Sensicles

To make any sense of the nature of Sensicles, you must be attuned to the pre-verbal language in which your mind primarily operates. Put differently, you must learn to think in that proto-language if you wish to grasp it at all. This often requires effort. Our rational mind relies heavily on natural language, which tends to obscure the Sensicle language by operating at a higher plane of emergence. It is like trying to see fine details painted on a canvas through a layer of frosted glass—our natural language blurs direct perception of the proto-language from which it emerges. Yet that is precisely what is required: without this attunement, it becomes far more difficult to appreciate the true nature of the elements, syntax, and grammar that compose this language.
 
Sensicles are as fundamental as anything can be within the theory. Each possesses a singular meaning-profile: a particular kind of difference it can make within relationships with other Sensicles. It is not first a meaningless object to which meaning is subsequently attached. Its difference-making nature is what it is.
 
Something such as blue-ness, at the fundamental level, should therefore not be imagined as a tiny patch of conscious blue. It is the primitive difference-making character that, within sufficiently complex higher-order organisation, can contribute to what consciousness eventually experiences as blue.
 
Some readers might wonder why I do not simply refer to these Sensicles as qualia. Qualia refer to the raw felt qualities of sensations, emotions, thoughts, or anything else. Although Sensicles may appear equivalent to qualia, I avoid that term, as it is too entangled with subjective consciousness to serve as an objective, foundational element in an account of how things fundamentally come into being, including consciousness itself. Qualia are what we experience in consciousness after it has been assembled by Sensicles.
 
The question naturally arises: if a Sensicle possesses only its singular nature—so that something like blue-ness lacks even the property of spreadability—how is it possible for us to see it extended across a surface or mixed with another colour? The answer lies in the first Sensicle we will examine.
 
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The Set (or Set-ness) Sensicle is the sense of something-ness.

Imagine standing alone in a dark forest. You think you have heard a twig snap. You feel that there is something there, though you do not know what. That feeling of something-ness is as close as we can get to experiencing the Set Sensicle.
In such moments, your mind instinctively tries to fill that set with a further set that will define the cause of the noise. For us, as conscious agents, everything is a “something.” Indeed, there is not a single thing in this universe—whether physical or mental—that is not a “something,” and that something-ness is made possible by the nature of the Set Sensicle.
 
The Set Sensicle contributes the primitive sense of something belonging together as a potential whole. It allows Sensicles to enter a bounded relational organisation without blending away their individual natures.
 
But placing elements within a Set does not, by itself, make the collection a genuine higher-order entity. That requires something more.
 
When Sensicles interact, the differences they make can constrain what happens next. Some combinations are fleeting, while mutually compatible constraints can make other patterns more persistent. If such a pattern becomes sufficiently integrated that it begins making a difference to the rest of reality as a whole, rather than merely through its constituents independently, the organised Set has become a new difference-making unit.
 
This distinction is important. The Set Sensicle provides the primitive grammar of belonging together; relational constraint and persistence determine whether that potential organisation becomes an enduring higher-order thing.
 
A straightforward way to visualise the distinction is to imagine a green clown. Its various elements can be gathered within an organised Set, but the Set is not simply metaphysical glue that turns arbitrary ingredients into a genuine entity. The resulting pattern acquires its identity through the relationships among those elements and the differences the organised whole can subsequently make.
The Set Sensicle therefore makes bounded organisation possible, while the relationships among the elements determine what that organisation becomes.
 
This also provides a more precise account of recursive emergence. Lower-level Sensicles can enter relationships that produce persistent, integrated patterns. When such a pattern becomes causally effective as a whole, it can itself function as a new building block within further Sets and relationships.
 
The products of the generative language can therefore become part of its vocabulary.
 
This process can repeat at progressively higher levels. It is analogous to atoms becoming components of molecules, molecules becoming components of cells, and cells becoming components of organisms—but the theory does not assume those transitions merely from the analogy. The task is to show how the underlying Sensicle dynamics actually generate them.
 
The Set Sensicle therefore does not single-handedly create pattern, structure or persistence. It contributes one of the primitive conditions that make relational organisation possible. The structure that emerges depends upon the wider network of differences, constraints and persistent relationships within the Set.
 
It is like having dozens of actors representing various characters in a stage production. These characters do not exist until the actors step onto the stage, at which point the characters come to life. The stage acts like a Set, bringing everything together as ‘a-thing’—a show.
 
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The next Sensicle we will examine is the Magnitude (or Magnitude-ness) Sensicle.
 
Taken in isolation, this Sensicle is again entirely incomprehensible to our conscious awareness. In such a solitary state, what exists is not magnitude as we ordinarily feel it, but only the potential for magnitude—a kind of undifferentiated sense intensity. This is a qualitative presence that has not yet been placed within any relational frame. It is neither “large” nor “small,” for there is no scale and no contrast. It simply is: a raw, non-relative intensity of presence. Don’t worry about not ‘getting’ it on an intuitive level. You can’t.
 
In its emergent form (when it’s ‘in’ a Set Sensicle with other elements and where our understanding kicks in), the Magnitude Sensicle contributes the sense of relation—the intuition of “more-ness” or “less-ness,” a pre-linguistic, pre-mathematical awareness of quantity or intensity within Set structures. The Magnitude Sensicle exerts a profound influence on reality and our conscious experience of it. While the Set Sensicle creates structure, Magnitude introduces variability and the potential for change. Flowmonics proposes that Magnitude is one of the Sensicles involved in the eventual emergence of structures such as space, time, movement and causation. Together with Position and other Sensicles, it may contribute to the relational organisation from which spacetime itself ultimately emerges. Exactly how that transition occurs remains an open part of the theory.

If the Set Sensicle is the creator, Magnitude is its power.
 
Another distinctive quality that Magnitude contributes to emergent phenomena is its additive nature. A hundred instantiated Magnitude-ness sets create a sense of “more-ness” in relation to, let us say, ten references. It is the Magnitude Sensicle that enables the Set Sensicle to form multiple references of a set [ [◿] [◿] [◿] ]. How did it all start? The simplest way to understand this is that the sense of more-than-nothing opens the possibility of more-than-that-more. So, a unit of Magnitude in a Set with no Magnitude gave us the sense of one more than zero, and that sense of more-ness gave us one more than one and so on. Remember, Sensicles make sense in the vocabulary of their nature—sense-ness. Our natural languages are not suited for it. They are the wrong language to use, and that’s why we’ve made no progress.

To make the notation of Magnitude more straightforward, we write it as [ ◿3 ], acknowledging that each Magnitude Sensicle reference is “wrapped” in its own Set and then brought together in a parent Set.
 
In summary, Magnitude is the sense of a primitive relation or felt distinction: this is greater than, smaller than, or equal to that. It makes comparison possible without requiring counting or measurement. Like all Sensicles, Magnitude must be instantiated to become “a thing” [◿]. Then, for it to have value in reality—and by extension to our minds—it must cohere with some other thing in that Set [ ◇◿ ]. In other words, the Magnitude of something. Next, it requires variability through its additive nature [ ◇◿3 ]. Finally, it requires a structure to make it relational [ [ ◇◿3 ] [ ◇◿6 ] ].
I have, of course, just introduced another Sensicle, so let me present it now.
 
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The Position (or Position-ness) Sensicle represents the sense of something being somewhere. Yet in its isolated state, it is, like all Sensicles, entirely unknowable. On its own, locality loses all definitional content. There is no “where,” because there is no elsewhere. It is presence without spatial relation: a pure hereness that has no contrast, no boundary, no direction, no extent. Space, in any meaningful form, does not yet exist. The solitary element does not occupy or define a real position—it is position-ness, or perhaps more precisely, presence without placement.
 
The only reason the Sensicles make any sense at all is that your mind always experiences them at higher levels of emergence. You cannot think of Magnitude-ness without thinking of the magnitude of something, nor of Position-ness without thinking of something somewhere, even if you do not know where. For example, you cannot envision this element as existing in a universe that contains only a single Position Sensicle, because your mind will inevitably imagine it within an entirely black space (spatial dimensions plus colour added). Try removing the space and the colour. Even if you manage that, you will still sense the Position Sensicle in a relational context to your own position.
 
What I am trying to do here is create an understanding of how the Sensicles cohere to create the emergent sense experience that we are so familiar with in our conscious awareness. So, let us imagine we bring a Position Sensicle together with a selection of Magnitude sets [◇◿100]. This creates the emergent sense of position-ness combined with 100 magnitude-ness—a Position of 100 Magnitudes. At this low level of emergence, it does not make much practical sense to the mind, which is primarily concerned with relational entities. If we then place it together with another set containing a different magnitude reference amount, an emergent sense we know as distance—in its most basic form—arises: one Position/Magnitude relative to another.
 
[ [◇◿1] [◇◿100] ]
 
Of course, in consciousness, we usually experience such Sets within higher levels of emergence, where we also know what the Position refers to—the Position of what?
 
[ [ [object1] [◇◿1] ] [ [object2] [◇◿100] ] ]
 
These structures quickly become increasingly complex. A sense of distance, for example, typically comes with at least two spatial dimensions, built-in orientations, and all of this unfolds across time. Still, these lower-level Sets are experienced as brief moments of the sense they represent, which quickly blend into the larger context of emergence.
 
The artist, in a sense, learns to isolate these more basic Sets and focus on them during the creative process. For example, they might isolate the Set of a curve’s tension, the weight of a shadow, or the distance between two forms—not merely as visual data, but as momentary intensities of presence and relation. It is like a dancer sensing the tension in a pause, rather than experiencing it as merely a mechanical duration between two steps. These can be shaped, emphasised, or distorted so that they resonate with the larger set of felt relations, thereby creating a unified quality that guides the creative process.
 
There are many other equally fascinating Sensicles—such as Spin-ness and Then-ness—alongside the more familiar colours and those that combine to give rise to our emotions and our experiences of sound, smell, touch, and taste.
 
By delving into the language of Sensicles—by coming to terms with the proposed grammar of reality itself—we can begin investigating questions such as why we experience three spatial dimensions, how the passage of time emerges into experience, what the self truly is, the nature of free will, and much more besides.
 
Why? Because Flowmonics proposes that these phenomena ultimately emerge from organisations of Sensicles. Understanding their syntax, relationships and generative grammar may therefore allow us to work backwards from the structures we experience towards the deeper processes from which they arise.