Psychical and physical realms: SMM/DTT and Spinoza’s substance monism

01The question behind the comparison

Psychical and physical can name two kinds of description, two kinds of property, two modes of access, or two distinct realms of being. These are different positions. SMM/DTT’s attraction is the possibility that a single generative source supports both an outwardly measurable world and inwardly meaningful experience. A clear comparison begins by stating what the distinction means. Otherwise a shift from first-person experience to an additional spatial dimension can occur without argument.

An experience of red and a measurement of reflected light are related but answer different questions. The measurement specifies a public procedure and result. The experience concerns how something appears to a subject. A single-source ontology may seek to ground both, yet common dependence does not itself establish an identity between them or a law connecting them. If the psychical is given an autonomous causal role in physical events, the role must be specified. If it is a different aspect of the same events, the task is to explain the correspondence and the limits of each description.

DTT’s six nested inner levels belong to its proposed organization of generation. They should not be assigned one by one to unverified mental dimensions, nor equated with a list of brain networks merely because both lists contain several entries. A bridge to consciousness needs a criterion of subjecthood and a mapping from source states to accessible experience. A bridge to physics needs observables, probabilities and a dynamical law. The two bridges may share structure, but they remain distinct explanatory tasks. This allows the metaphysical programme to stay ambitious while its empirical claims remain precise.

02The single-source and nested-time proposal

SMM begins with one nonspatial generative source. DTT distinguishes its inner production from the outer order in which completed results become accessible. The six inner levels are nested functional dependencies within that production; the seventh denotes outer completion. They are not six independent clocks, six spatial directions, or six simultaneously occupied temporal axes. This distinction makes the framework more specific than a general claim that everything changes: it asks how a world of persistent relations can be generated before its spatial representation is taken for granted. ^[2]

03The comparator’s explanatory structure

Spinoza distinguishes one substance from its modes and treats thought and extension within one intelligible order. His monism is not simply the assertion that every visible object is the same object. Particular things retain determinate relations even though they are not independent substances. This makes his philosophy a strong comparator for a source-based account of unity and differentiated appearances.

The crucial issue is whether dependence is an unfolding in time or an ontological relation that need not be temporal. A geometrical consequence depends on its premises without waiting for them to produce it. SMM/DTT’s generative language can instead give becoming an irreducible role, or interpret inner ordering as structured dependence. These options lead to different relations with Spinoza. His account of mind and body also does not require mental events to push physical events across a boundary between substances. A DTT bridge must state whether psychical and physical are coordinated aspects, generated sectors or interacting domains. ^[1]

04The precise agreement and difference

Spinoza’s treatment of thought and extension offers a clear alternative to two interacting substances. Mental and bodily descriptions belong to one order rather than sending forces across a metaphysical gap. SMM/DTT can adopt a related dual-aspect interpretation if its psychical and physical realms are coordinated expressions of a common source. That interpretation differs from claiming that one realm physically alters the other through a hidden channel.

The distinction can be tested conceptually with an intention and its bodily action. Under an aspect view, these are related descriptions of one organized event. Under an interaction view, the intention is an additional cause whose influence must be specified. DTT’s completion vocabulary can describe the event’s becoming accessible, but it does not choose between the two. The useful comparison therefore clarifies causal commitments before invoking quantum language. A single source can support a unified ontology, while a precise correspondence law explains how first-person significance and third-person physical description track the same history. This is a stronger claim than merely placing both under one heading. ^[1]

05Worked example: what follows and what does not

A person silently imagines a triangle and later draws it. The imagined triangle is not a small physical object hidden behind the eyes; the drawing is not identical to the act of imagining. Both can be related through a person’s capacities, intentions and bodily actions. An account can treat these as two aspects of one process, as causally interacting states, or as different levels of description. Each interpretation must explain the same ordinary sequence without confusing representation with represented object. SMM/DTT’s source unity can frame the relation, but the transition from imagination to drawing still calls for a specified account of agency and physical action.

06What this comparison contributes

The most productive comparison therefore asks how a theory handles access, identity and causation across the distinction. Does it preserve first-person meaning? Does it explain public agreement? Does it introduce new causal effects or reinterpret familiar ones? Psychical discourse can make a serious philosophical contribution without being labelled a new measured dimension. Conversely, a genuine physical proposal becomes stronger when its additional variables and their observable effects are stated independently of the metaphysical language that motivated them.

THE SAME QUESTION, DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS

The comparison at a glance

Continue on SMONAD

• Physical Time and Spiritual Time →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of realms.

• Preliminary Outline of Ibn Arabi's Cosmology →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of realms.

• Observer and record: making observation part of the model →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of realms.

• Introducing Ibn al-Arabi's View of Time →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of realms.

• Philosophy of time and creation →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of realms.