The Basics of a Trans-Structural Paradigm
Epistemological Assumptions
At any given time there are limits to what can be known of the background reality. It is through those limits that we experience what we consider to be an objective reality. Our objective reality is always incomplete. This is the felt reality, that part with which we have relationships.
Windows to our knowing include:
Chemical respondents:
Hormones and neurotransmitters mitigate our processing of information as well as the cognitive, emotional and physical dispositions with which we encounter reality. Included in this category are chemically based sensations such as taste and olfaction which are the windows with which we meet our reality.
Energetic respondents:
These include the remaining senses such as vision, hearing, temperature and pressure sensations. In addition are internal energetics, which, like chemical respondents mitigate our experience of reality, and the processing of information about that reality.
Space/Time respondents:
There is considerable complexity in our senses of time and space, much of which has been studied, and much that has not. Body clock functions are among those very well studied. Among those not studied is our sense of the present moment. How long is the present moment? Sometimes, when we are relaxed and peaceful, time is more protracted. During emergencies the moment is measured in milliseconds, and so time seems almost to stop.
Most of our capacity to engage in time has to do with our memory structures, and much of our orientation to time has to do with our short term memory passing into active memory, or long term memory. Outside of this, we know very little about this fourth dimension of space. What would happen if, like has happened in past epochs, the dimension of time became discernible by the same means as we sensate the other three dimensions?
Our other senses of space are not singularly discernible from the Energetic or Chemical Respondents discussed earlier. Here, there is the reference to a different gestalt: a sense of space that is qualitatively different than distance, something more akin to ambiance, or the'vibe' space is sometimes thick, and sometimes liminal, fleeting, slippery, or overlaid with other space.
Cognitive respondents:
Here cognitive is taken to be information oriented. It is not strictly limited to thoughts, or brain based processing. How we think about our encounters with reality, obviously mitigates our experience of it. Our assumptions, our memories, our attention and intention also participate with the formation of our reality interface.
Structures of consciousness, or cognition as it is used here including: worldview, belief structures, perceptual habits, and assumption sets, are a different order of respondents to the experienced reality. They include the already mitigated base level encounter with our felt reality, as well as an additional emergent order of classification and metacognition. As such, structures of consciousness play a role in altering, filtering, augmenting, constructing, combining, and/or interpreting the chemical and energetic respondents above.
Holes in the fabric:
There are both known and unknown holes in the fabric of our encounter with reality. The easiest example of these are the broad bands of energetics known to exist in the"real world", As a result of our perceptual gaps we do not encounter the broad range of frequencies below audible level, between audible and visual levels, and above visual levels. Were the full range of frequencies available to us perceptually, our notions of what reality is like would be vastly different. Our experience, then would be wholly different as well, though no less or more authentic. It would be difficult to guess what kinds of effects differences in perceptual systems might have on our experience of time, space, energy and matter.
The experience outside our felt reality probably doesn't even remotely resemble what we experience, and thus, speculation on what kinds of differences there might be are bound by all our habituated sensitivities. In other words, if we had the sensitivities of a tree, the idea of a rock being living and conscious might be blatantly obvious. Why would we not think that in the same way that ants are a super-organism, that from a different perceptual set why would not a grassy knoll, or a lake, or a cloud be?
How I know, then is through experience, whether through the mind, the body, through the spirit or though other dispositions or sensitivities which I may, in fact have, but which linguistic constraints have all but filtered out, or by new sensitivities that may evolve either through biological means, or through complex emergents.
We know reality through relationship. As individuals, we know reality through the relationship we have with ourselves and our environment. Our knowledge of ourselves- how and who we are- contributes to, enhances or detracts, simplifies or complexifies that which we know. It is this dynamic, relational feature of knowing that has to be considered in a metacognitive way in order to make room for new thought patterns. Without this metacognitive, or trans-structural consideration, our investigation into ontological structures is flavored by unexamined assumptions, and hence is relegated to habituated patterns of modeling.
