Let me take you on an adventure. I don't know if you'll be able to follow me, since it's not going to be easy, for it requires you to let go of everything you think you know about the universe. I'm not saying it's wrong, I've not gone insane, I just want to explore a different perspective, a different model for reality that looks at it from an entirely new angle. I don't know if I'll succeed, since language itself is based on this common model for reality that I would like you to disregard for a moment. I might use words in ways that you might not consider valid uses which may lead you to disagree with me. But I beg you to try and understand the concept I try to use the words for, since many of them will be too exotic to have an established word for them. If you don't open your mind to this, the following will be pure gibberish to you. Ok, here we go:
Let's loose the notion of what it means to be an object. Forget about the boundaries between the organisational units of space and look at the universe only in terms of the smallest parts that make it up. This is important because I want to propose a different way to define those organizational units that are commonly defined on spatial properties. But instead of lumping together points in space and calling them an object, I want to define objects in terms of causality. Just like objects in the classical model are made of particles, those objects in my new model are made of events. You might think of those events as interactions between particles, but completely relying on that might be misleading, since it tempts you into trying to localize them in space. The beauty of this new model is that space only has a subordinate role.
So events, each only occurring at an infinitesimal point in time, make up objects. Luckily, our minds have no problem identifying organizational units in the time dimension, as we know how to divide a play into acts or acts into scenes. It's basically that, but to a much larger extent, how I want to define objects now. Yet, I don't mean to just cut up the one time dimension there is and be done with it, since events occur concurrently and multiple objects can exist at the same time, just as multiple plays can take place at the same time on different stages. Still, I want to stress that the boundary between objects cannot be defined spatially as events are not localized.
So, how do we draw these boundaries then? What even are these boundaries? First, we need to stop thinking of boundaries as manifolds. Events, and thus objects, are better represented by a directed graph that is either infinite in size or at least incomprehensibly large. In that graph, events are nodes and edges denote causality between them. This means that the graph necessarily has a topological ordering. It's that topological ordering function which we call time. Boundaries are now cuts through this graph. So it is now our task to draw these cuts to find meaningful subgraphs that we want to call objects to build a useful model of reality.
Now I'm in a bit of a pickle. While I can conceive these objects in my mind, how can I communicate them to you? I'm using words to write this text but the semantics of these words are all defined based on the spatial perspective on reality. So I think the best I can do now is use many of these words with their usual semantics to clumsily describe the boundaries of these objects in the spatial model. However, what I want you to do is try to look past these complex spatial objects and see the simple objects in the causal model. And while I can't show you enough objects in this text to really do this, try to imagine how one might assign words to these objects and establish an entire language that is native to the causal perspective on reality.
Here we go: imagine an object that is composed of muscles contracting in the mouth of a person to form a smile. The electrical signals along their nerve fibers causing this are just as much part of the object as the reflection of photons off the person's lips and their absorption in another person's retina. It's an object that finds its beginning in a multitude of events occurring in the first person's brain and its end in a multitude of events in the second person's brain. But if you think this is all a way to complicated way to describe chains of causality or acts of communication, you're missing the point. A smile is just one example of an object that is easier to define in the causal model. For another example, let's look at a feeling, as I hope this will be a compelling argument for the usefulness of this model.
Let's say you're angry at your neighbor because they are playing loud music at 2 am. The soundwaves of the music hitting your eardrums are just as much part of this object as the cortisol being released into your bloodstream. The object encompasses the formation of memories of this event as well as the recollection of these memories when you see your neighbor days later. It's the subgraph containing all events up to the causal boundaries where other objects begin. When you scream at your neighbor for putting their dirty boots onto your doormat, that is a different feeling but if you remember the loud music while doing it there is a shared border between those feelings. It's these direct touching points that are easily overlooked but that become apparent if there are two objects that are touching.
Those were just two pretty simple examples. For the first one you could arguably say that this is what we mean by the word "smile". It's a rare example of a word that works under this perspective. However, I hope you see how the second example could benefit from having a word for it. There are countless instances of causal objects like this. Of course none of them are exactly the same, but that's not the case for spatial objects either. Yes, the exact boundaries will always be difficult to define as there will always be edge cases. Yes, it's nearly impossible to come up with a formal definition for it. But none of this is a requirement when using words for spatial objects.
Originally I wanted to use this newly acquired perspective to introduce semantics for words that are originally defined in a nebulous manner at best, such as "thoughts", "demons" and "self". However, this post is already getting quite long and I'm almost certain I completely lost all readers at this point. I might follow up on this, although I'm not sure because I do realize I sound more and more like a crazy person. I'm really not sure if I managed to convey what I wanted to communicate at all.
Don't worry, future posts will definitely not all be like this.
