ok, so this is the first part of my take on metaphysics. I'm just some rando, so I don't think I have any kind of authority to say this is 100% true and real, just what makes sense to me.
basically, I think the universe is made up of matter, hard stuff that definitely exists in some form. This is the only stuff that objectively exists. It's kind of the limiting factor for all other types of reality to exist (it's literally the stuff that other reality is made of). And other realities can only exist as layers of abstraction on top of other things. I'll get more into that in a minute.
I call it unconscious reality because it's reality without any kind of conscious framing applied (I'll also get into what consciousness being applied to something means later too). It's just stuff, just sub-atomic particles (maybe made of strings of energy vibrating at different frequencies at a super low level, maybe not. not super relevant to what I'm talking about here). It's just stuff.
the implications of it just being stuff starts to make unconscious reality feel super alien to us. There is no 'meaning', there aren't discrete objects, there is no time. It's just stuff that exists purely right now. This might not make a ton of sense. Why does it not have those things? Well. These all require some kind of perception and analysis, some prefered scale for observing, recording, making connections, and thinking.
why does meaning require thinking?
for something to have meaning, it needs to represent some aspect of something else. This requires some way of storing information about other things, some way of drawing comparisons. This all requires some level of abstraction. You need to store information about other things. How does that happen? Where does it go? Storage in computers usually happens by arranging electrons in specific ways on a drive. Those electrons are just electrons in a physical context. In a conscious context, you have memory! You know that those electrons have the potential to be read back into the computer, turned into pixels on your screen, viewed by your eyes, and understood to be a thing. This is abstraction.
why do discrete objects require thinking?
the universe does not paint in bright, straight lines. when you zoom in on something super close (like an electron microscope), almost no edges are simple and clean. The difference between where my finger ends and the key on my laptop's keyboard begins is not actually super clear at that level. They all just look like atoms without some ability to make sense of them. Where does the flame on my candle end, and the air around it begin? I can draw a line from my scale, but can we zoomed in on individual atoms? Where does the ocean end and the beach begin? When it gets to a certain depth? Who decides what depth? Is if physically different from one atom to the next when crossing that threshold? Nature paints in gradients. I takes me stepping back and thinking about the concept of a beach (based off of memories, and associations) for me to arbitrarily decide there's a line.
why does time require thinking?
time requires memory and the ability to retrieve those memories and compare them. I have to see a leaf falling, remember that it used to be attached to the tree, compare that to it mid-way to the ground for me to know that something changed. Time is just a tracking of change. What existed 5 minutes ago no longer exists in that arrangement, the entire reason whe know that it is 5 minutes from then is because we tracked a tiny, very consistent change and counted how many times it changed a specific amount. Like we've said before, memory also requires some kind of representation. Memory that literally stores an object is not memory, it's just an atomically identical copy (an impossible thing to do). We can create a map of associations with a thing in our minds, a pattern of electrons crossing certain synapses that represents a loose map of properties representing a thing
so how does this abstraction work?
abstraction is an emergent property of complexity. Eventually, unconscious reality starts turning inward on itself. It starts twisting into these chemical reactions. Eventually, the chemical reactions become complex enought that they start developing ways to keep around effects of interactions with the world. These may start out super super basic, but eventually they become pretty reliable, enough that they can start to develop new reactions back out of that encoded memory into action of the organism. We are the universe tying itself into the most complex chemical knot. This 'memory' is not the thing it represents. I look over and see a tree. Photons bounce off the tree and go into my eyes, they get converted into electrical signals that go to my brain, which turns them into chemical releases, which triggers neurons to form in a particular way. In my mind, I'm seeing a tree. In my brain, electrical signals in a specific shapes are going through a rube-goldberg machine, going trough pathways carved by previus shapes of eletricity, and triggering certain neurons. That process is my experience of a tree, part of that pattern is my conceptualization of a tree. None of those things are the tree, they're a mostly reliable by-product of my complex universe knot encountering photons from the tree.