An Experiential Vocabulary

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Introduction Part I
This part is dedicated to introducing and applying an experiential vocabulary, that is, a way of describing experiential events, with name: Formology.

An experiential vocabulary serves two goals. The first goal is the facilitation of the transfer of insights between the experiential and physical domain. This requires an experiential vocabulary that is rigorous enough to capture the psychophysical bridging laws, yet flexible enough to describe the experiential events of interest for the insight transfer. The second goal is to provide experiential semantics a vocabulary that can carry the full semantic burden of concepts via its formulated experiential events. This is key to increasing the range and rigor of experiential communication and insight, be it for conceptual investigation or practice, see part II. It is claimed that Formology satisfies both requirements: it is rigid enough to systematically capture the bridging laws while remaining flexible enough to describe all relevant experiential events. Therefore, Formology is claimed a good candidate for both the transfer of insights and for experiential semantics. 

Consider the first goal: insight transfer. To establish a psychophysical bridging law, one must formulate and relate physical and experiential events within a chosen vocabulary. A concern is that the vocabularies used are too vague or simply unable to systematically capture these bridging laws.

For the physical domain, there are different vocabularies one can use to describe the substrate, often provided by a Theory of Consciousness. For example, direct neurological descriptions in terms of local recurrences, broadcasting or neural oscillations. One can also consider mathematized vocabularies, such as those used in Integrated Information Theory or Predictive Processing. In this approach, the brain is modeled as a mathematical construct in which events are defined that indirectly correspond to physical events. Although some mathematized vocabularies still face practical translation problems, there are many viable options to choose from.

For the experiential domain, most vocabularies are based on the immediate attempt to describe conscious experience, which presents itself as a rich world with descriptive affordances. This yields terms like qualia, mental contents, or what-it-is-likeness, and these descriptions yield events that are often subject to human vagueness. This vagueness undermines any effort to systematically capture the bridging laws that relate the experiential and physical events. This motivates the search for alternative, more rigorous experiential vocabularies. 

Consider the second goal: experiential semantics. In experiential semantics, experiential events carry the semantic burden of concepts. A conceptual experiential event for, say, concept $X$, effectively answers what $X$ is felt like\textemdash the 'what it is like'-ness of $X$. For example, $X$ can take on time, self, action, language and so on. The point is that description of these experiential events require an experiential vocabulary. 

A formulation of an experiential conceptual event exposes the deeper structure in the lived experience which gives rise to the feeling of this concept. Experiential semantics can in this way, coupled with a clear and flexible vocabulary, aid experiential communication and insight. In part II, this is applied to a moral stance. Generally, if this experiential vocabulary also has proper bridging laws in place, then each such described experiential conceptual event also yields a naturalized explanation. In practice, these events are often the result from mutual inspiration and efforts from both experiential and neural insights. 

The demand for an experiential vocabulary is greatest for the experiential primacist, who endorses the most radical version of experiential semantics. Here, experiential events carry all semantic burden for \textbf{all} concepts. That is, such events constitute the final answer to any semantic question of the form: 'what does X mean?'. 

Even the psychophysical laws discussed above are just a kind of coupling between the actor and the observer experience, which\textemdash in the primacy of conscious experience\textemdash enjoy equal footing. As a result, all philosophical questions like; what is mathematics, what are choices, what is language or even, what is meaning itself\textemdash are answered by describing how these concepts are felt. To accomplish this, one needs a flexible enough experiential vocabulary that can do justice to the diversity of semantic questions. 

It is claimed that Formology is a vocabulary rigid enough to systematically capture the bridging laws yet flexible enough to describe all relevant conceptual experiential events. Formology is based on experiential persistences, called forms, which are empirically motivated by the fact that our brain is a statistical network that tracks regularities in its sensorium. As a result, the experiential analysis enjoys a set theoretic interpretation whilst not committing to any reductionist view. 

This part takes the following approach. 

The first chapter explains the concept of insight transfer.

The second chapter explains the universal experiential semantics.

The other chapters are dedicated to explaining and applying Formology. First, the conscious experience is formalized as a feel in feelspace. Formology uses the relationship of experiential persistences, also called forms, inspired by the brain as statistical machine. Populating feelspace with forms yields the concept of a field, which is the collection of all felt forms and is the generic description of the conscious experience that Formology utilizes. By doing this, Formology remains agnostic on a possible reductionist view of the feel while leveraging its analytic power. This is the starting position of Formology. The field is generic because the field treats each form equivalently, but by using methods, one can ascribe meaning to these forms, in turn increasing the descriptive power.  

Then, using Formological methods, one can increase the descriptive power by ascribing meaning to these forms, either feelway or worldway, using the psychophysical bridging laws. The feelway method lead to concepts and percepts, and base and merge forms. In the worldway method leads to codes via the reality coupling, which can give meaning to forms in two ways: the identity method and the causality method. By this, formology shows that it is able to capture the psychophysical bridging laws.

Furthermore, chapters are dedicated to IIT and the ontogeny and phylogeny of forms.

Lastly, the vocabulary is applied for general experiential semantics, yielding an experiential library. Special care is given to felt choices, which are heavily leveraged by Part II. 

Introduction Part II
How can an experiential vocabulary aid morality, be it on individual or societal level? This work answers this question by describing a felt stance and by equating the moral motive with narrative beauty. It proceeds in five stages—pragmatic, analytic, poetic, existential, and applied—each grounded in the same experiential interpretation of morality.

Consider the following moral stance, that is, a certain way of navigating the landscape of moral choices:

Every time one is confronted with a moral choice, first, do a social and self honest inquiry of the situation. Here, consider both the current situation, the possible options and the consequences of each option, insofar time constraints allow. Then, choose the morally best option given the understood situation. 

For brevity, call this the Status Stance. This is claimed a universal stance, meaning that it can be applied to face moral choices of any kind. This stance describes much of our navigation in practice already because this stance has moral and pragmatic appeal. 

To illustrate this, consider how violations affect moral appeal. For instance, violating the second step means that one is not motivated to act morally in morally relevant situations—such as focusing on maximizing revenue when human lives are at stake.

The first step can be violated in several ways. A violation of self-honesty occurs when one is unwilling to revise beliefs in light of new evidence, for example through wishful thinking. Another violation concerns social inquiry: one might only consider their own perspective and fail integrating others’ perspectives into the inquiry. Finally, the time constraints may also be violated—for example, when excessive hesitation results in greater harm that could have been avoided.

Although most people adopt this stance most of the time, there are still reasons why it is violated at times. This section is devoted to understanding how an experiential vocabulary can remedy some, if not all, of these reasons. 

Consider first unwilled violations. These occur when individuals want to apply the stance but do not know how to do so, either in general or in specific moments. The remedy, in this case, is to help them understand what applying the stance feels like, so that they can understand its verification conditions. To do this, one must describe the experiential events related to the Status Stance, and this requires an experiential vocabulary. 

Willed violations come in different degrees and nuances. The hope is that the clarity provided by an experiential vocabulary can either serve as a wake-up call for those who have neglected the stance, or confront the pride of the complacent virtue signaler—someone who speaks fluently about principles yet fails to embody them. 

So an experiential vocabulary can aid morality by describing the Status Stance and this is now the main objective. There are many options for experiential vocabularies, differing in formality, vagueness and theoretical ladenness. The experiential vocabulary applied here allows for different levels of formality, where Formology functions as the most fundamental description, and where neurological events are leveraged for additional clarity and rigor. 

In addition, a key move is made\textemdash called the moral identity\textemdash where the felt moral motive is equated with felt narrative beauty. This has significant analytical consequences for morality in general and opens the door for a neuro-theological, metaphysical and existential interpretation. 

The achieve this goal, the following approach is taken in this part.

The first chapter is for the pragmatic and is dedicated to the experiential descriptions. It begins by clarifying the concepts: the conscious experience, experiential events and experiential vocabulary. Then, the experiential events associated with the Status Stance are described. For the first step, choices in general are described and understood in terms of stream, temptation and consideration. Then, the felt situational inquiry, self-honesty and sociality are described and related with the self and the ego. For the second step, a special kind of consideration is discussed where the moral motive is equated to narrative beauty\textemdash the moral identity. This involves using the aesthetic stance not for physical objects but for the stories told by each option in the consideration. For this reason, the stance earns its poetical name: the Will to Our True Beauty. Lastly, different ways how the stance can show up in different practical settings is considered, be it on the individual, relational or societal level.

The second chapter is for the analyst and analyzes personal and sociological phenomena through the lens of the Status Stance and the moral identity. The personal phenomena includes amongst others the goal rule forward, and how this supports the intrinsic nature of the Status Stance by appealing to the beauty of truth and us, and the malleability of the stream. The chapter then compares the Status Stance with other moral stances and how the Status Stance, in virtue of being intrinsic and the moral identity, is unique in surviving the moral skeptic and critic. The societal phenomena includes amongst others religion, law and most importantly; moral disagreements and the World Tree. By the moral identity, a moral disagreement is either explained by difference in stories or difference in aesthetic evaluation. The World Tree describes the cumulative collective efforts of humanity to build robust stories and how this influences our moral decision making. The different levels and the dynamics of the World Tree is analyzed and it is related to science and general wisdom. 

The third chapter is for the poet and is dedicated to a neuro-theology and a metaphysics. The neuro-theological section introduces two claims. The first is the unity thesis, which holds that we are united under a shared story, meaning that a moral disagreement is always due to a difference in stories. The second is moral choice progression, which builds on a comparison of stories by robustness and states that long-term moral choice behavior converges. The empirical implications of these claims are examined and, if borne out, are treated as wonders. The section then casts the world as being in an ever tug of war between heaven and hell, based on the concept of moral world progress. The metaphysical section builds on this and considers two views. The first view is Statistical Determinism, which states that the current physical state plus laws fully determine the statistical properties of the next state. In this view, we are mere spectators of the ever-battle and beauty spreads akin to viral dynamics. The other view is the Quantum Will which states that we are conscious in virtue of the Will partaking in this battle. The view is introduced through a poem that addresses both why physical bodies are conscious at all and the Will-World interaction problem. 

The fourth chapter is for the existentialist and focuses on the justification and mode of existence. It argues that the moral identity justifies casting the existential problem as a moral problem and that, consequently, the Will to Beauty answers the justification of existence. Then, it is argued that the Status Stance is, besides universal and intrinsic, also minimal\textemdash effectively claiming that, regardless of the nature of ultimate reality, the Will to Our True Beauty provides an answer to the mode of existence. 

The last chapter is for the queers and is an attempt to further one branch of the world tree. In this chapter, the status stance is applied by first initiating an inquiry of situation relevant to the queers, considering both biology and sociology. Here, tri-queerness is defined as being an exception in traits stemming from three factors relevant in sexual selection. As a result, gender is seen as a motivational system consisting of a natural and nurtured part, which has consequences on the malleability of gender. Then, society and culture are analyzed, including linguistic practices like sexed and neutral languages, and how natural genders constrain nurtured genders and how this relates to the problem of the queers. Then, different options are stated about what the story of the queers will be, and to complete the stance, my opinion of beauty is stated.