Ripheus23

I'm just totally guessing here, but between Sanderson reportedly saying he likes(?) Bavadin more than the other Shards, and what she/it is now doing (heck of a lot of Splintering?), I have a notion that her original desire was for a lot more people, like maybe (almost) everyone on Yolen, to get Shards.

End = edge or end = outside of time? Isn't the Spiritual already sort of outside of time? Or would it be more like the difference between living forever and seeing all of forever at once, only in this case the Beyond is beyond even seeing all of forever at once?

True, I didn't think of that... I guess this depends on the concept of information. In a mathematical kind of way, what Pattern says about the fundamental shape of things or w/e (I don't remember where exactly) seems information-theoretic, and related to the Cognitive Realm. Let's say, physical information is like raw sensation, cognitive information is sensation refined to distinct experiences (perceptions and beliefs), and spiritual information is another layer of information on top of those. IDK if it'd be the origin, though, or whether there IS an origin, in this case. I feel like it would be asking if the law of identity is true "before" or "after" the law of noncontradiction and the law of bivalence/the excluded middle. Also, if space and time do not exist in the Spiritual Realm, and if they are fundamentally different from it, it seems as if they have to exist of themselves. That is, could there be a spren for pure space or time, and a Spiritweb for this spren (if it were a personal enough being)? Also, if there were a Beyond, this would be the fundamental plane. Since we're supposedly never going to have a definitive Cosmereological statement of the Beyond, it seems as if we will never be given an answer as to what the fundamental plane is, maybe?

I don't remember right now, and of course who knows (Sanderson could do things differently otherwise in any event), but has he done a transition to a flashback, in which the focus of the flashback is not the character whose POV the previous/upcoming chapter is from? I.e. a "pure" flashback POV, in that context?

Maybe the very name is deceptive. How does one become bound to/by a void? A void is a gap between chunks of matter/objects/w/e. A void is more like an anti-binding, even.

This doesn't mean she never was on Braize, does it? It could be that in the flashbacks to her (are we getting those? I don't remember for sure seeing that SA4 was supposed to be from her POV or whatever), we get a period on Braize and then she goes to the Beyond, but that at any rate, by the otherwise contemporary time, she is in the Beyond.

Maybe we will see an Eshonai POV of her on Braize?

@Artemos, I'm just speculating on how Investiture and gravity and quantum-mechanical spren might tie together, I guess.

I think the Realms are "layers" of reality, or "levels" or "planes" or whatever, that correspond to {concepts --- propositions --- stories} in a way. "Cognitive" isn't the same description as "of the mind," but usually has to do with a sort of information-theoretic gloss of the thing. In other words, something propositional, like the propositional calculus over the predicate calculus, maybe. The Spiritual Realm relates to a sort of super-propositional calculus, in which whole arrangements of facts get assigned a higher---spiritual---meaning. (I mean, the meaning is spiritual because it occupies this next stage.) Haecceities of persons would be Spiritwebs, maybe. But if spren are persons as well as haecceities of concepts, then... I guess I'm going off a broad take on what a perpendicularity is, or could be, in the Cosmere. I think it's no accident that the Cognitive "part" of an object is spherical, I suspect that this is related to how Investiture in general interacts gravitationally. Unless it's just a fantastical image (a world of bead-ground and solid water, etc.). I guess I think there might be a connection between space and matter on one hand, and time and energy on the other. At least, our historical concepts of these things.

Taravangian, Navani [more tragedy, try to crack Dalinar maybe, who knows], Ialai [is she still alive? I don't remember]. At least one more Bridge Four original member, maybe. Lopen, sacrificing himself? [I feel like Rock would have a family moment in the end so will have to be alive for that.] I wish I remembered more characters to morbidly judge...

Lift = Aeris But no, really... her end could be a solid tragedy for the story to convey

Without Investiture, there'd be no magic, that's the narrative account, granted. But I wonder about that word "magic." On a general level, it seems to be "something in a story that allows characters to do things with willpower* that would require machines [or something along those lines] in the actual world." However, that makes magic into an inherently fictional concept. Now I'm sure a whole amazing story could be written about a magic system defined from this concept of what the word "magic" truly means. Is that the story Sanderson is writing? I do not think so, even if he might avail himself of the tropes of such a sequence, as it goes. He is using the fictionalist trope per se with the twist/caveat that the thing in his story that does what the story requires it to (for the sake of the work being in the fantasy genre instead of science fiction) is amenable to a comprehensive mathematical/philosophical description. [This follows from his essay about the narrative limitations on magic, e.g. having magic be the problem or having magical solutions to plot problems require some finesse.] If that's true, then the philosophical question over whether the matter/energy category could have another item in it, is valid enough, and I think Sanderson is on the right track with it, as far as the abstract logic of Investiture stands. But I think at the end of the day he will refine this trichotomy somehow, either in terms of a deep argument about the very notions of matter and energy, or by replacing the usage of that category [to find a place for Investiture in mathematical physics] with the use of another that could coherently/intelligibly subvene the doctrine of Investiture.* *[Same footnote for both asterisks] One way this could be done would be by drawing on an adjustment to Kant's phenomena-noumena distinction relative to the question of causality. In Kant's system, there are three forms of causality: in time [normal causation], reciprocally between objects as they exist in space, and by free will. Now, Kant says that we don't empirically perceive the third form of causation. Let's suppose, then, that Realmatics in the Cosmere adjusts this picture such that in the Cosmere, it's possible to at least quasi-perceive agent-causation. In other words, the noumenal plane gets assimilated to the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms. However, this would make the mathematical description of Investiture nearly impossible to render in an intelligible form (for human readers), I suspect... EDIT: One thing about Realmatics that I'd like to note concerns the following [quoted from Calderis' quote of Sanderson in his "Shardplate Creation" OP]: Now in fact I did recognize the theory on its sleeve. It's an application of the concept of a haecceity. A haecceity is, if you will, the Platonic Form of an exact particular, it's exactitude's own particularity even. Think of the difference between, "A dog," "The dog," and, "This dog." The first is a general identity, the second a particular identity, the third a haecceitic identity. So, all objects and their parts have a special concept for each, and together these form a propositional/cognitive plane, if you will, perfectly "overlapping" those parts/objects. In the Cosmere, Investiture makes haecceities self-conscious on an abstract level, which is another thing, but not unexplainable/indescribable/fictionalistically ineffable.

Realmatics add a whole other level to the questions, that's for sure... well, 2 more levels but anyway I am not sure that Sanderson would be averse to at least partly explaining that in quasi-theological/philosophical terms. I mean the Cognitive Realm seems like an Alice-style Wonderland, so far as it has been described, but that could be chalked up to the role of Investiture in the Cosmere. Sanderson might claim that the real world has a Cognitive Realm but that due to our cosmos lacking the Investiture tangent in the category of matter/energy/w/e, ours doesn't "look like" Shadesmar* (for example). *I think the relationship between the beads and the spren and the objects in the Physical Realm, amounts to quantum Perpendicularities. That is, the beads are miniature warps in space-time that are tied to the spren of specific objects, allowing the "Soulcaster circuit," if you will, to be completed.

Sanderson has said that this is "science fantasy" and that there is matter and energy in the Cosmere, I think. Now, he might (for all I know right now) be illustrating the very interesting philosophical possibility that the laws of chemistry, which IRL are supervenient on our theory of atomic laws, are in the Cosmere-universe supervenient on an "Investiture field," if you will. That is, Sanderson might appeal broadly to know chemical information but posit a quite different subchemical layer. I would have to know more WoBs on this topic, though the SA quasi-reference to quantum mechanics points me in the direction of, "Yes, IRL physics, not just chemistry, is present to some degree in the Cosmere."

My understanding of this topic is that the (quasi-)technical description of Investiture is "a third thing in the same category as matter and energy." However, I am not sure that it is conceptually possible for there to be three items in that category. Consider, by way of comparison, space and time: This is from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He also says there that space is the way that we differentiate objects [the form of perceiving things as external to each other], whereas time is the way that we identify objects [the form of perceiving different states as pertaining to objects with individual identities, e.g. personal identity over time]. Internality and externality in this sense are comprehensively exclusive options, correlated with identity and difference per se. So if one were to come along and say, "There could be a third thing, like space and time, let's called it spime," well, there's an outer-limit mental allowance to be made for it [as Kant indicates in our lack of knowledge as to where the ideas of space and time come from outside of experience], but other than that, it's difficult to associate anything meaningful with such a possible claim. Now, in modern physics, it seems like there's still a division between quarks/leptons on one hand, and the force-carriers on the other, but then there's also the Higgs [which is for some kind of special mass-assignment, IIRC], and the whole meta-dichotomy of bosons and fermions (where some matter particles end up as one or the other, depending on which level of material constitution we're on or if we're in the spheres of supersymmetry or whatever!) [and there could be "plektons," apparently, that is particles whose statistical characteristics conform neither to Fermi's nor Bose/Einstein's rubrics, here!]. But generally it seems like matter has been reduced to mass, which is reducible to energy in the limit. So it seems to me as if it might be the case that there's really only one actually possible item in the category "things like matter and energy."

But what makes a Godmetal a metal? I know there's more to molecular structure than raw atomic geometry, but I still think the following (again from, "Metal," on Wikipedia) is pertinent: This calls to my mind the fact that some of the Rosharan/Surgebinder polestones are roughly the same element, so it's their impurities/resultant divergent coloration, that ties them to different magical effects, or whatever. That is, aluminum and gold are both fcc-ordered (as such) but this is not enough to make them identical, either in nature or magical effect. EDIT: Another broad possibility is that the permutations of the basis constants involved in Investiture might be so convoluted and numerous that at the end of the day, Team Cosmere will never actually resolve all the possible "plot holes," so to speak, hereof. But I don't think this will necessarily be a narrative/literary/storytelling flaw, at the end of that day.

I'm not sure that's true, at least not in this case. Although explaining this doubt would require quite a detour into the philosophy of fictional objects, I suppose...

So does Dalinar happen to think, "I'm doing something awesome," at that moment? Or maybe the Stormfather thinks it

As far as I remember, Sanderson and Peter(?) (I don't remember his last name, is it Ahlstrom?) have said that they are working on the physics/metaphysics of the Cosmere in a rather novel way, that is instead of just declaring, "This is how it is," they are simulating the process of scientific discovery, within this world of theirs, such that there is the matter of "scientific consensus" or something, to it. In that event, I am not totally criticizing Sanderson for being inconsistent or incomplete in his explanations. Science in the real world is a difficult thing. So for all that being said, I think that there is something else going on, here, than just "the molecular structure" and "resonance" of specific metals. I was reading somewhere WoB-ish that Honorblades could be used, in theory, Hemalurgically. But Honorblades are made of tanavastium(?), are they not? Which is not a metal Invested in by Leras and Ati. Albeit Honor-metal is Invested in by Honor, in some way, wherefore we might say, "Any metal Invested by a Shard, in some [appropriate] way, can be used for the Metallic Arts," but again I don't see what definition of metal is in play, so I'm still confused about this subject as per the OP (is tanavastium a metal because it conducts electricity and heat in the relevant fashion?).

I know various metals are Allomantically inert but I think this is due to them not being chosen for Investment by Leras and Ati, and that they didn't, in fact, choose metals per se, but metals-perceived-to-be-so (not merely believed to be, but visually seen to be, metallic), and whether something is "scientifically" a metal or not is not sufficiently connected to the explanation of Allomancy [Sanderson's assertion contrarywise notwithstanding]. EDIT: Sanderson can claim that the "molecular structure" and "resonance" of a substance is relevant, here, but I think he's (a) wrong or (b) incompletely explaining things [not that this is wrong on another level, though, for Team Cosmere has itself said that these matters are not decided just by authorial fiat, it seems?]. EDIT 2: The role of the number 16, here, is not what it seems to be said to be, either. For Leras and Ati could have chosen 16 base metals if that's what they were up to. But the fact is that they chose the concept of 8 metals + an alloy per each, which means the numbers 8 and 2 were just as "numerologically" significant, it seems. (Of course 8 times 2 = 16, which makes 16 the "end-goal" number in this system, I suppose, but there's a different... base... number.) EDIT 3: It's like the general description of Investiture as "some third thing, in the same category as matter and energy." That sounds interesting, but one might wonder if different definitions of that category, or the known examples, would rule out there being a "third" example, even imaginatively-speaking.

I don't know why this should be so, though. "It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal..." doesn't seem like a sufficient basis for such an explanation of the matter. I'd be interested to hear Team Cosmere come up with a molecular description for Godmetals, for example. If, however, the logic is, "The only Allo-feru-hema-theurgically active metals are those specifically Invested so by Preservation/Ruin/Harmony, as such," then it's not that we're dealing with metals as metals but as things perceived so, for as Artemos noted, "Steel is made of iron and carbon, a nonmetal." In other words: I have some doubts as to the coherence of Sanderson's current model of the Metallic Arts. But doesn't he say that there's a sort of "scientific consensus" to the deep-level explanations of Investiture, where these explanations have to be changed as people analyze the stories more? (That does something right interesting to the notion of "Words of Brandon," I would say...)

@Morsk, that's why I feel like there must be more to them... Maybe something Adonalsium-related, even. Maybe this is evidence of that A'lsium = Unity theory...

@Calderis (the long post), that seems to indicate we're working with the nuclear and/or chemical, but not the astrophysical, concept of metal. In that event, though, I have to wonder if every such metal could have a different magical effect, as such? I mean I know the image of the sixteen metals and Preservation's numerical signature and all that, but it seems to me as if there have to be more than 16 Allomantically/Feruchemically/Hemalurgically usable substances, if it's the essence of the substances that makes them so. From Wikipedia, "Metal": EDIT: But if there are more than 16 magically viable metals, then I wonder how 16-centric the Scadrian system is, or whatever, or how this all ties together...

How about a Cosmere theme park? Each "ride" would be a different Shardworld... Holographic spren, inter-ride regions that look like Shadesmar, who knows...

I imagine this topic has been done to death somewhere here, but, well, I'm wondering what concept of metal Sanderson is using to undergird the Metallic Arts? There's a nuclear physics definition, a chemistry definition, and an astrophysics definition, on Wikipedia, in the article "Metal," none of which seem... pertinent... to the magic systems in question. At least not so far as I can see. OTOH Sanderson has said that it's the color of gems in the SA that determines their powers, not their molecular structure, so I'm guessing it's the "color" of metal, the glossiness or what-have-you, that determines something to be a "metal" in the Cosmere. If that's so, though, I'm going to speculate that there's some run-around from the physics of color perception, through the matter-energy-Investiture equivalence, to the Metallic Arts, though I suspect that Team Cosmere haven't quite pinned down the dynamics yet.