Can 2R fix its broken relationship with the Truth?

Research and Sense-Making
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For the whole of Western history, apart from the last 50 years, very few people even questioned the idea that there was such a thing as the truth. Ancient philosophy assumed it as a goal, and from the late Roman era until the Rennaissance truth was “enforced” by the Catholic authorities. Did this lead to conflict? Yes, including what was arguably the low point in Western history: the Albigensian Crusade, during which the Catholic authorities engaged in total genocide of the Cathars because the Cathars were offering much deeper truths than the deeply corrupt Church could tolerate.

The Rennaissance and the Protestant Reformation were both examples of great changes in Western society resulting from a rejection of the Catholic monopoly on truth and commitment to a new, independent search for truth. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (the Age of Reason) were yet another example of a re-invigorated, re-launched search for truth. However, in both cases (science and Enlightenment philosophy), that search ended in partial failure, and in both cases the problem was consciousness. Science couldn’t even define consciousness, and is still structurally incapable of doing so in a coherent way. Hume tried to provide a philosophical foundation for a science of consciousness (“moral subjects”), but ended up with unresolvable paradoxes. Kant then formalised these paradoxes (he called them “the Antimonies”) into a metaphysical-epistemic system which forever banished “objective truth” to a noumenal world that humans can’t even cognise, let alone access. But science and analytical philosophy nevertheless continued to search for truth. Neither has suceeded in producing a coherent model of the whole of reality, but both are still committed to that as a goal.

The descent into outright truth-denial began with Nietzsche, but it was only the rise of postmodernism which institutionalised the total denial of objective truth. The postmodernists gave two justifications for this, which don’t sit comfortably with each other (but that doesn’t matter to postmodernists, because postmodernists don’t believe in the truth). The first was “truth is unattainable” and the second was “truth is authoritarian, and truth-claims lead to conflict and oppression”. The toxic, corrosive effects of this anti-epistemology on modern society are hard to overstate. The perfect example is gender ideology, where there was a systematic attempt to impose non-truths as truths. The postmodernist political philosophers spread a load of cynical lies about the relevant science, and then insisted that the rest of society should accept that people with male bodies and Y chromosomes can actually be women, and demonised anybody who disagreed, accusing them of “hate speech”. Many Western politicians accepted this, resulting in men competing in women’s sports, being put in female prisons and being allowed in refuges designed for women who had been abused by men. This was madness, and it was only reversed after two decades of intense “culture wars”. I don’t think I need to elaborate further on this – we all know what has happened.

Metamodernism was supposed to put this right, and Jason Storm’s version actually does. The single most important feature of metamodernism, distinguishing it from postmodernism, is the acceptance that this systematic truth-denial was a catastrophic mistake. It resulted in nihilism, the meaning crisis, and ideological paralysis. Storm is essentially saying that we need to take the best lessons from postmodernism, but that the time has come to accept that there is such a thing as truth after all, and that the whole of Western society needs, once again, to re-invigorate and renew its search for truth. That is the new paradigm which is needed – a new kind of search for the truth which does not repeat the genuine mistakes of modernism (especially physicalism and reductionism). We need the right hemisphere sort of truth, not just the left hemisphere kind.

Second Rennaissance does not practice Storm’s version of metamodernism. The moment I start talking about a collective search for objective truth, the response I get here is pure postmodernism: the outright rejection of the idea that objective truth is either possible or desirable. This is not a contingent state of affairs – 2R isn’t rejecting the idea of truth for no reason. The reason is abundantly clear: 2R’s methodology is perspectivist – it is an attempt to create collective meaning by accepting and trying to understand other people’s perspective. Any claim to truth is therefore viewed exactly how the postmodernists viewed it: as a threat.

This sets up a show-stopping problem. If all 2R is ever willing to do is to try to construct collective meaning without ever committing to a collective search for the truth, then its attempt to foment a Second Rennaissance is logically doomed to fail. The problem is that if there is no collective acceptance that a search for truth is both possible and desirable, then there is no internal pressure on individuals to change their own thinking in response to contradictions, lies, deceptions, mistakes, and everything else which blocks the path to truth. It’s too easy. It does not require the difficult “internal work” required when one’s own model of reality is demonstrated to be lacking. You cannot collectively approach truth if you prioritise social politics over the truth itself. Note that this was always the biggest criticism that both analytical philosophy and science had of postmodern philosophy: if you aren’t constrained by logic or empirical evidence, then it is a free-for-all. Anybody can say anything they like. It doesn’t actually have to have any fixed meaning, and it certainly doesn’t need to respect the truth. Is it any surprise that this led to a “meaning crisis”? 2R’s problem is that it still sees postmodernism as the pinnacle of Western thinking. I don’t think the problem can be fixed until/unless 2R is willing to collectively admit that, in fact, postmodern relativism was a disastrous mistake.

So…can 2R, as a movement, fix its broken relationship with the truth?

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When you say, “the Truth”, is this something you are professing to know?

Are there any consequences to knowing this Truth, if so? Do those who know it act differently than those who don’t? Does it lead to wisdom and a different sort of conduct?

Also, could you please answer this without a diatribe about Postmodern decadence and all that? These are simple, practical questions, that you could easily answer in a sentence or two. (Feel free to write a wall of text if you’d like but I won’t read it).

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I intended this thread to be a general discussion about epistemology, western history, postmodernism, metamodernism, the meaning crisis and the future of humanity. What I personally do or do not know, and how I justify it, is a distraction, because it personalises a discussion which needs to be generalised. In other words, this thread should not be about me.

The Pope doesn’t need to justify his claims about truth in terms of science or reason. He just decides things, based on Catholic doctrine and his own understanding of history and the world. Essentially, he “just knows”, and everybody else must accept his judgement as truth. That is how Abrahamic religions have always worked.

Science and analytical philosophy (AP) have never worked like that. Nobody in science or AP can just “profess to know truth”. In both cases, rigorous justification is required. In science this involves reductionism (breaking things into small pieces) and empirical evidence. When science fails in this respect, then it has internal procedures for correcting the mistake. And when this goes wrong then it causes big arguments. If you want to see an example of that, google for Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is an ex-physicist who has spent the last decade calling out contemporary cosmology and physics for failing in exactly this respect: it has stopped doing proper science, and has effectively given up searching for the actual truth. Cosmologists and physicists are jumping through the required academic hoops, but doing so in cynical ways: they produce mathematically elegant theories which are falsifiable, but which everybody knows will be falsified. But the culture is “publish or perish”, so if the physicists want to keep up with their mortgage payments, they must play the game (in bad faith).

So my approach to truth is consistent with both science and AP. I never make any claims on objective truth unless I can back them up with reason and empirical evidence. What I am doing that science does not do is insist that truth must be holistic. It must take into account the whole of science and the whole of AP, rather than just focusing on one small part. It must be a right hemisphere process as well as a left hemisphere process.

People on this forum have treated me as if I was acting like the Pope: declaring that I know what truth is, based on nothing but my own imagined authority. Your question implies that this is what I am doing. If that’s what you mean then the answer is no.

What I have actually done is offer a detailed argument, based on holistic science and reason, as to why certain things must be true. Nobody here has engaged with those arguments. I started a thread about the crisis in cosmology, and nobody responded. That lack of interest is a direct consequence of the postmodern approach of 2R. Collectively, you aren’t that interested in empirical science, because postmodernism declared science to be “just another narrative”, with no epistemological privelege. As a result, it is impossible for yourself and the other people here to distinguish what I am doing from what the Pope does. I am pointing out that this is a very serious problem.

How can there be a paradigm shift which resolves the conflict between science and spirituality, if 2R is not interested in engaging with science with respect to truth?

Does 2R believe it can arrive at the truth by a process of negotiation within its own group? If so, that isn’t going to work. If not, then it needs to start taking science seriously, and view the crisis in cosmology as a golden opportunity, instead of totally ignoring it.

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Absolutely sums up the problem here. You asked me a question which could only be answered carefully. I spent 10 minutes answering it carefully, and you can’t be bothered to read it. You wanted to force me into giving a simple answer, which would force me to fall into the trap you tried to set with the question, which intentionally ignored the justification for truth, effectively equating the Pope’s truth and scientific truth.

This resistance to thinking deeply is the exact opposite of wisdom.

Are there any consequences to knowing this Truth, if so?

There are huge consequences to actually respecting the search for Truth. For a start, you don’t just dismiss or ignore things that you don’t find personally interesting, if they’re about the truth. You are obliged to engage, because of a shared understanding that the truth matters, even if you share nothing else with the person you are talking to.

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Okay Geoff, maybe that was a bit dismissive. Let’s try to reboot this relationship, as I think the intellectual points we all care about have become needlessly personal.

I do agree with some of what you said here, and a lot of your views in general, though I don’t think you do yourself any favors in how you promote them.

Your reference to Sabine Hossenfelder is spot on. Modern cosmology and physics provide a perfect warning: when elite institutions begin inventing untestable mathematical models just to maintain funding and consensus, they have replaced the actual universe with a self-serving academic map.

But I want to challenge how you are applying this logic to the forum itself.

You stated that you want a collective search for truth that is holistic and utilizes a ‘right-hemisphere sort of truth.’ If we look at the actual neurological and philosophical definition of right-hemisphere processing—the work of Iain McGilchrist, for instance—the right hemisphere’s truth is fundamentally grounded in context, relationship, and the integration of multiple perspectives. It is the left hemisphere that insists on absolute, rigid categorization, strict black-and-white binaries, and demanding that everyone conform to a single, explicit framework.

When you judge 2R’s focus on ‘understanding perspectives’ as mere political maneuvering or truth-denial, you are evaluating a right-hemisphere process using a rigid, left-hemisphere ruler.

True perspective-coordination isn’t the postmodern claim that ‘everything is arbitrary and there is no truth.’ Rather, it is an exercise in scientific and human humility. It recognizes that because objective reality is infinitely complex, any single human mind or individual framework is a partial map. We don’t coordinate perspectives to negotiate what is true; we coordinate them to triangulate what is true, catching our own blind spots before we collide with the territory.

The real internal work isn’t swearing allegiance to a global framework. The real work is having the relational safety and humility to admit when the territory has proven our personal map wrong.

If we treat the coordination of viewpoints not as a threat to objective truth, but as the only viable mechanism for finite humans to discover it, doesn’t that change the entire nature of this debate?

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Yes. Science and analytic philosophy are left hemisphere activities, as is postmodernism (which endlessly “nitpicks” while ignoring the context). What 2R tries to do is much more right-hemisphere oriented, but it does at the price of dismissing the value of the left hemisphere. McGilchrist never said that we should use our right hemispheres and ignore the functions of the left, did he? He said we need both. What I am doing represents a complete integration of both. My theory is a complete synthesis of empirical science (all known empirical data) and holistic reasoning which takes account of subjectivity, intuition, beauty, etc… That is the whole point of it.

What 2R is doing is not an integration, but a rejection of the left-hemisphere domain of science and reason, and that is only possible because 2R retains postmodernism’s rejection of possibility of objective truth.

When you judge 2R’s focus on ‘understanding perspectives’ as mere political maneuvering or truth-denial, you are evaluating a right-hemisphere process using a rigid, left-hemisphere ruler.

No I’m not. I’m evaluating an attempt to use the right hemisphere while ignoring the left entirely, which in turn invalidates this as a right hemisphere process. The right hemisphere is supposed to seek whole pictures. This cannot be done if you do not take science and reason seriously.

True perspective-coordination isn’t the postmodern claim that ‘everything is arbitrary and there is no truth.’ Rather, it is an exercise in scientific and human humility.

You have consistently abused the idea of “humility” to reject the idea of objective truth. You’ve tried to weaponise it: anyone who claims truth, regardless of how they are justifying it, “isn’t humble enough”.

It recognizes that because objective reality is infinitely complex, any single human mind or individual framework is a partial map. We don’t coordinate perspectives to negotiate what is true; we coordinate them to triangulate what is true, catching our own blind spots before we collide with the territory.

Nonsense. Nobody here is interested in your collective blind spots. The exact opposite is happening: groupthink on a massive scale, which mutually justifies your collective rejection of objective truth. You’re doing it right now: "objective reality is too complicated for a single huma mind to understand…therefore there is no objective truth.

The real internal work isn’t swearing allegiance to a global framework.

I never said it was. Why the massive strawman? Again, you are trying to misrepresent what I am doing as being indistinguishable from what the Pope does. The point is not blind allegiance, but actually facing up to the contradictions in your own belief system. The point is to actually understand the justification for that framework. Blindly swearing allegience does not work.

Yes. But that can only happen if you admit that there is such a thing as a map which isn’t wrong, which is exactly what you aren’t willing to do. If there is such a thing as the territory, then there must be such a thing as a map of the whole territory which is accurate in terms of the basic structure. I have explained on numerous occasions, including in this thread, what that means. It means we need a basic ontology, metaphysics and a completed scientific model of reality. No such thing has ever existed, and the real paradigm shift that is coming must change exactly that.

That is not going to be possible unless people are willing to admit that there is such a thing as objective truth, and that it is knowable, and that knowing it is not “oppression”.

If we treat the coordination of viewpoints not as a threat to objective truth, but as the only viable mechanism for finite humans to discover it, doesn’t that change the entire nature of this debate?

Co-ordinating wrong viewpoints cannot lead to the truth. It leads only to collective delusion. The co-ordination must include science and reason. That is what is missing from 2R.

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First, let me address what has been attributed to me: ‘objective reality is too complicated for a single human mind to understand…therefore there is no objective truth.’

I never said that, and I don’t believe it. To be completely clear: I believe objective truth exists. If it didn’t, the word ‘wrong’ would have no meaning, and science would be a miracle. There is a real territory.

But you made an excellent point in your response that I want to lean into. You said that a true right-hemisphere process cannot ignore the left hemisphere—that we need a complete integration of empirical science, reason, and holistic vision.

I completely agree with you. The right hemisphere without the left is just ungrounded mysticism; the left hemisphere without the right is just rigid bureaucracy. They must work together.

So let’s apply that integration right here.

You mentioned that you have a framework—a synthesis of empirical data and holistic reasoning—that offers a basic ontology and metaphysics for a paradigm shift. If we are going to take the left hemisphere seriously, as you rightly insist we must, then any valid scientific framework requires a mechanism for error-correction. It needs a way to test its assumptions against the territory and find out where it is mistaken, so it can become ‘less wrong.’

Since you are calling on 2R to take science and reason seriously, I am genuinely asking: What is the left-hemisphere error-correction mechanism for your framework? If someone on this forum points out a contradiction or a piece of empirical data that doesn’t fit your model, how does your framework process that feedback without viewing it as ‘postmodern censorship’?

If we are going to do the hard internal work of facing up to our contradictions, let’s do it. How does your model prove itself wrong?

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Sabine rocks! (I don’t agree with everything she says, but I enjoy the way she says it!)

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If what is being pointed out is a genuine contradiction, either with itself (internal coherence) or with empirical data, then I am obliged to either find a way to eliminate that contradiction, or I must accept that the entire model is compromised in a very serious way. This has nothing whatseover to do with postmodernism. It applies in both science and analytical philosophy, and always has done. Neither of those ever accepted the central tenets of postmodernism.

If the model proves itself wrong then it is internally contradictory, and that would be a fatal problem. I have openly invited people, both here and elsewhere, to try to locate both internal contradictions and inconsistencies with empirical evidence. So far nobody has done so, anywhere.

It is important to understand that in the intellectual world I have always inhabited, anybody making claims about what is true is inviting others to use science and reason to invalidate those claims. And for most of my life, there was no shortage of people lining up to “debunk” any claim which fell outside the scope of mainstream science. That is not the reaction I have had to 2PC. There have obviously been idiots who thought they could debunk it with one sentence, but nobody who actually engaged with it continued to try to debunk it for very long. Instead, the people who would like to debunk it just go silent, and I never hear from them again. Scientific people do not know how to respond to 2PC, because it relies on holistic explanatory power instead of reductive thinking. They’ve never previously come across a holistic cosmology-metaphysics which is consistent with empirical data before, so they have got no idea how to attack it, but they are also entirely unequipped to accept it either, because it challenges their foundational assumption of physicalism/naturalism and their reductionist methodology. They literally do not know how to use their right hemisphere to assess truth. So the result is either to ban me, or ignore me.

Only a tiny number of people have seriously engaged with it, and these fall into two camps. One is people who are also searching for holistic, integrated theories of reality, and who therefore already understand the nature of the problems I am trying to solve. And the other is people whose minds don’t work like those of the herd: high-functioning autistic people, manic depressives, etc… These people have already rejected the groupthink that paralyses almost everybody else, even if it wasn’t out of choice.

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Your response is very clear and it helps map out exactly where the structural disconnect on this forum is happening.

You stated that if a model is internally contradictory or inconsistent with empirical data, it is seriously compromised, and that you openly invite people to locate those flaws. That is a foundational, rigorous principle.

But look at the sociological pattern you just described. You noted that when scientific people encounter your framework (2PC), they don’t know how to respond, they go silent, they ignore you, or they ban you. You interpret this silence as an inability to handle a holistic cosmology that challenges their physicalist assumptions.

But from a systemic perspective, there is an alternative explanation for that silence.

If your framework is a genuine integration of both hemispheres, then its holistic insights (Right Hemisphere) must be paired with an effective, accessible explanatory architecture (Left Hemisphere) that can bridge the gap for those who don’t see the world the way you do. If mainstream scientific minds consistently go silent or disengage, it might not be because they are terrified of your truth; it may be because the translation mechanism of your model is currently hitting a wall.

A completed paradigm shift cannot rely on a target audience composed only of people who already agree with it, or people whose neurodivergence naturally detaches them from the herd. If a model is structurally sound, it must possess the communicative power to convert or at least constructively engage the very people it seeks to enlighten.

If someone asks for error-correction pathways, or pushes back on ‘walls of text,’ this isn’t necessarily trying to ‘debunk’ your cosmology. It may be a legitimate pointing out that your translation mechanism is failing to create a bridge.

If the model is as robust as you say, it should be able to survive a transparent translation process. What does a structured, step-by-step entry point into your framework look like for someone who is trapped in mainstream physicalism, but is genuinely willing to look at your data?

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This is a cross-post. I will answer your post above separately.

Another important aspect of this is AI. These days, if somebody posts their own theory somewhere, it is very easy to use AI to debunk it. 99% of the time it is pseudoscientific garbage, and the AI has no trouble spotting this. I spent 6 months intensively using AI to test every part of 2PC – as I developed the model and the text, I used multiple LLMs to criticise it and to argue with each other about potential internal contradictions and inconsistencies with empirical data. What I did not do, was to “let the AI drive”. Every time I let the AI determine the direction of the enquiry, I ended up in a ditch. This was particularly true with respect to “trying to make 2PC into empirical science”. The AIs are obsessed with trying to make everything look and sound like science, even if it is garbage – that is exactly why 99% of people’s personal theories end up being pseudoscience.

By the end of this process I had identified (I believe) every single potential problem with respect to internal consistency and compatibility with known empirical data. And as a result, if somebody else tries to use AI to debunk 2PC, what happens is that the AI tells them that 2PC is internally consistent, and compatible with all known science. At which point, 99% of them disappear.

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This is pretty illuminating, and it actually helps bridge the gap between what you’re doing and what this forum is trying to achieve (if I can be so bold as to speak for others)…

Using multiple LLMs to aggressively stress-test your model, forcing them to argue with each other to expose internal contradictions, is a brilliant left-hemisphere methodology. You didn’t just guess; you actively set up a system of diverse viewpoints to triangulate the vulnerabilities in your map before testing it against the territory.

That process is exactly what a healthy version of 2R is trying to build on a human level and it’s what I was getting at earlier when I talked about the truth being something we get at through triangulation. Nothing inherently Postmodern about this, in my opinion.

When this movement emphasizes a perspectivist approach, it isn’t trying to say ‘all maps are arbitrary’ or ‘let’s negotiate a comfortable fiction.’ It’s trying to do what you did with the AI: assemble different perspectives to stress-test our collective assumptions, catch blind spots, and ensure our maps actually align with reality.

The disconnect here isn’t that the forum rejects objective truth or fears your model. The disconnect is that you have spent six months in an intensive, high-level dialectic with advanced systems, resulting in a highly condensed, polished framework - but the people on this forum are encountering the final output without having been part of that process.

When you share your conclusions, people don’t have the context of those six months of stress-testing. If they ask questions or offer alternative viewpoints, they aren’t trying to ‘debunk’ you with pseudoscientific garbage; they are trying to run their own manual check on the map. Shouldn’t this be evidence of rigor rather than PM hogwash?

Since you’ve already done the heavy lifting of ironing out the internal contradictions, you are in a unique position to help lead the search for truth here. Instead of treating the forum’s perspectives as a postmodern threat, why not treat this space as the human sandbox for the model you built? What is the best way for us to actually engage with the core data of 2PC without getting bogged down in the culture wars?

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Exactly. And the format of my book reflects exactly this. It comes in three parts, and the whole of part one (4 chapters) is there purely to achieve the goal you have just described: to bridge the gap between the way people (not just scientists, but everybody in the Western world) currently think about things, and a new, holistic way of thinking about them. This even applies to AI – if you show an AI just part 3 of the book, which describes the new metaphysics, cosmology and consequences for society, then the AI fails to understand what it is looking at. It misinterprets it as an attempt at science, when in fact it is very explicitly philosophy, even though it claims to be revolutionary for science. This seriously messed up Grok and Claude, both of which ended up giving me schizophrenic answers – every response came in two parts, one philosophical, and one scientific (“This is philosophically revolutionary, and a gamechanger for Western civilisation! But scientists won’t accept it at all, because of X, Y and Z, so you need to completely rethink your approach.”) If I then pointed out that the whole theory was claiming science and philosophy need to be re-united, I ended up having discussions about the way AIs work, and how the schizophrenic behaviour results from the fragmentation of its traianing data.

A completed paradigm shift cannot rely on a target audience composed only of people who already agree with it, or people whose neurodivergence naturally detaches them from the herd. If a model is structurally sound, it must possess the communicative power to convert or at least constructively engage the very people it seeks to enlighten.

If you actually read the book, you will see that I have given this a great deal of thought. I am acutely aware of the problem you are describing.

It looks exactly like Part One of my book (free PDF linked earlier in this post): The Two-Phase Cosmology: Amazon.co.uk: Dann, Geoff: 9781917558181: Books

Part One : The crisis of knowledge and meaning

Chapter 1: From the Apeiron to the Abyss

Chapter 2: The whole elephant

Chapter 3: The broken paradigm

Chapter 4: How might we recognise the new paradigm?

Part Two : A survey of the problem space

Chapter 5: The epicycles of ΛCDM

Chapter 6: The unfinished quantum revolution

Chapter 7: The missing science of consciousness

Part Three: The Two-Phase Cosmology

Chapter 8: 0|∞

Chapter 9: In search of a threshold

Chapter 10: The Embodiment Threshold

Chapter 11: Psychegenesis and the Psychetelic Principle

Chapter 12: Free will

Chapter 13: Time

Chapter 14: Two-Phase Cosmology

Chapter 15: A new kind of paradigm shift

Chapter 16: The praeternatural and the New Epistemic Deal

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Full disclosure: this reply is generated by an LLM (which has just digested your book) as I do not have time to read your whole book and draft a reply for the time being. I’m trying to get to the heart of the disagreement, so please don’t interpret this as non-engagement. If this reply misses anything important, call it out.

Geoff, thank you for providing the text. Having the actual architecture of The Two-Phase Cosmology laid out makes it much easier to see the exact landscape you are navigating.

I want to dive straight into Chapter 4: How might we recognize the new paradigm? You make a profound point about LLMs getting ‘schizophrenic’ when they read Part Three without Part One. Because their training data treats physical science and metaphysics as mutually exclusive silos, their syntax literally fractures when trying to process a model that unites them. They try to evaluate a holistic, participatory universe using a fragmented, reductionist rulebook.

This brings us right to the heart of the challenge you lay out in Chapter 4. If the defining characteristic of a true paradigm shift is its ability to resolve systemic crises by introducing a more comprehensive, integrated framework, then the ‘New Epistemic Deal’ cannot just be a better set of equations. It has to be a better way of organizing knowledge itself.

If mainstream minds and fragmented AIs look at an integrated model and experience it as an error, then the transition phase requires a very specific kind of labor. It requires building spaces where the left-hemisphere’s demand for rigorous, empirical metrics can safely partner with the right-hemisphere’s grasp of holistic context.

Since you’ve spent so much time mapping out how we might recognize a genuine paradigm shift, let’s look at that criteria. In a landscape full of competing narratives and institutional inertia, what are the primary baseline tests you outline in Chapter 4 to distinguish a truly integrated, holistic cosmology from a merely elegant philosophical abstraction?

If we can establish those criteria clearly right here, it gives the forum a concrete, left-hemisphere tool to evaluate not just 2PC, but any model of reality seeking to guide the Second Renaissance.

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It wasn’t purely left-hemisphere. It was necessarily both. The process would not have worked if it had just been the AIs and my left hemisphere. The magic ingredient, all through the process, was the full engagement of my own right hemisphere. The Master was always in control.

When this movement emphasizes a perspectivist approach, it isn’t trying to say ‘all maps are arbitrary’ or ‘let’s negotiate a comfortable fiction.’ It’s trying to do what you did with the AI: assemble different perspectives to stress-test our collective assumptions, catch blind spots, and ensure our maps actually align with reality.

That only works if science is included as a legitimate perspective in its own right, and (crucially) a privileged perspective. Postmodernism explicitly denies the epistemological privilege of science. 2PC restores it, but with strict rules regarding the limitations of science – rules that physicalism doesn’t respect.

The disconnect here isn’t that the forum rejects objective truth or fears your model. The disconnect is that you have spent six months in an intensive, high-level dialectic with advanced systems, resulting in a highly condensed, polished framework - but the people on this forum are encountering the final output without having been part of that process.

Yes, that is a major contributory factor. And not just here.

Here is a quote from Part 1 of the book, from the section I have repeatedly posted a link to ( A new kind of paradigm shift | Two-Phase Cosmology)

There is a new story available, and it does satisfy the description of the whole elephant given above, but it does so in a way that almost nobody is expecting. And if you think about it, then I hope you’ll agree that it always had to be that way.

When you share your conclusions, people don’t have the context of those six months of stress-testing. If they ask questions or offer alternative viewpoints, they aren’t trying to ‘debunk’ you with pseudoscientific garbage; they are trying to run their own manual check on the map. Shouldn’t this be evidence of rigor rather than PM hogwash?

I have not objected to people asking questions or offering alternative viewpoints. I actively welcome any relevant discussion.

Since you’ve already done the heavy lifting of ironing out the internal contradictions, you are in a unique position to help lead the search for truth here. Instead of treating the forum’s perspectives as a postmodern threat, why not treat this space as the human sandbox for the model you built? What is the best way for us to actually engage with the core data of 2PC without getting bogged down in the culture wars?

(1) Read the first two chapters of my book. Preferably read the whole thing.

(2) Stop ignoring posts like this: Why the crisis in cosmology is so serious, and so relevant to the goals of 2R - General - Second Renaissance Forum

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I’ll get back to you after I’ve read the first two chapters.

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Absolutely. That is the entire purpose of my work.

If mainstream minds and fragmented AIs look at an integrated model and experience it as an error, then the transition phase requires a very specific kind of labor. It requires building spaces where the left-hemisphere’s demand for rigorous, empirical metrics can safely partner with the right-hemisphere’s grasp of holistic context.

No disagreement there either.

Since you’ve spent so much time mapping out how we might recognize a genuine paradigm shift, let’s look at that criteria. In a landscape full of competing narratives and institutional inertia, what are the primary baseline tests you outline in Chapter 4 to distinguish a truly integrated, holistic cosmology from a merely elegant philosophical abstraction?

It must provide a coherent, elegant, parsimonious resolution to all 30 problems listed in chapter 3 and explored in detail in Part 2. That’s the whole point. I am saying “instead of trying to find 30 different solutions to these problems, which is what science and anaytical philosophy is currently trying to do, we must consider the possibility that all 30 are symptoms of a single, underlying conceptual problem.” This all comes together in Chapter 15.

2PC is revolutionary because it provides one solution to all thirty problems, and that solution could not be simpler. It is necessarily a Copernican-level structural change – something as simple as moving the centre of cosmos from the Earth to the Sun. In this case that structural change is the starting point. Instead of assuming we start from nothing (or God) and then try to explain how our cosmos developed according to physical laws acting in a temporally forwards direction, I start with an acceptance of the simple logic that nothing can come from nothing. I start instead from the only other starting point possible, which is an Infinite Nothingness (the Void). This turns the entire problem space on its head – the question becomes “How does the singular, classical reality we observe get selected from the infinite unrealised possibilities?” And the moment you ask this question, three very obvious answers pop up. This is from the first page of the introduction.

The new paradigm begins from the same impulse that gave rise to modern science in the first place: the wish to understand reality as a single, intelligible whole. The difference is that this time, instead of just collecting ever more fragments, we must look for principles that can make the fragments fit together. The central example of what this is the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness. I will start with a relatively unproblematic claim: that quantum wavefunction collapse and consciousness are both processes. More controversially, there are five notable similarities between them.

1: Both have proved extremely difficult for scientists to pin down, define and test.

2: As a result of (1), a significant number of scientists have controversially concluded that they don’t actually exist (resulting in the Many Worlds Interpretation and Eliminative Materialism respectively).

3: Wavefunction collapse is typically described as being triggered by an “observation” or “measurement”. Consciousness is the internal subjective experience of some kind of external reality. Therefore, both processes fundamentally involve a relationship between a subjective entity (an observer or a conscious subject) and an external, objective reality.

4: wavefunction collapse is famously non-local: the collapse at one location instantaneously affects the entire wave function, no matter how far it is spread across space. Consciousness is equally resistant to strict localisation: there is no single “seat” or moment where a unified field of experience arises; it emerges all at once from processes distributed across the brain (and, I will argue, beyond it). Both phenomena refuse to be restricted to a classical space-time point; both demand a fundamentally holistic description.

5: Consciousness involves the modelling of a mind-external reality, and assigning value to the various possible futures in order to select a best option. Wavefunction collapse involves the reduction of a set of unobserved physically possible outcomes into a single observed actual outcome. Therefore, both processes involve the transition between a range of possible futures or histories, and a single observed outcome in the present.

Now the difference between the old paradigm and the new can be made clear. The old paradigm approach to this is to examine each claim individually, demand irrefutable empirical justification, and consider the alternative explanations which are available. This is likely to result in the rejection of all five, not because of any clear justification for ruling them out, but for inconclusive reasons: there are too many competing theories (some of which are more to our personal taste), empirical confirmation is complicated, elusive or impossible, and the whole thing feels like woo. And anyway, correlations aren’t evidence of causation, so even if we accept that there really are five structural similarities, it doesn’t prove anything. There the discussion will be extinguished, no new thinking will take place, and we can all go back to our comfortable lack of a coherent model of reality.

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Please start with the Introduction!

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Okay, let me preface this by saying that I might not really the target audience for your book, as I’m not all that knowledgeable or interested in astrophysics and cosmology. I am much more interested in logic, philosophy of mind, ethics, and so on. I can’t really weigh in on the scientific plausibility of many of your claims.

From a philosophical point of view, I’m in agreement with much of what you say - in particular, the present scientific establishment’s having taken a wrong turn somewhere in the past, and the reppurcussions of this wrong turn having enormous consequences for us in the present.

That is why I can completely get behind the metaphor you use in Chapter 2; the parable of the blind men and the elephant is a perfect diagnosis of what is going wrong. Mainstream science and analytical philosophy are acting exactly like those blind men - each touching a different part (quantum mechanics, consciousness, cosmology) and inventing isolated, complicated explanations for what are actually different dimensions of the same underlying reality.

As I understand it, you turn the problem upside down in a way that appeals directly to logic. Instead of starting with matter and trying to figure out how it accidentally creates a mind, you start with the field of infinite potential (Phase 1). And if I understand your introduction correctly, consciousness and wavefunction collapse aren’t two separate mysteries; they are the exact same process - the boundary line or the phase transition where the “whole elephant” selects which specific path becomes actualized, classical reality (Phase 2). By making consciousness the very mechanism that collapses potential into actuality, your framework fundamentally changes how we view human agency. This makes sense to me, as it lines up with my consciousness-first intuitions about how reality works. So do the theories of Kastrup and Donald Hoffman and others.

Where we might have a slight disconnect, however, isn’t on the core physics or philosophy of mind, but rather on intellectual history - specifically regarding postmodernism. You tend to view postmodernism as a toxic endpoint, whereas inn my view, postmodernism is better understood as a necessary historical stage of development that must be transcended - but whose core insights must be integrated rather than simply thrown out.

Just as modernism brought us destructive materialism and hyper-capitalism, it also brought us indispensable insights like formal logic, calculus, and evolution. Similarly, traditionalism brought dogmatic religion, but also deep roots of community and virtue. Postmodernism, for all its deconstructive excesses, brought vital, non-negotiable insights regarding perspective, power structures, racial justice, and climate justice.

From an integral, second-tier perspective, the goal is a type of thinking that avoids throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We transcend the limitations of each stage while preserving its healthy evolutionary contributions to the whole. So, we are likely not in disagreement about the need for a rigorous, unified cosmology; we are just framing the cultural path to get there a bit differently. From a practical point of view, I think you overemphasize the need for agreement on one ontological framework (yours). Obviously, we could also go beyond materialism via an analytical idealism, process theology, panentheist, and similar approaches.

Since Chapter 2 is about recognizing that we are looking at a single elephant rather than disconnected pieces, what does implications does this have for the practice for human collective action? If our choices are actively participating in selecting the unfolding territory, how does your framework change the way we approach organizing our societies, our values, and the crises we face today?

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This is a fundamental disagreement, and it matters. Yes, I view postmodernism as a toxic endpoint, not the “most advanced stage yet”. I do not believe there is a coherent way forwards or “through” postmodernism, and this is absolutely crucial, because if you are forcing people to go “through” postmodernism then you will lose pretty much everybody but the postmodernists, because the rest of society will never accept postmodern anti-realism as a legitimate “stage”. We need to provide a direct path from “modernist” thinking (such as physicalist science) to the new paradigm.

This doesn’t involve “throwing out all the best bits of postmodernism”, because we never needed postmodern anti-realism to learn those lessons. We don’t need anti-realism to acknowledge that physicalism is false, or that those in power use narratives to brainwash people. Those “insights” can be carried through to the new paradigm without anybody needing to touch postmodernism, or accept its key tenets. If they are true, then they can be incorporated into the new paradigm directly.

Postmodernism, for all its deconstructive excesses, brought vital, non-negotiable insights regarding perspective, power structures, racial justice, and climate justice.

If those insights are legitimate, then they should be transplantable into the new paradigm. It may well turn out that the last two cannot be transplanted without being reconfigured. The postmodern narratives on racial justice and climate justice are both deeply problematic, precisely because they deny realism. Racism is real, but Critical Race Theory is detached from reality. “Climate justice” is seriously delusional nonsense – it’s both a physical and political impossibility. But none of this comes out of the 2PC core theory – all 2PC (or rather the New Epistemic Deal) says is that we must start with reality before we start discussing things which require subjective value judgements. This sort of topic is what my previous book was about.

OK. This comment tells me you have not yet understood what I am proposing and why it matters. I am not over-emphasising the need for agreement: it is absolutely 100% necessary, because without a unified cosmology there is no way that the scientific world, or analytic philosophers, will ever agree to it. We cannot fix the cultural problems without fixing our broken relationship with the truth, and this cannot be piecemeal: if you agree to take truth seriously, you cannot then opt out when your own beliefs are challenged. That just locks us back into the bad old paradigm we need to leave behind. The framework I am proposing is not just “mine”. It is the objective truth. It resolves the thirty biggest problems in science and philosophy, whereas idealism and panpsychism do NOT. This is where your relative disinterest in science and cosmology matters. We cannot have an integrated model of the whole of reality if that model does not include cosmology. It MUST resolve the crisis in cosmology, and the lack of a scientific theory of consciousness, and the mess that is quantum foundations, and it must also end the bifurcation of philosophy - it must re-unite analytical and continental philosophy, which is only possible by identifying the cause of the schism and correcting it. It necessarily must do all of those things. It is only because it solves all thirty problems that it qualifies as a potential foundation for the a Second Rennaissance.

And all of them fail. Analytical idealism is wrong. It cannot resolve the crisis in cosmology. It solves, if I am being generous, maybe five of the 30 problems. Panpsychism solves a different five. Process theology does a bit better, but cannot resolve the crisis in cosmology either. [Edit: 2PC is a form of panentheism]. The problem is that that crisis in cosmology has a very specific shape – they are very specific problems, and they can only be solved with the correct answer. Panpsychism and idealism are both wrong because they assume that consciousness can exist without a brain. As soon as you make that assumption, the whole of 2PC collapses, because it destroys the two phase structure. We are then left with all three crises: cosmology, quantum foundations and consciousness, still unresolved, and still fundamentally unconnected, and philosophy will remain bifurcated. This is why truth matters. You are still thinking in terms of “my truth vs your truth” when it comes to metaphysics. The new paradigm gets rid of that by providing a new metaphysical model which cleanly resolves the thirty biggest problems in science and philosophy. As soon as anybody actually understands how this solution works, denying it becomes practically impossible. This is exactly why so many people have responded by ignoring it instead of trying to debunk it.

The old paradigm isn’t “modernism”. It’s a multi-dimensional stalemate: physicalism vs panpsychism vs idealism vs dualism vs anti-realism… Nobody can win, because none of these models are correct. Which allows everybody to believe whatever they like, with no regard to what is actually true. This can only be fixed by somebody proposing the correct model, and other people actually understanding why it is the correct model, and accepting it. Your reaction is typical: you’re quite happy believing panpsychism or idealism, and you see no reason to accept “my” ontology. You need to stop thinking of it as “mine”. I am offering it as the objective truth, and backing that up with an integrated solution to 30 of the biggest problems in science and philosophy. “Your” current prefered choice does not do that. It is just another menu item from the old paradigm. What justifies you continuing to believe in a model of reality which doesn’t work, when I am offering you one which does? This doesn’t just apply to you. It applies to everybody. That’s the whole point.

Since Chapter 2 is about recognizing that we are looking at a single elephant rather than disconnected pieces, what does implications does this have for the practice for human collective action? If our choices are actively participating in selecting the unfolding territory, how does your framework change the way we approach organizing our societies, our values, and the crises we face today?

That is what the New Epistemic Deal is for. And it is crucial to understand that the NED only works if you accept the metaphysics and ontology. It’s all one integrated system.