Years ago when I first found DH's work I was very enthusiastic about it because it really was the first of that kind that I had seen. However, even though it stimulates the imagination, I think that it still formulates things in such a way that it is greatly susceptible to 'spiritual atomism' (where the atoms are the conscious agents). This quickly leads to flat-MAL-like conception, where it is very difficult to make proper sense of the depth-contextuality of existence. In particular, any ideas of hierarchy necessarily appear as a corporate pyramid of equal peers, where some happen to be on top and exploit the lower.Stranger wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 11:15 pm Regardless of what DH claims his CA theory to be or to do, IMHO it has its important place. If successful, it would fill a missing link in the philosophy of consciousness and address the main challenge from the materialistic camp, namely - if everything is consciousness and the whole reality is nothing more than qualitative conscious first-person experiences, how is it that on the level of perceptions the experience is highly mathematically structured (e.g. always strictly following Schrodinger equation?) Obviously, notwithstanding the undeniable experiential fact that all we know about ourselves and reality is only conscious experiences, it is also undeniable fact that sensory experiences are highly ordered and structured mathematically, and this fact needs to be explained. This is precisely what DH theory is trying to address. Obviously, structured perceptional experiences constitute only a limited set of the totality of our conscious experiences (which includes all kinds of non-sensory experiences that are not mathematically structured), and so, CA theory would have only a limited applicability and cannot be claimed to be the exhaustive theory of consciousness. I'm very confident that consciousness cannot be reduced to mathematics. So, let's appreciate the CA theory for what it can do while understanding and accepting its limits.
I don't see anything wrong to assume that the universe of Consciousness contains not only the hierarchy of cognizant free-willing CAs, but also a multiplicity of elementary level non-cognizant CAs which make a "computational machinery" put in place by the Divine-level consciousness in order to produce structured sensory experiences. We also can appreciate that these mathematical machinery is firmly algorithmically structured while at the same time allowing wide "openings" to allow for the flowing of possibilities and meanings through its cracks. This is due to the quantum-probabilistic nature of these structures. Even though the distribution of probabilities is totally deterministic and mathematically structured, the actual events-experiences are not deterministic and not mathematically structured at all and allow for the execution of Willing and Thinking according to higher-order meanings to freely flow through the sensory screen. I can intuit here a breathtaking Wisdom of such creation scheme.
Today I think we have more fruitful frameworks. They are of course still abstract intellectual models, but they have more potential to awaken intuition for the true nature of depth-contextuality. Probably the best at this time is the work of Michael Levin (which we have dealt with here). Another of great value is that of Justin Riddle which you introduced here.
In both cases, even though abstractly, we are led to ideas that are much more in tune with the inner contextual depth of our being, where all the mystery lies. Interacting CAs too easily leads to the Toruk Makto fallacy since every agent considers themselves a fully complete and self-sufficient atom of existence (which can theoretically be extracted from its environment, placed elsewhere, and one would still feel innerly intact).
It's not so much the concrete tokens of the theory in question but the way of thinking that is important. Presently the break from spiritual atomism is greatly urgent. There are (at least) two important ideas that must be deeply grasped if we are to find our upright stature within reality and overcome the centuries-old Newtonian way of thinking, which when it creeps into spiritual life, leads to something like spiritual atomism - spatially-like enclosed CAs that exist in the spiritual vacuum and interact through spiritual 'photons'. This simply translates our physical sense of existence into a fantasized state, and thus we make a caricature of the spiritual realm.
The first is that we need to grasp something like Levin's nested fields of autonomous spiritual activity. A short prelude to the essays currently in the writing has been posted here, which treats these nested fields as Symphony of Minds.
The second is that we need to find the proper attitude toward the higher-order curvatures within which our states of being metamorphose. Here we need to overcome the tendency of the intellect to act like it can encompass the higher order reality within its thought-fragments. A very simple analogy can be drawn.
The atmospheric pressure gradually changes throughout the day. Now we can imagine that it begins to change faster and faster. When the changes of pressure become quicker than twenty cycles per second, this begins to be perceived as sound. The critical thing to note here is how in the first instance the scale of our now-span is embedded within more encompassing wavelengths of change. When we think intellectually about these wavelengths we live in their intuitive nature but the thoughts that we produce are like compressed symbols (tones) which fit in our now-span.
The most desperately missing skill in our materialistic age is the proper inner attitude toward the higher order mind-fields - who are autonomous beings within which our existence is embedded. This is why we keep stressing about the importance of prayer, as the means of letting go (surrender) and feeling the willed intuitive curvatures within which our existential movie meanders. We can symbolize the intuition of these fields through Imagination and concepts but we should remember that these are indeed only symbols - elemental wave packets that fit within the now-span of our consciousness. We can find the reality of the higher-order minds only by consciously trying to become concentric to their life. Then our thinking life becomes a compressed artistic expression of our intuition of the higher-order mind fields. The thought wave-packets are not the reality of the higher order patterns of intuitive intents but they are resonantly attuned to them and thus become symbols. The critical thing is to develop this inverted cognitive attitude toward that which can't fit in our thought wave packets, yet can be intuitively known (by becoming concentrically resonant with it) and expressed through such packets.