<1>
'Dear Dr. Lofting: I enjoyed reading your very thoughtful, penetrating, and quite original thoughts which were provoked by my reflections on Hypercomplexity.' --

I thank Prof Raman but beg to point out that it is just plain "Chris Lofting"..

<2>
'I will confess that here and there I was > a little lost, and was not sure if I had been clear enough in what I was trying to say.' --

In Raman's reflections on Hypercomplexity I picked-up a 'physics' bias (understandable ;-)) with an emphasis on properties of QM being seen as 'strictly' QM -- something I commented on in that the method of analysis has some of these properties rather than the things under analysis and so wave interference patterns seen in QM experiments (e.g. double-slit etc) come from the dichotomy-based method of analysis -- the results are imposed by the method; I can create the same patterns using dichotomous processes with pen and paper.

<3>
'I have always felt and maintained that the world such as it appears is an illusion: i.e. an impression resulting from the biochemistry of the human brain. So the only reality that we can talk about is Perceived Reality.' --

Sure..my argument is that there is an 'interface' in between the neurology and psychology that 'refines' even these sense perceptions into abstract whole/aspects catagorisations and our 'maps' of 'out there' are made by making analogies between 'in here' whole/aspects categorisations and 'out there' whole/aspects categorisations. To refine our whole/aspects distinctions, at the psychology level we 'name' patterns but this process can give the pattern a sense of independence of 'us' which is possibly an 'illusion' and what I think has happened to some degree with QM in its use of statistics where patterns that are properties of the METHOD of PAIR analysis are deemed to be properties of things 'out there'.

<4>
'Whether and to what extent this PR is a reflection of anything "out there" I absolutely do not know.' --

I think this is a 'major' question in that the whole/aspects 'template' affects our differentiation between ontology and epistemology. If our 'reality' is determined by whole/aspects distinctions then 'what is' (ontology) is affected by how we perceive (epistemology) and so the emphasis on ontology having an 'independent' bias is 'wrong' in that it exists within an epistemological context -- PR -- rather than the reverse. BUT, if we have adapted to our environment by internalising its characteristics (i.e. whole/aspects distinctions that have developed 'randomly' over a few billion years), then 1:1 mapping IS possible, as is a 'precise' and independence-stressed ontology.

<5>
'I was merely trying to say that PR SEEMS TO HAVE THREE or FOUR DIFFERENT LEVELS or PLANES OF MANIFESTATION.' This may be a totally wrong way of reacting to the world, as you seem to suggest.' --

I dont think it is 'wrong' since it is the 'best' system we have adopted to working on this planet, but we need to be wary of it in that it creates 'problems' -- illusions -- and this is the role of reductionism -- to remove the illusion. At the psychology level (!) we seem to develop from a single-context, literal, either/or, precision-biased 'self' oriented perspective into a multi-context, symbol/metaphoric, both/and, approximations-biased 'others' oriented perspective. This process is common not only in psychological development but also in the characteristics of the methodologies created by the psychologies to 'map' 'out there'; so as things develop so we move further and further into the world of symbol and metaphor and so further and further away from 'out there'. (Taoism emphasises this problem in that we go beyond the moment and so into illusion - the monkey-mind).

As our analysis gets deeper so we find different levels -- but this seems to come from bifurcations 'in here' and so, for example, the ancient distinctions of fire, water, air, and earth are in fact four different ways of describing the same thing but underneath are all connected. There is the suggestion therefore that water/fire is secondary to earth/air which is in fact the primary distinction -- this implies development is 'complex' along the lines of bifurcations in the order of 0-1-2-4-8-16...

In Science, when we move from precision to approximation we are moving from the specific to the general and so from 'particle' distinctions to 'wave' distinctions -- from analysis of the particular to the analysis of the general laws that control/guide the particular. However, these are properties and methods of 'in here' and are not necessarily 'out there'. Furthermore, the methods of analysis are usually dichotomous in form and there are characteristics of this METHOD that seem to be projected onto 'out there' and so these artifacts of the method 'become' properties of 'out there' -- including 'entanglements' etc.

I think we have gotten to the stage where the maintaining of the distinction between physics and 'out there' versus neurology/psychology and 'in here' is no longer valid since by understanding how 'in here' makes maps so we can be wary of possible illusions -- thus I think all physics students now need to also take a course in 'basic' human information processing in the form of 'wholes and their aspects'.

Christopher J Lofting
[e-mail <clo@fmsc.com.au>]