The Purpose of Consciousness IIII

 Human reality consists of true ideas, useless ideas, and systems of investigation to discover true ideas and systems of true ideas that expand human knowledge and reality. This expanded reality must be able to distinguish useless ideas that fail to expand reality by its use of the real idea of nothing. But useless ideas are nevertheless real because human consciousness can usefully discard them from its expanded reality by its useful idea of nothing. Human consciousness can experience nothing except that which is real because it can and does use the real idea of nothing to make it all real. This condition means that even if a person makes up nonsense words in his mind, those words become real as soon as he experiences them because they automatically become equal to the useful and real idea of nothing.

When any idea becomes the object of human consciousness, it immediately becomes real either as meaning nothing or it will have a meaning assigned to it by consciousness. Human consciousness cannot avoid making all of its experiences real. When Democritus thought about atoms, he immediately assigned that word to his thought, and it became real. When scientists discovered that aether does not exist, then that real idea became useful as the real idea of nothing. But the scientists had to discover that the idea of aether equals the real idea of nothing.

Human consciousness can experience only reality because all that it experiences becomes useful to expand reality or to limit the expansion of reality by its use of the idea of nothing. Human intelligence depends on this ability. Even useless ideas become useful and real to consciousness because intelligent consciousness must be able to distinguish between an expanded reality and a limited reality.

But if everything that appears to consciousness must be true and real, then where does falsity appear? The only possible answer is that falsity never appears to human consciousness except as the real idea of nothing that indirectly indicates falsity. Humans can formulate all true and useful ideas, feelings, and sense objects into true and useful systems that expand human reality. Humans can also formulate all true and useful ideas, feelings, and sense objects into false systems that usefully limit the expansion of human reality. So where is the falsity in false systems? That falsity never directly appears to humans, but the idea of nothing can indirectly indicate its presence so that that falsity can be usefully discarded from any expansion of human knowledge and reality. Mathematics reveals this universal fact. If a person makes a mistake in arithmetic and adds 2+3=6, then that person has formulated true and real numbers and signs into a false system that limits human reality because this false system really equals the true and useful idea of nothing. This example indicates that falsity and unreality never directly appear to consciousness, but consciousness can use its real idea of nothing to exclude its falsity from an expanded reality. In order to possess an intelligent consciousness, humans must be able to distinguish the difference between a real something and a real nothing.