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The druid said: “We experience facts but observe fictions.” A Procedural-Metaphysical Reconstruction of Reality and
the Līlā of Māyā By Bodhangkur Abstract This
article reconstructs the metaphysical, cognitive, and cultural implications
of Finn’s aphorism, “We experience facts but observe fictions.”
Beginning from a precise definition of facts as momentary obtaining events,
the paper develops a procedural ontology in which compound entities such as
organisms, objects, and worlds exist only as stabilised fictions generated by
cognitive systems operating on timescales slower than the underlying flux of
events. This framework provides a rigorous explanation for the ancient Indian
insight of Māyā (constructed
appearance) and Līlā (dynamic
play), showing that these concepts capture the emergent perceptual world with
remarkable phenomenological accuracy. The result is a unified theory of how
reality generates appearances and how cognition produces the world of
experience. 1. Introduction: From Aphorism to Ontology Finn’s
aphorism— “We experience facts but observe fictions.” —encapsulates
a profound distinction between two layers of reality: ·
Fact-level reality,
composed of momentary events; and ·
Fiction-level appearance,
constructed by cognitive systems to stabilise the flux of those events. This
paper reconstructs the natural, physical, and cognitive context in which this
aphorism is not merely insightful but necessary. It further shows that
the ancient Indian concepts of Māyā
and Līlā accurately anticipated
the structure of the observed world. 2. Facts: The Event-Level Constituents of Reality 2.1 Definition of a Fact A fact
is defined as: a
momentary obtaining state-of-affairs — an event that happens. Examples: ·
A photon interacts with a retinal molecule. ·
A sodium-ion channel opens in a neuron. ·
A molecule vibrates in response to thermal
energy. These
events are: ·
brief, ·
discontinuous, ·
quantised, ·
ontologically minimal. 2.2 Consequences of the Definition 1. Facts are
instantaneous or bounded in duration. 2. Facts are
not objects but occurrences. 3. There is
no such thing as an “enduring fact.” Thus: Reality
consists of events, not things. 3. The Human Organism: A Flux-System of Micro-Facts 3.1 Biological Composition A human
organism comprises: ·
~73 trillion cells, ·
each containing ~100 trillion atoms, ·
each atom constituted by dynamic subatomic
interactions. Every
component is in continual flux: ·
Atoms exchange. ·
Molecules fold and unfold. ·
Cells metabolise and die. ·
Neurons fire synchronously and asynchronously. No
component remains the same across time, not even over milliseconds. Thus: No human
being exists as a fact; only as a continuous flux of
micro-facts. 3.2 Identity as Fiction The
“self,” the “body,” and the “organism” are not single facts. They are: ·
stabilised patterns, ·
coherence-maintaining procedures, ·
functional interpretations projected across flux. These
patterns behave like stable entities but do not exist as such. They are
realistic because they produce reliable continuity; 4. Cognitive Timescales: Why Observation Cannot Access
Facts 4.1 Temporal Compression Cognitive
systems integrate sensory information over windows of: ·
50–200 ms (perceptual
coherence), ·
300–700 ms (conscious
access). In that
same window, millions of micro-events occur. Thus: We do not
and cannot observe individual facts. 4.2 The Mind as a Fiction-Generator To act
effectively, the brain must: ·
impose object-constancy, ·
create boundaries, ·
form categories, ·
stabilise continuities, ·
construct narrative coherence. Perception
is therefore not a passive reflection of reality but an active
constructive process. Thus: Observation
necessarily generates fictions: 4.3 Example A chair
appears stable. In
reality: ·
its molecular bonds vibrate, ·
its atoms exchange with the environment, ·
photons bounce off its surface in shifting
patterns, ·
no event-level stability exists. The
“chair” is a fiction constructed by the perceptual system to support action
and prediction. 5. Experiencing Facts vs. Observing Fictions 5.1 Experience = Internal Registration of Fact-Events When pain
is felt, when pressure is sensed, when heat is registered, the organism is
responding directly to event-level reality. Experience
is the organism’s being acted upon by micro-facts. Example: Thus: Experience
is fact-driven. 5.2 Observation = Interpretative Reconstruction By
contrast, when one “observes a hand touching a stove,” one is not perceiving
facts but: ·
integrating thousands of micro-events, ·
stabilising them into meaningful structures, ·
imposing continuity and identity. Thus: Observation
is fiction-driven. This
distinction grounds Finn’s aphorism. 6. The Līlā of Māyā: Ancient Indian Intuition Revisited 6.1 Māyā as
Cognitive Appearance In
classical Indian thought, Māyā
refers not merely to illusion but to the world as constructed appearance—the
realm of name-and-form (nāmarūpa)
that does not correspond to ultimate reality. Under our
framework: Māyā = the
stabilised, fiction-level world generated by cognitive integration. It is not
false; it is constructed. Perception
presents not the real but the usable. 6.2 Līlā as Dynamic
Reconfiguration Līlā, the world as dynamic play,
is an apt description of the ceaseless reconfiguration of perceptual fictions
in response to flux. Because: ·
reality is event-driven, ·
cognition stabilises patterns, ·
flux continuously destabilises them, ·
yet cognition restabilises the world anew— the
observed world appears as a performance, a staged display, a continuous
unfolding. Thus: Līlā = the
dynamic reshaping of fictions under pressure of factual flux. 6.3 Why the Intuition Was Accurate Ancient
Indian thinkers lacked neuroscience but possessed acute phenomenological
insight: ·
the world appears stable yet is not, ·
the world appears structured yet continually
shifts, ·
identity appears unified yet is composed of parts
in flux. Our model
shows that this intuition was structurally correct. Māyā and Līlā
describe not metaphysical illusion but: ·
the cognitive interface, ·
the perceptual display layer, ·
the world as constructed coherence over real
flux. This is
precisely what our metaphysics predicts. 7. The World as Interface: Reality Emergent in Two
Layers We may
now summarise: 1. Layer 1:
Fact-Reality o composed
of momentary events o discontinuous o dynamic o not
directly observable 2. Layer 2:
Fiction-Reality o composed
of perceptual constructions o stabilised o useful o corresponds
to Māyā–Līlā Thus: Reality
presents itself in two ontological strata: This
dual-layered ontology is not metaphysical dualism but procedural necessity:
a living system cannot operate at the timescale of events and thus must
generate stabilised appearances. 8. Conclusion: The Natural Context of Finn’s Aphorism We now
see the structural inevitability of Finn’s statement: “We
experience facts but observe fictions.” It
expresses the fundamental organisation of reality and cognition: ·
We experience facts because
the organism is built from facts and responds directly to micro-events. ·
We observe fictions because
observation is a cognitive construction generated to stabilise, interpret,
and make actionable the flux of events. This
duality leads naturally to the ancient Indian insights: ·
Māyā = the
world of constructed fictions we observe. ·
Līlā = the
dynamic play of those fictions as they continuously reconfigure under the
influence of flux. The world
as it appears to us is not the world of facts but the world of
interpretations—a world staged, stabilised, and performed by cognitive
processes operating within a universe of events. Thus the ancient intuition was
precisely right: The world
we observe is the Līlā of Māyā — And
Finn's aphorism names the mechanism by which this play becomes possible. |