Charge and Feeling

In my 50s I spent some time revisiting the world of physics that I had learned in my youth. Now for the first time I realised that the function of charge was never clearly understood in the conventional physics textbooks I read. Also I found that the process of change was not clearly understood. What causes change to happen? What, if anything, is the role of charge in the process of change?

It is always helpful, when considering a difficult problem, to see if one can use an appropriate analogy from some other department of knowledge. I want to compare matter and mind, so where, within the field of consciousness, is the agency of change?

Within consciousness it is always emotion that is changing. However, emotion itself is not the agency of change. Emotion is a compound mixture of feeling and mind. There are a multitude of emotions, but only three feelings. There are just three feelings: the pleasant one, the unpleasant one, and the neutral one. This is the Buddhist understanding and I verified this fact directly during the time when I used to practise meditation.

The importance of feelings is that they help give rise to emotions, that is, the basis of all emotions is the three feelings. I define an emotion to be a mental concept that is energised by feeling.[¹]. It is feelings that are always changing, and so they produce the continual change in emotion.

Comparing Charge to Feeling

Now I can return to my ideas on charge. The analogy that I am looking for is that of feeling. Charge bears some close resemblances to feeling. Compare these statements:

There are three kinds of charge: positive, negative, neutral.
There are three kinds of feeling: positive, negative, neutral.

Within the domain of matter, charge acts on an individual particle. When we consider consciousness, then feeling acts on an individual mind. Within evolution, matter is created before individual units of consciousness are created. In my view, charge can be viewed as the evolutionary basis of feeling, that is, charge is the model on which feeling is based. The way that charge functions is the same as the way that feeling functions.

Charge acts in two ways, as does feeling. Charge helps to maintain a stable, long-term, energy pattern in an individual particle or atom, whilst nevertheless producing random current movement. As an example, think of an ordinary electrical circuit. When the power is switched on, the current forms a stable, long-term flow; when the power is switched off, the stable flow disappears and random current flows occur due to changes in temperature. So too a person’s temperament (such as introversion or extroversion) maintains a stable energy pattern based on a preference for a particular emotion (which is itself based on a particular feeling, either positive or negative); the particular emotion may be long-term resentment, or jealousy, or narcissism, or pride, etc. Nevertheless, the person experiences short-term oscillations of feeling superimposed on his temperament. In both examples, changeable (unstable) flows of charge or feeling are superimposed on stable background patterns of charge or feeling.

In evolution, charge (within matter) evolves into feeling (within consciousness). To understand the function of charge we look in reverse: by understanding the function of feeling, we thereby know the function of charge. Feeling is the agency of change within consciousness. Therefore charge is the agency of change within matter. The more charge that a unit of matter possesses, the more it can change.

The Significance of Change

The significance of change is profound. The ability to change is the pre-requisite for causality to operate. If a unit of anything cannot change then it cannot be involved in causation. If anything cannot change then it can neither be acted on by something else nor can it act as a cause on anything else. If charge could not produce movement of particles, then any applied power (such as a battery or a transformer) would produce no effect – electrical circuitry would not work.

Feelings govern the way that a human wants to interact with other humans. So correspondingly, charges govern the way that energy and matter interact. The changeable flow of charge produces random patterns of current movement, or “spontaneity”. Likewise, the changeable flow of feeling also produces the spontaneity of short-term relationships. But spontaneity is inadequate to sustain long-term relationships or patterns of stability. Long-term relationships are maintained by will (or willpower). Within units of matter the long-term patterns of stability are maintained by will too, only here “will” means force.

[ Within my theory of philosophical Idealism, force means the power of God’s will to maintain stability in the material world. Here, “God” means the immanent God within all units of matter.]

[¹]. For my ideas about Emotion, see the three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [1]

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Ian Heath
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.	What causes Change to Happen? The physical world is a state of perpetual change. But what causes change to occur? The answer is not obvious, and to discover it I used an analogy. I compared matter with consciousness. Are there any similarities between the way that matter changes and the way that consciousness changes? My answer is Yes. There are two aspects to change: the how and the why of it. In the world of the physicist, change is seen to happen. Attention is focused on how to make it happen. Little, if any, attention is paid to why it happens.
Sub - Headings
Comparing Charge to Feeling
The Significance of Change
References