All-At-Once Insights
I find myself tongue-tied at this point in my blog entries because of the all-at-once insights that arise when using intuition as a method to fuel scientific imagination. I have proposed that the core of experience at the first tier provides a ground for consciousness and that this explains a variety of behavioral phenomena that most of us have either experienced ourselves or heard about from others. I suggested that experiences at the first tier are made possible by a genetically given, innate substrate that guides the development of a pre-empirical, physical core of experience. I have also offered a plausible physiological paradigm for this innate substrate.
These ideas provoked a cascade of insights that inform each other to such a degree that it is impossible to maintain an orderly, logical sequence in developing them. Intuition often functions without regard for the comfortable boundaries required by the linear sequences of conscious thought. As I struggle to find my way forward, I will describe some of the interwoven insights that have emerged.
The verbal-symbolic tier of consciousness develops from the physical core of experience at the first tier established by a genetically given substrate. I want to develop my thinking further about the nature of the first-tier processes involved. How do the sources of guidance I propose express themselves in behaviors generated at the first tier? The conscious descriptions that are later articulated at the verbal-symbolic tier must have roots that ground them in the physical core at the first tier. How does this grounding impact the functions that develop?
These lines of investigation generate their own insights, and the concepts that emerge provoke lines of thinking that extend in multiple directions. I want to present them as they emerge and not as if they developed in order in a logical sequence from one to the next. The distinct lines of thought that arise are interwoven; they develop in parallel but not independently. They emerge together from the same source, and each influences the others in ways and to a degree that is impossible to disentangle.
The primary lines of thinking involve 1) how the specific sources of innate guidance that function at the first tier enable the human species to develop consciousness at the verbal-symbolic tier, 2) how the ongoing processes that take place at the physical core continuously play out in the background of the conscious world we create, and 3) how the component systems that guide first tier functioning become expressed as recognizable features at the verbal-symbolic tier. As I consider each of these lines of thinking in future blog entries, I remain fully aware that they are inextricably intertwined. I will present them in separate entries as if they were independent of each other. Linear sequences of thought are required by the language games we create at the verbal-symbolic tier.
The intuitive process is not simple or orderly or linear or easy to follow. It is alive with possibilities that, because they emerge from the same personal experience base, are better thought of as plurabilities. This is a term James Joyce first used in Finnegans Wake, and it refers to possibilities that are rooted in personally lived experiences and not randomly proposed or selected. Plurabilities are not simply possible; they are grounded in the physical core of experience that represents the essence of who we are.
Comments (2)
Keep up the great writing!
I like how you let us in on your process.