Matter as Mnemonic Capacity, NOUSLETTER IV

In Ennead II.4 Plotinus anticipates Chris Langan’s concept of syndiffeonesis with intelligible matter, at least to some capacity, seeing as intelligible matter is called for as a substrate to relate differentia in the way of plural Forms. 

The matter principle in question present to both the second and third hypostases acts not only a relational medium but a receptive nature onto which information is impressed, and therefore related. This would make the matter of objects, both intelligible and sensible—a kind of mnemonic capacity, onto which information is inscribed as shapes might be impressed onto clay. Information in reality being akin to impressions onto a receptive medium is key, opposed to exterior things added into the clay and related by it by virtue of subsisting in it as a medium and nothing more. 

Information is necessarily defined, definition is necessarily relative to what it is not—defining one thing defines other things. Particularization of information in reality is therefore concomitant with pluralization, the more particularity—the higher the degree of multiplicity. However, if Reality as a principle is singular by virtue of being self-same and irreducible to any given real things (reality-itself isn’t reducible to a plate for example)—while plural real things are reducible to Reality as a principle, then a non-virtual multiplicity of real things cannot ultimately stand. 

So, a mnemonic matter principle is in essence the attribute by which virtualization of information in a particular and plural mode is made possible in a Reality that is ultimately unitary or monistic. Put more simply, reality in the way we experience it, full of defined things, is a virtualization (or simulation) of information inscribed onto this receptive, plastic memory principle—which we can rightly call the “matter” or material of these defined things. 

I believe the inscription process is akin to thought. Naturally, the inscription of form onto intelligible matter in the second hypostasis wouldn’t be discursive in nature, rather: apprehensive and contemplative—directly informed by its metastructure, the forms being akin to patterns therein. Although at the level of soul, it seems the inscriptive process does occur more discursively and in time, allowing for change in the particular arrangements of information. Further, I maintain it is the involvement in and subsequent perception of these sets of information that renders to the perceiver as the world.

Glossary:
Metastructure: structuring structure; a structure that contains both posterior structures and the capacity to retain those structures, and is irreducible thereto—as is the case with a universal and a particular.
Mnemonic capacity: capacity to memorize; memory; plastic (malleable) and elastic medium.
Syndiffeonesis: CTMU (Chris Langan’s metaphysical model) reductive principle positing the reduction of any two related real things to a more common reality by virtue of being related to begin with.
Hypostasis: refers either to substantial reality principle, or explicate orders thereof as is the case in Plotinus.
Virtual: not existent in-itself, a line on clay would be a line itself if it were string pressed into the clay, it would not if it were only pressed into the clay—in a manner of speaking.
Monism: the view that reality is ultimately of a singular substance or principle.
Reality Principle: that which is in-itself, the principle that substantiates real-ness and is irreducible to any particular real thing (to which other real things are also not reducible).
Particularization: a process in which parts are increased.
Pluralization: a process in which quantitative magnitude is increased.