This Landscape of Consciousness website presents about 500 diverse theories (explanations) of consciousness, organizes them into a taxonomy, and explores their implications for big questions, such as AI consciousness and life after death. The taxonomy arrays the ~500 theories into 11 consciousness categories—one of which, Materialism, has 13 subcategories. About 450 theories have their own pages and descriptions.
Open I seek an organizing framework for diverse theories of consciousness and to explore their impact on big questions. My central theses are twofold: (i) understanding consciousness at this point cannot be limited to selected ways of thinking or knowing, but should seek expansive yet rational diversity, and (ii) issues such as AI consciousness, virtual immortality, meaning/purpose/value, life after death, free will, etc., cannot be understood except in the light of particular theories of consciousness.
OpenThis Landscape of Consciousness website develops a taxonomy of theories (explanations) and their implications. There are about 500 theories across 11 categories (Materialism has 13 subcategories); about 450 theories have their own pages and descriptions. To get an overall sense of this rather vast territory, we have four ways to visualize the Landscape and to find and access each theory.
Landscape Grid. Landscape Categories. All Landscape Theories. Landscape Map. Interactive Visualizations.
OpenFollowing are brief comments on consciousness from participants on Closer To Truth (arranged alphabetically). Perspectives are diverse. Quotes are from the Closer To Truth website – www.closertotruth.com.
OpenThe meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness. While the meta-problem is not a theory or explanation of consciousness, it gives insight into the ways of thinking of leading theorists and it probes the psychosocial structure of the field.
OpenDiverse explanations or theories of consciousness are arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms. Categories: Materialism Theories (philosophical, neurobiological, electromagnetic field, computational and informational, homeostatic and affective, embodied and enactive, relational, representational, language, phylogenetic evolution); Non-Reductive Physicalism; Quantum Theories; Integrated Information Theory; Panpsychisms; Monisms; Dualisms; Idealisms; Anomalous and Altered States Theories; Challenge Theories.
OpenThe Landscape team members. Acknowledgements for Landscape and Closer To Truth related to consciousness.
Open