The Cognitive Realm, Reification, Spren, and a giant logical leap

[Justice]

Hey all, first bonafide theory and it's only my second or so post. Something from my classes on moral and social philosophy has been popping in my head as I re-listen to WoK, especially they emergence of Syl. It reflects the notion of shardic intent, the cognitive realm, and spren. Hold on tight, I'm about to stream of conscience this.

 

The intents of shards as we know them are social constructs insofar as they are all human conceptualizations of natural and social forces. EG preservation is a categorization of natural events that hold in common the resistance against entropy. Ruin is entropic. We perceive different phenomenon (death, decay, heat loss, systemic information disintegration, etc) and apply a particular conceptual notion to bind them together as similar. They become ruin, yet without the idea, they are all isolated phenomena. They do not exist as a whole idea without the imposition of boundaries and definitions ascribed to reality by a shared perception by humans (sentient beings).

 

Thus established, the question emerges as to what exactly intents are and how the notion of human generated categories can impose their characteristics upon individuals, and what exactly the cognitive realm is. Here I will introduce a concept i have yet to see on the shard.

 

The idea that abstract concepts can impose structure upon reality is reification. Through social power, manifested as norms, language, expectation, roles, and so on, abstract ideas can emerge with real power that constrain and direct behavior. People in society invent an idea of how the world is structured and then impose that idea up on each other using overt and covert, insidious and invidious means. For instance, without seeing the hidden strings, some particular scientific explanation of how people come to have different skin color becomes a justification for social power structures that already exist, reinforcing those structures and adding a normative value and scientific weight to those structures. Suddenly attempting to address those structures is not just going after individual instances of injustice but fighting the basic shared understanding of science and the natural world, a much more difficult opponent.

 

Where does this idea go when thinking about spren, the cognitive realm, and the SA? It seems pretty clear to me. The notion that human thoughts and ideas create real objects in a separate realm that then have real impacts on the "physical" realm is a clear link. Real objects have representation in this world of ideas, but the more "permanent" (perceived), large (observed as singular), or important (ideas as opposed to objects) they are, influences their existence in the cognitive realm and, in turn, their usefulness or power when encountered by or wielded by a human. See: honor as opposed to wind, a ship, a stick, the land as opposed to the sea, the space between planets... Changing something in the realm of ideas can then have a major impact on the physical world (changing a rock into gas!?!?!?)

 

Pretty generic notions so far. What's the theory?

 

The fluidity of interaction between the physical and cognitive realms allows for major changes in the way things work, especially on Roshar where the cognitie realm is so close.

 

The honor pact creates heralds who have individual abilities toed to "natural forces" defined as surges. We have heard that the heralds first emerged to fight in desolations and the knights radiant came much later. Maybe the delineation of surges can be tracked back to the intents of the shards or something else. That's for another post. Nonetheless, these heralds' repeated engagement with the different sentient species on Roshar led to the emergence of cognitive entities that reflected these singular individuals and their powers. These are the spren that radiants eventually bond. The idea of heralds is reified in the form of spren in the cognitive realm. These cognitive entities impose order and structure on the physical realm, forcing humans to act in a particular way and make "abstracted" promises to gain access to power. Once the power was available this structure was further reinforced by the heralds in the form of the orders, which further reinforced the cognitive idea of the bond being the source of the power, and so on.

 

The important idea is that all of this is imposed through repeated actions of people. The cognitive realm is mutable through what people believe, and as such the structure of bonds and powers are mutable as they relate to how people observe them and understand them. Here's the logical leap (since nothing up to this point is actually a theory about what might happen in the books).

 

The heralds are nothing special. Their link is a promise that only exists through social bounds and structures. Therefore other people can replace them. The new knights have become reified versions of the old heralds and their powers. In addition, our new heroes are gaining the ability and experience to survive damnation. I imagine the horrors Shallan and Kaladin (think Bridge 4) have been through have steeled them for damnation. They have the powers of former heralds and the strength and willpower to replae the failed heralds in the oathpact.

 

Our main characters are going to be the new heralds at the end of the first set of 5 books, They all die or are sent to damnation to suffer. The oathpact is renewed. The second half of the series is the actual resolution of the oathpact.

 

This vibes with the idea of the cognitive realm, the social concept of honor, and even the notion that viewpoint characters can die. Renarin and others can "die" before his viewpoint book and still have a major role. Thousands of years can pass between the halves of the series if necessary. The old heralds can try and prevent losing their old role or try to circumvent the desolations, but they gave up their role. If they do not fulfill the idea of herald they no longer hold the position.

 

This take leads to a lot of other ideas I have (such as the roles of the shards and intents and how fundamental the boundaries and oppositions of each intent truly are as well as the meaningful merging and destruction of shards). What the idea of reification does in this conversation is allow for a foundational relationship between how the physical and congnitive realms interact.

 

Thoughts?

[Master_Moridin he/him]

I'm having a hard time parsing this, but from what I'm getting all the ideas on the Cognitive realm seem really cool.

 

When you bring up Shards though, you seem to ignore the existence of the Spiritual Realm and that Shards exist in it primarily.  Hopefully someone that can put words to screen on this better will come along.

[Stormgate he/him]

Your theory is interesting. How do you figure Investiture plays into it?

[Justice]

Your theory is interesting. How do you figure Investiture plays into it?

I'm not sure exactly. My gut reaction is that investiture is the granting of sentient control over natural forces (gravity, weak force, light, etc), which isn't so much cognitive. The control is spiritual and the particular forces are the physical. That being said, per a very helpful PM, the shards and their intents dwell largely in the spiritual realm. I haven't figured out how that plays in yet. I'm about to re-read The Emperor's Soul and that might give me some ideas of where to go with this. Edited March 12, 2016 by Justice