OK. So “consciousness” refers to subjective experience – an internal experience of being embodied in a physical world.
Because of the definition you yourself just gave. Either there are experiences, however basic, or there are none. There is no grey area. Not being conscious is very clear – it is the total absence of any subjective experiences – it is the state of “NOT being something it is like to be”.
The choice is binary. Either consciousness has always existed in some form, in which case panpsychism is true and we must deny neuroscience, or it appeared at some point, in which case we should be asking where that point might have been. Panpsychism has been around for millenia. It is not a new idea, and it cannot support a major paradigm shift for the reason explained ad infinitum: we already know that brains are necessary for consciousness. Panpsychism is too easy, too simplistic, and too lacking in explanatory power. It does not help us to solve the problems in cosmology or quantum mechanics. It does not offer a foundation for a radical new integration, because it clashes with neuroscience, and cannot explain mind->brain causality.
Thank you. This is much clearer, and it actually gets to the heart of where we disagree.
I understand your threshold argument perfectly. I simply don’t think you’ve established that such a threshold exists.
You write:
“The boundary of consciousness cannot be this blurred.”
But that isn’t a scientific result, its a philosophical assertion.
In fact, much of biology points in precisely the opposite direction.
Even within humans, consciousness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. We routinely talk about minimally conscious states, altered states, anaesthesia, dreaming, impaired awareness, emerging from coma and varying degrees of responsiveness.
The very science you appealed to studies consciousness as something that varies in richness, integration and accessibility. So why should its evolutionary origin suddenly require an absolute metaphysical switch?
More fundamentally, I think you’re assuming the very thing you’re trying to demonstrate. Your argument is:
Consciousness cannot be gradual.
Therefore there must have been a threshold.
Therefore brains crossed that threshold.
But step (1) is precisely what requires justification.
If anything, your broader philosophy has repeatedly emphasised emergence, relationality and process over fixed categories. That’s why I’m surprised to find consciousness becoming the one phenomenon that, in your view, apparently refuses to behave like every other emergent property in nature.
And importantly, I am open to the idea that perhaps there is a threshold - perhaps consciousness really does switch on at a particular level of organisation.
This is a hypothesis, not an established scientific fact.
The more interesting question isn’t whether your model is impossible - it’s why you seem so certain that all the alternatives are…
If you think consciousness can be gradual, then you are obliged to explain what on Earth you think that means. For example, was there any consciousness 10 seconds after the Big Bang? What was conscious, given that there weren’t any objects or structures in existence? What was it conscious of? What was it aware of? How was it aware of those things?
And if nothing was conscious at that point, then there must have been some later point when consciousness began. Not gradual, but binary. The fact that it must have started as a simple consciousness doesn’t mean the distinction between no consciousness and simple consciousness isn’t binary.
No. They are absolutely crucial to the whole reason why 2R exists, and why we are having these discussions.
I note your repeated refusal to respond to any of them. You are willing to say you’ll accept them provisionally even though you don’t agree with them, but you are not willing to explain which of them you disagree with, or why.
This is yet another example of persistent bad faith communication. You want to give the impression that you are debating in a constructive manner, but what you’re actually doing is 100% obstructive. There is no decent reason for not responding in detail to those four points. The real reason for this refusal is that there is no response you can give which won’t force you into new thought patterns, and you simply aren’t willing to go there.
This is why 2R will never achieve anything: nobody here is willing to break free of postmodern epistemic anarchy.
Geoff, I will respond to both your posts. I actually think you have advanced some excellent, thought provoking points.
On the matter of a threshold for consciousness - I don’t think you’ve assumed one must exist. You say consciousness must either have always existed or have appeared at a threshold, and that it cannot be gradual. But the word ‘must’ is doing all the heavy lifting here. That isn’t a scientific result; it’s a philosophical premise of 2PC.
You also dismiss panpsychism because it has existed for millennia. Why is that relevant? The age of an idea says nothing about its truth: for example, atomism is over 2,000 years old. Many of the relational ideas emerging in modern physics echo much older philosophical traditions. Indeed, you’ve often highlighted parallels between 2PC and Taoism yourself. By your own criterion, any theory that resonates with an older worldview would cease to be interesting.
The genuinely novel part of a scientific theory is rarely its central intuition - it’show that intuition is reformulated, connected to evidence, made mathematically precise, and used to generate explanatory or predictive power.
Also, panpsychism does not “deny neuroscience”. One can fully accept that altering brains alters conscious experience without concluding that brains therefore generate consciousness. The neuroscience establishes extremely strong correlations and causal dependence within organisms; it does not, by itself, settle the metaphysical interpretation.
As for your latest question: “Was anything conscious 10 seconds after the Big Bang? What was it conscious of?” - that simply introduces another assumption: that consciousness must always consist of an individual subject standing apart from an object. That is one philosophical model, not an established scientific fact, and there are perfectly serious philosophical positions that do not begin with that assumption. The singularity state present at what is termed the big bang exists even now, which is something at least covered in your own theory.
What continues to strike me is the inconsistency with your broader worldview. Elsewhere you’ve argued that reality is fundamentally relational, emergent and process-based. Life emerged gradually - nervous systems emerged gradually - bains emerged gradually - species emerged gradually. Yet consciousness becomes the one phenomenon that must arrive via an abrupt metaphysical switch.
If there is in fact a real binary issue here, that remains an assumption of 2PC, not something that neuroscience or evolutionary biology has established as fact.
Under the foundation of 2PC, I can see it possible for some reconfiguration to embrace consciousness as always existing in some form, just as potentiality always exists within actuality and vice versa. Yes, it means re-examining some essential pillars, doing more work, opening up new ideas - but the result is you could have a stronger, more profound theory that really stands the test of time.
Okay, I accept all of your points. I never said I do not accept your points, I challenged the fact that you are conditioning this experiment on others accepting a set of arbitrary points before an impartial evaluation is made. If we all did that – provide a set of assumptions that must be agreed to before we could test theories – we’d get nowhere. But here we are, engaging in nonsense once again. Like I said, your points are agreeable. I won’t stipulate my own points that I’d like you agree to because I’m interested in evidence and results. Now suggest a new prompt or explain clearly why you will not.
I am not interested in talking to your AI, Justin. All that tells me is that you’ve stopped doing any thinking for yourself.
If you think consciousness is gradual – that there is no binary difference between conscious and not conscious – then you are obliged to explain what that means. You are accusing me of “making an assumption”, but it in fact it is not an assumption at all.
You have agreed that consciousness is “what it is like to be X” (where X can be a bat, a human, or anything else capable of being conscious". You cannot “be nothing” though. If there is something like what it is to be, then we need to be able to say which entity is conscious (which is the thing that it is like to be), and what that entity can be conscious of (it can’t be conscious of nothing, right?).
So, did consciousness exist 10 seconds after the Big Bang? If so, what was conscious, and what was it conscious of?
OK, now we might be making some progress. So you’ve accepted the following:
(1) The “Second Rennaissance” is an attempt to foment a major cultural paradigm shift, capable of solving the Meaning Crisis as a pre-requisite for meaningful attempts to solve the metacrisis.
(2) We need a clear idea about what this paradigm shift entails, because we cannot just say the old paradigm is “modernism”. Clearly postmodern relativism is also a major part of the problem, because it is necessarily directionless and unable to build anything new.
(3) The old paradigm can be accurately described as “epistemic anarchy”.
(4) Therefore the new paradigm must conclusively end the epistemic anarchy, and provide a new foundation for knowledge which integrates, at least at the foundational level, science, philosophy, and spirituality.
This gives us (and the AI) a clear understanding of what the old paradigm is, and what the new paradigm must achieve in order to be able to actually qualify as the new paradigm.
So the next question is which theoretical frameworks you think 2PC should be compared to.
I showed a fresh instance of Deepseek the 4 criteria above, and prompted it: “Given these criteria. what are currently the most promising candidates available for the new paradigm?”
Response:
Based on the search results, there is no single, universally agreed-upon candidate for the new paradigm that meets all the criteria you’ve outlined. However, the search results reveal a vibrant and active discussion within the “Second Renaissance” ecosystem and related academic fields, identifying several distinct and contending approaches. The movement itself is described as “a paradigm trying to be born” that currently “consists of a bunch of different movements, people and ideas” and “doesn’t have enough structure to become a paradigm shift worthy of the name ‘Second Renaissance’” .
The main contenders and their approaches to ending “epistemic anarchy” and integrating science, philosophy, and spirituality can be categorized as follows:
The “New Starting Point” (Epistemological Foundationalism)
The Key Idea: This view argues that you cannot build a new paradigm on the ruins of the old by synthesizing its parts. Instead, you must find a completely new, defensible epistemological starting point that can command consensus and from which a new integrated understanding of reality can be built. Proponents of this view reject postmodernism outright as “anti-epistemological” and the “final epistemological bankruptcy of the Age of Disjunction” .
Specific Proposals: One prominent voice in the forum proposes a new model based on a specific relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness (related to Penrose-Hameroff but “metaphysically reversed”). This model is claimed to resolve the Measurement Problem, the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and the crisis in cosmology simultaneously, providing a foundational metaphysics that “completes the quantum revolution” .
The Challenge: The primary challenge for this approach is the immense difficulty of achieving consensus on a single, novel metaphysical framework, especially one that makes such bold, unifying claims .
The “Integrative” Paradigm (Transcend & Include)
The Key Idea: This approach, associated with thinkers like Ken Wilber and Hanzi Freinacht, suggests that a new paradigm must not reject the insights of previous stages (pre-modern, modern, postmodern) but must “transcend and include” them. The goal is to integrate the valid critiques and contributions of each into a new, more comprehensive “holon” or “metamodern” framework .
Specific Proposals: This perspective often emphasizes the “Integral” approach, which seeks to synthesize diverse fields and perspectives. It moves beyond a purely rationalist or materialist worldview to incorporate subjective experience, intersubjective culture, and objective systems in a coordinated framework.
The Challenge: Critics argue that this approach risks being too vague and failing to establish a firm, non-negotiable foundation for knowledge, potentially leading back to a form of relativism. As one forum participant puts it, trying to “hold on to the core insights and values of postmodernism” is a mistake because it doesn’t provide a new, stable epistemic ground .
The “Relational and Experiential” Metaphysics
The Key Idea: This is more a shared set of themes that many “candidates” seem to converge on, rather than a single cohesive theory. It proposes a new ontology where reality is understood as fundamentally relational, experiential, and participatory, rather than material .
Core Themes:
Consciousness as Fundamental: Consciousness is not an anomaly but a “principle woven into the fabric of the cosmos” .
Meaning and Value as Ontological: Meaning and value are not human projections but are “ontological” and belong to “the structure of reality” .
Ecological Interconnection: The “true grammar of existence” is ecology and interconnection, viewing the world as a “web of mutual becoming” .
The Challenge: While this provides a compelling philosophical vision, it is still nascent and needs to be developed into a rigorous, testable, and consensus-building epistemology that can effectively govern claims to knowledge and integrate with empirical science.
The “Dialogic and Practical” Approach
The Key Idea: This perspective shifts the focus from finding the one correct foundational theory to developing better processes for generating and validating knowledge collectively. It often emphasizes dialogue, epistemic humility, and the integration of spiritual principles into the practice of inquiry .
Specific Proposals:
Post-postmodern Dialogic Epistemology: This model focuses on developing a “shared epistemic basis” through dialogue, the public use of reason, and embracing “epistemic humility” .
Application of Spiritual Principles: Some groups, such as the Association for Bahá’í Studies, are actively working to apply spiritual principles like the “harmony of science and religion” to academic inquiry across fields like neuroscience, health, and technology. They advocate for a “humble and hopeful approach” that sees scientific findings as “snapshots in time” rather than absolute conclusions .
Posthumanist and Indigenous Frameworks: Other academic proposals look to posthumanism and Indigenous cosmologies to “deterritorialise Enlightenment concepts” and build a new “relational pedagogy” based on interdependence and ecological kinship .
The Challenge: While valuable for fostering cooperation, these dialogic approaches may be seen by foundationalists as avoiding the hard work of establishing a definitive, non-negotiable truth. They could potentially be co-opted by the very “epistemic anarchy” they aim to solve .
Summary: Current Landscape of Proposed Paradigms
Approach
Key Idea
Example Proponents/Concepts
Core Challenge
Epistemological Foundationalism
Find a single, new, definitive starting point for knowledge to build a consensus.
Forum contributor proposes QM-Consciousness-Cosmology unification model .
Achieving consensus on a novel, complex metaphysical framework.
Integrative “Transcend & Include”
Synthesize the valid parts of all previous paradigms (pre-modern, modern, postmodern).
Integral theory (Ken Wilber), Metamodernism (Hanzi Freinacht) .
Risk of vagueness; may not provide a firm foundation, potentially leading back to relativism.
Relational & Experiential Metaphysics
Propose a new ontology where reality is fundamentally relational, experiential, and participatory.
Underlying themes in many forum discussions .
Still nascent; needs development into a rigorous, testable epistemology.
Dialogic & Practical
Focus on developing better processes for generating and validating knowledge collectively.
Dialogic epistemology, applying spiritual principles to inquiry, posthumanist frameworks .
May be seen as avoiding the hard work of defining a definitive truth; could be co-opted by epistemic anarchy.
In summary, while the goal is clear, the path is contested. The most promising candidates are currently competing visions for how to build the new foundation, ranging from a definitive new metaphysical theory to a more practical, collective process for co-creating a shared understanding.
I hope this overview provides a useful starting point for navigating the complex landscape of ideas surrounding the Second Renaissance.
That is quite informative in its own right, but not much use in comparing 2PC to other existing proposals, because it doesn’t suggest any other existing proposals (not even UTOK or Kastrup). Rather, the AI suggests we should be comparing things at a more abstract level of the process of paradigm shifting itself.
What is objectionable about the prompt I posted? It allows you to upload the full text of your theory into the chat and compare it with other would-be solutions. It comes up with a quantitative score representing a probability of success, which your prompt did not do.
I would like to focus on the claim that you made about solving the metacrisis. Again, are you no longer making this claim?
Firstly, I’m not sure why you’ve assumed that I was talking to AI. I’ve ignored my own suspicions on that front because they’re irrelevant to the substance of the discussion although it’s kind of ironic that the one time you overtly relied on AI you actually got a more comprehensive picture!
To your point: you keep insisting that I am obliged to explain consciousness 10 seconds after the big bang. Why? I haven’t proposed a complete cosmological theory - I’ve questioned one of the central assumptions of yours. You say the threshold isn’t an assumption, yet I don’t see how it can be anything else. You begin by asserting that consciousness must be binary, and from that conclude there must have been a threshold. That isn’t an empirical finding.
Now, to answer your question directly. If one adopts a panpsychist or more broadly, a continuity=-based view, then asking ‘What was conscious 10 seconds after the big bang’? is rather like asking, ‘Where was energy 10 seconds after?’
The answer is that whatever fundamental reality existed then is what later gave rise to everything else. Brains don’t somehow cease to be expressions of energy because they become complex. Likewise, on this view, complex consciousness doesn’t replace a more fundamental aspect of reality; it is a richer, organised expression of it.
As an anology (even though past ones seem to have been pointless to advancing the debate with you): consider how a single electron and a modern computer both participate in the same electromagnetic laws. Do you expect a lone electron to behave like a computer…? Complexity changes the organisation and the emergent properties, not necessarily the underlying substrate.
Similarly, a panpsychist isn’t claiming that the universe 10 seconds after the big bang was sitting there reflecting on philosophy or admiring sunsets. The claim is simply that consciousness, in its most primitive form, is a fundamental aspect of reality, just as energy or spacetime are treated as fundamental in physics. Rich, reflective consciousness then emerges through increasingly complex organisation, just as life emerges from chemistry without ceasing to be chemistry. I would very much like you to engage this point, especially on the level of proving why it is nonsense or why it is unscientific! Unlike some, I am very open to have my foundational beliefs questioned and to re-assess the validity. I’d add that, like yourself, I also previously thought that the only thing conscious was organisms with brains. I change my beliefs with more evidence… can you?
You also keep asking, ‘What was conscious?’ But notice what’s built into the question. You’re assuming consciousness must always belong to a discrete object; an isolated entity standing apart from everything else. That is precisely one of the philosophical assumptions under debate. If reality is fundamentally relational, as you’ve argued elsewhere, then perhaps asking “which object was conscious?” is like asking an elephant where its trumpet went
I have not even got that far yet. We need to establish what is meant by “other would-be solutions”. Does that mean competing theories? If so, the AI didn’t suggest any (not even UTOK, or Kastrup’s idealism). Or does it mean competing proposals for a methodology of delivering a paradigm shift?
There’s no point in running an AI test if we have not yet established what we are testing for, is there?
The AI’s response is not irrelevant. We have been implicitly talking about potential rivals to 2PC as new epistemic or metaphysical foundations, but judging by that AI response, 2PC is the only game in town in that respect. The alternatives it lists aren’t competing paradigms, but alternatives to epistemological/metaphysical foundationalism as the process by which a new paradigm should be sought. This is a key point, and it needs to be addressed.
Because you are claiming the appearance of consciousness can be gradual. The reason my position is not the “assumption” you are accusing it of being is precisely because there is no good answer to this exact question. Your whole position depends on the claim that it is possible that there was no point in cosmic history when consciousness first appeared. If so, it logically follows that something must have been conscious right from the beginning. Do you accept that logical conclusion? If so, then you are obliged to explain what could possibly have been conscious in the very early universe, and what it could have been conscious of.
And you cannot answer the question.
The claim is simply that consciousness, in its most primitive form, is a fundamental aspect of reality, just as energy or spacetime are treated as fundamental in physics.
In which case, why can’t you answer my question? If consciousness existed in a “primitive form” right from the start, what was conscious 10 seconds after the big bang, and what was it conscious of?
You’re assuming consciousness must always belong to a discrete object
You bet I am. That follows from your own definition of consciousness: “What it is like to be X”. That definition doesn’t work if there is no X, does it?
We are testing the degree to which your claim that 2PC is capable of solving the metacrisis is true, relative to other would-be solutions.
Stop filibustering. The prompt I gave is minimal and does not bias the evaluation in favor of any one solution. I’ve even accepted a set of arbitrary stipulations you insist on making so that we can just test your theory against the claims you make for it. Unsurprisingly, you’re not willing to submit to the test.
Stop refusing to answer basic questions. I am not “filibustering”. I am trying to actually nail down what we are supposed to be testing for, and you are trying to stop anything from being nailed down.
You say we should be testing 2PC against rival proposals. The question we are now trying to answer is what it should be compared against. Why can’t you just respond to this in good faith? Do you think it is an unreasonable question?
Unsurprisingly, you’re not willing to submit to the test.
And that is yet more bad faith communication. It’s another strawman. I am not refusing to submit to the test. I am trying to establish what 2PC is going to be compared with. Why are you making this so difficult?
Are we testing for alternative models of reality? Or are we testing for alternative approaches for future methodology? 2PC is both. Most of the alternatives are one or the other.
It makes more sense to test two theories head to head so that the LLM’s evaluation can dive deeper into all the relevant details of each theory.
Your prompt wasn’t very useful because it left this open. As you noted, BK’s work, UTOK, and other candidates were left out. Surely many other approaches were as well.
Since you’re making claims about 2PC, let’s simply take 2PC and compare it with other approaches head to head. Fair?
No. You still haven’t answered the question I am asking you!
Are we proposing comparing 2PC to other proposed epistemic-metaphysical systems (such as UTOK or Kastrup’s idealism) or to other proposed methodologies for finding the new paradigm (such as those suggested by the AI response from Deepseek above)?
2PC is both, but most of the alternatives are either one or the other.
My position is that consciousness has always existed in some form. What emerged gradually was not consciousness itself, but the richness, differentiation and complexity of conscious experience. So if you ask me whether consciousness existed 10 seconds after the big bang, my answer is yes—but not as human consciousness, or bat consciousness, or anything remotely resembling the experience we know today.
The point where we differ is that you immediately ask ‘what was conscious?’ I don’t think that question is as straightforward as you assume, because it already presupposes there had to be a discrete object, an X, standing apart from everything else. If, at that stage, reality was fundamentally undifferentiated, then the relevant X is simply that undifferentiated whole. I don’t see why consciousness must begin only after reality has fragmented into separate entities.
The position is relatively straightforward: differentiated consciousness emerged from undifferentiated consciousness.
What does that mean? Again, we can look at the energy analogy. We don’t ask when energy suddenly appeared inside stars - they are highly organised expressions of something that already existed. Likewise, on the view I’m exploring, brains don’t conjure consciousness out of nothing, instead they organise and differentiate something more fundamental into the extraordinarily rich forms of experience we recognise in ourselves and other animals.
That may turn out to be wrong, but it is at least a coherent alternative to a threshold model. What I don’t accept is your claim that your threshold is a logical necessity. It’s a metaphysical assumption of 2PC. The fact that you find alternatives difficult to imagine doesn’t make them incoherent.
The real elephant in the room, as I have tried to hint on, is what represents the underlying nature of reality. I tried to direct your attention to this several times, even using the framework from your own theory, but to no avail
It’s quite simple. You claimed that 2PC can solve the metacrisis. Any theory or framework that can make similar claims can be compared.
You want this to be about epistemic-metaphysical systems. Do you see other epistemic-metaphysical systems making this claim? I don’t. I am intentionally making this comparison about the claims you yourself have made. You are the one who set the bar that high.
This feet-dragging is seriously exhausting. If you don’t either agree to the following prompt, or offer one of your own, I’ll have to bow out of this discussion, as it is quite obvious that you’re not willing to submit to third-party evaluation. I just commissioned an AI to come up with a prompt of its own in an effort to take your points into account and produce something agreeable. If you don’t like it, come up with your own, otherwise I’m done.
You are an impartial evaluator.
Given the attached materials for Approach A: [insert name] and Approach B: [insert name], answer:
Which approach has the better chance of materially helping humanity respond to the metacrisis, and why?
Evaluate only the claims actually made in the supplied materials. Do not assume either approach is true, false, old-paradigm, new-paradigm, scientific, unscientific, practical, impractical, humble, or dogmatic. Treat those as claims to be assessed.
Compare the approaches on:
coherence of diagnosis
explanatory power
epistemic or metaphysical grounding
integration of science, philosophy, spirituality, and practical action
ability to address the meaning crisis and metacrisis
practical adoptability
For each approach, give:
its strongest case
its main weakness
0–10 scores for each criterion
a probability estimate that it could significantly improve humanity’s response to the metacrisis
its clearest comparative advantage over the other approach
a final verdict, with confidence level, and what evidence would change your conclusion
You supplied your own definition of consciousness: “What it is like to be”. In fact, as you’ve specified it, it doesn’t make sense. To make sense, it needs to be “What it is like to be X”, where X can be a human, a bat, an alien, a computer, or even a star. Your answer above is negative – you are saying “it can’t be anything like consciousness as it exists today”, which presumably means it is NOT “what it is like to be X”, since there was no X in existence at the time – or at least none that you are willing to say was conscious.
At this point your own position has completely broken down, because you are trying to defend a position with respect to consciousness which clashes with your own definition of consciousness. You essentially want there to be two different things labelled “consciousness” – one of them has a clear meaning, and the other of which has no apparent meaning whatsoever. What is your positive definition of “consciousness as it was in the very early universe”? What properties does/did that consciousness have, which warrants the use of the word “consciousness”?
Avoidance or omission of careful clarifications and evidence
You want this to be about epistemic-metaphysical systems.
Yes, but you haven’t agreed to that yet, have you? I have now asked you at least three times to specify what you want to compare 2PC to. You repeatedly refuse to answer, and then accuse me of “dragging my feet”!
Why are you making this discussion so unbelievably difficult? Why can’t you just give straight answers to clear and relevant questions?
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO COMPARE 2PC TO? JUST ANSWER THE F******* QUESTION!!!
The “New Starting Point” (Epistemological Foundationalism)
The “Integrative” Paradigm (Transcend & Include)
The “Relational and Experiential” Metaphysics
The “Dialogic and Practical” Approach
Summary: Current Landscape of Proposed Paradigms
