Is the concept of Investiture coherent/meaningful?

[Fanghur Rahl]

14 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I don't see how that could be mean more than one thing?

 

Because I was under the impression (falsely it would seem based on that WOB) that the Cognitive and Physical realms are in at least some sense completely reducible that what’s happening in the Spiritual Realm rather than being their own independent aspects of reality that were ‘created’ by the Spiritual, that’s where the disconnect is, since that clearly isn’t what you meant. So I was just confused because it sounded like you pretty much agreed with me.  Though like I said, that WOB would seem to suggest that you’re right and I’m wrong.

[Calderis]

@Fanghur Rahl until that WoB, I would have agreed with you completely. I thought that the Spiritual was ultimate and immutable truth.

My thinking had to change quite a bit. It's a fairly recent WoB at that. 

[Fanghur Rahl]

Fair enough, I guess I’ll have to defer to Brandon on that, although I’m still not entirely sure that it’s an internally coherent model of a possible reality. 

[Scion of the Mists]

14 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

The only problem with that is what I said earlier, namely that it ultimately leads to a kind of chicken/egg paradox. If the Physical Realm is ultimately the result of the Cognitive Realm, and what happens in the Physical Realm affects the Cognitive Realm, then which is really the more fundamental of the two?

There are these things called feedback loops, where two things affect each other.  To use your analogy of the brain/mind: the brain cells may give rise to the mind, but each affects the other.  A change in the make up of those cells can alter the mind; a decision made my the mind can affect the brain chemistry.  

 

3 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Fair enough, I guess I’ll have to defer to Brandon on that, although I’m still not entirely sure that it’s an internally coherent model of a possible reality. 

I'm not sure you're going to get very far applying philosophical concepts from the real world to the Cosmere (which is fundamentally different in many ways).  

[Fanghur Rahl]

What can I say? I’m hyper-analytical. lol.

[Ripheus23]

Quote

Time does exist in the Spiritual, it's just less important because it's essential a marker of what has happened or possibilities of what will. 

Here's something I wonder about, then. Let's say possibilities are the main "objects" in the Spiritual Realm. I don't think actuality can emerge from possibility alone, but I don't think physical actuality would emerge even from possibility as a dynamic source. If the Spiritual Realm is fundamental, then the reality is that the other two Realms are just subplanes of it. Now this might be so if the term "subastral" (I've seen this somewhere) determines not just the relative but the absolute rank of the Cognitive Realm, since the Spiritual would then be the astral, and the Beyond the superastral [in principle], and that would be the order of definition [with the Physical being "sub-subastral," then?]. Here, the "Astral Realm" would be lead to the definitions of the other Realms. However, the nature and power of the other two Realms, in relation to the Spiritual, seems too much for them to have come from it alone, and if they are all perpendicular to each other, or perpendicular to something that runs through them all, or whatever, then they are not subplanes of each other, as such, at all, that is each has unique elements that are internal to their "purpose" and their regions do not directly overlap parts of each other [at least from some specific higher-dimensional vantage]. [So the Cognitive might be subastral not because being astral is definitive of the Spiritual Realm, but because the difference between the subastral and astral planes independently corresponds to the Cognitive-Spiritual relation.]

EDIT:

18 hours ago, Calderis said:

But what that means to me is that everything is recorded there. Every event and interaction in the form of Connection. Everything in physical matter, in the investiture of the Cognitive, is written there in the Spiritual forms. 

This reminds me of The Neverending Story. However, a correspondence, even a one-to-one one[!], still seems to me to put a distance between the levels of objects in each Realm, such that there still has to be a possible outside framework to which all three Realms are "subordinate." [This is similar to the problem of trying to decide whether "all possible worlds" count as a hyperworld, in contemporary modal logic.] That is, there is something in each Realm that is not really just Spiritual on some deep level, or else there would end up just being a Spiritual Realm with Physical and Cognitive subregions.

EDIT 2:

I just remembered why I thought matter would be tied to space essentially. Descartes talked about res extensa and res cogitans, IIRC, and so as these words/concepts evolved a little more, the word "material" got assimilated to res extensa's meaning, the idea being that matter is, by definition, that which "fills up" space or is extended in space.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Ripheus23

[VirtuousTraveller]

This is my first post on here in a long time, but I just wanted to let you all know that this thread is literally why I love the 17th Shard so much =)

The deepness of this conversation has been a refreshing splash of fantasy philosophy in the middle of a crazy work day!

[tmnsquirtle]

I just had a thought.

The spiritual realm is the most basic/fundamental. Because we don't know a lot about it, other than the fact that space/time don't exist there, this is the easiest mental leap to make IMO. 

The cognitive realm is emergent from the spiritual, bringing about the concepts of time and space. Of course, these would be expressed somehow via investiture. I'm not actually 100% sold that it goes in this order (spiritual -> cognitive -> physical), but for the purposes of this idea it has to. Note that the cognitive realm 'contains' everything the spiritual has, but with more informational complexity: sapience? Check. Investiture? Check. 

The physical realm is emergent from the cognitive. It brings about the concepts of mass and energy. As far as we know, everything in the cognitive realm is made out of investiture, unless you visit from the physical (at which point, who really knows). But, the physical realm is home to non-investiture constructs, which are presumably unique to the physical realm regardless. 

So, it seems to follow that the structure of the realms can be figured by stacking them in order of increasing complexity: Spiritual, where the basic energy (investiture) of the universe comes from. Cognitive, where that energy is structured into concepts, places, and times. Physical, where those concepts and places are given actual form.

[Calderis]

2 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

I'm not actually 100% sold that it goes in this order (spiritual -> cognitive -> physical), but for the purposes of this idea it has to.

According to an actual shard, this is how it works. Per Leras... 

Quote

“It’s not the world of the dead. It’s the world of the mind. Men—all things, truly—are like a ray of light. The floor is the Physical Realm, where that light pools. The sun is the Spiritual Realm, where it begins. This Realm, the Cognitive Realm, is the space between where that beam stretches.”

I feel like a Shard would know this better than anyone. 

5 minutes ago, tmnsquirtle said:

Note that the cognitive realm 'contains' everything the spiritual has, but with more informational complexity: sapience? Check. Investiture? Check. 

Counterpoint to "everything" is the discussion earlier of purely Spiritual entities. 

[Ripheus23]

Preservation would seem to understand it, I suppose... But then again gods have been wrong before in this world and his metaphor/analogy does leave unexplained what the light itself is, and how the combined framework surrounding the light's path ranks in relation to the source of the light.

EDIT: But I feel like Pattern would not be totally out-of-the-loop, so to speak, either, and he seemed to refer to fundamental truths of reality in a Cognitive way. Or that was my gloss of one of his remarks somewhere (I wish I remembered where).

My impression of the overall system is not a straight line made from three segments but a quasi-triangular loop. The whole system is fundamental, and we might think of matter, energy, and Investiture as indefinite permutations of the whole. I.e. matter is where physical existence comes before cognitive and spiritual forces though it includes those in itself, energy is where cognitive existence comes first but includes physical and spiritual information, and Investiture is where physical and cognitive information are ordered after spiritual information. So the three forms of information are more or less strongly correlated with the different matter-like categories without being identical to them (except overall):

M : p, c/s

E : c, p/s

I : s, p/s

Or something like that...

EDIT: Another idea I have, is that the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Transcendental Analytic, and the Transcendental Dialectic, in the Critique of Pure Reason, would correspond to the physical-cognitive-spiritual trichotomy, while leaving open the question of a "Beyond" (the noumenal realm of transcendental ideals in themselves). The Spiritual Realm becomes an intrinsically "mysterious" place in the sense that it represents our ability to question the other Realms and point towards an outer domain, a focus imaginarius. In some sense it can be considered "fundamental," at least if the meanings of individual sentences depend in all ways on the meanings of questions ranging over sets of sentences. But even here I'm not sure such would be so, in that it seems like individual sentences can be meaningful in themselves, at least to an extent.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Ripheus23

[tmnsquirtle]

3 hours ago, Calderis said:

Counterpoint to "everything" is the discussion earlier of purely Spiritual entities. 

My bad. I suppose I meant in a more theoretical sense. 'Has,' in this case, means 'has the fundamental property of.' 

Meaning that, in theory, any entity formed in a realm can go (with appropriate perpindicularity/transport/whatever) to a 'lesser realm' without any modifications, but cannot travel 'upwards' (again with the same transport) without some transportation. 

I'm sure there are counter-examples, but that's what I mean by the fundamental properties. Spren cannot move to the physical realm without some expenditure of energy, or a helper. Kelsier can't get to the physical realm without help. A spiritual being, if one existed, wouldn't be able to manifest in the cognitive realm without some weird shard involvement.

[Calderis]

@tmnsquirtle I can agree with that.

In the removed from Cosmere example of a spiritual entity, they were somehow "forced" into the physical and as a consequence the natural order of time really messed with them. 

[tmnsquirtle]

@Calderis that's pretty much what I was imagining a cognitive entity would be like. I actually would really like to see a spren or seon forced into the physical via shenanigans, and get a POV chapter from them explaining their disorientation and confusion. It would likely explain a lot of how the cognitive works on a fundamental level.

P.S: Congrats on the recent Dragon, btw!

Edited August 26, 2018 by tmnsquirtle