One of the more difficult questions arising from Pneuminous Accretive Theory concerns the possibility of anomalous causation. If the apparently material world is understood as a manifestation of pneuminous accretions, what might account for those occasional phenomena in which conceptuality appears to exert an unusual influence upon events?
The question arises particularly from synchronicity, in which an apparently external occurrence seems to correspond meaningfully with a conceptual configuration in a manner that exceeds ordinary expectation. Such experiences need not be interpreted as supernatural. Coincidence, selective attention, psychological association and other conventional explanations remain available (this uncertainty is preserved through the principle of agnostic disjunction). Nevertheless, the peculiar appearance of a relationship between thought and world provides the starting point for the phenomenology the has generally explored over past years.
Pneuminous Accretive Theory begins with the quasi-substantialisation of conceptuality. Concepts, images, identities and relations acquire stability through processes of accretion onto the vector field. The vector field is the manifestation of the underlying outside-of-conceptuality (as opposed to the umbratic which is the manifestation of the outside of perception itself). The extra notion here is that the vector field which seems to have the actual characteristics of things is itself simply more forceful accretions of pneuma The theory does not require an initial decision about whether an apparent synchronicity has an ordinary or extraordinary cause.
However, a more speculative possibility emerges if we extend the theory into an all-pneuma ontology. Suppose that what we ordinarily regard as material reality is itself constituted by pneuminous accretions at a cosmic level. The apparently external world would then not be an ontologically separate substance upon which thought somehow acts. It would already be pneuminous in its constitution. The problem of anomalous causation would consequently become a problem of relations between different pneuminous configurations.
The Stability of the World
If the material world (a key manifestation of the vector field) is pneuminous, why does it resist ordinary thought so effectively? Why can we imagine a stone moving without the stone moving? Why does the world continue to exhibit such extraordinary regularity regardless of the wishes, beliefs or conceptual activities of individual human beings? Within the speculative all-pneuma model, the answer lies in the vastly different scales and stability of accretive organisation.
Ordinary human conceptuality operates within an already established field of extraordinarily powerful accretions. These constitute the stable conditions of experienced reality, including the apparent solidity of objects, the persistence of physical relationships and the regularities described by natural science. Such configurations might be conceived, in a theological formulation, as the thoughts of God. This need not initially entail a personal deity, although the possibility of one is not excluded. The formulation indicates that the apparently material world belongs to an order of pneuminous organisation vastly exceeding the local configurations of human consciousness.
Human thought does not ordinarily modify a stone because it encounters an accretion of enormously greater stability and resistance. There is no need to posit an absolute ontological division between mind and matter. The distinction is instead between configurations of radically different accretive power. The question of anomalous causation can now be reformulated:
Under what conditions might a relatively local pneuminous configuration become capable of modifying, redirecting or disturbing the more stable accretions constituting ordinary reality?
The notion of curvature provides a possible way of conceptualising how such modifications might occur. In general relativity, mass-energy is associated with the curvature of spacetime, affecting the trajectories along which physical bodies move. The proposed pneuminous analogy is that sufficiently intense configurations might alter the organisation of the wider pneuminous field, influencing the trajectories of events within it.
This is not a claim that pneuma literally obeys Einsteinian physicss, nor that anomalous events are gravitational phenomena. Curvature is being proposed as a conceptual model for a possible relationship between intensity and the organisation of reality. A pneuminous configuration might conceivably exert a local influence upon the field without transforming the whole of its structure. An anomalous event would then not necessarily represent the suspension of natural law by an external supernatural agency. It might instead involve an unusual local modification of the accretive relationships through which ordinary reality is maintained.
Curvature might alter the probability of events, producing unusual concentrations of apparently meaningful coincidences. It might modify relationships between otherwise separate configurations, generating anomalous correspondences between conceptuality and external occurrences. More radically, it might affect the conditions under which particular events become manifest, producing phenomena that appear to violate ordinary physical expectations. These possibilities should not be treated as equivalent. A meaningful coincidence and an apparent physical anomaly place very different explanatory demands upon the theory.
Nor does the existence of synchronicity as an experience establish that any such curvature has occurred. The proposal is conditional: if anomalous causation exists, pneuminous curvature might provide a framework for understanding its operation. This establishes the central problem of the curvature hypothesis. The next question is what might enable one pneuminous configuration to modify another, particularly when the latter possesses vastly greater stability. One possible answer lies in the elusive relationship between accretion, intensity and power.
