Jump to content

Motivation, Execution, Consequence: A Realmatic Theory


Kurkistan

Recommended Posts

We aren't sure that spren are Spiritual beings, actually. Also, the only "first hand" account we have from a spren was from Syl, an honorspren, specifically one capable of forming a Nahal bond and becoming sentient. Not exactly the most representative sample.

Spren needn't have true memory or decision making, then, more likely simply reacting to stimuli like automatons

She had been bonded to a KR in the old days, when the Bond broke, she lost sentience to the low level of normal spren. She says that before the Bond she was only able to remember things for some minutes. So there was something left. Which brings me to the conclusion that she has a cognitive aspect on her own.

I've seen a few people note that she had some memory for several minutes when she had no bond. I can't confirm it without the book.

I agree that they react to stimuli like automatons, and suspect that instinct is how they do that.

I also need to put some thought into the nature of spren (so Hemalurgy, spren, what else is on the agenda?), but my intuition at first blush is that they may be a visible of Realmatic interactions, made tangible by the ludicrous amount of Spiritual energy being tossed about by highstorms (recall that there are no spren in Shinovar). Still needs a more in-depth analysis by someone who's read the book and recent theories more closely, though.

I don't see why we should believe that Breaths have any capability to store this kind of information (memory, identity, etc.). They don't bring it over and we know that Breaths are not full souls, so why ought they to have the capacity to store an entire personality?

Breaths, which go to the afterlife, can remember visions. In the quote that shook your mind about nightbringer, breaths could remember and interpret a command, carrying it out to their best ability.

How do we know breaths aren't full souls?

I am not saying they have the capacity to store an entire personality, I am simply stating what we know about them. With Brandon Sanderson's quote say, he suggested that they do store some of the essence of a criminal, it's just not brought along for some reason.

Perhaps. But still, "90% sentient."

It may well not take much soul to be 90% sentient.

Why bother wiping some aspects off of a Breath (and still denying them to its original owner) when you can just exclude those aspects in the first place? It's like selling a 13-piece set of plates, but then saying "oh, you were only supposed to get 12" and then smashing one of them.

The people in the cosmere are all humans, so unless he changes the nature of humans they should all have basically the same nature.

It's like selling a person to someone and then realizing they aren't supposed to have arms and then cutting off their arms rather than only giving them a torso, head, and legs. I am assuming he changes his magic systems rather than his humans.

I agree that it's circumstantial evidence, but that doesn't mean we should simply ignore it, especially when there's little reason to think that anything else is the case.

Also, there's simply no need for it to work that way, and Awakeners seem fine and dandy going between Breath-states at a fairly quick pace, never having problems when the Breaths they get back are "emotionally scrubbed."

The awakeners have oodles of breaths mostly so any weaknesses in the breaths would be less because they have so many. In the sequel the author said he wants to go back to basics with less soul usage so they can be more skillful. Then these issues with souls may become more prominent.

Anyway, we really don't have enough evidence to say exactly what would happen. It's worth looking out for any evidence confirming or denying this theory though with the emperor's soul.

How does it explain Breaths animating things?

Breaths have instinct to carry out orders and memory to remember orders.

Edited by Nepene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

She had been bonded to a KR in the old days, when the Bond broke, she lost sentience to the low level of normal spren. She says that before the Bond she was only able to remember things for some minutes. So there was something left. Which brings me to the conclusion that she has a cognitive aspect on her own.

I've seen a few people note that she had some memory for several minutes when she had no bond. I can't confirm it without the book.

I agree that they react to stimuli like automatons, and suspect that instinct is how they do that.

Once again, Syl is an exceptionally abnormal example. The vast majority of spren are not capable of forming Nahel (misspelled it before) bonds.

If the non-bonded version of Syl does retain memory, and if that is normal for all spren (a big if there), then I'm fine with spren having exceptionally limited Cognitive aspects. That doesn't mean that they are purely Spiritual beings who have Spiritual memory.

Breaths, which go to the afterlife, can remember visions. In the quote that shook your mind about nightbringer, breaths could remember and interpret a command, carrying it out to their best ability.

How do we know breaths aren't full souls?

I am not saying they have the capacity to store an entire personality, I am simply stating what we know about them. With Brandon Sanderson's quote say, he suggested that they do store some of the essence of a criminal, it's just not brought along for some reason.

Dead people chatting with Endowment and Returning isn't necessarily just Breaths, as I have already said. It could be hijacking the Cognitive aspect, or working with a people's entire souls, including but not limited to their Breaths.

I fear to give this to you, since it can be interpreted several ways, but I just found this quote from Brandon:

"Ghero6 ()

In Vahr's case, did collecting Breath from other rebel-minded people strengthen his determination and resolve?

Brandon Sanderson ()

It would have had an influence on him, but you would need the numbers of Breaths that he had for any effect to manifest. It's basically a non-issue in the current book, but it could be an issue in some of the things that will happen in the next book."

Brandon could be pulling a sneaky sneaky there with Determination as an attribute (ala Feruchemy), or some ludicrously minute amount of Identity could leak through.

Another piece of grist for your evil mill:

"Zas678 [our very own]

Can a Drab Return?

Brandon Sanderson

A Drab can not Return as the Returned are known, and there are things about the Drab that are not completely understood. But a Drab without a Breath, it’s going to be very hard. Drabs do not Return. Good question, by the way. No one has ever asked me that before."

Reasonably, it could be that, since Breaths are linked to Endowment, they are how Endowment keeps an eye on and reels in possible Return-ers. Or you could take this and run with it. Either way.

We know that Breaths aren't full souls because Brandon has said that they aren't, because they lack identity, and because Drabs aren't dead husks.

I already spoke to the "quote that shook [my] mind." To reiterate, it's either not exactly what Brandon meant, since he was focusing on something else, or my theory is simply dead in the water because Breaths figuring things out all on their lonesome is impossibly far beyond the bounds of what they ought ever be able to accomplish under my theory, for the reasons that we've spent a score of posts discussing.

If Breaths don't "bring along" something, then they don't store it. It's as simple as that. This is not a matter of debate, really. Breaths are part of people's souls, as Brandon himself has said. He did not, in any way, shape or form, suggest that Breaths store "some essence of a criminal" whenever they are in the "proper" person yet, for some reason, do not store this essence when they are anywhere else.

It may well not take much soul to be 90% sentient.

Then, once again, why aren't Drabs dumber?

The people in the cosmere are all humans, so unless he changes the nature of humans they should all have basically the same nature.

It's like selling a person to someone and then realizing they aren't supposed to have arms and then cutting off their arms rather than only giving them a torso, head, and legs. I am assuming he changes his magic systems rather than his humans.

I think we're both suffering from "incomprehensible analogy syndrome" here.

What I meant was that, since giving up a Breath means the Breath-giver loses whatever Endowment wipes off of it, and the Breath-receiver doesn't gain anything from the now-wiped attribute, why should Breaths ever have these always-destroyed attributes, especially if it only ever harms the Breath-giver?

What did you mean?

The awakeners have oodles of breaths mostly so any weaknesses in the breaths would be less because they have so many. In the sequel the author said he wants to go back to basics with less soul usage so they can be more skillful. Then these issues with souls may become more prominent.

Anyway, we really don't have enough evidence to say exactly what would happen. It's worth looking out for any evidence confirming or denying this theory though with the emperor's soul.

Even after her Les Mis experience, during the final sequence, if I recall correctly, Vivienne basically goes from flush to drab to flush to drab to semi-flush without reporting any ill-effects.

Yes yes, we can't be sure. But we have no reason in-text to think that this "emotional memory" exists, and a lot of places where it could have been demonstrated but wasn't.

Breaths have instinct to carry out orders and memory to remember orders.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Still, I don't think so. Instinct doesn't really account for the ability to carry out complex commands; and remember that I'm still trying to obviate the need for Breaths to do Cognitive-y things, so I would prefer not expanding the theory to include that, at least at this point.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once again, Syl is an exceptionally abnormal example. The vast majority of spren are not capable of forming Nahel (misspelled it before) bonds.

If the non-bonded version of Syl does retain memory, and that is normal for all spren (a big if there), then I'm fine with spren having exceptionally limited Cognitive aspects. That doesn't mean that they are purely Spiritual beings who have Spiritual memory.

Retaining long term memory is likely a cognitive aspect. I was more talking about some sort of less effective spiritual memory. I don't think we have any major disagreements here, if you agree spiritual memory is possible.

Dead people chatting with Endowment and Returning isn't necessarily just Breaths, as I have already said. It could be hijacking the Cognitive aspect, or working with a people's entire souls, including but not limited to their Breaths.

I fear to give this to you, since it can be interpreted several ways, but I just found this quote from Brandon:

"Ghero6 ()

In Vahr's case, did collecting Breath from other rebel-minded people strengthen his determination and resolve?

Brandon Sanderson ()

It would have had an influence on him, but you would need the numbers of Breaths that he had for any effect to manifest. It's basically a non-issue in the current book, but it could be an issue in some of the things that will happen in the next book."

Brandon could be pulling a sneaky sneaky there with Determination as an attribute (ala Feruchemy), or some ludicrously minute amount of Identity could leak through.

It's clear (thanks to you hard work on the internet) he is saying identity slips through and it will be a major issue in the next book. Small, but important. Since we want to make predictions about the next book understanding what he means is very important.

Another piece of grist for your evil mill:

"Zas678 [our very own]

Can a Drab Return?

Brandon Sanderson

A Drab can not Return as the Returned are known, and there are things about the Drab that are not completely understood. But a Drab without a Breath, it’s going to be very hard. Drabs do not Return. Good question, by the way. No one has ever asked me that before."

Reasonably, it could be that, since Breaths are linked to Endowment, they are how Endowment keeps an eye on and reels in possible Return-ers. Or you could take this and run with it. Either way.

We know that Breaths aren't full souls because Brandon has said that they aren't, because they lack identity, and because Drabs aren't dead husks.

Ah, ok. I guess Endowment is similar to Hemalurgy, if less agonizing, ripping a fragment of a person's soul away, and that bit has divine magic embedded in it.

I already spoke to the "quote that shook [my] mind." To reiterate, it's either not exactly what Brandon meant, since he was focusing on something else, or my theory is simply dead in the water because Breaths figuring things out all on their lonesome is impossibly far beyond the bounds of what they ought ever be able to accomplish under my theory, for the reasons that we've spent a score of posts discussing.

Since your theory is based on assuming he didn't mean what he said, it doesn't have much predictive power. Personally I will just adapt your theory with a slight tweak.

If Breaths don't "bring along" something, then they don't store it. It's as simple as that. This is not a matter of debate, really. Breaths are part of people's souls, as Brandon himself has said. He did not, in any way, shape or form, suggest that Breaths store "some essence of a criminal" whenever they are in the "proper" person yet, for some reason, do not store this essence when they are anywhere else.

You did just quote Brandon saying that some part of the breath crosses over and it'll be important in the next book. And he has said that not much crosses, implying some does.

Then, once again, why aren't Drabs dumber?

Why should drabs be dumb? I am assuming all the cognitive aspect is retained.

What I meant was that, since giving up a Breath means the Breath-giver loses whatever Endowment wipes off of it, and the Breath-receiver doesn't gain anything from the now-wiped attribute, why should Breaths ever have these always-destroyed attributes, especially if it only ever harms the Breath-giver?

I was unaware that breaths were a part of the soul, not the whole soul. So I thought them having it all was part of the cosmology, and was wrong about that.

Still, my idea may hold some merit. It may be that endowment chops off any part of the soul that is necessary for functioning- active spiritual memory, identity etc (though not perfectly). That identity part stays with the person, thus making drabs more functional than one might predict.

Endowment may have considered this a kindness. The drab would have everything they needed to live, and would be able to give to the person they trusted.

Even after her Les Mis experience, during the final sequence, if I recall correctly, Vivienne basically goes from flush to drab to flush to drab to semi-flush without reporting any ill-effects.

She did have a lot of breaths. Any weaknesses in them would be covered. With the emperor's soul we will be dealing with a single emperor soul, so any issues in transferring a single soul should be covered.

Yes yes, we can't be sure. But we have no reason in-text to think that this "emotional memory" exists, and a lot of places where it could have been demonstrated but wasn't.

We do have one, but as you said you are ignoring it as it hurts your theory.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Still, I don't think so. Instinct doesn't really account for the ability to carry out complex commands; and remember that I'm still trying to obviate the need for Breaths to do Cognitive-y things, so I would prefer not expanding the theory to include that, at least at this point.

They don't carry out complex cognitive commands- they do things like act as fingers, protect people, strange people, cause chaos. All things that require no thought, just instinct. They never do anything cognitive like writing out a message, or mathematics, or considering the wisdom of actions.

I wonder, does Nightbringer ever cognate?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Retaining long term memory is likely a cognitive aspect. I was more talking about some sort of less effective spiritual memory. I don't think we have any major disagreements here, if you agree spiritual memory is possible.

It isn't necessarily impossible, I just don't really see a need for it.

It's clear (thanks to you hard work on the internet) he is saying identity slips through and it will be a major issue in the next book. Small, but important. Since we want to make predictions about the next book understanding what he means is very important.

Though it pains me to say it, I suppose it wouldn't break the world for the tiniest smidgen of Identity to leak through.

Ah, ok. I guess Endowment is similar to Hemalurgy, if less agonizing, ripping a fragment of a person's soul away, and that bit has divine magic embedded in it.

Quite.

Since your theory is based on assuming he didn't mean what he said, it doesn't have much predictive power. Personally I will just adapt your theory with a slight tweak.

Harsh, but true to an extent. It all just seems so very messy under your model, as I understand it, with things where they oughtn't to be and little rhyme or reason for it all.

If you want, I would encourage you to start another thread laying out your own version of my theory in more detail (and all in one place). Feel free to quote the stuff of mine that you agree with and whatnot.

You did just quote Brandon saying that some part of the breath crosses over and it'll be important in the next book. And he has said that not much crosses, implying some does.

I think I may have written that part before I pulled the quote, actually. Oops.

Okay then. I still disagree with your initial point about aspects of Breaths being "available for storage" but being wiped by Endowment, for the reasons we've discussed. I'll accept some (exceptionally tiny) smidgen of (non-wiped) Identity, though.

Why should drabs be dumb? I am assuming all the cognitive aspect is retained.

Because, if a tiny sliver of soul can bring a corpse to 90% sentience all by itself, it should negatively impact those who lose it (and benefit those who gain it), which isn't the case, as we've discussed.

I was unaware that breaths were a part of the soul, not the whole soul. So I thought them having it all was part of the cosmology, and was wrong about that.

Still, my idea may hold some merit. It may be that endowment chops off any part of the soul that is necessary for functioning- active spiritual memory, identity etc (though not perfectly). That identity part stays with the person, thus making drabs more functional than one might predict.

Endowment may have considered this a kindness. The drab would have everything they needed to live, and would be able to give to the person they trusted.

I agree, to an extent. Still don't see the need for spiritual memory, though.

She did have a lot of breaths. Any weaknesses in them would be covered. With the emperor's soul we will be dealing with a single emperor soul, so any issues in transferring a single soul should be covered.

It actually won't be "transferring" in TES: it will be Forging, creating a new soul out of whole clothe. Quite a different process under any interpretation.

We do have one, but as you said you are ignoring it as it hurts your theory.

Now that's both harsh and unfair. "Emotional memory" is your idea to explain foreign Breaths being less effective and/or desirous than the one you were born with, as you may recall:

"If my idea about Endowment wiping souls clean when they are transferred is right say, it might well take people with a new soul a while to train them to function properly emotionally."

That has nothing to do with Brandon saying that Breaths "did their best to interpret" and "decided" things. I argue that he may have meant that a separate Cognitive aspect was bundled in at the moment of Awakening or that he might have been vastly over-simplyfying because Awakening was not the focus of that annotation.

I may be wrong in that interpretation and my entire theory may fall because of it, but I did not by any means ignore any evidence. I've gone out of my way to bring facts and reason to this discussion, even those which could do my case more harm than good, and have engaged with every quote and argument that you have brought to bear. I do not appreciate being accused of ignoring evidence, and did not do so in this case.

As far as that quote proving emotional memory, are we still discussing the same thing at this point (20 posts later)? I'm talking about the likelyhood of negative side-effects from losing your "native" soul, specifically your idea of "emotional memory." An idea which is unnecessary, overly-complicated, and, once-again, baseless. Why oh why do you still support it?

I acknowledge the possibility of very slight Identity contained within Breaths (although it might not be a sure thing). That gives a smidgen of support to keeping your original Breath. Take it and run, but I simply don't see a future for emotional memory.

They don't carry out complex cognitive commands- they do things like act as fingers, protect people, strange people, cause chaos. All things that require no thought, just instinct. They never do anything cognitive like writing out a message, or mathematics, or considering the wisdom of actions.

I wonder, does Nightbringer ever cognate?

Chat with a robotics engineer for two minutes about how easy acting like fingers is and then get back to me, I'll wait:

*Three hours later*

Was that fun? Did s/he laugh or yell? It's always a toss up with those guys :D.

On a more serious note, those are all fairly complex commands, and complexity has little to do with wisdom or linguistics. Our computers are performing more tasks in the time that you take to blink than you could do in an hour. Yet they are not sentient.

"Protect me" involves recognizing threats and moving appropriately to intercept them, all from a moving vantage point surrounded by multiple (also moving) bodies possessing varying, unknown levels of skill, hostility, and danger. "Cause chaos" could encompass remaining visible and frightening, being unpredictable, attacking people, making scary noises, and much more, and all of this while evading capture.

Yes yes, all of this could be spread to the "instinct" sub-category if you just stretch your mind out a bit, but I still maintain that it's unnecessary and harmful to Realmatic definitions of the three realms. Also, "instinct" sounds much more like a process for evaluating and reacting to the world than one for propelling something through it, so I'm not sure that it really should fall under the Spiritual category.

Also, consider that Nightblood (not Nightbringer) does actually consider the wisdom of an action. He's an odd duck, so it may not generalize, but his thought processes, while problematic under my theory because he's unique in having such a complete Cognitive aspect, are still explainable for me. Under an "instincts-based" theory of Awakening, however, you're even worse off then I am.

Side Note: It's occurred to me that the afterlife looks altogether less grim if we just say that both the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects live on after death. Why ought the Cognitive to die while the Spiritual lives, after all?

This does raise issues for my theory about the Lifeless, although perhaps normal Breaths could pull back partial Cogntive aspects like Divine Breaths pull back the whole thing, if that's how it all works.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harsh, but true to an extent. It all just seems so very messy under your model, as I understand it, with things where they oughtn't to be and little rhyme or reason for it all.

Under my model, just as a piece of cloth remembers being alive a soul remembers being alive and can do things like stretch their fingers and strangle people. How is that messy?

Okay then. I still disagree with your initial point about aspects of Breaths being "available for storage" but being wiped by Endowment, for the reasons we've discussed. I'll accept some (exceptionally tiny) smidgen of (non-wiped) Identity, though.

Good to agree.

Because, if a tiny sliver of soul can bring a corpse to 90% sentience all by itself, it should negatively impact those who lose it (and benefit those who gain it), which isn't the case, as we've discussed.

It's probably a pretty large chunk of the soul, given the large effect.

I agree, to an extent. Still don't see the need for spiritual memory, though.

If the breaths are doing the command independently rather than being directly commanded by a cognitive aspect then they need to remember those commands.

They also presumably have senses to monitor the environment.

It actually won't be "transferring" in TES: it will be Forging, creating a new soul out of whole clothe. Quite a different process under any interpretation.

Forging will probably involve transferring a soul into a body, or removing a soul from a body.

Now that's both harsh and unfair. "Emotional memory" is your idea to explain foreign Breaths being less effective and/or desirous than the one you were born with, as you may recall:

"If my idea about Endowment wiping souls clean when they are transferred is right say, it might well take people with a new soul a while to train them to function properly emotionally."

That was a possible consequence. It was clearly not that great an idea, but you found awesome sources which suggested that it does exist in certain situations and will be important for the next book. My idea of emotional memory was to explain multiple observations that suggested that such memory existed.

That has nothing to do with Brandon saying that Breaths "did their best to interpret" and "decided" things. I argue that he may have meant that a separate Cognitive aspect was bundled in at the moment of Awakening or that he might have been vastly over-simplyfying because Awakening was not the focus of that annotation.

It's possible a cognitive aspect was bundled in, but I can't see anything he could have been simplifying it from.

I may be wrong in that interpretation and my entire theory may fall because of it, but I did not by any means ignore any evidence. I've gone out of my way to bring facts and reason to this discussion, even those which could do my case more harm than good, and have engaged with every quote and argument that you have brought to bear. I do not appreciate being accused of ignoring evidence, and did not do so in this case.

As far as that quote proving emotional memory, are we still discussing the same thing at this point (20 posts later)? I'm talking about the likelyhood of negative side-effects from losing your "native" soul, specifically your idea of "emotional memory." An idea which is unnecessary, overly-complicated, and, once-again, baseless. Why oh why do you still support it?

I haven't expressed any support of negative side effects from losing your native soul since you gave a source which said the effect was small. Emotional memory, on the other hand, has substantially more evidence.

You have been very good with accepting the implications of what is said. What he said in that annotation clearly has some implications- the breaths have some sort of ability to make choices. You've had some trouble with that single implication.

Chat with a robotics engineer for two minutes about how easy acting like fingers is and then get back to me, I'll wait:

*Three hours later*

Was that fun? Did s/he laugh or yell? It's always a toss up with those guys :D.

Ok, I agree that moving fingers is not a simple task, any more than curing diseases is, or seeing colours in more complexity.

It's simple though cognitively. Your body takes care of it for you. It requires no sentience or cognition.

On a more serious note, those are all fairly complex commands, and complexity has little to do with wisdom or linguistics. Our computers are performing more tasks in the time that you take to blink than you could do in an hour. Yet they are not sentient.

Yes, I know.

"Protect me" involves recognizing threats and moving appropriately to intercept them, all from a moving vantage point surrounded by multiple (also moving) bodies possessing varying, unknown levels of skill, hostility, and danger. "Cause chaos" could encompass remaining visible and frightening, being unpredictable, attacking people, making scary noises, and much more, and all of this while evading capture.

Both of those are covered by flight or fight adrenal instincts.

Yes yes, all of this could be spread to the "instinct" sub-category if you just stretch your mind out a bit, but I still maintain that it's unnecessary and harmful to Realmatic definitions of the three realms. Also, "instinct" sounds much more like a process for evaluating and reacting to the world than one for propelling something through it, so I'm not sure that it really should fall under the Spiritual category.

If spiritual means propelling you through the world and cognitive means reacting to it, then breaths, which enhance your senses, allow you to react better to diseases, and give you a sensation of when you are being watched are clearly cognitive aspects.

Also, consider that Nightblood (not Nightbringer) does actually consider the wisdom of an action. He's an odd duck, so it may not generalize, but his thought processes, while problematic under my theory because he's unique in having such a complete Cognitive aspect, are still explainable for me. Under an "instincts-based" theory of Awakening, however, you're even worse off then I am.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/106/Warbreaker-Chapter-Fifty-One

Notice that almost every sentence nightblood makes involves a sensation or an order or a location. Go there, do this, i feel that. The sort of things that your emotions and senses tell you. There's a person, go there, he feels bad, flimsy justification, kill him.

"We should kill him, Nightblood continued. Come on. We should do it. We really should do it.

“Why do you care?” Vasher whispered. “You don’t know him.”

He’s evil, Nightblood said."

That is nightblood's wisdom. We should do something because that person is bad. It's not a cognitive wisdom, it's an instinct wisdom.

"That man down there, Nightblood said. The god in the palace. He holds the power to start this war. You don’t want this war to start. That’s why he’s evil.

“Why does that make him evil?”

Because he will do what you don’t want him to.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Vasher said. “Plus, who is to say that my judgment is best?”

It is, Nightblood said. Let’s go. Let’s kill him. You told me war is bad. He will start a war. He’s evil. Let’s kill him. Let’s kill him."

That person there, he is powerful in a way you don't want, war is bad, so he should die. Emotional instincts.

Nightblood is explaining the sort of instant emotional judgement you make when you're pulsing with adrenaline.

Side Note: It's occurred to me that the afterlife looks altogether less grim if we just say that both the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects live on after death. Why ought the Cognitive to die while the Spiritual lives, after all?

Perhaps. It depends on what cognitive aspects require to exist. With, why ought the cognitive die, it may be that cognitive functions are dependent on there being a physical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Under my model, just as a piece of cloth remembers being alive a soul remembers being alive and can do things like stretch their fingers and strangle people. How is that messy?

Messy because it has memory and thought and context-sensitive action crossing boundaries and being in one realm or another at different times for different reasons. And I still dislike your insistence on using the word "soul" to refer to Breaths.

It's probably a pretty large chunk of the soul, given the large effect.

Yes, we don't know how large a chunk it is, so I suppose I wasn't right to assert that it was small. Still, we have Drabs retaining a large amount of their efficacy despite being Drab and Awakeners not simply "doubling-up" every few Breaths they get. Also, you would think that a Breath nearly as powerful as a full soul would be enough to power a piece of rope without needing 99 of its closest friends to help out.

If the breaths are doing the command independently rather than being directly commanded by a cognitive aspect then they need to remember those commands.

They also presumably have senses to monitor the environment.

So the "unnecessary-ness," once again, flows to our different conceptions of how Commands function. Senses is odd, actually. Obviously real people need their sense-organs to sense the majority of their environment, but I suppose that Awakened objects rely entirely upon Spiritual cues.

Forging will probably involve transferring a soul into a body, or removing a soul from a body.

I will eat my shoes if it involves removing a soul. Read the descriptions we have on TES. It's all about creating a fully functional new soul and sticking it into an empty shell.

That was a possible consequence. It was clearly not that great an idea, but you found awesome sources which suggested that it does exist in certain situations and will be important for the next book. My idea of emotional memory was to explain multiple observations that suggested that such memory existed.

I suppose I'm getting old and forgetful. Would you mind re-quoting those sources that actually support emotional memory, explaining how exactly they support it, and above all clearly stating what you're current definition of "emotional memory" is?

It's possible a cognitive aspect was bundled in, but I can't see anything he could have been simplifying it from.

Here's what he would have had to write if Awakening works as I theorize and he wanted to talk about it:

"This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the partial Cognitive aspect that was copied over from Sharshara into Nightblood at the moment of Shashara's Awakening of him was insufficient to truly grasp and permute the meaning of "evil" in the over-reaching "Destroy evil" Vocalization which Sharshara also embedded in Nightbloods new Cognitive aspect. This partial of copying of Sharshara's mind then interpreted that it could best accomplish it's task to "Destroy evil" though using it's heightened Spiritual sensitivity to gauge the personalities and intentions of those who touched Nightblood..."

So essentially:

"the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided"

Vs.

"the partial Cognitive aspect that was copied over from Sharshara into Nightblood at the moment of Shashara's Awakening of him was insufficient to truly grasp and permute the meaning of "evil" in the over-reaching "Destroy evil" Vocalization which Sharshara also embedded in Nightbloods new Cognitive aspect. This partial of copying of Sharshara's mind then interpreted"

Perhaps I was unnecessarily verbose or it could be slimmed down, but, especially since Brandon wants to keep it unnecessary to understand the Cosmere as a whole and Realmatics in particular, and he was focusing on something else at the time of writing, I don't think it's an unbelievable leap for Brandon to just have simplified it.

I haven't expressed any support of negative side effects from losing your native soul since you gave a source which said the effect was small. Emotional memory, on the other hand, has substantially more evidence.

You have been very good with accepting the implications of what is said. What he said in that annotation clearly has some implications- the breaths have some sort of ability to make choices. You've had some trouble with that single implication.

See my above request for you to provide that evidence all in one place. Also, that "trouble" primarily consists of me rejecting that implication as nonsensical for various reasons, foremost because of its unnecessary complications of the magic system and implications about the necessary messiness of the structure of the Cosmere.

Ok, I agree that moving fingers is not a simple task, any more than curing diseases is, or seeing colours in more complexity.

It's simple though cognitively. Your body takes care of it for you. It requires no sentience or cognition.

---

Yes, I know.

---

Both of those are covered by flight or fight adrenal instincts.

Curing disease is dirt simple for Breaths. Just pump up the "immune system" stat and call it a day. Seeing colors in more detail is just heightened perception and falls under the same category. And all of this also takes place in an already functioning human with an intact Cognitive aspect, so even if it was Cognitively demanding it would have little to do with the Breaths providing the Cognition.

If spiritual means propelling you through the world and cognitive means reacting to it, then breaths, which enhance your senses, allow you to react better to diseases, and give you a sensation of when you are being watched are clearly cognitive aspects.

Fair enough. I should have been more thoughtful in my descriptions, but that's not really what I meant. You don't "react" to disease and I've already discussed purely Spiritual interactions being real things, such as Connection.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/106/Warbreaker-Chapter-Fifty-One

Notice that almost every sentence nightblood makes involves a sensation or an order or a location. Go there, do this, i feel that. The sort of things that your emotions and senses tell you. There's a person, go there, he feels bad, flimsy justification, kill him.

"We should kill him, Nightblood continued. Come on. We should do it. We really should do it.

“Why do you care?” Vasher whispered. “You don’t know him.”

He’s evil, Nightblood said."

That is nightblood's wisdom. We should do something because that person is bad. It's not a cognitive wisdom, it's an instinct wisdom.

"That man down there, Nightblood said. The god in the palace. He holds the power to start this war. You don’t want this war to start. That’s why he’s evil.

“Why does that make him evil?”

Because he will do what you don’t want him to.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Vasher said. “Plus, who is to say that my judgment is best?”

It is, Nightblood said. Let’s go. Let’s kill him. You told me war is bad. He will start a war. He’s evil. Let’s kill him. Let’s kill him."

That person there, he is powerful in a way you don't want, war is bad, so he should die. Emotional instincts.

Nightblood is explaining the sort of instant emotional judgement you make when you're pulsing with adrenaline.

Nightblood sounds more like a psychopathic manchild than a being of pure instinct. Almost as if his mind is simply stunted and such a complex and nuanced task as "destroy evil" is to much for him?

To wrap up my thoughts about "emotional instincts," I think you're simply reaching. As I've already said, everything can be boiled down to "instincts" if you simplify your description of it enough. But what's the instinct to "hold when thrown?" Is that a human instinct that the "soul" is simply acting on? I didn't know that I instinctually held onto trees whenever I was thrown at them, and then never let go.

Besides seeming unnecessary and overly-simplistic, this talk of "instincts" also vastly limits the capabilities of Awakening if the complexity and nuance of Commands is limited more by some unknown "instinct limitation" on Breaths than on the imagination of the Awakener. Not to call yet another "the author wouldn't do that," but I don't think Brandon would want to limit the magic system that severely.

And if you tell me that there's no effective limit to what "instincts" can accomplish, then what's the limit on how you define instincts, and how are they then truly different from thought?

We also have the question of why such a thorough Visualization component is necessary if Breaths can "instinctively" know how to carry out a Command. If you tell a person to "hold things," you don't have to then draw them a picture of how things can be held. If Breaths are really these nearly-complete instinctive human souls, then they shouldn't need such hand-holding.

Perhaps. It depends on what cognitive aspects require to exist. With, why ought the cognitive die, it may be that cognitive functions are dependent on there being a physical.

The existence of almost purely Cognitive beings merely shadowed in the Physical realm suggests that Physical aspects aren't all-important.

P.S. Sorry, not as full a set of replies as I could have made, running out of time just now.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going through version 1 of the book for anything interesting that he removed. I've found a few things. I'm gonna post the best things here.

"“Lower me,” he Commanded. The large tapestry—woven from wool threads—sucked hundreds of Breaths from him. It hadn’t the form of a man, and it was massive in size, but Vasher now had enough Breath to spend in such extravagant Awakenings. The tapestry twisted, a thing alive, and formed a hand, which picked Vasher up. As always, the Awakening tried to imitate the form of a human—looking closely at the twistings and undulations of the fabric, Vasher could see outlines of muscles and even veins. There was no need for them; the Breath animated the fabric, and no muscles were necessary for it to move."

The breath remembers what muscles and veins felt like. Remember how that metal magic could steal strength? sDNA and muscles may be partially in the soul.

"Dramatic, Nightblood noted.

The sunset? Vasher asked.

Yes.

You can’t see it, he said to the sword.

But I can feel you seeing it. Crimson. Like blood in the air."

Awakened objects cannot see directly, but can sense and use the sight of humans.

From first edition.

She carried the rope tucked into the dress’s pocket pouch, hidden behind a fold of cloth on the side. She’d grown so accustomed to having a certain amount of Breath that missing a fraction, even the small bit contained in the rope, felt wrong.

And from 1st edition, crossed out.

As if her mind were slightly dulled and foggy.

Also from 1st edition, crossed out.

"Lightsong shrugged. “Anyway, my servants broke this one for me. The stronger and more skilled the Awakener who created the Lifeless, the more difficult it is to break it.”"

I'd guess that some emotional fortitude is passed on from the awakener, along with their cognition boosting intelligence.

“Hold that branch,” she Commanded. Again, Breath left her. More of it this time. Her trousers drained of color, and the rope end twisted, wrapping around the branch. The rest of it remained still.

So the amount of breath used varies from command to command.

When Vasher is explaining lifeless "Why are Lifeless so dull-minded, while Returned fully sentient?”

Was in 1st edition "why can't lifeless remember their past." I guess he thought that was too revealing. Lifeless lack memory.

"His Command incorporated making the rope respond to taps of his finger along its length. "

Awakened objects can remember commands.

"“That man saw and did terrible things,” Denth said. “I’ve tried, Vasher. I’ve tried going back. But the darkness. . .it’s inside. I can’t escape it. My laughter has an edge to it. I can’t forget.”

“I can make you,” Vasher said. “I know the Commands.”

Denth froze.

“I promise,” Vasher said. “I will take it all from you, if you wish.”"

Breath magic can take away memories, presumably giving it to another person.

Messy because it has memory and thought and context-sensitive action crossing boundaries and being in one realm or another at different times for different reasons. And I still dislike your insistence on using the word "soul" to refer to Breaths.

I have little desire to contest you further on this. We shall see.

I am trying to use the word breath more- you'll remember in the book the princess' kingdom called them souls, and I adapted that till you showed me they were part of a soul, not all of it.

Yes, we don't know how large a chunk it is, so I suppose I wasn't right to assert that it was small. Still, we have Drabs retaining a large amount of their efficacy despite being Drab and Awakeners not simply "doubling-up" every few Breaths they get. Also, you would think that a Breath nearly as powerful as a full soul would be enough to power a piece of rope without needing 99 of its closest friends to help out.

Drabs likely retain most of their function because endowment seperated the soul as such to leave them functional.

We've been told the number of souls you need isn't proportional to the ease of a task. It's proportional to how close to a human the thing is.

I will eat my shoes if it involves removing a soul. Read the descriptions we have on TES. It's all about creating a fully functional new soul and sticking it into an empty shell.

Ok, I shall hold you to that. You shall eat your shoes if a soul is removed. I remember one story where the thief of the book was trapped in a prison and had to alter the souls of every stone in a wall to break it down- i could imagine that she may have to swap souls in and out of stones or people. Use her forging talent on things other than the emperor's soul.

I suppose I'm getting old and forgetful. Would you mind re-quoting those sources that actually support emotional memory, explaining how exactly they support it, and above all clearly stating what you're current definition of "emotional memory" is?

It's gotten rather tiresome.

I am tired too.

Emotional memory would be memory of how it felt to do things, and your impressions of things. For example, you like a person, you move your arm, you dislike being cut.

"This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the partial Cognitive aspect that was copied over from Sharshara into Nightblood at the moment of Shashara's Awakening of him was insufficient to truly grasp and permute the meaning of "evil" in the over-reaching "Destroy evil" Vocalization which Sharshara also embedded in Nightbloods new Cognitive aspect. This partial of copying of Sharshara's mind then interpreted that it could best accomplish it's task to "Destroy evil" though using it's heightened Spiritual sensitivity to gauge the personalities and intentions of those who touched Nightblood..."

So essentially:

"the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided"

Vs.

"the partial Cognitive aspect that was copied over from Sharshara into Nightblood at the moment of Shashara's Awakening of him was insufficient to truly grasp and permute the meaning of "evil" in the over-reaching "Destroy evil" Vocalization which Sharshara also embedded in Nightbloods new Cognitive aspect. This partial of copying of Sharshara's mind then interpreted"

Well, there's no evidence for or against your theory, so I can't really contest it.

Curing disease is dirt simple for Breaths. Just pump up the "immune system" stat and call it a day. Seeing colors in more detail is just heightened perception and falls under the same category. And all of this also takes place in an already functioning human with an intact Cognitive aspect, so even if it was Cognitively demanding it would have little to do with the Breaths providing the Cognition.

Why is pumping up the immune system stat different from pumping up the muscle skill stat? And you could go talk to an immunologist and ask them how easy it was to boost an immune system. Ask them if its simple. Go talk to someone who designs eye prosthetics and ask them how easy it is to boost someone's senses. If you believe that moving fingers isn't simple because a roboticist would disagree, I don't see how you can say boosting someone's immune system is different.

Fair enough. I should have been more thoughtful in my descriptions, but that's not really what I meant. You don't "react" to disease and I've already discussed purely Spiritual interactions being real things, such as Connection.

You do react to disease, your body secretes chemical compounds and raises its temperature and produces immune cells.

Nightblood sounds more like a psychopathic manchild than a being of pure instinct. Almost as if his mind is simply stunted and such a complex and nuanced task as "destroy evil" is to much for him?

He does, but you don't present any quotes or references from him so I can't really contest what you're saying in any way.

To wrap up my thoughts about "emotional instincts," I think you're simply reaching. As I've already said, everything can be boiled down to "instincts" if you simplify your description of it enough. But what's the instinct to "hold when thrown?" Is that a human instinct that the "soul" is simply acting on? I didn't know that I instinctually held onto trees whenever I was thrown at them, and then never let go.

You could simplify everything down to instincts, but you wouldn't be following the definition of the world. From wiki.

Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.

The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.

That is indeed what all awakened objects do. They carry out a fixed action pattern with a short sequence of actions without variation in response to some stimuli. Grabbing onto things is an instinct most have. Anyone who's picked up something has it. You don't need to think about how to curl your fingers or adapt to minor variations in the environment. The awakener says when the breaths carry out those instincts.

Besides seeming unnecessary and overly-simplistic, this talk of "instincts" also vastly limits the capabilities of Awakening if the complexity and nuance of Commands is limited more by some unknown "instinct limitation" on Breaths than on the imagination of the Awakener. Not to call yet another "the author wouldn't do that," but I don't think Brandon would want to limit the magic system that severely.

http://brandonsanderson.com/article/100/Sandersons-Second-Law

Sanderson's Second Law can be written very simply. It goes like this:

Limitations > Powers

He loves limitations. Do you know the author well? And the vast majority of the descriptions of awakenings involve some simple action- muscles pulsating, a hand grabbing or waving.

He makes the magic system, adds lots of limitations, and then tries to carry out what he has to do.

And if you tell me that there's no effective limit to what "instincts" can accomplish, then what's the limit on how you define instincts, and how are they then truly different from thought?

I, like the author, think limitations make a story more interesting.

We also have the question of why such a thorough Visualization component is necessary if Breaths can "instinctively" know how to carry out a Command. If you tell a person to "hold things," you don't have to then draw them a picture of how things can be held. If Breaths are really these nearly-complete instinctive human souls, then they shouldn't need such hand-holding.

Hold what things? Hold themselves? Make a cup to hold water? Hold a key to open a door? Hold back someone from a fight? there's a lot of possibilities as to what hold things could mean.

The existence of almost purely Cognitive beings merely shadowed in the Physical realm suggests that Physical aspects aren't all-important.

P.S. Sorry, not as full a set of replies as I could have made, running out of time just now.

The existence of almost purely cognitive beings is another confusing thing which could have a number of possible implications.

Our issue is how does cognition arise in the physical plane? There may be other ways for it to arise in the cognitive realm, but it is an important issue how it arises in the physical planes.

Say hypothetically, cognition arises on the physical plane when spiritual energy meets a divine spark. That doesn't prove that that is the only way for cognitive beings to arise on the cognitive plane.

Edited by Nepene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is all getting a bit long. :(

I'm going through version 1 of the book for anything interesting that he removed. I've found a few things. I'm gonna post the best things here.

Before we start, just a general reminder that this is an early version, with everything from world-building to plot still on the table, so anything that was replaced with something else or omitted entirely from the final version may welll have been altered for a reason.

"“Lower me,” he Commanded. The large tapestry—woven from wool threads—sucked hundreds of Breaths from him. It hadn’t the form of a man, and it was massive in size, but Vasher now had enough Breath to spend in such extravagant Awakenings. The tapestry twisted, a thing alive, and formed a hand, which picked Vasher up. As always, the Awakening tried to imitate the form of a human—looking closely at the twistings and undulations of the fabric, Vasher could see outlines of muscles and even veins. There was no need for them; the Breath animated the fabric, and no muscles were necessary for it to move."

The breath remembers what muscles and veins felt like. Remember how that metal magic could steal strength? sDNA and muscles may be partially in the soul.

That's in the final version too, btw. Once again, could simply be a quirk of the magic system, or just reflecting the basic human source of Breaths, you know the whole "Law of BioChromatic Parallelism: the closer a host is to a living shape and form; the easier it is to Awaken. BioChroma is the power of life, and so it seeks patterns of life." (paraphrase) that I addressed back on the first page. Memory is a whole 'nother beast altogether, and I'll add physical muscles being stored in Breaths to my "reason to eat my shoes" list.

"Dramatic, Nightblood noted.

The sunset? Vasher asked.

Yes.

You can’t see it, he said to the sword.

But I can feel you seeing it. Crimson. Like blood in the air."

Awakened objects cannot see directly, but can sense and use the sight of humans.

A: Nightblood is weird. B: Nightblood is really weird. C: I already suggested that Nightblood has some abnormal Spiritual and/or Cognitive mind-reading powers because he's weird. D: Okay, I don't see what this has to do with emotional memory or anything else you've posited.

From first edition.

She carried the rope tucked into the dress’s pocket pouch, hidden behind a fold of cloth on the side. She’d grown so accustomed to having a certain amount of Breath that missing a fraction, even the small bit contained in the rope, felt wrong.

And from 1st edition, crossed out.

As if her mind were slightly dulled and foggy.

I'm calling world-building tweak on that. That's the kind of thing you should mention at some point, and intentionally crossing it out indicates that Brandon didn't want that in there. Recall that Vivienne's earlier mind-fog was almost instantaneously explained by a disease, perhaps even to stop people from thinking that the above was still true.

Also from 1st edition, crossed out.

"Lightsong shrugged. “Anyway, my servants broke this one for me. The stronger and more skilled the Awakener who created the Lifeless, the more difficult it is to break it.”"

I'd guess that some emotional fortitude is passed on from the awakener, along with their cognition boosting intelligence.

I think this is still essentially in the final addition.

Or the Cognitive aspect of the Lifeless is simply stronger with a more intuitive, stronger-willed Awakener. We're probably better off not parceling out Feruchemical and Hemalurgical aspects as the reason for everything.

“Hold that branch,” she Commanded. Again, Breath left her. More of it this time. Her trousers drained of color, and the rope end twisted, wrapping around the branch. The rest of it remained still.

So the amount of breath used varies from command to command.

Ah, I missed that one in my initial trawl. Thank you. "Awakening" post updated for that, although I don't think it really matters that much. So more complex Commands (with more complex Cognitive aspects) require more Spiritual energy to power the Cognitive aspect's cogitations. Another interesting route for exploration in the future (along with Spren and Hemalurgy).

When Vasher is explaining lifeless "Why are Lifeless so dull-minded, while Returned fully sentient?”

Was in 1st edition "why can't lifeless remember their past." I guess he thought that was too revealing. Lifeless lack memory.

Or possibly Brandon didn't want to draw attention to memory just yet, since, besides Lifeless retaining their skills, Arsteel, as you argued, seems to remember his Arsteel-ness.

"His Command incorporated making the rope respond to taps of his finger along its length. "

Awakened objects can remember commands.

Also from final, if I recall.

Yeah. That's kind of the whole idea. Almost like they have minds. I don't dispute this, it's part of the bedrock of my theory. Although it's a fairly complicated command, so I do wonder how instinct could account for it...

"“That man saw and did terrible things,” Denth said. “I’ve tried, Vasher. I’ve tried going back. But the darkness. . .it’s inside. I can’t escape it. My laughter has an edge to it. I can’t forget.”

“I can make you,” Vasher said. “I know the Commands.”

Denth froze.

“I promise,” Vasher said. “I will take it all from you, if you wish.”"

Breath magic can take away memories, presumably giving it to another person.

Big presumption. Vasher's "brain Awakening" is a mystery at this point. Apparently, he knows Commands that people can do on themselves, perhaps simply saying "Me: Forget the last two days" and so altering their own Cognitive aspects (aka memories) in circumstances like with the kidnapped little girl. In the case of the little girl, the time we actually saw this happen, Vasher made the little girl repeat a phrase, presumably a Command, which caused her own BioChromatic aura to flicker (617-618). Vasher didn't appear to do anything beyond simply telling the girl the Command.

Quote for fun:

“Child,” he said. “I’m going to say some words to you. I want you to repeat them. Repeat them, and mean them.”

The girl regarded him absently, nodding slightly.

He glanced at Vivenna. “Back away.”

She opened her mouth to object, but thought better of it. She stepped back out of earshot. Fortunately, Vasher was near a lit street lamp, so she could see him well. He spoke to the little girl, and she spoke back to him.

After opening the cage, Vivenna had taken the Breath back from the thread. She hadn’t stowed it somewhere else. And, with the extra awareness she had, she thought she saw something. The girl’s BioChromatic aura--the normal one that all people had--flickered just slightly."

To reiterate, Vasher says "'I can make you [forget] [...] I know the Commands,'" as you yourself quote, not "I can take them from you," and we see that it's a voluntary, self-done process which doesn't appear to necessarily involve another person.

-End quote war.

I have little desire to contest you further on this. We shall see.

I am trying to use the word breath more- you'll remember in the book the princess' kingdom called them souls, and I adapted that till you showed me they were part of a soul, not all of it.

Yeah, the kingdom that also knew nothing about how BioChroma actually worked. You're insistence on using their terminology was a bit irritating. :P

Drabs likely retain most of their function because endowment seperated the soul as such to leave them functional.

We've been told the number of souls you need isn't proportional to the ease of a task. It's proportional to how close to a human the thing is.

But how would Endowment do that? S/he takes out enough juice to give a corpse 90% sentience all by its lonesome (remember that we're not allowed to give that corpse a boosted Cognitive aspect from the Awakener), but somehow leaves so much left in the Breath-giver that Drabs are still essentially the same?

As for proportionality, I was simply suggesting that even a mismatched Breath at nearly full soul-power should be enough to make a rope twitch.

Ok, I shall hold you to that. You shall eat your shoes if a soul is removed. I remember one story where the thief of the book was trapped in a prison and had to alter the souls of every stone in a wall to break it down- i could imagine that she may have to swap souls in and out of stones or people. Use her forging talent on things other than the emperor's soul.

Soles at the ready for consumption!

I am tired too.

Emotional memory would be memory of how it felt to do things, and your impressions of things. For example, you like a person, you move your arm, you dislike being cut.

Ah, thank you for clarifying your new definition. I don't think Awakened objects go particularly out of their way to avoid being cut, by the way.

Well, there's no evidence for or against your theory, so I can't really contest it.

There's probably more evidence for my interpretation than for yours, but I digress.

As for the specific issue of my blatant reinterpretation of Brandon's annotation, you have to agree that my version of the explanation is not the kind of thing he would want to have written out in full, especially since it raises so many more questions than it answers for anyone who doesn't have a fairly full grasp of Realmatics.

Why is pumping up the immune system stat different from pumping up the muscle skill stat? And you could go talk to an immunologist and ask them how easy it was to boost an immune system. Ask them if its simple. Go talk to someone who designs eye prosthetics and ask them how easy it is to boost someone's senses. If you believe that moving fingers isn't simple because a roboticist would disagree, I don't see how you can say boosting someone's immune system is different.

Because it does not require even the slightest act of will to accomplish. We see in Mistborn, both with Allomancers and Feruchemists, that things like Health, Strength, and Senses can just be turned up or down and maintained without any mental strain. Allomancers can even burn pewter while sleeping! As you yourself suggested, and I agree with, this is probably the result of simply opening the tap a bit wider in the Spiritual realm for those attributes for that individual.

Moving you're fingers in a specific way, however, is not a thought-less task. Tired, exceptionally young, ill, drunk, or otherwise hindered people can all attest to that. Even basic grasping and holding requires a certain effort, especially with a struggling target (try to apply flea medication to a cat someday). The more complex a task gets, the more improbable that it could be handled by a completely mindless object.

You do react to disease, your body secretes chemical compounds and raises its temperature and produces immune cells.

Okay, I'll shift the italics over. You don't react to disease. Your bodies immune responses, by and large, take place without your conscious intervention or the necessity for intelligent guidance on your mind's part.

He does, but you don't present any quotes or references from him so I can't really contest what you're saying in any way.

That's a strange accusation. I'll just point you one post up to where I quote your Nightblood quotes. Contest away.

You could simplify everything down to instincts, but you wouldn't be following the definition of the world. From wiki.

Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.

The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.

That is indeed what all awakened objects do. They carry out a fixed action pattern with a short sequence of actions without variation in response to some stimuli. Grabbing onto things is an instinct most have. Anyone who's picked up something has it. You don't need to think about how to curl your fingers or adapt to minor variations in the environment. The awakener says when the breaths carry out those instincts.

Ouch. That's a thorough definition. Even broader than what you had in mind initially, I'll guess.

Very well. I amend my initial criticism: Explaining Breath's ability to carry out Commands as some inherent "instinct" which these Breaths carry over is still an unwarranted and unnecessary breach of the Cognitive realm. You're definition also lacks any and all explanation for how Breaths can come to decisions. This entire discussion started because you pulled a quote of Breaths "interpreting" commands and "deciding" things. Are instincts really up to the task of deciding what instincts to apply where?

Even if we decide that Breaths are actually programmed with specific sets of "instincts" (like Vasher's tap-sensitive rope) by their Awakener, there remains the question of how these instincts are programmed in and where exactly they come from. Do Breaths, therefore, include all of the instincts of their original holder? Will the Breath of a handless man be capable of "hold things?" Will a Drab suddenly lose all of their instincts upon giving up their Breaths, or do they somehow still get to keep those?

If you decide that instincts are really the way to go, these are the kind of questions that you'll need to answer.

http://brandonsanderson.com/article/100/Sandersons-Second-Law

Sanderson's Second Law can be written very simply. It goes like this:

Limitations > Powers

He loves limitations. Do you know the author well? And the vast majority of the descriptions of awakenings involve some simple action- muscles pulsating, a hand grabbing or waving.

He makes the magic system, adds lots of limitations, and then tries to carry out what he has to do.

I, like the author, think limitations make a story more interesting.

He also made it so that Bendalloy and Cadmium bubbles don't microwave people due to the Doppler effect, which sure would have been an interesting limitation on their use. Brandon likes limitations when they spur creativity, not when they stunt it (this is a stunting case, by the way).

Also, I would still like an answer on how your infinitely robust instincts are different from thought proper, and how that fails to compromise the existence of the Cognitive realm.

Hold what things? Hold themselves? Make a cup to hold water? Hold a key to open a door? Hold back someone from a fight? there's a lot of possibilities as to what hold things could mean.

I thought you saw Awakened objects as having a constant perfect access to the minds of their users? If so, then they should just hold whatever is appropriate for the situation.

Even if they can't all read minds (as I suspect), a fully-capable being should still be able to "instinctively" read context clues and hold what is most appropriate to hold (a cup of water on a hot day, the enemy during a fight, etc.)

Instead, we see that "hold things" is actually fairly stupid, just holding whatever is closest, (pg 575, 253, 449). 449 actually has a straight description: "If you do it right, the rope will grab whatever is closest." This up to and including trying to grab multiple things at once (575). Vasher (past-master of Awakening) would sure have preferred if that rope had grabbed the servant's neck, but it grabbed his arm instead (253).

This is very wasteful and sub-optimal if we're investing almost-whole human instincts, honed over millennia, into these objects. A partial Cognitive aspect, on the other hand...

The existence of almost purely cognitive beings is another confusing thing which could have a number of possible implications.

Our issue is how does cognition arise in the physical plane? There may be other ways for it to arise in the cognitive realm, but it is an important issue how it arises in the physical planes.

Say hypothetically, cognition arises on the physical plane when spiritual energy meets a divine spark. That doesn't prove that that is the only way for cognitive beings to arise on the cognitive plane.

It's worth discussing (purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity).

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is all getting a bit long. :(

Before we start, just a general reminder that this is an early version, with everything from world-building to plot still on the table, so anything that was replaced with something else or omitted entirely from the final version may welll have been altered for a reason.

yes it is. Just skip anything you feel is repeated or too long.

Indeed it may have been altered, but having some new information that doesn't directly contradict something adds some degree of evidence to it being true.

That's in the final version to, btw. Once again, could simply be a quirk of the magic system, or just reflecting the basic human source of Breaths, you know the whole "Law of BioChromatic Parallelism: the closer a host is to a living shape and form; the easier it is to Awaken. BioChroma is the power of life, and so it seeks patterns of life." (paraphrase) that I addressed back on the first page. Memory is a whole 'nother beast altogether, and I'll add physical muscles being stored in Breaths to my "reason to eat my shoes" list.

Yeah, unless I said explicitly it was in the first version my quotes were from the final version.

The author said that bodies remembered being alive so they were easier to animate. I hardly think it's a stretch to say that breaths remember being alive so they animate bodies easier- a reason for it seeking patterns of life.

We know that divine breaths can increase muscle size say. That implies that breaths interact with physical strength. It could be a quirk of divine magic, or you may well have to eat your shoes.

A: Nightblood is weird. B: Nightblood is really weird. C: Okay, I don't see what this has to do with emotional memory or anything else you've posited.

Nightblood senses using people's senses, not their own- it may well be that awakened objects do the same. We are trying to explain how breaths work so I thought it was relevent.

I'm calling world-building tweak on that. That's the kind of thing you mention at some point, and intentionally crossing it out indicates that Brandon didn't want that in there. Recall that Vivienne's earlier mind-fog was almost instantaneously explained by a disease, perhaps even to stop people from thinking that the above was still true.

It may have been crossed out because he wanted to show not tell. The illness may have just been another factor. With this direct quote that aspect is more likely to be true. We shall see.

Or the Cognitive aspect of the Lifeless is simply stronger with a more intuitive, stronger-willed Awakener. We're probably better off not parceling out Feruchemical and Hemalurgical aspects as the reason for everything.

You're taking the cognitive stuff from other books. It's just as reasonable to take the metal magic aspects to interpret it. Brandon Sanderson likely thinks in those terms. We have to think like him.

Ah, I missed that one in my initial trawl. Thank you. "Awakening" post updated for that, although I don't think it really matters that much. So more complex Commands (with more complex Cognitive aspects) require more Spiritual energy to power the Cognitive aspect's cogitations. Another interesting route for exploration in the future (along with Spren and Hemalurgy).

Ctrl f and breath is really helpful with the entire book.

Or possibly Brandon didn't want to draw attention to memory, since, besides Lifeless retaining their skills, Arsteel, as you argued, seems to remember his Arsteel-ness.

Yes, that was what I meant.

Yeah. That's kind of the whole idea. Almost like they have minds. I don't dispute this, it's part of the bedrock of my theory. Although it's a fairly complicated command, so I do wonder how instinct could account for it...

Giving a fixed response to a stimuli is instinct. You tap someone, they jerk away.

Big presumption. Vasher's "brain Awakening" is a mystery at this point. Apparently, he knows Commands that people can do on themselves, perhaps simply saying "Me: Forget the last two days" and so altering their own Cognitive aspects (aka memories) in circumstances like with the kidnapped little girl. In the case of the little girl, the time we actually saw this happen, Vasher made the little girl repeat a phrase, presumably a Command, which caused her own BioChromatic aura to flicker (617-618). Vasher didn't appear to do anything beyond simply telling the girl the Command.

Denth stood for a long moment, foot on Vasher’s arm, sword lowered. Then, finally, he shook his head. “No. I don’t deserve that. Neither of us do. Goodbye, Vasher.”

He said that too. With the all that, I'd presume you can endow another with your memory, since Denth doesn't wish it on Vasher (as they are bad memories). The girl probably endowed Vasher with her emotional memories (hence the flicker), implying memories are within breaths. While she might cognitively remember what happened the experience would have no emotional impact on her so she wouldn't have to cry at night.

To reiterate, Vasher says "'I can make you [forget] [...] I know the Commands,'" as you yourself quote, not "I can take them from you," and we see that it's a voluntary, self-done process which doesn't appear to necessarily involve another person.

Yeah, a voluntary self done process like endowment. It's likely that the endowment magic is similar to most endowment magic where breath is endowed on another.

Yeah, the kingdom that also knew nothing about how BioChroma actually worked. You're insistence on using their terminology was a bit irritating. :P

Neither side knew much about how breaths work. Both were wrong in various ways. And it may be that I or you is closer to the truth- breaths might have more identity than one would think, or less. Be closer or further frorm souls.

But how would Endowment do that? S/he takes out enough juice to give a corpse 90% sentience all by its lonesome (remember that we're not allowed to give that corpse a boosted Cognitive aspect from the Awakener), but somehow leaves so much left in the Breath-giver that Drabs are still essentially the same?

We can't say for sure, though my suggestion, it only takes what is not needed, probably works.

As for proportionality, I was simply suggesting that even a mismatched Breath at nearly full soul-power should be enough to make a rope twitch.

It can make a human twitch easily. It has enough force. A lot of energy is clearly required to imitate muscles and skin and such.

Ah, thank you for clarifying your new definition. I don't think Awakened objects go particularly out of their way to avoid being cut, by the way.

Awakened objects are installed with a single instinct or command, as we have seen. They are incomplete.

As for the specific issue of my blatant reinterpretation of Brandon's annotation, you have to agree that my version of the explanation is not the kind of thing he would want to have written out in full, especially since it raises so many more questions than it answers for anyone who doesn't have a fairly full grasp of Realmatics.

Your interpretation would probably be phrased by him in a different manner- if it was the person's cognitive aspect he would have likely said that the person's personal meaning of what is evil is instilled in the sword and that the lady who created it didn't understand evil.

Because it does not require even the slightest act of will to accomplish. We see in Mistborn, both with Allomancers and Feruchemists, that things like Health, Strength, and Senses can just be turned on or off and maintained without any mental strain. Allomancers can even burn pewter while sleeping! As you yourself suggested, and I agree with, this is probably the result of simply opening the tap a bit wider in the Spiritual realm for those attributes for that individual.

In the novel which formed the basis of Warbreaker(you can read it from the warbreaker portal in deleted scenes) a boy was the heir to a dynasty. This dynasty had the magical ability of skill. They could quickly pick up any skill with little effort. The entire dynasty got killed and the boy got all of it. Without the slightest act of will he could pick up any skill or ability. He could fight better than a skilled and magically strong prince, cook better than a master chef, climb a wall better than the best climber. With no mental strain he can just turn on advanced muscle memory.

Skill is just another stat in many books and games.

Moving you're fingers in a specific way, however, is not a thought-less task. Tired, exceptionally young, ill, drunk, or otherwise hindered people can all attest to that. Even basic grasping and holding requires a certain effort, especially with a struggling target (try to apply flea medication to a cat someday). The more complex a task gets, the more improbable that it could be handled by a completely mindless object.

Okay, I'll shift the italics over. You don't react to disease. Your bodies immune responses, by and large, take place without your conscious intervention or the necessity for intelligent guidance on your mind's part.

And most things you do with your body require no conscious intervention. You can walk without thinking, grab without thinking.

That's a strange accusation. I'll just point you one post up to where I quote your Nightblood quotes. Contest away.

You said he sounded more like a psychopathic man child than a being of instinct. A psychopathtic man child would, presumably, be a being of emotion as children don't think clearly about things but I can't really challenge you saying Nighty is not a being of instinct and emotion if you offer no argument.

Ouch. That's a thorough definition. Even broader than what you had in mind initially, I'll guess.

It's fairly narrow, and was what I had in mind before as it's the definition.

Very well. I amend my initial criticism: Explaining Breath's ability to carry out Commands as some inherent "instinct" which these Breaths carry over is still an unwarranted and unnecessary breach of the Cognitive realm. You're definition also lacks any and all explanation for how Breaths can come to decisions. This entire discussion started because you pulled a quote of Breaths "interpreting" commands and "deciding" things. Are instincts really up to the task of deciding what instincts to apply where?

Occam's razor requires explaining everything that happens. Since the breaths do make decisions, some explanation for how they make decisions is necessary. It's not unwarranted and unnecessary if it's required to explain all observations.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22I+made+a+choice+on+instinct&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=ZjV&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&oq=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&gs_l=serp.3...6445.11924.2.13477.25.23.2.0.0.3.167.2690.4j19.23.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.kdsppYrIFKo&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=460fa893879c26b0&biw=1519&bih=634

Yes, people often decide based on instincts.

If you fall, you don't have time to think about what would be the best course of action considering all the possible factors. You grab something close by to slow your fall or put your hands out in front of you. Just as a rope grabs when thrown. It's fairly easy to judge whether someone is evil too, based on surface judgements and stereotypes. These decisions do not involve processing much information, just seeings stuff, accessing how you feel about things and repeating a set of actions.

Even if we decide that Breaths are actually programmed with specific sets of "instincts" (like Vasher's tap-sensitive rope) by their Awakener, there remains the question of how these instincts are programmed in and where exactly they come from. Do Breaths, therefore, include all of the instincts of their original holder? Will the Breath of a handless man be capable of "hold things?" Will a Drab suddenly lose all of their instincts upon giving up their Breaths, or do they somehow still get to keep those?

The handless thing would be hard to do. You'd need fifty or so handless people to give you their breaths. Would be interesting to see though. People do remember phantom hands though- it'd be better to cut baby's hands off at birth and take their breaths later in life to be scientific.

It may also be that breaths take some or all of their instincts from the person using breaths. Could a handless person make a hand command?

The drab presumably retains their instincts, remaining functional, but might well not be as good at learning new ones. It would be hard to distinguish this from their depression which causes a lack of motivation.

He also made it so that Bendalloy and Cadmium bubbles don't microwave people due to the Doppler effect, which sure would have been an interesting limitation on their use if he hadn't. Brandon likes limitations when they spur creativity, not when they stunt it (this is a stunting case, by the way).

If breaths could do anything you could think of then they would be able to easily solve problems for you. By making them limited to simple commands you force people to think of how to do crazy things with simple commands. He is increasing creativity with his limitation.

Also, I would still like an answer on how your infinitely robust instincts are different from thought proper, and how that fails to compromise the existence of the Cognitive realm.

Instincts involve no planning, at most snap judgements based on a simple sensory input, and need no thought. Thinking involves long term plans, considering many complex factors in depth, and a strong understanding of indirect causation. It doesn't compromise the existence of the cognitive realm, and even if breaths were fully sentient cognitive beings I don't see how that would compromise the cognitive realm, any more than humans being sentient compromises the cognitive realm.

I thought you saw Awakened objects as having a constant perfect access to the minds of their users? If so, then they should just hold whatever is appropriate for the situation.

I do not know where you get your ideas of what I believe.

These are soul fragments (broken and incomplete) animating pieces of rope which are nothing like what they are used to. I doubt they have perfect access to people's minds or find it that easy to carry out orders. That they can do anything at all is impressive.

Even if they can't all read minds (as I suspect), a fully-capable being should still be able to "instinctively" read context clues and hold what is most appropriate to hold (a cup of water on a hot day, the enemy during a fight, etc.)

I am calling them a bundle of instinct, not a fully capable being. I agreed with you that they had no thought. That level of thought requires cognition. Besides which, on a hot day there are many things you could hold. You might need to grab enemies during a fight on hot days too.

Instead, we see that "hold things" is actually fairly stupid, just holding whatever is closest, (pg 575, 253, 449). 449 actually has a straight description: "If you do it right, the rope will grab whatever is closest." This up to and including trying to grab multiple things at once (575). Vasher (past-master of Awakening) would sure have preferred if that rope had grabbed the servant's neck, but it grabbed his arm instead (253).

This is very wasteful and sub-optimal if we're investing almost-whole human instincts, honed over millennia, into these objects. A partial Cognitive aspect, on the other hand...

Intellect is honed over millenia too. And they probably have a partial instinct, being soul fragments.

I am unsure what you're saying. Breaths are stupid, and instinct is intelligent and cognitive functions are stupid, so it's more likely they are animated by a cognitive function? Surely cognition is by definition smart. It is how your brain processes information to make decisions. Instincts are often stupid, being a repetitive response to a stimuli. If I accept all your arguments about breath, that it is wasteful and suboptimal, then surely that would sugggest it was based off something that was unable to process information, not something that could?

It's worth discussing (purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity).

Tis only possible with more information though.

Edited by Nepene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes it is. Just skip anything you feel is repeated or too long.

Indeed it may have been altered, but having some new information that doesn't directly contradict something adds some degree of evidence to it being true.

I'll try not to skip stuff yet, but I feel that we're reaching an end to productive discussion pretty soon.

Some degree, perhaps. Or maybe it's evidence that it most certainly is no longer true. That's why first drafts are unreliable: multiple equally plausible interpretations of why something was changed.

Yeah, unless I said explicitly it was in the first version my quotes were from the final version.

The author said that bodies remembered being alive so they were easier to animate. I hardly think it's a stretch to say that breaths remember being alive so they animate bodies easier- a reason for it seeking patterns of life.

We know that divine breaths can increase muscle size say. That implies that breaths interact with physical strength. It could be a quirk of divine magic, or you may well have to eat your shoes.

Sure, I can agree with Breaths "remembering being alive" in a very very very vague sense of being attuned to organic and/or human-like objects and even warping those objects to reflect humanity a bit. The source of this as an actual re-writable memory, instead of just an effect of the intrinsic nature of all Breath falling under the "human" category is what I disagree with.

Divine Breaths aren't really carrying "muscle." They grant the ability for Returned to reshape their bodies at will, up to and including making themselves fat instead of Greek gods. That's not what I was talking about, and I didn't realize it was what you were talking about.

Nightblood senses using people's senses, not their own- it may well be that awakened objects do the same. We are trying to explain how breaths work so I thought it was relevent.

Ah, I see. Thank you then, that might well be an avenue worth exploring (purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity, senses of Awakened objects). I guess I've just gotten into the habit of assuming some kind of counter-argument from you. :)

It may have been crossed out because he wanted to show not tell. The illness may have just been another factor. With this direct quote that aspect is more likely to be true. We shall see.

Going back to ambiguity, it could just as easily (and, I think, more likely) that Brandon wanted to eliminate those negative effects as a consequence of Breaths. As far as showing and not telling gets, we don't get any showing of "fuzziness" from not having Breaths except for sick!Vivienne, further evidence against it.

You're taking the cognitive stuff from other books. It's just as reasonable to take the metal magic aspects to interpret it. Brandon Sanderson likely thinks in those terms. We have to think like him.

Sorry for being unclear. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't do it because it was based in other books, but merely that we should avoid parceling off tiny smidgens of aspects as a rule, at least when we can reasonably posit a more simply system.

Ctrl f and breath is really helpful with the entire book.

The thing is I could have sworn I did that. Thanks for the tip, though, since apparently I didn't.

Giving a fixed response to a stimuli is instinct. You tap someone, they jerk away.

Fair enough, again.

Okay, I suppose this is as good a place as any to actually explain myself as regards to my dislike of instincts as you have them, namely in the Spiritual realm:

The Reach of the Cognitive Realm (and why instincts are in there):

Despite the fact that instincts and instinctual responses don't fall under cogitation, as in complex introspective thought, the Cognitive realm as I've defined it is not limited to only sentient beings. According to the three-aspect model of the Cosmere, rocks have Cognitive aspects, and so do fruit flies; all animals have Cognitive aspects, for that matter, most of whom are usually described in the real world as primarily acting on instinct.

I put all of these things in the Cognitive realm because they still fall under the category of cognition. Cognition is defined (Wikipedia, but oh well) as: "a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions." It's stretch to call a rock "deciding" how to fall to the ground a mental process, obviously, but I've expanded it a bit to make room for even inanimate objects having Cognitive aspects, as we know they do (ala the goblet in Shalan's room).

So you could describe the primitive Cognitive aspects of animals or Awakened objects as instincts, sure, and you've provided a fair argument for why that description is accurate given how deterministic most instinctual responses are. My disagreement, I suppose, falls under some haziness (though this may be my fault) as to how this instinct can be a Spiritual trait; what that would mean if it was; what it would mean if the instinct actually had to be removed from the Breath giver, stored in an Awakener, and then given to an Awakening target; and why, by the beard of Zeus, you insist on that instinct being stored in the Breath instead of just being endowed from the Awakener at the moment of Awakening.

Way of Kings Goblet quote:

You want me to change? a warm voice said in her mind, distinct and different from the cold whisper she had heard earlier. It was deep and hollow and conveyed a sense of great age. It seemed to come from her hand, and she realized she was grasping something there. One of the beads.

The movement of the ocean of glass threatened to tow her down; she kicked frantically, somehow managing to stay afloat.

I’ve been as I am for a great long time, the warm voice said. I sleep so much. I will change. Give me what you have.

“I don’t know what you mean! Please, help me!”

I will change.

She felt suddenly cold, as if the warmth were being drawn from her. She screamed as the bead in her fingers flared to sudden warmth. She dropped it just as a shift in the ocean swell towed her under, beads rolling over one another with a soft clatter.

She fell back and hit her bed, back in her room. Beside her, the goblet on her nightstand melted, the glass becoming red liquid, dropping the three spheres inside of it to the top of the nightstand. The red liquid poured over the sides of the nightstand, splashingto the floor. Shallan pulled back, horrified.

The goblet had been changed into blood.

The goblet talked to her in Shadesmar, otherwise known as the Cognitive realm. Considering that an inanimate object has a Cognitive aspect, I think it's fair to say that instinctive animals have one too. Intelligence is not required for a presence in the Cognitive realm.

Denth stood for a long moment, foot on Vasher’s arm, sword lowered. Then, finally, he shook his head. “No. I don’t deserve that. Neither of us do. Goodbye, Vasher.”

He said that too. With the all that, I'd presume you can endow another with your memory, since Denth doesn't wish it on Vasher (as they are bad memories). The girl probably endowed Vasher with her emotional memories (hence the flicker), implying memories are within breaths. While she might cognitively remember what happened the experience would have no emotional impact on her so she wouldn't have to cry at night.

Or Denth meant that Vasher didn't deserve to live and/or be redeemed for whatever terrible harm he caused Denth by "healing" Denth of the memory of it. Vivienne also didn't see anything actually pass between Vasher and the girl, or Vasher's aura flicker, which you would think would have been mentioned.

As far as emotional impact, when someone says, "I can make you forget," that usually means forgetting, not "I can make you emotionally neutral to your still entirely intact memories." The girl also acts somewhat disoriented after her brain-scrub, implying that she didn't know how she got there in the state she was in.

Neither side knew much about how breaths work. Both were wrong in various ways. And it may be that I or you is closer to the truth- breaths might have more identity than one would think, or less. Be closer or further frorm souls.

Sorry, that was more meant to be a small dig at you than a real substantive point. Souls *shivers*

We can't say for sure, though my suggestion, it only takes what is not needed, probably works.

But that's just he problem, "only what's needed" is still a storming huge chunk if it's enough to create a nearly intact mind all on its lonesome. You would think you'd see some mental effect on Drabs and Awakeners.

It can make a human twitch easily. It has enough force. A lot of energy is clearly required to imitate muscles and skin and such.

Fair enough. Yet another of my throwaway points. I guess I really am getting a bit tired, and/or losing track of what's been said where by who for what reason. Sorry.

Awakened objects are installed with a single instinct or command, as we have seen. They are incomplete.

See my above discussion of instincts as naturally Cognitive objects.

Your interpretation would probably be phrased by him in a different manner- if it was the person's cognitive aspect he would have likely said that the person's personal meaning of what is evil is instilled in the sword and that the lady who created it didn't understand evil.

But he would also have to explain how Nightblood's mind came upon its current mechanism for discovering and judging someone's evilness, which would once again plunge us into the nature of that mind.

In the novel which formed the basis of Warbreaker(you can read it from the warbreaker portal in deleted scenes) a boy was the heir to a dynasty. This dynasty had the magical ability of skill. They could quickly pick up any skill with little effort. The entire dynasty got killed and the boy got all of it. Without the slightest act of will he could pick up any skill or ability. He could fight better than a skilled and magically strong prince, cook better than a master chef, climb a wall better than the best climber. With no mental strain he can just turn on advanced muscle memory.

Skill is just another stat in many books and games.

You are aware that this is stronger evidence for Cognitive change than for primitive Spiritual instincts, since cooking is most definitely not instinctive. I doubt that cooking, magic (depending on how the system worked), or even fighting (on a tactical level) could ever fairly be reduced to just "muscle memory." I also doubt that he could have done all of that instinctively without any mental strain if you drugged him or otherwise impaired his ability to think and reason.

Even if you insist on disagreeing, I still have my analysis from farther up this post that instincts rightly fall under the Cognitive realm.

This isn't a game and skill as a stat is simply an abstraction for a more complex thing (namely, the learning process, experience, wisdom, and yes, muscle memory), whereas whenever I offhandedly call an attribute a stat (for levity's sake), I'm referring something that we've actually seen be arbitrarily raised or lowered without much thought by direct magical intervention. Vin doesn't grow more skilled as a fighter when she burns pewter, she just grows more physically capable of being one.

And most things you do with your body require no conscious intervention. You can walk without thinking, grab without thinking.

Unless you're mentally impaired or you're walking across a slippery surface of the thing you're grabbing is struggling (once again, cat+flea meds is not a good thing). It's all easy because we've been doing since we were babies, not because it simply is so.

You said he sounded more like a psychopathic man child than a being of instinct. A psychopathtic man child would, presumably, be a being of emotion as children don't think clearly about things but I can't really challenge you saying Nighty is not a being of instinct and emotion if you offer no argument.

I thought it was obvious that I was offering an equally valid alternative interpretation of the nature of Nightblood's mind. To spell it out more clearly, then, everything you say about Nightblood--as you yourself noted just now--and point to as evidence for him being a being of pure emotion and little intellect, could also be attributed to him having a stunted Cognitive aspect and trying to undertake a very complex command. So there's no compelling evidence that says we should choose your new theory over an established one (mine) that explains the facts equally well in Nightblood's case and, if I may say so, better in other cases.

It's fairly narrow, and was what I had in mind before as it's the definition.

Ok.

Occam's razor requires explaining everything that happens. Since the breaths do make decisions, some explanation for how they make decisions is necessary. It's not unwarranted and unnecessary if it's required to explain all observations.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22I+made+a+choice+on+instinct&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=ZjV&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB%3Aofficial&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&oq=%22I+decided+on+instinct%22&gs_l=serp.3...6445.11924.2.13477.25.23.2.0.0.3.167.2690.4j19.23.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.kdsppYrIFKo&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=460fa893879c26b0&biw=1519&bih=634

Yes, people often decide based on instincts.

If you fall, you don't have time to think about what would be the best course of action considering all the possible factors. You grab something close by to slow your fall or put your hands out in front of you. Just as a rope grabs when thrown. It's fairly easy to judge whether someone is evil too, based on surface judgements and stereotypes. These decisions do not involve processing much information, just seeings stuff, accessing how you feel about things and repeating a set of actions.

Occam's razor suggests explaining everything that happens in the way that makes the least possible assumptions, barring any other way to distinguish between theories. That's kind of been my point this whole time, since I hold that my theory is more elegant and goes to explain more facts beyond simply Awakening.

Very well. See my above analysis on instincts, once again.

The handless thing would be hard to do. You'd need fifty or so handless people to give you their breaths. Would be interesting to see though. People do remember phantom hands though- it'd be better to cut baby's hands off at birth and take their breaths later in life to be scientific.

It may also be that breaths take some or all of their instincts from the person using breaths. Could a handless person make a hand command?

The drab presumably retains their instincts, remaining functional, but might well not be as good at learning new ones. It would be hard to distinguish this from their depression which causes a lack of motivation.

When you say "It may also be that breaths take some or all of their instincts from the person using breaths. Could a handless person make a hand command?," I grow a bit confused. More and more, I see no real distinction between the consequences of my own theory of Cognitive transference from the Awakener and your posit of "instincts."

As for Drabs, if they keep all of their instincts, then where in the name of Cthulhu do the Breaths get them from (barring the Awakener, but that would simply make your theory a direct copy of my own)? I give a power source for Cognitive copying (color), but here you are suggesting that instincts are simply copied over wholesale from Breath givers without any loss on anyone's part, which also contradicts the narrative the book presents of Drabs lacking a piece of themselves when they give up their Breaths.

If breaths could do anything you could think of then they would be able to easily solve problems for you. By making them limited to simple commands you force people to think of how to do crazy things with simple commands. He is increasing creativity with his limitation.

Good point.

Instincts involve no planning, at most snap judgements based on a simple sensory input, and need no thought. Thinking involves long term plans, considering many complex factors in depth, and a strong understanding of indirect causation. It doesn't compromise the existence of the cognitive realm, and even if breaths were fully sentient cognitive beings I don't see how that would compromise the cognitive realm, any more than humans being sentient compromises the cognitive realm.

As I (I'm just gonna' keep referencing it, to save typing) argue above, the Cognitive realm stores more than just full sentience. It also includes inanimate objects, and presumably everything in-between.

If Breaths are even partially sentient, then they must be partially Cognitive in their nature, as well as Spiritual. My very first response to you said why this made no sense; there is also our un-ending discussions of how Drabs do not become more stupid nor Awakeners more intelligent due to the presence or absence of Breaths. You yourself eventually settled on a non-intelligent "instincts" attribute which you placed in the Spiritual realm.

I do not know where you get your ideas of what I believe.

These are soul fragments (broken and incomplete) animating pieces of rope which are nothing like what they are used to. I doubt they have perfect access to people's minds or find it that easy to carry out orders. That they can do anything at all is impressive.

I think I misinterpreted your reading of Nightblood's sense-sharing to be in support of all Awakened objects also having mind-sharing. Sorry about that.

I am calling them a bundle of instinct, not a fully capable being. I agreed with you that they had no thought. That level of thought requires cognition. Besides which, on a hot day there are many things you could hold. You might need to grab enemies during a fight on hot days too.

I guess this breaks down to my lack of understanding of how "instincts" differ from primitive Cognitive aspects. I'm just trying to understand what the extent and capabilities of your instinctual Breaths are, and why they end where they do. Referring higher up again, even non-sentient instincts still ought to fall under the Cognitive realm in any well-ordered system, especially since the goblets are already there.

Intellect is honed over millenia too. And they probably have a partial instinct, being soul fragments.

I am unsure what you're saying. Breaths are stupid, and instinct is intelligent and cognitive functions are stupid, so it's more likely they are animated by a cognitive function? Surely cognition is by definition smart. It is how your brain processes information to make decisions. Instincts are often stupid, being a repetitive response to a stimuli. If I accept all your arguments about breath, that it is wasteful and suboptimal, then surely that would sugggest it was based off something that was unable to process information, not something that could?

EDIT: I can't believe I missed saying this the first time around, but my original criticism that "instincts" being already present in Breaths makes the Visualization step unnecessary actually still applies, even more so with stupid Breaths that grab everything in sight. You're original response was "Hold what things? Hold themselves? Make a cup to hold water? Hold a key to open a door? Hold back someone from a fight? there's a lot of possibilities as to what hold things could mean." In answer, "hold things."

Awakened objects make no distinction, so the Visualization step cannot be a "narrowing down" for already fully capable instinctive Breaths. That once again leaves the obvious (and heavily implied in-text) answer that the Visualization provides the method by which the Awakened object ought to go about following its Command. So, once again, the question is raised as to what the Visualization step is for if Breaths are already "instinctively" capable of following Commands.

The same holds true for Vivienne having to Visualize "protect me" as well as for othe Commands in the book, like Vasher (pg 285):

“Upon call, become my fingers and grip,” he Commanded. The shirt quivered and a group of tassels curled up around his hand. Five of them, like fingers.

It was a difficult Command. It required far more Breath to Awaken than he would have liked—his remaining Breath barely allowed him the Second Heightening—and the visualization of the Command had taken practice to perfect."

I imagine that instinctive Breaths should know how to be fingers without needing a tricky Visualization, as would also be the case with other such general and self-explanatory Commands.

--

Sorry for your confusion. I suppose it stems from my own confusion.

Also Cognition (as in belonging to the Cognitive realm) can, by definition, also be dumb, as it turns out.

If you accept all of my arguments about Breath, then Breath are mostly just power-sources as far as Awakening is concerned, with the Awakener providing the Cognitive aspect, so Breaths are being just about as optimal as they can be. So yes, I am suggesting that Breathe are based off of something that is unable to process information, namely a small fragment of the human soul, just enough to get the juices flowing but lacking any ability to think, reason, or even react "instinctively" due to its soulyness.

Tis only possible with more information though.

I'm sure that there's more we can theorize about them once our oh-so-small discussion is out of the way.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll try not to skip stuff yet, but I feel that we're reaching an end to productive discussion pretty soon.

Indeed, but we are mostly in agreement so we're pretty close to resolving it all.

Some degree, perhaps. Or maybe it's evidence that it most certainly is no longer true. That's why first drafts are unreliable: multiple equally plausible interpretations of why something was changed.

I think the most important reliability thing is that they are written by the same author. It may have been tweaked, but the author found it perfectly plausible that less breaths would leave someone feeling fuzzy. The author, at one point, thought that was perfectly fair and plausible given his understanding of the world.

Divine Breaths aren't really carrying "muscle." They grant the ability for Returned to reshape their bodies at will, up to and including making themselves fat instead of Greek gods. That's not what I was talking about, and I didn't realize it was what you were talking about.

Divine breaths may be tweaking the physical stat because souls are connected to the physical stat.

Ah, I see. Thank you then, that might well be an avenue worth exploring (purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity, senses of Awakened objects). I guess I've just gotten into the habit of assuming some kind of counter-argument from you. :)

We are just trying to predict the future. I am as happy to agree as disagree with you.

Going back to ambiguity, it could just as easily (and, I think, more likely) that Brandon wanted to eliminate those negative effects as a consequence of Breaths. As far as showing and not telling gets, we don't get any showing of "fuzziness" from not having Breaths except for sick!Vivienne, further evidence against it.

As much as you might dislike it, Vivienne being fuzzy while is likely to be due to the breaths- Brandon showing us the negative effects of a loss of breaths. It's not evidence against it. I'd put it at fifty fifty.

It would mean the drab/lifeless/awakener thing made more sense, if there was some small degree of cognition in the breaths.

Sorry for being unclear. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't do it because it was based in other books, but merely that we should avoid parceling off tiny smidgens of aspects as a rule, at least when we can reasonably posit a more simply system.

Your system has less data- Brandon never clearly defines spiritual and cognitive and physical. You can't make a reasoned system without data.

Okay, I suppose this is as good a place as any to actually explain myself as regards to my dislike of instincts as you have them, namely in the Spiritual realm:

The Reach of the Cognitive Realm (and why instincts are in there):

Despite the fact that instincts and instinctual responses don't fall under cogitation, as in complex introspective thought, the Cognitive realm as I've defined it is not limited to only sentient beings. According to the three-aspect model of the Cosmere, rocks have Cognitive aspects, and so do fruit flies; all animals have Cognitive aspects, for that matter, most of whom are usually described in the real world as primarily acting on instinct.

I put all of these things in the Cognitive realm because they still fall under the category of cognition. Cognition is defined (Wikipedia, but oh well) as: "a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions." It's stretch to call a rock "deciding" how to fall to the ground a mental process, obviously, but I've expanded it a bit to make room for even inanimate objects having Cognitive aspects, as we know they do (ala the goblet in Shalan's room).

The goblet sees she has a problem (she wants him to change) remembers the past (it's always been a goblet) explains its past with no emotion (always been the same- perhaps giving a reason to change) and says what it will do to solve her problem. It asks her for spirit (warmth I presume means spirit energy) to change.

Fits the definition of cognition clearly. It pays attention to its surroundings, understands and produces language, solves problems, and makes reasoned decisions based on the data. It is different from awakened objects. They don't pay attention to their surroundings, responding only to a single stimuli. They don't understand or produce language. They don't solve problems (an intelligent human can use them to solve problems though) and they make snap judgements based on simple ideas and stimuli.

So you could describe the primitive Cognitive aspects of animals or Awakened objects as instincts, sure, and you've provided a fair argument for why that description is accurate given how deterministic most instinctual responses are. My disagreement, I suppose, falls under some haziness (though this may be my fault) as to how this instinct can be a Spiritual trait; what that would mean if it was; what it would mean if the instinct actually had to be removed from the Breath giver, stored in an Awakener, and then given to an Awakening target; and why, by the beard of Zeus, you insist on that instinct being stored in the Breath instead of just being endowed from the Awakener at the moment of Awakening.

The example of cognition you provided that a goblet made was nothing like an instinct. It considered a problem, considered its history, sought out a creative solution, and requested spiritual energy. An instinct is a fixed respose to a stimuli. No creativity, no thoughts of history, no requests for support from companions (though you can have the instinct to call for help), no deviation due to the complexities of a problem. Not in a single instinct, at least.

Why, by the beard of Zeus, do I insist on this instinct being stored in the breath? Because all the evidence points to that.

Or Denth meant that Vasher didn't deserve to live and/or be redeemed for whatever terrible harm he caused Denth by "healing" Denth of the memory of it. Vivienne also didn't see anything actually pass between Vasher and the girl, or Vasher's aura flicker, which you would think would have been mentioned.

That is another possible explanation I hadn't thought of, yes.

Vivienne wouldn't necessarily see a small object moving between them.

As far as emotional impact, when someone says, "I can make you forget," that usually means forgetting, not "I can make you emotionally neutral to your still entirely intact memories." The girl also acts somewhat disoriented after her brain-scrub, implying that she didn't know how she got there in the state she was in.

I guess. Breaths may have direct control over full memories too.

Sorry, that was more meant to be a small dig at you than a real substantive point. Souls *shivers*

You're digging at me? Ugh.

But that's just he problem, "only what's needed" is still a freaking huge chunk if it's enough to create a nearly intact mind all on its lonesome. You would think you'd see some mental effect on Drabs and Awakeners.

I'm not really an expert on how large the soul is and how large or small its spare capacity is. You might or might not see some mental effect on Drabs and Awakeners- he hinted in edition 1 that you do.

But he would also have to explain how Nightblood's mind came upon its current mechanism for discovering and judging someone's evilness, which would once again plunge us into the nature of that mind.

He could do that easily enough.

This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly.

Let me reword it.

This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, returned lady did her best to visualize what evil was. What she decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly.

You are aware that this is stronger evidence for Cognitive change than for primitive Spiritual instincts, since cooking is most definitely not instinctive. I doubt that cooking, magic (depending on how the system worked), or even fighting (on a tactical level) could ever fairly be reduced to just "muscle memory." I also doubt that he could have done all of that instinctively without any mental strain if you drugged him or otherwise impaired his ability to think and reason.

His cooking was instinctual- he had no idea what he was doing or why, just that he had to do it. Likewise with the fighting. He couldn't teach people because he didn't understand his moves.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/123/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Seven

Devin reached for the flower, deciding he might as well follow the ‘recipe’ Den had given him. However, he paused.

I should cook the meat first, he thought. But, how did he know that?

He moved uncertainly at first, but gained more confidence as he worked. He started to boil the meat in a small pot, and started cooking the vegetables in a separate one. He knew almost instinctually which spices to add to which pot, even though he didn’t even know what half of them were.

I need cleanwater, Devin realized. The stew wouldn’t taste half as good without something to dull the taste of the salt. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the men were in the habit of collecting rain. Or, if they did collect it, the probably drank it immediately.

From five.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/121/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Five

Yet, he understood what he was doing. He knew how to prepare for each combination of attacks. He knew how to watch and wait for an opening. He knew when his chance came and, almost without thinking, he knew how to sink his sword straight into the unarmored spot under the Guard's arm.

Drugging him or making him tired would impair him. If you stuck a knife in him that would also impair his instincts (which he noted when a person tried to sneakily knife him). What's your point? I am not saying that instincts and spirituality is independent of your physical form. We know cognition and spiritual power are both dependent on your physical form. Your life flutters if you're dying physically, your mind gets fuzzy if you are ill physically.

This isn't a game and skill as a stat is simply an abstraction for a more complex thing (namely, the learning process, experience, wisdom, and yes, muscle memory), whereas whenever I offhandedly call an attribute a stat (for levity's sake), I'm referring something that we've actually seen be arbitrarily raised or lowered without much thought by direct magical intervention. Vin doesn't grow more skilled as a fighter when she burns pewter, she just grows more physically capable of being one.

And there his skill is arbitrarily raised by direct magical intervention boosting his instincts.

Unless you're mentally impaired or you're walking across a slippery surface of the thing you're grabbing is struggling (once again, cat+flea meds is not a good thing). It's all easy because we've been doing since we were babies, not because it simply is so.

I agree. And it's easy to have a good immune system unless you don't eat right or are immune system impaired, it's easy to be strong as long as you have leverage. It's all easy because people are in the right situation, not because it simply is so.

I thought it was obvious that I was offering an equally valid alternative interpretation of the nature of Nightblood's mind. To spell it out more clearly, then, everything you say about Nightblood--as you yourself noted just now--and point to as evidence for him being a being of pure emotion and little intellect, could also be attributed to him having a stunted Cognitive aspect and trying to undertake a very complex command. So there's no compelling evidence that says we should choose your new theory over an established one (mine) that explains the facts equally well in Nightblood's case and, if I may say so, better in other cases.

Your theory is not established since we don't know that it does have a stunted cognitive aspect. I was hoping you'd point out some time when Nightblood solved a problem creatively, or correctly used its memory to predict the future, or made a decision based on multiple sensory inputs, or some major marker of partial cognition or do something to prove your theory.

When you say "It may also be that breaths take some or all of their instincts from the person using breaths. Could a handless person make a hand command?," I grow a bit confused. More and more, I see no real distinction between the consequences of my own theory of Cognitive transference from the Awakener and your posit of "instincts."

1. We don't see any evidence of cognition in breaths.

2. I was guessing that while the breaths are wandering about a person's body they pick up what it's like to grab from the soul in your hands. If from my first theory they are blank when endowed to another they might pick up the nature of being alive when they're in a new person. Under your theory, the breaths directly take a cognitive aspect from the person which controls their form- your thoughts make them want to form muscles and grab. Under one theory they are limited by what you can do, in another they are limited by your imagination.

As for Drabs, if they keep all of their instincts, then where in the name of Cthulhu do the Breaths get them from (barring the Awakener, but that would simply make your theory a direct copy of my own)? I give a power source for Cognitive copying (color), but here you are suggesting that instincts are simply copied over wholesale from Breath givers without any loss on anyone's part, which also contradicts the narrative the book presents of Drabs lacking a piece of themselves when they give up their Breaths.

You can learn new instincts and so presumably have spare capacity. Under my theory of how breaths are made, some or all of that spare capacity is is in breaths. Whatever is not being used. Or all of your breath might know what it feels like to grab. Drabs feel that loss.

As I (I'm just gonna' keep referencing it, to save typing) argue above, the Cognitive realm stores more than just full sentience. It also includes inanimate objects, and presumably everything in-between.

Yes, I agree.

If Breaths are even partially sentient, then they must be partially Cognitive in their nature, as well as Spiritual. My very first response to you said why this made no sense; there is also our un-ending discussions of how Drabs do not become more stupid nor Awakeners more intelligent due to the presence or absence of Breaths. You yourself eventually settled on a non-intelligent "instincts" attribute which you placed in the Spiritual realm.

Can you provide some clear quote from Brandon that sentience, the ability to have subjective experiences, means something must be cognitive? If that's true that blows your theory out of the water. The breath's main effect is sentience (they enhance your subjective experience of colours) so it seems quite clear that breaths are made of sentience.

The drab issue is fair. My theory requires no cognition. But if less breaths means a fuzzier mind (and it did in first edition) then they may have some cognitive aspect.

I think I misinterpreted your reading of Nightblood's sense-sharing to be in support of all Awakened objects also having mind-sharing. Sorry about that.

They may have some mind sharing, though likely not as strong or perfect due to having less breaths.

EDIT: I can't believe I missed saying this the first time around, but my original criticism that "instincts" being already present in Breaths makes the Visualization step unnecessary actually still applies, even more so with stupid Breaths that grab everything in sight. You're original response was "Hold what things? Hold themselves? Make a cup to hold water? Hold a key to open a door? Hold back someone from a fight? there's a lot of possibilities as to what hold things could mean." In answer, "hold things."

Awakened objects make no distinction, so the Visualization step cannot be a "narrowing down" for already fully capable instinctive Breaths. That once again leaves the obvious (and heavily implied in-text) answer that the Visualization provides the method by which the Awakened object ought to go about following its Command. So, once again, the question is raised as to what the Visualization step is for if Breaths are already "instinctively" capable of following Commands.

I'm trying to understand what you're saying.

Under the theory which you accepted, more breaths meant more emotional or spiritual strength and more ability to communicate with or command breaths. An awakener with more experience can command them better. The god emperor was able to make a cloth hold a particular thing, the knife at the end. Vasher was only able to make a rope curl around an object he threw them at.

I am not saying that all awakened objects have a perfect set of all instincts which they follow accurately at all times.

The same holds true for Vivienne having to Visualize "protect me" as well as for othe Commands in the book, like Vasher (pg 285):

“Upon call, become my fingers and grip,” he Commanded. The shirt quivered and a group of tassels curled up around his hand. Five of them, like fingers.

It was a difficult Command. It required far more Breath to Awaken than he would have liked—his remaining Breath barely allowed him the Second Heightening—and the visualization of the Command had taken practice to perfect."

I imagine that instinctive Breaths should know how to be fingers without needing a tricky Visualization, as would also be the case with other such general and self-explanatory Commands.

--

I agree that fingers shouldn't need lots of breaths to be fingers, but he didn't ask them to just be fingers. He asked them to monitor his fingers and copy his movements I presume. They had to sense his actions and amplify them in a certain way. I have done that. I have copied other hands. But I wouldn't say it's a common action of mine, or one I have a good instinct for.

There are also many possible interpretations of upon call, become my fingers and grip. Grip what, his hand, his arm, the enemy, the ground? Become fingers, cut off the hand and replace fingers, copy your movements exactly, copy in an exaggerated fashion?

If you accept all of my arguments about Breath, then Breath are mostly just power-sources as far as Awakening is concerned, with the Awakener providing the Cognitive aspect, so Breaths are being just about as optimal as they can be. So yes, I am suggesting that Breathe are based off of something that is unable to process information, namely a small fragment of the human soul, just enough to get the juices flowing but lacking any ability to think, reason, or even react "instinctively" due to its soulyness.

I understand your theory, that breaths are a power source and a cognitive aspect is the guider, with the efficiency of actions depending on how efficiently the cognitive aspect can work, with less good aspects causing power leakage.

I disagree.

I'm sure that there's more we can theorize about them once our oh-so-small discussion is out of the way.

Indeed, if we can find more sources as you did.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<snip>

As much as you might dislike it, Vivienne being fuzzy while is likely to be due to the breaths- Brandon showing us the negative effects of a loss of breaths. It's not evidence against it. I'd put it at fifty fifty.

It would mean the drab/lifeless/awakener thing made more sense, if there was some small degree of cognition in the breaths.

What, exactly, would make more sense? We don't see Drabs or Awakeners with more or less "fuzzy" minds, just sharper or duller perception of the world.

Your system has less data- Brandon never clearly defines spiritual and cognitive and physical. You can't make a reasoned system without data.

He never defined "instinct" or "emotional memory" either. He did tell us that three distinct realms (P, C, and S) exist, so I think it's a pretty good idea to base our analysis on them.

The goblet sees she has a problem (she wants him to change) remembers the past (it's always been a goblet) explains its past with no emotion (always been the same- perhaps giving a reason to change) and says what it will do to solve her problem. It asks her for spirit (warmth I presume means spirit energy) to change.

Fits the definition of cognition clearly. It pays attention to its surroundings, understands and produces language, solves problems, and makes reasoned decisions based on the data. It is different from awakened objects. They don't pay attention to their surroundings, responding only to a single stimuli. They don't understand or produce language. They don't solve problems (an intelligent human can use them to solve problems though) and they make snap judgements based on simple ideas and stimuli.

----

The example of cognition you provided that a goblet made was nothing like an instinct. It considered a problem, considered its history, sought out a creative solution, and requested spiritual energy. An instinct is a fixed respose to a stimuli. No creativity, no thoughts of history, no requests for support from companions (though you can have the instinct to call for help), no deviation due to the complexities of a problem. Not in a single instinct, at least.

Why, by the beard of Zeus, do I insist on this instinct being stored in the breath? Because all the evidence points to that.

The goblet says exactly: "You want me to change?" "I’ve been as I am for a great long time" and "I will change. Give me what you have." You're adding a smidgen to the narrative there.

EDIT 3: Presumably, that goblet was just sitting there minding its own business, not actively reacting to the world around it, since the day it was created. It's only Cognitive action that we see is a fairly simple response to a magic system. How about I offer an alternative narrative from yours, one which doesn't interpret the goblet as something of a latent sapient mind:

The goblet receives a stimulus (being in the presence of a soulcast-capable human), sends out pertinent information about its state, waits for input on how Shallan wants it to change that state (as is what the magic system ought to cause it to do), and then takes Shallan's stormlight and defaults to pure blood when Shallan fails to offer any deviations--within an appropriate time frame--from what her garnet naturally suggests.

Doesn't that sound a bit more "instinctual" and deterministic to you? The act of soulcasting from this perspective simply initiates a chain of queries and responses as a result of those queries. I'm not saying that it's a sure thing that this is how it actually works, but you are a bit quick to dismiss the goblet as "merely" sapient in your effort to preserve the sanctity of "instincts."

Is it so unbelievable that animals are simply a more robust, active version of this kind of Cognitive aspect, one which is active even when there is not soulcasting in their vicinity?

But I digress.

The main point of that quote was to prove to you that even very simple objects have Cognitive aspects. A rope will have a Cognitive aspect whether or not it's Awakened. So when you Awaken it, what's wrong with saying that the Awakener just tacks another bit onto the Cognitive aspect? You keep belaboring that it's possible for instinct to be separate from Cogntion, and its possible for Breaths to store this instinct, but why are you fighting so hard?

You say that "all evidence points to" Breaths housing instincts, but what evidence is that, exactly? I just did a cursory search of the last page and couldn't really find anything of note. Most of your points seem geared towards providing an alternative to my model, but you keep having to explain away why we see no real evidence, especially in Drabs and Awakeners, of what should be there if you're right.

Your theory is ethereal to boot, with you swinging between extremes of:

1) Awakeners imparting instincts to Breaths upon Awakening and no instinct-loss for Drabs

2)Drabs losing instincts to Breaths

-Or Drabs having a harder time learning new instincts

3)New iteration: You can learn new instincts and so presumably have spare capacity. Under my theory of how breaths are made, some or all of that spare capacity is is in breaths. Whatever is not being used. Or all of your breath might know what it feels like to grab. Drabs feel that loss.

EDIT: 4)I was guessing that while the breaths are wandering about a person's body they pick up what it's like to grab from the soul in your hands. If from my first theory they are blank when endowed to another they might pick up the nature of being alive when they're in a new person.

-Tell me if I missed any.

From that we get that instincts can suddenly be learned, as opposed to being intrinsic:

Instinct:

1. an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species.

2. a natural or innate impulse, inclination, or tendency.

3. a natural aptitude or gift: an instinct for making money.

4. natural intuitive power.

Wikipedia: Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors

--No learning there.

So you can't mean actual instinct, as in the kind you're born with. That eliminates 3 and a subsection of 2, leaving only instincts being copied over from the Awakener and being stolen from Drabs.

Once again, no evidence of Drabs/Awakeners being more/less "instinctively capable" exists in the books, so let's not make assumptions.

EDIT 5: You would think that an Awakener who was holding a "sword fighting capable" Breath would be better at sword fighting, and that there would even be an economy for "Breath trainers" to provide these skills to Awakeners. If Breaths just sit around in 1-Breath people gathering extra copies of "instincts" to them, then those Breaths should probably boost the original set, so the "ordinary" level of Grasping for people on Nalthis is actually some degree better than usual. Drabs should suffer from this when they lose the boost to these attributes, and Awakeners should benefit.

Even if, for no apparent reason, Drabs/Awakeners don't see any benefits from extra "instincts" they hold, we should still see an economy for "Breath trainging." We know that Lifeless who were skilled in life remain skilled after death, and people notice and care about this, so they should also notice and care about different skill-levels in Breaths.

A judo-master equivalent's Breath should have a particularly robust and useful "hold things" "instinct," should it not? A person with a good sense of direction might have a particularly useful "find tunnels" instinct. A skilled fighter should provide a useful Breath for "fight for me, as if you were me."

Besides this kind of thing being mentioned just because it should be for any detailed magic system, such "professions" would have added depth and character to Hallandrian culture within the book, and certainly would have been worth mentioning as a logical consequence of Breaths being as you describe them. We know that Brandon likes "mundane utility" for his magic systems and examining the logical implications of what magic would do to a society, certainly, and "Breath trainer" as a profession would definitely be a perfect example of that kind of implication.

--

EDIT: Just re-noticed #4, I'll address it now. First of all, it still violates the narrative of Drabs losing out when they give up Breath if Breaths are just "spare capacity." Second, and more importantly, my soul doesn't know how to extend and retract my body, or how to fight to defend myself in the form of a cloak.

As it turns out, motor skills (like grasping and defending yourself (effectively) and whatnot) are learned behaviors too. So there goes your entire instinct argument. That's nice, and means that even stealing actual, universal instincts from Drabs won't cut it, since those instincts don't even include "hold things."

But wait, can't we just transfer these learned behaviors? First of all, that kind of thing is hardwired in on the individual level, so ought to be a bit harder to transfer.

Even allowing for transfer, though, it's still far more narrow than Awakening shows. No Breath-giver will have the learned behavior to extend or retract (as a rope, no less), no matter how hard you imagine that Breath responding when tapped on in specific ways. Some of the other Commands' implementations ("Protect me" as a cloak and "Strengthen me" come to mind) are also such that they really shouldn't be learned behaviors for any average Joe human that you get Breaths from, but the rope is probably the strongest example.

EDIT 2: More examples of improbable commands for simple motor skills!

"Upon call, become my fingers and grip that which I must"

"Become as my legs and give them strength"

"Fight for me, as if you were me"

"Fetch keys" "Find tunnels"

Please describe to me the "instinct" that is being called upon to strengthen legs.

--

(As you yourself partially quoted on post 32):

"the mechanics of how [Vasher] moved about with the ropes were far more complicated than they seemed. His Command incorporated making the rope respond to taps of his finger along its length. Awakening was different from creating a Lifeless—Lifeless had brains and could interpret Commands and requests. The rope had none of that; it could only act on its original instructions."

--Also a nice piece of evidence for why Lifeless are re-programmable.

Also, learned physical behavior seems an odd thing to program into the Spiritual realm, and really seems much more at home in the Physical/Cognitive, doesn't it?

EDIT 2: More fun on instincts. I'm trying to anticipate what you may say. I want this argument to end:

Q: "What if, by 'instincts,' I (Nepene) just mean that the Commands create and call upon tasks which are equivalent to instincts in relative simplicity and lack of Cognitive demand, so it's still an instinct?"

A: You've been talking non-stop about the human source of the Breath and human instinct being the basic restriction upon Awakening. Commands can be "equivalent" to instinct all you want, but that doesn't mean that can be embedded in Breaths in any real way prior to the moment of Awakening. The "create" part is the problem here, not the "call upon."

Q: As far as 'Upon call, become my fingers and grip that which I must,' I have done that. I have copied other hands. But I wouldn't say it's a common action of mine, or one I have a good instinct for. So Awakening is just strengthening really weak instincts.

A: Well I've never copied someone's hand motions. The piano isn't my thing. Does Vasher ever go "I hope the vast majority ("it was a difficult Command. It required far more Breath to Awaken than he would have liked") of the Breaths I got from all of those poor rebellious farmers had some kind of "follow hands" motor skill worn in so well that they could do it unconsciously, to some extent"? How exactly would he go about "strengthening instincts" anyway? If each and every one of those Breaths is supposed to work together to move this foreign matter, won't all of them need a fairly complete set of "instincts?" Where will Vasher get them all? Just by imagining? Then why do Breaths need to store instinct in the first place? Can't he just imagine the whole lot and never have to worry about it?

--

So we have to have a way to program new learned behaviors into objects then. We can't ever teach ourselves to "extend/retract," obviously, so the behavior has to be created out of whole cloth at the moment of Awakening, perhaps even by imagining it. It's almost as if the only option really left to us is to have the Awakener mentally create and then transfer the mechanism by which they want an object to carry out a Command.

To sum up, Breaths can't store "instinct" of any sort because it doesn't cover the range of actions Awakened objects are capable of, as well as making Breaths non-generalized and unacceptably unique in requiring that the Breath-giver learned certain skills before giving the Breath up--which skills they should then lose, by the way. Such as Vivienne's ability to grasp anything when she's a Drab, since it's so basic as to be in everyone's Breath. The tap-sensitive rope is really my trump card here, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with any human action.

You can call the primitive deterministic behavior of Awakened objects "instinct" all you want, but that doesn't address where that "instinct" needs to originate, namely in the mind of the Awakener. I suppose you can still say that the "instinct" imagined by the Awakner is stored in the Spiritual realm with the newly transferred Breath, but you don't really have any reason to at this point, especially since the origin of these mechanisms is clearly within the Cognitive aspect of the Awakener.

--

As far as I know about the evidence at hand, I can't prove the negative yet of how it can be simply impossible that "instincts" fall in the Spiritual realm. But I have argued very strongly and, I believe, very effectively for the improbability of Breaths "stealth storing" instincts and then using them when used in Awakening.

What, exactly, is so wrong with suggesting that "instinct," defined as something to the effect of "non-reflective reaction to the world" (as enabled by the existence of your mind), is also seated in the Cognitive realm? What is so very good about instincts being stored in Breath that you insist upon them, and so very bad about Cognitive copying that you can't stomach it? I'm simply growing weary at this point, and don't understand why you fight so hard for an unnecessary and unfounded distinction.

You're digging at me? Ugh.

Dig (n): A taunt.

He could do that easily enough.

This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, the Breaths infused in him did their best to interpret their Command. What they decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly.

Let me reword it.

This, of course, isn't an easy thing to determine. In fact, I don't think it's a black or white issue for most people. When Nightblood was created, returned lady did her best to visualize what evil was. What she decided was evil was someone who would try to take the sword and use it for evil purposes, selling it, manipulating and extorting others, that sort of thing. Someone who wouldn't want the sword for those reasons was determined to be good. If they touch the weapon, they feel sick. If others touch the weapon, their desire to kill and destroy with it is enhanced greatly.

That still places the decision in the wrong place. In the case of Nightblood, I'm perfectly fine with his Cognitive aspect being the one that made the decision on how to interpret "destory evil," and you must agree that either way the point Brandon seemed to be getting at was a decision taking place within Nightblood, not in the mind of his Awakener.

His cooking was instinctual- he had no idea what he was doing or why, just that he had to do it. Likewise with the fighting. He couldn't teach people because he didn't understand his moves.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/123/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Seven

Devin reached for the flower, deciding he might as well follow the ‘recipe’ Den had given him. However, he paused.

I should cook the meat first, he thought. But, how did he know that?

He moved uncertainly at first, but gained more confidence as he worked. He started to boil the meat in a small pot, and started cooking the vegetables in a separate one. He knew almost instinctually which spices to add to which pot, even though he didn’t even know what half of them were.

I need cleanwater, Devin realized. The stew wouldn’t taste half as good without something to dull the taste of the salt. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the men were in the habit of collecting rain. Or, if they did collect it, the probably drank it immediately.

From five.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/121/Warbreaker-Prime-Mythwalker-Chapter-Five

Yet, he understood what he was doing. He knew how to prepare for each combination of attacks. He knew how to watch and wait for an opening. He knew when his chance came and, almost without thinking, he knew how to sink his sword straight into the unarmored spot under the Guard's arm.

Drugging him or making him tired would impair him. If you stuck a knife in him that would also impair his instincts (which he noted when a person tried to sneakily knife him). What's your point? I am not saying that instincts and spirituality is independent of your physical form. We know cognition and spiritual power are both dependent on your physical form. Your life flutters if you're dying physically, your mind gets fuzzy if you are ill physically.

Nice quotes. You did note him recognizing the appropriate course of action (prompted by his magic) and then taking it, did you not?: "I should cook the meat first, he thought. But, how did he know that?" Not just "Devin reached for the meat first without thinking, unsure of what he was doing or why. He felt a prisoner in his own body, watching in amazement as he prepared a feast, letting his mind wander as his body and instincts took control."

The actions all take place with his volition: presumably he could stay his hand in a fight if he wanted to spare his enemy, or sacrifice himself for a greater cause in that same fight, both of which would go against "fighting instincts." Devin's skills seem to be enabling him to act as he wills, not constraining him to act as his newfound "instincts" demand.

Drugging me or making me tired won't stop me from pulling my hand back from a flame, putting my hands out to catch myself when I fall, or eating food when I'm hungry. It will hinder me in cooking an edible meal, though.

And there his skill is arbitrarily raised by direct magical intervention boosting his instincts.

More like implanting the skills artificially in his head.

Your theory is not established since we don't know that it does have a stunted cognitive aspect. I was hoping you'd point out some time when Nightblood solved a problem creatively, or correctly used its memory to predict the future, or made a decision based on multiple sensory inputs, or some major marker of partial cognition or do something to prove your theory.

He uses a fisherman to get to shore to get back to Vivienne to get back to Vasher. That sounds like problem solving to me. He could have just killed the fisherman immeditately without any long-term planning and then been dropped back into the ocean, or failed to call out to Vivienne (who he'd only just met), with no metallic skin off of his non-existent back. Besides that, I can't think of any time when Nightblood was alone enough to need to think things out.

As far as establishment goes, it's as well established as your own at the very least, Mr. Glass-house-owner.

1. We don't see any evidence of cognition in breaths.

2. I was guessing that while the breaths are wandering about a person's body they pick up what it's like to grab from the soul in your hands. If from my first theory they are blank when endowed to another they might pick up the nature of being alive when they're in a new person. Under your theory, the breaths directly take a cognitive aspect from the person which controls their form- your thoughts make them want to form muscles and grab. Under one theory they are limited by what you can do, in another they are limited by your imagination.

1. What would be evidence of a Cognitive presence is kind of the point of the last 10,000 words.

2. Okay. That's nice.

You can learn new instincts and so presumably have spare capacity. Under my theory of how breaths are made, some or all of that spare capacity is is in breaths. Whatever is not being used. Or all of your breath might know what it feels like to grab. Drabs feel that loss.

Instinct: An innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.

Drabs do not show any evidence whatsoever of ever feeling that loss.

Can you provide some clear quote from Brandon that sentience, the ability to have subjective experiences, means something must be cognitive? If that's true that blows your theory out of the water. The breath's main effect is sentience (they enhance your subjective experience of colours) so it seems quite clear that breaths are made of sentience.

The drab issue is fair. My theory requires no cognition. But if less breaths means a fuzzier mind (and it did in first edition) then they may have some cognitive aspect.

First of all, that's an abusive redefinition of sentience that ignores how we've been using it so far. We've been using it as a stand in for "human-level intelligence," the two being equivalent in most parlance because of certain philosophical theories stating that true "experience" can only be had by intelligent beings. I meant intelligence, you meant intelligence.

EDIT 4:

You've been requiring that something be intelligent in order to be in the Cognitive left and right, so I think it's fair to say that sentience should be in the Cognitive realm. It also just makes sense when you use the word "cognitive" that intelligent minds be included (as well as less intelligent minds, as I suggest, but that's not what we're talking about at the moment).

Brandon, also, appears to be using sentient in that way when he calls Lifeless "90% sentient," (saying " If the Lifeless were sentient enough, it could give up its own Breath") and says spren and Nightblood have "almost sentient behavior." I doubt he's saying that Lifeless lack 10% of the normal ability to perceive, and they could give up their Breath voluntarily if only they got that extra 10%.

Quote:

"Objects with almost sentient behavior like nightblood in Warbreaker share important links with the Spren from tWoK. If you understand the spren you will understand a lot about the connection between the books."

"almost sentient behavior." Unless he means that they're pretty good at perceiving, Brandon definitely means intelligence.

Did you really think that we were talking about perception this whole time when we said "sentience?" You yourself pulled the "almost sentient behavior" quote. Were you talking about senses then too?

--

Brandon never said it directly to my knowledge, but there doesn't seem to be much point to a Cognitive realm otherwise, does there?

Once again, Breaths affect perception which is distinct from sentience as we've been using it.

I'm trying to understand what you're saying.

Under the theory which you accepted, more breaths meant more emotional or spiritual strength and more ability to communicate with or command breaths. An awakener with more experience can command them better. The god emperor was able to make a cloth hold a particular thing, the knife at the end. Vasher was only able to make a rope curl around an object he threw them at.

I am not saying that all awakened objects have a perfect set of all instincts which they follow accurately at all times.

If Breaths don't have full sets of instinct--if Breath A is less capable than Breath B is less capable than Breath C--then you can't trust any given Awakening to actually work or to work as well as the last time you did it under identical conditions. That's the kind of thing you mention at some point in your magic system. Instead, the only limitation to Awakening ever mentioned is the skill of the Awakener and the raw power of their Breaths.

I agree that fingers shouldn't need lots of breaths to be fingers, but he didn't ask them to just be fingers. He asked them to monitor his fingers and copy his movements I presume. They had to sense his actions and amplify them in a certain way. I have done that. I have copied other hands. But I wouldn't say it's a common action of mine, or one I have a good instinct for.

There are also many possible interpretations of upon call, become my fingers and grip. Grip what, his hand, his arm, the enemy, the ground? Become fingers, cut off the hand and replace fingers, copy your movements exactly, copy in an exaggerated fashion?

Fine.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What, exactly, would make more sense? We don't see Drabs or Awakeners with more or less "fuzzy" minds, just sharper or duller perception of the world.

We do see a drab with a fuzzy mind, Brandon directly says so. Since it was in the first edition I went looking again.

It was rather paradoxical that a breath had no cognition to me. Lifeless got cognition upon receiving a breath. That strongly implied, to me, that breaths were giving them cognition. You convinced me that the evidence I saw of breaths sharpening or dulling minds was just illness, that we should have seen more note made of the issue if it happened. I believed you. But given in the first edition Brandon directly said that less breaths meant a foggy mind I think it's quite likely that they do have some cognition. If a goblet can have cognition, a breath can too probably.

Her stomach growled. She was learning to ignore it. Just as the people ignored her. She didn’t feel like she was a true beggar or child of the street, not after just one week. But she was learning to imitate them, and her mind felt so fuzzy lately. Ever since she’d gotten rid of her Breath.

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/94/Warbreaker-Chapter-Thirty-Nine

He never defined "instinct" or "emotional memory" either. He did tell us that three distinct realms (P, C, and S) exist, so I think it's a pretty good idea to base our analysis on them.

Instinctive Awakening: All persons of the Sixth Heightening and above immediately

understand and can use basic Awakening Commands without

training or practice. More difficult Commands are easier for them to master

and to discover.

The Commands themselves were

simple to say, but providing the right mental impulse was difficult. It was

like learning to control a second body. Vivenna was quick. Yes, she had a lot

of Breath. That made it easier, but true Instinctive Awakening—the ability

to Awaken objects without training or practice—was a gift granted only by

the Sixth Heightening. That was one step beyond even what Returned had,

with their single deific Breath. Vivenna was far from that stage. She learned

faster than she should have, even if he knew she was frustrated by how often

she got things wrong.

I know that awakening isn't a biological behaviour, but Brandon uses the word instinct for something you learn. He likes the word instinct, so I am copying his use. He explains what it means, an ability you can use without training or practise.

The goblet says exactly: "You want me to change?" "I’ve been as I am for a great long time" and "I will change. Give me what you have." You're adding a smidgen to the narrative there.

EDIT 3: Presumably, that goblet was just sitting there minding its own business, not actively reacting to the world around it, since the day it was created. It's only Cognitive action that we see is a fairly simple response to a magic system. How about I offer an alternative narrative from yours, one which doesn't interpret the goblet as something of a latent sapient mind:

The goblet receives a stimulus (being in the presence of a soulcast-capable human), sends out pertinent information about its state, waits for input on how Shallan wants it to change that state (as is what the magic system ought to cause it to do), and then takes Shallan's stormlight and defaults to pure blood when Shallan fails to offer any deviations--within an appropriate time frame--from what her garnet naturally suggests.

Doesn't that sound a bit more "instinctual" and deterministic to you? The act of soulcasting from this perspective simply initiates a chain of queries and responses as a result of those queries. I'm not saying that it's a sure thing that this is how it actually works, but you are a bit quick to dismiss the goblet as "merely" sapient in your effort to preserve the sanctity of "instincts."

None of that sounds instinctual. Let's assume I accept your cricism and all of my things are unsupportable and out of bounds.

You note that this goblet has a memory of its past, waits for an input of how it should change, actively draws her magic in, and turns to pure blood when she doesn't give clear orders.

When you don't give a breath clear orders it just hangs around in a shirt. The goblet mangaged to work out something new to do based. That is not instinct, or determinism.

Plus, how many goblets have you know that instinctively turn to blood in your hands? That seems like a creative decision, not an instinct.

Is it so unbelievable that animals are simply a more robust, active version of this kind of Cognitive aspect, one which is active even when there is not soulcasting in their vicinity?

It's not unbelievable, I'm fine with them having that.

The main point of that quote was to prove to you that even very simple objects have Cognitive aspects. A rope will have a Cognitive aspect whether or not it's Awakened. So when you Awaken it, what's wrong with saying that the Awakener just tacks another bit onto the Cognitive aspect? You keep belaboring that it's possible for instinct to be separate from Cogntion, and its possible for Breaths to store this instinct, but why are you fighting so hard?

A rope has a cognitive aspect therefore you can transfer your cognitive aspect to it? That logic doesn't follow. Besides which, I doubt a rope's cognitive aspect is that good at grabbing or being a muscle.

We are both fighting. You feel I am wrong and see so clearly you are right and so are shocked that I disagree and are fighting me really hard. We don't have enough evidence for this, but I feel that my evidence is stronger. It is a fact that we have, to my knowledge, no evidence anywhere of cognition being something you can embed in an object.

Your theory is ethereal to boot, with you swinging between extremes of:

1) Awakeners imparting instincts to Breaths upon Awakening and no instinct-loss for Drabs

2)Drabs losing instincts to Breaths

-Or Drabs having a harder time learning new instincts

3)New iteration: You can learn new instincts and so presumably have spare capacity. Under my theory of how breaths are made, some or all of that spare capacity is is in breaths. Whatever is not being used. Or all of your breath might know what it feels like to grab. Drabs feel that loss.

EDIT: 4)I was guessing that while the breaths are wandering about a person's body they pick up what it's like to grab from the soul in your hands. If from my first theory they are blank when endowed to another they might pick up the nature of being alive when they're in a new person.

I did make a number of suggestions of how it could work. Changing a theory to fit the evidence isn't a mark of a poor theory.

From that we get that instincts can suddenly be learned, as opposed to being intrinsic:

Instinct:

1. an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species.

2. a natural or innate impulse, inclination, or tendency.

3. a natural aptitude or gift: an instinct for making money.

4. natural intuitive power.

Wikipedia: Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors

--No learning there.

In the field of developmental psychology there is indeed a great deal of debate about the difference between innate biological instincts and habits you learn and repeat in a similar manner. For example, if you take birds and tie up their wings, when you release them at the time most birds fly they can also fly- the motions of flying are a biological ability they have.

A baby cannot control its bladder when born. They can control it a year later. Is that an example of a learned behaviour, or an example of their biological organs gaining the ability with growth? It's a complex debate.

A man, just like his father, does well in finances. Is that because his father taught him the habit of how to be a good businessman, or because he has an instinct for understanding people and numbers?

For most casual people though, habit and instinct are intermixed. I wouldn't be able to tell you whether grabbing, tensing, or picking things up were habits or instincts, but most people would happily call either instincts.

“Well then, if I must,” she said, tossing her head and commanding her

hair become a deep auburn red. It flushed midtoss, flaring from yellow to red

like ink bleeding into a pool of clear water. Then she made it grow. The ability

was more instinctive than conscious—like flexing a muscle.

I didn’t have to learn to speak again when I Returned, he thought. I didn’t

have to learn to walk again, or read again, or anything like that. Only my personal

memory was lost.

But not all of it, apparently.

Is flexing a muscle instinctive? Is walking, reading? It may be a learned habit. I don't think Brandon cares much. I'll also note, the fact that when his breath returned from Endowment he kept his instincts is intriguing.

Let me just drop this quote in here.

He nodded. “You have to form the Command in your head, not just speak

it. The Breath you give up, it’s part of your life. Your soul, you Idrians would

say. When you Awaken something, it becomes part of you. If you’re good—

and practiced—the things you Awaken will do what you expect of them.

They’re part of you. They understand, just like your hands understand what

you want them to do.”

It suggests that the breaths know what to in the same way your hands know what to do.

That hints they inherit your body's habits or instincts, not another person's.

So you can't mean actual instinct, as in the kind you're born with. That eliminates 3 and a subsection of 2, leaving only instincts being copied over from the Awakener and being stolen from Drabs.

Once again, no evidence of Drabs/Awakeners being more/less "instinctively capable" exists in the books, so let's not make assumptions.

We don't see any awakeners or drab(bar returned) do any complex tasks that require learning new instincts, the only Drab we see trying to learn a new skill (begging) sucks at it.

EDIT 5: You would think that an Awakener who was holding a "sword fighting capable" Breath would be better at sword fighting, and that there would even be an economy for "Breath trainers" to provide these skills to Awakeners. If Breaths just sit around in 1-Breath people gathering extra copies of "instincts" to them, then those Breaths should probably boost the original set, so the "ordinary" level of Grasping for people on Nalthis is actually some degree better than usual. Drabs should suffer from this when they lose the boost to these attributes, and Awakeners should benefit.

That's one theory. We know Brandon said that not much identity crosses over, so we know that theory is false. Whatever remains of the Drab's soul retains most of their skills.

EDIT: Just re-noticed #4, I'll address it now. First of all, it still violates the narrative of Drabs losing out when they give up Breath if Breaths are just "spare capacity." Second, and more importantly, my soul doesn't know how to extend and retract my body, or how to fight to defend myself in the form of a cloak.

Why does it violate the narrative of Drabs losing out if they lose their spare capacity?

How do you know your soul doesn't know how to extend or retract your body or how to defend yourself in the form of a cloak?

As it turns out, motor skills (like grasping and defending yourself (effectively) and whatnot) are learned behaviors too. So there goes your entire instinct argument. That's nice, and means that even stealing actual, universal instincts from Drabs won't cut it, since those instincts don't even include "hold things."

The wiki article doesn't address whether any of the actions breaths do are instinct or habit.

But wait, can't we just transfer these learned behaviors? First of all, that kind of thing is hardwired in on the individual level, so ought to be a bit harder to transfer.

Even allowing for transfer, though, it's still far more narrow than Awakening shows. No Breath-giver will have the learned behavior to extend or retract (as a rope, no less), no matter how hard you imagine that Breath responding when tapped on in specific ways. Some of the other Commands' implementations ("Protect me" as a cloak and "Strengthen me" come to mind) are also such that they really shouldn't be learned behaviors for any average Joe human that you get Breaths from, but the rope is probably the strongest example.

From what we've seen of how commands work, the breaths animate the material as though it were a body (with veins and muscles) and then extend or contract that muscle.

EDIT 2: More examples of improbable commands for simple motor skills!

"Upon call, become my fingers and grip that which I must"

"Become as my legs and give them strength"

"Fight for me, as if you were me"

"Fetch keys" "Find tunnels"

Empathy+normal gripping instincts for the first two.

Fight for me as if you were me, his sword fighting instincts. That level of intelligence and skill though suggests sentience in the breaths. Likewise with the straw people that he thanks after tasks.

Also, learned physical behavior seems an odd thing to program into the Spiritual realm, and really seems much more at home in the Physical/Cognitive, doesn't it?

I see emotions as the realm of the spiritual realm, so I am happy with learned physical behaviour being in there.

So we have to have a way to program new learned behaviors into objects then. We can't ever teach ourselves to "extend/retract," obviously, so the behavior has to be created out of whole cloth at the moment of Awakening, perhaps even by imagining it. It's almost as if the only option really left to us is to have the Awakener mentally create and then transfer the mechanism by which they want an object to carry out a Command.

She opened her eyes, focusing on her bonds. She pictured them untying

again, but somehow that felt wrong. She was like a child, sitting and staring

at a leaf, trying to make it move just by concentrating on it.

That wasn’t the way her newfound senses worked. They were part of

her. So, instead of concentrating, she relaxed, letting her unconscious mind

do the work. A little like she did when she changed the color of her hair.

She tried imagining it, that doesn't work.

What, exactly, is so wrong with suggesting that "instinct," defined as something to the effect of "non-reflective reaction to the world" (as enabled by the existence of your mind), is also seated in the Cognitive realm? What is so very good about instincts being stored in Breath that you insist upon them, and so very bad about Cognitive copying that you can't stomach it? I'm simply growing weary at this point, and don't understand why you fight so hard for an unnecessary and unfounded distinction.

I don't have any special need for instincts to be in one realm or the other, I simply like to have evidence for my claims.

You are growing weary that i disagree with you, yes.

Dig (n): A taunt.

Yes, and I disliked you being cruel to me by taunting me. I don't think it's productive in debates.

That still places the decision in the wrong place. In the case of Nightblood, I'm perfectly fine with his Cognitive aspect being the one that made the decision on how to interpret "destory evil," and you must agree that either way the point Brandon seemed to be getting at was a decision taking place within Nightblood, not in the mind of his Awakener.

I must agree that if the person's cognition was making the decision, it's fair to just say it was happening inside Nightblood?

Nice quotes. You did note him recognizing the appropriate course of action (prompted by his magic) and then taking it, did you not?: "I should cook the meat first, he thought. But, how did he know that?" Not just "Devin reached for the meat first without thinking, unsure of what he was doing or why. He felt a prisoner in his own body, watching in amazement as he prepared a feast, letting his mind wander as his body and instincts took control."

The actions all take place with his volition: presumably he could stay his hand in a fight if he wanted to spare his enemy, or sacrifice himself for a greater cause in that same fight, both of which would go against "fighting instincts." Devin's skills seem to be enabling him to act as he wills, not constraining him to act as his newfound "instincts" demand.

As Brandon defines instincts (walking for example) they all take place within your volition.

Drugging me or making me tired won't stop me from pulling my hand back from a flame, putting my hands out to catch myself when I fall, or eating food when I'm hungry. It will hinder me in cooking an edible meal, though.

I've seen drunk people ignore pain more and ignore hunger and miss themselves when they try to catch themselves.

He uses a fisherman to get to shore to get back to Vivienne to get back to Vasher. That sounds like problem solving to me. He could have just killed the fisherman immeditately without any long-term planning and then been dropped back into the ocean, or failed to call out to Vivienne (who he'd only just met), with no metallic skin off of his non-existent back. Besides that, I can't think of any time when Nightblood was alone enough to need to think things out.

Ah, I agree with you, that implies the sword has cognition.

First of all, that's an abusive redefinition of sentience that ignores how we've been using it so far. We've been using it as a stand in for "human-level intelligence," the two being equivalent in most parlance because of certain philosophical theories stating that true "experience" can only be had by intelligent beings. I meant intelligence, you meant intelligence.

Well, we obviously had different definitions of sentience. I was using it in terms of awareness. Feelings, senses, that sort of stuff. A non sentient thing would be dull minded and not feel anything.

Brandon, also, appears to be using sentient in that way when he calls Lifeless "90% sentient," (saying " If the Lifeless were sentient enough, it could give up its own Breath") and says spren and Nightblood have "almost sentient behavior." I doubt he's saying that Lifeless lack 10% of the normal ability to perceive, and they could give up their Breath voluntarily if only they got that extra 10%.

So sentience means being able to make choices?

"almost sentient behavior." Unless he means that they're pretty good at perceiving, Brandon definitely means intelligence.

He may also mean perception.

Did you really think that we were talking about perception this whole time when we said "sentience?" You yourself pulled the "almost sentient behavior" quote. Were you talking about senses then too?

--

I assumed it meant awareness of your surroundings.

Brandon never said it directly to my knowledge, but there doesn't seem to be much point to a Cognitive realm otherwise, does there?

Sentience could require multiple realms easily enough.

Edited by Nepene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are growing weary that i disagree with you, yes.

No. I am growing weary of your obstinate and horrifying tendency to reweave more and more tangled webs of "theory" every time I knock one down.

Fine then. I'm done trying to reason with you, with addressing each of your answers and concerns point by point and trying to persuade you of the error of your ways. It seems that nothing short of Brandon coming down from on high and saying "no, Breaths definitely don't store anything even related to instincts" would convince you.

Thank you for your real solution to the problem of instinctive Awakening and for spurring me to discover the possibility of Breaths storing some small amount of Identity, as well as for bringing the interesting questions of purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, and the relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity to my attention.

Now if you don't have anything meaningful to add beyond that, please feel free to post your theory of Instinctive Awakening on its own thread with all of your evidence for your own discussion all in one place which is not here.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No. I am growing weary of your obstinate and horrifying tendency to reweave more and more tangled webs of "theory" every time I knock one down.

We had a lot of disagreements, but they were mostly based on four concepts which we hadn't defined sufficiently at the start of the debate, or sought information out on. It was frustrating for both of us because we had our mental webs span and our ideas in our head we didn't talk about.

Your main counters were based on four things.

1. Drabs don't lose any function when they lose their breaths.

2. A definition of instincts that precludes motor skills.

3. Me believing that a lot of instinct carries over.

4. The functions awakened objects do aren't instincts, so they must be imagination.

I provided direct quotes that refuted all four of your points.

Drabs have fuzzier minds after they lose a breath, not just after a week of being ill.

Brandon defines instincts widely and regularly uses and references the difference between knowing what you are doing and instinctively doing something. He describes walking as instinct, a complex motor action, implying he thinks habits are instinct.

I provided quotes saying you treat a breath like a part of your body, implying you give it the unconscious instincts.

I provided a direct quote from Vivenne where she tried to imagine awakening an object, failed, and did it unconsiously.

So, in summary, Brandon came down from the sky and it's more likely he supports me than you. I wouldn't be that hopeful for your theory to make better predictions than mine. Drabs probably will be less intelligent, breaths will probably be somewhat sentient and intelligent, they will be limited by instincts not imagination, and Arsteel's emotions and instincts will be stored in his fifty breaths.

Thank you for your real solution to the problem of instinctive Awakening and for spurring me to discover the possibility of Breaths storing some small amount of Identity, as well as for bringing the interesting questions of purely Cognitive beings, spren, hemalurgy, and the relationship between Spiritual energy and Cognitive complexity to my attention.

Now if you don't have anything meaningful to add beyond that, please feel free to post your theory of Instinctive Awakening on its own thread with all of your evidence for your own discussion all in one place which is not here.

I shall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Kurk, I hope you haven't already wrote about it but do I have permission to write a sort of extension theory on some of the stuff already in this theory? Crediting relevant parts to you, of course.

Most definitely. :)

It would be great to have someone else work out some permutations and/or offer helpful suggestions (nothing's perfect). Be sure to give me the link when you get you're theory up and I'll link to it in the OP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most definitely. :)

It would be great to have someone else work out some permutations and/or offer helpful suggestions (nothing's perfect). Be sure to give me the link when you get you're theory up and I'll link to it in the OP.

Great, it might take some time because I need to plot it in my mind before I write it, but it'll be right here in the general theories section and I'll edit this post to add a link when I'm done :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello all you Realmatic Theorists!

After an extremely long break contemplating this dissentation, I have returned, and immediately spotted this thread. A few (few) of you may remember that quite a while back, I created many active discussions about the simple nature of the Realms, not their extensive applications. In fact, the Spiritual to Cognitive bond was kind of my area of study.

How excellent that a thread discussing exactly that has come to such prominence! Now, I think its quite right for me to go reasonably academic on you all, considering what a very candle-lit pen to paper few months it has been!

I will begin by mentioning that due to their extensive nature, I haven't read many replies, so some of what I say may be repeated, however I did read most of the OP and the evidence and points made there are now to be discussed. Expect a few more ravings of little importance over minute aspects of theoretical Spirituality theorem over the next few days!

Shardblades, as suggested in this thread, are essentially Physical manifestations of the power of the Spiritual realm, "admin weapons," as it were. Shardblades are triggered into existence by a certain Physical/Cognitive key (enabled by alterations to the Spiritual DNA of its wielder)

The above is in the OP. Here, as its quite late over here, I am merely going to interject an opinion with a small evidence base. Here goes:

I think the key here is literally as you say a 'Cognitive key'! The main quote for evidence would be that it is numerously repeated that the Shardblade is just a thought and ten heartbeats away. This, I believe is a simply Cognitive 'execute' and Spiritual 'directive' chain, though the directive could be replaced by 'delay' or Physical 'restriction'. Simply, the mind changes the parameters of the 'hold' on the Spiritual Shardblade, and the Blade is released, and manifested in the Physical realm through a 'tunnel' of sDNA. This tunnel is somehow connected to the Spirit Point above Heart, and thus the ten heartbeats. This I hope makes sense.

However, time for the crazy bit. In accordation with the laws of Hemalurgy, this could mean that the access to a Shardblade could be stolen (without the Blade being 'given' or 'dropped from death'), literally stolen, with a certain metal over the heart. Perhaps the hand is also linked, so that the Shardblade is dropped there, and also so that the Shardblade dissipates when dropped or can change hands if given.

Comments always welcome, and Kurkistan, good theory! Well presented and excellent concept, at least.

Odium's_Shard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello all you Realmatic Theorists!

After an extremely long break contemplating this dissentation, I have returned, and immediately spotted this thread. A few (few) of you may remember that quite a while back, I created many active discussions about the simple nature of the Realms, not their extensive applications. In fact, the Spiritual to Cognitive bond was kind of my area of study.

How excellent that a thread discussing exactly that has come to such prominence! Now, I think its quite right for me to go reasonably academic on you all, considering what a very candle-lit pen to paper few months it has been!

I will begin by mentioning that due to their extensive nature, I haven't read many replies, so some of what I say may be repeated, however I did read most of the OP and the evidence and points made there are now to be discussed. Expect a few more ravings of little importance over minute aspects of theoretical Spirituality theorem over the next few days!

The above is in the OP. Here, as its quite late over here, I am merely going to interject an opinion with a small evidence base. Here goes:

I think the key here is literally as you say a 'Cognitive key'! The main quote for evidence would be that it is numerously repeated that the Shardblade is just a thought and ten heartbeats away. This, I believe is a simply Cognitive 'execute' and Spiritual 'directive' chain, though the directive could be replaced by 'delay' or Physical 'restriction'. Simply, the mind changes the parameters of the 'hold' on the Spiritual Shardblade, and the Blade is released, and manifested in the Physical realm through a 'tunnel' of sDNA. This tunnel is somehow connected to the Spirit Point above Heart, and thus the ten heartbeats. This I hope makes sense.

However, time for the crazy bit. In accordation with the laws of Hemalurgy, this could mean that the access to a Shardblade could be stolen (without the Blade being 'given' or 'dropped from death'), literally stolen, with a certain metal over the heart. Perhaps the hand is also linked, so that the Shardblade is dropped there, and also so that the Shardblade dissipates when dropped or can change hands if given.

Comments always welcome, and Kurkistan, good theory! Well presented and excellent concept, at least.

Odium's_Shard

Nice to have another crazy person on board. Muwhaha. The Cognitive/Spiritual division is actually the fuzziest area so far, so I welcome your input. Sorry I didn't take the time to find/read/reference your theories (which I didn't know existed until now). I kind of stumbled into this and then was either lazy or wanted to maintain the purity of my thought process, depending on how charitable you're being. Any insights from the good old days would be appreciated.

--

I can buy that for Shardblades. I'm not sure about the necessity/nature of this "tunnel," though. Those are also some very interesting thoughts on Hemalurgic theft of Shardblades. I doubt the hand is the link, though, since otherwise it would probably be common-enough knowledge that simply cutting off a Shardbearer's hand (or even just "severing" it with another Shardblade, probably) is enough to get their Blade. I've been remiss in not addressing Hemalurgy, one of the few magic systems which we know is directly linked to sDNA.

On the topic of Hemalurgy, I've been knocking around the idea of Memory and/or Intelligence as possibly stored in the Spiritual realm, partially because both can be stolen by spikes (though we're not sure if Memory as an attribute is actual discrete memories or simply memory capacity/clarity).

--

Memory might be stored in the Spiritual rather than the Cognitive realm just because it's somewhat more intrinsic to the nature of a person (i.e. their soul) than most other mental attributes, although this does create a problem in breaking up Feruchemical divisions of the metals in an unnatural way, unless we then re-do the division.

Intelligence seems more intuitive, actually, since we know (hopefully) from Awakening that greater Cognitive complexity requires more Spiritual energy to power. So increased "intelligence" could be a result of unnaturally boosting the Spiritual energy associated with someone's Cognitive aspect.

This idea of intelligence as a function of Spiritual energy actually flows fairly well with a possible discussion of the nature of spren. They could well be the mostly-Cognitive beings that Brandon talked about, mostly existing as evidence of interaction between the Realms (as the Cognitive is the hub). Where things fall into place, though, is that the Nahel, bond, in this case, would actually consist of the Surgebinder giving Spiritual energy (either a small portion from their own aspect or as siphoned from Stormlight) to boost the heretofore starved minds of Nahel-bonded spren.

EDIT: Scratch all of the intelligence stuff about spren. The Orem Q&A says:

Q. Okay, so Syl, she’s been around for at least a few thousand years, right?

Brandon: Yes.

Q. How does she forget her memories? Is it in connection to humans that makes it so she remembers things?

Brandon: Yes.

Q. And she’s what, a Bonding Spren?

Brandon: You will find out. She [says she’s] an Honorspren, but you will find out.

Zas: Is that bond the Nahel bond?

Brandon: [Nervous grin on Brandon’s face] [laughter] There is a certain amount of... It is a symbiotic bond that is gained by Syl. And things gained by the person bonding. And the stronger presence in the physical realm, and the ability to think better in the physical realm is a part of that bond. She is mostly getting [something] of the physical realm. Without the bond, it is very hard for her to think in this world.

Q. Because she’s windspren.

Brandon: That’s part of it. That’s part of something else.

To be addressed later, a bit busy looking over the Q&A's right now.

That would also explain Syl having a distinct personality from Kaladin, since she has her own complete mind (rather than hijacking his if she was a Spiritual being), but needs extra Spiritual energy to make it work properly. Her lack of clear memory from before her time with Kaladin and difficulty remembering to stay on task while away from him (when she got the leaves) could also be a result of an incomplete Spiritual aspect, if Memory is really stored in the Spiritual realm.

...Or memory is stored in the Cognitive realm but also needs spiritual fuel to be persistent/fresh/accessible, explaining Syl's gradual rediscovery of her identity/past. That would also obviate the need to mess with the Feruchemical groupings (which have so far been a very helpful guide).

--

As far as reading the whole thread, feel free to skim the ridiculously long war between Nepene and myself. It's mostly about Awakening and got a bit out of hand, really.

Thank you, by the way.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thankyou for taking the time to respond! No need to read up on my old posts, most are either now widely disregarded or have passed into general knowledge. Sometimes I wait days to hear comments, so this speedy reply is most welcome!

I can buy that for Shardblades. I'm not sure about the necessity/nature of this "tunnel," though.

I have quite specific set of terminology that I believe has long since become extinct. By 'tunnel', I don't think that necessity for a literal 'gap' through which the Shardblade would pass is logical. Rather, a Spiritual power base, presumably stored in the 'Spiritvessel' (this will be explained later) of that Shardbearer in the Spiritual Realm, would be, by Cognitive direction (thought), formed through a Spiritkey (sDNA gene?) passes through their Cognitive assumption (following your idea that the Cognitive Realm is mere perspective), and is then held into place by a Cognitive process, and 'fueled' by this specific Spiritual power.

Next, my ideas on the basis of Hemalurgy depend rather heavily on a rather incorporated theory of mine that is generally accepted (though I can only take one credit in its creation) which is rather creatively called 'Vessel theory'. This process was quite heavily extended (much like your own) by me and Telcontar, around March time this year. Prepare yourself for a (reasonably condensed) version!

Basically, this theory operates on the distinction between Windrunners (and presumably other Surgebinders of some form) and Soulcasters. How come the Windrunners have to take Light into themselves to use it, while Soulcasters are able to escape this indiscretion? In short: perspective. The Light in one case is held in a 'vessel', who happens to be alive, due to its chemical/Spiritual make-up, is able to hold Light within itself. Most likely a Spirit gate facilitates this (allowing a closed system that is un/bottled by Cognition). So the Light here is held by the Windrunner, due to the conditions on which the Light must be 'bent' (assuming Stormlight as pure white light, the different colours are made in a prism like Spirit key, and represent different abilities), and then the Windrunner use that Light to affect other closed systems, in which the power given by the Surgebinder must be greater than the resistance given by the system. For example, in animate objects have little Cognitive presence with which to encapsulate their Spiritual goods, and so are easily breached and manipulated.

However, a Soulcasters magic is dependent on the Light being bent by the Gem. And thus the Light must come from the gem. However, there must be some kind of Spren operating Spiritually in a Nahel bond in order for the Soulcaster to take the Light from one closed system to another. In the process of having the Light remove, the gem suffers stress in its boundaries. Large shifts of Light can crack the gem. The Light is then used as a 'bribe' for the object to shift form in the Cognitive realm, which I believe exists around objects Spiritual boundaries, which link to Shadesmar and the Shardworld. The Soulcaster then breaches the bribed object and 'alters' (somehow using the Light) its make up.

Thus, Hemalurgy uses the power of Ruin, stored in the Spiritual realm, to breach and steal information from within a spiritvessel, which could be thought of, I guess, as a 'cell', in the biological sense. It contains genetic information (sDNA), has a slight power gloop running through it (plasm) and has a cell wall of some Cognitive kind determined by willpower.

Thoughts welcome!

Odium's_Shard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So much Terminology, so much... :mellow: Although it's necessary for breaking new ground now I feel guilty for how much Terminology I have. :(

I'm not sure about exactly what you mean by referring to the Cognitive realm as "mere perspective"

You're theory about Surgebinding is quite interesting. I particularly like you're extension of the concept of a "vessel" to simply include humans as a subset, as well as how it explains the unique effects of different gems with different cuts.

--

I'm not quite sure of how you model the "resistance" of the system, though (just stop me if you have oodles of proof waiting in the wings, or I simply misunderstand because you condensed it down for my benefit):

I don't think we've really seen much difference between how sentient beings and inanimate objects are treated for either Surgebinding (at least for Szeth-style psuedo-Windrunners) or Soulcasting.

We only get a third person perspective when Jasnah Soulcast the muggers to death, but don't get much indication that her ability to Soulcast a living person was remarkable or particularly draining on her gemstones, at least not more so than a normal Soulcasting. We might have expected a "but people can't be Soulcast" reaction from Shallan if Soulcasting intelligent beings was particularly difficult. Not the strongest case, though, since Shallan can't be expected to know much about Soulcasting, since it is a religious activity and obviously Vorinism wouldn't be eager to talk about their ability to turn people into pure fire. The focus of that passage was also quite obviously not on the nature of Soulcasting, what with the murder(?) and all.

The stronger case is against Surgebinding in particular, since we have multiple POV's of Szeth doing Basic Lashings on his enemies and himself. At no point do we see a particularly large drain on his resources, more so than just the proportional amount of Stormlight needed to lift relatively massive people as opposed to other object.

--

You're close "physical" connection between the Cognitive and Spiritual realms is also quite an interesting way to approach the Realms, one which did not occur to me. While I agree that Cognitive aspects are a natural "gateway" to both of the other Realms, I don't see the necessity of them being the only gateway.

Physically stabbing people through the heart with spikes seems do do the trick with Hemalurgy regardless of the intelligence of its victims (though such violence may simply be at "penetration level 1000" while the range of human "resistance" only goes up to 100). The Spiritual Feruchemical metals, particularly Connection, also seem to directly affect the Spiritual aspects of people without regard for their Cognitive aspects.

Viewing the Cognitive aspects of objects/people as a mere "cell-wall" is somewhat limiting for both the Cognitive and Spritiual realms, I think. It seems somewhat natural to see Cognitive aspects as simply thin shell by which Spiritual directives are filtered (as my theory does, to some extent), but I don't think we need to go so far as to make that shell be all-encompassing. The Cognitive realm may well have a certain amount of "depth" to it, and the Spiritual realm seems unduly restricted if the only way into it is through the Cognitive.

It's mostly a visualization thing, I'll admit, but crucial, I think, if we're to discuss the possible depth of the Cogntive realm and the possibility of alternative means of egress to the Spiritual.

--

Do you have any thoughts on my ideas about spren, Intelligence, and Memory, by the way?

EDIT: I would also appreciate if anyone reading this could think up and ask questions which could prove/disprove my theory, since the Q&A is nigh.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure about exactly what you mean by referring to the Cognitive realm as "mere perspective"

I think its a little misunderstanding, due to my wording, I guess. What I meant, as I will later discuss, is that the Cognitive Realm both does and does not exist in certain ways. When it is used, it exists, but the Spiritual Realm, as you mention, can be reached without a 'Cognitive process'.

I'm not quite sure of how you model the "resistance" of the system, though (just stop me if you have oodles of proof waiting in the wings I have no proof, or I simply misunderstand because you condensed it down for my benefit):

I don't think we've really seen much difference between how sentient beings and inanimate objects are treated for either Surgebinding (at least for Szeth-style psuedo-Windrunners) or Soulcasting.

We only get a third person perspective when Jasnah Soulcast the muggers to death, but don't get much indication that her ability to Soulcast a living person was remarkable or particularly draining on her gemstones, at least not more so than a normal Soulcasting. We might have expected a "but people can't be Soulcast" reaction from Shallan if Soulcasting intelligent beings was particularly difficult. Not the strongest case, though, since Shallan can't be expected to know much about Soulcasting, since it is a religious activity and obviously Vorinism wouldn't be eager to talk about their ability to turn people into pure fire. The focus of that passage was also quite obviously not on the nature of Soulcasting, what with the murder(?) and all.

I think this is quite interesting. It depends how you look at it. In the same way that you could say Vessel theory cannot be true because of these aspects, you could say that the Vessel system also solves some of these inconsistencies, to an extent. In the same way that a rock and a person are affected by Surgebinding, say Lashing, the 'access' to their 'cell' is through both Cognitive barriers and the Spiritual 'resistance'. However, the bent Stormlight used to facilitate the Lashing, has the same amount of power whether used on a rock or a human, and as you claim, that minimum amount of Light required to alter gravity affect gravity. Its an independent system, and the power of Creation in gravity handle the Vessel itself. In the case of Soulcasting, the objects 'Cognitive' is being bribed by the Light. In the case of a human, this is more difficult, and more Light has to be streamed from the gem. I do think Jasnah used a high amount of Light, and I remember something about one of her gems shattering from the process. The nature of the ranged Soulcast is also ambiguous, and much about that scene itself is unknown in how it deviates from the norm.

You're close "physical" connection between the Cognitive and Spiritual realms is also quite an interesting way to approach the Realms, one which did not occur to me. While I agree that Cognitive aspects are a natural "gateway" to both of the other Realms, I don't see the necessity of them being the only gateway.

Physically stabbing people through the heart with spikes seems do do the trick with Hemalurgy regardless of the intelligence of its victims (though such violence may simply be at "penetration level 1000" while the range of human "resistance" only goes up to 100). The Spiritual Feruchemical metals, particularly Connection, also seem to directly affect the Spiritual aspects of people without regard for their Cognitive aspects.

I believe that the power for breaking the Spirit wall is stemmed directly from the Power of Creation in line with Zas's theory about it, that is channeled through Ruin. I believe the fact that some energy goes into breaking the wall, and the fact that this is forceful, is what creates the end-negative process.

Viewing the Cognitive aspects of objects/people as a mere "cell-wall" is somewhat limiting for both the Cognitive and Spritiual realms, I think. It seems somewhat natural to see Cognitive aspects as simply thin shell by which Spiritual directives are filtered (as my theory does, to some extent), but I don't think we need to go so far as to make that shell be all-encompassing. The Cognitive realm may well have a certain amount of "depth" to it, and the Spiritual realm seems unduly restricted if the only way into it is through the Cognitive.

As I have discussed or mentioned above, the Cognitive is 'the gateway' into a Spiritcell. This doesn't mean that the Cognitive couldn't play out into its own dimension, or that this gateway could not be unduly linked or expansive compared to the Spiritcell. The fact that these 'cell points' are linked through Shadesmar could explain Hoid travel, as Hoid could enter the Cognitive of one rock cell, and then travel by the passages that link Shadesmar, and steps out of another, possibly on another Shardworld. Also, the Spiritcell can be breached by extreme power (like in Hemalurgy), in the same way that you could either storm the gate or just fire a cannon at the wall of the castle.

--

Do you have any thoughts on my ideas about spren, Intelligence, and Memory, by the way?

I might comment on this later, when I have the time.

This has turned out to be a very good discussion for honing my own viewpoint on the matter!

Thanks,

Odium's_Shard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Odium

You can cut up a quote by putting in tags pretty easily, just so you know. It makes reading everything simpler:

I'm not sure about exactly what you mean by referring to the Cognitive realm as "mere perspective"

I think its a little misunderstanding, due to my wording, I guess. What I meant, as I will later discuss, is that the Cognitive Realm both does and does not exist in certain ways. When it is used, it exists, but the Spiritual Realm, as you mention, can be reached without a 'Cognitive process'.

I'm not quite sure of how you model the "resistance" of the system, though (just stop me if you have oodles of proof waiting in the wings, or I simply misunderstand because you condensed it down for my benefit):

I have no proof

I don't think we've really seen much difference between how sentient beings and inanimate objects are treated for either Surgebinding (at least for Szeth-style psuedo-Windrunners) or Soulcasting.

We only get a third person perspective when Jasnah Soulcast the muggers to death, but don't get much indication that her ability to Soulcast a living person was remarkable or particularly draining on her gemstones, at least not more so than a normal Soulcasting. We might have expected a "but people can't be Soulcast" reaction from Shallan if Soulcasting intelligent beings was particularly difficult. Not the strongest case, though, since Shallan can't be expected to know much about Soulcasting, since it is a religious activity and obviously Vorinism wouldn't be eager to talk about their ability to turn people into pure fire. The focus of that passage was also quite obviously not on the nature of Soulcasting, what with the murder(?) and all.

I think this is quite interesting. It depends how you look at it. In the same way that you could say Vessel theory cannot be true because of these aspects, you could say that the Vessel system also solves some of these inconsistencies, to an extent. In the same way that a rock and a person are affected by Surgebinding, say Lashing, the 'access' to their 'cell' is through both Cognitive barriers and the Spiritual 'resistance'. However, the bent Stormlight used to facilitate the Lashing, has the same amount of power whether used on a rock or a human, and as you claim, that minimum amount of Light required to alter gravity affect gravity. Its an independent system, and the power of Creation in gravity handle the Vessel itself. In the case of Soulcasting, the objects 'Cognitive' is being bribed by the Light. In the case of a human, this is more difficult, and more Light has to be streamed from the gem. I do think Jasnah used a high amount of Light, and I remember something about one of her gems shattering from the process. The nature of the ranged Soulcast is also ambiguous, and much about that scene itself is unknown in how it deviates from the norm.

//Ignore the text color. Focus on the [quote] tags.

[quote]I'm not sure about exactly what you mean by referring to the Cognitive realm as "mere perspective"[/quote]

I think its a little misunderstanding, due to my wording, I guess. What I meant, as I will later discuss, is that the Cognitive Realm both does and does not exist in certain ways. When it is used, it exists, but the Spiritual Realm, as you mention, can be reached without a 'Cognitive process'.

[quote]I'm not quite sure of how you model the "resistance" of the system, though (just stop me if you have oodles of proof waiting in the wings, or I simply misunderstand because you condensed it down for my benefit):[/quote]

I have no proof

[quote]I don't think we've really seen much difference between how sentient beings and inanimate objects are treated for either Surgebinding (at least for Szeth-style psuedo-Windrunners) or Soulcasting.

We only get a third person perspective when Jasnah Soulcast the muggers to death, but don't get much indication that her ability to Soulcast a living person was remarkable or particularly draining on her gemstones, at least not more so than a normal Soulcasting. We might have expected a "but people can't be Soulcast" reaction from Shallan if Soulcasting intelligent beings was particularly difficult. Not the strongest case, though, since Shallan can't be expected to know much about Soulcasting, since it is a religious activity and obviously Vorinism wouldn't be eager to talk about their ability to turn people into pure fire. The focus of that passage was also quite obviously not on the nature of Soulcasting, what with the murder(?) and all.[/quote]

I think this is quite interesting. It depends how you look at it. In the same way that you could say Vessel theory cannot be true because of these aspects, you could say that the Vessel system also solves some of these inconsistencies, to an extent. In the same way that a rock and a person are affected by Surgebinding, say Lashing, the 'access' to their 'cell' is through both Cognitive barriers and the Spiritual 'resistance'. However, the bent Stormlight used to facilitate the Lashing, has the same amount of power whether used on a rock or a human, and as you claim, that minimum amount of Light required to alter gravity affect gravity. Its an independent system, and the power of Creation in gravity handle the Vessel itself. In the case of Soulcasting, the objects 'Cognitive' is being bribed by the Light. In the case of a human, this is more difficult, and more Light has to be streamed from the gem. I do think Jasnah used a high amount of Light, and I remember something about one of her gems shattering from the process. The nature of the ranged Soulcast is also ambiguous, and much about that scene itself is unknown in how it deviates from the norm.

I think its a little misunderstanding, due to my wording, I guess. What I meant, as I will later discuss, is that the Cognitive Realm both does and does not exist in certain ways. When it is used, it exists, but the Spiritual Realm, as you mention, can be reached without a 'Cognitive process'.

Okay, I await your explanation.

I think this is quite interesting. It depends how you look at it. In the same way that you could say Vessel theory cannot be true because of these aspects, you could say that the Vessel system also solves some of these inconsistencies, to an extent. In the same way that a rock and a person are affected by Surgebinding, say Lashing, the 'access' to their 'cell' is through both Cognitive barriers and the Spiritual 'resistance'. However, the bent Stormlight used to facilitate the Lashing, has the same amount of power whether used on a rock or a human, and as you claim, that minimum amount of Light required to alter gravity affect gravity. Its an independent system, and the power of Creation in gravity handle the Vessel itself. In the case of Soulcasting, the objects 'Cognitive' is being bribed by the Light. In the case of a human, this is more difficult, and more Light has to be streamed from the gem. I do think Jasnah used a high amount of Light, and I remember something about one of her gems shattering from the process. The nature of the ranged Soulcast is also ambiguous, and much about that scene itself is unknown in how it deviates from the norm.

I'm not quite sure if I understand exactly what you're getting at, especially with how gravity-changing works. Sorry. :(

I agree on the ambiguity, either way. The question remains, though, as to why changing something/someone's spiritual gravitational bond with Roshar is fundamentally different from changing that person into fire, if both specifications are squirreled away in a Cognitive-shielded Spiritual realm.

I believe that the power for breaking the Spirit wall is stemmed directly from the Power of Creation in line with Zas's theory about it, that is channeled through Ruin. I believe the fact that some energy goes into breaking the wall, and the fact that this is forceful, is what creates the end-negative process.

I see. Makes enough sense within your system, I suppose.

As I have discussed or mentioned above, the Cognitive is 'the gateway' into a Spiritcell. This doesn't mean that the Cognitive couldn't play out into its own dimension, or that this gateway could not be unduly linked or expansive compared to the Spiritcell. The fact that these 'cell points' are linked through Shadesmar could explain Hoid travel, as Hoid could enter the Cognitive of one rock cell, and then travel by the passages that link Shadesmar, and steps out of another, possibly on another Shardworld. Also, the Spiritcell can be breached by extreme power (like in Hemalurgy), in the same way that you could either storm the gate or just fire a cannon at the wall of the castle.

I think you lost me with "cell points" and teleportation. My interpretation, though it's not very well developed, was that Hoid could just alter some "location" part of his aspect directly.

Okay, I'm fine with the Cognitive realm being both a wall and deep in it's own right. The problem is that, no matter how you breach the wall, it's still a wall which must ultimately be dealt with for all access to the Spiritual realm, unless I'm misreading you. My reading of Duraluminum feruchemy suggests that the Cognitive realm can be bypassed to get to the Spiritual, and it seems to make sense that there should exist some independent path from each of the realms into both of the others.

This has turned out to be a very good discussion for honing my own viewpoint on the matter!

Quite. It's nice to be back to talking about broader issues rather than focusing on minutia and arguing interpretations.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not quite sure if I understand exactly what you're getting at, especially with how gravity-changing works. Sorry.

I don't think I'm quite clear on it myself (after all, gravity, due to my unfortunately scientific viewpoint, cannot be viewed as in an alterable way, and yet here it seems the only solution). My personal interpretation is that the Light (Stormlight) used within the person to alter their sDNA that determines their effect by this force, such as the way they interact with the fields and such forth, and that the Stormlight only shifts this sDNA for the time it remains in the body, and it is being used up all the time (this is why bodies Szeth made float to the ceiling dropped after a time). Eventually the Stormlight is burned out.

Similarly, for other objects, the sDNA is altered somehow in their Spirit Vessel. I think as you say, since humans have the same Cognitive power, and do no subject themselves to it willingly, this must be through the wall.

Okay, I'm fine with the Cognitive realm being both a wall and deep in it's own right. The problem is that, no matter how you breach the wall, it's still a wall which must ultimately be dealt with for all access to the Spiritual realm, unless I'm misreading you. My reading of Duraluminum feruchemy suggests that the Cognitive realm can be bypassed to get to the Spiritual, and it seems to make sense that there should exist some independent path from each of the realms into both of the others.

Sorry about this, I wasn't clear. What I meant is that at the 'gate' to each supposed cell (not really cells, but just for visualisation purposes) their is a Cognitive door. This allows the Cognitive Realm of a person to control the innings and outings of the cell. Hoid could travel through these links to Shadesmar to emerge from a different spot in Physical Realm.

The rest of the cell is entirely open. This is where you might puncture it. Maybe, realistically, there is little or no resistance, and it is floating in the power of the Realm, and the free space, but in order for the Stormlight to be trapped and this system to remain intact, there has to be a seal of some kind. And the Spiritual realm isn't only within these cells. These cells are just points in the Realm itself, almost like a locker within a school. The Cognitive deals with opening the locker and perceiving the sDNA, and the sDNA helps with power channelling from outside the cell (such as Allomancy taking power into the cell, and then 'burning' it through the metal gateway, to enact in the Physical realm).

I think I need to clear up my viewpoint, so any other confusions, please ask! I'm obviously never 100% correct, or we could be on a tangent here, so I'm not allowed to say what is right, so please help to destroy this theory for the sake of progress!

Odium's_Shard

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...