VGF Articles
On the Wider Application of the IIP-VGF Framework
Spirit and Science in the IIP-VGF Framework
For many, many people, in the modern world, science already appears as an authority outside self on the nature of things. And, through modern medicine and neuroscience, how many people it appears as an authority on the nature of our self.
There is then an immediate psychological response to the idea that science can prove or demonstrate something about spirit or spirituality. The authority of science suddenly makes spirit or spirituality seem more tangible if it can say something about it. That's how it seems.
The effect is real, psychologically and emotionally. But it's only an effect. It is actually, if you look at it more carefully, in the same class as very real psychological and emotional effects that can be produced by mentalists except that there is usually no mentalist deliberately producing the effect. It's very powerful, in the same way that an effect produced by a single mentalist on stage can affect a whole audience. But that doesn't make it real.
A good part of what is actually happening in the "spirit meets science" arena is authority laundering. The demonstrable authority of science and scientific knowledge is being laundered into the realm of spirit and spirituality, giving it a boost. This also makes the disciplined, objective study of science seem less disconnected from spiritual phenomenology. But it goes further because if the magic of mixing can be induced, the mixing of the authority of science with spiritual longing, this very powerful psychological and emotional effect can be conjured up.
The effect is made all the more possible in a climate of scientific advancement, technological innovation, and policies of disruption from technology companies, which all helps contribute to the feeling that we have now arrived, and are on the verge of something. It is part of the Zeitgeist of our times.
The truth is that modern science absolutely relies on measurement. And things such as spiritual consciousness, spiritual realisation, spiritual awakening, God consciousness, and spiritual reality, are not things that can be measured, although that impression can be given in pseudoscience.
We know in modern neuroscience that human consciousness arises through brain function. However, to say human consciousness reduces to measurable brain function is register collapse, and modern neuroscience is in general very careful to talk about "neural coordinates" of consciousness.
Here is the rub: we already had this consciousness before we scientifically associated it with brain function. The science doesn't discover something new, called consciousness. What it does discover, is new ways to understand, by understanding structures that can be understood scientifically. And that includes structures in what we actually experience. That's the value of science, applied to conscious phenomenology.
Register collapse helps produce powerful, beguiling psychological and emotional effects, which can draw in many people, but that doesn't help science. And it also doesn't really help anyone looking for something far greater than psychological and emotional effects, as a result of spiritual longing.
Without scientism or reductionism, the IIP-VGF framework allows human spiritual experience and phenomenology to be properly connected to disciplined science without the pitfall of register collapse. That means, without blurring the distinction between scientific description and subjective experience, without making metaphysical claims about science, and without authority laundering - the compulsion to steal from the authority of science to try to support spirituality.
Rather than trying to collapse scientific discipline into the far less disciplined register of popular spiritual discussion and communication, trying to spiritualise science, or satisfy spiritual longing through authority laundering from science, the IIP-VGF framework begins with a principle that allows science and spirituality to truly intersect without collapsing registers. That connecting principle is the IIP-VGF framework itself.
Not only is this a principle that can be described in a disciplined way mathematically, and applied scientifically, but it can be applied as a straightforward correlate in any register of human understanding and expression.
Most pertinently, it is applicable in the spiritual register itself. As correlate, we find it, for example, in Buddhism, and we find it in Hinduism. Infinite self-recurrence is already a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, and in Hinduism it appears symbolised in Sesa Naga, the snake coiled around Vishnu. Even in Christianity it is hinted at, in the book of Ecclesiastes, and possibly elsewhere in the Bible too. This doesn't mean that there is anything mystical about the principle in science or mathematics. The principle of infinite iteration or self-recurrence is already a part of standard mathematics and science.
So the connection doesn't require a collapse of registers, of scientific into the mystical, or the claim that the mystical can be explained scientifically. The connection is just there, in us, when we can see it. In say, Buddhism, for example, it is disconnected from the principle in engineering. It is disconnected, because we are not collapsing registers, engineering into Buddhism, or Buddhism into engineering. Nonetheless, we can see the connection - as a principle, the principle of infinite self-recurrence occurs in both mathematics and engineering, and in Buddhism.
In science what we ordinarily call consciousness and experience as our human conscious sentience, has evolved in time. It's not that we have a scientific "theory of consciousness" that "explains consciousness" by reducing it to scientific facts, but we can say that it has evolved in time because the intelligence that embodies it - the neural intelligence that is embodied by our brain - has evolved in time.
We in the modern West may tend to think of time as linear, but time can be also understood in a way compatible with modern physics in terms of infinite iteration or self-recursion. Again, we find the understanding of time as recursive or cyclic in other registers, particularly in older cultures.
The evolution of natural intelligence is also something that can be understood in a disciplined, modern scientific way, as a recursive functor. This natural intelligence of ours embodies consciousness of such complexity that it has traditionally been described as psyche. Through the IIP-VGF framework we can show evolving natural intelligence as a recursive functor, and how evolving intelligence and its attendant psyche projects its own evolution as its environment.
In the evolution of the functor a partition between the internal and external parts of the functor evolves. The partition acts in the intelligence itself as an obscuration to intelligence realising the fact that the environment is a projection - structurally a projection of the functor - and also a projection of the psyche as phenomenologically experienced.
More informally we can describe all this in the following way: We can say that the underlying principle of the evolution of the psyche is the principle of the evolution of repeat patterns evolved in the soil of repeat patterns. In other words, nature herself is about repeat patterns stabilised in the soil of repeat patterns. The mind is about repeat patterns. And what unfolds as even our life experience is about repeat patterns. Even amidst the apparently new.
More formally, mathematically we can describe this in terms of evolution by decoherence, not just the quantum decoherence that physics already articulates, but as the ongoing recursive decoherence process of the VGF - the "vast generative field" of closures of infinite iteration. These can arise with varying degrees of persistence from the ephemeral to the cosmically stable background of space-time itself.
The framework articulates how a closure of ongoing infinite iteration constitutes a "decoherence image". The stability of closures or decoherence images is only ever gained at the cost of fidelity to the generative origins of any closure. Thus the term "decoherence image" arises because any stability or closure is always a fidelity-reduced "image" of its generative origins, created through the ongoing decoherence.
The general pattern of the language here, involving "images" and what we are calling here loss of fidelity, may already be familiar in certain areas of theology. This is not, however, because the scientific description collapses into the theological register or vice versa. What we have been talking about is evolutionary consciousness as it is understood in science, without attempting to reduce consciousness to scientific facts.
Theology and spirituality traditionally addresses transcendental consciousness, rather than the evolutionary. The framework connects the evolutionary or mundane to the transcendental not by collapsing registers and pretending that transcendental experience can be reduced to scientific facts, and/or that science, really, is mystical, but by providing a bridge between them.
The bridge, in theology and spirituality itself, is in that the starting point of the framework - the mathematical alpha principle of open generativity from infinite iteration - is a decoherence image of another kind - an "image" of spiritual reality.
There is then an immediate psychological response to the idea that science can prove or demonstrate something about spirit or spirituality. The authority of science suddenly makes spirit or spirituality seem more tangible if it can say something about it. That's how it seems.
The effect is real, psychologically and emotionally. But it's only an effect. It is actually, if you look at it more carefully, in the same class as very real psychological and emotional effects that can be produced by mentalists except that there is usually no mentalist deliberately producing the effect. It's very powerful, in the same way that an effect produced by a single mentalist on stage can affect a whole audience. But that doesn't make it real.
A good part of what is actually happening in the "spirit meets science" arena is authority laundering. The demonstrable authority of science and scientific knowledge is being laundered into the realm of spirit and spirituality, giving it a boost. This also makes the disciplined, objective study of science seem less disconnected from spiritual phenomenology. But it goes further because if the magic of mixing can be induced, the mixing of the authority of science with spiritual longing, this very powerful psychological and emotional effect can be conjured up.
The effect is made all the more possible in a climate of scientific advancement, technological innovation, and policies of disruption from technology companies, which all helps contribute to the feeling that we have now arrived, and are on the verge of something. It is part of the Zeitgeist of our times.
The truth is that modern science absolutely relies on measurement. And things such as spiritual consciousness, spiritual realisation, spiritual awakening, God consciousness, and spiritual reality, are not things that can be measured, although that impression can be given in pseudoscience.
We know in modern neuroscience that human consciousness arises through brain function. However, to say human consciousness reduces to measurable brain function is register collapse, and modern neuroscience is in general very careful to talk about "neural coordinates" of consciousness.
Here is the rub: we already had this consciousness before we scientifically associated it with brain function. The science doesn't discover something new, called consciousness. What it does discover, is new ways to understand, by understanding structures that can be understood scientifically. And that includes structures in what we actually experience. That's the value of science, applied to conscious phenomenology.
Register collapse helps produce powerful, beguiling psychological and emotional effects, which can draw in many people, but that doesn't help science. And it also doesn't really help anyone looking for something far greater than psychological and emotional effects, as a result of spiritual longing.
Without scientism or reductionism, the IIP-VGF framework allows human spiritual experience and phenomenology to be properly connected to disciplined science without the pitfall of register collapse. That means, without blurring the distinction between scientific description and subjective experience, without making metaphysical claims about science, and without authority laundering - the compulsion to steal from the authority of science to try to support spirituality.
Rather than trying to collapse scientific discipline into the far less disciplined register of popular spiritual discussion and communication, trying to spiritualise science, or satisfy spiritual longing through authority laundering from science, the IIP-VGF framework begins with a principle that allows science and spirituality to truly intersect without collapsing registers. That connecting principle is the IIP-VGF framework itself.
Not only is this a principle that can be described in a disciplined way mathematically, and applied scientifically, but it can be applied as a straightforward correlate in any register of human understanding and expression.
Most pertinently, it is applicable in the spiritual register itself. As correlate, we find it, for example, in Buddhism, and we find it in Hinduism. Infinite self-recurrence is already a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, and in Hinduism it appears symbolised in Sesa Naga, the snake coiled around Vishnu. Even in Christianity it is hinted at, in the book of Ecclesiastes, and possibly elsewhere in the Bible too. This doesn't mean that there is anything mystical about the principle in science or mathematics. The principle of infinite iteration or self-recurrence is already a part of standard mathematics and science.
So the connection doesn't require a collapse of registers, of scientific into the mystical, or the claim that the mystical can be explained scientifically. The connection is just there, in us, when we can see it. In say, Buddhism, for example, it is disconnected from the principle in engineering. It is disconnected, because we are not collapsing registers, engineering into Buddhism, or Buddhism into engineering. Nonetheless, we can see the connection - as a principle, the principle of infinite self-recurrence occurs in both mathematics and engineering, and in Buddhism.
In science what we ordinarily call consciousness and experience as our human conscious sentience, has evolved in time. It's not that we have a scientific "theory of consciousness" that "explains consciousness" by reducing it to scientific facts, but we can say that it has evolved in time because the intelligence that embodies it - the neural intelligence that is embodied by our brain - has evolved in time.
We in the modern West may tend to think of time as linear, but time can be also understood in a way compatible with modern physics in terms of infinite iteration or self-recursion. Again, we find the understanding of time as recursive or cyclic in other registers, particularly in older cultures.
The evolution of natural intelligence is also something that can be understood in a disciplined, modern scientific way, as a recursive functor. This natural intelligence of ours embodies consciousness of such complexity that it has traditionally been described as psyche. Through the IIP-VGF framework we can show evolving natural intelligence as a recursive functor, and how evolving intelligence and its attendant psyche projects its own evolution as its environment.
In the evolution of the functor a partition between the internal and external parts of the functor evolves. The partition acts in the intelligence itself as an obscuration to intelligence realising the fact that the environment is a projection - structurally a projection of the functor - and also a projection of the psyche as phenomenologically experienced.
More informally we can describe all this in the following way: We can say that the underlying principle of the evolution of the psyche is the principle of the evolution of repeat patterns evolved in the soil of repeat patterns. In other words, nature herself is about repeat patterns stabilised in the soil of repeat patterns. The mind is about repeat patterns. And what unfolds as even our life experience is about repeat patterns. Even amidst the apparently new.
More formally, mathematically we can describe this in terms of evolution by decoherence, not just the quantum decoherence that physics already articulates, but as the ongoing recursive decoherence process of the VGF - the "vast generative field" of closures of infinite iteration. These can arise with varying degrees of persistence from the ephemeral to the cosmically stable background of space-time itself.
The framework articulates how a closure of ongoing infinite iteration constitutes a "decoherence image". The stability of closures or decoherence images is only ever gained at the cost of fidelity to the generative origins of any closure. Thus the term "decoherence image" arises because any stability or closure is always a fidelity-reduced "image" of its generative origins, created through the ongoing decoherence.
The general pattern of the language here, involving "images" and what we are calling here loss of fidelity, may already be familiar in certain areas of theology. This is not, however, because the scientific description collapses into the theological register or vice versa. What we have been talking about is evolutionary consciousness as it is understood in science, without attempting to reduce consciousness to scientific facts.
Theology and spirituality traditionally addresses transcendental consciousness, rather than the evolutionary. The framework connects the evolutionary or mundane to the transcendental not by collapsing registers and pretending that transcendental experience can be reduced to scientific facts, and/or that science, really, is mystical, but by providing a bridge between them.
The bridge, in theology and spirituality itself, is in that the starting point of the framework - the mathematical alpha principle of open generativity from infinite iteration - is a decoherence image of another kind - an "image" of spiritual reality.