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Naïve Realism, Empirical Science
and Transcendent Science

Naïve realism has a tendency to trap our minds within the empirical world of the senses but we can overcome the cultural effects of this in a rigorous scientific manner. The main topics covered in this article are:

Semiotic nature of language and thought,
Overcoming the limitations of empiricism via abstraction,
Transcendent conceptual languages,
Transcendent scientific methodology

In a recent conversation I said “Anything that we can speak about is an object within the mind [empirical] but not an object in absolute reality [transcendent].” But that is not the whole story...

Language is an entirely empirical phenomenon and yet it is not true that all talk will just go round in circles within the empirical context (relative reality). Through practices such as meditation and jnana yoga we can individually overcome naïve realism but even without this our culture as a whole doesn't need to remain a victim of naïve realism.

Language and science can evolve to refer to either empirical or transcendent contexts. Let me explain...

Semiotic Relationship

The object that is experienced or conceived is a cognitive object, but it also has a semiotic relationship with something (this relationship gives it its 'meaning').

For example, the perceptual experience of a chair is semiotically related to a stream of sensory information that creates the impression of a chair within the mind. The concept chair is semiotically related to memories of many experiences that have a similar form. The word 'chair' is semiotically related to the concept chair. From this concept may other concepts may arise and become associated with it, some of them directly related to other perceptual phenomena (e.g. 'comfortable') and some arising from the relations between conceptual objects (e.g. 'fashionable').

Empirical Concepts

The above example is entirely empirical in that it operates only within the realm of sensory experiences of surface appearance. No matter how much conceptual inference occurs of the type described in the example, the concepts cannot go beyond just the surface appearances of reality.

Abstraction

Another type of conceptual inference is abstraction. A classical example of this is mathematics. We may experience one chair, then two and so on, as well as many objects other than just chairs. From these experiences we may abstract the principles of mathematics and realise, for example, that one chair plus one chair equals two chairs and more generally that "one plus one equals two". This doesn't just relate to chairs but to all quantities, hence it is an abstract general principle.

Due to its deep abstraction mathematics is not a 'worldly' language. For example, if I introduce the word 'apple' or the analogy of “eating an apple” then these have no meaning unless the listener has had previous experiences with such things. But in mathematics it is different, when I introduce the variable 'x' or the function y = f(x) these have no prior meaning and any attempt to give them meaning based on memory associations and prior worldly experience will lead to confusion. They are pure symbols without any intrinsic connection to worldly concepts (unless explicitly defined). The only meaning that they have arises from the network of interactions that they participate in within the mathematical context.

This type of mathematical abstraction evolved into rationalist (rather than empiricist) conceptual frameworks such as quantum physics. In a parallel evolution abstraction from intuitive insight also resulted in mystic wisdom.

Transcendent Concepts

Quantum physics and mystic wisdom still use words that have a semiotic relationship to concepts, which are objects within the mind, but these concepts have a semiotic relationship to entirely non-empirical phenomena.

Although it is still a form of conceptual naïve realism to believe that a wavefunction is absolutely real or that spirit is absolutely real, these concepts nevertheless point towards something that is absolutely real, rather than just pointing towards perceptual experiences which are only relatively real. Hence they constitute transcendent conceptual languages rather than just empirical conceptual languages.

Transcendent Conceptual Languages

In another recent conversation it was said that “our languages have deep roots in metaphors of body and percept; which makes it difficult sharing on realities that transcend body and percept”

And in reply I said: Very true, that is why my primary 'language' for exploration is based on mathematics, which I see as the language of pure information.

This mathematics however is not a symbolic manipulation to me - it is the SMN algorithmic process that is operating within my mind as a dynamic process. By working with the symbolic form of SMN I have internalised the dynamic process that SMN models and it is that process that is the internal language that I use.

When creating external discussions for others who are not familiar with the SMN language, I use two main analogies - virtual reality and mystic wisdom (particularly Advaita Vedanta). There are many terms in Sanskrit that can speak directly about the subtler aspects of reality - it is a language not entirely based on "metaphors of body and percept".

When in India and speaking with people familiar with Advaita Vedanta it is easy to come to a deep mutual understanding in less than half an hour of conversation. But when speaking with minds that are caught up in dualism and who only use common language I have found that using the VR analogy can be very effective [although it can take quite some time for things to sink in].

However with those who are unwilling or unable to understand non-dual mystic terminology or to contemplate the VR analogy, I have found that no amount of conversation is able to cut through the web of confusion that permeates the [empirical] language itself.

Whilst all languages refer to objects of cognition within the mind it is nevertheless possible to speak of that which lies beyond the mind using transcendent conceptual languages. Whilst they can point toward the absolute reality rather than just the relative reality we must still remember that these concepts are just concepts, otherwise we engage in transcendent naïve realism.

Mysticism offers many varieties of transcendent conceptual languages (e.g. Advaita Vedanta , Daoism, Kabbalah).

Aspects of Western philosophy have developed transcendent conceptual languages of a kind (e.g. Intersubjectivity, panprotoexperientialism or panprotopsychism, Russellian Monism or Type-F Monism, process metaphysics).

Science is developing transcendent conceptual languages (quantum physics, information theory and system theory, simulated realism, VR analogy).

Transcendent Scientific Methodology

It is even possible to create detailed mathematical models of the transcendent reality generative process (using system matrix notation SMN) and study the types of empirical universes that arise. It can model both classical and quantum universes. The classical case has been implemented in software in various forms to prove that it works as a general system simulator, and both cases have been explored mathematically but there is great scope for further exploration. The analysis so far shows that the virtual realities can exhibit quantum phenomena as well as special relativity, which naturally arise from the information theoretic constraints. The virtual universes also exhibit the full range of system theoretic phenomena.

When the virtual reality analogy is applied to our situation, there is no physical computer, there is only a unified computational space, a space of pure interactions or cosmic information processes. Whilst we cannot ever comprehend the true nature of that transcendent context, the VR analogy explains why that is the case, and also shows that there are many things that can be known.

Whilst a system within a virtual universe has a mind that is conditioned by its experiences within that world and it uses language that is derived from worldly experience, the computational space is totally beyond all such worldly concepts and cannot be comprehended in terms of these concepts. Hence it is true that the computational space is utterly incomprehensible from a perspective “within the world”.

But if such beings developed their own computational technology and gained certain insights that enabled them to create their own sub-information-processes that then gave rise to sub-virtual-universes, into which they didn't have an empirical perspective, but instead they had a transcendent perspective, then from that perspective there are things that they can know about the sub-situation, which they can then use to help them comprehend their own situation. This is the perspective from which all of my own work comes.

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