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| Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT |
Preface
In recent decades, the philosophy of mind has undergone a subtle but decisive transformation.
Where once physicalism stood as a confident explanatory framework - asserting that all phenomena, including consciousness, could be reduced to or explained by physical processes - it now finds itself under pressure from a problem it has never fully resolved: the existence of experience itself.
Consciousness has not disappeared under analysis. It has not been eliminated, nor reduced, nor even successfully explained as a secondary byproduct of non-experiential matter. Instead, it has stubbornly remained - persistent, irreducible, and philosophically disruptive.
In response, a number of contemporary thinkers have proposed a revision rather than a rejection of physicalism. Among the most prominent is Galen Strawson, a British analytic philosopher, who argues that if physicalism is true, then consciousness must be understood as a fundamental aspect of the physical world. From this newly arising re-perspective of physicalism, what once was called “the physical” must now begin to include "experiential or proto-experiential properties."
This move has been presented as a resolution by Strawson.
Yet it raises a deeper question...
... has physicalism solved the problem of consciousness - or has it transformed itself into something else?
This essay argues that what appears as an expansion of physicalism is, in fact, the beginning of its transformation into a more comprehensive ontological framework. One, which we have presently been working on, described as "embodied process(ual) realism (epr)."
Hence, the inclusion of experience at the ontological base of reality (sic, "panexperiential-ism") undermines the classical conception of matter as inert, non-experiential substance. Once this assumption is relinquished, the foundations of traditional physicalism begin to shift.
What emerges in its place is not merely a revised physicalism, but now begins to merge with the outlines of a process-relational ontology - one in which reality is understood not as static substance, but as dynamic, structured becoming.
This transition is not accidental.
It is forced by the nature of the problem itself.
If consciousness exists, and if it cannot be derived from wholly non-experiential components, then reality must be such that interiority, however minimal, is already present within its fundamental structure. But if this is so, then reality cannot be adequately described in terms of inert particles governed by external laws. It must instead be understood as a field of relational processes capable of sustaining identity, integration, and continuity across scale.
This is the point at which physicalism gives way to processual realism.
The aim of this essay is not to reject physicalism outright, but to show that its most sophisticated contemporary forms point beyond themselves. By tracing this development, we can better understand why a framework such as Embodied Process Realism is not an alternative to science, but a philosophical deepening of its implications.
Today’s companion essay explores the distinction between Embodied Process Realism (EPR) and contemporary forms of physicalism (or scientific realism).
In particular, it engages Galen Strawson’s revision of physicalism as a critical turning point. Strawson’s work recognizes that any adequate account of reality must include consciousness - not as an anomaly, but as something that cannot be explained without reference to experiential, self-referencing interiority.
Yet this recognition requires more...
Once consciousness is admitted as fundamental to the universe, the framework of physicalism must necessarily expand beyond its classical limits. It must ultimately give way to a more comprehensive ontology of reality - one that is fully relational and processual, as developed in the philosophy (and theology) of Alfred North Whitehead.
This is the direction taken in the present companion essay.
Building on the earlier work of Essays 1–8, we have been exploring quantum gravity, cosmogeny, and the structural conditions of reality, and have developed a processual framework described as Embodied Process Realism (EPR) providing a contemporary expression of Whiteheadian process thought - articulated in contemporary dialogue with the quantum sciences using expansive processual grammar.
From this perspective, what contemporary physicalism is becoming is not a final ontology, but an early expression of a deeper processual realism which Whitehead had earlier expressed in the 20th Century.
Put simply:
Physicalism asks what reality is made of.Embodied Process Realism asks how reality holds together as itself.
EPR is therefore not a form of “process physicalism,” but a distinct ontological framework grounded in Whiteheadian process philosophy. Within this broader framework, any newer versions of scientific-physicalism can be more fully and properly understood, as well as measured for inadequacy.
Orientation
This essay will proceed in four movements:
- Classical Physicalism and Its LimitsThe historical assumption of non-experiential matter
- The Problem of ConsciousnessWhy experience resists reduction
- The Expansion of PhysicalismStrawson and the turn toward panpsychic inclusion
- The Emergence of Processual RealismWhy a relational, process-based ontology becomes necessary
that reality, when understood in its full depth, is not merely physical - but processual, relational, and capable of becoming inwardly conscious to itself.
Section I - Classical Physicalism and Its Limits
An actual entity is a process, and is not describable in terms of the morphology of a ‘stuff.’
- Alfred North WhiteheadConsciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness.- WhiteheadThe experiential cannot emerge from the wholly non-experiential.- Galen Strawson
Classical physicalism has been one of the most successful intellectual frameworks in the history of human thought. Its strength lies in its simplicity and its power: the claim that everything that exists is ultimately physical, and that reality can be understood in terms of structure, relation, and law.
Yet embedded within this framework is a further assumption - rarely stated explicitly, but historically decisive:
that the physical, at its base, is non-experiential.
Matter, in this view, is extended, measurable, and governed by external relations. It behaves, interacts, and persists - but it does not feel. It possesses no interiority. Consciousness, therefore, must arise later, as a product of sufficiently complex arrangements of what is, in itself, wholly without experience.
This assumption proved methodologically powerful. By excluding experience from its descriptions, science was able to focus on quantifiable relations and predictive models. The world became intelligible as a system of interactions, describable without reference to subjective life.
But what began as a methodological decision gradually hardened into an ontological claim.
Reality itself came to be understood as fundamentally non-experiential.
It is here that the difficulty emerges.
For consciousness has not disappeared under analysis. It has not been eliminated, reduced, or explained away. It remains - immediate, undeniable, and irreducible. Any account of reality must either include it or explain how it arises.
Within classical physicalism, the standard response has been to treat consciousness as emergent. Experience is said to arise from complex configurations of non-experiential components, particularly in biological systems such as the brain.
Yet this proposal introduces a profound tension:
If the basic constituents of reality are wholly non-experiential, then it becomes unclear how experience could arise from them at all. No increase in structural complexity, however great, appears sufficient to generate something entirely different in kind - namely, experience - from what is entirely without it.
This is not merely a gap in explanation. It is a question of coherence.
As Galen Strawson has argued, one cannot derive the experiential from the wholly non-experiential without introducing a discontinuity at the level of being itself. If consciousness exists - and it undeniably does, as many now recognize (and as we have been describing through EPR) - then the nature of reality must be such that its emergence is not accidental, but unavoidable and irreducible.
In response to this difficulty, contemporary physicalism has begun to shift.
Rather than abandoning its central commitment, some philosophers have proposed expanding the meaning of the physical itself. If everything is physical, and if consciousness is real, then the physical must include experiential or proto-experiential aspects at its most fundamental level.
On this re-perspectivizing view of materialism/physicalism, what was once called “matter” is not wholly devoid of interiority. Instead, experience - or something like it - is already present in some minimal form, and consciousness arises not as a radical emergence, but as an organization or intensification of what is already there.
This move has been presented as a necessary completion of physicalism.
Yet it signals something more significant.
But... once the assumption of non-experiential matter is relinquished, the foundations of classical physicalism begin to transform. The physical is no longer defined solely in terms of structure and external relation. It now begins to include an intrinsic dimension - an inward aspect of interiority - that had previously been excluded.
At this point, the framework begins to shift.
Reality can no longer be adequately described as a collection of inert components governed by external laws. It must instead be understood as a dynamic field in which relations involve integration, continuity, and the potential for inward organization.
This is the threshold at which physicalism gives way to something more comprehensive.
What emerges is the need for an ontology capable of accounting not only for structure, but for identity, interiority, and the conditions under which experience becomes possible. Such an ontology cannot be grounded in static substance alone. It must be relational, developmental, and processual.
In this sense, the expansion of physicalism does not resolve its central difficulty.
It reveals it.
And in revealing it, it points beyond itself - toward a view of reality as process, relation, and the progressive capacity to become inward to itself.
If reality must be understood in these processual terms, then the question is no longer whether consciousness can arise from matter, but:
how reality, in its own structure, gives rise to identity, interiority, and experience.
It is to this question that we now turn.
Section II - Identity, Experience, and the Structure of the Real
Nature is a process of expansive development.- Whitehead, "Science and the Modern World"
If the preceding analysis is correct, then the problem of consciousness cannot be resolved by adding experience to an otherwise non-experiential framework. The difficulty lies deeper. It concerns the very structure of reality itself as defined by physicalism/scientific realism.
Once experience is admitted as real - and once it is recognized that it cannot emerge from what is wholly without it - the question of ontology shifts.
It is no longer:
How does consciousness arise from matter?
It becomes:
What must reality be like such that experience is possible at all?
This shift is decisive.
For it directs attention away from isolated entities and toward the conditions under which anything can persist, differentiate, and become identifiable in the first place. It begins to sound more like embodied processual realism and less like physicalism. But this additive approach of "stopping up the leaks in the dike" becomes problematic, for it shows the shortcomings of physicalism's ontological framework philosophically.
1. Identity as the First Condition
Please note: The terms below have been exhaustively covered across the previous Essays 1-8 of the series, "What Is Reality" as we have looked at reality's ontology.
Before there can be experience, there must be something that is capable of being itself across change.
This is the problem of identity.
Identity is often assumed rather than examined. Objects are taken to persist; systems are treated as continuous; organisms are understood as enduring individuals. Yet if reality is fundamentally dynamic - as both physics and philosophy increasingly suggest - then identity cannot be grounded in static substance.
It must be grounded in continuity.
But continuity alone is not sufficient. A mere sequence of events does not constitute an identity. For something to be identifiable, there must be a patterned continuity - a trajectory that maintains a recognizable configuration across successive moments.
Identity, therefore, is not given. It is achieved.
It consists in the capacity of a configuration to hold together as itself through change, maintaining sufficient self-consistency to be distinguishable from what it is not.
This is the first structural condition of the real.
2. Experience as Structured Continuity
If identity is the condition under which something can be said to persist, then experience must be understood in relation to this persistence.
Experience is not an isolated event. It is not a detached occurrence appearing suddenly within an otherwise inert system. Rather, experience presupposes a form of continuity - a way in which successive moments are integrated rather than merely juxtaposed.
To experience is, at minimum, to register continuity.
This does not require reflective awareness. It does not require cognition or self-consciousness. But it does require that a system, in some minimal sense, retain and integrate its own transitions.
Without such integration, there would be no distinction between before and after, no continuity across moments, and therefore no basis for experience at all.
Experience, then, is not an addition to identity.
It is a deepening of it.
Where identity is minimally realized, continuity remains external - observable as patterned persistence. Where identity becomes more integrated, continuity begins to be internally registered. The system does not merely persist; it begins, however faintly, to hold its own transitions together.
This is the earliest form of interiority.
3. From Structure to Inwardness
At this point, a crucial insight emerges:
If identity requires patterned continuity, and if experience requires the integration of that continuity, then experience cannot be an anomaly within reality. It must be a development of the same structural principles that allow anything to persist at all.
This dissolves the sharp divide between the physical and the experiential.
What we call “the physical” describes the external organization of relations. What we call “the experiential” describes the internal integration of those relations.
They are not two different substances.
They are two aspects of the same process.
This realization brings us to a turning point.
A framework that treats reality as composed of inert units cannot adequately account for identity or experience. Even an expanded physicalism that includes experiential properties at the base lacks the conceptual resources to explain how these properties become structured, integrated, and sustained across scale.
What is required is an ontology in which:
- identity arises through patterned continuity
- experience arises through integrated continuity
- structure and inwardness are understood as complementary expressions of a single process
This is the point at which a process-relational understanding of reality becomes necessary.
Reality must be understood not as a collection of things, but as a field of ongoing formations - configurations that achieve and maintain themselves across time through the integration of relations.
In such a framework, identity is not a fixed property, but a stabilized trajectory. Experience is not an inexplicable emergence, but the inward articulation of that trajectory.
The implications are far-reaching.
If identity and experience arise together from the same underlying structure, then the problem of consciousness is no longer one of emergence from non-experience, but of degree, integration, and organization.
The question is no longer:
How does experience appear in a non-experiential world?
It is:
How does reality, through its own structure, deepen from continuity into inwardness?
To answer this, we must now examine more closely the nature of continuity itself - and the conditions under which it becomes capable of sustaining interior life.
Section III - From Continuity to Interiority
Each actual entity is a subject experiencing and a superject of its experiences.- Whitehead, "Process and Reality"There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition
apart from temporal duration. - Whitehead, "Concept of Nature"
If identity is understood as patterned continuity, and if experience arises as the integration of that continuity, then a further implication follows.
Experience cannot be confined to a single level of complexity.
It must instead be understood as graded.
The classical problem of consciousness assumed a sharp division: a world of non-experiential matter, within which experience suddenly appears at a certain threshold of complexity. But once that assumption is relinquished, the question changes.
It is no longer:
Where does experience begin?
It becomes:
In what forms, and to what degree, does reality exhibit inwardness?
The traditional model divides reality into two distinct domains:
- the physical (objective, non-experiential)
- the mental (subjective, experiential)
This division has proven difficult to sustain.
If the physical is entirely without interiority, then the emergence of experience remains unintelligible. If the mental is wholly distinct, then its relation to the physical becomes obscure.
The result is a persistent oscillation between reduction and dualism.
A graded model avoids this difficulty.
Rather than asking how one domain gives rise to another, it recognizes that what we call “experience” may exist in varying degrees of integration and intensity, corresponding to different levels of organization within reality itself.
To speak of interiority is not yet to speak of consciousness in its full sense. It is to speak of a more basic condition: the internal integration of a system’s own transitions.
A system exhibits interiority to the extent that it:
- retains aspects of its prior states
- integrates these into its present configuration
- maintains a continuity that is not merely external, but internally coordinated
This does not imply awareness.
It does not require cognition, reflection, or self-recognition.
But it does mark a shift.
The system is no longer only a pattern that persists. It becomes a center of integration—a locus in which its own continuity is, in some minimal sense, held together from within.
This is the earliest form of inwardness.
Once interiority is understood in this way, it becomes possible to speak of degrees.
At minimal levels, interiority may consist only in the simplest forms of retention and transition. At higher levels, it becomes increasingly complex, involving richer forms of integration, responsiveness, and coordination.
Biological systems exhibit a significant intensification of this process. Organisms do not merely persist; they regulate themselves, respond to their environments, and maintain their internal organization through ongoing processes of renewal.
Here, interiority deepens.
It becomes not only integration, but regulated integration - a coordination of internal processes in relation to both internal states and external conditions.
At still higher levels, this integration becomes capable of supporting reflection, memory, and the differentiation of self and world.
But these developments are not discontinuous.
They are intensifications of the same underlying structure.
At this point, a broader picture begins to emerge.
If identity arises through patterned continuity, and if interiority arises through the integration of that continuity, then reality itself must be understood as a field in which such processes are continuously unfolding.
Interiority is not an exception within reality.
It is a development within it.
This does not require that every element of reality possess fully developed experience. It does require that the structure of reality be such that inwardness is possible, and that it can emerge and intensify across scales of organization.
In this sense, reality is not merely a system of external relations.
It is a living field of relational coherence, within which configurations arise, stabilize, and, at increasing levels of integration, become inwardly organized.
This understanding clarifies the limits of expanded physicalism.
To say that the physical includes experiential aspects is to acknowledge that interiority cannot be excluded. But without a framework for understanding how interiority develops - how it becomes structured, integrated, and sustained - this inclusion remains incomplete.
What is required is not simply the addition of experience to matter, but a reconceptualization of reality itself.
Reality must be understood as:
- relational rather than atomistic
- processual rather than static
- capable of generating identity and interiority through its own structure
This is the move from physicalism to processual realism.
The implications are now clear.
If interiority is a graded development of structured continuity, then consciousness is not an isolated phenomenon, but a high-order expression of a more fundamental feature of reality.
The question is no longer whether reality can produce experience.
It is:
how reality, through increasing integration, becomes capable of experiencing itself.
To answer this, we must now turn to the role of direction, selection, and significance within this process.
For inwardness alone is not sufficient.
It must become oriented.
Section IV - Value, Direction, and the Emergence of Meaning
The teleology of the universe is directed to the production of Beauty.
- Alfred North Whitehead
If interiority arises as the integration of continuity, then a further development must be considered.
Integration alone is not sufficient.
For a system that merely integrates its own states without differentiation would remain undirected - a continuity without orientation. Yet the systems we observe, particularly at higher levels of organization, do not simply persist. They select, respond, and differentiate.
This introduces a new dimension.
Interiority becomes directional.
At its most basic level, interiority involves the retention and integration of successive states. But as integration deepens, systems begin to exhibit preferences - not necessarily conscious choices, but tendencies toward certain configurations rather than others.
These tendencies reflect a form of orientation.
A system that maintains itself does not do so indifferently. It sustains certain patterns while excluding others. It stabilizes some trajectories and not others. This selective maintenance introduces the first structure of value.
Value, in this sense, is not imposed from outside.
It arises from within the system as the distinction between what is sustaining and what is disruptive to its continuity.
To speak of value at this level is not to invoke moral judgment or conscious evaluation. It is to recognize that systems embody a form of selective persistence.
A configuration that persists must, implicitly, favor those conditions that allow it to continue. It must differentiate between pathways that support its integrity and those that undermine it.
Thus, value emerges as:
- preference without reflection
- selection without deliberation
- direction without explicit intention
This is the earliest form of valuation.
It is embedded in the structure of reality itself, wherever continuity is maintained through differentiation.
As with identity and interiority, value admits of degrees.
At minimal levels, value is implicit in the stability of configurations. At higher levels, it becomes more explicit, as systems develop increasingly complex modes of interaction and response.
In biological systems, this becomes especially clear. Organisms regulate themselves in relation to their environments, maintaining internal conditions while adapting to external changes. This regulation reflects a more developed form of valuation—one that distinguishes not merely between stability and instability, but between better and worse conditions for continued existence.
Here, value begins to take on a richer structure.
It is no longer simply the persistence of pattern, but the optimization of persistence.
At still higher levels of integration, value begins to organize experience in more complex ways.
Systems capable of memory, anticipation, and coordination do not merely respond - they begin to relate their present states to past conditions and future possibilities. This introduces a temporal depth into valuation.
Value becomes structured across time.
It is in this temporal structuring that the earliest forms of meaning begin to emerge.
Meaning is not yet linguistic or conceptual. It is not yet symbolic. But it arises wherever:
- continuity is integrated
- differentiation is sustained
- and orientation is extended across temporal horizons
In this sense, meaning is the organization of value within continuity.
This development reveals once again the limits of classical and expanded physicalism.
To acknowledge that reality includes experiential aspects is an important step. But without an account of how those aspects become directional, selective, and temporally structured, the framework remains incomplete.
Value cannot be reduced to structure alone.
It arises through the organization of structure in relation to persistence and continuity. It requires a framework in which systems are not merely described, but understood as maintaining themselves through selective differentiation.
This is not easily captured within a purely physical vocabulary.
It requires a relational, process-based ontology in which:
- identity stabilizes
- interiority integrates
- value orients
- and meaning begins to form
The implications are now clear.
If identity gives rise to interiority, and interiority gives rise to value, then reality itself must be understood as increasingly capable of direction and significance.
The emergence of meaning is not an anomaly.
It is a continuation.
The question is no longer:
How does value appear in a valueless world?
It is:
how reality, through its own structure, becomes capable of valuing and meaning.
To complete this arc, one further step remains.
For value, once sufficiently integrated, does not merely orient - it begins to reflect.
Section V - Consciousness, Reflection, and the Emergence of Agency
Consciousness presupposes experience, and not experience consciousness.- Alfred North Whitehead
If interiority gives rise to value, and if value becomes structured across time as meaning, then a further development becomes possible.
Value can begin to turn back upon itself.
This marks the emergence of reflection.
At earlier stages, systems exhibit orientation without awareness. They differentiate, select, and maintain themselves according to implicit valuations embedded in their structure. But as integration deepens, these processes become more complex and more internally coordinated.
A system capable of reflection does not merely respond to conditions.
It becomes, in some degree, aware of its own responses.
This does not imply full self-consciousness at once. Reflection exists in degrees, just as interiority and value do. But it introduces a decisive shift.
The system is no longer only a locus of integration and orientation. It becomes a locus of self-relation.
To relate to oneself is to bring one’s own states into a form of internal articulation. Past and present are no longer merely integrated—they are recognized, contrasted, and coordinated.
This introduces a new level of organization.
The system now operates not only through continuity, but through a reflexive continuity - a continuity that can, in some measure, take account of itself.
Here, identity deepens once more.
It becomes not only a trajectory sustained through time, but a trajectory that is, at least partially, accessible to itself.
This is the beginning of consciousness in its developed sense.
With reflection comes the possibility of agency.
Agency is not merely the capacity to act. It is the capacity to participate in the shaping of one’s own continuity.
A system capable of agency does not simply follow the trajectories established by prior states. It can, within limits, modify, redirect, and reorganize those trajectories.
This introduces a new dimension to reality.
Continuity is no longer only maintained - it is, to some extent, co-created.
Agency, therefore, is not an external addition to reality. It is a high-order expression of the same processual structure that gives rise to identity, interiority, and value.
As with all prior developments, agency is not uniform.
At minimal levels, systems exhibit constrained forms of responsiveness. At higher levels, this responsiveness becomes increasingly flexible, adaptive, and anticipatory.
In human experience, this reaches a particularly complex form. Reflection becomes explicit, self-relation becomes articulated, and agency becomes capable of deliberation and intentional action.
Yet even here, the structure remains continuous.
Human agency is not an exception to the structure of reality. It is an intensification of it.
At this point, the trajectory traced throughout this essay becomes clear.
- Identity emerges as patterned continuity
- Interiority emerges as integrated continuity
- Value emerges as directional continuity
- Meaning emerges as temporally structured value
- Consciousness emerges as reflexive continuity
- Agency emerges as participatory continuity
Each stage does not replace the previous. It deepens it.
What began as the problem of consciousness within physicalism now reveals itself as a more fundamental question about the nature of reality itself.
The classical question was:
How does consciousness arise from matter?
The question now becomes:
How does reality become capable of relating to itself?
And with this shift, a further realization follows.
Reality is not merely that which exists.
It is that which, through increasing integration, becomes capable of experiencing, valuing, and participating in its own unfolding.
What began as a defense of physicalism has led, step by step, to a different conclusion.
Not the abandonment of science, but the transformation of its philosophical ground.
Coda - From Reality to Voice
How creation, humanity, and God come to voice within a shared reality.
The movement traced throughout this essay has not been a departure from physicalism so much as an unfolding of its limits.
What began as a framework grounded in the success of scientific description - concerned with structure, relation, and law - encountered a persistent difficulty in the reality of experience. Consciousness could not be eliminated. It could not be reduced to what was wholly without it. And in response, physicalism was compelled to expand.
Yet this expansion revealed something more fundamental.
Once experience is admitted, once identity is understood as patterned continuity, once interiority is recognized as integrated continuity, and once value emerges as orientation within that continuity, the framework itself begins to transform.
What appeared to be an extension of physicalism becomes the threshold of a new ontology.
Reality is no longer adequately described as a collection of inert components. It must be understood as a living field of relational coherence - a field within which configurations arise, stabilize, and increasingly participate in their own continuation.
In this light, the progression we have traced is not a sequence of separate developments, but a deepening of a single structure:
- Identity as continuity held together as itself
- Interiority as continuity held together from within
- Value as continuity held together with direction
- Meaning as continuity extended across time
- Consciousness as continuity relating to itself
- Agency as continuity participating in its own unfolding
Each stage emerges from the last, not by addition, but by intensification.
This leads to a further recognition.
Without a developed language of metaphysics, ontology, and cosmology, these developments remain unintelligible. Concepts such as value, meaning, identity, purpose, and direction cannot be grounded. They appear as projections, imposed upon a reality that does not support them.
Hence, the necessity of philosophy is not optional - it is foundational.
It provides the conceptual conditions under which reality can be understood as capable of interiority, coherence, and participation. It allows us to speak of the world not only as structured, but as capable of becoming inwardly organized and meaningful.
It is here that the implications extend beyond philosophy.
For once reality is understood as relational, processual, and capable of sustaining identity, interiority, and value, the language of theology can be engaged in a new way.
Not as an external imposition.
Not as a departure from reason.
But as a continuation of the same inquiry.
In such a framework, concepts such as love and God do not enter as interruptions. They emerge as intelligible extensions of a reality already understood as capable of relation, value, and participation.
This does not settle theological questions.
But it transforms the conditions under which they can be asked.
The grammatical shifts introduced across this work mark decisive moments in this transformation.
We are no longer asking:
What is real?
We are now asking:
How does the real become identifiable, inward, meaningful, and participatory?
And in doing so, a final question comes into view - one that gathers the entire trajectory:
How does reality begin to live as itself?
This is the labor - and the aim - of the work that follows.
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