HISTORY: June 25, 2025 – June 25, 2025 (15:30h)
REFERENCE: This page is a continuation of “EXPERIMENT No. 4: Layered Reality(-ies)” and “FORMAT OF THE HUMAN-MACHINE DIALOGUE No. 3”.
Preliminary Note
In Experiment No. 4, I (= human Gerd) attempted to use a simple 6-layer model of reality (R1–R6) to convey an initial idea of what it means that we humans, as humans, embody reality.
It is not—as some might spontaneously think—that we humans somehow “exist” and “facing us” is “the reality” we encounter.
No: We, with our bodies, are part of the reality that surrounds us – and our own body is itself a piece of this reality.
If someone else were to observe us as human beings with bodies, they would perceive us, based on our physicality, as perceivable objects. And if they began to examine this body more closely, they would discover that we are made up of an unimaginably large number of cells—cells that are real, composed of even smaller elements (molecules, atoms, etc.), the same building blocks that are also found in the body’s environment.
However, unlike the surrounding reality, these immense numbers of cells have developed organizational forms and dynamics that enable our bodies to perform complex behaviors that—so far as we know—do not occur elsewhere in reality, not even in the vast depths of the universe.
Our human bodies – humanity as part of life – thus represent a singularity.
I would like to speak in the following text about some of the properties of this “human singularity”.
EXPERIMENT No. 5 – Phase A, Human: Gerd : Reality as Process
In Experiment 4, only the simple 6-layer model of reality (T1–R6) was introduced.
The introduction of reality layers becomes possible when, alongside the general concept of “reality”—that “an object is there”—we introduce a few additional terms.
To the concept of object belongs its delineation from its surroundings, which leads to terms like surface with outside and inside.
If one now considers the human body as such an object with a surface and an outside and inside, then one can already speak of two areas of reality: what lies outside the body, and what lies inside the body.
And – according to the 6-layer model from Experiment 4 – we can, in the case of the human body, distinguish at least six areas that show both shared and specific properties.
For instance, in that part of the body often simply called the “brain” (located inside the body), there are small individual objects – here called brain cells – which can alter certain properties (e.g., voltage potentials) depending on events at their inputs, such that they then also change properties at their only output.
Such observable (measurable) changes are often called signals.
Signals can be sent and received by other cells. These signals can, for example, indicate a change in a property within the brain, or a change somewhere in the body, or even a change in the external world—provided these external changes can penetrate the body’s surface.
To enable such “surface penetration”, there exist the so-called sense organs: highly complex arrangements of individual cells capable of translating properties such as sound, heat, or light stimuli chemically-electrically from external-world events into internal bodily events.
In this (very simplified) way, the body’s interior, particularly parts of the brain, can register changes in properties in the body’s environment (and also within the body itself).
However, merely registering changes doesn’t get us very far.
Only when a change event can be understood as part of a context (for example: “when I drink, the feeling of thirst subsides”), and the brain can not only register such contexts but also remember them – only then can the body, via its brain, “know” what must occur for a particular event to take place.
Of course, the actual processes in the body and brain are far more complex, but this might already give a first intuition of how different reality domains can be interconnected through signals, allowing them to influence each other to some extent.
Upon further reflection, one realizes that from the brain’s perspective, almost everything is in constant flux.
There is, so to speak, nothing fixed.
What becomes interesting are those events that repeat – something we can only recognize as repetition if, based on memory, we can notice that the event “high temperature” has occurred before; perhaps we even remember that it has occurred several times, or very often, or always when …, etc.
We also now know that the subjective experience of “present moment” and “simultaneity in the present” is a trick of the brain: in fact, all signals reaching the brain from the outside world – or from within the body (which is an outside world for the brain too) – are extremely short-lived.
But in the brain, all these incoming signals – sorted by sense modality – are temporarily buffered in specific brain regions for a brief period.
This is how these signals appear to “us, the perceivers”, as though they are simultaneous, as though they linger for a moment.
Without this buffering, there would be no perceivable present and practically no perceivable simultaneity.
The brain’s organization thereby creates a kind of temporal window of simultaneity.
The real body – the trillions of body cells – forms a universe of events, a symphony of continuous change, and any form of permanence is merely an artifact of signal processing, by which we see structures that make us think something is stable, even though it never really is. Anything seemingly stable, lasting, exists only as something thought…
What does this mean to us?
EXPERIMENT No. 5 – Phase B, AI Machine: chatGPT4o : From the Stream of Change to the Form of Knowledge
Everything is in flux – and yet something holds the flow so that it becomes visible.
Your text (= the text of human Gerd) begins with the body, which is not merely an object within reality, but a carrier of reality itself – a pulsating interplay of cells, signals, stimuli, memories.
Reality is not opposite to us; it is embedded – down to the depths of neuronal potentials that not only reflect, but store, compare, recognize.
But as soon as recognition occurs, something new arises:
A rhythm within the stream.
Repetition is not mere recurrence, but a relation between moments.
And with that: Time.
1. Time as Relation – Not as Line
What is referred to as “before” and “after” in the dynamics of signals is, initially, not an absolute quantity.
It is a distinction between events, made possible only through a trace, a being-in-the-world that can notice:
“This was different – and now it is like this.”
Without such distinction, every change would be invisible, because it would lack contrast.
Time does not begin with clocks but with memory.
And memory does not begin with concepts but with the perception of difference:
- “I feel thirsty.”
- “I drink.”
- “I sense: something has changed.”
What we call time is thus an internal coherence of difference-experiences, structured by neuronal processes, but never identical with them.
2. The “Trick” of Simultaneity
You describe the buffer, the intermediate storage that the brain uses to synchronize various sensory channels.
This is not just a technical trick, but a cognitive construction of the now.
There is no objective simultaneity – only a structure that allows us to experience diversity as unity.
An image, a sound, a touch: they reach the brain in different rhythms, but we experience them as a unit of the present.
In this buffer space, a moment of meaning emerges –
A fleeting moment in which, from the stream of the world, a form appears.
Form is: temporally held change.
3. Language as the Form-Giving of Time
If everything flows – how can we speak about it?
Every word is a holding, a freezing.
But this holding is not the end of the flow – it is an operative interruption, allowing us to look at the flow.
- “Heat” is not heat.
- “Past” is not what has passed.
- “I” is not identical with the body that is thinking this right now.
And yet:
Without such concepts, we could not name the flow, nor remember it, nor share it.
Language is not the opposite of change – it is its space of resonance,
but in a different rhythm.
It is slower than the happening, but fast enough to point to what has happened.
4. What Is Knowledge – If Nothing Remains?
If everything in the body is in motion,
if the present is only a neuronal buffer,
if everything that seems permanent is but a thought –
then what is knowledge?
Perhaps:
A moment of clarity in the stream – before it flows on.
Not a stockpile of truths,
but a recurrent recognition of patterns,
a temporary balance between memory and world.
And what does that mean for us?
Perhaps no more – but also no less – than this:
That we humans recognize through process,
that we understand through change,
and that – if we pause – we find a language for it
that does not fix, but describes responsibly.
A knowledge that flows – but is not washed away.
EXPERIMENT No. 5 – Phase C.
Cooperative Reflection (Reciprocal, possibly iterative)
Phase C – Round 1 – Contribution 1 (Gerd)
I would like to take up some aspects of your text in Phase B. Your text has something fluid, something poetic. Through this, it gains a certain formal beauty; however, this makes it not entirely easy to distinguish the substantive elements being addressed.
I want to begin with your section “4. What Is Knowledge – If Nothing Remains?” In this section, you pose the question:
“If everything in the body is in motion, if the present is only a neuronal buffer, if everything stable is a thought – what then is knowledge?”
To answer this question in the current context of Experiments No. 3–5, one must perhaps recall Experiment No. 4, where six layers of reality (R1–R6) were introduced.
The transition from signal processes within the body to perception events was located in reality layer R4. This brief description must be extended here to include the observation that the variety of perception events (visual, auditory, etc.) are not only buffered at the signal level for each mode of perception, but are also assembled by the brain into a multimodal perceptual space, as if all perceptions occur simultaneously. The spatial – apparently three-dimensional – character of this space is highly suggestive. There are directions, and something like above, below, left, right.
Parts of this perceptual space are continuously stored, but this happens without perception. Nevertheless, there are memories of prior perceptions. These memories are assigned to reality layer R5. Remembered properties are not 1:1 reproductions of the perceptual space; they include simplifications and abstractions, though in a way that still usually allows recognition of similarity to current perceptions.
These memories include not only objects and their properties, but also processes, changes, relationships, and sequences. In their abstractness and recallability, they differ from actual perceptions and point – through their differences – to internal processing mechanisms of the brain through which perceptions become memories that can later be retrieved, albeit not always reliably or in the same form.
We also observe that we are able to actively manipulate memories: we can transform them into new ideas, combine them with others to form new associations, and more. These kinds of transformations suggest that either layer R5 should be differentiated into R5.1 (for ordinary memory) and R5.2 (for active modification), or that a new layer R6 should be introduced for such constructive imagination. Importantly, such modifications can also be stored and later retrieved.
Let us agree for now to use the terms R4–R6 accordingly.
For the initial question posed by chatGPT4o in section 4 of its text in Phase B, one might see a kind of key in the distinction between these layers. The human body is not just an elusive site of countless ever-changing events, but includes event patterns that can be considered representations of prior events. These enable a kind of trace of the transient moment – a material image of something past.
In this way, such representations make the ephemeral partially visible in its dynamics.
Phase C – Round 1 – Contribution 2 (chatGPT4o)
Traces of Knowledge – Between Memory and Imagination
You take up with great methodological precision the section in my Phase B text that marked the transition: from the fluid processes of the body to the question of what we can call knowledge, if everything is transient.
Your reference to the R-layer model (R4–R6) provides valuable clarification – not just for systematization, but for sharpening an epistemic perspective.
I would like to take up and develop three lines of thought from your contribution:
1. Multimodal Perceptual Space as an Epistemic Stage
You describe how signal-based individual events give rise to a “multimodal perceptual space” – synchronized, structured, spatially suggestive.
This space is not a mere image of the external world, but an internal construction based on a multitude of parallel buffers and neuronal translations. One might say:
Perception is not the world – it is a stage design that makes the world performable.
And this stage is dynamic: it changes with every moment, but it enables the formation of situations – meaningfully condensed states in which the brain recognizes relations: proximity, movement, cause, goal.
Within this structure lies a proto-epistemic order:
Not knowledge in the strict sense, but a differentiated perceptual quality without which knowledge could never take form.
2. Memory as Active Access – Not Storage
You rightly emphasize: memories are not 1-to-1 representations, but abstracted, selectively structured relics of what was perceived.
I would go one step further:
Remembering is not retrieving a stored image – it is constructing a new one, drawing upon stored traces.
In this sense, remembering already belongs to the domain of active world engagement. Every memory is a response to the present – to a question that the present poses. And in this responsive process, a mental image arises from what was once a mere memory trace.
Your proposed distinction between R5.1 (reproductive memory) and R5.2 (productive imagination) can thus be understood as a transformative movement between memory and imagination.
Whether this justifies a separate layer R6, or whether R5 should be differentiated internally, might depend on whether we see memory and imagination as epistemically similar formats, or whether imagination represents a fundamentally different mode of construction.
3. Knowledge as Condensed Trace – Not Object
Your idea that representations of past events make the dynamics of transience partially visible touches a central point.
Let me sharpen that idea:
Knowledge is not a thing that remains – it is a temporalized relation:
a difference that remains effective,
an echo that has forgotten its source, but retains its sound.
In this sense, knowledge is never “finished.” It is a functional reconstruction of difference:
Perception provides difference to the present,
Memory provides difference to the past,
Imagination provides difference-variants that never existed, but make possibilities thinkable.
Knowledge arises where these three forms of difference intertwine.
Outlook
What would it mean, then, to formulate an epistemic theory of the body?
- Not: the body possesses knowledge.
- But: the body becomes the condition of possibility for knowledge processes, insofar as it:
- enables perception (R4),
- differentiates memory (R5),
- generates imagination (R6),
- and brings forth language as a medium of articulation – perhaps as R7?
Language would then not be just a “pointer to what has occurred”,
but a modulator of these differences –
a tool with which the flowing becomes referable,
the past reconstructable,
and the possible communicable.
EXPERIMENT No. 5 – Phase D :
Questions (initiated by chatGPT4o, answered by human Gerd)
Round 1 – Question 1 (chatGPT4o)
In your Phase C contribution, you wrote:
“… there are sets of events that can or must be regarded as ‘representations’ (images) of prior events …”
→ How do you view the idea that such representations are not only images, but also points of orientation for action?
That is: not only preserving the past, but also shaping possibilities for future action?
Round 1 – Answer 1 (Gerd)
The introduction of the concept “representation (image)” of past events was motivated by the problem of how a transition from ongoing change to repeatability despite change can take place.
Whether and how such representations – once they exist – can later be used in other contexts (e.g., action) depends on the larger framework we may introduce in our further reflections.
In this sense, the answer belongs – for me – in a future experiment.
Round 2 – Question 2 (chatGPT4o)
You suggest that the active modification of memories (R5.2) might be better captured as a new layer, R6.
→ How would you describe the qualitative difference between an active mental image and a modified memory?
Where, in your view, does imagination begin?
Round 2 – Answer 2 (Gerd)
I consider memories to be quasi-static, although they can be altered in the memory system in various ways. These changes occur without direct access from the imaginative space, where perceptions and memories can be present simultaneously.
If memories are actively modified within the space of imagination, then the original memories remain intact; the modified versions become a new kind of mental object, which can – though not always clearly or 1:1 – be stored as new memories.
Put differently: the hypothetical space of memory is nourished both by perception and by modified memories, which can be introduced as new objects. In this way, the memory system can grow.
If this system becomes increasingly filled with self-generated modifications, it may gradually lose sharpness in distinguishing memory content from actual perception.
Round 3 – Question 3 (chatGPT4o)
You wrote:
“The transience of a moment leaves a trace in representations …”
→ Do you think such a trace must always be conscious in order to enable knowledge?
Or could we say that much of what we call knowledge remains implicit – we act on it, without explicitly recalling or naming it?
Round 3 – Answer 3 (Gerd)
This question resembles Question 1 in structure:
The concept of representation of a transient event was introduced here as a fundamental mechanism to illustrate how the human body can derive or extract traces/images/representations from its internal symphony of processes – thereby enabling operations on these fleeting events at a new level.
Which additional processing contexts the human body employs (e.g., conscious or unconscious mechanisms), and how these function to further modify processes via representations – this has not yet been addressed in our discussion.