Category: Metaphysics

The Noosphere

Back in February, I briefly discussed the Global Conscious Project and the dot, and while I would like to explore these topics in greater depth, it would be good to provide a summary of the phenomenon it aims to measure, the noosphere.

Just as water on Earth is contained by the hydrosphere and life comprises the biosphere, the mind exists within an analogous domain called the noosphere. Translated from the Greek words nous or mind,¹ and sphaîra or sphere,² it refers to a “sphere of mind”³ or a “thinking layer” that evolved from living beings.⁴ As humans and their activities evolved over time, so too did the biosphere, creating a relationship of co-evolution between the two as they continued to interact over time.⁵ It has also been described as “a global topology of human awareness emerging through recent technological and cultural interconnection.”⁶

The term was first developed in Paris in the early 1920’s by Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian mineralogist, geochemist, and natural philosopher, who was delivering lectures on the biosphere, geology, and chemistry.⁷ These lectures inspired paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and mathematician Édouard Le Roy, along with Vernadsky, to consider an additional, thinking layer to the planet that developed from the biosphere.⁸ Vernadsky was interested in the growing significance of human activity on the planet and suggested that humanity’s “collective reason” was influencing the evolutionary and geochemical processes on Earth.⁹ Specifically, it was “scientific thought” combined with humanity’s activities on Earth which developed a new stage in the planet’s evolutionary history.¹⁰

While they were in agreement that human culture and technology were the causal factors behind the development of the noosphere, each had their own specific sense of what the noosphere was.¹¹ While Tielhard considered the noosphere to have certain mystical or spiritual qualities to it, Vernadsky considered it in a more materialistic sense.¹² Le Roy’s views were said to be more similar to Tielhard’s, as both men were Catholic and shared an interest in topics which could bridge their religious beliefs with scientific research.¹³

Today, the noosphere is not a very popular idea in Western countries,¹⁴ but remains as a topic of interest in Russia¹⁵ and Ukraine.¹⁶ Contemporary discussions often involve sustainable development and environmental conservation¹⁷ and can be framed it in terms of living systems theory.¹⁸ As a superorganism, the noosphere can be characterized as being similar to other living systems like cells given the existence of functions or “subsystems” which process matter and energy, or information.¹⁹ When we consider the impact that the internet has had on both human societies and the biosphere,²⁰ it seems intuitive to consider the noosphere as something very real and influential with respect to the planet and the organisms which inhabit it. Moreover, when we consider how social media on smartphones has increased connectivity and the ways we are able to reach others, through means like short videos, direct messages on social media, and tweets, this “thinking layer” of Earth seemingly continues to develop.

That being said, is there anything beyond our current technologies that contribute to or influence the noosphere? Maybe. The Global Consciousness Project claims that it is able to measure “collective consciousness” through the use of random number generators (RGNs).²¹ The idea is that “shared consciousness can cause the network to stop behaving in a random fashion” when “large numbers of people share a focused attention toward the same thing” or “smaller numbers of people are in a more coherent state and hold a collective intention.”²² Interesting.

While the Project is on its second generation of the RGN network,²³ the first version and its corresponding website contained a visual representation of the data to indicate “conscious coherence.”²⁴ The “dot” ranges in colour depending on the variance of randomly generated numbers detected within the network.²⁵ A blue dot signifies a “significantly small network variance. Suggestive of deeply shared, internally motivated group focus” while on the opposite side of the spectrum, a red dot indicates a “significantly large network variance. Suggests broadly shared coherence of thought and emotion.”²⁶ I used to check the dot once in a while, sometimes after events like January 6^th 2021, but would go months or even a year without checking back. I never took it too seriously, but it was always fun to see what it was picking up. Today, as I write this, something is broken because it’s been stuck on grey for hours.

The term noosphere was brought to my attention by an old URL used for the first generation of the GCP. At one point, the website was hosted on noosphere.princeton.edu and while the Princeton address is no longer in use, it can be seen on the Wayback Machine. After learning about the Project and the dot, I became interested in the noosphere and whether what they claim to be measuring is actually real. I will write more on the GCP and how minds can supposedly influence RNGs in an upcoming blog post. It has something to do with quantum effects, presumably generated by minds, but I need to do more research.

Works Cited

1 David Pitt and Paul R. Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998; Taylor & Francis Group, 1998), 4.

2 Boris Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere: The Great Acceleration,” Earth’s Future 9, no. 2 (2021): 5, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001917.

3 Valentina Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” Philosophy and Cosmology 16, no. 16 (2016): 179.

4 Clément Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere? Planetary Superorganism, Major Evolutionary Transition and Emergence,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 41, no. 4 (2024): 614, https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2997.

5 David Pitt and Paul R. Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998; Taylor & Francis Group, 1998), 18.

6 Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 4.

7 Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 26; Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 6.

8 Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 6; Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 614.

9 Jonathan D. Oldfield and Denis JB Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept: Russian Understandings of Society–Nature Interaction,” Geoforum 37, no. 1 (2006): 148.

10 Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 149.

11 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 6.

12 Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” 180; Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 53.

13 Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 51.

14 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 614.

15 Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 146.

16 Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” 187; Sergiy Sonko, “Man in Noosphere: Evolution and Further Development,” Philosophy and Cosmology 22, no. 22 (2019): 51.

17 Sonko, “Man in Noosphere,” 68; Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 145.

18 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 615.

19 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 615.

20 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 617.

21 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://gcp2.net/about.

22 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0.” This information can be found by expanding the section posing the question ‘How can we observe the effects of consciousness?’

23 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0.” Found under ‘How does the GCP 2.0 network differ from its predecessor in GCP 1?’

24 “The Global Consciousness Project,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://global-mind.org/.

25 “Global Consciousness Project Dot,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://global-mind.org/gcpdot/.

26 “Global Consciousness Project Dot.”

September 4, 2026

Souls, Consciousness, and Dualism

I came across a Noema article a little while ago that makes an interesting claim about consciousness and the soul. It argues that the soul does not belong to a separate physical realm or is composed of something separate from the rest of nature, and can, theoretically at least, be explained by physics. Specifically, it begins by stating that “consciousness is not separate from the physical world – our “soul” is of the same nature as our body and any other phenomenon of the world.”¹ While this brought to mind the relationship of energy and matter, let’s see what the article says about how this might work.

The article begins with a subtle critique of our scientific understanding of the physical world and aims to motivate the reader towards remaining sympathetic towards old ideas about the soul. The author, Carlo Rovelli, states that although some believe that science can be used to produce explanations of “everything,” there are still many phenomena which we do not fully understand. “We can’t cure the flu or accurately predict the weather two weeks ahead.” Moreover, when we do understand certain physical laws, “we still cannot account for what they imply.” He appeals to a bicycle breaking down and how we go about restoring it, stating that we must ask a mechanic for help rather than a particle physicist. Though true, this comparison conflates science and engineering. We don’t ask scientists how to build bridges and engines, we ask them to provide us with regularities of the physical world expressed in mathematical terms which are then used by engineers to build and maintain devices and infrastructure.

From here, the article moves to a discussion of “our own brain and body” as an example that “we understand the least about” which I disagree with. We understand a lot about both, and while there are gaps in our understanding and more to learn about specific mechanisms, this framing has been exaggerated. Although consciousness in particular “is a very complicated natural phenomenon,” the fact that is poorly understood is not due to the complexity of consciousness but a failure within philosophy to properly identify and organize the explanatory components required to improve our understanding.

After a bit of background on the “hard problem of consciousness” and the “explanatory gap,” Rovelli briefly appeals to Spinoza’s ideas surrounding God and nature to motivate his position about souls and consciousness. “Our soul could be a phenomenon of the same basic nature as any other phenomenon in nature.” Though this is a reasonable position to propose, he doesn’t expand on this line of thinking, he just mentions Spinoza and moves on.

Rovelli’s next move is a good one despite failing to credit Kant with the idea. He reminds the reader that though Chalmers claims that science cannot explain the phenomenal aspects of experience, science is “entirely about experience.” Rather than representing the world objectively from an external perspective, it in fact examines the world as experienced by human observers. For example, we see a marble or a ball roll down an inclined plane and investigate why this is the case. Any so-called objectivity associated with the science is deduced through repeated experiments which indicate a regularity and predictability associated with our attempts to measure and represent observed phenomena. Objectivity is arrived at through descriptions of the natural world as they appear to us.

Further down, the author explicitly states this relationship. “We do not derive a first-person perspective from an objective third-person view. It is the opposite: Any account is perspectival because knowledge is always embodied.” This is a great way of articulating it and is more or less where Kant was coming from. The default “view” or understanding is subjective, and therefore, we must take this into consideration when thinking about and discussing natural phenomena. Kant didn’t stress the significance of embodiment in his writing, as this idea is a relatively recent addition to our understanding, but is very significant to include and I’m glad Rovelli includes it.

Ultimately, the author’s argument provided for why there is no “hard problem” or “explanatory gap” is not the strongest but it is present.

P1: “The world I access is the information I have about it, and I am a part of the world.”
P2: “Any account [of reality] is approximate, has blind spots and is realized within reality, so it is embodied in a part of that same reality. There are hinges between a representation and where is is embodied, and this may be a singular point in a representation, but it is not a metaphysical gap. It is not an explanatory gap.”
C: “There is no ‘hard problem’” and “our mental life can very well be of the same nature as any other phenomenon in the universe.”

So in a nutshell, because we appeal to subjectivity for objectivity/science, there is no gap and no “hard problem.” The origins of our understanding of reality is through a subjective point of view, and as such, is coupled to the universe. This eliminates the duality that underpins the metaphysical gap, explanatory gap, and the hard problem. I believe this is what Rovelli is trying to say. The argument would benefit from more explanation in P2 because it’s a bit vague, so I’m not exactly sure if I have this right.

Interestingly enough, he does mention Kant shortly after this argument by appealing to the idea of humans as “transcendental subjects.” Our experiences are “not obtained by addition to a physical state, but by subtraction from a complete physical account.” He states that mental processes articulate only the “salient characteristics” of their underlying physical processes, and its this fact which allows us to appeal to Kantian transcendence. It’s an interesting move that I would like him to expand upon. What does it mean to be a “transcendental subject?” Why does this matter? It sounds cool and spiritually-aligned but is there anything more we can learn from this line of thinking?

The article finishes with several claims that Rovelli believes are substantiated by the arguments made throughout. By ignoring or rejecting a dualistic perspective of the universe, which I’m fine with, we can then consider souls and minds as just another part of reality. Again, there are no apparent problems with this line of thinking. That said, he goes on to claim that the reason why this is compelling is because “hundreds of years of astonishing and unexpected success of the sciences … have convincingly shown that apparent metaphysical gaps are never such.” That “Earth is not metaphysically different from the heavens, living beings are not metaphysically different from inanimate matter, humans are not metaphysically different from the body.” Well yes, the last two examples are true, but what do you mean by “heavens?” Sure, we have discovered a deep continuity throughout the physical world, from the laws of physics to chemistry to biochemistry to evolutionary biology, physiology, and cognitive science, but his conclusions are still a bit hasty given the arguments presented. In general, I am sympathetic to Rovelli’s perspective but I think the reasons he uses to justify his position could benefit from a deeper analysis.

My hypothesis is that the answer we are looking for is energy. Clearly, consciousness is the result of physiological activity generated by the body, but an explanation for a soul requires more investigation. It makes sense that energy has something to do with it because of what we commonly think of ghosts, spirits, or some other supernatural phenomenon. Experiential testimonies will often refer to a kind of energy, movement, or electricity that can be felt, and apparitions must be caused by some kind of physical phenomenon. Furthermore, if certain devices or technologies can truly detect the presence of something other-worldly, it usually does this through some kind of physical, usually electronic, interface. We don’t necessarily need to discard this idea of “duality” wholesale, it can be explained by the relationship between energy and matter.

It seems as though there is a relationship or connection between souls and consciousness, but the question is what does this entail? Does consciousness persist after death, or does it dissolve or disperse once the body can no longer support it? While we can theorize and conjecture about answers to these questions, it ultimately comes down to empirical evidence to provide an explanation of souls and consciousness beyond the living being. Science may not explain everything at the moment, but it is a powerful tool for generating truthful explanations to our questions and ideas.

Works Cited

1 Carlo Rovelli, “There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness,’” Noema, May 7, 2026, https://www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-hard-problem-of-consciousness.

July 8, 2026

Comment Section Contributions

In the YouTube video “Why AI Will Never Be Conscious,” Alex O’Connor interviews Anil Seth and asks a number of questions surrounding consciousness and artificial intelligence. I didn’t find the conversation to be all that interesting, but maybe it’s because I’m not the target audience. Regardless, what I did find rather interesting was a comment left by @kevinharrison2074:

“…a system which forms a temporally extended, self-modelling, world-inhabiting process whose internal organization gives rise to an actual point of view”

This is actually good because it provides a rough definition of what subjectivity involves and where it comes from. Sure, “internal organization” is vague but it’s a start. As such, it gets added to The List.

What I will give Seth credit for is his brief mention of autopoiesis at 0:25:06 and his half-hearted attempt at moving away from a computational perspective of consciousness.¹ Characterizing consciousness, even loosely, as a controlled hallucination² is not a helpful why of explaining consciousness though, given the semantic baggage attached to ‘hallucination’. This phrasing puts the cart before the horse, because hallucinations are erroneous perceptions. Perceptions themselves aren’t necessarily erroneous, they are interpretations generated from sensory data.

Maslow’s Law of the Instrument can be applied to research and theory: if the only thing you study is the brain, everything looks like a neuron.

Works Cited

1 Alex O’Connor, Why AI Will Never Be Conscious – Anil Seth, 2026, 1:42:27, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsi8T_WtLnE.

2 Alex O’Connor, Why AI Will Never Be Conscious – Anil Seth, at 1:25:13.

May 27, 2026

Coherency

The Global Consciousness Project and the Dot that represents global consciousness coherence is another esoteric rabbit hole that I was introduced to a few years ago and meant to research further. I had forgotten about it until earlier today, and was reminded of it while browsing through my collection of mysticism memes. Anyway, the basic idea is that computer systems which generate random numbers can be influenced by human minds, and by analyzing the coherency of random numbers generated around the world, we can get an idea about the coherency of human consciousness. The dot changes colour based on the variance within the network of random number generators, but I’m not sure what it means when it goes red. How does a large network variance indicate “broadly shared coherence of thought and emotion”? There’s lots to read about on the GCP website, so stay tuned and I will be back next week with more information.

It’s hard to believe the first month of the year is already behind us. I hope 2026 is off to a good start for you. I’ve been working on my resolutions and have met a few goals I set for myself, like weekly blog posts, finishing the Christmas cats cross stitch, and mending a few pairs of pants. The week that just passed, however, was not a productive one. I struggled to find something to write about for today’s entry, didn’t do the sewing I had planned on doing, and skipped the exercising. The thing about progress, though, is that it’s not linear and tomorrow is always a new day. Consistency is key.

based on The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse

February 1, 2026

Organisms are NOT Algorithms

As mentioned recently, I am working on a response to Yuval Harari’s book Homo Deus. The reason is because it argues for a dystopian future constructed from a series of fallacious premises. These premises have issues due to the arguments he constructs for them, often through the use of strawmen and ignoring evidence to the contrary or other perspectives. Throughout, it seems that he’s furthering some kind of agenda, and for those who are not familiar with the author, it remains unclear what this involves until about the final third of the book. Having been aware of Harari’s affiliation with the World Economic Forum,¹ I began this book suspicious of his motivations for writing it. Within pages, I was inspired to write a response essay because there are far better solutions to the issues he outlines throughout than the ones he proposes.

One of the central premises of Homo Deus is this idea that organisms are algorithms. In chapter 2, on page 96, he introduces the reader to the claim by heading a new section with this very idea. He begins the topic by asking whether we can be sure that animals actually have “a subjective world of needs, sensations, and emotions,”² fearing that we may be anthropomorphizing their behaviours. On the next page, he clarifies that they do because “all mammals evolved emotional abilities and needs.”³ Moreover, emotions are useful because they are “biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals.”⁴ He then explains what an algorithm is without catching the blatant category error he commits.

An algorithm is just a series of steps for achieving some outcome. The example he appeals to is the same kind that I myself have been using for years now: a culinary recipe. While his example discusses vegetable soup, mine has always revolved around bread because it’s a far more finicky food to make. Ingredients must be introduced in the correct order in specific proportions, and temperature matters a great deal. Anyway, a recipe, in any form it exists, whether on a cue card or on a blog, always consists of the steps required to achieve the desired outcome. But you know what a recipe also requires? A set of hands to take physical ingredients and work with them to make a physical product. The recipe itself is not the same as the loaf of bread when it comes out of the oven. It’s a description of the steps one must take to make bread in the physical world. I can’t eat a recipe. If there was an attempt to eat a recipe, I would be eating the cue card it’s written on. On the next page, Harari actually mentions this in passing, and it’s amazing he doesn’t catch his mistake. Arguably, he will not because he’s [allegedly] not interested in telling the truth, but in furthering a narrative. Anyway, he states “A recipe by itself cannot make soup. You need a person to read the recipe and follow the prescribed set of steps.”⁵ He does try to save the argument later by stating “humans are algorithms that produce … copies of themselves.”⁶ That “the algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions, and thoughts.”⁷ An organism’s body is a calculator, and that what we think of as emotions and sensations are actually algorithms. These calculations are felt as sensations.

There are no calculations occurring in living beings, at least not in the literal sense. Physiological processes can be described as algorithms or calculations, but they are inherently very different. The sensation of hunger is not inherently a series of steps, it’s the presence of the hormone ghrelin in the bloodstream. The brain detects the presence of this hormone and organizes an individual’s behaviour in response. Though we can articulate the release of hormones and neurotransmitters in algorithmic terms, there is no algorithm until a human creates it through observation and representation. Just as you need a person to read a recipe, you need one to write an algorithm. In a universe without intelligent beings, all that’s occurring is just a system governed by the laws of physics and biochemistry. There’s only cause-effect relationships, and while these causal relationships can be described in algorithmic terms, they themselves are not algorithms.

In Anticipatory Systems, Robert Rosen differentiates between natural systems and formal systems. A natural system is any physical system that exists within the universe, either created by nature or humans. Just as a forest is a natural system, so is a car or a computer. A formal system, on the other hand, is created by an observer measuring and articulating a natural system. These can be expressed by using forms of notation like mathematics, logic, and music. Formal systems aim to represent natural systems, and how well it does so is determined by the accuracy of the predictions it generates. If a prediction is discovered to be true when some experiment is performed on the natural system, then we can surmise that our formal system accurately represents that natural system. If not, then we must determine which aspect of our representation is incorrect so that it can be rectified.

An algorithm belongs to the world of formal systems, not natural systems. It relies upon observation and representation to achieve the desired outcome. If we don’t get the outcome we are interested in, we tweak the algorithm. We fix the bugs in the computer code, we reduce the amount of salt we add, or we make the water warmer. Our experience interacting with the outcome, whether software or bread, is what informs us about whether the algorithm is appropriate or not.

Organisms are not algorithms, they are physical systems undergoing various physiological changes. Though we can articulate physiological processes as algorithms, they nonetheless will always belong to the domain of physical reality, not formal systems. Hunger is an experience, blood pressure is the relationship between the heart and arteries, and wolf populations are fluctuating quantities of individuals with hearts and sensations of hunger. Hormones are chemicals, atoms which bind together based on the laws of physics. There are no steps, procedures, or descriptions without an observer who is able to translate their experiences of interacting with the physical world into representations of it.

To believe that organisms are algorithms places ourselves and other animals on the same plane as computers, which is subversive and dangerous. It reduces what it means to be a living being with subjective experiences, motivations, and a rich biological heritage. We may be imperfect animals with biases and compulsions, but we are not calculators or a series of logic-gates. Unlike computers and other artifacts, we have motivations which have been selected for throughout evolution for the sake of survival and reproduction. A computer does not care about anything, it merely performs the operations it has been programmed to execute. Though we may be able to articulate biological functions in terms of operations and procedures, these representations will remain just that, descriptions of real-world phenomena.

Women Baking Bread by Carl Moon (American, 1878 – 1948)

Works Cited

1 “Yuval Noah Harari,” World Economic Forum, accessed January 18, 2026, https://www.weforum.org/people/yuval-noah-harari/; Yuval Noah Harari, “Read Yuval Harari’s Blistering Warning to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 24, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/01/yuval-hararis-warning-davos-speech-future-predications/.

2 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Signal Books, 2017), 96.
3 Harari, Homo Deus, 97.
4 Harari, Homo Deus, 97.
5 Harari, Homo Deus, 98.
6 Harari, Homo Deus, 98.
7 Harari, Homo Deus, 99.

January 18, 2026

Esoteric Theories of Consciousness: Another Quantum Theory

Back in July of 2025, I wrote a post about Sir Roger Penrose’s quantum theory of consciousness as outlined in his book Shadows of the Mind. To summarize, he believes that something beyond our current understanding of science is necessary to explain consciousness, and ultimately explores whether the microtubules of cellular cytoskeletons might play a role in producing consciousness. He appeals to the research of Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist at the University of Arizona,¹ which suggests that certain chemicals may interfere with microtubule behaviours. If this occurs, these changes may lead to changes in consciousness. It’s an interesting idea, and from an anesthesiologist’s perspective, might be able to explain some aspect of how conscious awareness may be altered temporarily. From a philosophical perspective, however, it seems to only explain one aspect of consciousness, rather than accounting for what consciousness is and how it developed in living beings.

The quantum aspect of this theory is located within the microtubules, which themselves act as dielectric waveguides. The interior of microtubules can be rendered temporarily unentangled with the environment, and as such, are able to pass signals to other microtubules. Now, I know very little about quantum mechanics, so I’m treading on a very flimsy limb here. The only reason why I’m even attempting to explain all of this is because of a crazy book I read a few years ago. If you think this theory is a bit far-fetched, hold on to your hat.

Itzhak Bentov’s book Stalking the Wild Pendulum is a very interesting read but only for those with an open mind. In addition to the extravagant claims he makes throughout, the reason it caught my attention is because it indicates some loose connections to a few theories of consciousness. Previously, I wrote about similarities between certain claims and panpsychism, and now, I will be doing something similar with respect to the quantum theory of consciousness popularized by Penrose and Hameroff. Because my understanding of quantum mechanics is shaky, I’m not as certain about these connections, but I feel like their worth putting out there anyway. There’s just something about Bentov’s claims that seems to shed new light on the Penrose-Hameroff theory.²

Pendulum begins with an introduction on sounds, vibrations, and waves. He introduces the reader to standing waves or the natural vibrations of matter in the universe. They are “waves that occupy a ‘fixed’ position in any structure, whether it is a string [of a musical instrument], a plate, or a container filled with liquid, or a blood vessel.”³ Put another way, “when a structure is in resonance (which means that it vibrates at a frequency that is natural to it and is most easily sustained by it), it implies the presence of a standing wave.”⁴ The next couple of chapters builds on this idea of vibrations and motion, and in the third chapter, Bentov introduces the pendulum as an example of oscillation. When we think of a pendulum, it becomes apparent that the only point of rest is at each extreme, when the pendulum reaches is maximum point before swinging back in the opposite direction. Right before it turns around, for a brief period of time, it pauses and “rests.”⁵ Bentov goes on to say that objective reality is made up of a void or vacuum which is filled with oscillating electromagnetic fields which move between two points of rest.⁶ Returning to the pendulum analogy, he explains that as it approaches the point in which the pendulum turns around, the point of rest, it covers “a smaller and smaller distance per unit for time as it approaches its turning point.”⁷ When distances go below Planck’s distance, or 10^-33 centimeters, we end up in “a new world.” Here, causal relationships “break down” and spacetime becomes “chunky” or “jerky” rather than “smooth.” As such, “a material point can traverse space without necessarily requiring any chunk of time for the process,” moving through space at infinite velocity.⁸ With respect to the pendulum example, this means that at this moment of rest, “the pendulum can be just about any place” for a very brief period of time, before swinging back in the opposite direction.⁹ “Infinite speed and total rest seem somehow complementary.”¹⁰ Since atoms also oscillate in the form of vibrations, “it is very likely that our matter is blinking off and on at a specific rate,” namely 10¹⁵ Hz at room temperature.¹¹

Moving to a discussion of subjective reality, Bentov states that the “common denominator” between objective and subjective realities is a “change or motion occurring between two states of rest.”¹² Though he explains this in other terms, we can think of the nervous system as responding to environmental changes. We know that the longer a stimulus is present, the less (or more) a neuron fires, and it’s only when the stimulus changes in some manner does the neuron change it’s behaviour. As long as there is movement or environmental changes, “tangible reality exists.”¹³ We can think of a sensory-deprivation chamber, and how in these situations, subjective reality becomes rather strange. Chapter 3 closes with two interesting questions: “where does matter go when it periodically disappears?” and “what happens to us as we blink on and off?”¹⁴

In chapter 4, we are reminded that the perception of time does not follow regularities, unlike the ticking of a watch or clock. Some moments may fly by, while others may drag on for what seems like forever. To demonstrate this effect, Bentov develops and experiment in which the reader is encouraged to visualize themselves in being in a different place in order to become more relaxed. This is to be done in front of a clock where the passing of seconds can be observed. In a sufficient state of relaxation, the seconds seem to slow down and even stop. This subjective experience acts as an analogy for an objective situation, as articulated by the theory of relativity. He goes on to propose that “the observing mind, the entity that correlates and makes sense of the information submitted to it by the brain, was absent. It went off to the beach and left the ‘hardware’ at home, unattended. The ‘hardware’, by which I mean the sensory organs and the brain, are processing and producing the information, but the entity that correlates and makes sense of the information, has left the body for a while.”¹⁵ The observer was “partially on the beach and partially in the body, handling information at a reduced rate.”¹⁶ In slowing down the body, the mind is able to decouple itself from its physical residence and thus able to travel at high velocities to other places.¹⁷

Bentov goes on to explain that the matter which constitutes our bodies oscillates at about seven times per second, and in doing so, rests about fourteen times a second.¹⁸ At each point of rest, the observer or mind is able to leave to other dimensions or realities for a brief period of time. In an “expanded state of consciousness,” perhaps through meditation or the influence of drugs, more time can be spent in other realities.¹⁹

How does this relate to the Penrose-Hameroff theory? Well, aside the introduction of any exogenous chemicals through some form of consumption, perhaps the relaxation of the body results in changes in endogenous chemical production. These chemical changes in the body might impact the behaviours of microtubules, which in turn results in changes in consciousness. Perhaps chemical changes within the body enables the mind to perceive the world differently, or access other versions of reality or even other dimensions. In fact, this idea of accessing other realities or dimensions is what inspired my investigation into this whole topic in the first place.

Before I venture into this backstory, I’d like to briefly return to solid ground. If you’re finding this all of this to be rather nonsensical, I don’t blame you. I used to as well. I was convinced that empiricism was the only philosophical view that should be taken seriously, and that claims about various aspects of the universe had to be verified by systematic experimentation before they could be taken seriously. As such, I was quite dismissive of many theories of consciousness, especially the ones that did not conform to our scientific understanding of the natural world. It wasn’t until I experienced a number of strange, inexplicable phenomena that I started to come around to letting go of my preconceptions. After several months, maybe even a year, of wandering down the rabbit hole of ancient and occult wisdom, I decided to let go completely. The insanity of the pandemic helped too, as we watched in real-time how a good deal of “science” is just bunch of grifters lying to themselves, each other, and policy makers. What was right seemed wrong, and what was wrong seemed right. This is just my long-winded way of stating that I’m not trying to convince you of anything, I am simply explaining to you exactly how I got here.

I decided to reconsider the quantum theory of consciousness after receiving a number of emails from my Google Alerts subscription on the subject, beginning in September of 2024. For several weeks, similar articles kept appearing under the ‘consciousness’ tag I had signed up to receive alerts for. One in particular caught my attention, titled “Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe.”²⁰ Well shit, that sounds like Bentov! Could microtubules be the bridge between our brains and bodies to higher dimensions? Microtubules in the pineal gland maybe? Hmmm…

Anyway, the articles Google found for me were by Manasee Wagh writing for Popular Mechanics,²¹ Eric Ralls at Earth.com,²² Becca Monaghan at Indy100.com,²³ and Rupendra Brahambhatt at Interesting Engineering.²⁴ In the article by Wagh, the one with the title claiming that consciousness can connect with the whole universe, she begins by discussing an interesting study on rats by Khan et al.²⁵ that describes how the effects of an anesthetic can be slowed when rats are injected with a microtubule-stabilizing drug called epothilone B. Although this is an interesting finding, how does this relate to the universe? After briefly discussing Penrose’s theory, she goes on to wonder whether “on a quantum level, consciousness is capable of being in all places at the same time. In other words, it can exist everywhere simultaneously, suggesting that your own consciousness can hypothetically connect with quantum particles beyond your brain, maybe entangling with consciousness all across the universe.” If this were to be true, what kind of conditions would need to be met for this connection to bubble up into experiential awareness? How can we access each others’ minds?

Brahambhatt’s article discusses dreams and how they might be “conduits to alternative dimensions or elevated states of consciousness,” a theory I have heard before in my rabbit-hole travels. It harkens back to Monroe’s hemi-sync astral projection, as discussed in the CIA’s Gateway Project, a fascinating topic I wrote on years ago. Brahambhatt also mentions that consciousness might be able to affect people in parallel universes, and while she just kind of throws this idea out there based on a quote from a paper stuck in preprint,²⁶ I find myself agreeing with her. My reasoning for taking this position, however, is based on hermetic wisdom, as the growth of a person leads to the growth of the mind and possibly its capabilities. I’m not about to bet the farm on any of these ideas of course, it’s just interesting to think about given how much overlap there is within different teachings throughout human history and around the world.

Both Ralls and Monaghan write on the idea of hyperdimensionality as envisioned by physicist Michael Pravica. Though Pravica’s argumentation is weak, namely that because we can mathematically describe more than four dimensions, they might actually exist, the Ralls article establishes a connection to string theory. Since the “basic building blocks of the universe” consist of vibrating one-dimensional strings, additional spatial dimensions are necessary for the mathematics of string theory.²⁷ Maybe this is what Pravica is referring to though, and Ralls just portrayed it poorly. Either way, this line of thinking moves the discussion into an Idealist realm, one which claims that mathematics reflects a world beyond the physical universe, as described by Plato. Whether this move appeals to the reader depends on his or her perspective on what mathematics is. Is it something created by humans, like the game of chess, or is it something waiting to be discovered by intelligent beings?

Altogether, these articles suggest some kind of conceptual bridge is needed between the Penrose-Hameroff theory and claims about consciousness being connected to other dimensions or the rest of the universe. Though sketchy, Bentov’s explanations provide a lead. Maybe not a robust explanation, but a lead for further investigation. If I hadn’t read Pendulum, there would be no conceivable way that I would have followed the line of reasoning offered by these articles. This whole topic may be under-baked, but we do have a set of ingredients to work with here.

Evolutionary processes may explain how consciousness came to be, but that doesn’t mean that the phenomenon itself isn’t more complex or mysterious than we previously thought. If not, then that’s fine; however, subjective experiences can be strange and inexplicable at times. Again, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything here, I’m just trying to make sense of things. If you know, you know, and if not, that’s okay too. There are plenty of mysteries in the universe one can sink their time into, and that’s worth celebrating on its own.

The Ancient Five Elements and the Corresponding Five Platonic Shapes

Works Cited

1 “Stuart Hameroff | The Science of Consciousness Conference,” University of Arizona, accessed January 6, 2026, https://consciousness.arizona.edu/person/stuart-hameroff.

2 Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, “Orchestrated Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: A Model for Consciousness,” Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 40, no. 3 (1996): 453–80, https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-4754(96)80476-9.

3 Itzhak Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness (Destiny Books, 1988), 33.
4 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 12.
5 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 50.
6 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 55.
7 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 52.
8 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 52.
9 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 53.
10 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 54.
11 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 54.
12 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 55.
13 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 55.
14 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 56.
15 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 62.
16 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 62–63.
17 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 63.
18 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 74.
19 Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum, 75.

20 Manasee Wagh, “Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe, Groundbreaking New Research Suggests,” Science, Popular Mechanics, September 26, 2024, https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62373322/quantum-theory-of-consciousness/.

21 Wagh, “Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe, Groundbreaking New Research Suggests.”

22 Eric Ralls, “Consciousness May Stem from Unseen Dimensions Beyond Our Reality,” Earth.Com, September 21, 2024, https://www.earth.com/news/consciousness-may-stem-from-unseen-dimensions-beyond-our-reality/.

23 Becca Monaghan, “How Does Human Consciousness Work? It May Come from Another Dimension, Scientist Suggests,” Indy100.Com, September 20, 2024, https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/human-consciousness-another-dimension.

24 Rupendra Brahambhatt, “Your Consciousness Could Travel Multiverse When You Dream: Scientists,” Interesting Engineering, October 19, 2024, https://interestingengineering.com/science/alternate-reality-in-dreams.

25 Sana Khan et al., “Microtubule-Stabilizer Epothilone B Delays Anesthetic-Induced Unconsciousness in Rats,” Research Article: New Research, eNeuro 11, no. 8 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0291-24.2024.

26 David Leong and Oxana Zinych, “Dreams as Portals to Parallel Realities and Reflections of Self,” Qeios, ahead of print, Qeios, December 18, 2023, https://doi.org/10.32388/242XCF.

27 Ralls, “Consciousness May Stem from Unseen Dimensions Beyond Our Reality.”

January 11, 2026

Esoteric Theories of Consciousness: A Quantum Theory

This is a topic I will address in a few different parts because I am connecting some divergent yet similar ideas. I wrote a preface to this topic earlier this year, discussing Sir Roger Penrose’s first book The Emperor’s New Mind. In it, he doesn’t really discuss what he think consciousness is per se, but mentions that it doesn’t result from some kind of algorithm or procedure. This conclusion would have, at the time, differed from prevailing views of the mind. His second book does a better job at theorizing the causes of consciousness, which is what I will discuss here.

In Shadows of the Mind, Penrose’s general claim is that we probably need a new understanding or perspective of physics to understand what consciousness is and how it comes about. Though I am sympathetic and open-minded, I don’t think we necessarily need a new understanding of physics to draw some preliminary conclusions about consciousness. That said, there very well could be physical aspects of consciousness that are poorly understood, if at all. These are the ideas I would like to explore in this series of posts titled “A Quantum Theory of Consciousness.” Although I have a basic theory of consciousness, that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Penrose begins Shadows with a discussion of minds and robots, a topic I won’t discuss here because my thesis has covered this topic in depth. There may be room to expand and elaborate on this topic, but I won’t do it in this post. In section 1.3,¹ Penrose provides four options for thinking about consciousness, which he labels A through D:

A: All thinking is computation; in particular, feelings of conscious awareness are evoked merely by the carrying out of appropriate computations.
B: Awareness is a feature of the brain’s physical action; and whereas any physical action can be simulated computationally, computational simulation cannot by itself evoke awareness.
C: Appropriate physical action of the brain evokes awareness, but this physical action cannot even be properly simulated computationally.
D: Awareness cannot be explained by physical, computational, or any other scientific terms.

Though Penrose is interested in exploring option D, I am of the belief that C is the more appropriate view. In fact, I think Penrose makes a category error in his preference for D, as an explanation of consciousness which appeals to quantum mechanics is still explained by physical and scientific terms. It’s just that the terms and ideas he appeals to aren’t fully understood or generally accepted, however, they nonetheless comport with physics in general. We aren’t appealing to some spiritual cause here; instead, we are expanding what is meant by “physical” and “scientific.” Regardless, I don’t think it would be wise to deviate from C, as this would lead us back to something like conjecture or spiritualism. I mean we can, but then anything goes, and there’s no fun in that.

A few pages later, Penrose draws some interesting conclusions on simulations that I’d like to briefly touch on. He appeals to Searle to state that “a physical process is very different thing from the actual process itself. (A computer simulation of a hurricane, for example, is certainly no hurricane!)”² Yes indeed, this a very important idea to keep in mind with respect to robots. As I argued in my thesis, the simulation of empathy does not mean that true empathy is present.

To his credit, Penrose does admit on page 15 that he believes that “C is the [option] which… [is] closest to the truth.” That said, since he and others do not have an idea of what C might involve, D is also worth exploring. This is just a clarification I needed to pointed out for the sake of charitability.

The rest of Chapter 1 and Part 1 explores some interesting and related topics, but I won’t go into them here because I’ve already discussed my opinions of these ideas in my thesis, or they veer into a tangent that isn’t all that important to my purpose here. What I will say is that in 1.7, Penrose discusses Chaos.³ This is a good thing, as he is approaching an important topic related to minds and complex systems in general. He claims that “the future behaviour of the system depends extremely critically upon the precise initial state of the system”⁴ but initial conditions aren’t the only aspects that matter. Every physical system necessarily interacts with other physical systems, and a multitude of variables are always present. Initial variables are important, but there could be other variables that might matter as well. Think about making a loaf of bread. The amount of yeast, salt, and sugar, as initial variables, are very important indeed. However, there could be other variables at play which do not exist in the beginning, like changes in temperature or humidity. The world around us is complex and ever-changing, and a number of variables which are not present in the initial stages will also impact the outcomes of complex systems. Random events occur which end up influencing the outcomes of systems which cannot be accounted for during the initial stages. You can be driving correctly, following the rules of the road and acting cautiously, when all of the sudden, out of nowhere, a vehicle from the oncoming lane swerves directly in front of you. There are always variables which cannot be fully accounted for. Later on, Penrose mentions that “the question of whether or not something can be simulated in practice [sic] is a separate one from the in principle [sic] issues that are under consideration here.”⁵

As a quick aside, when Penrose states that something is “computational,” he means that it can be articulated through an algorithm or series of procedures to reach a conclusion or outcome. During the 20^th century, it was thought that the mind worked like a computer, rather than the other way around. In actuality, the mind produced computers as a reflection of their own rational capacities. The cart was placed before the horse, so to speak. The mind is an outcome of physical systems which, eventually, in evolutionary timelines, gave rise to abstractions and algorithms. Once human brains became sufficiently advanced, they could produce procedures and processes which could be articulated as a series of steps. Otherwise, there is only “know-how” or the ability to just do something,⁶ like score a goal or make pierogies. Penrose, like countless others before and after him, make this error. One of these individuals is Yuval Noah Harari, and his book Homo Deus exemplifies this critical mistake. I am very much looking forward to writing a review of this book.

Before skipping ahead to the meat of Penrose’s argument, let’s quickly review why he is so interested in an alternate view of consciousness. He states in his first book The Emperor’s New Mind that the mind is not a computational thing because intuition and insight plays an important role in mathematical break-throughs, as seen in Gödel’s conclusions regarding the incompleteness of mathematics. In Shadows, he goes over this argument again to arrive at the idea that “human understanding cannot be an algorithmic activity”⁷ to which I, and anyone sympathetic to embodied cognition, will agree to. Instead, “meanings can only be communicated from person to person because each person is aware of similar internal experiences or feelings about things.”⁸

After much scrolling past discussions of Gödel’s contributions and resulting conclusions, we reach a discussion of what consciousness is. To be fair, Penrose takes the reader through a “quick” tour though quantum physics before connecting these theories to consciousness. He begins Chapter 7 with a reminder that neuronal activity exists as an “on or off” phenomena, where there are no alternatives which are characteristic of “quantum actions.”⁹ In quantum theory, it is feasible that some states may be both “on” and “off” at the same time with no contradiction. Moreover, quantum coherence refers to situation where a number of particles adhere to a single quantum state, namely “on” or “off,” which is decoupled or “unentangled” from the wider external environment. They seem to follow their own rules or patterns which remain independent from external factors.¹⁰

In the fourth section of Chapter 7, Penrose introduces us to the “humble paramecium” with its “numerous tiny hairlike legs” called cilia.¹¹ Paramecia are especially interesting because they are single-celled organisms which exist and thrive without nervous systems. Instead, they roam around governed by their cytoskeleton, the structure which secures their shape in addition to many more functions, like “transporting… molecules from one place to another.”¹² Indeed, the cytoskeleton acts as a skeleton, muscles, circulatory system, and nervous system for the organism. The paramecium’s cilia are made up of microtubules, hollow cylindrical tubes which are arranged in fan-like structures when cut into cross-sections. Now, each microtubule is a protein polymer which can be divided into subunits called tubulins. Each tubulin consists of a dimer or pair of distinct parts, where each consists of about 450 amino acids. Together, these “peanut-shaped” protein pairs are arranged in different ways depending on their configuration and influenced by the presence of electrons.¹³ Messages can be propagated along the length of microtubules depending on the conformation of dimers, influencing the behaviour of these organisms. Given that neurons have their own cytoskeletons, Penrose speculates that neuronal activity is influenced by their microtubules, where the firing of neurons may have something to do with factors influencing their cytoskeletons.¹⁴

How? Penrose appeals to studies conducted by Stuart Hameroff in the 1970’s which suggest that microtubules “might act as ‘dielectric waveguides.’¹⁵ As such, the interior of the tube remains unentangled with the environment for a certain amount of time, resulting in signals which can be passed to nearby microtubules. Is there evidence for this? Apparently so. When it comes to general anaesthetics, we do not have a robust understanding of how they work. In fact, a number of “completely different substances that seem to have no chemical relationship with one another”¹⁶ can render us unconsciousness. Nitrous oxide (N₂O), ether (CH₃CH₂OCH₂CH₃), chloroform (CHCl₃), and other chemical compounds, including the inert gas xenon, have anaesthetic effects on humans and animals.¹⁷ Penrose, following Hameroff’s work, suggests that these chemicals can interrupt microtubule functionality through their electric dipole properties.¹⁸ By changing the configuration of dimers which make up microtubules, the actions of microtubules can be influenced or interrupted. Penrose concludes that consciousness thus must rely on a functioning cytoskeleton, where factors which interrupt this functionality will influence consciousness in some way.

Therefore, the “mind is a mere shadow [sic] of the deeper level of cytoskeletal action–and it is at this deeper level where we must keep the physical basis of mind!”¹⁹

Very interesting indeed, given that we still do not understand how general anaesthetics work. Perhaps there is some quantum phenomena at play to even render sensation and perception possible in the first place. There are likely layers of “awareness” which are necessary for high-level consciousness to manifest in mammals like humans.

Penrose concludes Shadows with a discussion of artificial intelligence and minds generally, stating that computational systems will never be able to “directly ‘feel’ things”.²⁰ Since there is no understanding in computers, certain aspects of the world like beauty, goodness, and morality are beyond their comprehension. Truth, according to Penrose, is another aspect which is cannot be understood by computers, given the conclusions drawn by Gödel.²¹ Truth is a conclusion which can only be reached by minds, and not by algorithms or calculations. There must be an external system which can look inside a narrower system to determine whether some proposition is true with respect to the bigger picture. Statements and premises refer to a specific set of physical phenomena which can be represented formally, reducing the physical system to a formula which can be expressed in some kind of notation. Ultimately, “human insight lies beyond formal argument and beyond computable procedures.”²² Although Penrose goes on to state that this argues for the existence of the Platonic mathematical world, I won’t weigh in on that here, although I believe that I agree with him. “Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily by the rules of some ‘manmade’ formal system, but has an absolute nature, and lies beyond any such system of system of specifiable rules.”²³ Yes, but in Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose states that algorithms are a part of this Platonic realm, which I disagree with for reasons I mentioned above. Minds create algorithms which are predicated on mathematical, Platonic truths, but without minds, there are no algorithms. Procedures belong to the physical world, because the interpreter needs a process whereby an outcome can be reached. The details of this process are determined by the ways in which the physical world operates.

So what now? Although sensation and perception appears to be dictated by the nervous system and the body, perhaps there is a realm of causality that influences how the body operates. Maybe some aspect of the physical world influences the firing of neurons, where the ideas and feelings we have are governed by forces we do not yet understand. I don’t know, this is why I am interested in this crazy stuff. I know that when I smell the lilacs I experience that wonderful, familiar scent, but do lilacs need to be present to trigger that sensation? Can my unverbalized thoughts influence the ideas or feelings that manifest in others? I don’t know, maybe we are all connected in ways we have yet to understand. There is room for interpretation and theory which comports with mystery and discovery. Human hubris only shuts out possibility, and while I am not a fan of unguided speculation, it is brash to rule out possibilities which have not been adequately explored.

In the next entry, I will dive into Itzhak Bentov’s discussion of the quantum mind and the ways it apparently connects to the physical world. Since he offers no evidence for his theory, we will see whether these ideas are factual or salvageable, however, I think they are nevertheless worth exploring. Life is short and consciousness might be forever, so let’s go for it.

Thank you for your patience as I write these entries. I really appreciate it. Stay curious dear reader, I think the world is far more mysterious and interesting than what we have been taught in school.

Works Cited

1 Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 1994).
2 Penrose, 15.
3 Penrose, 21.
4 Penrose, 21.
5 Penrose, 24.

6 Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992), xi.

7 Penrose, Shadows of the Mind, 51.
8 Penrose, 53.
9 Penrose, 348.
10 Penrose, 351.
11 Penrose, 357.
12 Penrose, 358.
13 Penrose, 359.
14 Penrose, 366.
15 Penrose, 368.
16 Penrose, 369.
17 Penrose, 369.
18 Penrose, 370.
19 Penrose, 376.
20 Penrose, 399.
21 Penrose, 400.
22 Penrose, 418.
23 Penrose, 418.

July 5, 2025

Esoteric Theories of Consciousness: Panpsychism

This is a topic I have been wanting to write about for a long time, since reading Itzhak Bentov’s book Stalking the Wild Pendulum. Until I had read this book, I dismissed panpsychism as a crazy theory with no connection to reality. Briefly, panpsychism suggests that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the universe,¹ and arises from a system’s functional organization.² If a certain organization is achieved, the system is capable of phenomenal experiences like pain or the taste of lemon. Differing levels of consciousness can be explained by appealing to the complexity of this functional organization; for example, a flatworm is more conscious than a rock.³ Though popularized by David Chalmers in the 1990’s, some central tenets of panpsychism can be traced back to Spinoza⁴ and Leibniz.⁵ Within the multitude of versions of panpsychism, however, no connection to any scientific knowledge is made, making it difficult to support. I’m all for crazy theories but my interest is proportional to its relation to something we know or suspect about the world. Bentov’s discussion of consciousness, however, provides a means for connecting the theory to something adjacent our current scientific understanding. It’s just a lead though, and much more work must be done to establish a sufficiently robust theory. That said, even if a theory were to be established, even more work will be required to ensure Bentov’s ideas are correct. With respect to physics and Earth sciences, he may be mistaken about one or more aspects of the premises he uses to generate his theory. We will have to see.

In Chapter 5 of Stalking the Wild Pendulum, titled ‘Quantity and Quality of Consciousness’, Bentov begins with a definition of ‘consciousness’. Though simple, he claims that “it is the capacity of a system to respond to stimuli.”⁶ Previously, I have defined ‘consciousness’ as something like an awareness of internal and external environments, so it seems that Bentov and I are on the same page here. Bentov goes on to state that though we commonly think of these kinds of systems as nervous systems, this definition applies to all sorts of systems even non-living ones. He anthropomorphizes atoms by stating that they “respond” to stimuli like the presence of electromagnetic radiation, since their electrons jump into higher orbits as a result. His next examples involve bacteria and viruses which is less of a metaphorical stretch. He concludes that “the higher and more complex the organism, the more varied and the more numerous the responses per stimulus.”⁷ Sure, but an atom isn’t an organism, so I’m still not sure about that one, but I will grant the stretch to bacteria and maybe viruses. Anyway, he goes on to state that the quantity of consciousness refers to the number of responses exhibited for the same stimulus.

He does address the reader’s probable concern about atoms and states that “we may at first have trouble trying to visualize a rock or an atom as a living thing because we associate consciousness with life.”⁸ Right, and arguably for good reason, however, let’s see where this train of thought takes us. So for the sake of charitability and open-mindedness, I will grant him the stretch despite remaining sceptical. He thinks that our discomfort with this idea is a human limitation, and in a similar way, a rock might have trouble understanding human consciousness. To Bentov, “consciousness resides in matter”⁹ which starts to sound like panpsychism. Different amount of matter or mass contains differing amounts of consciousness, where quantity and quality is determined through “different evolutionary levels.”¹⁰

The quality of consciousness is associated with “the level of consciousness” determined by the “frequency-response range of the system.”¹¹ By this, he refers to the range of frequencies an agent can detect; for example, human hearing exists within the range of about 20 or 30 Hz to about 20,000 Hz.¹² Therefore, the wider the range, the higher the level of consciousness. Bentov also describes quality in terms of the intelligence of the response, or the number of responses the agent is capable of producing.¹³ He also describes this as refinement, where the agent is able to understand and possibly report on a number of aspects of experience, rather than a few. Consider the sommelier versus the novice wine-drinker; the sommelier is able to pick out notes of cherry, pine, or smoke, where the newbie simply tastes sweet or sour. Different organisms or agents are capable of differing levels of consciousness, where a worm or fruit fly is at a lower frequency-response range than an elephant or human.¹⁴ To illustrate these levels, Bentov supplies a handy diagram which I have recreated by hand:

The energy-exchange curves “show the extent of energy exchange between an entity and its environment” where “the maximum energy exchange, or interactions of [human] beings with their environment, occurs at the peak of the curve. It is [our] point of resonance with the environment.”¹⁵ He later states that “at the highest levels, this means control over the environment”¹⁶ which suggests that humans have more control over the environment than rocks and grasshoppers. Differing levels of consciousness ultimately mean differing realities. The reality the grasshopper experiences is simpler and less refined than the reality humans experience.

The astral level is the dream level, an idea which is not unique to Bentov. I have encountered this idea from reading about spirituality and ancient religions, and to some, is not all that foreign or esoteric. When we dream during REM sleep, we actually transcend our physical reality into a different reality, supposedly. This is why the energy-exchange curves overlap, because different levels of reality and control are not discrete or finite, and can overlap with each other to a degree.

In Chapter 6, Bentov explores “relative realities” by first considering plants. Like animals, they grow and reproduce, purportedly responding to human emotions as per the work of Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird in The Secret Lives of Plants.¹⁷Maybe their studies don’t reproduce or rely on faulty assumptions, but let’s ignore that for a moment. Plants also move in response to stimuli; recall the sunflower as it follows the sun. From here, Bentov discusses animals and their characteristics, noting how these organisms can be viewed as a range of complexity given their stage in evolutionary development. There isn’t much said here that overly conflicts with biological perspectives, so I won’t go into detail here. He also discusses drugs and human experiences, as they allow us to access higher levels of consciousness, another uncontroversial perspective for the initiated. Next, Bentov discusses particle-wave duality to motivate his further discussion of consciousness.¹⁸ Most of us are vaguely familiar with this idea; photons can be considered as particles or waves. A particle, articulates Bentov, is a wave-packet, similar to a little “bubble” of waves confined to a specific space through individuation. Kind of like water in the form of rain versus in the form of a puddle. Within the body of water, like a puddle or ocean, water molecules are everywhere and unindividuated, but in rain, they become individuals as droplets.

Bentov now jumps to a discussion of individuation in nature.¹⁹ A mountain valley, roughly speaking, consists of a sheet of rock, acting like a continuum. Now within this valley, let’s say we have a massive boulder. Though once part of the valley, it has broken off to become its own “individual.” His next move is to claim that “matter is consciousness” only to add in parentheses that “matter contains consciousness,”²⁰ a claim which overlaps with panpsychism. If there is a critical mass of matter, it is able to develop a “dim awareness of self.” It was Chalmers who stipulated that consciousness arises from functional organization, but it isn’t a stretch to consider that very simple organizations, like rocks, may still have some level of consciousness. Maybe they don’t feel pain or know the taste of lemon, but some form of qualia or consciousness theoretically exists even within simple organizations. Chalmers’ move was to say that certain qualia will appear when functional organizations are obtained. Returning to Bentov now, he states that “over millions of years this dim awareness may be strengthened into a sharper identity, possibly through interaction with other creatures. If an animal finds a hiding place within a rock formation, it will feel grateful to the rock for shelter, and the rock will feel it.” The animal’s consciousness, higher than the rock’s, “will give its [the rock’s] consciousness a push upward.”²¹ Eventually, this consciousness of the rock becomes “a spirit of the rock” and its energy-exchange curve will reach into the astral region.²² When a man stumbles upon this rock, he will feel or sense that there is something special about this rock, becoming impressed or impacted in some manner. Strong claims indeed.

As a quick aside, Bentov describes the ways in which our thoughts impact aspects of the environment. Because devices and instruments like EEGs can pick up electromagnetic magnetic energy emitted by neurons, and because no energy is lost within the universe but merely transferred, “it means that the energy of thought was broadcast in the form of electromagnetic waves, at the velocity of light into the environment and, finally, into the cosmos.”²³ Moreover, since thought can be focused, it is possible to “send coherent thoughts” to be received by the person “for whom the thought was meant.”²⁴ This applies to the rock as well. The rock, becoming more aware and ascending in quality of consciousness, is slowly able to increase its control over the environment. The example Bentov uses is a copper mine, where ceremonies held for the rock inspires it to perform certain actions.²⁵ In Peru, he states, llamas would be sacrificed to protect miners, preventing a collapse of the mine. Otherwise, the rock is able to perform “tricks” like collapsing the mine onto humans digging for copper.

“In a way, all these minor gods or Nature spirits rely on the energy they get from others to keep themselves powerful. Just like politicians, their power and influence depends on their constituency. Eventually, as their constituency diminishes, they fade from the scene, as did the gods of ancient peoples, for examples, the Baal, the Moloch, the Greek and Roman gods, etc.”²⁶

It’s interesting that Bentov chose those two gods to begin his list of examples… It’s even more interesting that poor Bentov would die as a result of the famous crash of American Airlines Flight 191.

Anyway, the chapter finishes with a discussion of the astral realm, communicating with the dead, and human creativity. I will let you read these bits yourself as they aren’t exactly related to this discussion of panpsychism. My goal here was to establish an interesting connection between panpsychism and some sort of further explanation of it, as uncovered in Bentov’s Stalking the Wild Pendulum. Though incomplete, it’s at least a lead for further study, as it overlaps with ancient religions and our current understanding of physics. Sure, some of Bentov’s claims are worthy of scepticism, however, I find this more compelling than panpsychism alone. Recall that one of the 7 Hermenutic Principles is that “all is mental, all is mind.” It’s a difficult idea to accept given our current veneration of science and empiricism, but maybe we have been mistaken. Maybe there is more to life than the material world. I don’t know for sure, however, my personal experiences have hinted at otherwise. You, dear reader, have your own experiences; listen to them. Remain open yet critical. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Part two of this series investigates the Quantum Theory of Consciousness and Bentov’s discussion of quantum mechanics. I might also get into his ideas regarding Earth sciences too, depending on how much overlap is involved. Otherwise, it will be saved for a separate post. There is so much to say about these crazy theories, so I must break it up into separate entries. I’m also in the midst of reading Spinoza which has been very interesting and rewarding, and someday I will establish further connections between his philosophy and these strange ideas. For more info on panpsychism, check out this excellent YouTube video by Carneades.org.

Works Cited

1 William Seager, Theories of Consciousness : An Introduction and Assessment (Routledge, 2016), 287, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203485583.

2 Seager, 288.

3 David Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West (The MIT Press, 2017), 11, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11084.001.0001.

4 Seager, Theories of Consciousness, 317.
5 Seager, 291.

6 Itzhak Bentov, Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On the Mechanics of Consciousness (Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1988), 77.
7 Bentov, 77.
8 Bentov, 78.
9 Bentov, 78.
10 Bentov, 78.
11 Bentov, 78.
12 Bentov, 79.
13 Bentov, 79.
14 Bentov, 85.
15 Bentov, 80.
16 Bentov, 83.
17 Bentov, 93–94.
18 Bentov, 97.
19 Bentov, 98.
20 Bentov, 98.
21 Bentov, 99.
22 Bentov, 99.
23 Bentov, 100.
24 Bentov, 101.
25 Bentov, 101.
26 Bentov, 102.

December 12, 2024

Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness

The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness is a theory originally proposed by Giulio Tononi which has since been further developed by other researchers, including Christof Koch. It aims to explain why some physical processes generate subjective experiences while others do not, and why certain regions of the brain, like the neocortex, are associated with these experiences.¹ Evidently, he appeals to information theory, a technical domain which uses mathematics to determine the amount of entropy or uncertainty within a process or system.² Less uncertainty means more information, where complex systems like humans and animals contain more information than simpler systems like an ant or a camera. Relationships between information are generated from a “complex of elements”³ and when a number of relationships are established, we see greater amounts of integration.⁴ Tononi states “…to generate consciousness, a physical system must be able to discriminate among a large repertoire of states (information) and it must be unified; that is, it should be doing so as a single system, one that is not decomposable into a collection of causally independent parts (integration).”⁵ This measure of integration is symbolized by the Greek letter Φ (phi) because the line in the middle of the letter stands for ‘information’ and the circle around it indicates ‘integration’.⁶ More lines and circles!

In addition to considering the quantity of information generated by the system, IIT also considers the quality of this information generated by its mechanisms. Both attributes determine the quality of an experience. This experience can be conceived of as a “shape” in a qualia space made up of elements and the connections between them.⁷ Each possible state of the system is considered an axis of the qualia space, each of which is associated with a probability of actually existing as that state. A particular quale consists of a shape in this state space, specifying the quality of an experience. Therefore, viewing a red object results in a particular state and shape in the qualia space, a mathematical object supposedly representing neuronal activity.⁸ As such, Tononi claims that his theory provides a way to describe phenomenology in terms of mathematics.⁹ Sure, however, this doesn’t really explain much about consciousness or qualia, it just provides a mathematical description of it.

In later publications, he attempts to clarify this theory a bit further. Rather than appealing to activity in the brain, his theory “starts from the essential phenomenal properties of experience, or axioms, and infers postulates about the characteristics that are required of its physical substrate.”¹⁰ The reason is because subjective experiences exist intrinsically and are structured in terms of cause-and-effect in some physical substrate like a brain. Experiences, therefore, are identical to a conceptual structure, one expressible in mathematics.¹¹ By starting from axioms, which are self-evident essential properties, IIT “translates them into the necessary and sufficient conditions” for the physical matter which gives rise to consciousness and experience.¹²

Not satisfied? I hear ya barking, big dog. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued by the concept but was ultimately unimpressed because it doesn’t explain anything. What do we mean by ‘explain’? It’s one of those philosophically dense concepts to fully articulate, however, a dictionary definition can give us a vague idea. By ‘explain’, we mean some discussion which gives a reason or cause for something, demonstrating a “logical development or relationships of” the phenomenon in question,¹³ usually in terms of something else. For example, the reason it is sunny right now is because the present cloud coverage is insufficient for dampening the light coming from the sun. Here, ‘sunny’ is explained in terms of cloud coverage.

We are not alone in our dissatisfaction with IIT. On Sept. 16^th 2023, Stephen Fleming et al. published a scathing article calling IIT pseudoscience.¹⁴ The reason is because IIT is “untestable, unscientific, ‘magicalist’, or a ‘departure from science as we know it’” because the theory can apply to many different systems, like plants and lab-generated organoids.¹⁵ They state that until the theory is empirically testable, the label of ‘pseudoscience’ should apply to prevent misleading the public. The implications of IIT can have real-world effects, shaping the minds of the public about which kinds of systems are conscious and which are not, for example, robots and AI chatbots.

One of the authors of this article would go on to publish a longer essay on the topic to a preprint server on Nov. 30^th that same year. Keith Frankish reiterates the concerns of the original article and further explains the issues surrounding IIT. To summarize, the axiomatic method IIT employs is “an anomalous way of doing science” because the axioms are not founded on nor supported by observations.¹⁶ Instead, they appeal to introspection, an approach which has historically been dismissed or ridiculed by scientists because experiences cannot be externally verified.The introspective approach is one which belongs to the domain of philosophy, more akin to phenomenology than to science. Frankish grants that IIT could be a metaphysical theory, like panpsychism, but if this is the case, it is misleading to call it science.¹⁷ If IIT proponents insist that it is a science, well, then it becomes pseudoscience.

As a metaphysical theory, I’m of the opinion that it isn’t all that great. It doesn’t add anything to our understanding because the mathematical theory is rather complex and doesn’t provide a method for associating itself with scientific domains like neuroscience or evolutionary biology. It attempts to, however, it’s explanatorily unsatisfactory.

That said, the general idea of “integrated information” for consciousness isn’t exactly wrong. My perspective on consciousness, based on empirical data, is that consciousness is a property of organisms, not of brains. There are no neural correlates of consciousness because it emerges from the entire body as a self-organizing whole. It can be considered a Gestalt which arises from all of our sensory mechanisms and attentional processes for the sake of keeping the individual alive in dynamic environments. While the contents of subjective experience are private and unverifiable to others, that doesn’t make them any less real than the sun or gravity. They can be incorrect, as in the case of illusions and hallucinations, however, the experiences as experiences are very real to the subject experiencing them. They may not be derived from sense data portraying some element of the natural world, as in the cases of visual illusions, however, there is nonetheless some physical cause for them as experiences. For example, the bending of light creates a mirage; the ingestion of a substance with psychoactive effects creates hallucinations. The experiences are real, however, their referents may not exist as an aspect of the external world, and may just be an artifact of other neural or physiological processes.

I’ve been thinking about this for many years now, and since the articles calling IIT pseudoscience were published, have been thinking some more. Hence why I’m a bit “late to the game” on discussing it. Anyway, once I graduate from the PhD program, I’ll begin work on a book which explains my thoughts on consciousness in further detail, appealing to empirical evidence to back up my claims. I have written an extensive discussion on qualia, accompanied by a video, aiming to present a theory of subjective experiences from a perspective which takes scientific findings into consideration.

My sense is that, for a long time, our inability to resolve the issues surrounding qualia and consciousness was a product of academia. We’re so focused on specialization that the ability to incorporate findings and ideas from other domains is lost on many individuals, or is just not of interest to them. I hope we are slowly getting over this issue, especially with respect to consciousness, as philosophy of mind has a lot to learn from other domains like neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology, just to name a few.

Consciousness is a property of organisms like humans and animals for detecting features of the environment. It comes in degrees; a sea sponge is minimally conscious, while a gecko is comparatively more aware of its surroundings. Many birds and mammals demonstrate a capacity for relatively high-level consciousness and thus intelligence. Obviously humans are at the top of this pyramid, given our mastery over aspects of our world as seen in our technological advancements. Consciousness, as an organismic-level property, emerges from the coordination and integration of various physiological subsystems, from systems of organs to specific organs and tissues, all the way down to cells and cellular organelles. It is explained by the interactions of these subsystems, however, cannot be causally reduced to them. Though the brain clearly plays an important role for consciousness and subjective experiences, it is a mistake to be looking for causal properties of consciousness in the brain, like a region or circuit. Consciousness is an emergent property of bodies embedded within a wider physical environment.

From this perspective, we can and have developed an analogue of consciousness for machines, as per the work¹⁸ of Dr. Pentti Haikonen. The good news is that because this machine doesn’t use a computer or software, you don’t need to worry about current AIs becoming conscious and “taking over the world” or outsmarting humans. It physically isn’t possible, and the recent discussions I’ve posted aim to articulate ontologically why this is the case. You ought to be far more afraid of people and companies, as explained by this excellent video from the YouTube channel Internet of Bugs.

Lastly, I want to extend a big Thank You to Dr. John Campbell for inspiring me to work on this explanation of consciousness, as per the helpful comment he left me on my qualia video. I recommend following Dr. Campbell on YouTube, he is a fantastic researcher and educator, in addition to being an honest, critically-thinking gentleman who covers many interesting topics related to healthcare.

*A Scholar in his Study* by Thomas Wijck (1616 – 1677)

Works Cited

1 Giulio Tononi, “Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto,” The Biological Bulletin 215, no. 3 (December 1, 2008): 216, https://doi.org/10.2307/25470707.

2 Tononi, 217; Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Second (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1948), 17, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11810.001.0001; C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” The Bell System Technical Journal 27, no. 3 (July 1948): 393, https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x.

3 Tononi, “Consciousness as Integrated Information,” 217.
4 Tononi, 219.
5 Tononi, 219.
6 Tononi, 220.
7 Tononi, 224.
8 Tononi, 228.
9 Tononi, 229.

10 Giulio Tononi et al., “Integrated Information Theory: From Consciousness to Its Physical Substrate,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17, no. 7 (July 2016): 450, https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.44.

11 Tononi et al., 452.
12 Tononi et al., 460.

13 “Explain,” in Merriam-Webster.Com Dictionary (Merriam-Webster), accessed August 10, 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explain.

14 Stephen Fleming et al., “The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness as Pseudoscience” (PsyArXiv, September 16, 2023), https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zsr78.

15 Fleming et al., 2.

16 Keith Frankish, “Integrated Information Theory: Pseudoscience or Appropriately Anomalous Science?” (OSF, November 30, 2023), 1–2, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uscwt.

17 Frankish, 5.

18 Pentti O Haikonen, Robot Brains: Circuits and Systems for Conscious Machines (John Wiley & Sons, 2007); Pentti O Haikonen, “Qualia and Conscious Machines,” International Journal of Machine Consciousness, April 6, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793843009000207; Pentti O Haikonen, Consciousness and Robot Sentience, vol. 2, Series on Machine Consciousness (World Scientific, 2012), https://doi.org/10.1142/8486.

August 10, 2024

Virtuous Circles

Prior to the advent of artificial intelligence, cybernetics introduced a theory for the development of autonomous agents through functional circularity. These systems use their own outputs as inputs to generate feedback loops¹ to create a self-regulating process which is able to maintain autonomy and stability.² A simple example is the thermostat which uses sensors to measure air temperature.³ The reading is compared to the set threshold, and heat generated if the value is below the desired temperature. Once the heat has increased to meet the threshold, the thermostat detects the change and shuts off heat production. If the temperature drops below the threshold, the thermostat repeats the process automatically.

Since ancient Greece, circular causality was considered to be problematic given its tendency to produce logical paradoxes.⁴ One example is “This statement is false” because if the entire statement is true, it contradicts itself. If the statement is evaluated as false, this again produces a contradiction because the statement is indeed true, given that it declares itself to be false. In this instance of self-reference, the contradiction cannot be resolved.

As mentioned in a previous post, some instances of self-reference are not paradoxical, particularly with respect to living organisms. A cat can learn to pounce by noting the difference between its desired end-state, to leap on top of a toy for example, and its actual end-state, which falls short and misses it. The reason this doesn’t produce a paradox is because the cat, as a natural system, contains far more complexity than the statement above. Visual and tactile cues can be reinterpreted by its relatively sophisticated brain to adjust its muscle movement on the next jump, reducing the error until it lands successfully.

The cat contains parts which act as wholes, while the statement does not; its parts are simple and concrete. The nervous system can be considered as a whole, acting as a functional unit within a larger system, the animal as a self-contained individual. The statement, however, generates a paradox because it hits a dead-end so-to-speak, as there isn’t any additional functionality to resolve the act of self-reference. Essentially, it contains two parts: the statement and a binary value.

The argument I am proposing is that formal systems, even complex ones, are two-dimensional while natural systems, even simple ones, are three-dimensional. The two dimensions include structure and information; in the paradox example above, the structure refers to the statement and the information is the binary value. Natural systems, however, include structure, information, and energy. This third dimension, energy, is added as a consequence of the type of structure involved. I’m still working on this part and I might change my mind on this.

I can see why esoteric wisdom is presented in metaphor; it’s difficult to articulate abstract metaphysical ideas. Following suit, let’s think about a circle in two dimensions versus three dimensions.

A line segment which loops back upon itself creates a circle. The metaphor is a snake which eats its own tail and dies of starvation; the paradoxical statement “dies” as a result of the contradiction it generates. It cannot be true and not true, breaking itself in the process.

Fun fact: you can save a snake from starving to death in this situation by holding up a vessel of strong rubbing alcohol to its nose. This triggers its gag reflex which frees its tail.

In three dimensions, however, we gain a new axis, one which allows for upward movement. The circle becomes a spiral as it gains height in this new dimension. Though we are back to where we started, something is added and can thus look down to see the vertical distance traveled. Alternatively, the spiral can descend, coming full circle but on a lower plane. The former is considered a virtuous circle while the latter is a vicious circle.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Florida
Photo by Mary Mark Ockerbloom

These examples may abstractly illustrate the point, but how are we to explain this using normal physics? The answer seems to reside in levels created by nested systems, creating irreducible parts to be leveraged in cases of self-reference.

For example, the nervous system is an integrated whole⁵ which responds to the organism’s own actions. Selecting a particular pathway provides a linear input-output process, for example, from sensory mechanisms in the skin, through the nerves in the spinal cord, into the primary sensory cortex in the brain, to the motor cortex in the brain, and back down again to the hand. The system can be represented as a simpler interaction but it cannot be reduced to a simpler system. As a unit, the nervous system contains additional functionality which the the parts do not possess. Leveraging other aspects of the nervous system, say visual information, provides a “way out” for any situation which may cause a paradox of sorts.

At least this is what I’m thinking for now. A complex whole comprised of subsystems can account for self-reference. Can a formal system, even comprised of a number of complex subsystems, account for self-reference? Perhaps in some cases, if the system is “looking inward” from a broader scope than the thing it is referring to. In cases where self-reference fails, it might be due to a need to “move outward” and reference something beyond the current scope. It might also be due to a logical paradox from within, as seen in Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, or perhaps due to the fact that formal systems cannot account for semantics. I’m not exactly sure at this point. I am going to keep working on this but for now, here’s an attempt at clarification.

Works Cited

1 Francis Heylighen and Cliff Joslyn, “Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics,” in Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology (Third Edition), ed. Robert A. Meyers (New York: Academic Press, 2003), 160, https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-12-227410-5/00161-7.

2 John Johnston, The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI (The MIT Press, 2008), 26, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262101264.001.0001.

3 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Second (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1948), 131, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11810.001.0001.

4 Thomas Fischer and Christiane M. Herr, “An Introduction to Design Cybernetics,” in Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New, ed. Thomas Fischer and Christiane M. Herr (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2019), 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18557-2_1.

5 Wiener, Cybernetics, 13.

August 6, 2024

Older posts →