with an

abstract idea. And so it is with the abstract idea of "reality".

The Shapes of Fundamental ParticlesWhen we hear the words "point particles" uttered by physicists, they mean toconvey, on the one hand, the idea of a particle whose size is no greater than a



ii

geometrical point - with no extension in any spatial dimension - and on the otherhand, the idea that the internal structure or size of such particles is irrelevant. Theformer is meant to be taken simply as a working model whereas the latterexpresses what physicists literally believe. Therefore, although we may imaginepoint particles as geometric points, what we know of them is only that their form

and size are inconsequential to current theory and practice, or that they areliterally formless (i.e. they have no inherent structure).

If a physicist ever talks about particles as"smeared out regions of probable existence",he/she is getting at quantum mechanical models.Quantum mechanics says that particles exist,more often than not, in states called"superposition". Superposition states are stateswhereby a particle has no definite position inspace. Instead, there is said to be a region in space

wherein the particle has a greater chance of beingfound than outside. Superposition is said to be inherent to the particle's positionitself - that is, the particle has no definite position before it is measured - and nota shortcoming of our measuring devices. So we will often hear its position beingdescribed as being at all points within this region at the same time. For example,when it comes to the position of an electron around an atom's nucleus, we oftenhear the description of an "electron cloud". This means to convey the form of the"smeared out region of probable existence" that takes on many shapes local to thenucleus.

One could still imagine the electron as a geometrical point, but that says moreabout its structure whereas the smeared out region says more about its position.

Distinguishing Between The ModelsIs it possible to have a system-of-experiences model of consciousness without adependent model of reality? To be perfectly sure, these two models do notpropose exactly the same thing, and one could conceivably have one without theother. To see how, let's look at exactly what each one purports at its core. Adependent model states that the contents and the essence of reality depend fortheir existence on experience, and in fact are one with experience. A systemmodel states that the primary function of consciousness is not to be aware of reality, but to maintain a system of experiences that feel like reality. Now, onemight hold a system model without subscribing to a dependent model if one took an anti-realist position. That is, if one took these experiences as having noinherent ontological standing (i.e. they're illusions), then one could dismiss adependent model. In fact, as an anti-realist, it would not be enough to supposeone's experiences weren't real - one couldn't even assume that there was a realworld beyond them. To suppose such a thing would be inconsistent as it wouldconstitute a faint echo of the window model - that is, to suppose that there mustbe a real world, even if it were completely obscured by experiences, would be to



iii

assume one knows about that real world, and such knowledge could only beupheld if one took it to be a form of pure awareness as the window model wouldhave it, not an experience as the system model would have it. But when it comesto dependent models, realism is necessary. Dependent models state thatexperiences are the real things they appear to be, and they are just as real as they

seem to be. Therefore, one could hold onto a system model without doing thesame for a dependent model. It doesn't seem to work the other way around,however - if one should hold a dependent model, one necessarily holds a systemmodel as well

The Inconceivability of SuperpositionThe following thought experiment demonstrates how states of superposition,when conceived of as objects existing in more than one place at a time, areindeed impossible to imagine correctly. Imagine an electron in two places at thesame time. Keep in mind that this electron is actually one electron occupying twoplaces simultaneously - not two electrons that are simply identical in all their

features. Now imagine poking one with a pin such that it starts to move (like in

the animation below ). We can certainly imagine that one of them moveswhereas the other doesn't. This is proof that we are not imagining it correctly. If we really understood what it means for the two apparent electrons to be one andthe same, it should not even be possible to imagine this. Why is this? Well, if they are the same, everything that happens to one should necessarily happen tothe other. If you poke one with a pin and it moves, the other should move as wellin exactly the same direction with exactly the same momentum. Note that it's notenough simply to enforce this in our thought experiment by consistentlyvisualizing their behavior as synchronized. Why not? Because if they really are

the same electron, we should conceive of it as necessary - that is, we should noteven be able to imagine one doing something without the other mimicking. Butthe fact that we can, even if we understand this to be erroneous, shows that wehaven't got it right. We don't truly get the concept - we can't get the concept.Thus, states of superposition really are inconceivable.

Standards, Not Logic



iv

The "internal standards" we refer to in this principle, with respect to MM-Theory, are, of course, its own logical coherence. But we ought to use the word"standards" when it comes to beliefs in general, which is what this principle isreally getting at. The reason for this is because we tend to believe things for morereasons than just simple logic. We believe things by faith, by intuition, by

inspiration, by the teaching of others, and so on. Given a dependent model, theseare the things that support beliefs of all kinds. So long as the recognition of thesebeliefs as mental things doesn't affect the integrity of its internal standards, theinfinite regress is not a problem for their correctness. Of course, these internalstandards may not be sufficient for the theory to be correct, even if they do avoidthe infinite regress problem, for they could still be wrong for other reasons. Abelief based on faith, for example, may be logically incoherent even though faithalone may be enough to sustain the belief in the beholder's mind. So althoughcorrectness does (or should) depend on logical coherence, all that is needed toavoid the infinite regress is the fortitude of a theory's internal standards whateverthey may be.

That being said, I would like to point out the difference between a theory's"logical coherence" and its "deductive thoroughness" - at least, I would like toclear up my meaning. When I say that MM-Theory, or any theory, is "logicallycoherent", I only mean that it is free from internal contradiction. It takes a lotmore than freedom from internal contradiction, however, to meet the standard of "deductive thoroughness", which denotes that the entire argument on which thetheory in question rests is absolutely deductive, from initial premises to finalconclusions, and so one must be persuaded by it should he/she accept the truth of the premises. I don't quite hold MM-Theory up to this standard. For me, it isenough that it merely avoids internal contradiction, for that to me is what ismeant by "coherence" and "consistency". Should I ever find more deductivearguments to bolster MM-Theory in the future, I would deem them morepowerful criteria for judging the theory "correct", much like more empiricalevidence makes for a more "correct" theory in science, but I hardly regard thematter as all-or-nothing - that is, that the theory is either immaculately deductivethrough-and-through or worth nothing - and so I allow for plenty of gray areabetween the two extremes.

Two Selves vs. Two Models



v

Although the self-presenting-the-model isnot in the model beingpresented, it maynevertheless take part in a

different model - a greatermodel - one in which it isa self-in-the-model. Afterall, when statement 2)makes reference to"subjective realities", itcan only be referring tosomething in our model of the universe as MM-Theory has it. We havedefined subjective realities

as regions in the UniversalMind after all. Therefore, because the subjective realities referred to typicallyconstitute human minds, they are selves-in-a-model. Nonetheless, insofar as theycontain models, they are also selves-presenting-the-model, where the model inquestion is that which they contain. Thus, a self-presenting-the-model may alsobe a self-in-the-model, but in that case it is the models being referred to that aredifferent.

Kant and The Thing-In-Itself The astute reader may realize that this distinction - between the self-in-the-modeland the self-presenting-the-model - works as a solution to the problem raised bymost antagonists to Kant's metaphysics. The problem is that Kant seems to haveworked himself tightly between a rock and a hard place. He claims that thereexists, in the full ontological sense of the word, unknowable and inconceivablethings-in-themselves, yet in that very breath, professes to have such knowledgeand conception. This, of course, appears contradictory - unless we apply thedistinction between the self-in-the-model and the self-presenting-the-model aswe did for the virtual inconsistency in MM-Theory. We would say that the onewho has no knowledge or conception of the thing-in-itself is the self-in-the-model, and the one who does (namely Kant himself) is the self-presenting-the-model. For the latter, the thing-in-itself is simply an element in a cognitivemodel, certainly conceivable and arguably knowable. It exists in the mind of theself-presenting-the-model as no more than an idea. To the self-in-the-model,however, it is forever beyond conception and unattainable by knowledge. Thisshould not be taken as a contradiction because the 'minds' to whom the thing-in-itself is either knowable or not, either conceivable or not, are two different things- one is an element in a model, the other an agent presenting the model.

Of course, this only works as a solution to the Kantian problem if we take Kant'sentire metaphysics to be merely a model, made available to the public for anyone



who wishes to entertain it. Taken as an official stance on truth, however - that is,as an attempt to picture reality as it is independently of any mind and its mannerof apprehending it (as a window model of consciousness would have it) - it willbe burdened with the very poignant and debilitating error that those critics of Kant have long pressed against him. He would indeed be guilty of contradiction.

Therefore, Kant and any like-minded metaphysicist (such as us) struggling withthis infamous dilemma can evade such criticism by employing the solutionconsidered here - however much the cost of abandoning a window model of consciousness may weigh in on him or her - especially where that cost is feltmost profoundly - namely, on the very theory urging such abandonment

Reality and Perception

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