“Do“, “while“, and “for” are what are known as “looping conditionals” in JavaScript. In this article, I propose a new such conditional: “be”.

Before we delve into be, a clarification and addendum are in order.  Be by itself is not necessarily a looping conditional (unlike do, while, or for).  Be may also to be accompanied by not-be in any (non-)existential platform: not-be shall henceforth be notated as “!be”.  As in Java, the ! operator here simply means “not”.

Be and !be may form a coupled loop, consisting of both consciousness and unconsciousness as these two latter terms refer to awareness and unawareness (respectively).  Practically, then, be denotes any possible state or trait of awareness, whereas !be corresponds with any such state/trait of unawareness. Be and !be may each interchange with consciousness and unconsciousness (for reasons I will leave out of this article; but, am happy to engage with otherwise).

The current project–which I will henceforth call “2be || !2be?” (or “to be, or not to be?“, for the more Shakespeareanly-inclined)–may be described also as an “enactive”, computational one. Enactivism (as described in, e.g., Francisco Varela’s work) and performativity (consult, e.g., Judith Butler) are necessary to invoke for the set Po of possibilities afforded by both the ubiquity and foreseeable reiterations of mobile computing.  Po, then, consists of (non-)existential computing possibility.  (It is trivial to add Pr for the present context, if such probabilities happen to be more relevant.)

Next, come the highly challenging questions of how we are to program consciousness and unconsciousness (see, e.g., Doug Hofstadter and Hubert Dreyfus’ works for the best overview understandings of the former project).  The subject- and object-oriented programming (SOOP™) paradigm I propose as an answer to these problems will be grounded around them.  Be and !be will serve as SOOP™‘s “primitive” values, standing in for consciousness and unconsciousness (again, interchangeably).  Consciousness and unconsciousness (or, in this case, be/!be) are simultaneously variables and constants of the more specific psychological state or trait class. In this particular way, SOOP™ could be considered a preliminary psychological extension of quantum computing.

To conclude this post, an example of 2be || !2be? code is provided:

     count = 1
     be
     {
document.write(count + “ times 7 is “ + count * 7 +    “
”)
     }    while (++count <= 7)

hypothetical be…while loop

The output of SOOP™ programs like the above will be considered in this article’s successor.

References:

• David Bohm, 1951:  Quantum Theory
• Eric Dodson, Ph.D.
• Martin Heidegger, 1953:  Being and Time
• Robin Nixon, 2015:  Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript with JQuery, CSS & HTML5 (4^th ed.)
• William Shakespeare, 1603 (approx.): Hamlet
• Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 2000: The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
• Judith Butler, 1990: Gender Trouble

* SOOP™ is a pending trademark of Suraj Sood.