Multisense Realism is a conjecture on the nature of consciousness based on the idea that all phenomena can be reduced to an experiential primitive, then nature of which is aesthetic (sensory-motive) rather than anesthetic (physical-informative). The justification for this is parsimony: There is no plausible explanation for phenomena that are defined as physical or computational to generate anything that 'seems' like anything other than it is. The capacity for 'seeming' is, by definition both redundant and impossible in physical or logical terms.

To solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness via physical or information theory would require defining those anesthetic phenomena in such a nebulous way that anything, including aesthetic properties, can be made to seem plausible as 'emergent properties' or 'illusion'. This solution fails on the grounds of being both anti-parsimonious and fallacious, as it seeks to explain the physicality of a phenomenon experienced as non-physical purely by presuming in advance that it is physical.

Multisense Realism (MSR) integrates concrete physics and abstract logic into a larger continuum of experienced properties which transcend subjective and objective distinctions. Concrete objects for example, are proposed to be artifacts of a particular band of the universal aesthetic spectrum. We would call that band 'tangibility'.

In Kantian terms, MSR suggests that there may be no noumenal reality, and that the foundation of nature and supernatural-seeming experiences alike are phenomenological. This is not a Simulation hypothesis since the dream of nature is a single, eternal dream from which nothing can awaken except into another, more inclusive dream. Dreams are relatively unreal, but only because the experience of finally awakening completely is one that belongs to the most inclusive and tangible dream.

MSR proposes a general schema of how the sense of subjectivity and objectivity arise from a partial splitting or diffraction of the all-inclusive history of experience. While similar to nondualism of Advaita Vedanta and the Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum, which also posit a fundamental 'everythingness' being divided or alienated into the natural world, MSR seeks to provide clarity on the nature of that seeming fragmentation.

I include some diagrams here to convey a sense of that:

In broad terms, MSR conceives of existence itself as an irreducibly aesthetic-participatory, creative phenomenon (Holos) which is spatiotemporally 'graphed' (diffracted) through manipulation of nested scales of perceptual rates and types. Physical phenomena arise from interference patterns of the sense of tangibility, which is itself an interruption of the unity with Holos. Subjectivity is the temporal division of the aesthetic Holos, and Objectivity is the intersubjective rendering of that division.

MSR questions deep assumptions about the nature of 'fields', 'forces', 'light', and 'information' and arrives at an outline of a new metaphysics based on sensory-motive aesthetics rather than anesthetic laws of information processing or mass-energetic geometry. It is math and physics which are emergent, incomplete, and holographic. Subjective consciousness, while incomplete in a different sense, is a much richer and complete model of the Holos of nature. The incompleteness of subjectivity is only one of degree, whereas the incompleteness of math and physics is one of kind.

More on Multisense Realism at http://multisenserealism.com

Sensitivity is the sole primordial Absolute means that physics, information, space and other compelling possible fundamentals are all ultimately dependent on some capacity to detect and receive experience.

The specific proposal of sensitivity or sense being pre-noumenal is called Primordial Identity Pansensitivity and is part of an overall meta-theory called Multisense Realism MSR. What PIP/MSR does is to build a model in which the noumenal is understood to be a projection within the phenomenal rather than the other way around.

In the same way, public existence is seen, not as an idealist fantasy from within subjective experience, but as a history of all private experiences as seen from a relativistically alienated perspective (bodies are feelings at a distance, distance is low level insensitivity).

• Disambiguation of P, PP, PIP, and MSR

1. Pansensitivity (P) proposes that sensation is a universal property.

2. Primordial Pansensitivity (PP) proposes that because sensation is primitive, mechanism is derived from insensitivity. Whether it is mechanism that assumes form without sensibility (materialism) or function without sensation (computationalism), they both can only view feeling as a black box/epiphenomenon/illusion.

Under PP, both materialism and computationalism make sense as partial negative images of P, so that PP is the only continuum or capacity needed to explain feeling and doing (sense-motive), objective forms and functions (mass-energy), and informative positions and dispositions (space-time).

PP says that the appearance of forms and functions are, from an absolute perspective, sensory-motive experiences which have been alienated through time and across space.

3. Primordial Identity Pansensitivity (PIP) adds to the Ouroboran Monism of PP, (sense twisted within itself = private experience vs public bodies) by suggesting that PP is not only irreducible, but it is irreducibility itself.

PIP suggests that distance is a kind of insensitivity, so that all other primitive possibilities which are grounded in mechanism, such as information or energy, are reductionist in a way which oversignifies the distanced perspective, while anthropomorphic primitives such as love or divinity are holistic in a way which oversignifies the local perspective. Local and distant are assumed to be Cartesian opposites, but PIP maps locality and distance as the same in terms of being two opposite branches of insensitivity. Both the holistic and reductionist views ignore the production of distance which they both rely on for their perspective, both take perspective itself, perception, and relativity for granted.

4. MSR (Multisense Realism) tries to rehabilitate reductionism and holism by understanding them as bifocal strategies which arise naturally, each appropriate for a particular context of perceived distance. Both are near-sighted and far-sighted in opposite ways, as the subject seeks to first project anthropomorphism outward onto the world and then, following a crisis of disillusionment, seeks the opposite – to project exterior mechanism into the self. MSR invites us to step outside of the bifocal antagonism and into a balanced appreciation of the totality.

The idea here in the above chart is that if we want to take the full spectrum of phenomena into account, we have to either begin with a reductionist realism and work upward, or a holistic idealism and work downward.

When we suppose that consciousness is a phenomenon that arises out of unconscious phenomena, we are saying that mechanism, through some act of emergence (generally by complexity), the mechanism in question (generally physical or computational mechanism) becomes enchanted with itself. In this case, as David Chalmers famously points out, there would have to be some threshold beyond which it would be impossible to tell the difference between a real person and a machine which acts just like a real person (a philosophical zombie). Finding this unacceptable, he suggests instead some variety of panpsychism should be explored, including perhaps, what I would call a promiscuous or 'leaky' panpsychism in which devices such as thermostats would have to be considered aware in some sense.

Finding both of these alternatives unacceptable, I suggest that we move over to the right side and begin with a downward facing ideal absolute. For the spiritually inclined, this could be called by any number of theistic names, however, it can also be conceived of equally well in completely non-spiritual, atheistic terms. When we suppose that awareness itself is inescapable and inevitable in all possible or theoretical universes, we are saying that through some divergence or illusion, awareness takes on a temporary solid appearance. In MSR, I suggest that this is a more plausible option than brute emergence from nothingness…modulated constraint within everythingness.*

Rather than positing an appeal to future scientific understanding to explain the emergence of aesthetic realism from mechanism, the divergence of mechanism from total awareness can be made palatable through a nested modulation of insensitivity. Intentionally partitioning intention itself so that it appears unintentional given a certain amount of insensitivity. This could be viewed either in the religious sense of 'God's divine plan is not visible to us', or in a more conservative sense of 'Shit happens coincidentally, but coincidental shit also happens to be meaningful from some perspective'.

If anyone is interested in what the crazy pink cone and all that is, I can explain in more detail, but briefly, if we take the MSR road from disenchanted idealism (the conservative 'Shit happens' option), then instead of the Chalmers dilemma of zombies vs leaky panpsychism, we get a continuum in which local sense is selectively blinded to the sense of non-human experiences, through a combination of frame rate mismatch (time scale difference cause entropy and local sense approximates) and distance (literal spatial scale difference, as well as experiential unfamiliarity).**

The other ten dollar words there, 'tessellated monism' and 'eigenmetric diffraction' both refer to the juxtaposition of sensitivity and insensitivity, through which a kind of metabolism of accumulating significance (solitrophy) in the face of fading sense (entropy) and fading motive (gravity).

• I call this cosmology the Sole Entropy Well hypothesis and it has to do with reversing Boltzmann's solution to Loschmidt's paradox so that entropy is a bottomless absolute, like c, in which local ranges of entropy and extropy stretch and multiply in a fractal-like reproduction.
• I call this aspect of MSR Eigenmorphism, which has to do with things appearing to be more doll-like and less familiar from a distance. This makes, for example, the presence of atoms and solar systems in our experience more similar to each other than either of them seems like a tree or a cell. The limits of our perception coincide with the simplicity of ontology, and they are, in a sense, the same thing (given eigenmorphism). As a rule of thumb, distance = the significance of insignficance.

Why Multisense Realism (and PIP) Solves the Hard Problem of Consciousness

The Hard Problem of consciousness asks why there is a gap between our explanation of matter, or biology, or neurology, and our experience in the first place. What is it there which even suggests to us that there should be a gap, and why should there be a such thing as experience to stand apart from the functions of that which we can explain.

Materialism only miniaturizes the gap and relies on a machina ex deus (intentionally reversed deus ex machina) of 'complexity' to save the day. An interesting question would be, why does dualism seem to be easier to overlook when we are imagining the body of a neuron, or a collection of molecules? I submit that it is because miniaturization and complexity challenge the limitations of our cognitive ability, we find it easy to conflate that sort of quantitative incomprehensibility with the other incomprehensibility being considered, namely aesthetic* awareness. What consciousness does with phenomena which pertain to a distantly scaled perceptual frame is to under-signify it. It becomes less important, less real, less worthy of attention.

Idealism only fictionalizes the gap. I argue that idealism makes more sense on its face than materialism for addressing the Hard Problem, since material would have no plausible excuse for becoming aware or being entitled to access an unacknowledged a priori possibility of awareness. Idealism however, fails at commanding the respect of a sophisticated perspective since it relies on naive denial of objectivity. Why so many molecules? Why so many terrible and tragic experiences? Why so much enduring of suffering and injustice? The thought of an afterlife is too seductive of a way to wish this all away. The concept of maya, that the world is a veil of illusion is too facile to satisfy our scientific curiosity.

Dualism multiplies the gap. Acknowledging the gap is a good first step, but without a bridge, the gap is diagonalized and stuck in infinite regress. In order for experience to connect in some way with physics, some kind of homunculus is invoked, some third force or function interceding on behalf of the two incommensurable substances. The third force requires a fourth and fifth force on either side, and so forth, as in a Zeno paradox. Each homunculus has its own Explanatory Gap.

Dual Aspect Monism retreats from the gap. The concept of material and experience being two aspects of a continuous whole is the best one so far – getting very close. The only problem is that it does not explain what this monism is, or where the aspects come from. It rightfully honors the importance of opposites and duality, but it does not question what they actually are. Laws? Information?

Panpsychism toys with the gap.Depending on what kind of panpsychism is employed, it can miniaturize, multiply, or retreat from the gap. At least it is committing to closing the gap in a way which does not take human exceptionalism for granted, but it still does not attempt to integrate qualia itself with quanta in a detailed way. Tononi's IIT might be an exception in that it is detailed, but only from the quantitative end. The hard problem, which involves justifying the reason for integrated information being associated with a private 'experience' is still only picked at from a distance.

Primordial Identity Pansensitivity, my candidate for nomination, uses a different approach than the above. PIP solves the hard problem by putting the entire universe inside the gap. Consciousness is the Explanatory Gap. Naturally, it follows serendipitously that consciousness is also itself explanatory. The role of consciousness is to make plain – to bring into aesthetic evidence that which can be made evident. How is that different from what physics does? What does the universe do other than generate aesthetic textures and narrative fragments? It is not awareness which must fit into our physics or our science, our religion or philosophy, it is the totality of eternity which must gain meaning and evidence through sensory presentation.

• Is awareness 'aesthetic'? That we call a substance which causes the loss of consciousness a general anesthetic might be a serendipitous clue. If so, the term local anesthetic as an agent which deadens sensation is another hint about our intuitive correlation between discrete sensations and overall capacity to be 'awake'. Between sensations (I would call sub-private) and personal awareness (privacy) would be a spectrum of nested channels of awareness.

Multisense Realism proposes that the cosmos is an involuted, tessellated or 'Ouroboran Monism' – or a neutral monism in which experienced presence defines itself by the pantomimed projection of its own absence. What is proposed is a universal sense which modulates itself through various kinds of insensitivities; deferments, delays, and diffractions. Such insensitivities or entropies, are ultimately what we know to be public space and private time. To be clear, private time is not clock time (which are public measurements of reliably changing objects), but rather the sense of narrative sequence, of evolving stories which spiral or gyrate rather than merely repeat.

It is thorough these nested diffractions of experienced sense that matter and energy can be understood as alienated experiences - experiences which have become unfamiliar to each other on some level over the history of the universal diffraction.

Executive Summary

In the history of attempts to understand consciousness there has been much debate over what is conscious, what is not, and what the relation is between the two categories. In simplistic terms, idealism conceives of matter as a phenomenon derived from consciousness while materialists conceive of consciousness as emerging from unconscious functions of matter. Dualism conceives of matter and consciousness as two fundamentally different categories of phenomena. Neutral Monism conceives of both mental and material phenomena as derived from a more fundamental property.

Multisense Realism begins with the Neutral Monism view in which there is a meta-property from which all other discernments and relations are derived. Rather than a metaphysical field or invisible realm, the MR conjecture is that this root property could be meaningfully described as ordinary 'sense'. There are more descriptive terms to be applied, but the gist of them is very close to all of the ordinary things that we mean by sense. Consciousness is what we use to make sense of an experience which already makes sense.

The first question that MR asks is, can we make sense of a universe which does not make sense already? At this point rigid definitions of what sense is should be avoided – not to obscure but to discourage jumping to conclusions. Intolerance and impatience are perhaps the two most formidable obstacles to to understanding this new approach. This is not Creationism, Dualism, Idealism, Theism or any brand of anti-scientific ideology. There is nothing being sold here. The intention of MR is to open a door to a revolutionary synthesis of all empirically real phenomena. This new view, while shocking in some ways, promises to reconcile both the Western and Eastern frameworks for explaining consciousness and physics. This reconciliation is accomplished by dissolving both mind and body in a continuum of common sense.

It is not the purpose of MR to propose that we return to a pre-Copernican worldview, nor is it to call for a repeal of any methods of science. To the contrary, MR seeks to add new tools for science to approach subjectivity on its own terms, doing for private physics in the 21st century what the Enlightenment did for public physics in the 17th century. Where the scientific revolution tapped into the power of quantitative analysis, the next revolution must add to that an appreciation of qualitative identities. This is not as easy as it sounds. It may well require a radical shift, an ontological pivot from an expectation of complexity built up from nothingness to an expectation of simplicity isolated within 'everythingness'.

MSR immodestly places itself at the end of the chain of advancing human worldviews:

Developmental Stage: transcendental voyeur (localizing motive) – what is observed/transcended

   Archaic/shamanic: Natural spirits (magic) – alienates objectivity with direct animism

   Classical/polytheistic: Named supernatural deities (prayer) – alienates physicality with empathetic identification

   Post-Classical/monotheistic: Absolute supernatural deity (religious devotion) – alienates morality with indirect identification

   Enlightenment/dualistic: Impersonal deity (reason) – alienates animism with mechanistic observation

   Modern/scientific: Impersonal forces and laws* (engineering) – alienates subjectivity with abstract formulation

   Post-modern/existential: Pure probability** (computation) – alienates subjective-objective dualism with quantum reconciliation

   Integral/holistic: Re-enchanted information (signifying pattern) – alienates impersonal perspectives with quantized qualia.

   Ouroboran: Multisense perception (motive participation) – alienates alienation with qualia-quanta reconciliation.

• evacuated sense and motive
• evacuated physics

Each stage involves a stepping out of the previous system. The Integral/holistic stage steps out of all systems by considering them information. The Ouroboran stage steps out of by considering system-making and system-breaking as the final and absolute reconciliation of private unity (time) and public multiplicity (space).

The pre-Enlightenment models of the universe revered the symmetry of the universe. The creedo 'As above, so below', as well as the Eastern concept of yin and yang cite this kind of binary complementarity as fundamental. Even after this schema was abandoned by science, the fixation on binary complementarity remains inevitable. Electromagetism, Mass-energy, Space-time. Genetics has its interlocking set of bases. That's only scratching the surface. The periodic table and quantum physics are overflowing with simple patterns, inversions, variations, sequences. Despite whimsical names for the 'charm' and 'strange' quarks, the sense of personality in physics is intended ironically. The true nature of microcosmic phenomena is seen to be completely mathematical and devoid of personality, with symmetries arising purely from the expectation of simple rules rather than any vast eternal significance. The universe is assumed to be the ultimate machine, the ultimate parts of which are ultimately fragmented.

Under the Ouroboran monism proposed by MSR, the dualism itself is not as important as the capacity to appreciate difference and indifference. That capacity is deemed to be Absolute, as that which can never be experienced in any way is indiscernible from nothing at all.

More on Multisense Realism at http://multisenserealism.com

Sensitivity is the sole primordial Absolute means that physics, information, space and other compelling possible fundamentals are all ultimately dependent on some capacity to detect and receive experience.

The specific proposal of sensitivity or sense being pre-noumenal is called Primordial Identity Pansensitivity and is part of an overall meta-theory called Multisense Realism MSR. What PIP/MSR does is to build a model in which the noumenal is understood to be a projection within the phenomenal rather than the other way around.

In the same way, public existence is seen, not as an idealist fantasy from within subjective experience, but as a history of all private experiences as seen from a relativistically alienated perspective (bodies are feelings at a distance, distance is low level insensitivity).

• Disambiguation of P, PP, PIP, and MSR

1. Pansensitivity (P) proposes that sensation is a universal property.

2. Primordial Pansensitivity (PP) proposes that because sensation is primitive, mechanism is derived from insensitivity. Whether it is mechanism that assumes form without sensibility (materialism) or function without sensation (computationalism), they both can only view feeling as a black box/epiphenomenon/illusion.

Under PP, both materialism and computationalism make sense as partial negative images of P, so that PP is the only continuum or capacity needed to explain feeling and doing (sense-motive), objective forms and functions (mass-energy), and informative positions and dispositions (space-time).

PP says that the appearance of forms and functions are, from an absolute perspective, sensory-motive experiences which have been alienated through time and across space.

3. Primordial Identity Pansensitivity (PIP) adds to the Ouroboran Monism of PP, (sense twisted within itself = private experience vs public bodies) by suggesting that PP is not only irreducible, but it is irreducibility itself.

PIP suggests that distance is a kind of insensitivity, so that all other primitive possibilities which are grounded in mechanism, such as information or energy, are reductionist in a way which oversignifies the distanced perspective, while anthropomorphic primitives such as love or divinity are holistic in a way which oversignifies the local perspective. Local and distant are assumed to be Cartesian opposites, but PIP maps locality and distance as the same in terms of being two opposite branches of insensitivity. Both the holistic and reductionist views ignore the production of distance which they both rely on for their perspective, both take perspective itself, perception, and relativity for granted.

4. MSR (Multisense Realism) tries to rehabilitate reductionism and holism by understanding them as bifocal strategies which arise naturally, each appropriate for a particular context of perceived distance. Both are near-sighted and far-sighted in opposite ways, as the subject seeks to first project anthropomorphism outward onto the world and then, following a crisis of disillusionment, seeks the opposite – to project exterior mechanism into the self. MSR invites us to step outside of the bifocal antagonism and into a balanced appreciation of the totality.

Why Multisense Realism (and PIP) Solves the Hard Problem of Consciousness

The Hard Problem of consciousness asks why there is a gap between our explanation of matter, or biology, or neurology, and our experience in the first place. What is it there which even suggests to us that there should be a gap, and why should there be a such thing as experience to stand apart from the functions of that which we can explain.

Materialism only miniaturizes the gap and relies on a machina ex deus (intentionally reversed deus ex machina) of 'complexity' to save the day. An interesting question would be, why does dualism seem to be easier to overlook when we are imagining the body of a neuron, or a collection of molecules? I submit that it is because miniaturization and complexity challenge the limitations of our cognitive ability, we find it easy to conflate that sort of quantitative incomprehensibility with the other incomprehensibility being considered, namely aesthetic* awareness. What consciousness does with phenomena which pertain to a distantly scaled perceptual frame is to under-signify it. It becomes less important, less real, less worthy of attention.

Idealism only fictionalizes the gap. I argue that idealism makes more sense on its face than materialism for addressing the Hard Problem, since material would have no plausible excuse for becoming aware or being entitled to access an unacknowledged a priori possibility of awareness. Idealism however, fails at commanding the respect of a sophisticated perspective since it relies on naive denial of objectivity. Why so many molecules? Why so many terrible and tragic experiences? Why so much enduring of suffering and injustice? The thought of an afterlife is too seductive of a way to wish this all away. The concept of maya, that the world is a veil of illusion is too facile to satisfy our scientific curiosity.

Dualism multiplies the gap. Acknowledging the gap is a good first step, but without a bridge, the gap is diagonalized and stuck in infinite regress. In order for experience to connect in some way with physics, some kind of homunculus is invoked, some third force or function interceding on behalf of the two incommensurable substances. The third force requires a fourth and fifth force on either side, and so forth, as in a Zeno paradox. Each homunculus has its own Explanatory Gap.

Dual Aspect Monism retreats from the gap. The concept of material and experience being two aspects of a continuous whole is the best one so far – getting very close. The only problem is that it does not explain what this monism is, or where the aspects come from. It rightfully honors the importance of opposites and duality, but it does not question what they actually are. Laws? Information?

Panpsychism toys with the gap.Depending on what kind of panpsychism is employed, it can miniaturize, multiply, or retreat from the gap. At least it is committing to closing the gap in a way which does not take human exceptionalism for granted, but it still does not attempt to integrate qualia itself with quanta in a detailed way. Tononi's IIT might be an exception in that it is detailed, but only from the quantitative end. The hard problem, which involves justifying the reason for integrated information being associated with a private 'experience' is still only picked at from a distance.

Primordial Identity Pansensitivity, my candidate for nomination, uses a different approach than the above. PIP solves the hard problem by putting the entire universe inside the gap. Consciousness is the Explanatory Gap. Naturally, it follows serendipitously that consciousness is also itself explanatory. The role of consciousness is to make plain – to bring into aesthetic evidence that which can be made evident. How is that different from what physics does? What does the universe do other than generate aesthetic textures and narrative fragments? It is not awareness which must fit into our physics or our science, our religion or philosophy, it is the totality of eternity which must gain meaning and evidence through sensory presentation.

• Is awareness 'aesthetic'? That we call a substance which causes the loss of consciousness a general anesthetic might be a serendipitous clue. If so, the term local anesthetic as an agent which deadens sensation is another hint about our intuitive correlation between discrete sensations and overall capacity to be 'awake'. Between sensations (I would call sub-private) and personal awareness (privacy) would be a spectrum of nested channels of awareness.

Multisense Realism proposes that the cosmos is an involuted, tessellated or 'Ouroboran Monism' – or a neutral monism in which experienced presence defines itself by the pantomimed projection of its own absence. What is proposed is a universal sense which modulates itself through various kinds of insensitivities; deferments, delays, and diffractions. Such insensitivities or entropies, are ultimately what we know to be public space and private time. To be clear, private time is not clock time (which are public measurements of reliably changing objects), but rather the sense of narrative sequence, of evolving stories which spiral or gyrate rather than merely repeat.

It is thorough these nested diffractions of experienced sense that matter and energy can be understood as alienated experiences - experiences which have become unfamiliar to each other on some level over the history of the universal diffraction.

Executive Summary

In the history of attempts to understand consciousness there has been much debate over what is conscious, what is not, and what the relation is between the two categories. In simplistic terms, idealism conceives of matter as a phenomenon derived from consciousness while materialists conceive of consciousness as emerging from unconscious functions of matter. Dualism conceives of matter and consciousness as two fundamentally different categories of phenomena. Neutral Monism conceives of both mental and material phenomena as derived from a more fundamental property.

Multisense Realism begins with the Neutral Monism view in which there is a meta-property from which all other discernments and relations are derived. Rather than a metaphysical field or invisible realm, the MR conjecture is that this root property could be meaningfully described as ordinary 'sense'. There are more descriptive terms to be applied, but the gist of them is very close to all of the ordinary things that we mean by sense. Consciousness is what we use to make sense of an experience which already makes sense.

The first question that MR asks is, can we make sense of a universe which does not make sense already? At this point rigid definitions of what sense is should be avoided – not to obscure but to discourage jumping to conclusions. Intolerance and impatience are perhaps the two most formidable obstacles to to understanding this new approach. This is not Creationism, Dualism, Idealism, Theism or any brand of anti-scientific ideology. There is nothing being sold here. The intention of MR is to open a door to a revolutionary synthesis of all empirically real phenomena. This new view, while shocking in some ways, promises to reconcile both the Western and Eastern frameworks for explaining consciousness and physics. This reconciliation is accomplished by dissolving both mind and body in a continuum of common sense.

It is not the purpose of MR to propose that we return to a pre-Copernican worldview, nor is it to call for a repeal of any methods of science. To the contrary, MR seeks to add new tools for science to approach subjectivity on its own terms, doing for private physics in the 21st century what the Enlightenment did for public physics in the 17th century. Where the scientific revolution tapped into the power of quantitative analysis, the next revolution must add to that an appreciation of qualitative identities. This is not as easy as it sounds. It may well require a radical shift, an ontological pivot from an expectation of complexity built up from nothingness to an expectation of simplicity isolated within 'everythingness'.

MSR immodestly places itself at the end of the chain of advancing human worldviews:

Developmental Stage: transcendental voyeur (localizing motive) – what is observed/transcended

   Archaic/shamanic: Natural spirits (magic) – alienates objectivity with direct animism

   Classical/polytheistic: Named supernatural deities (prayer) – alienates physicality with empathetic identification

   Post-Classical/monotheistic: Absolute supernatural deity (religious devotion) – alienates morality with indirect identification

   Enlightenment/dualistic: Impersonal deity (reason) – alienates animism with mechanistic observation

   Modern/scientific: Impersonal forces and laws* (engineering) – alienates subjectivity with abstract formulation

   Post-modern/existential: Pure probability** (computation) – alienates subjective-objective dualism with quantum reconciliation

   Integral/holistic: Re-enchanted information (signifying pattern) – alienates impersonal perspectives with quantized qualia.

   Ouroboran: Multisense perception (motive participation) – alienates alienation with qualia-quanta reconciliation.

• evacuated sense and motive
• evacuated physics

Each stage involves a stepping out of the previous system. The Integral/holistic stage steps out of all systems by considering them information. The Ouroboran stage steps out of by considering system-making and system-breaking as the final and absolute reconciliation of private unity (time) and public multiplicity (space).

The pre-Enlightenment models of the universe revered the symmetry of the universe. The creedo 'As above, so below', as well as the Eastern concept of yin and yang cite this kind of binary complementarity as fundamental. Even after this schema was abandoned by science, the fixation on binary complementarity remains inevitable. Electromagetism, Mass-energy, Space-time. Genetics has its interlocking set of bases. That's only scratching the surface. The periodic table and quantum physics are overflowing with simple patterns, inversions, variations, sequences. Despite whimsical names for the 'charm' and 'strange' quarks, the sense of personality in physics is intended ironically. The true nature of microcosmic phenomena is seen to be completely mathematical and devoid of personality, with symmetries arising purely from the expectation of simple rules rather than any vast eternal significance. The universe is assumed to be the ultimate machine, the ultimate parts of which are ultimately fragmented.

Under the Ouroboran monism proposed by MSR, the dualism itself is not as important as the capacity to appreciate difference and indifference. That capacity is deemed to be Absolute, as that which can never be experienced in any way is indiscernible from nothing at all.

More on Multisense Realism at http://multisenserealism.com