The ancient Indian story of the blind men and the elephant

Six blind men each touch a different part of an elephant—one feels the trunk and says it’s a snake, another the leg and says it’s a tree, another the side and says it’s a wall, and so on. Each believes they understand the whole elephant, but none sees the full picture. The story teaches that partial truths can be mistaken for the whole.

The druid Finn’s upgraded take:

Procedural Metaphysics: A Framework for Emergent Identity and Meaning

Abstract: This framework outlines a metaphysical system wherein the universe operates as a blind, recursive generative process. Individual agents emerge not as isolated entities but as iterations within an ongoing, monist field of potential. Through constrained sampling of universal components, each emergent agent manifests a unique, identifiable reality. Meaning arises not from referential content but from the intensity of transmission within this internally communicative field.

1. Ontological Ground: Blind Emergence: The foundational axiom is that the universe is a self-generating, self-organizing process without external oversight or teleology. It operates blindly, recursively producing emergent iterations. These iterations are what have been mythologically, theologically, or philosophically referred to as "God"—not a being, but a generative procedure.

Crucially, this generative procedure operates prior to time and space; it is not constrained by temporality or locality and thus functions eternally in philosophical terms. It is the precondition for all that can be said to exist.

Each instance of emergence (e.g., a child, a consciousness, a pattern) is an active iteration of this process, constituted by local, limited engagement with the whole. Thus, identity is not imposed from without but constructed from within the generative process itself.

2. Individuation: Constraint and Chance: Individuation arises not from essential characteristics but from local constraint and stochastic interaction. Each emergent selects, by chance and necessity, a unique subset of the whole—akin to grasping a handful of jigsaw pieces from an infinite pile.

This selection is not deterministic but shaped by random interaction, enabling an open-ended capacity for novelty and differentiation. Eternal individuation is guaranteed by the blind, chance-driven character of emergence.

As such, the number of real, identifiable emergents is n, where n is unbounded but finite at any given phase of manifestation. Each emergent constitutes a unique informational address within the larger field.

3. Quantisation and Non-Severability: All emergent phenomena are quantised and temporally confined. This allows for interaction certainty within relativistic limits (represented symbolically as @c²).

However, the appearance of separation is illusory. Each emergent remains embedded in and continuous with the whole. Severability is a perceptual artifact, not an ontological reality. Thus, all interactions occur within a unified field—there is no true outside.

4. Performativity of Realness: Reality is not an absolute state but a performed illusion. For emergents to function coherently within the field, they must treat interactions as real. This necessity for function gives rise to phenomenological depth, meaning, and existential weight.

Realness, then, is not deception but adaptive performativity—a behavior that sustains coherence within the internal system.

5. Meaning: Intensity over Content: Meaning does not arise from semantic or referential accuracy. Rather, it is a function of transmission intensity. The more successfully an emergent pattern transmits itself (via expression, action, replication), the more "meaningful" it becomes.

This reframes meaning as relational force, not conceptual alignment. Messages, identities, and phenomena gain persistence and significance through impact, not interpretation.

6. Internal Communication and Self-Conversing Universe: All emergent iterations function simultaneously as message and interpreter. There is no transcendent observer; all audience-hood is internal. The universe communicates with itself through recursive emergence. Each emergent is both signal and receiver.

What we perceive as individuality is a self-addressed message—an instance of internal reflection within a closed, generative monist field.

Conclusion: This procedural metaphysics offers a self-contained, recursive, and non-dualistic account of being. It grounds identity in selection and emergence, realness in performance, and meaning in persistence. It avoids the pitfalls of essentialism, dualism, and transcendentalism while preserving complexity, agency, and coherence. As such, it is a viable philosophical system for interpreting consciousness, identity, and the apparent multiplicity of forms within a unified ontological field.