Lifting the Veil on the Platonic Mind Space That Gives Rise to Consciousness and Meaning

Recent advances in the hard sciences and in the humanities have made it abundantly clear that as human beings our perception of the mind-external world—what we colloquially call ‘reality’—is permeated by an a priori metaphysical substrate of meaning, values, and ethics (Meaning). These advances demonstrate that we perceive Meaning in the world and infer the existence of objects, not the other way around.  

In this paper I identify a unified field of Meaning in the unconscious mind of individuals as the agent responsible for importing this a priori metaphysical substrate into our perceptual experience of the world. My research supports the thesis that this autonomous field of Meaning is: (1) the lens through which we perceive the material world; (2) the source of meaning in words; and (3) by virtue of how it internally maps our perceptual experience, the seat of consciousness in modern humans. Although overlooked by modern science, this field was evidently well known to ancient civilizations.

The forgotten field of Meaning so described is the product of a generative matrix of non-arbitrary meaning-sound relations. The matrix generates an integrated system of Meaning (a Meaning System) from a discrete inventory of symbolic sounds, which sounds in different combination map onto an underlying hierarchical framework of nested concepts. While a Meaning System itself stands permanently outside of spacetime, it projects encoded fragments of the system—what we call thoughts—into spacetime coordinates in real time in the form of either spoken or written words.

Consciousness arises from the subdivision of this internal, metaphysical mind space into two distinct sub-fields; the first represents the subjective observer (the metaphysical inner eye, or ‘I’), the second, everything that is perceived as being outside of the ‘I’ (i.e., what is ‘Other’). This separation of the observer from the observed is a prerequisite for consciousness, as it paves the way for the birth of the relational quality that persists between the two now-separated fields, what we call ‘the subjective experience of what something is like’. This relation between subject and object is the vital third leg in the ontological makeup of consciousness.

Meaning Systems operate as a kind of higher order organ of perception, identifying objects, time periods and activities in spacetime that are classified as ‘Other’, and naming them according to their functional attributes. They then tie all of these entities together into a coherent and seamless perceptual gestalt, wherein all perceived spacial objects and temporal entities (time periods and activities) are perceived to be nested within a hierarchy of like entities, a configuration that mirrors the internal architecture of Meaning Systems themselves.

The rediscovery of this forgotten substrate of Meaning allows us to enter the inner sanctum of Meaning for the first time with a scientific mindset and tools in order to investigate the internal organization of this hidden module of mind. In this paper I share the methodological approach used to gain access to this inner realm, and present my preliminary findings regarding its architecture and substance.