Introduction
Have you ever stopped to consider how our perceptions shape our understanding of the world around us? From Brunelleschi’s revolutionary development of perspective in art to modern developments in science and technology, it is clear that our perspectives have a profound impact on our understanding of reality. But what if there was a way to categorize and better understand these perspectives? This is why I developed the concept of Planes of Discourse.
In this article, we will introduce the four primary planes: Physical, Biological, Subjective, and Intersubjective. It is important that you are aware this is not the concept called “Planes of Discourse” regarding the contrast between different educational disciplines. What I am writing about is more of an epistemological discipline. We will explore the guidelines for each plane, the properties that define it, and how they interact with one another to create a snapshot of reality. By developing this framework of the world we can develop better models of reality that will lead science to a deeper understanding.
Epistemology, the study of knowledge, establishes how we come to know what we know. Within this field are the planes of discourse, which are distinct layers of causality that can work in unison to have an effect on the world. Each discourse has differing rules of analysis, variables, and limits. However, when these different planes interact without a proper framework, paradoxes can emerge, challenging our understanding of the world. Here are some examples of how experts in different fields will create direct paradoxical statements and in effect show the need for a proper framework.
Paradoxical Argument Examples:
- From a philosophical standpoint, truth is objective and can be uncovered through reason and evidence. However, from a postmodern perspective, truth is subjective and is constructed through social and cultural contexts, creating a paradox between these two fields of study.
- “Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are fundamentally different and have not yet been reconciled because they do not have a framework to connect them. I consider this a problem with sub-discourses, which are directly related, but due to brevity, this will be addressed in a future article.
- Post-modernist discourse claims that truth is socially constructed, while scientific discourse posits the existence of objective facts that are independent of human interpretation. However, gravity is an objective scientific fact that exists independently of human interpretation, thus challenging the postmodernist claim that all truth is socially constructed.
- Dualism, which asserts that the mind and body are distinct entities, creates a paradox when analyzed by neuroscientists who have discovered evidence of the brain and body affecting mental states. This paradox exists between the philosophical and scientific circles.
I just selected a few to point out the necessity for a framework that will reveal the relationships with different discourses and how causality works within them. One other note before we begin, please excuse the egocentric tone in this presentation, as it represents an original thesis rather than an impartial analysis.
The Power of Perspective
Before Brunelleschi’s innovations in perspective, there was a famous artist named Giotto in the 1200s who had a mastery of painting and he was very influential in the Renaissance. There was one problem. He was unaware of the rules of perspective which would not be developed for another 200 years. Giotto’s medieval conventions of perspective lacked the ability to create a convincing illusion of depth and three-dimensionality in his works. As much as he mastered most of the rules of painting, he lacked the understanding of a perspective framework to grasp spatial relationships.
That all changed when Filippo Brunelleschi, a master craftsman and engineer, revolutionized the art world with his innovative use of perspective. He developed a system of geometric rules and techniques that allowed artists to create images that mimicked how the world appears to the human eye. This newfound ability to represent the world in a more realistic way had a profound impact on the art world. Brunelleschi’s perspective framework became the foundation for all Western art that followed.
Like Bruneleschi’s framework, Planes of Discourse provides a framework for organizing and understanding complex causality between the different discourses. Similarly, the different sciences are like Giotto’s work, they have mastery in their disparate fields but there has not been a framework established to grasp their relationships clearly. This results in a form of myopia where the subject loses its clarity the further away it gets from the discourse it is observing. This is where we see Giotto’s distortions of the perceived world. Without a relationship framework established, these concepts in different fields of study start conflicting with each other because of their unconnectedness. You may think the scientific method would give us a solution here. However, as powerful as the scientific method is, it also suffers from the inability to grasp the big picture. As you will see, Planes of Discourse will help organize and regulate the different disciplines into a system that will bear the fruit of insight and clarity.
It is appropriate to use this art analogy because when a person is not skilled with a complex tool they don’t comprehend what they are missing. This is just like Giotto’s lack of perspective, especially if they possess great skills in other ways. However, when framework tools are used effectively, understanding becomes clear.
Each perspective that is established by the planes of discourse, epistemologically speaking, has its own limits, rules, and science behind it. For the different sciences to collaborate, these planes need to be understood under these conditions to avoid confusion and paradox. These are not ontological concepts that reveal actual reality, but I do believe that they are the pathway to a better ontology.
When a person describes something, it ALWAYS comes from a perspective. Of course, there is an obvious point of view, but what I am referencing, however, are the limitations of any discourse in which the concept is expressed. I will also note there are even limitations to the communication process when talking about the discourses themselves ( that will be addressed in a future article). Each different science has a particular perspective ingrained in how it views the world. It is typical for scientists in any field of study to get married to the discourse they happen to be using. This inevitably leads to myopia when they get stuck in that perspective, which clashes with other perspectives in other sciences. If there was a framework laying out rules on the advantages and limitations of each perspective, then their methodologies would explain what they can and cannot do. This framework would also explain what they can and cannot know. Collaboration, epistemologically speaking, would be much more effective and maybe even new fields of study would be discovered that are cross-disciplinary.
The Layers in Planes of Discourse
The planes that seem to be different in nature but also have causality are: Physical, Biological, Subjective, and Intersubjective. These can be broken up even more into subplanes like quantum and atomic in the physical for example. But to keep the overarching rules simple, these are the categories that are vastly different in their nature, their rules, their limits, and the properties in which they interact. This is just a basic summary, so it does not capture the complexity and nuance of observed reality. In future articles, each discourse will be covered in much more detail.
Physical
The physical discourse has properties such as distance, time, substance, and space. The sub-discourse quantum changes many of these rules but has more similarities to the physical discourse than any other discourse. Researchers are often stuck in the physical discourse, believing that other layers have no causal significance. In other words, they think that other discourses are just automated bumper cars dictated by the physical but not by the driver. If you would like to see a more solid argument regarding physical primality, I wrote an article about Epiphenominalism that will invalidate this error in causality.
This is also the only discourse that does not process data as an attribute to its function. The physical doesn’t possess any function for that matter. Modern science has determined that physical reality is governed by chaos. In effect, this chaos falls into organized patterns like galaxies and solar systems. There are rules and limits that physical reality follows like physics, chemistry, etc., but there is no directive, which means no instruction that it innately possesses. If physical reality possessed directives it would be a result of the development of the biological discourse or a being creating functions or directives like building a computer and directing it to process.
In order to store data, physical means must be used but the physical information itself is not conducted without a biological or subjective interlocutor. You may attempt to nullify this argument by saying that the biological evolved from the physical into the biological. While this may be true but we have no evidence to prove that this process was intelligently directed. As far as modern science has concluded, life was chaotically and randomly bestowed (I will write in more detail about this in a future article).
Biological
The biological discourse is a data-oriented discourse. The biological has properties like data storage, teleology, resource processing, and many more. The biological stores information in DNA through chemical reactions without which life would not be possible. This seems obvious, but the point I am trying to make is that the storage of data is key to all of the functions of life. Evolution, replication, information processing, and energy consumption are among the many functions that life is directed to do. I use the term teleology to denote the directive functions of these processes.
The biological discourse evolves its data and replication over generations, therefore evolution is a rather slow process. This is in contrast to the subjective which processes and evolves data quickly.
Subjective
The subjective discourse is also a data-oriented discourse but is more like a live program running on biological hardware. It is different in that it only exists in the now and is only present when processing the world. This is vastly different than the biological because it requires the subjective seat of consciousness to absorb the reality of now. The reason it has its own discourse is that its primary directive is to process synthesized information from the senses and to predict ideal actions for predicted outcomes. In contrast, the biological information is sensed and processed but there is no seat of consciousness.
The subjective requires a complex brain with many heuristics to process salient information from a vast array of millions of bits of data that the senses receive. I provide more detail on the distinctions of the subjective in my article The Subjective Experience of Being.
The subjective takes in information through the intersubjective discourse. The subjective does not possess any information itself, it depends on the intersubjective for all information. Think of the subject like a processor and RAM and the intersubjective like the internet and storage. The processor and RAM only have data in them when the computer is running which would be a live being, and the processor and RAM pull information from storage and the internet to make decisions. When we talk about the subjective, the intersubjective becomes subordinate biologically to the subjective. However, there are cases when not talking about the subjective that the intersubjective doesn’t even use the subjective which we will talk about in the following subsection.
Intersubjective
Now that you have heard some information about the intersubjective, some might suspect that talking about the intersubjective discourse as something that seems concrete would be interpreted that I am pointing at things in the real world. This would not be accurate. I am actually pointing at the data recorded in biology or the subject’s mind. This is not to say that what is in the real world does not exist. What it is saying is that there are real effects and objects created from the intersubjective and subjective information affecting the world. Therefore, we would see these effects in the world.
One other argument would be to posit that since real connections exist in the world, therefore the intersubjective is manifested physically as a real thing. This may sound correct, but from a data-focused standpoint, it takes biology or subjects to process this complex information, therefore it is subjugated from biology or subjects even though it can be observed as a reality in the world. With this understanding, one can analyze what is observed with sensible robust relationships that do not create what isn’t there.
There are many ways in which we can view the intersubjective. I have divided the intersubjective into three categories: internal intersubjective, external intersubjective, and collective intersubjective. The general term intersubjective is really a blanket term for everything outside the subject. However, this is not properly accurate because of the way intersubjectivity relates to the biological and the subjective. Unlike subjectivity, the intersubjective discourse is not limited by time. Since the intersubjective discourse is what is outside the subject in subjectivity, it would seem like some kind of opposite created for the subject. This is further from the truth. Rather, it is more of a useful categorization for the things outside the subject in which the subject receives as information. Since information outside the subject is vastly different in nature from the subject itself, it has its own category. Anything outside one’s self that is experienced has an effect on the subject. The biological machine that designed subjectivity designed it for the purpose of processing the complexity of the intersubjective. You may think of this type of intersubjectivity as an internal intersubjective that occurs only in the mind.
The second type of intersubjective is the external intersubjective. This is more of the opposite of the internal intersubjective. Imagine an eye receiving information from the world; the data an eye receives would be the internal aspect while the actual occurrence received by the eye would be the external intersubjective. This distinction is critical because the nature of that data is vastly different for each type. Books are a helpful example to clarify this distinction. When you read a book, the data in the book is external to the subject, not limited by time, and symbolic. The information the eye receives is visual, limited to the moment the eye receives the data, and processed within the mind. You see how this can get rather complex when attempting to parse. The internal intersubjective in some ways is an extension of the subjective. However, when you add concepts like memory, you realize that the storage of memory is very similar to books which are intersubjective. This internal memory storage is also internal intersubjective because it takes place within the mind. Without getting too bogged down in details, I’m only pointing out the rationale for the necessity of these terms.
The last type is collective intersubjective. It is more difficult to pin down the concreteness of intersubjective structures but you do see their effects in the real world – like governments, institutions, and other social structures. They may have physical manifestations but they are mental constructs. This does not mean that they do not exist without our minds, but it does mean that they become void of all meaning without our minds. So in a sense, most people collectively believe the government exists, therefore, it has an effect. These effects are not necessarily arbitrary because these ideological structures possess physical manifestations of the signs, symbols, objects, and structures they signify which cultivate consistency in their design.
The other common type of collective intersubjective is biological groups like a mass of bacteria or a pack of wolves. You can think of these as a conglomeration of biological forms working together for a unified goal. It is pertinent to note that for a biological group like bacteria, subjectivity is not needed. So as much as intersubjectivity comes after subjectivity, intersubjective collectives were around evolutionarily long before subjectivity was developed in the animal branch. This is what I introduce in The Subjective Experience of Being.
Layered Causality
Causes and effects are not necessarily singular. I think it would be common for people to intuitively assume that if something causes an effect, then that cause is the primary cause of the effect. This fallacy is called causal reductionism – which is assuming a single cause or reason when there were actually multiple causes or reasons. Physicists argue that because chemical reactions happen in our brain before the person is aware, physics determines the decision rather than the individual. This type of reductionism implies that the subject making the decision is not needed. It is evolutionarily developed for the subject’s experience to cause the body to respond effectively. To make more sense of this, I have developed layered causality to show how these relationships work.
If a person decides to throw a ball, there are many required causes:
- Subjective: The person decides to throw the ball.
- Biological: The underlying heuristics and teleologies that lay the groundwork for warranting such a decision along with biologically directed autonomic functions involved in propagating the action.
- Physical: the chemical reactions and all it entails for actually deciding to throw the ball and actually throwing it.
- Intersubjective: If another person asks them to throw the ball.
It is clear that more than one is required for the ball to be thrown. This is where layered causality comes in. When we list out the discourses it would typically be in the physical, biological, subjective, intersubjective order. However, what I am emphasizing here is the sensibility of the events. The physical reactions may have come first, but the cognitive decision that was subjectively decided was the reason it occurred in the first place. Without that reason, the ball would not have been thrown.
Layered causality is a bottom-up approach like a cake with the physical discourse being at the bottom. In the above example, all four discourses are used for the effect to happen with the lower layers being the foundation for the higher levels to happen. So in this sense, when a physicist observes these chemical reactions for a decision they are observing that discourse at work. Just because one observes this, it does not negate the other discourses.
Some may argue that one or more of these “higher” discourses are really just contrived illusions. I prefer to apply the “sine qua non” school of thought which means – without which not. Ask yourself, “If that discourse didn’t actually exist, would it be possible without it?” Every time I ask myself this, I discover what is required.
Layered programming analogy
Let’s suppose physics is the lowest level of programming in a computer, which is assembly. Assembly is rudimentary in that it just pushes and pulls things out of registers. It’s difficult and slow for humans to interpret. Eventually, medium-level languages like C++ evolved which is a bit more readable but still needs to be compiled before use. Then there are high-level languages like Visual Basic which are simple and quick to learn. The higher the language, the more it processes and does with each command.
The biological is like a low-level language that is compiled in DNA which moves around all the assembly registers when it’s compiled. In this sense, life follows the rules of physics but also causally conducts the rules of physics on a higher level. The causes and effects are at a higher level of complexity due to the fact that they are manipulating data. This does affect the lower language of physics but from a physics perspective, life doesn’t even exist since it’s just mere motion and chemical reactions through time.
In a sense, the subjective is like a high-level language that the biological discourse evolved to help it achieve its objectives, one of which was survival. At this stage, there are many layers of data processing information for the subject. I can subjectively pick up my cup. There is a cause and an effect. I can also explain this biologically, but also with physics, each having its own language, its own rules, and its own perspective.
These levels are layered in such an order because, like a cake depending on the layer below it, the lower levels are necessary for the higher levels to be there without which the higher levels wouldn’t be possible. Just like in programming, assembly was originally necessary to program C++. In planes of discourse, the data received in intersubjectivity requires the subjective (or the biological for nonsubjective life forms), the function of the subjective requires biology to create it, and biology requires atoms in physical discourse to process it.
The intersubjective, subjective, and biological discourses are all data-centric since data is the primary element of their function. The biological system records information in the genome and transmits it to its offspring. Without data, biology would not be able to function. For a being’s subjective experience to be able to receive and process data at the moment it is received, it requires a brain to process data. The intersubjective, which is what is outside the subject, is information received by the senses. This is not really a “programming language” per se because the intersubjective itself is not specifically a machine. But there are biologically created mechanisms that you can think of intersubjectively like institutions or swarms.
If you are looking for more detail about layered causality, I have another example in the article Causality of the Atom Bomb.
Application and Implications
Planes of Discourse is not a tool like critical theory in the sense that it does not seek to interpret and critique a given subject from a particular political or ideological perspective. Instead, it provides a framework for analyzing causal relationships in a systematic manner, in order to gain a deeper understanding of their complexity. Additionally, it is a procedure like the scientific method However, unlike the scientific method, it takes a more holistic approach. Just categorizing to figure out which cause is more significant would be a misuse, because in actuality, all planes are required. This distinction is critical to keep in mind when using the planes of discourse. It helps to ensure that the analysis remains objective and focused on gaining a better understanding of what is being analyzed.
If you try, you can easily use this tool to analyze, for example, the effects of a drought. You can gain insight into the impact of each discourse, and it would seem correct. Such as considering the biological effect of the environment, the individuals affected by it, and how cities and their social structures are affected by it. However, all you would be doing is using arbitrary divisions as a way to look at it from different perspectives. The issue here is that simply dividing the effects of drought into these four categories fails to capture the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of these factors. This may limit our ability to fully understand what we are studying.
Suppose we are analyzing a problem related to human behavior. One could use the four discourse perspectives to approach the problem in a more holistic way. Let us analyze the factors that contribute to depression (just a sketch) as an example:
- From a physical perspective, one could examine if the patient is exercising, eating properly, or sleeping enough. What we are looking for is something out of equilibrium. These processes the body does physically would have an effect on the biology of the patient by triggering the proper amount of hormones. This depression could also be caused by lacking a vital nutrient or mineral that a doctor would be able to identify.
- From a biological perspective, one could examine hormonal imbalances, brain chemistry, and genetics. Is there a hormonal imbalance causing this depression? Does the patient have a genetic disposition for depression?
- From a subjective perspective, one could focus on the individual’s experiences and perceptions of the problem. Since it is clear that the patient’s subjective experience is suffering from depression, are there personality issues getting in the way of the individual’s subjective experience? It could be the result of childhood trauma or stress. Has the patient tried meditation or yoga as a way to mitigate this depression?
- Finally, from an intersubjective perspective, one could examine their environment, social and family life, or even negative ideologies or cultural influences. If any of these factors become toxic to the individual, it may cause depression. The problem could even be that they need more positive social interactions.
By using these different planes of discourse, one could gain a more comprehensive understanding of the problem. As opposed to being just different categories, you can see that all these discourses directly affect and are interrelated with each other. Whenever one attempts to tackle a problem like depression, one may use one or a few of these methods. However, with this holistic approach, you may discover which factor or factors are actually causing your being to be out of equilibrium. The term equilibrium is significant here because when something is out of equilibrium, there is a problem to solve. This out-of-equilibrium cause will cascade to other discourses because of their interconnectedness.
Conclusion
This introduction only scratches the surface of Planes of Discourse. If we were to correlate this to the development of Bruneleschi’s perspective, this would only be a sketch in his notebook. This article covers the basics of the four layers: Physical, Biological, Subjective, and Intersubjective. We have also covered how they interrelate with one another and some of their properties. We examined layered causality which refers to the cause-and-effect relationship between the layers of different discourses. We also reviewed some rudimentary examples of applying the planes of discourse. This introduction has been designed to provide you with insight into whatever field you are involved in or for those who just want to gain a better understanding of the world.
If you have questions or critiques, feel free to leave a comment below. I will either edit these articles in light of this new information or add additional information since I probably wasn’t clear enough.