Introduction[]
Hello there, I didn't plan on doing anything major in regards to the standards after having revised the concept standards, however, I'm tackling this now because there's a trend I've seen as of late that reminded me of something. What is that ? Well, it reminded me that I needed to elaborate more on the standards for concepts and any scaling that derives from ontological relationships with them.
While what I'm going to be talking about applies to any generalized concept, I'm mainly going to be talking about this with the concept of space or dimensionality in mind, seeing as how this is most relevant to scaling per our new standards. If you are still confused, what I'm going to be proposing here is that unless a "concept" is contained within "conceptual space", it should only scale to the defined amount of elements that exist within "physical space" as opposed to all potentialities that could be derived from the concept
This sounds confusing and don't worry, I'm going to elaborate on all of this in the next section. Just, for the time being, keep the terms "physical space" and "conceptual space" in mind, as these will be important things that I'm going to give meaning to and contextualize in regards to the new standards that I'm trying to push here
So, let's get into that, shall we ?
Physical Space (The World of Becoming)[]
Whenever one thinks of the term "Physical Space", they typically default to a space that is purely physical, as in, it has a concrete existence that is rooted in something like having matter or some type of physicality to it. Well, for all intents and purposes, throw that definition out of your head because that's not entirely what I'm referring to when I say "physical space" is any concrete space that has influence on reality within a cosmology. So basically, this implicates anything that "exists" and can be interacted with in some conventional way
I should preface that when I speak of "physical space", this isn't just in relation to physical elements of a cosmology but also metaphysical elements of a cosmology as well. Anything such as a spiritual realm, some astral plane or any of that sort of thing would still constitute under "physical space", seeing as they have a "concrete" existence and have influence over reality in some form. I only use the term "physical space" because all things that exist within a cosmology is grounded in some physicality to it, whether it's a physical level of physical or metaphysical level of physical, which in itself just is meant to refer to anything that "exists" in general
This idea seems like nonsense but it's actually grounded in philosophy and theology, specifically, things such as The Theory of Forms and Substance Theory tackle this idea and it's what the basis for our understanding of concepts stem from, alongside their relationship with physical reality. These two things are relevant because they bring up important concepts that kind of tie together what I'm trying to propose here.
What are those concepts ? The concept of "The World of Becoming" and "Accident". These two things aren't inherently connected but they are relevant for this revision because they provide a framework and basis for what I'm proposing.
To give definition to these things, so you can better understand where I'm going with this:
- "The World of Becoming" is just Plato's way of referring to the physical universe, a flawed copy of the world of forms, in which the idealized, perfect blueprints reside as the framework for reality. Everything in the "World of Becoming" is shaped and influenced by "forms", as everything in it is a imitation of these "forms" and any alteration of the "form" would result in an alteration of lower reality to imitate that change
- In substance theory, an "Accident" can be defined as a characteristic that a thing does not need in order to be itself, and which thus can either be present or absent without harm to its identity. To further elaborate on this, Accidents basically are direct contrasts to the fundamental essence of a thing, the essence being defined as the sums that makes it be the thing that it is
- Providing an example of this: Let's take a circle. We are familiar with a circle, right ? A round-shaped figure that has no corners or edges essentially. This definition basically sums up it's essential attributes and notes, as outside of this bare characteristic, it would cease to be a circle. An example of an "accident" in a philosophical sense, would be the exact circumstance of the circle, as whether the circle itself is big or small has no bearing on whether it's a circle or not
So I gave definition to these things but you may be asking, why is this even relevant ? Well, continuing from where I left off, a concept in its truest form does not exist within "physical space" in the sense that it "exists" as something conventionally interactable. In this same regard, a "concept" having things like "mass", "volume", "size" or any of these things that are short of just being the basic things that define it, would not make it a "true" concept but an "instance" that in itself can be likened as an accident of the actual concept
With all of this defined, you see where I'm going with this now ? Basically, a "concept" is not truly a concept unless it's simply defined by being itself and being contained within a "conceptual space" that in itself is free of accidents such as "volume", "mass" or anything that would assert concepts as being anything other than themselves and thus not encompassing of all "potentialities" that fall under it
Conceptual Space (The World of Being)[]
Moving on from the previous section, you may be wondering, what exactly is "Conceptual Space" ? Well, as I define it, one can liken "conceptual space" to being where concepts reside or basically the assumed "place" in which concepts "exist" within a cosmology. Once more, this term is not exactly meant to be what it is but rather just something that provides a framework, as in actuality, "conceptual space" as defined here is the part of the cosmology that doesn't "exist" without physicality, that is to say, it doesn't "exist" and you can't "interact" with it through conventional means
So what this entails is any "potentialities" that would fall under a concept. For example, using the concept of dimensions, let's say we have a cosmology in which there are 5 spatial dimensions. Well, these "5 dimensions" exist within "physical space" but in actuality, any amount of dimensions one could impose in a setting do exist within the verse, however, not in any meaningful context and in fact, they are "potentialities" or "instances" that fall under the "concept" and thus reside within "conceptual space"
Anything that exists within "conceptual space" has no influence over reality, at least in a physical sense. Like, for example, if the very concept of dimensions was to suddenly be destroyed in the aforementioned setting I mentioned above, only the 5 dimensions would be affected due to existing in a "physical space" that has influence over reality, whilst any amount of dimensions that exist beyond that but are contained within the "concept of dimensions" wouldn't be effected for the fact they don't exist in any meaningful way
No matter what concept you think of, it exists in a cosmology and influences it to some degree but where they "exist" would be a "conceptual space" in which doesn't "exist" in any "concrete" manner, that meaning, concepts in a cosmology are inherently independent of the "potentialities" or "instances" that fall under it by virtue of existing outside of all "Accidents" that subject those "instance" to physical space and thus make it "separable" or an "individual" as opposed to a "collection" of other instances
Once more, this has philosophical and theological basis, with this being in reference to The World of Being. This framework is relevant because Plato's idea of "forms" implicated an existence that was free of accidents. To be more specific, Plato stated that "forms" such as Beauty were "not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself", which aligns with what I said above about concepts just merely being concepts and free of "accidents" like volume, mass, size and all those denotations that would only matter to anything bound to "physical space"
In summary, a "conceptual space" can be likened to a "platonic-like" space or basically just any type of space where concepts in their truest and purest form are meant to reside. Just having a space that has "all concepts" is not the same thing either, by the way, since it still has a form of dependence on "physical space" in the sense that it has implied "size" or "volume" of some kind, which concepts that reside in a "platonic-like" space don't have per being free of accidents that implicate it being bound to "physical space" and attributes that fall under it like "size" or "volume"
The Relevance This Has To Standards[]
So why does any of this matter for the standards, you may be asking ? Well, simply put, the reasoning why we consider existing ontologically beyond the concept of dimensions to be 1-A in the first place is because the very "concept" would contain any amount "potentialities" that would fall under that concept and it would be a category error to assert that something ontologically beyond dimensions is still dimensioned in some shape or form, which would implicate they are beyond any amount one could insert in the setting
When the "concepts" in question are literally physical things that "exist", it invalidates that premise as it would just merely be an "instance" of that concept as opposed to being the "true" concept that would encompass all "potentialities" or "what-ifs" that fall under that abstracta. This might seem like a bit to understand, so I'm going to give you an example with stuff that's currently accepted
Let's say I have a space and it contains the concept of dimensions... It's not going to be a High 1-B+ space but the concept of dimensions will be for the fact it contains all instances of dimensionality but this doesn't necessarily apply to the "space" in question due to "what if" dimensions not having influence nor any instance outside of the abstracta of dimensions. On the contrary, If the space is explicitly the same "size" as the abstracta itself, that is to say, the space in itself has evidence of containing everything that is entailed within the abstracta, then it would scale to High 1-B+
- Let's say I had a space in which is the literal concept of dimensions itself... That "space" would be one with the abstracta and thus logically have the same "size" and thus it would be High 1-B+
- On the other hand, if I have a universe that contains the concept of dimensions and one were to exist beyond it... This doesn't matter for anything High 1-B+ or beyond as opposed to it just being relevant to however many dimensions that universe contains, as a "concept" can't have anything "larger" or "bigger" than it outside of that thing having a superior "ontology" to that concept
- This can be circumvented by said "universe" being a "platonic-like" space or some "conceptual space" akin to something like in The Theory of Forms or The Collective Unconsciousness... This gets around the above by virtue of concepts not being subject to "size" or "volume" by simply being free of "accidents" that bound it "physical space" but merely makes the concept "itself by itself with itself"
So this doesn't really change the standards too much. If a character exceeds the concept of dimensions, that's still 1-A or if a character IS the abstracta of dimensions, that's still High 1-B+. What's getting cracked down on is any argument of spaces containing the concept of dimensions, thus those spaces having that "size" (so unless the concept of dimensions is explicitly ontologically interior to you, exceeding the space would scale to however many dimensions exist in that space)
In addition to this, if a "concept" doesn't exist within some "conceptual space" or has things that suggest it it's more akin to an "accident", in other words, an "instance" or "emanation" of the true concept, then existing beyond it also doesn't mean anything. So for example, if a concept has "mass", "volume" or anything that denotes it's a part of "physical space", it's not truly a concept in the sense that it contains all "potentialities" or "what-ifs".
- This doesn't invalidate its existence as a concept but rather just suggests it doesn't contain "all possible things" that fall under that idea due to being an "instance" in itself that's subject to "physical space". For example, if the concept of dimensions exists within "physical space" and the cosmology has 6 dimensions, this would mean that existing above the space in which this "concept" is contained in would be just Low 1-C as it only scales to what exists within "physical space"
What Are Examples of Verses That Qualify/Don't Qualify[]
Verses That Don't Qualify[]
- Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha
- In a recent revision, Anos and by extension, the entire verse, was upgraded to High 1-A. Well, this is one of the revisions that inspired me to make this and frankly, this is only passed because of how loose the standards were prior to this. Now, this type of argument doesn't qualify under this standard. It's whole basis is that The Militia World exists beyond The World of The Gods but there are several problems with this
- First problem is The Militia World is not ontologically superior to The World of The Gods, it's just merely larger and as I highlighted above, this is a major red flag since concepts have no "size" or "volume" to speak of and these are exclusively things that something bound to "physical space" would have as "accidents". So this means that Orders are not true "concepts" in sense that they'd contain all "what-ifs" or "potentialities" as opposed to however many dimensions exist within The World of The Gods or below
- Second problem this assumes that The World of The Gods contains all "what-ifs" or "potentialities" by virtue of just merely containing the "concept of dimensions". As also said above, this doesn't mean anything for the "size" of the space itself, which would only be however large it is in relation to the rest of the cosmology or however many dimensions exists below it. The "what-if" dimensions don't exist in any meaningful way and thus the space isn't High 1-B+. So once more, unless the "concept" is being surpassed ontologically, this doesn't scale to 1-A
- In a recent revision, Anos and by extension, the entire verse, was upgraded to High 1-A. Well, this is one of the revisions that inspired me to make this and frankly, this is only passed because of how loose the standards were prior to this. Now, this type of argument doesn't qualify under this standard. It's whole basis is that The Militia World exists beyond The World of The Gods but there are several problems with this
- Instant Death
- In another revision, Yogiri got upgraded to 1-A+, possibly High 1-A and the general cosmology got buffed beyond 1-A. This is the secondary revision that inspired me to make this revision, even if it did come before the above one. It really just planted the seeds for this but nonetheless, this once more only passed due to the looseness of the standards. The whole basis for this is that Celestial Foundations are High 1-B+ because everything exists on a conceptual level and there's an infinite hierarchy of them, thus 1-A+. As you guessed, there's several problems with this CRT in relation to these current standards
- First problem is that it's a category error for there to be "multiple" concepts of the same thing unless those concepts are in themselves just "potentialities" of the actual concept that exists. Concepts are "itself by itself with itself", meaning that there's no multiplicity or "quantity" to speak of due to being an "accident". This would contradict the idea that the concepts are true abstracta and thus contain any and all dimensions that theoretically could exist under the abstracta
- Second problem is that despite Celestial Foundations existing as conceptual things... This doesn't mean anything for "potentialities" or "what-ifs" on the basis that these Celestial Foundations are still apart of "physical space" and thus are subject to variables like "size" and "volume", which a concept is not and such things would be "accidents" that bound it to "physical space"
- Third problem is that having their own laws doesn't support this nor rectify the fact that they contradict what constitutes as an "abstracta" in the sense that they contain any and all potentialities that could exist, do exist or will exist. If you want to be more on point, the "different laws" can just be attributed to the fact all of Instant Death is apart of an Ultimate Ensemble, with one of the most basic things being that different universes have different laws, physics and mathematics
- In another revision, Yogiri got upgraded to 1-A+, possibly High 1-A and the general cosmology got buffed beyond 1-A. This is the secondary revision that inspired me to make this revision, even if it did come before the above one. It really just planted the seeds for this but nonetheless, this once more only passed due to the looseness of the standards. The whole basis for this is that Celestial Foundations are High 1-B+ because everything exists on a conceptual level and there's an infinite hierarchy of them, thus 1-A+. As you guessed, there's several problems with this CRT in relation to these current standards
Verses That Do Qualify[]
- NiGHTS
- What separates NiGHTS from the the other two series mentioned here is that the archetypes in the series are not only contained within a "conceptual space", that being The Collective Unconsciousness but these "ideas" are not bound to "physical space" in the sense that they are subject to "volume", "mass" or "size", which would also be implicated by a "concept" being contained within a space that isn't "platonic-like" or just wholly conceptual, which would make it free of "accidents" that denote size and thus make it an "instance" of the concept
- Hololive
- Similarly with NiGHTS, when it comes to Hololive and entities such as The Council, they are separated from the other two series mentioned above on the basis that The Realm of The Gods exists as pure potentiality, is explicitly a "conceptual space" in the same vein as The Collective Unconsciousness or The World of Being, the archetypes aren't bound to "physical space" in ways that implies they have a "size", "mass" or "volume"
Answering Some Potential Questions[]
I'm aware that this is very confusing and that there are some questions that one could think of when reading this, alongside poke some holes in what I said in this blog. Well, I'm going to use this section to address some of these questions and or refute some potential counters to everything I've stated here. So yeah, let's finish this off
Doesn't This Invalidate Existing Beyond Dimensions Being 1-A ?[]
Not necessarily. What this is cracking down on is arguments of "this space contains the concept of dimensions, so this larger space would be 1-A" or any type of superiority to dimensions that isn't an ontological superiority. The standards are still the same, that being, if you exist ontologically beyond the concept of dimensions, you'd be 1-A and if you are the very abstracta of dimensions, you'd be High 1-B+
So what this means is, just having superiority to dimensions doesn't cut it. It has to be specifically ontological, otherwise it's a category error argument and also contradicts the idea of an abstracta having all "potentialities" or "what-ifs", which a "concept" being bound to "physical space" would not have and would just be merely an "instance" in itself
Why Does A "Platonic-Like Space" Matter ?[]
One may question why even bring up the idea that concepts being contained within a "platonic-like space" even matters. Well, to elaborate that even further, we already assume that an "abstracta" in itself "exists" but is inherently independent of "physical space", that is the part of reality that has concrete influence and is subject to "accident".
So a "platonic-like space" or just any type of "conceptual space" where things are independent of variables like "size", "volume" or anything of that sort would essentially be relevant because we can then say that the "concept" is not an "instance" but the true concept that also entails all "potentialities" or "what-ifs" that fall under the abstracta itself
Say if the "concept of dimensions" exists as a part of the universe. This is a problem because you have now assigned "size" and "volume" to it implicitly, which means it's no longer an "abstracta" that contains all "potential" dimensions but is just an "instance" of dimensions in itself. We as humans can be considered an "instance" of the "concept of humanity", which subjects us to things like "height", "width", "dimension", "size" and all of that, of which the "concept of humanity" would inherently not have but just merely be itself by itself with itself (meaning humanity is only it's basic traits and nothing more, with anything outside of that being an "accident" that prevents it from being it's fundamental essence)
Wouldn't Metaphysical Realms/Locations Be A "Conceptual Space" ?[]
Remember that "Physical Space" isn't just talking about literal physicality but merely anything that has "influence" in some concrete manner. What separates a "platonic-like space" from a random spiritual plane that exists in the verse is that the former doesn't really "exist" in the verse in the sense that it's dependent on "accidents" and the degree in which it influences reality is just by "being", if that makes any sense.
The spiritual plane in question here would still be a part of "physical space" because it's subject to "size", "volume" and all these things... This is with the notion that it's a part of the multiverse and isn't some "platonic-like" space that is independent of the multiverse or "physical space" as defined in this blog. The point I want to drive home is that "Physical Space" isn't just anything physical but really anything that has concrete and conventional influence on reality and thus is subject to accidents