Psychic Products

Starting from our minimal certainty — the perception of sth changing — we can approach conscious perception not as a product of an independent matter, but of that same unique substance which we have seen generating space, time, and physical laws.

If everything that exists proceeds from one and the same substance — here called CELA — then there can be no subject truly separate from the object, nor any “perceiver” external to reality. What we call consciousness is not a distinct entity, but a particular mode of organization of that same substance. In other words, consciousness is not added onto the universe: it is an emergent property of it, arising from the progressive deployment of CELA along determined axes of complexification.

By applying to the perceptual domain the same method used for physical products, one may suppose that perception also emerges through a progressive complexification along certain axes. The following table, though schematic, offers an initial sketch of this progression: to each new perceptual axis corresponds the birth of an additional structure of discernment.

Thus understood, conscious perception is a dynamic construction. It results from a series of differential operations, each grounded in the recognition of a perceptible difference and organized along a specific axis. These discernments structure both our experience of the external world and that of the internal world: they constitute the mechanisms by which CELA, through us, distinguishes itself, explores itself, and recognizes itself.

The D¹–D⁸ progression is ontological in nature, not merely descriptive or functional. It does not represent an operation of the human mind, but the structure of the Real in act. Human cognition merely reflects its functioning, because it is one local expression of it. In other words, ontology generates cognition, and not the reverse.

Consciousness (D⁵) is not “produced” in a causal sense, but emerges from the first complete reflexive relation of the field of CELA to itself. D⁵ designates the ontological threshold at which perception becomes simultaneously perceived and perceiving — the minimal form of consciousness. It is therefore not an external causality, but a necessary self-configuration of the system when it reaches complete reflexivity.

From this structure, it follows that perception necessarily implies existence, but that the reverse is not true. The perception of perceiving — formulated as (sth feels sth) — is made up of less complex elements than the perception of existing — (being sth). By regrouping the first two elements ((sth feels) sth), one shows that perceiving implies being; but to establish the reverse, one would have to decompose being sth, which may designate either an object ((feels sth) sth) or a subject ((sth feels) sth). Thus, depending on how one combines and recombines the elements of one and the same perception, one passes from one truth to another, without these truths being immediately reducible to one another. The following table illustrates this combinatorial logic.

By manipulating the basic elements of what is perceived (sth, feels, being), one recovers the main notions of the ontological universe of discourse — existence, consciousness, perceiving agency, and so on. This same method can be applied to other domains of experience: for example, to the adjective “intense” in the thermal field. There one again finds structural correspondences between physical, perceptual, and linguistic notions.

This table highlights these correspondences in the thermal field of discourse. It illustrates how one and the same schema of complexification may manifest across different orders: the physical (amplitude, pressure, energy…), the psychic (intensity, sensation, relation…), and the linguistic (intense, hot, heating…). These correspondences do not arise from a simple analogy between language and world, but from an ontogenetic homology: language, in its very structure, proceeds from the same movement of self-differentiation as the Real it expresses. In other words, language does not imitate reality — it emerges from it, as a reflexive form of its internal organization.

This convergence suggests that the Real has a double psychophysical nature, in which the mental and the material are only two expressions of one and the same fabric of differentiation. But is all terminology really conditioned by these eight levels? I could offer other examples (D2: just ⟶ the just or judge ⟶ to judge ⟶ judgeable ⟶ justice ⟶ judicial ⟶ judiciously), but the best way I know to show it still lies in the use of a neologism. For example:

Semantic gradient of “bob” (D2–D8)

D2 — bob (sensation)
Immediate quality: direct qualifier expressing a sensible property or a perceived state.
Example: a bob atmosphere.
D3 — Bob (object/subject configuration)
Individual entity: a particular instance embodying the quality “bob.”
Example: that Bob manifests the essence of bob.
D4 — to bob (transition)
Action / process: the act of manifesting bob, of producing or operating according to that quality.
Example: he bobs as soon as he expresses himself.
D5 — bobbing (relation)
Ongoing process: that which manifests the quality in a dynamic and interactive way.
Example: a bobbing presence.
D6 — bobism (principle)
Operative principle: structuring archetype at the origin of bobic manifestations.
Example: bobism is not an ideology, but the internal law of bob.
D7 — bober (system)
Organization of the principle: operating system or structuring agent of the bobic principle.
Example: the bober realizes and systematizes bobism.
D8 — bobly (context)
Field of expression: ontological context or global mode in which bob is expressed.
Example: to act bobly = to act within the field of bob.

One must not think that this classification applies only to European languages. The D1 → D8 schema does not rest on the existence of a chain of lexical derivations in a given language, but on a conceptual principle: each “dimension” of perception adds a level of structuration — intensity, relation, system, context, and so on. In French or English, morphology makes these stages visible through derivations (just → justice → judicial → judiciously). But in isolating or agglutinative languages, these same stages may be expressed through distinct words or syntactic constructions, without the conceptual logic changing. Thus, the linguistic correspondences proposed here do not have the value of a universal law: they serve as heuristic illustrations of the internal coherence of the model.

For example, in Chinese or Japanese, the progression exists as well, but it is often realized through lexical composition or particles and adverbs rather than suffixation. What varies is the grammatical support, not the logic of passage from one dimensional axis to another.

This model does not assert an a priori truth: it proposes a coherence to be tested. Let it be studied — if the comparative analysis of languages were to show that this hierarchy does not exist, one would have to conclude that the model describes not the structure of the Real, but only the structure of our thought of the Real. Its linguistic falsifiability makes it an instrument of verification, not of belief: the more natural languages confirm this progression without exception, the more the axial hypothesis is strengthened.

That said, the eighth level has a particular importance for problem resolution. For example: you would like to be warmer? Here are the solutions:

The perceptual combinations illustrated here are not recipes, but manifestations of one and the same organizational structure. Psychophysics thus shows how CELA, in deploying itself, simultaneously produces the form of our experience and the internal logic of the world.

Psychic Products

Semantic gradient of “bob” (D2–D8)

Further reading