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H.B. Augustine is a junior undergraduate student at Denison University studying Philosophy and Communication. He has started a publishing organization called "Integral Publishing House" - contact him at august_h@denison.edu if interested in publishing Integral material.

Integral Metaphysics

The Logical Anatomization of Creation

Henry Augustine

The Raw Chain of Being

As was the case for Spirit and God, Creation, by definition, is most fundamentally divided into three distinct parts. We will call one part matter. We will call another part feeling. We will call the last part thought. Creation, as we know It, is the Perceptive Composition of matter, feeling, and thought. Matter, feeling, and thought together constitute substance. Creation, on a deeper account, necessarily and sufficiently consists of substance along with essence and being. All of this may seem far outside the conventional linguistic barrier concerning philosophic inquiry. However, as the following argument will show (as with arguments prior) in the general ideas it contains that it suggests must be the case, we ought best to ignore the illusion of meaninglessness that necessary abstract labels such as “Spirit” and “God” and “Creation” and “substance,” together present to the (conventional) rational mind. As proper readers, let us focus on the semantics instead of on the language.

We have seen that the Kosmos fully consists of Spirit, God, and Creation. Spirit-God-Creation is the necessary and sufficient anatomization of the Kosmos. Spirit-God-Creation constitutes the Raw Chain of Being, as the following diagram represents.

The leftmost circle is Spirit; the middle is God; the last is Creation. The white circle in itself, as the gray and black ones, is fundamentally and relatively different from the others in themselves, and the same for these two individually. We can understand the Kosmos entirely through Spirit, entirely through God, and/or entirely through Creation. Furthermore, although each of these aspects is unique unto itself, each also collectively embodies all the rest.

As concerns the Raw Chain of Being, or Trichotomy of Existence, is the archetypal paradox, “All contained in One and One contained in All.” Spirit is no more Spirit than Spirit is God or Creation. God is no more God than God is Creation or Spirit. Creation is no more Creation than Creation is Spirit or God. We can refer to Spirit, God, and Creation both in Themselves, and in relation to the Whole. Since the latter reference to or definition of Creation means that Creation consists of Itself as well as of God and Spirit, we can see that this mode of Creation in its entirety embodies multiple “layers.”

The first layer is the precise other definition of Creation: Creation-in-Itself. The second layer is God-in-Itself. The third layer is Spirit-in-Itself. We can view Creation both as Creation-in-Itself, meaning Creation discounting God and Spirit, and as Creation-out-Itself, meaning Creation including God and Spirit in its composition and depth.

Creation-out-Itself consists of Spirit relative to substance – being, God relative to substance – essence, and Creation relative to substance – naturally, substance. Creation-in-Itself is characterized by substance, and substance differentiates into matter, feeling, and thought. Let us know and understand the fundamental nature of substance. Someone who provides considerable insight on the nature of substance as it relates to this discussion, is Baruch Spinoza.

Substance: the Constituent of Creation

Spinoza's Ideas in Ethics include explanations for the nature of Existence, for the nature of mind and body, as well as for the nature of morality. Spinoza bases his entire work on precise geometric methodology, meaning he begins by stating the axioms and postulates from which he will deductively argue the rest of his Ideas. From his ontological argument, Spinoza is able to justify his substance monism, which allows him to tackle the issue Descartes raises 36 years prior – that concerning the nature of mind and body.

The explanation for this monism begins by stating that there is substance: “Existence belongs to the nature of substance.” Furthermore, substance is infinite, and why this is the case is that if substance were finite, then this would mean there is “more than one substance having the same attribute.” However, for Spinoza, the existence of multiple substances, sharing the same attribute, is impossible – since the underlying attribute is then the ultimate substance to which each one necessarily belongs. The underlying attribute, then, cannot be finite, since “it would have to be limited by another substance of the same nature” – and this cannot be the case since another substance of the same nature is again ultimately of the same substance (as the theoretical finite one). From all this, we see that substance necessarily and primarily exists, that there is only one substance, that this substance is infinite, and that it has an infinite number of attributes. Why substance has an infinite number of attributes is that substance is synonymous to God, according to Spinoza's definition and argument:

For since the ability to exist is power, it follows that the greater the degree of reality that belongs to the nature of a thing, the greater amount of energy it has for existence. So an absolutely infinite Entity or God will have from himself absolutely infinite power to exist, and therefore, exists absolutely.

There is only substance; there is only nature; there is only God. Regardless, this one essence of everything is infinite and it contains infinitely many attributes. Among these attributes are thought and extension.

Thought and extension, or the “thing thinking” and the “thing extended,” are simply different attributes of Spinoza's version of God. Modes are variations of attributes, and it follows that there are two kinds of modes for Spinoza: infinite and finite. Furthermore, the infinite or eternal mode of a particular attribute “must have followed from the absolute nature of [this] attribute…” The infinite mode of the attribute of thought, for instance, would be something eternal and Absolute regarding the nature of thought, i.e. “logical necessity.” The infinite mode of the attribute of extension would rather be “physical necessity.” Having seen infinite modes, we may now inspect Spinoza's definition of finite modes.

Finite modes, in contrast, are the temporal and noticeable events in which each corresponding attribute takes place, such as individual thoughts or physical occurrences. The act of introspection is a finite mode of the attribute of thought; one billiard ball colliding with another is a finite mode of the attribute of extension. Both these examples are objective in the sense that they are observable as well as passing. Because all modes equally correspond to God, this means that the ways we can describe and explain these events directly correspond to one another. The significance of Spinoza's work is his explanation for the mind-body problem.

Rene Descartes had raised the question with his own theory, however insufficiently conveyed. For Descartes, the “mind” and the “body” were completely different entities, one made of “thinking substance” and the other of “extended substance.” Descartes' dualism contrasts with idealist, materialist, and monist (i.e. Spinoza) mind-body explanations. Idealists hold that ideas are all that exist; “things” are really “thoughts.” Materialists, conversely, consider “matter” to be all that exists, and that the mind is ultimately a collection of atoms. Finally, monists, namely Spinoza, solve the mind-body problem by stating that there is only one substance, and that “minds” and “thoughts” are different attributes of the substance, but are still able to interact with one another since they were nonetheless substantially connected. Our explanation of Creation requires another explanation, but not one of metaphysics and instead belonging to philosophy of mind. Let us begin.

Creation is characterized by substance. Substance is the manifestation of that which can be. Logically, substance is “stuff”; physically, and more practically, it is pure energy. Substance divides and manifests itself into three main kinds. The most primitive kind is matter. Our bodies are made of matter, thus, they are material. Another kind is feeling. Our “hearts” are likewise the composition of feeling, making them not physical, but sentiral. The last kind is thought. The “mind” is the composition of thought just as the body is the composition of matter and the core is the composition of feeling. The mind, in this light, is not physical at all but something entirely different. Simply, the mind is mental.

Just as a gas, solid, and liquid are different from one another relative to themselves but still related on a deeper, atomic level, so are matter, feeling, and thought distinct in comparison to one another, yet fundamentally the same because each is simply substance manifested as one of Spinoza's infinite modes. Creation necessarily and sufficiently consists of these three infinite modes of substance. The latter contrasts with Spinoza's view holding that there are an infinite number of attributes of substance/nature/God or Creation, and the only ones we happen to grasp are thought and extension. In order to accomplish all the above successfully, we will begin by providing evidence that there is this necessary and sufficient distinction between matter, feeling, and thought. The evidence will be primarily phenomenological.

With our thought experiment depicting Consciousness, we divided experience into sensation, feeling, and thought. We saw that sensation is not feeling, nor is it thought – and the same for the other two. Let us agree that experience, then, can be divided into sensation, feeling, and thought. We know that sensation and thought exist and that they are distinct faculties of experience. We can also acknowledge that passion is not a mere human invention; rather, passion is real, and it surely is not sensation nor is it thought. Yet we can experience passion, we can experience feeling. Let us ask whether there are any more distinct features of experience alongside sensation, feeling, and thought.

We can agree that experience most fundamentally, necessarily, and sufficiently consists of all the sensation, feeling, and thought that we perceive. Let us replace “thought” with the term reflection, and let us replace “feeling” with the term sentiment. We will continue to label sensation as such. What now remains is to see that sensation, sentiment, and reflection, distinct relative to experience, are also distinct relative to Creation. Here is where the general significance of the mind-body problem, philosophy of mind, Spinoza, as well as Descartes, falls into play. The mind-body problem and philosophy of mind are relevant to this discussion because they significantly contribute to our metaphysical understanding of Creation. It is perhaps more appropriate that we replace “mind-body” problem with “body-core-mind” problem.

We know that sensation can be most fundamentally attributed to matter. Nerve cells inform the brain what the body senses, and the brain allows this message to contribute to sensation and physical perception. Again, sensation is electric in nature, meaning it is the composition of various electric signals in sense data conveying pieces of information regarding some part of the immediate corporeal world. We can see that sensation in its fundamental atomic nature contains this electric quality, as atoms contain charge. Let us ask ourselves, however, whether feeling and thought are most fundamentally attributed to the same faculty, which is electric and hence, physical in nature. First, we can concern ourselves with feeling, the constituent of sentiment. Let us begin by considering the relative difference between emotions and passions.

Feeling, the Core, and Sentiment

Emotions are physical, spontaneous, and fleeting. In contrast, we cannot explain passions from a purely physical standpoint. Passions emerge gradually and last significantly longer than do emotions. “Anger,” “fury,” or “irritation” is an emotion. “Desire,” “affection,” or “gratitude,” however, is a passion. Let us agree that desire/affection/gratitude exists, regardless what we believe it most fundamentally is. Consider several examples. First, consider having the desire to do what one believes to be Good, solely for the sake of doing so. Perhaps we may explain this notion because we randomly experience a physical impulse making us do things a number of others consider “Good,” simply because we feel internal physical pleasure whenever we do such a thing. Is it the memory of the specific internal physical pleasure that is responsible for the habituation of being Good? Perhaps, despite whether subconsciously, the latter is the case.

Pretending that desire is exclusively due to memory of internal physical pleasure occurring each time this particular action takes place, let us ask ourselves why this pleasure occurs so precisely and consistently. Surely, there must be a cause for what we label “desire.” Desire being inclination due to memory of internal physical pleasure befitting the intention of the desire, we can agree that there must be a cause as to why there is always this pleasure. Perhaps the cause is the motive to experience the same pleasure as habitually before. However, avoiding an infinite regress, we can see that there must be a single and sustaining explanation accounting for the succession and totality of these causes/effects. The fundamental cause is not sensation nor is it reflection. Reflection alone only brings the idea of something. Sensation alone only brings the physically perceived copy of the thing in itself. Because sensation and reflection cannot be the cause of that which we have just considered, we may see that this inductor is neither physical nor is it mental – sensation nor reflection. The significance of this cause is that it is unique unto itself.

We have seen that the cause is not and cannot be ultimately physical in nature, since it is that which is responsible for the physical nature of desire. Because this faculty is different from sensation and reflection, and because it is immaterial most fundamentally, we can see that it is an entirely different mode of substance: feeling. We can use the same argument for what we label “affection” as well as “joy.” Like desire, we can see that affection and joy are not ultimately physical, unlike emotions such as “panic” or “excitement.” There is a nonphysical origin creating the physical or objective indicators that we use to “explain” affection and joy. However, whereas the origin of sensation is external sense data conveying whatever it specifically represents, the origin of desire, or affection, or passion, is not a thing, theoretically existing in the external world, which our body senses. In addition, the origin of desire/affection/passion is not alike to the origin of reflection in that it is simply an idea corresponding to some aspect of the World. Instead, the origin of sentiment is entirely different from matter and from thought.

Like matter and thought for sensation and reflection, feeling is that which is responsible for any form of sentiment. We have attempted to explain the problem of the fundamental nature of what to which we consider emotion, feeling, and sentiment collectively to correspond, in three primary ways. Within the realm of conventional psychology, these ways, or theories of emotion, are the James-Lange theory, the Cannon-Bard theory, as well as the two-factory theory. James and his colleague, Carl Lange, developed a theory of emotion, which served as the first concrete psychological attempt to define that and those so subtly part of experience. The theory states that emotions strictly follow physiological changes within the body because of some external factor or factors. For instance, if we see a bear, we do not first feel “fear” and then experience the subsequent bodily changes; rather, it is the other way around. According to James:

…bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and…our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion. Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect…and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble…Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.

By this definition, “feeling” or “emotion” is entirely physical, and the names we assign to these various physiological reactions that we experience because of something, constitute the multitude of “sentiments.” The process, then, goes external factor, then physiological reaction, and finally cognitive recognition of reaction, or emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory, in contrast/complement, is the precise opposite of the James-Lange theory.

Walter Cannon and Philip Bard argue that emotions follow perceived external factors, and that these emotions then induce physiological changes. The evidence for this proposition is that we feel “embarrassment,” for instance, before we actually blush – for those who blush upon being embarrassed, at least. This notion suggests that the sentiment of embarrassment is not contingent on the intangible physical expression. The Cannon-Bard theory was partially a success because it disproved the James-Lange theory in its universal application with regard to emotion; it also sparked intellectual debate concerning the nature of emotion. The theory was unsuccessful, however, since it suggested that because the physical effects follow the sentiment, then the latter must be something nonphysical and distinct. Such an implication contradicted the supposed laws of science and matter, so the question remained unresolved – until the two-factor theory presented the most pragmatic solution of, or at least best way of explaining, the nature of emotion.

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer conducted the following study. They gave college students an injection of either adrenaline or a placebo. They told the participants that these injections were simply vitamins for their vision. Later, they informed one-third of the students that the injection was in fact adrenaline, and about adrenaline's actual bodily effects (which are arousing); they informed another third the same, except with a false description of adrenaline's effects; and the remainder no information whatsoever. Later still, a confederate – previously acting as a participant – began behaving either “playfully” or “angrily.” The students both misinformed and uninformed regarding adrenaline, behaved similarly to the way the confederate behaved, while the ones informed showed no signs of behavior mirroring that of the confederate. The significance of this study is apparently that physiological changes are all that one experiences, and, the individual appropriately labels the supposed cause of these changes based on his or her respective association. This theory is similar to the James-Lange theory, but different in that it holds that the same physiological effects are not always the manifestation of the same emotion. Emotions, in this sense, are subjective and they vary according to the current situation.

Now, to regress, we have seen that there is a difference between emotion and passion, because emotions are physical, spontaneous, and fleeting, whereas we cannot explain passions as being entirely or predominantly the result of internal physical alteration. We have seen that the evidence for this assertion is that although someone may experience physiological changes when having desire, or affection, or joy, there still must be a cause for the desire, for the affection, for the joy. We have seen that this cause Certainly cannot be a sensation or sensations alone nor can it be an idea or ideas alone. However, let us pretend: Perhaps the cause can be an idea alone. With further examination, yet, we can see that there is still a liaison between the idea and the physiological effect. This link is one's attachment to the idea.

If one cared about nothing, if one felt for nil, then one would not do anything nor would one experience any kind of quality that we label “emotion,” such as “joy,” or “sadness,” or “appreciation.” Because the connection between the idea and the physiological effect cannot be mental nor can it be physical – since the first is its distinct mental cause while the second is its distinct physical effect –, we can see that it is not a function of the mind nor is it one of the body. However, returning to the three theories of emotion, and considering our recognition of the distinct cause of our objective account for emotion/feeling/sentiment – let us proceed to examine why the first two theories are correct and complementary, while the third, though insightful, does not explain emotion at all. From this point forward, we will fully recognize and comprehend the necessary distinction between emotion and passion. To begin, let us see that the James-Lange theory explains emotion but not passion.

Certainly, some drives are more primal than are others. In addition to fundamental physiological needs such as food, we also experience fundamental emotions solely because of subconscious instinct. For instance, our bodies will involuntarily react to sudden movements and loud noises. We may automatically be more insecure in the absence of light or more alert if we sense that danger may be lurking. These qualities are intangible and they are physical in nature. We experience excitement, aggression, or fear based on the body's internal reaction to various external factors, and these factors exclusively. Excitement, aggression, and fear – surely – are more primal and basic than are desire, affection, and joy. The James-Langue theory of emotion is legitimate for emotions, because emotions are sudden and physiological, most fundamentally, in nature. However, as the Cannon-Bard theory shows, we cannot explain all “emotions” in the way James and his colleague contest.

Passions arise following a conscious recognition or judgment regarding things not necessarily pertaining to direct physical experience or perception. Passion does not arise solely in the moment exclusively because of our body's reaction to any number of conscious or subconscious stimuli. This theory is legitimate, we can see, in that it accounts for all that its counterpart does not. One theory explains emotion, while the other explains passions – and both emotion and passion constitute sentiment. Fear is an emotion; bliss is a passion. By definition, emotion is spontaneous, physical, and primitive – while passion is significantly more temporally extensive and not directly the result of the body's inherent reaction to immediate external causation. These two theories of emotion are valid in the ways we have considered. However, the two-factor theory – although perhaps seeming to be the best solution – actually says nothing about the nature of sentiment.

This theory is an enlightening demonstration of the placebo effect, and that alone. However, as sentiments are most fundamentally immaterial, it is impossible to confuse one sentiment in its essence with another sentiment in its essence. External and internal physical factors may cause us to confuse the sentiment with something else or to shun it altogether – but the two-factor theory is deceiving if we take it to explicate sentiment and nothing more. Rather, this demonstration only shows our mind's ability to alter a sentiral experience because of any number of appropriate internal and external aspects, as they befit the study's primary intention. However, regardless whether we agree with this take on the third and most recent theory of emotion, we have already seen that sentiment is ultimately immaterial. Having separated matter, the body, and sensation from feeling, the core, and sentiment, we may now do the same with regard to thought, the mind, and reflection.

Thought, the Mind, and Reflection

Perhaps we can agree that the mind consists of a number of hypothetical schemas, which the psychologist Jean Piaget defines as mental representations one has depicting concrete physical impressions or memories. Perhaps the act of thinking or reflection is simply rearranging these schemas and forming different or (more) complex ones. Perhaps the mind is that which controls these prototypes, exemplars, or whatever, and perhaps the mind is that which understands the significance of such ideas. Perhaps the materialist account of the mind-body problem – as well as the materialist metaphysical foundation – is True, or is the case. However, let us consider the significance of thought being electric in nature as is sensation.

We cannot deny the schemas. We cannot deny that the mind rearranges these schemas and that it acquires new ones. We cannot deny that the mind is also able to understand these schemas. Pretending materialism is right concerning the mind – we cannot deny that we cannot doubt the first two of the latter three things about the mind. However, let us consider the significance of the notion of understanding. Understanding, in this sense, is thorough comprehension of the significance of one or more/all relationships between schemas. Understanding that fire will always cause dry paper to burn is not concerned with the individual significance of the fire and the dry paper; rather, understanding is concerned with the collective significance of the relationship between the fire and the dry paper.

However, note we cannot define understanding, necessarily and sufficiently, without using some form or variant of “understanding.” Understanding, like many notions, is unique unto itself. Now, if understanding exists and if it means realizing, or comprehending, or familiarizing, etc., “oneself” with the True meaning of the relation between schemas, or better-put, ideas, then – considering materialism – understanding must exist relevant to the mind as a concrete mental faculty electric in nature, and thus empirically discoverable. Based on the materialist account, since understanding must be physically measurable, then it must also be easily measurable given today's relatively advanced neuroscience technology, namely the EEG.

The EEG may lack in terms of spatial accuracy regarding the mind's physical behavior, but it is very effective in terms of measuring this behavior temporally. Why, then, given this so-called “microscope of the mind,” cannot we easily identify and label understanding? We can agree that the mind is capable of understanding and that the mind functions as a faculty of understanding. However, there is no physical evidence at all for understanding. Furthermore, the fMRI provides no such proof.

This device, complementary to the EEG, specializes in spatial, not temporal, accuracy. The fMRI additionally (dis)proves precisely what its technological counterpart does. There is only physical evidence for the schemas, which are really the objective correspondents to ideas. However, understanding is that which sees the significance of the relationship between schemas. The relationship between two things transcends the things in themselves. The relationship is not a thing but is simply a relationship, an idea. The understanding of these ideas is not an idea but is that which perceives the meaning that the ideas convey. Once more: Understanding is unique unto itself.

The vast majority of schemas, in fact, fall under John Locke's definition of complex ideas. However, where in the mind, from a scientific perspective, is the mover of these ideas? The mind controls and understands thought. However, where is the measurable physical entity or mind that is dichotomized by thought, or reflection, and understanding? Science sees the physical ripples of thought and has evidence for the thoughts, but science sees zero evidence for the thinker and zero evidence for the understanding, the latter of which this thinker frequently gains. Science claims to have sufficient evidence to explain the mind on a purely physical basis. However, science merely describes the mind impartially. Science is yet to discover the mind, in its entirety, for which it claims to have “proof” – proof for the theoretical entity that voluntarily thinks and subsequently understands, that “literally exists” as a completely physical element.

There is additional scientific evidence showing that the mind cannot be material. This evidence comes from quantum physics – namely (and again), the double-slit experiment. This demonstration goes as follows. Physicists, in an attempt to understand better the nature of matter, sent electrons through two parallel slits onto a vertical flat surface. Physicists predicted that because the electrons were particles, the resulting pattern on the vertical flat surface would be congruent to the shape and orientation of the two parallel slits. In contrast, had they conducted this experiment using waves in water rather than electron particles, they would have predicted something quite different from their inference concerning the electrons. Rather than producing a pattern congruent to the slits, the waves would produce an interference pattern, extending across the surface with the area of highest intensity in the middle and lowest at the two ends. In short, waves in this experiment produce an interference pattern while particles do not – at least, according to the scientists before seeing the actual results of the electrons or particles.

Absurdly, the electrons did not behave as predicted – they produced an interference pattern. In addition, the electrons did not produce such a pattern when an actual observer was present during the experiment – at least some of the time. Physicists found that the intention and the expectation of the observer or observers literally influenced the pattern of the electrons. The most sensible conclusion to draw from the latter is that reality is constantly influenced by the individual, based on his or her internal content – in other words, (partially) based on his or her thoughts, on the mind itself. If the mind is and extends no further than the totality of neurons firing inside the brain, then it is logically and physically impossible for it to be able to do exactly what the double-slit experiment and quantum physics altogether have clearly shown to be the case. What, then, can we infer? Based on the profound significance of the double-slit experiment and its respective branch of science (however so much theoretical it may seem), we can see that the mind, though it interacts with the body, is not physical in nature. The mind is unique unto itself.

Being rational, we can conclude that the mind Certainly interacts with the body, as there is evidence suggesting this. However, again being rational, we can conclude that the mind in itself, by no means, is an actual physical entity – meaning it, in itself, cannot be ultimately explained as being the composition of atoms. Because the microscopes of the mind, our EEG and fMRI technology, fail to show what and where the mind in itself is and how it in itself specifically operates, as precisely and as accurately in Truth as is our evidence for the function and behavior of sight or for touch – we may ironically see the scientific proof that the mind, in itself, is not actually physical. Furthermore, the double-slit experiment and quantum physics provide evidence befitting the same notion. The most tempting conclusion to draw, without further regard, shares the general sentiment of Descartes, that the mind and body are entirely separate and distinct qualities, consisting of entirely separate and distinct substances. However, this answer is not sufficient. Descartes had the right idea in mind, generally, but more specifically, he failed to explain effectively how material and immaterial “substances” are actually able to interact. Here is where Spinoza succeeds and answers the question that the former philosopher raises.

Spinoza's monism is the imperative explanation solving the initial solution from Descartes. Let us see why Spinoza – along with our examining the failure, and ignored “success,” of neuroscience conjecture, the significance of quantum discovery, as well as our considering the conclusion of Descartes – gives us the final predominantly logical necessity comprehensively solving the mind-body problem, and in Truth, regardless if seeming “invalid” and/or “unsound,” inductively shattering conventional (meta)physical beliefs. We should agree all that exists in the World together forms that which constitutes the World. It logically and physically follows that what constitutes the World is ultimately unitary and indistinct. “Stuff” constitutes the World, no doubt. It is logically and physically impossible for stuff and not-stuff to interact. Everything, considers Spinoza, must be ultimately of the same stuff. Spinoza's assertion is unquestionably True.

Let us call “stuff,” instead substance. Substance is that which constitutes the World or Creation, no doubt. Furthermore, it is evident that there are different attributes of Creation, or modes of substance. Just as the three modes of molecules are as gases, solids, and liquids, so are two of the most fundamental, necessary, and sufficient modes of substance matter and thought. Matter is the kind of substance responsible for the physical component of Creation. Matter forms bodies, and matter becomes sensation in order to inform (initially) the body of that which is from a relative, external, corporeal standpoint. Thought, however, forms minds, and thought becomes reflection in order to inform itself of the significance of what is beyond what immediate physical perception reveals. Matter in itself is different from thought in itself, as sensation in itself is different from reflection in itself. However, matter and thought, sensation and reflection, are ultimately the same because both are simply modes of substance, and substance alone.

Conclusion

We may now conclude this logical experimentation in recognition of the necessary and sufficient logical anatomization of Creation. Creation consists of matter, feeling, and thought, revealing Itself to us via experience, which consists of sensation, sentiment, and reflection as brought by the body, core, and mind. What we mean by the term “Creation” is what we have clarified to be “Creation-in-Itself,” as opposed to Creation-out-Itself. The former is Creation as sufficiently characterized by substance alone. Substance is the philosophic term synonymous semantically to the scientific term energy. Creation-out-Itself, in contrast, is sufficiently characterized by essence and being, in addition to substance. Essence is the cornerstone of intelligence, being is the cornerstone of awareness – and substance is the cornerstone of experience. Experience, intelligence, and awareness are the rudimentary components of the Kosmos relative to us, as opposed to the Kosmos relative to itself – which consists of Spirit, God, and Creation.

Now that we have established a firm grasp on the necessary and sufficient nature of reality, we may proceed to wrestle all other relevant problems in philosophy from an Integral logical perspective.