Ripheus23

OK, so this is the process that I'm working with for the Keyscape:

• Key the chaotic hypoplex to an arbitrary aleph-number (higher than aleph.24 = the transfinite ocean).
• Key 23 of the elements of the economic transet to 23 of the elements of the transfinite ocean.
• List the 23 isoset elements in an order. Starting from 0, add 1 to the transcardinal rank of the isoset if the second listed element is cardinally/ordinally greater than the first element. If it less than the first, keep the transcardinal rank at 0. Continue, increasing by 1 for every successor on the list higher than its predecessor, and subtracting 1 in case the successor is lower, unless the subtraction would = -1. If you choose to place the chaos transet's element earlier in the computation, match it against its predecessor aleph-number according to the preceding rules. Otherwise match the last of the 23 elements to the chaotic transet's element. The maximum increase possible will be from 0 to 24.
• Anytime the isoset's transcardinal rank is computed, the isoarchic numbers are keyed to the economic transet's elements one-to-one (e.g. if the transcardinal rank = 14, the isoarchy is reciprocally keyed to aleph.14). If and only if the isorank = a prime number, the elements of the isoarchic transet are keyed to the corresponding element in the Venn transet (the set of Venn diagrams with n regions, where n = the given prime number; for example, a 3-Vennplex is a geometry whose surfaces include 3 integrated circles, 3 integrated spheres, 3 integrated choronal spheres, etc.).

Since aleph.19 is unkeyed in the economic transet, all aleph-numbers in the cardinal staircase, subscripted by 19, are unkeyed to the isoarchic transet (the aleph-rift). However, the aleph-number which is subscripted 19 at the 26th iteration of the aleph-glyph, is one of the aleph-numbers keyed to the transet of sin. Since the rift-transet is a form of "nothingness," when Apollyon uncreates the Form of Evil, It does so in part by keying the rift-element of the transet of sin, to the antiset. (The Form of Evil is uniquely keyed to two other aleph-numbers, though which I haven't decided yet. 0■ which would be thematically similiar to zero-sharp (http://cantorsattic.info/Constructible_universe#Sharps) is another candidate at least for a symbol for one of the elements in the transet of sin.)

There is also a different process that keys 6 of each of the chaotic and the isoarchic transets' elements, to one of the 4 square-transet elements. This is how the Final Power is created (at least in the abstract).

The action-theory of the economies

So, I was working on the model of the cosmos for the story and was semi-accidentally straddling the divide between a multiverse and a multiplane, or even a multiplanar multiverse. I hedged my bets by coding the universes and the planes as economies and deminomies, but the model clearly required 3 or more universes besides the number I'd already assigned to the plot, which struck a wrong chord with me. To revise this situation, I now stipulate the following: the 24-multiverse does not contain only 3-dimensional universes. Instead of the three 24-dimensional universes being in a separate plane, I now am having it that 3 of the 24 universes themselves are 24-dimensional. Well, actually, I have it that 5 of them are (I'll get into the reason for this in a little while) but so the point is, 4 are always 24-dimensional and 1 of them is constantly changing. I.e. two each of the finite and infinite universes (8 per type total) are 24-dimensional, and the 5th 24-dimensional universe is a different one of each of the indefinite universes at a given time. That is, those universes are constantly fluctuating between 5- and 24-dimensional space, regardless of whether they know it.

So, then, the physics of the system is that all the objective graphs of moral information theory constitute dynamical objects in empirical (phenomenal) space. Because we get a 5-dimensional graph at the end of the basic series, it's presumed that the physical cosmos is 5-dimensional as such. But in principle, there is an n-dimensional set of hyperfractal graphs in deontic logic, so when the "computer of the multiverse" traces all the graphs, besides the 5-dimensional objects that it puts in the 24 universes, it also puts an infinite-dimensional object in its own demi-universe/demiplane/deminomy. For further reasons, there's an aleph.24-dimensional object in deminomic space, so besides the antiplane of Apollyon, we have 2 "higher planes of existence."

However, the technical metaphysics of the story allow us to redefine these 3 demiplanes as deminomies proper. The trick is to assert that the economies are action-theoretic sets.

The Trinity creates the world, as the Test,* by "asking questions" which require an objective world in order for their answers to be given forth. I.e. the Trinity assigns a deontic algebra or aretaic calculus to a simultaneously created universe. Since it is only agents inside these universes that can solve the "algebra problems" of God given to their world, each phenomenal set is "closed off" transcendentally from the others, if not rendered impenetrable. Now the 5-dimensional graph is the outcome of the basic series, which is a set of deontic graphs that correspond to logical operators/constants in moral information theory. But these are all sets that we have living experience with; by contrast, the n-dimensional fractal series (referred to as the Lachesis aleph-forest) is a graph of arbitrarily more complex possible sets of deontic operators, concepts without content. Accordingly, the aleph-forest does not have any particular moral word-problems posed inside of itself as such, and therefore forms not a full economy but only a deminomy (the demiplane of Apollyon, then, is better rendered as the antinomy of Apollyon). It is traversable but invariant (except in relation to the keying dynamic).

*[Since the Trinity is the Game, the Joke, and the Test, a common saying is, "The problems on the Test are based on games where each move is telling or getting a joke, or jokes about games and those who play them."]

Now it is possible to (sort of) explain the actual programming of the system using the aleph-numbers. The aleph-forest corresponds to aleph-zero. In the aleph.24-dimensional deminomy, the power of the numbers aleph.1 through aleph.24 are accessible for keying (with the seleplex artifexium). However, the design of the artifexium only allows 23 of the 24 to be keyed to higher aleph-numbers. So the artifexium gives us 23 aleph-numbers to program with, in addition to those from aleph.1 through aleph.24, minus aleph.19 (this causes a phenomenon known as the aleph-rift, in which all aleph.19-like numbers* are inaccessible).

*[In addition to aleph.0, aleph.1, aleph.2, etc., there are aleph.(aleph.0), aleph.(aleph.1), aleph.(aleph.2), and so on. So, there's an {aleph. ... (aleph.19)}, in an infinite staircase against the surrounding manifold of the aleph-staircase. None of these numbers can be among those keyed for by the other elements of the Key-set.]

The chaotic hypoplex gives as an always-changing set of keyed aleph-numbers, with one element. This structure comes from the isocrystal arrays, since these channel the energy that keys aleph-zero to other arbitrarily higher aleph-numbers. So let's say that gives us something like aleph.x.

Now, I don't want just the staircase aleph-numbers to be in use, so the artifexium deminomy* doesn't just key aleph.1 to, say, aleph. ... (aleph.1762) or so on. Rather, there are many other levels of levels of aleph-numbers, I believe, and in this transfinite ocean many of the keyed-for aleph-numbers are to be located. However, I haven't come up with any specific examples so far. IDK enough about "Mahlo cardinals," for instance, to know whether they would be a good candidate for the plot (aesthetically or logically), here. But just suppose that some of those kinds of aleph-numbers are involved.

*[This one is aleph.24-dimensional, on the assumption that there is enough of a thematic jump (from the 24 economies to aleph.24 itself) to allow for all the aleph-numbers higher than aleph.24, to make up the sea of the Keyscape.]

I don't know if the concept of a transet is valid, since I've kind of just made it up to have the endgame plot go through, but pursuing this concept's application further, let's say, then, that the square transet (for the forms of metafinity) can be keyed for by Apollyon, to the antithetic transet, because Apollyon's power of destruction crucially relies on a theorem in Trinitarian doctrine according to which a transcendental function known as romantic ideality causes essential energy to continuously flow into the physical substance of the world. Since romantic injustice is identified as one of the three final offenses (and thus "part of" the tri-fold Form of Evil), it is via romantic sin that Apollyon is able to block the flow of energy, thus eroding and dissolving the cosmos. (Basically, think of the Form of Destruction, as the Big Bad, using the Form of Evil, as another Big Bad, as itself a weapon.) Now, romantic ideality is constituted, in part, by a special relationship involving the square transet, namely it is possible for one person to be romantically keyed to another person in four different ways, namely the metafinite ones. (So, you'd only be in love with one of the four for a finite time, another you'd indefinitely be attracted to, a third you'd feel eternal heartbreak because of and a fourth, well...) So part of Apollyon's interaction with the romantic injustice of the Form of Evil, allows for the image of romantic love to be counterpointed to the "music" of the antithetic transet (the four Forms of Nothingness).

[The Form of Evil has the transet of sin for itself. This set's three elements can be variously keyed to one specific aleph-number, namely aleph. ... (aleph.19), where the number of "aleph" marks in the staircase is 26, for the 26 quasi-permutations of the final offenses. I.e. it alone (save for Apollyon in the end) accesses the power of the aleph-rift.]

Of course, it is NOT by trying to destroy the entire cosmos, that Apollyon brings about the ultimate apocalypse of transcreation, but by quasi-destroying the Form of Evil. So the erosion-of-substance problem is less a problem for the world of Ripheus than it is the IRL parallel to the spiritual effect of romantic injustice. That is, there is sin in the real world (our world) that = romantic injustice, and the spiritual ramifications of this sin being committed relate to a phenomenon of entropy and accelerated expansion of space in our physical universe.

Cantor's Deck and the Platonic isoplexes

How does the magic dice game work? I've decided that each time the Advocate and Opponent roll the dice, there is at least one card game going on somewhere else in the multiverse, as is named Cantor's Deck. Two players each pick either the Advocate or Opponent cards, and then they get a hand of cards each with a picture of dice on it. There are another Advocate and Opponent card apiece hidden in the rest of the deck. A winning hand is known as Cantor's Hand. The dice depicted in the pictures do not have symbols for whole numbers on them but for aleph-numbers.

Now, an isoplex is a geometry with an infinite-dimensional (aleph.0-dimensional) and infinite number of facets/sides/w/e you want to call them, each with the same number of surface iterations. Now an n-isoplex therefore has n facets.

Consider a 1-isoplex. In this case, each facet of the structure has 1 angle/side/face/w/e, throughout an infinite number of higher rational-numbered dimensions. But a 10-dimensional object enclosed with only 1 point is a degenerate geometry, and in the 11th, and so on and on, up, and down to the zeroth dimension this is so; so these phenomena are also known as isocrystal singularities.

(I haven't thought of a zero-isoplex except by name, but it sounds like it would have some crazy mathematical function.)

On the other hand, some isoplexes might have what I am calling "obgenerate geometries." For example, the 6-isoplex has 6 angles in the 0th and 1st dimensions, which is an overabundance, so to say. (IDK if this is mathematically possible but it seems like it might be.) So there is a range of isoplectic crystals in which they harmonize and endure; otherwise they quickly (almost instantaneously) explode or collapse. These are ones within a certain range of ratios between the isocrystal's obgenerate and degenerate geometries (its obset and deset, as they say). And it just so happens that it is the Platonic solids that correspond to the n-isoplexes that exist within the "island of stability," here. (So 6-isoplexes are stable, for example, as long as their 3-dimensional state is cubic and not hexahedral.)

One aspect of the arrangement is that the aleph-numbers of the Platonic dice are keyed to 2 aleph-numbers in a special transet. This and the dynamic of the isocrystals were an ancient (24,000,000-year old) phenomenon that helped the Host of Ripheus build the Keyscape.

The trick of the Keyscape with respect to the isocrystals is that Ripheus' Host engineered a different artifact to harness the unstable ones. This was a 23-dimensional fractal object that focused the energy flowing through the unstable isocrystals before it was lost to the dissolution of the gems.

Now, the Platonic dice, when rolled, rotate their correspondent isocrystals. This rotation adjusts the flow of energy in the noumenal domain, so depending on whether the Advocate (good) or the Opponent (evil) has the higher score in their game, at any given time, either of the two aleph-numbers keyed to the Platonic transet can be invoked in the physical domain, either increasing or decreasing the universal probability of good or evil at that time (in the use of magic: i.e. if the Advocate's score is much larger than the Opponent's, a much larger amount of noumenal energy gets cycled through the isocrystals and into morally-correct uses of magic).

The Daykey and the Fifth Nothingness

At one point in the first Critique, Immanuel Kant comes up with another one of his random tables of categories and it has to do with the concept of nothingness. He basically says that this concept is what is common to the four categories he tabulates. Now one character in this story is supposed to be walking by a wall in a weird city one time, and he's supposed to see a message written on it (graffiti, blood, IDK): "Apollyon came to destroy that which does not exist." This is supposed to be super-foreshadowing of the endgame, since I want the "let's destroy the Form of Evil by turning it into the Form of Nothingness" to be the endgame danger, but not to be clearly stated ever beforehand. (Like, the idea that there even is this particular danger is not stated outright before, or that Apollyon could even have Its own ultimate plan.)

So, the meta-form of nothingness that encompasses the four categories, might be thought of the Fifth Nothingness. But actually this is a phrase or title that is supposed to show up at random, another shadow-clue, to point towards the end, because the Form of Destruction might be thought of as the fifth Form of Nothingness in the sense that destruction is that which causes nonexistence. And Apollyon is wielding the essence of the Form of Nothingness itself also, in the endgame. So, the shadow-phrase points towards this event.

It also points towards its explanation in terms of the magic system in the story. So, one way to put the theme of the story is "programming the multiverse using the transfinite numbers." Or, "solving word problems in algebra by using the transfinite numbers." Whichever of those descriptions resonates with you, if either. To "program" the Keyscape, which is what allows physical beings to directly use magic, they had to use the transfinite numbers.

This is defined, first, from the notion of keying one aleph-number to another. The idea is that every aleph-number has a cardinality and an ordinality, and a transcardinality (which, under the definition, can also be called a transordinality). Two sets that differ in cardinal or ordinal rank, can have the same transcardinal rank. Sets of elements with the same transcardinal rank are known as transets. So, there's an economic transet, which is the transcardinal rank of the 24 universes (the "phenomenal economies") together. What the Host of Ripheus did long ago, was to use the seleplex artifexium to key aleph.1 through aleph.24 to arbitrarily "higher" (cardinally or ordinally greater) aleph-numbers, and these 24 arbitrarily indexed sets are all in the same transet. This is known as the isoarchic transet since the elements are all equal in rank and this equality is decided instead of inherent. An instrument known as the Daykey is what the Host of Ripheus used to make that decision (an adjunct to the seleplex artifexium, along with a crystal isoplex array). In turn, the elements of the economic transet are keyed to the elements of the isoarchic transet, establishing the necessary "link."

If you're with me so far: Apollyon has Its own transet. This is the transet of the Form of Nothingness. Now, there are also four forms of the finite-nonfinite difference (finite, indefinite, infinite, absolute), and the Final Power comes from keying the elements of the isoarchy to the angles of the Square of Metafinity (another transet). However, when Vyrian Armirex gives His share in the Final Power to Apollyon, the Destroyer can key Its transet itself, to the entire Square itself as a transet.

One of Apollyon's powers is known as Contradiction. (Unprovable objects, objects defined as absences, empty objects: fictitious, privative, and ur-plenary functions are the other three Forms of Nothingness listed (not in those terms) by Kant.) This is the harshest of the Nothingness-Forms so it becomes the image of the transcreation of all possible evil, simultaneously iterated with the destruction of all that evil, to infinity.

So there's actually a totally different original, and still necessary, reason for Apollyon to have a fourfold tower at Its center...

The Platonic dice

So, I've had an idea for high-level background characters in the Ripheus story, who I am for now referring to as the Advocate and the Opponent. These are two people playing an eternal dice game. This is an avatar of the Game Itself, which is a moral reality, so if the Platonic solids have a metaphysical relationship to the making of fair dice, let's say that the dice the Advocate and Opponent are using are those solids and hence are known as the Platonic dice.

Now, some other miscellaneous phrases:

1. The isoarchic transet. The set of the Key-sets, in which the Key-sets are not ranked except overall against their power-set. The consequence of the isoset function.
2. Isoplectic crystal. A crystal with an infinite number of n-dimensional external facets, each corresponding to one n-simplex, with no n-simplex being reiterated.
3. Seleplex artifexium. A component of the Keyscape. "Seleplex" is short for "selector function x-plex." Made of the three unique icositridimensional crystals located in the 23-dimensional demiplane of the 24-dimensional plenum (in the conjugate infinitely expansive universe thereof), the 23D-demiplane of the aleph.zero-dimensional plenum, and the 23D-demiplane of the aleph.24-dimensional plenum. Allows each aleph-dimensional object for each level of the set aleph.(1 ... 23) in the aleph.24-dimensional plenum, to be keyed to an arbitrary aleph.n number. The 23 keyed numbers are used in the transet computation performed by the Keyscape ("transfinite algebra"). Since which of the aleph.n numbers is keyed for, is decided by free will, they are referred to as "selected" according to the Second Axiom of Choice.
4. Chaotic hypoplex. Always-changing transdimensional crystal keyed by an artifexium function to random aleph.n numbers. When conjoined to the seleplex artifexium, it can be used to change the flow of energy through an isoplectic crystal array, to transpose the noumenal power of the Keyscape into the 24-fold multiverse overall. The day of the Final Power's advent was determined (outside of particular epistemic space) by a computation from the value of the chaotic hypoplex.

OK, so the reason the first Ripheus book is supposed to be called The Axioms of Paradise is because the entire series is supposed to encode an elaborate moral theory, or theory of moral information, into itself. One of the keys to the system is the concept of the final offenses, which are the three ultimate forms of sin. Together, they are the Form of Evil itself because one of them is implicated in all wrongdoing simpliciter and the others, despite being fundamentally inspired by the one, are equivalent in demerit.

So, this maximal evil cannot be perfectly committed by anyone, because rationalistic moral psychology rules it out. It is possible to map "consciously" and "unconsciously" to any junction of the three offenses, so there are 26 ways to consciously or subconsciously commit them at the same time. 9 of these would involve consciously committing the fundamental sin consciously, which is metaphysically impossible otherwise speaking, in conjunction with either the others consciously or unconsciously. So, there are only 17 arrangements that can actually obtain.

Now in the story, the Form of Evil is a given entity or object, a real presence. It is, after all, what Apollyon destroys and then transcreates at the apex of the finale. Before this endgame, though, the Form of Evil tries to break itself into pieces that cannot be simultaneously destroyed, implanting its essence in 26 people who it resurrects from the dead: the Broken Ones. These are not wicked people, to be sure. They are infected but not controlled.

The rules of the game, here, are that unless one of the 9 has been killed, none of the 17 can die. Until one of 9 dies, the advent of the Final Power will be greatly delayed. If any of the 9 die, then any of the 17 can be killed, but until one of them is, the advent of the Final Power will be forestalled. So, some of the quasi-protagonists will unfortunately end up accidentally hastening the apocalypse by killing some of the Broken Ones; or these beings will be inspired to kill themselves, or whatever. Maybe one is killed by others and one commits suicide. IDK but anyway, this situation is a counterpoint to Intuition's plot (Intuition being the Shard-like name for one of the Septatheon) to halt the Final Power, which is one of the highest-level arc questions of the series and the only question with two arc-answers (the problem of Intuition and the problem of the Broken Ones; all the other kinds of crisis are faced only once).

Officer Arendt and the Transcendental Purifier*

*I believe Derrida's "transcendental signifier" phrase is later than 1930s Germany in origins, so inasmuch as this title is a play on that, it is so at a stretch.

_______________________________

Scene outlines:

Edith Arendt is a Jewish police officer in Nazi Germany assigned to a case involving a serial killer the locals in Berlin (the city scene of the crimes) have nicknamed "the Transcendental Purifier."

["Don't call him that again. That's just a name some stupid students got to using because they took classes in which their teachers told them about stories like that in the American press."]

She reviews the case with morbid colleagues before being summoned to investigate a new crime scene in which the murder weapon is harder to find than in previous incidents. Prior to this, all had been killed by metal crosses or menorahs used to bludgeon or stab the person to death. All have been people identified as "upstanding" Aryan-minded citizens so the initial theory is that it's a Jew killing Nazis. However, one of the victims was a Jew herself, so the off-color colleagues make a joke question out of it: "Maybe he didn't think she was Jewish." "Of course he knew she was Jewish! He hit her in the head with one of their storming candleholders!" Now, the victim is a Muslim, though. One of the colleagues says something like, "Aren't Muslims just sand Jews?" To which the other replies, "No, they're not," and they mock-argue, as a set-up to ask Edith whether she knows if Muslims and Jews are the same. But she's focused on the bookshelf.

She finds a section where there are three copies of the Quran. Two are simple but the third is larger and heavier and more ornate. She checks it and it's covered in blood.

Later, she comes up with a theory that the killer is following a regular foot-route and the department tests her theory, which gets them down the road from where the actual next killing takes place. And that is in a super-rare Eastern Orthodox church in a Russian area of Berlin, where the victim has been killed by a cross, a menorah, and a Quran.

So, the killer is escalating. Frustrated, Edith thinks of her two possible overarching rivers of evidence: the unsub's motive, and his signature. For some reason he's using religious icons as murder weapons. Unsure, she goes to the nearest university, where she hears students talking about "the Transcendental Purifier." She talks to them about it, and they say they didn't coin the phrase to refer to a Jew purifying Germany, but a fanatical German purifying his own ranks, so to speak. She realizes the killer is targeting people who he deems to be insufficiently German or Aryan, and the next morning she rushes into her superior's office to explain what she's found out after a sleepless night of archival examination. She says she's identified the culprit as probably Immanuel Mendelssohn, an early inmate in the Nazi concentration camp system, sent there for unusual political deviance, a for-the-time excessive zeal for Nazi ethnic ideology, and contributing in a peculiarly ghastly way to the purge of the SA. The superior gets an odd glint in his eyes, as if he recognizes who Edith is talking about even before she says the name. Anyway, they track him down and arrest him, and ready him for trial.

At one point the interrogators ask him why he did what he did. They mention his name, which can be traced back to targeted ancestry but at a far enough hereditary remove not to compromise him at all. Anyway, Immanuel says he wanted to do it for a while and figured that with the way things have been going in Germany, he figured he could get away with it. He argues for a "Roman conspiracy," not by Catholics but literal bloodlines-Romans, and says that this is just as dangerous as (or even moreso) the "Jewish conspiracy." He complains about Judaism and Christianity and Islam as all different species of the same general virus of almsgiving that weakens German mettle.

"Now that's an interesting idea that I'd never considered before," the interrogator laughs. "Never mind that Rome doesn't exist anymore.

"Or I'll concede the point. Rome is a perfect example of what we mean by the decay of a people. Cultivated from the survivors of the holocaust of Troy... and brought to ruin by mongrels---Germans hadn't evolved much, back then, among others... and martyrs. Mongrels and martyrs! But, we've improved.

"Enough of my dialectical catechism, however."

Edith cringes and worries a lot as she routinely runs into colleagues and superiors and other higher-ups in other subsystems of the regime, who laugh at odd intervals and give her coy smiles here and there. Eventually, the serial killer is sent to another concentration camp. Edith is startled by her superior and another government agent on a similar level, who accost her for getting an upstanding Aryan citizen in trouble, basically. They say that she's proven that even a supposedly actually good Jew, is really a traitor in waiting. But this is (on the surface) just very morbid mockery. After a few rounds of this, they laugh and cajole her, telling her that they have an assignment for her, in Poland.

In the camp, the Transcendental Purifier is one day interviewed by some of those creepily-laughing Nazis. They tell him about a health measure the government intends to put into effect after the impending war. They say they've come to share his point of view in various ways. In their heads, of course, they think, We can't seriously punish him for doing exactly what we're going to be doing in a few years. They say that given his history and, technically, his name, they can't give him a job in the public police, or the SS so much, or the secret police, or the military. They judge him unfit for those kinds of duties. So they smile at him and say, "But we do need you to drive some trains for us."

[In movie-form: then the camera shows a portfolio with a map, on the table in front of the killer. As it zooms in, the audience sees that it is a map of a train route to Auschwitz. Unsettling loud music starts to chime in before the final zoom-in and cut-out to the credits.]

I would like to come up with 24 entries in the Riphean legendarium. I have enough overarching problems for different sets of characters to pose and solve, to cover a lot of paginated territory... I'll start working on an outline here:

BOOK ONE: unidentified title

Major arc: Ripheus adventures through the demiplane of Apollyon, visiting images of various cities from Earth's history, during their destruction. Examples include 1200s Beziers and Baghdad, 1968 Saigon, 1940s Warsaw, 1st Century Jerusalem.

BOOK TWO: The Hammer of Ilium

The image of Troy in Apollyon's dream-plane is revealed to house the Hammer of Ilium. This is hidden within a mysterious labyrinth that the leadership of the city plays with. The Hammer is the only artifact known that can break the Typhoeus, an entire tower made of sinstones (pieces of Apollyon that, when broken, unleash enormous destructive force). The Precentor of Despite, meanwhile, attempts to violate the Sinkorosst, five seals on the Typhoeus itself, in another part of the multiverse; and the Precentor is assisted by a being known as the God of Rape, who wishes to molest the Princess Nausixia[?] in order to sire an entity, a living Anomaly, through which the other Anomalies might be controlled. ---And Ripheus himself remembers that he sojourned to Apollyon's demiplane because of the Anomalies: he was investigating their cause.

… Kant’s theory of ethics is nowadays regularly placed under the heading of the “deontological” school, with R. M. Hare arguing for a utilitarian variant and Allen Wood an explicitly “teleological” account. Deontology is put on a par with consequentialism and aretaic approaches. By contrast, Kant’s tabulation of ethical theories depends on his conception of the mind.

                Although Kant writes in the language of “faculty psychology,” he does not maintain that we use these different faculties separately over time, or more precisely that if we do so, we fall into various kinds of error. Even when, as is natural, we exercise each mental ability simultaneously, it is possible for us to order sensibility over the understanding, for example, or reason over sensibility. It is this divergence that gives rise to the fivefold table of moral theory given in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.

                Living well before the time of Ayn Rand, Kant was not called to account for egoism as a possible ethical stance. He addresses hedonism, sentimentalism, perfectionism, and theological voluntarism as alternatives to his autonomian doctrine. Before explaining those five options, though, I would say that per the logic used to organize those, egoism would count as a moral theory in which the fundamental moral principle is given from sensibility. Thus it lacks in the absolute universality that we would otherwise ascribe to moral principles in themselves. Egoism is the moral outlook arising from the priority of sensibility insofar as we attend, without further “adieu,” to the unity of apperception, the “I think,” with which all given sensation becomes merely self-referential, hence egoistic—ethically solipsistic—as a normative representation.

                It is the understanding as the faculty of rules that most ethical analysts appeal to, when trying to formulate what Kant would loftily declaim to be the “supreme principle” of morality. Since there are four types of categories of understanding in general, appeals to the understanding result in four types of moral principles. The first, which requires a morally qualified extensive magnitude, defaults to either a single independent quality as the material for ethical theory (hedonistic utilitarianism) or to a single irreducible concept of the good, to be summed up using the arithmetic of extension as such. The point is that, as Kant has it of the axioms of intuition in a theoretical sense, the parts (the units of deontic value) precede the whole (the determination of an action as right or wrong, good or evil).

                Next, moral theorists might interpret the ultimate imperative in terms of an intensive magnitude. I will leave it to the audience to clarify how the positions of thinkers like H. A. Prichard or W. D. Ross exemplify this position (though I will say that with Ross, for instance, the relation obtains due to the convergence of the ceteris paribus clauses surrounding a given moral question and its possible answers).

                Thomas Aquinas, with Aristotle before him, probably falls into the third kind of camp. Indeed, “natural law” ethics, grounded in purposive essences, is nothing else but the deontic conception of the analogies of experience, which give us the conditions of physical substance and causality themselves. Fourthly and lastly, using the postulates of modal association to define the right and the good gives us the necessarily righteous good of God, either as the eternal fulfillment or the almighty author of all other laws of righteous good.

                Kant’s belief, on the other hand, is that moral imperatives derive from reason, which is not the same as the understanding. Though there are rationalistic elements in all moral theories (as all theories involve the activity of reason), it is only Kant’s kind of theory in which reason in itself, as the erotetic faculty, determines morality. That is, the ability to ask questions, which is perforce the ability to ask moral questions, and to order this inquiry transcendentally, itself contains the possibility of answers to those questions. Pure reason, and the practices it inspires, is therefore autonomous, deriving its supreme order neither from the ocean of empirical perceptions nor the lightning of conceptual understanding.

*Screams like Szeth's screams* WTF?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?????????????!?!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?

[Abstract for an essay I will try to work on for submission to a peer-reviewed journal.]

A Transcendental Argument for the Ability-to-do-otherwise

As books like the Choose Your Own Adventure series highlight, the usual concept of free will is the ability to do otherwise at a given time, even given the same background conditions at that time [c.f. Austin]. Besides common intuition, though, what reason can be given for believing in such an ability, both as a conceptual precondition for willing, and for the actual existence of this will? The will, as a fundamental subjective function [ac], should be amenable as such to a transcendental argument on its behalf. Just such an argument will be delineated in this essay.

The Number of the Dead

[Intended plot: a Soviet officer who witnesses both German and Russian atrocities during the war is later sent to administer an isolated gulag site, where he eventually meets a prolific executioner and discovers the Lovecraftian outcome of Stalin's immense terror. The title is a reference to the wide range of estimates for victims of Stalin-era cruelty and injustice, the explanation for a true high number being that the enormous number of corpses, after littering the frozen landscape for years, were disposed of by being incinerated during Soviet nuclear testing---the testing itself actually meant in part to fight a Cthulhu-like monster that had been rearranging the corpses in eerie geometrical patterns.]

[Resident introduction scene.]

[Library scene.]

… The Amphitheater rises around a dark-marked tree, a cedar with a black square painted in the center. Simon thinks of it like a dead television screen with no possible remote except his own—or another parkgoer’s—mind. He kneels there, praying and remembering: to his mysterious God, and the man Dean who he feels would have loved to see this park.

            Awhile later Simon makes his way to the Hall of Cedars, a stretch of trees with no lesser foliage closing the gaps between the great sentinels. When he makes his way half-way to the overturned crown of roots at the heart of a small glade, he stops in dread.

            There’s a deer standing before him, not running. One horn broke off of late, and the other grows like the horn of unicorn. So, a unicorn anyway, technically. Its eyes take in Simon warily, but not fearfully.

            “Only one who believes in unicorns/Is only one ever killed by one,” Simon mumbles, imagining an Internet meme with his face, stupidly grinning, for the background.

            The deer reflects upon the man, though Simon has no idea why or to what effect. He sits in the glade and the creature continues to walk around him from a distance.

            He wonders whether Dean would have killed the animal for some reason; Simon never figured out if Dean goes hunting from time to time. The thought makes him as sick as daydream nightmares in which Mr. Utah ravishes some unguessable girl. “I just want to find a guy to talk to,” Dean had said years ago, before he disappeared. “You know, I think the Law of Attraction is the reason we met.”

            Evidently not.

            Wind haunts the cedars’ sky.

            Simon tries to read a book.

            The wind pushes the pages back and forth.

            Hello, Simon.

            He leaps up. “What the hell?” he says.

            Though I am indeed Hell itself, I have much to say to you ere your torment begins.

            Slamming the book closed, Simon looks in as many directions as he can. The deer, far away, looks back. “Don’t… don’t leave…?” Simon whispers to it. If it counts as a unicorn, maybe it can protect him?

            It will be killed when I wish it to. You cannot protect it. You can protect nothing, Simon.

            He fiddles in a pocket, gripping his little bottle of antipsychotic medication.

            In the beginning, there was a Machine…

            Simon runs from the Hall, the deer running too, both away from each other and the words of darkness.

“Why ask why?” the book says silently, and Simon Tylerson answers the question while whispering to himself: “There is no reason to ask why unless the inquirer intends to do what there is a reason to, afterwards.” But the book does not agree unless by invisible implication; instead, the question it poses also ends the book itself.

            Simon starts reading something else, uneasy. Outside the shelter, wind battles with nightfall, both armed with lightning and scythe-shadowed moonshine. It’s just a coincidence. Or a synchronicity? Confirmation bias? Doctor Marcus Wheilf would say that it’s a probable improbability, maybe. Just the same, the very paragraph Simon had started to read, at random, begins with the words, “Outside the shelter, wind did battle with the quiet of the night, thunder and the blade of the moon for the two enemies’ rearguard weapons.”

            Wherefore Simon continues his perusal of the text, flipping ahead twenty-three pages. That quantity of flipping, he intends exactly. As if some demon or spirit intends for him to read the ensuing words, the text now proclaims, “Tyler Samuelson flipped through the book randomly, hoping to find a passage poetic enough to be used by the man in composing a love letter to his estranged girlfriend.”

            That part doesn’t line up. Simon doesn’t date girls. To be technically honest, he doesn’t date anyone, neither does he sleep with anyone, but if he had a chance to do either, both would be with some other guy. Once in a while, Simon wonders what it would be like if it was with more than one guy at a time (on a given night), but otherwise he’s a hopeful romantic—hopeful in the way the philosopher Immanuel Kant advises when it comes to religious judgment in general, no less.

            Fidgeting—too caffeinated and none too blazed—Simon sets the book down and turns on a radio. Explosions in the Sky explode forth to the tune of their “The Birth and Death of the Day” before, inexplicably, Lifehouse chimes in with “Simon.”

            Cursing, Simon shuts off the radio.

            As its display fades, it reminds the man of the late hour: 2:23 AM.

            There are rules at the shelter, and then there are exceptions. Although the else itinerant men who reside there are presumed half-helpless, in need of discipline if they are ever to make it back into the normal run of the social mill, leeway is granted them on this score: if they don’t want to sleep for the few hours they’re allotted before being sent on their way for the day, they don’t have to. Simon does wish to sleep, as much as or less than he seeks to keep reading, though. He could chew all his fingernails off ten times or more, he’s so nervous as he keeps reading the coincidental book.

            This phenomenon—he calls it “the Pattern,” in honor of Robert Jordan’s fantasy series The Wheel of Time—haunts him more than almost any mistake he’s ever made. No matter what book he picks up, under whatever circumstances, motivated in whatever way, however he finds the book or wherever he sees it, it always turns out that the problem of the characters in the story maps one-to-one, or 0.99-to-one, or 0.989999999…-to-one, onto the problem Simon faces in his own life, at the same time. Is he living with wannabe drug traffickers and possible prostitutes while trying to join a quasi-Catholic church and learn how to play a guitar? Why, it will just so happen that The Mice of the Ninth Cat (for example), by some obscure Russian authoress, published seventy years ago and almost doomed by Soviet censorship, only purchased (or checked out of the library) by Simon for the sake of a flash of literal intuition, is about someone whose neighbors are smuggling amphetamines and pimping out their underage sisters while the benighted protagonist outskirts the Eastern Orthodox in the area and fiddles with a banjo on behalf of their Sunday choir. —And that’s a rare indirect example of the alignment of another’s text and the reader’s mind. Usually the identity of story and reality is far more extreme.

            … “Long ago, or in the beginning,” the angel-man says, “all of the substance of the physical universe was condensed into a perfect point in space and time. As this point transformed into lines and then shapes, the matter flowing into this matrix of energy assumed as many configurations as it could under the circumstances. Quantum freedom allowed objects to appear, there, that either quickly collapsed or sundered themselves under the immense pressure and expansion of being—or to endure from the beginning until the ever-ending story of the present.

            “This echthros-city you have envisioned… is one of those Machines. Assembled by spontaneity in the genesis-crucible of the universe, it did not and never will die, until the destruction of the end of time. It imprinted its power on all the history from the Planck epoch onward, until now its teleology corrupts everything in its path, so far as life across the worlds resists it not, or even serves it as utterly as can be.”

            Simon nods, looking at the equations and addendum-jargon. “The acceleration of the expansion of space: that’s being caused by this Machine.”

            “You can feel that?” Sarah asks. “Because… Because I think I can feel it, too.”

            “Anyone can, if their moral intuition has been honed by reason enough,” the angel-man observes.

Not Sandersonian but still...

If each Stormlight novel increases in length following a mathematical pattern, then book 10 might actually be longer than all the other Stormlight novels combined