THE STANDARD REFERENECE MODEL. This lecture was given on November 27th, 2005 and is entitled the Standard Reference Model. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello. Today is November 27th, 2005. This lecture will cover the following subjects: OBJECTS and QUALITIES SYMBOLS and REFERENTS CASUAL PATHWAYS SYMBOLS OF FINAL AUTHORITY LEARNING AND KNOWELDGE THE LEARNED ABOUT, THE LEARNER and THE LEARNED INDIRECT PERCEPTION AND DIRECT PERCEPTION THEORY AND TRUTH MODEL AND EVIDENCE PERFECT CERTAINTY and UNCERTAINTY GEOMETRIC CONGRUENCY FOCUSED AND DEFOCUSED IMPLIED VIEWPOINTS DIMENSIONALITY and ZERO DIMENSIONALITY CONSTITUENCY, ARRANGEMENT AND PROCESS CAUSAL MESSENGER WAVES RENDITION AND INTERPRETATION The standard reference model (SRM) is a simplifed version of how we learn in the physical universe. It is simple, but complete enough to encompass all forms of learning that takes place at any physical universe level. By learning of course we mean coming to know knowledge about something. The standard reference model is referred to over and over again by the proof and therefore it is important to know this thing forwards, backwards, upside down and inside out in order to understand the proof. If you can understand the SRM, you can understand any form of learning that takes place in the physical universe. The physical universe is considered to be the universe of matter, energy, space and time and the changes that go on amongst that matter, energy, space and time which we hereby collectively call mechanics. The word mechanics comes from the word machine, and we define a machine as any system of parts interacting via cause and effect across a spacetime distance (dimension). Parts of course are any amount of matter and energy in a space and time. Thus the process of mechanics is the process of parts interacting, via cause and effect, across a space time distance. A process is defined as a change in state in an object or collection of objects that are in some functional arrangement. We learned in the previous lecture on Symbols and Referents, that a symbol is a later object or event (same thing) that is causally related to an earlier object which is the referent. In that sense, the symbol is an effect and the referent is cause. A causal pathway is a series of events in spacetime that are causally related to each other, one after the other, thus forming a chain of referents and their symbols as time progresses. If A causes B, then A is the referent and B is the symbol. If B then causes C, B becomes a referent in its own right, and C is the symbol. C is in fact a symbol for both B and A, for C will be imprinted with data about both B and A via the causal impingement emmanating from A through B to C. In general when we learn in the physical universe, we are learning by looking at effects, by being an effect of a cause, and thus computing back to what the cause must have been like, considering what the effect was plus our current theories of the moment. In that sense, when we change state as a result of some causal referent (influence) out there which we are trying to learn about, we have become a symbol for that referent. The event of the new changed state in ourselves is a symbol that is causally related to the referent that caused that change in state in ourselves. This symbol that we have become then, is called the symbol of final authority, for it is the last event in the causal pathway that is being looked at directly in order to learn about the qualities of the referent that caused it. So you have this referent out in spacetime somewhere, and it causes various effects which cause other effects, which cause other effects, which eventually come down to an effect caused in ourselves as observer. We call this chain of cause and effects a causal pathway. All mechanical observation is actually receiving an effect from some cause, and then changing state as a result of that cause. Thus we define mechanical observation as changing state as an effect of some cause. We also call this indirect perception, because one is learning about A out there by looking at B, namely one's self in here. Direct perception would be learning about A by looking directly at A. But this is not possible in the physical universe, as any kind of space or time separation between observed and observer limits the observer to observing changes in himself (B) in order to learn about A. If B is separated from A by a space time distance, B can never be in direct contact with A. B can only be in indirect contact with A via effects propagated from A across that space time distance to B a moment later. Worse by the time that effect reaches B, A may not even exist any more! That means even when B is in indirect contact with A via the effect it receives from A, the indirect contact is not with A as it is now, but with A as it was when it emmanated the causal messenger wave. This is because the speed of causal propagation is finite. Thus at the moment that B 'sees' A via the change in state in itself, A may in fact no longer even exist. Thus at no time is B seeing A directly. Clearly if one does not receive an effect from a cause, if one does not change state from a cause, then one can not have learned anything about that cause. Thus we assert the Fundamental Theorem of Learning: There must be a causal pathway between learned about and learner, in order for the learned to be considered learning. Notice the learned about is the referent, and the learner is the symbol of final authority: that's how the learner learns. The Learner changes state as a result of a causal messenger wave allegedly emmanated by the learned about and later received by the learner. The learned are any deductions or hypotheses that the learner can make about the learned about because of the particular nature of the change in state that the learner received from the learned about. In other words if there is no causal pathway between learned about and learner, then no learning can take place. The dependability of knowledge 'learned without a causal pathway' would be randomly correct at best. So the symbol of final authority is the last effect, the last change in state in the chain between referent and observer that is actually used to learn from, and is actually observed by the observer and in fact IS the new state OF the observer. And it is from the data gleaned from that being an effect, that change of state, that the observer then computes back to what the nature of the referent might have been. For example, the light coming off the sun, hits a photo electric cell, which generates an electric current, which rings a bell. By the time the bell is rung, the photon that came from the sun that hit the photo electric cell is long gone. And in fact by the time the bell rings, the little impluse that came from the little electric cell that triggered the bell is also gone. So what we observe is the bell ringing, we haven't observed the electric impluse that started the bell ringing, and we certainly haven't observed any of the photons hitting the photo electric cell. So the bell ringing is the symbol of final authority, and we are going to learn from that whether or not the sun is there. But in fact it is worse than this, because the bell ringing is of no use unless it produces air waves that hit our ears, enters our brain, and reaches our consciousness, where our HEARING the bell ring is in fact the final final symbol of authority in the chain. A deaf person would have learned nothing from the bell ringing because he wouldn't have received the effect, he wouldn't have changed state when the bell rang. The standard reference model replicates this process of learning four times, in four different ways. The purpose of this is to show us that although implemented in many different ways, the underlying learning process is always the same, receive an effect and from that theorize about the nature of the cause. Knowledge then learned in this way consists of theory alone. Theory consists of evidence and model. The symbol of final authority is the evidence, the computed description of the possible nature of the cause is the theoretical model. As we shall see no where is truth or perfect certainty to be found in this process. By the time one understands the standard reference model well one should understand that learning can take place in many different ways, but its always the same fundmental process, you are being or observing a symbol, in order to make a conclusion about a referent. You are looking at B to learn about A. Until we get to the 4th stage at which point something new and startling happens. The SRM does something relatively odd in that it considers consciousness and the being who is conscious, and what he is conscious of, to be the fourth stage of learning and to be distinct from all the other stages of the learning process described below. It asserts that the conscious experience and the being who is having the conscious experience are fundamentally different and distinct stuff from any of the other preceeding stages and should not be confused with them. In other words, consciousness is its own thing and needs to be studied as its own thing on its own terms. Although the data it displays to the viewer depends on prior causal pathways, the process of consciousness itself is not merely a process in those causal precursors, but is different from them. In particular a learning process within consciousness about itself should not be considered a learning process in the brain, nor a mechanical learning process in any space time medium of any sort. This assertion may be considered purely arbitrary, and to stand only until proven wrong, but its done because, as will be shown later, there are qualities in consciousness that are qualities OF consciousness and are not qualities of anything involved in the prior stages of learning in the brain. As an example, say you are aiming your eyes at a physical brick out on a table in front of you. You have a physical brick out there on the table and then you have your conscious picture of the brick. When you close your eyes, the conscious picture of the brick disappears, but the physical brick doesn't. Thus clearly the brick and the conscious picture of the brick are two different objects. Remembering what we learned from the A's and the B's, if A and B are objects, and B changes state and A doesn't, then A and B are two DIFFERENT objects, each with their own existence. Also since B changes state, B must exist. B is your conscious experience of the brick which disappears when you close your eyes. Since A, in this case, is a physical brick on a table out there, we will assume that A is not a nothing either, and thus A also exists. Thus both A and B exist and are two different objects. The brick has qualities, location, weight and temperature, and your conscious picture of the brick has qualities, which are different from the physical brick's qualities, we will get into these later. Your consciousness is clearly being the effect of the brick via your brain and eyes, so your conscious picture is acting as a symbol for the brick. Your consciousness tries to represent the referent brick out on the table to you via the symbol which is your conscious picture of the brick. The conscious picture of the brick is a RENDITION or conscious RENDERING of the brick. From this you draw your INTERPRETATION of that symbol in order to conclude what the brick on the table must be like. Your conscious experience is a rendition, a rendering if you will, of the physical universe in a symbolic medium, namely conscious color forms, red, green, blue, experiences of cold and hot, hard and soft etc. What you believe about the physical universe is an interpretation you make of the symbol panoply rendered in your consciousness. The physical universe is the referent. Consciousness is used as the symbol. Consciousness is the rendering. The physical universe is the interpretation. The physical universe is a THEORY based on our interpretation of the observed rendering in our consciousness. Put simply, in our observation of the brick, what we end up observing is our conscious picture of the brick, not the physical brick itself directly. Because the conscious picture of the brick has qualities that the physical brick doesn't have, and because the brick has qualities that the conscious picture of the brick doesn't have, we therefore must consider them two different objects, and thus the standard reference model treats them as two separate objects, with a possible causal pathway between as referent and symbol. Alright let's take a break, we will come back to this after coffee and donuts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When you are talking about the process of learning, of coming to know knowledge about, you are always talking about a causal pathway that goes from the original referent to the symbol of final authority. As was described in the previous lecture on Symbols and Referents, the symbol is a separate object from the original referent, its in a different space and time, certainly in a different time because its later, and being a different object, it has qualities that are different from the original referent. Presumably there is enough mapping from the qualities of the final symbol to the qualities of the original referent that one can draw possible conclusions about the original referent from looking at the final symbol. That is why we call the causal imprint left by the referent on the symbol a data imprint, it contains data about the possible nature of the referent. And it is this process that we want to lay out in great detail with what we call the standard reference model. So the standard reference model starts with an original referent, in this case let us consider the lowly Rubic's cube. Rememeber the Rubic's cube? I used to play with these things for hours. I used to feel that if I could figure out how to solve one of these things, after it was scrambled, I would understand the mystery of the universe. It was quite a disappointment because when I finally learned how to solve them, there was nothing there. It was a total let down. Little did I know how big a role the Rubic's cube would play in my final understanding of the universe. In the physical universe learning takes place via causal pathways. A causal pathway is a series of changes in state in spacetime objects that are related to each other via alleged causation. They had better be so related, because without causation, there is no learning. Now the first thing to understand about the standard reference model, is that it is not meant to be an assertion that it is right or all encompassing. The standard reference model is merely a way of looking at processes of learning in the physical universe which is easy to understand, generally accepted, and fits in with most of mainstream science. We are in fact, trying to prove this model wrong when it comes to how we see our own consciousness and its colorform pictures. But in the physical universe the standard reference model is the generally accepted state of the art theory as to how physical universe learning takes place. THE GUY IN THE TANK OK, so the standard reference model describes the experience of a guy in an army tank whose only vision of the world is through a TV set that is connected to a video camera outside the tank. The video camera is aimed at the Rubic's cube sitting outside the tank on a table in the sunlight. The Rubic's cube will be considered our original referent. The Rubic's cube is what we and the guy in the tank are trying to learn about, including whether or not it exists. The Rubic's cube is lit by the sun light. So here we have the sun and its rays come down onto the Rubic's cube, and those rays bounce off the Rubic's cube and hit a lens that goes to a video camera. In the back of the video camera is a Charge Coupled Device (CCD), which receives a focused image of the Rubic's cube, on its surface. We assume that the video camera has only one lens, so that the image on the CCD is upside down relative to the original referent, a result which is a standard property of simple lenses. Now we know from earlier discussion, an object can have different kinds of qualities, it can have qualities of being, namely those qualities it has by virtue of being alone, and it can have qualities of relation, which are those qualities it has by virtue of being in relation with other objects. There are a number of different kinds of qualities of relation, there are spacial, temporal, material, energetic and causal. For example spacial relations would be above and below, next to, on top of etc. Temporal relations would be before and after, etc. Material relations might be heavier or lighter than. Energetic relations might be faster or slower than. And lastly and most importantly, causal relations would be things like is cause of or is affected by. One of the qualities of the Rubic's cube is a causal quality of relation, namely that it affects photons. It absorbs photons of some frequencies, and reflects photons of other frequencies. So what happens here at this interface where the photons from the sun hit the Rubic's cube is an imprinting of data about the nature of the Rubic's cube on the stream of photon's leaving the surface of the Rubic's cube after absorbtion and reflection have taken place. The photon's have 'learned something' about the cube and that learning is now imprinted on the outgoing photon stream headed for the video camera. The photon's coming in from the sun are kind of a clean slate, unimprinted with any data on them except maybe data about the sun! Then you get these photons colliding with the Rubic's cube, and the photon's coming out of that interaction are very specifically affected by the nature of the Rubic's cube. Remember the Rubic's cube has 6 different faces with 6 different colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and white. However only 3 faces at a time are facing the video camera, no matter which way the cube is oriented. Thus the pattern of photons coming off the cube towards the video camera have imprinted in them a very complex data set about exactly which faces are facing the camera, at what angles, and what their colors are. Also if you were foolish enough to play with the cube before the experiment, whether it is scrambled or not! That's a lot of data to be carried by one small stream of photons. Alright, so the photon's come into the lens of the video camera, and they get bent and refocused right here on the surface of the CCD, which is the retina of the video camera if you will. I you look into the device in a dark room, you can see a nice focused but upside down image of the Rubic's cube right there. GEOMETRIC CONGRUENCY OK, so now we have to take up something that is very important, for without this, most people will probably miss the whole point of this discussion. Two objects are geometrically congruent to each other when they have the same spacetime shape as each other. Technically two objects are congruent when their geometries are identical to each other, but we are going to call two objects congruent when they are merely recognizably similar to each other. For example, if we have a small cube and a big cube, technically they are geometrically similar but not congruent. Only if we have two cubes of the same size and color would they be considered congruent. But for our purposes, we going to say the smaller cube is geometrically congruent with the bigger one, and we are going to go even further and say a 2 dimensional PICTURE of one of these cubes is also geometrically congruent to the 3 dimensional original. Thus we DEFINE geometical congruency not to mean geometric identicality, but geometrically recognizably similar, both in form, color, and materiality. Thus if it is a cube or it looks like a cube, then it is geometically congruent to a cube. THE REFERENT AS SYMBOL FOR ITSELF Now if we consider that the original cube can be considered a symbol for itself, then referent and symbol are clearly perfectly geometically congruent in the technical sense, because any object is geometrically congruent to itself. But then as the stream of photons bounce off the cube, they begin to disperse in space and lose that congruency. They remain a symbol for the original cube as they travel away from the cube, because they are in the direct causal path of the cube, but they no longer look like a cube! We call this process defocusing, namely the geometrical congruency of the symbol becomes more defocused as it moves away from the original referent. The symbol becomes more and more less like a cube in shape and form. In fact if you put a piece of paper between the cube and the video camera lens, you will not see a picture of the cube at all even though many of the photons that are leaving the cube are hitting the paper. The image on the paper of the cube is completely defocused. But all the data about the cube is still there! Then as the stream of photons carrying the data about the cube hit the lens, they are forced to converge again in the direction of the CCD screen at the back of the video camera. As soon as the photons start to pass through the lens they begin to refocus again, until they become completely focused again at the exact moment they hit the CCD screen. Thus we have the following diagram which is crucial to our understanding of the standard reference model. The down direction shows the progress of cause from the original referent to the image on the CCD screen. Cube Referent Focused Hi Geo Congruency Photons before lens Symbol Defocusing Lower Geo congruency Photons at lens Symbol Defocused Lowest Goe congruency Photons after lens Symbol Focusing Higher Geo Congruency CCD screen Symbol Focused Hi Geo Congruency The fact that the symbol at the CCD screen is focused and geometically congruent to the referent means that at least some data has been conserved about the cube during the causal transit from referent to final symbol on the CCD screen. We are going to replicate the above on each stage of this journey to help us keep a clear eye on what is being described here. Then you have some electronics, a couple of circuits in there that convert the image on the CCD screen into a serialized bit stream, 1's and 0's. And the 1's and 0's are now going to go to a standard Cathode Ray TV set, with a little electron gun. And the TV set has a screen, and the electrons scan the screen back and forth and up and down, and replicate the image one more time on the TV screen, only this time it's right side up again. Now this TV set exists inside of an Army Tank, and we use that because this is an actual application, this happens all the time, tanks no longer have windows to see through, they only have video monitors to give a detailed view of the outside world. And in the tank there is a guy sitting in a chair, and he's looking at the TV set, and he can't see anything else about the outside world but what is on the TV set. This is very important, because all he has is the TV set to look at about the outside world. If he were born in the tank, we might consider that he has never seen the outside world directly. So new light rays are generated on the surface of the TV screen and they leave the TV set and head for the guy's eyes which act in analogue fashion to the lens and CCD in the video camera, that picked up the image in the first place. Now we are going to do a blow up of the guys' eye over here into a much bigger box and what we have is an eye ball, and we have a retina, and we have some neurological circuitry called the optic nerve and optic chiasm where they cross. This neurological circuitry comes into the brain and makes its way to the visual cortex in the back of the brain. So here are the eye and the lens, and the light waves come into the eye and they get focused on the retina, and once again on the back of the retina you have your little Rubic's cube showing up again as a very clear focused image, you can see it, if you cut the eye open, its right there, very recognizable. And its up side down again just as the image on the CCD screen was upside down and for exactly the same reason. Now here is where the standard reference model separates from science, from the science of today, you won't read about this in your physics books. But as I said in the beginning of this lecture there is reason for doing this, if only for the purpose of offering the possibility of it, so if we want to prove it wrong we can, but if it isn't stated you can't prove it wrong. So we are going to state it. Just as we drew a bigger circle to represent the guy's head and eyes, we are going to draw another circle representing the conscious unit of the soldier, with a little star in the middle representing the conscious viewer himself. The conscious viewer at the very center of the circle is looking at and seeing a conscious display of color forms on the inside of the circle that encompases the viewer. He is locked inside his consciousness and never see outside of it, except through symbolic displays on his conscious screen. And so is one more function that goes on here, which is that you have the consciousness of the guy, with the little guy here in the middle, a little ghost, the little 'I AM!', the looker, the being who is aware of being aware, and the consciousness is the whole color picture he sees around him. Even though most of us only see the color picture in front of us, it goes all the way around spherically, 360 degrees, as you know if you have ever had a 360 degree dream or out of body experience, and it includes sound, touch, taste, smell and a whole litany of other conscious sense forms that give us data about the alleged world around us. 360 degree surround sound consciousness is the native state of a conscious being. Our consciousness is just like the TV screen, it displays conscious color forms for our viewing pleasure. And the data coming from the eye, through the optic nerve and then the visual cortext, one way or another gets displayed onto the conscious color screen we call our conscious picture of the world, which is everything you see around you. And then lo and behold on the consciousness, you have your little rubic's cube all over again, for the last time, only this time it is right side up again! So notice just for yuks, at the referent, the cube is right side up. At the CCD screen, the symbol is upside down, at the TV Screen the symbol is right side up again, at the retina the symbol is upside down again, and in the conscious color form display, it is finally right side up again. AND IT STILL LOOKS LIKE A CUBE. So through all the defocusing and refocusing, from referent cube out on the table to symbol of final authority, conscious display, the data in the causal pathway has been conserved, and is finally reconstructed in the concious display with very high geometric congruency indeed. In fact we believe that the original referent is a cube BECAUSE that is the way it looks in the conscious display! We believe the qualities of the final symbol ARE the qualities of the original referent. OK, so this diagram can be broken up into four sections. It can be broken up into the original referent, which is section zero. It can be broken up into the CCD which is section one. It can be broken up into the TV set which is section two. It can be broken up into the eye retina, which is section three. And it can be broken up into the conscious picture is which is section four. Now there are a couple of things I want you to notice here. In the lecture on symbols and referents we talked about how a symbol can have data content and it can have picture form. Picture form is just what it sounds like, it is a 1 to 1 correspondance in space and time, between the geometric shape and form of the symbol and the shape and form of the referent. Picture form is exactly what we mean by high geometric congruency, that is space time relationships between referent and symbol have a 1 to 1 correspondance, and recognizably look like each other. For example, the image on the surface of the CCD, even though it shows up as a two dimensional projection, is very obviously and recognizably a Rubic's cube, complete with color and perspective. We refer to this picture form recognizability between symbol and referent as geometric congruency. Strictly speaking true congruency would mean an exact match in shape, size and dimensionality, between symbol and referent, so in this case we really only have geometric similarity, but we will continue to use the term geometric congruency none the less to refer to symbols that have a high picture form content relative to their referents. The fact that symbol and referent are not absolutely congruent merely indicates that they are two different objects because they have different qualities. This is very important, because the Fundamental Theorem of Identicality says that if two objects have any different qualities at all, they must be two different distinct separate objects with their own separate existence and equal ontological status. Both referent and symbol ARE, and both EQUALLY ARE. There is no relativity to existence, there is no "I am more ARE than you." The symbol merely comes AFTER the referent, this does not in any diminish the equal actuality of either. On the other hand, let's look at the the light waves coming directly off the Rubic's cube. If you were to put a piece of paper at a point half way between the cube and lens of the video camera, you wouldn't be able to see a Rubic's cube. That's because the symbol has become defocused, meaning it has lost its high picture form, lost its geometric congruency to the original referent. The data imprinted in the light waves is all there however. so the data content remains high, while the picture content becomes low. Data content is always conserved even while picture content comes and goes. Notice however that because the data content is at least in part ABOUT the geometricity of the original referent the picture form should always be recoverable at a later stage. If not, then the data content relating to geometricity is truely gone. So you have the following situation. You have something coming in from the sun which contains no data and no picture, which hits the original referent namely the Rubic's cube and is imprinted with data about the cube. The Rubic's cube itself is a picture, it has a space time arrangement, but the photon's coming off it immediately lose their picturness as they get away from it, because each point on the cube radiates reflected light in all directions, but they don't lose their data content. We know this because the entirety of the Rubic's cube can be recreated from it using a lens. The reason that a piece of paper placed between the cube and the lens does not show a picture form of the cube is because each point on the paper is being illuminated by EVERY point on the cube at the same time. As the photons hit the paper, they are coming from different directions, but once they hit the paper and are rescattered back to an observer, their original direction of travel is lost, and thus the data content of the photon stream is also lost never to be recovered. You can't look at the paper with a lens and see the cube, you will only see the paper! On the other hand by allowing the photon stream to go through a lens, the various photons that came off a single point on the cube are redirected back to a single point on the focusing surface, name the CCD screen, thus not only is data content conserved along the entire pathway, the symbol at the CCD interface is in a state of high picture form again, high geometric congruency. Thus the causal pathway starts at the Rubic's cube with high data content and high picture form as the cube itself, then travels with high data content and lowering picture form until it hits the lens with high data content and almost no picture form at all. From the lens the causal pathway continues with high data content and increasing picture form until it hits the CCD screen as a highly focused image, namely high data content and high picture form. So at the point of the original referent, we have high data and high picture. In this sense the referent is a symbol for itself and therefore the data content and pictureness are both 100 percent perfect. But then as soon as the light waves come off of it, we are now looking at something with high data and low picture. Then it hits the lens which refocuses the image on the CCD screen where we get high data and high picture form on the screen once again. But notice that the data content at the CCD is somewhat less than the original referent. The whole cube is not represented there, only certain faces of it are visible, there is a certain amount of loss of clarity and perfection of rendition, data is lost. Probably if there were some very fine print on the side of the Rubic's cube you would not see it at the CCD screen if the print were small enough. So its not a perfect replication. There are a lot of differences between the picture form symbol on the CCD screen and the original referent, not the least of which is that the original referent is a 3D object, and the symbol on the CCD screen is a 2D projection of it. The image on the CCD screen is nonetheless a symbol for the original referent, a symbol which is has high but not perfect data content, and high but not perfect picture form. And also notice with two video cameras looking at the cube from slightly different angles, the full 3D data content of the original referent could be reconstructed from the two slightly different 2D projections. Notice that the light waves going through the lens is also a symbol of the cube, but it has low picture form so its not geometrically recognizable as such. Now the electronic circuitry that scans the CCD, converts the image symbol on its surface to a series of 1's and 0's. And if you were to actually take a look at a printout of those one's and zero's you would not see a clear Rubic's cube. Maybe if you printed out the 1's and 0's just right, you might see a faint image of the cube in the background of a bigger mess. The data stream however could be encrypted, in which case the data stream would be completely unrecognizeable. This stripping the data off the CCD screen and encrypting it is a form of defocusing, the data is still there, but the picture form is not. So at the point between the CCD and the TV set we have another symbol which is this data stream, and it has low picture form but still all the data is there. But again there is slightly less data than in the previous symbol. Data content is decaying with distance along the causal pathway. Every step we go along a causal chain we lose a little bit of data. Thus we say that data is conserved to the degree that the causl pathway is short, or is 100 percent digital. Now the serial data stream from the CCD and hits the TV, hits the circuitry inside the TV, and the electron beam starts to scan on that phosphor screen, and we get a recognizable Rubic's cube on that phospor screen. So again we have another symbol, and this one has high picture content and and high data content. But again the light coming off the TV screen goes off in all directions, just like the light from the original referent went off in all directions, and so if you put a piece of paper between the TV screen and the guy's eyes, you get another symbol, which is this dispersal of light traveling between them, that has high data content but no picture content. So I think we see a pattern here. We have high picture content, low picture content, high picture content, low picture contentm etc. Original cube High picture content Right side up Lens Low picture content CCD High picture content Up side down TV circuity Low picture content TV screen High picture content Right side up Lens of eye Low picture content Retina of eye High picture content Up side down Brain/Visual Cortex Low picture content Conscious picture High picture content Right side up And this pattern continues on in the same way into the eye. We get into the eye ball, the symbol gets recreated on the retina as yet another symbol in the chain of symbols, and this symbol is high picture form again, although upside down and high data. And this thing gets into the brain, and whatever is going on here in the visual cortex is low picture, but again the data is conserved, the data is very well intact. We say the data in the visual cortex is low picture content, because if you cut open the brain while it is viewing a cube, no where AT ALL in the brain anywhere, is there an electrical or energy pattern that geometrically resembles a cube! You just can't tell trivially what the guy is looking at by looking at the activity in the brain. And then the data stream gets to the conscious unit, and lo and behold we have a final last symbol, which is what the guy as a conscious unit is looking at, and this last symbol is high picture and high data, and all right side up as it should be. This is the last symbol on the chain in the conscious picture, that started from the first symbol on the chain which was the original referent. This picture in his consciousness therefore, is the Symbol of Final Authority for this observer. That means that everything this guy is going to learn about the original refeerent is going to come from this last symbol in his conscious picture. He no longer has contact with the photons that came in to the video camera, because they got absorbed by the CCD. He can't see them, because they are long gone. He can't see any of the data stream connecting the CCD to the TV set because it too is long gone. He can't see any of the photons coming off the TV set because they were absorbed by his retina and are long gone by the time the image gets to his brain and visual cortex. So if this guy is going to learn anything about the original referent, all he has to study is his symbol of final authority, namely the conscious picture that forms in his consciousness. Now this is not the place in this lecture for me to get into this, but I am going to get into it anyhow. Just to take a look at why do we separate off consciousness and its pictures as a separate fundamental thing separate from the brain and the visual cortex. And that is because if you cut the brain open and you LOOK no where will you find a cube. The LAST place a cube exists in the human body is on the surface of the retina. You will see the data of a cube encoded in the visual cortex, however it is encoded, but no where will there be a picture. Yet what we see in our consciousness is a picture which is in fact very geometrically congruent to the original referent, the cube out in the sun's light. Therefore this picture in consciousness is actual, and therefore the thing which displays the picture is actual, and consciousness is therefore defined as the symbol of final authority. Whatever consciousness is, whatever it is made of, however it works, it is picture form, it is high picture form and high data form, and no where in the brain is anything anywhere near high picture form. Also note that the guy can't see the original cube, nor the picture on the CCD, nor the picture on the TV set, nor even the picture on his retina, because as a conscious viewer he is a different object than all these things. He can only see his conscious picture because in fact he and his conscious picture are one and the same object, even those there is the illusion of space and separation between the viewer and viewed. Close one eye, that's more the truth. The way you know that the conscious picture is not a physical object or process is because you can SEE the object you are looking at! If it were a different object than you, you would never be able to see it. OK, this is something else that doesn't really belong here, but we are going to go into it quickly, just to get it down. We know from previous lectures that objects have qualities. Further more, at any given time, over time, an object can change its quality set. The very movement in time itself is a change in that object because it now has a quality that it is at 2 minutes after midnight rather than at 2 minutes before midnight. That is a quality of relation, but a quality of the object's quality set none the less. For example take two identical cubes, and place one to the right of Goober, and the other to left of him. Thus the quality sets of each cube are not identical because one is to the left and one to the right of Goob's. Same thing with space or time. We consider that now the basketball is here, and a few seconds later it is there. We make the mistake of thinking it is the same basketball that has just moved around a bit in space and time. But just as a candle flame in a windless room might look identical from moment to moment, it is in fact a totally new flame in each instant. Thus moving through time alone continuously creates new objects of any object in existence. A process is a change in state in an object, a change in an object's quality set. The standard reference model depends very much on the concept of two different objects. Meaning that the world isn't all just one object all mushed together, this is a whole slew of objects, a whole series of space time events, each one being an object, and that what is going on here in the brain, is not what is going on over here on the CCD, but they do have analogous qualities between them and perhaps a casual pathway between them. Having analogous qualities doesn't mean that two different objects are the same one object, it means they are two different objects with similar but different qualities. Thus a video camera may work similar to an eye, but a video camera is not an eye. Like wise a TV screen may work similar to a conscious display, but a TV is not a conscious unit. Lastly and most importantly, just because the final image in the conscious display looks like a cube, doesn't mean it IS a cube. The original referent cube is 4 stages of casuation and learning away from the symbol conscious image in the mind's eye, and therefore they are two different objects each with their own unique onotological right to claim they exist and are actual. There are no degrees of existence, thus the original cube, and the conscious picture of the cube both exist, period, and thus both need careful and equal study. By studying the standard reference model out from beginning to end and all the parts inbetween, we should be able to tell the causal pathway that takes place between original referent and the symbol of final authority at the end of the chain. The photons bouncing off the original referent is one process. The photons traveling across space to the lens is another process. The photons being focused by the lens is another process. The photons traveling between the lens and the CCD screen is another process. The photons hitting the CCD screen is another process. And the data from the CCD being converted into a serial stream is another process etc. And each one involves a different object changing state. The CDD does not change state until the photon hits it, or so we hope. And the photon doesn't hit the CCD until it has first hit the cube and changes state there. Now this is really important, so I am going to bring it up at this point. At the TV screen, let's take a look at the TV screen, its very important. The TV screen is basically made of glass, and the glass has phosphors on it, and there are electrons coming in that are scanning the TV screen that hit the phosphors. When an electron hits a phosphor it causes ANOTHER DIFFERENT electron in the phosphor atom to kick up into a higher energy level. The original electron is then drained off to the side to be recycled later. The phosphor's electron then later falls back down a level and emits another photon of a particular frequency. And so you have electrons coming in, and you have photons going out. One of the things we want to point out here is that this not all just one process. A process is a change in state in an object, and there are at least 3 separate objects here. The first object is the stream of electrons coming into the glass from the electron gun. That's a process, they are changing position in space, they are coming into the glass, When they hit the glass, they kick the electron's up a level in the atoms of the phosphors on the glass, and that's a process in the atom's of the phospors. The atom's of phosphor on the glass are not the same object as the electrons coming into to hit them. Two separate objects, two completely separate processes, however they are causally related in that the electrons coming into the glass are a causal precursor to the phosphors changing energy states. It is very important to not take two processes that are causally related and then claim that they are one and the same process. That would be like saying that the conscious picture of the cube is merely a process in the brain. The conscious picture of the cube MAY BE CONNECTED TO AND RESULT FROM a casual precursor process in the brain, but processes in the brain are different objects than processes in consciousness. And by the time the picture ends up in consciousness, the precursor causal process in the brain is long gone. Proof? There are no cubes in the brain, and the brain, being a multidimensional entity, couldn't see what it is looking at anyhow, as everything is separated by space and time. Remember the fact that a conscious unit can see its own conscious pictures with perfect certainty, means that conscious picture and conscious viewer must be one and the same object, thus consciousness must be zero dimensional. Since the brain is multidimensional, the brain can not be the consciousness. Then as the electrons fall back down in the phosphor atoms, they emit photons and start to move through space towards the guy's eyes. And so now we have a third object, because the photons are not a phosphor atom, they are not an electron orbiting around a phosphor atom, and they are not the original electrons coming in, hitting the glass. So you have a third object, and because these photons are moving through space, this object is also undergoing a process, namely change in space and time. The point here is that we have three separate objects undergoing three separate processes, and it is scientifically incorrect to collapse them all into one process. For example if someone were to say to you that the photon leaving the glass is the SAME THING, the same process as the electrons coming into the glass, they would be wrong. Collapsing multiple parts of a causal pathway into one part causes a failure to distinguish the various parts going on within the collapsed part. It would also be very wrong to claim that the photons traveling across space after leaving the phosphors were merely the same process AS the phosphors absorbing and emitting energy. Confusing two different processes that are causally related as one single process again results in a failure to discriminate properly the various different processes going on. We belabor the point because people make these mistakes all the time when considering where in the causal pathway their own consciousness lies. So over here in stage four of the standard reference model, we have a diagram of a brain, and we have a diagram of a conscious unit with little conscious being inside it, looking at his conscious experience, his conscious TV set if you will, a 360 degree surround sound movie house, filled with the color forms he sees around him. We are claiming that the brain and the conscious unit are two different events, two different processes, and two different objects. It is very tempting for people to say that their consciousness IS merely a process going on in the brain or visual cortex. Now we know there are lots of processes going on in the brain, and we know that we are not conscious of many of them, so what they are claiming is that there is a subset of processes in the brain which ARE in fact their consciousness. They claim there is no separate object called a conscious unit undergoing a separate independent process from those going on in the brain. Some might claim that if you took away all of the brain, there would be no more conscious unit, but they have in fact never done this, so their claim is asserted without merit. And many have in fact died, flatlined, no brain, and came back and reported being very much alive outside the body while the brain was dead. Maybe the brain was not so dead after all, maybe not. All of which is anecdotal evidence to cause us to study the matter further. Notice that even if processes in the brain are necessary causal precursors to processes going on in consciousness, this does not in any way lessen the distinction between the two different objects, namely the brain and its processes and the consciousness and its processes. Remember there is no cube in the brain, and yet there is a cube in the consciousness. That alone is damning. But the consciousness can see with perfect certainty what it is looking at, the brain, being a machine, can't. Notice also that just because there may necessarily be a causal pathway between the brain and the conscious unit SO THAT DATA MAY PASS FROM THE BRAIN TO THE CONSCIOUS BEING, this alone does not prove that the conscious unit depends upon the existence of the brain for its own existence. It might very well be that if the brain dies, the conscious unit might have nothing of interest to display, but self consciousness would always remain, like a TV set that was on with no show to play on it. So the standard reference model asserts with malice aforethought that there are two separate objects between brain and conscious unit, and thus two separate processes going on, with a data bridge between them. The first hint that this may be valid is that the symbol of final authority in the conscious unit is in fact a picture of a cube. The data content is there, but so is the picture form. There is no picture form in the visual cortex or any other part of the brain goin all the way back to the retina. You cut open the brain and look at the patterns of what is going on there, and no where is there a picture. If object A and object B have different qualities, then A and B are two different objects. If A has qualities that B doesn't, or B has qualities that A doesn't, then they can't be one and the same object and under no circumstances can it be meaningful to say that are. So since consciousness has highly geometrically congruent picture forms in it, but the brain and visual cortex do not, there is no way that consciousness can be MERELY THE SAME THING AS a process in the brain or visual cortex. Notice we are not denying that some processes in consciousness may be causally related to processes in the brain, but causal relation between two different objects does not imply that the two objects are one and the same object. IN SUMMARY ----------------------------------------------------------------- Data Pict Orien- Refle Made Form From tation Focus Facing ction Of ----------------------------------------------------------------- Cube 100% 100% up high left right plastic Lens high low low glass CCD high high down high right left silicon Circuit high low low metal TV high high up high left right glass Eye lens high low low cells Retina high high down high right left cells Brain high low low neurons CU high high up high left right consciousness Notice that there is yellow light coming off the Cube, but no yellow light coming off the TV set, instead the TV set is emitting red and green to fake yellow. So they gotta be two different objects. Notice nothing is lighting the conscious picture of the cube, consciousness is lighting itself, consciousness is self luminous. There are no photons in a dream or in the imagination, but both can be seen clearly in the consciousness. Notice the blockage between the symbol and referent destroys the symbol. Paper between the Cube and the lens destroys the cube on the CCD screen. Cutting the circuitry between the CCD and the TV screen destroys the image on the TV screen. Paper between the TV screen and the eye destroys the image on the retina. Cutting the optic nerve between the retina and the conscious unit, destroys the image in the conscious unit. OK, so this is the end of the lecture on the Standard Reference Model given on November 27th 2005. Homer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink (607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com Mon Mar 24 01:35:12 EDT 2008