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The key to my argument is the notion that dissociation can demarcate and carve out a private phenomenal field. This way, alters must become blind to all phenomenality taking place outside their respective field, which then explains why I cannot read your
thoughts. And indeed, there is strong empirical evidence for the literally blinding power of dissociation: in 2015, doctors reported on the case of a German woman who exhibited a variety of alters (Strasburger and Waldvogel, 2015). Peculiarly, some of
her alters claimed to be blind while others could see normally. Through EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s
body, even though
her eyes were open. When a sighted alter assumed con­trol, the usual brain activity returned. Clearly thus — if nothing else, for sheer empirical reasons — dissociation is a sufficiently powerful potential solution to the decombination problem.

10. At What Level Does Cosmic Dissociation Occur?
The challenge we must now address is the so-called ‘boundary prob­lem for experiencing subjects’ (Rosenberg, 2004, pp. 77–90): what measurable structures in nature correspond to — that is, are the revealed appearance of — alters of cosmic
consciousness? As we have seen, Shani (2015) posits that elementary particles are akin to micro-level alters, which in turn come together to compose higher-level relative subjects. However, as already mentioned, I believe this to be an unnecessarily
convoluted notion. Instead, I submit that cosmic dissociation happens precisely
at the level of living beings with unitary consciousness, such as you and me. You and I are alters of cosmic consciousness.
There are several arguments for this. The first has already been hinted at: given that we ordinarily experience an integrated phenom­enal field, there is no direct reason to conjecture that this field is a composite of lower-level constituents.
Secondly, we have seen that von Neumann’s reasoning regarding quantum measurement (1996) implies that the entire inanimate uni­verse must be one unfathomable ‘von Neumann chain’ — that is, an entangled indivisible whole. As such, it is arbitrary
— physically speaking — to carve out any segment of the inanimate universe and posit it to be the revealed appearance of an alter. Von Neumann did, however, exclude conscious living organisms from the embrace of von Neumann chains, since at least we,
conscious human beings, clearly can perform quantum measurements. On this basis, only conscious living organisms can correspond to alters of cosmic consciousness, not elementary particles or any other subset of the inanimate universe.

Thirdly, as observed by Mathews, ‘the individuation of [inanimate] objects…
is not consistently objectively determined… many of our individuations — of
rocks and mountains, for instance — have basically nominal status’ (2011, p. 144). Take
what we call a ‘car’: though based on structural and functional reasoning that helps the business of transportation, its delineation is ultimately arbitrary. If one argues that, say, the spark plugs are integral to the car because without them the
car cannot function, by the same token one would also have to include the fuel that makes its engine run, the environment air that allows combustion and cools
the engine, the road gripped by the tires, the ground that sustains the road, the gravity that
enables grip, and so on. The decision of where to stop is motivated by convenience. An analogous rationale applies to whether we distinguish the handle from the mug, the hood from the jacket, the river from the ocean, etc. This relative arbitrariness in
the way we delineate their boundaries renders inanimate objects problematic candidates for the revealed appearance of alters of cosmic consciousness. After
all, in Mathews’ words, ‘the boundaries between subjects are not nominal. The individuation of
subjects, or centres of subjectivity, is objectively determined’ (ibid.).

Mathews is giving us an important clue here. Indeed, the boundaries of our own body are not nominal. Our ability to perceive ends at the surface of the body: our skin, retinas, eardrums, tongue, and the mucous lining of our nose. We cannot perceive
photons hitting a wall or air pressure oscillations bouncing off a window, but we can per­ceive those impinging on our retinas and eardrums, respectively. Moreover, our ability to act through direct phenomenal intention also ends at the surface of the
body: we can move our arms and legs simply by consciously intending to move them. However, we cannot do the same with tables and chairs. Clearly, thus, the
delineation of our body is an empirical fact. I cannot just decide that the chair I am sitting on
is integral to my body, in the way I can decide that the handle is integral to the mug. Neither can I decide that a patch of my skin is not integral to my body, in the way I can decide that the hood is not integral to the jacket. The criterion here is
not merely a functional or structural one, but the range of phenomenality — sensory perception, intention — intrinsically associated with our body. Based
on this objective criterion, there is no freedom to move boundaries at will.

What these considerations suggest is clear: the physical boundary of the body is the revealed appearance of the dissociative boundary of our phenomenal field. And in so far as we can assume that all living organisms have phenomenal
inner life in some way
akin to our own, the conclusion can be generalized: living organisms are the revealed appearance of alters of universal consciousness; they are carved out of their context by virtue of cosmic dissociation.
But can we assume that all living creatures have phenomenal inner life? I believe we can: in so far as it resembles our own, the extrinsic behaviour of all metabolizing organisms is suggestive of their having dissociated phenomenal
fields analogous to
ours in some sense. This is obvious enough for cats and dogs, but what about plants and single-celled organisms such as amoebae? Well, consider this: ‘many types of amoeba construct glassy shells by picking up sand grains from the mud in which they
live. The typical Difflugia shell, for example, is shaped like a vase, and has a remarkable symmetry’ (Ford, 2010, p. 26). As for plants, many recent studies have reported on their surprisingly sophisticated behaviour, leading even to a proposal for a
new field of scientific enquiry boldly called ‘plant neurobiology’ (Brenner
et al., 2006).

Clearly, thus, even plants and single-celled organisms exhibit extrinsic behaviour somewhat analogous to our own, further suggesting that they, too, have dissociated phenomenal fields. Of course, the same cannot be said of any inanimate object or
phenomenon (those that have been engineered by humans to merely simulate the behaviour of living beings, such as robots, natural language interfaces, etc., naturally don’t count).
Finally, we have good empirical reasons to believe that normal metabolism is essential for the maintenance of our dissociated phenomenal fields, for when it
slows down or stops the dissociative boundary seems to become phenomenally porous (Kastrup, 2017a)
. So metabolism — the shared and differentiating characteristic of all living
organisms — seems, again, to be the revealed appearance of alters of cosmic consciousness. The unique features of metabolism — think of DNA, morphogenesis, transcription,
protein folding, mitosis, etc. — unify all life into a unique, clearly distinct natural category, despite the widely different forms organisms can take. This category provides the unambiguously demarcated ‘something in nature’ that Rosenberg was
looking for (2004, pp. 77–90).
In conclusion, I posit that cosmic dissociation happens precisely at the level of individual living organisms. Each living organism is an alter of cosmic consciousness.

11. Reducing the Revealed to the Concealed Order
Notice that the revealed side of nature relative to any given alter con­sists of images on the screen of the alter’s conscious perception. Therefore, if one can reduce perceptions at the level of individual alters to non-perceptual phenomenal contents
at the level of cosmic consciousness as a whole, one will have reduced nature’s revealed to its concealed order.
Before we address this challenge, however, we need some further background on dissociation. By definition, phenomenal contents inside an alter cannot evoke phenomenal contents outside the alter, and vice versa. But they can still influence each other.
Indeed, phenomenal impingement across a dissociative boundary is empirically known. John Lynch and Christopher Kilmartin (2013, p. 100), for instance, report that dissociated feelings can dramatically affect thoughts and corresponding behaviours, whereas
David Eagleman (2011, pp. 20–54) shows that dissociated expectations routinely mould our perceptions. Indeed, the entire clinical field of depth psychology is based on the notion that dissociated phenomenal contents in deeper layers of the psyche
continuously impinge on the executive ego (Kelly et al., 2009, pp. 301–34). We can visualize this as in Figure 2a, wherein the partial overlap of adjacent vertices internal and external to an alter represents impingement across its dissociative
boundary.

Figure 2b illustrates the same thing according to a simplified representation unrelated to graph theory: the broader psychic space is represented as a white circle, with an alter represented as a grey circle within it. These circles are
no longer graph
vertices but represent sets of phenomenal contents. The dashed arrows represent
the impinge­ment of external and internal phenomenal contents — not explicitly shown — on each other, across the alter’s boundary. For the avoid­ance of doubt, notice
that these dashed arrows no longer represent cognitive associations. I shall use this simplified representation hence­forth. Moreover, for simplicity’s sake, from now on I shall also refer to all non-perceptual phenomenal contents simply as ‘
thoughts’.

Figure 2. Phenomenal contents impinging on the dissociative boundary of an alter, illustrated in two different but equivalent ways, (a) and (b).
I submit that, before its first alter ever formed, the only phenomenal contents
of cosmic consciousness were thoughts. There were no per­ceptions. The formation of the first alter then demarcated a boundary separating phenomenal contents within the
alter from those outside the alter. This newly formed boundary is what enabled perceptions to arise relative to an alter: the thoughts surrounding the alter impinged on its dissociative boundary from the outside. And since phenomenal contents are
particular patterns of self-excitation of cosmic conscious­ness, this impingement can be regarded as an interference pattern between excitations within and outside the dissociative boundary, respectively (see Figure 2a again). What we call perception,
or the revealed side of nature, is the alter’s experience of this interference pattern (cf. Kastrup, 2017c). It follows that the revealed side of
nature can be grounded in its concealed side: the former arises from excitatory
interference between
dissociated but mutually impinging thoughts. Indeed, I submit that the formation of dissociative boundaries is what partitioned the cosmos into revealed and concealed sides. See

Figure 3.
The thoughts of an alter can also impinge on its dissociative boundary from the
inside and thereby influence the surrounding phenomenal activity of cosmic consciousness (not shown in Figure 3). This corresponds to the effects on the world of the presence
and actions of a living organism within it.

Figure 3. Thoughts in cosmic consciousness cause perceptions in an alter.
The revealed or extrinsic appearance of an alter’s boundary is an organism’s sense organs. In our case, these are our skin, eyes, ears, nose, and tongue. Therefore, even if the outside stimulation is very faint and subtle, evolution has had billions
of years to optimize the sensitivity of our sense organs — our alter’s boundary — to pick up on these faint signals.
But how can a mere dissociative boundary give rise to a qualita­tively different category of experience? If you recall, this is a question I raised earlier, motivated by the fact that perceptions feel undoubtedly very distinct from thoughts.

To answer it, let us first consider Donald Hoffman’s interface theory of perception (2009): it asserts that evolution emphasizes perceptual qualities conducive to fitness, not to truth. In other words, we have evolved to perceive
not the phenomenal
contents that are really out there — that is, outside our alter — but just a phenomenal representa­tion thereof that helps us survive and reproduce. Hoffman uses the analogy of a computer desktop: although a computer file is repre­sented in it as,
for instance, a blue rectangle, this does not mean that the file itself has the
qualities of being blue and rectangular. As a matter of fact, the actual file does not have those qualities at all: it is a pattern of open and closed microscopic switches in
a silicon chip. In an analogous way, my hypothesis is that the qualities we experience on the screen of perception — colours, sounds, flavours, textures,
etc.
— are not the qualities experienced by the segment of cosmic con­sciousness that surrounds our alter, but their ‘desktop representation’ instead. Our perceptions do not feel like the thoughts of cosmic consciousness because a qualitative
transition between these two experiential categories has helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.

The work of Friston, Sengupta and Auletta (2014) has similar implications but, significantly, is derived from an entirely different line of reasoning. Their results are based on abstract mathematical considerations and, therefore, can in principle be
leveraged under any ontology. They show that whenever a Markov blanket (Pearl, 1988) defines the boundary of an individual organism, internal states of the organism will evolve to optimize for two conflicting goals: (a) to reflect external states of the
world beyond the Markov blanket; and
(b) to minimize their own entropy or dispersion. Goal (a) is about allowing the
organism to know what is going on in the world outside, so it can take suitable
actions to survive in that world. Goal (b) is about preventing the organism from losing its
internal structural and dynamical integrity because of the second law of thermodynamics. In our case, the dissociative boundary of an alter is the Markov blanket, whose revealed appearance is our skin and other sense organs.

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