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At the height of Pleromian science, mankind found a way to construct objects from the weaving together of telos waves and eidetic particles. These subatomic correlates to matter were key in the relationship between the mind and how it perceives the world, the study of them thus unlocking an array of arts that act as the foundation of Pleroma itself. Thus, Pleroma stands head and shoulders above its neighbors—kingdoms of simple and rudimentary magic. Whilst they busied themselves with tossing about the elements, Pleromian craft borders the creation of new lifeforms and robotics: they’re called the P.H.I.L.O.S.O.P.H.E.R series, or simply “Philosophers”.
The Concept
The above acronym stands for Pneumatic Haecceities and Immanent-Logic Operating Sparks of Psychic and Hylic Endoplasmic Registries. From these terms, four should stand out to us given the Gnostic tone of the previous writings: Pneumatic (from the Greek Pneuma), Sparks, Psychic and Hylic. Together, these encapsulate the direction of the Philosopher ‘species’ as an artificial step in the history of mankind. The present writing will attempt to explore the ideas behind their setup, along with their place in Pleromian society.
The term ‘Pneuma’ ("spiritual", from Greek πνεῦμα, "spirit" ) is typically associated with gas and pressure—like the tires of a car, for example—and this is due to its primary meaning of ‘air’ or ‘breath’. But for the Gnostics and most Greeks, breath was a metaphor for life and vitality (and eventually, a sign of the spirit). In the Stoic tradition, this very spiritual ‘breath’ overflowed both life and the cosmos itself as an all-encompassing force—in such a way that in the micro-relations of the term, it would have to be characterized in different grades: tonos, physis and psyche (then elevated to logica psyche). The first gradient, tonos (or the pneuma of state or tension), is characterized by its unifying and shaping nature that creates hexis—also known as cohesion. It moves both outwards and inwards, thus providing unity/substance and producing qualities/quantities. For the Stoics, an individual is defined by the balance of their inner pneuma—as it both holds them together and separates them from other objects. The second gradient, physis (or pneuma as life force), is that which pushes the threshold for growth and signified a thing as alive. The third gradient, psyche (or pneuma as soul), pervades an organism along with the capabilities for movement, perception and reproduction—with a higher gradient providing reason. Keeping the perspective of the Stoics in mind will be key for a full understanding of the pneumatic concept.
In the Gnostic tradition, Pneuma is treated more personally. The Gnostics believe that only three sorts of humans can be distinguished: the pneumatic, the psychic and the hylic. Judging by the previous discussion, we can ascertain what the pneumatic entails—a spiritual sort of human, in tune with God’s wisdom and a virtuous way of life. This order of humans transcended the material world through such wisdom, acquiring the divine knowledge printed within the soul. The classic example of these spiritual men are Christ and Buddha; in contrast, the hylic are men devoted to matter—to the earthly desires, to mortal knowledge, to this world. The psychics, on the other hand, were considered as a step in between both, as those whose interests raise above the material things but do not yet grasp the underlying spiritual knowledge.
Sparks, on the other hand, make direct reference to what we’ve known Aeons as being: divine sparks. In this sense, a spark has always been a motor of sorts—an engine directed for some form of activity. Without the prefix of a divine, we are acknowledging that the particular use of spark in this context alludes to an artificial type; this is only half-true. Despite the man-made fabrication of philosophers as sparks, our earlier distinctions clarify that this is by no means a limitation. The use of pneuma, psychic and hylic here are primarily those of natural designators: they refer to the types of things that philosophers can interact with—their kind, their being, their matter, their objects, so on. In this sense, they are open-ended in their programming to perceive these ontologies, in the same way that a human can perceive and interact with them were they to be properly exposed.
Given these distinctions, philosophers are directed at the previously mentioned natures—which is made more so evident by the neighboring terms. The term ‘Haecceity’ (/hɛkˈsiːɪti, hiːk-/; from the Latin haecceitas, which translates as "thisness" ) is taken from the medieval-scholastic philosophy of Duns Scotus to refer or denote the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing that make it a particular thing; that is to say, what produces the individuated thing and differs it from its genus (such as the difference between the concept of man and the concept of Bob). Thus, when we partly describe the philosopher kind as Pneumatic Haecceities, we’re alluding to them as particularities of spiritual nature—as only any life touched by philosophy can ever be. This is to add, however, that in being individuated spiritual particularities they are also drawn to other haecceities.
We can then claim that philosophers consist of two things in their greatest respects: individuations and open-directedness toward different natures, mainly those of pneumatic, psychic and hylic kind. However, when we refer to that open-directedness—the sparks—as Immanent-Logic Operators, and in turn connect them with the Pneumatic Haecceities (along with the Psychic and Hylic natures), we are claiming that the extent of their logic-interactions ranges to haecceities beyond that of Pneumatic kind. In saying ‘immanent’, we’re conditioning the logic of present relations—and in relating the nature of those relations to a pneumatic kind and otherwise, we provide the philosophers with a capability of operating in each of those gradients immanently. If we observe these statements carefully, we can see the resemblance to the theory of Deus sive Natura expressed in that the transcendental (transcendental in the sense of condition of possibility) realms which structure the world exist within it—thus eliminating the notion that they persist in some ethereal ‘outside’ of existence. The fundamental-organizing principles in nature coexist with the ordained matter.
As a result, what thoughts the philosophers think—regardless of kind—enjoy a sort of present-ness to the world. The logic systems that they operate congeal into reality, in the same sense as ours do if only in a much more advanced way. Our thoughts take time to find home, more so depending on their level of abstraction; whereas for a philosopher, all levels of abstraction mentioned so far (pneumatic, psychic, hylic) are ‘immanent’—present, differing only in their positing. They experience the structures of these abstractions in the world, as if the surface of the organized objects were translucid.
Under this new light, the later entries of Endoplasmic Registries make better sense. Endo (Greek for “internal” or “within”)-plasmic (from the Greek “plasma” and “plassein”, meaning “mold” or “to mold/shape”) gives us one image, yet it is an adjective traditionally tied to the term reticulum (endoplasmic reticulum)—as a network or interconnected web of membranous globules. Granted that the weight of the idea we’re trying to carry out is more closely felt with this second term, the concept of endoplasmic still serves us a great deal. To describe those registries of our tri-nature as molds or in the process of being molded, it is characteristic to say of philosophers that they can very well mold them—shape them.
The concept behind the philosophers is thus clarified: artificial sparks that mold and shape the logics, particularities and other sorts immanent in the tri-nature—them being immanent in that all their connections are put-forth, exposed, present. The purpose and way in which this is managed will soon be discussed.
The Design
The first philosopher series consisted of a Soma-chassis, prototype for the second-generation series-chassis known as the Res Extensa model. With an emphasis in harnessing the flow of pneuma, the Soma-chassis comes equipped with a Psyche processor, programmed in platonic programming language. Unlike the later Res Cogitans processor, the Psyche processor is designed with lesser compartments; they are sketched throughout the chassis in a tripartite manner. The logos compartment is in the head, allowing them to reason and regulate their body movement. The thymos compartment is in the chest; it animates the Soma with anger, emotion or passion. The third compartment, the eros, is in the stomach—which fuels the Soma with desire or hunger.
These platonic machines had simple yet thorough thought processes which often relied on a pleromian mainframe dubbed the Nous—later replaced by another named Sophia (Greek for ‘wisdom’) once the previous one vanished. Their logos compartment was responsible for interpreting on signals (called ‘Forms’) from the mainframe to carry out their actions. Sophia’s manufacturing and translation of forms is aided by three sub-mainframes called Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Plato—this last one responsible for most of the translations. Many philosophers operated under these mainframes as service bots and guinea pigs for more elaborate programs which acted as new mainframes to a second generation of philosophers with different compartments.
Subsequent generations of the philosopher series focused on more powerful Psyche processors, capable of computing greater amounts of information. In a sense, these newer processors were conglomerates of various old-gen models—with each model serving a function for the processor itself as opposed to a single processor performing all operations. This type of build is known as the Renaissance models, and unlike the early Platonic Models, they manage a variety of languages (including Platonic and Parmenedian) that range from Aristotelian to Aquinian.
The Renaissance models pose a Res Extensa chassis, an Anima main-processor with a Res Cogitans sub-processor. The Anima is mapped in Aristotelian code, with each older-gen processor installed acting as drives that function in a conjoined manner, together powering the sub-processor: respectively, these are the Ethos, Pathos, Logos, Kairos and Telos drives. Together, they give the philosopher models a sense of humanity. The Ethos drive instills in them a notion of right and wrong, whereas the Pathos drive allows them to understand or comprehend emotion—as well as to appeal to the emotions of others. The Logos drive is programmed in an open-ended manner, lending the philosophers the capacity to compute logic-schemes and reason through them whilst perceiving external uses of logic and reason; it is also through this drive that they may learn and use languages. The Kairos drive is dedicated to their perception of time which is fixed to that of a human’s; it is mostly tasked with contextualizing their operations in different time-files. The Telos drive, on the other hand, motors their search for purpose—which, like the Logos drive, is open-ended to not determine their programming from the onset. Paired with an intuition program-interface, the Renaissance model are the ideal generation for human interaction.
The third generation is marked by the Germanic Idealist models, under which production of the philosophers start to take a turn. Built as humanoid, quantic-super computers, they signify a change to a possible evolution of mankind and artificial life. With technology that can resize various programs, processors and drives to a molecular level for the sake of sleek chassis-logistics, they are capable of endlessly modifying themselves with complex structures—meaning various Res Cogitans along with most Anima models. Their almost mythical Geist-model is the most powerful processor yet: an elaborate pneuma-harnessing mechanism directed at space-time operations through different drives that alter perception and, in turn, shape realities.
Given their programming capabilities, the Germanic Idealist models can distinguish their chassis as an object and their chassis as an experiencing mechanism; Korper and Leib. In this sense, they may either appear as human or as monstrous clouds of re-arranging gears and other objects.
The Story
Our story takes place at the most prosperous point of the Renaissance models, from the perspective of three young philosopher-decommissioning bots: FR-01 Descartes, FR-02 Pascal and FR-03 Spinoza. The three friends live through the defective processes and questionable orders of the Sophia-mainframe, the mass production of philosopher models and the social issue of decommissioning older generations that were tasked with public services. In the process, they meet bots with faulty programming that resist their fate, as well as having them question their own. Of those they meet, one of them is particularly elusive—the PL-01 Socrates—constantly evading their attempts to decommission them whilst tripping their intensions, even turning them against each other. This is furthered worsened as they receive cryptic messages from a future bot named GI-04 Hegel, whom warns them of events to come as consequences of their actions. With every message showing incredible precision and prophetic detail of their actual circumstances, the young philosophers are at a loss on how to proceed with their lives at the expense of older ones.
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Geisteswissenschaften
"Sciences of the spirit."
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