opg: I don't think the human mind can really comprehend absolute nothingness. We always have to visualize it against something we can conceive.

That's exactly why I refer to it as "erstwhile nothingness," placing it in relation to the somethingness that's evident in every "experience."

opg: I notice a lot of references to "experience" and "experiential", but that implies (at least to me) that somehow our experience of the universe is more than just our experience of the universe. Which further implies we're more important than just another species on an tiny planet

I written about this earlier in this thread in an attempt to obviate precisely the implication you've presented here. Here are some quotes from those earlier exchanges:

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unq: For this and a variety of other reasons I've come to regard our experience of existence as boundless complexification timelessly imploding within an original singularity representing the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness.
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unq: To the best of our present knowledge, emergent experiential evolution materializes as complexifying relations among boundlessly elaborating existants [of every ilk], *in the human realm* boiling down to boundless perceivers of the cosmos, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei and ephemeral quarks, the latter negotiating infinite probabilities in harmony with their macroscopic relations.
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unq: Cognition is emergent within experience.

opg: Not quite sure what that means.

unq: I apologize for the confusion. The obscurity likely arises from my use of the term 'experience' *in referring to quantum to cosmic emergence*, including whatever's going on here on mother Earth. The notion is that anything happening at any scale is a precursor to whatever happens next. If you can suggest an alternative expression, please share it, as I'm not satisfied with 'experience' either.
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Even though no one responded to my invitation for an alternative, I guess I should have eliminated that ambiguity after that post. Somewhere along the line I concluded that the term entanglement might be preferable as a generic reference to complexifying relations at levels ranging from quarks to cosmos. The problem is that the term *entanglement* may be unfamiliar to some, and it certainly only vaguely describes what's going on at the scale of human complexity.

I suppose referring to processes at all levels of complexity as "experience" is the problem.

Your thoughts?

Tom