♾️ Hierarchical Consciousness vs No Ultimate God
Thesis: Similarity Theory denies an ultimate, creator‑controller deity. What exists instead is an open hierarchy of relative god‑likeness: higher orders of organisation that possess greater scope of influence over lower orders, without absolute knowledge or control.
🧭 Guiding Principle
In Similarity Theory, realities rhyme across scales. A higher order can organise, constrain, and meaningfully influence the behaviour of lower orders, yet no order occupies a final, all‑controlling vantage. Infinity functions as a conceptual tool rather than an instantiated being; therefore there is no ultimate God to which real similarity can be drawn.
🔎 Working Definitions
“God” (Abrahamic sense): An ultimate, unbounded, all‑knowing, all‑powerful being who is the absolute origin and end of reality. Similarity Theory rejects this as a realised entity; it is a concept only.
God‑like (relative): Any order of organisation whose powers appear overwhelming relative to a lower order. The god‑likeness is comparative, provisional, and bounded by the structure that produces it.
Higher‑order mind: A collective or structural integration that exhibits capacities not available to parts in isolation, for example a civilisation‑scale intelligence, a planetary mind, or a dimensional mind.
🪜 Core Claims
Infinity is conceptual, not instantiated. Mathematical infinity guides thought but does not appear as a concrete entity that can be “most powerful” or “all‑knowing”. Consequently, there is no real‑world analogue of an absolute God to which similarity could be claimed.
All higher minds are system‑internal. Planetary, universal, or dimensional minds are products of the system’s organisation. They are not creators standing outside it. They arise from integration, they change with conditions, and they are never final.
God‑likeness is always relative. A higher order can appear god‑like to a lower one without possessing total control. Apparent sovereignty dissolves when examined at finer granularity.
No terminus. The hierarchy is open‑ended. For any “higher” there are further horizons. There is no highest rung that closes the ladder.
🧪 Analogies (kept by design)
🧑🌾 Humans to animals and plants. We breed, feed, mow, fertilise, and cull. This looks like total control from the plant’s vantage, yet we cannot determine the timing of every blossom, the direction of each leaf, or the number of chews a cow will take. Our power is wide but not absolute.
🚰 The draining sink. You can open the plug and drain the basin, which feels like complete control. Yet you cannot fix the exit order of water molecules, or decide which will evaporate and never leave. Coarse control does not imply micro‑deterministic governance.
🗿 Rock to atoms. A rock organises and constrains its atoms through structure and bonding. Relative to an atom, the rock is god‑like as a stabilising form. Still, the rock does not command the precise trajectory of each electron; its “control” is structural, not omnipotent.
🧍♂️ Higher‑dimensional beings to us. Beings above our order may manipulate, reconfigure, or terminate us. Their agency would appear divine from our vantage, yet it remains bounded by their own structural limits and context.
🧩 Vocabulary Note
When Similarity Theory uses the term “god‑like”, it is a concession to limited human vocabulary. It does not smuggle in an ultimate deity. It marks relative asymmetry of power between levels of organisation, nothing more.
🧠 Implications
Ethics scales with vantage. Power over lower orders imposes stewardship duties without conferring omniscience.
Method over metaphysics. Investigate how integration yields new capacities rather than postulating a final cause.
Language discipline. Reserve “God” for comparative discourse only, and specify the reference class (for example “god‑like relative to X”).
🔗 See also
🌀 Transcendence without a Final Ceiling
🔦 Light Behind the Frames (Consciousness and Time)
🧭 Freedom and Will in an Open Hierarchy
🧬 Panpsychist Resonance across Scales
📚 References and notes
[1] On “Alpha and Omega” as a scriptural marker of ultimacy, see standard commentaries on Revelation 1:8 and 22:13.
[2] Aristotle’s treatment of potential as opposed to actual infinity, and later formal developments by Cantor and successors, offer context for seeing infinity as a conceptual tool rather than a realised magnitude.
[3] Hilbert’s Hotel illustrates why completed infinities behave counter‑intuitively, underscoring the conceptual rather than instantiated character of infinity in physical settings.
[4] P. W. Anderson, “More is Different,” and subsequent work on emergence, argue that higher‑level properties are not simple sums of parts and can exhibit novel laws.
[5] M. A. Bedau’s account of weak emergence clarifies how macro‑level regularities arise from micro‑dynamics without implying absolute top‑down control.
[6] Surveys in the philosophy of emergence and discussions of downward causation map the space between structural constraint and micro‑determinism.
[7] Standard overviews of panpsychism provide background for treating mind‑like features as pervasive without appealing to an ultimate deity.
♾️One‑sentence takeaway:
Similarity Theory replaces the idea of an ultimate God with a scale‑relative map of powers, where every rung can look divine from below, and none is final from above.
