Pluralist and Relational Metaphysics—Additional Theories

Some theories of phenomenal consciousness resist classification within the standard alternatives of materialism, non-reductive physicalism, quantum & dimensional, information, panpsychism, neutral monism, dualism, idealism, and phenomenology, because they locate consciousness neither in a single kind of fundamental substance nor straightforwardly on one side of the mental–physical divide. Instead, they propose that phenomenal consciousness arises through, consists in, or is mediated by relations among multiple ontologically significant principles, domains, poles, fields, subjects and objects, or processes. What is fundamental may therefore be not consciousness alone, matter alone, or even one neutral substrate, but a structured plurality whose relations make phenomenal consciousness possible.

These theories are grouped here within the Neutral Monisms category as the closest available ontological neighborhood, but they should not thereby be understood as neutral monisms in the strict sense. Neutral monism holds that mental and physical reality derive from, or constitute different organizations or aspects of, one fundamental kind of reality that is intrinsically neither mental nor physical. The theories collected here typically share neutral monism’s central motivation—to avoid making either physical matter or consciousness itself the sole ontological foundation—but relax its requirement of a single neutral fundamental kind. Some posit several co-original principles; others treat consciousness as an interface, relation, coupling, mediation, or process between distinct aspects of reality. Still others make the relation between the elements more fundamental to explaining consciousness than any element considered on its own.

Neutral Monism is therefore their taxonomic home primarily by proximity rather than strict identity. On the Landscape’s roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist axis, it occupies the conceptual territory between theories that build consciousness entirely from the physical and theories that make consciousness or an irreducibly mental reality fundamental. Pluralist and Relational theories generally inhabit this same intermediate territory while refusing to resolve it into either a single neutral ground or two independent substances. Placing them under Materialism would impose physicalism; under Idealism, the ultimacy of consciousness; under Panpsychism, ubiquitous phenomenal or protophenomenal properties; and under Dualism, an ontological bifurcation that many of these theories explicitly seek to avoid.

This grouping is also distinct from the Landscape’s Materialism/Relational theories. There, relational organization is invoked within an ultimately physicalist ontology to explain consciousness. Here, relationality is itself metaphysically consequential: the relevant relations, principles, or domains cannot simply be reduced to physical processes.

“Relational and Pluralist Metaphysics” is thus a deliberately inclusive boundary category for theories whose defining contribution is an ontological architecture of relation, plurality, mediation, or process. Their placement within Neutral Monisms acknowledges their nearest conceptual affinity without falsely classifying them as strict neutral monisms.

Note that not every theory here must be metaphysically pluralist in the strict technical sense. Some may instead be fundamentally processual, relational, or mediating and resist strict neutral monism for another reason. Therefore, “Pluralist and Relational” names the family resemblance defining the collection, not two necessary-and-sufficient conditions for membership.

Farhadi’s Trilogy Theory: Fundamental Awareness and Local Consciousness

Physician/gastroenterologist-scientist Ashkan Farhadi proposes The Trilogy Theory of Consciousness (TTC), which posits that awareness is the ontological prerequisite of phenomenal consciousness, whereas phenomenal consciousness is the localized operational realization of awareness through the recursive interaction of intention and self-reflection in living systems.

While many contemporary theories treat awareness as synonymous with phenomenal consciousness, TTC distinguishes awareness as its ontological prerequisite rather than phenomenal consciousness itself. TTC considers awareness fundamental but, unlike conventional panpsychism, does not attribute awareness or phenomenal consciousness universally to physical entities. The physical world remains independently real, while suitable living physical systems, through interaction with the awareness field, develop subjective awareness that enables awareness-based choice selection and a sense of agency, together giving rise to consciousness. In TTC, consciousness is neither universal nor a property of a being; rather, it is a local phenomenon resulting from a unique pathway of awareness-based information processing within an entity. TTC further argues that awareness cannot be reduced to neural computation, information processing, computational complexity, or quantum mechanisms alone. The Quantum Trilogy Theory of Consciousness (QTTC) extends this framework by proposing Quantum Field Theory (QFT) as one possible physical realization of awareness, without claiming quantum processes as the unique ontological substrate of consciousness.

TTC is an explanatory framework developed to address unresolved explanatory gaps in consciousness studies. In addition to the Hard Problem of consciousness, the theory identifies the “selection gap,” explaining why only selected information enters subjective awareness despite extensive unconscious information processing, and the “directive gap,” explaining how subjective experience generates intentional directives that can influence cognition and behavior. TTC proposes a unified functional architecture for addressing these interdependent problems.

According to TTC, awareness is ontologically fundamental but does not, by itself, constitute phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness emerges from the recursive interaction of awareness, intention, and self-reflection. Intention is operationalized through Awareness-Based Choice Selection (ABCS), by which awareness actively selects and directs informational states, while self-reflection generates the momentary sense of agency or the experienced "I." Neural activity provides the biological implementation of consciousness but does not constitute or fully explain phenomenal consciousness.

TTC further distinguishes between responsiveness, an automated unconscious response to incoming information in living systems that produces adaptive or goal-oriented behavior, and awareness-based processing, which alone generates phenomenal consciousness. Consequently, sophisticated goal-oriented behavior, including that of contemporary artificial intelligence, which exemplifies responsiveness, is not considered sufficient evidence of consciousness. The theory also incorporates free will as an intrinsic organizational component of awareness and consciousness rather than an independent metaphysical property.

QTTC extends TTC by proposing that awareness may be physically realized as localized excitations of a Universal Awareness Field within Quantum Field Theory, providing one possible ontological realization while preserving TTC as a substrate-independent explanatory framework. Together, TTC and QTTC provide a unified framework for awareness, agency, free will, and consciousness that remains conceptually coherent, experimentally falsifiable, and open to future empirical refinement.

References

Farhadi, A. (2023). Trilogy Theory of Consciousness (TTC): A new paradigm of consciousness.Neuropsychiatry (London), 13(4), 1–16.

Farhadi, A. (2025). Awareness-based choice selection: improving the decision-making efficiency by using known information. Curr Psychol 44, 13145–13153 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-08072-8

Farhadi, A. (2021). There is no “I” in “AI”. AI & Society, 36, 1035–1046. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-01136-2

Farhadi, A. (2025). Toward a field-based framework of awareness: Quantum Trilogy Theory of Consciousness.Journal of Modern Physics & Quantum Neuroscience, 1(3), 1–14.https://doi.org/10.63721/25JPQN0128

Tubb’s Quantum Numinous

Permaculturalist and independent researcher Timothy Tubb proposes Quantum Numinous theory which has phenomenal consciousness as the fundamental, non-quantized relational "operating system" of a participatory universe—identified with the Correlation of Quantum Information (CQI) and enacted through a tripartite Observer–Wave–Particle (OWP) loop that mediates between two primordial fields to collapse non-local potentiality into localized matter.

On this account, the hard problem is recast: consciousness is not an emergent product of complex matter but the relational precondition for matter's appearance. The OWP loop couples an observer-function (the relating self), a wave-function (non-local potentiality, characterized as obtaining "at the speed of light," with space, time, and information unified), and a particle-function (localized matter). The observer mediates the field, collapsing it into quantized particles fitted to its immediate environmental and evolutionary context.

Two poles underwrite the scheme: a Light Field—source of information, animation, and expansion—and a Plenum/Void, an "effective zero" of inertia and density supplying the structural counter-resistance held necessary for quantization. Phenomenal consciousness is construed as the symbiotic correlation between these poles. Tubb further assigns light, energy, and space to the Light Field and heat, mass, and time to the Plenum/Void, deriving an energy–mass–in–spacetime paradigm from their interaction.

Because consciousness is defined as purely relational, the theory carries panpsychist implications: every progressively self-organizing system, from cellular structures to mind–body organisms, is said to possess some quotient of consciousness, with biological evolution refining a universal capacity for correlation (photosynthesis and retinal vision serve as illustrations). Subjective experience is the internal realization of this correlation. The theory presents itself as a "technical blueprint" repositioning inquiry from the study of inert matter to the mechanics of the conscious self.

Note that while Tubb's theory has "Quantum" in its title, and quantum mechanics participates in its architecture, it does not constitute consciousness. The theory defines phenomenal consciousness as a fundamental, non-quantized relational process and explicitly calls it the “symbiotic correlation” between two primordial poles, mediated by an Observer–Wave–Particle relation.

Blackwell's Intermediary Consciousness: An Interface Between Timeless Being and Spacetime Existence

AI/IT scientist/engineer Grahame Blackwell holds that consciousness is neither the fundamental ground of being nor an emergent property of matter, but the interface between them—the speculative mechanism by which an eternal, non-spatiotemporal being maintains a hybrid existence with a physical body in space and time (Blackwell, 2010a). The proposal rests on a layered ontology—biological over chemical over physical over quantum—with a further stratum below quantum mechanics that he argues must be timeless and nonlocal. Phenomenal consciousness on this account is bidirectional traffic across that boundary: qualia and the texture of embodied experience are conveyed inward to the eternal being, while the continuous-present, ubiquitous-here character of the deeper level is partitioned outward into a format a spacetime organism can process.

Blackwell's route to the interface runs through his claimed reconstruction (non-standard) of physics. He argues that elementary particles are localized configurations of electromagnetic energy, that the effects attributed to Special Relativity follow from this structure rather than from relativistic postulates (Blackwell, 2011a), and that spacetime curvature is rationalized on the same basis (Blackwell, 2011b). Material reality becomes a four-dimensional "tapestry of light" (Blackwell, 2007), with two consequences he takes to bear on consciousness: the universe is one undivided whole described by a single composite wavefunction, and every organism is woven into it as a complex energy pattern.

What underlies the tapestry, Blackwell argues, must be independent of time (Blackwell, 2010b) and nonlocal, the latter supported by entanglement results (Blackwell, 2026). If the essential self is rooted below spacetime, there is no beginning or end to it and no Prime Cause, since what has always existed cannot have been caused; the question why there is something rather than nothing is dissolved rather than answered, and the hard problem of consciousness encounters the same fate.

The interface performs two tasks. Inward, it delivers to the timeless being the qualia available only to an embodied organism, which Blackwell takes to be the point of embodiment. Outward, it imposes temporal succession and spatial extension on a substrate having neither, and transmits the value systems informing free choice at the physical level. Persons are accordingly "sparks of consciousness," the eternal embodied within the physical.

The framework addresses why there should be experience at all—embodiment furnishes something to a being that would otherwise lack it—but does not specify how the interface operates, why particular neural states correlate with particular qualia, or what constrains the partitioning into space and time. Its supporting physics diverges from standard treatments of Special and General Relativity, so the consciousness proposal inherits whatever confidence attaches to that reconstruction.

References

Blackwell, G. K. (2007). Tapestry of Light. Transfinite Mind Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9554382-0-2.

Blackwell, G. K. (2010a). Layers of Reality: Foundations of Our Space-Time Existence. Transfinite Mind Ltd. https://transfinitemind.com/layers.html

Blackwell, G. K. (2010b). Time doesn't exist: A step-by-step proof. Reality Check (blog). https://grahameb.com/realitycheck/?p=425

Blackwell, G. K. (2011a). Elementary sub-atomic particles: The earliest adaptive systems. Kybernetes, 40(1/2), 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921111118004.

Blackwell, G. K. (2011b). Cosmic system dynamics: A cyberneticist's perspective on gravitation. Kybernetes, 40(9/10), 1319–1330. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921111169413/.

Blackwell, G. K. (2016). Atoms of Light and The Relativity Myth. Transfinite Mind Ltd. ISBN 978-0-9554382-4-0.

Blackwell, G. K. (2026). Nonlocal realism. Beyond Spacetime (Substack). https://drgblackwell.substack.com/p/nonlocal-realism.

Huang's Dynamic Self-Model

Buddhist scholar Wenge Huang presents what he terms a novel 'Dynamic Self-Model', inspired by empirical insights from Theravada Buddhist meditation: the self is merely an illusion emerging from the rapid alternation between 'awareness' (A) and 'awareness-of-awareness' (AoA). As a core component, he defines AoA—which cannot be detected under ordinary conditions—as a spontaneous process distinct from effortful 'meta-cognition' and attentional 'meta-awareness', and he posits it as a prime candidate for the 'higher-order representation' in higher-order theories of consciousness. This mechanism is revealed by vipassana, the nature of which is enhanced awareness induced in Buddhist meditation, making contemplating the five aggregates possible, just like 'watching' a slow-motion film: if regarding each 'aggregate' as an 'awareness,' then contemplating the five aggregates would reveal a subsequent 'awareness-of-awareness' that arises immediately after each aggregate (or awareness).

This conceptual model not only elucidates the core mechanism of how the self is dynamically generated, but also offers a novel synthesis for the long-standing debate between higher-order and reflexive theories of consciousness (see below). Although empirically validating any model of consciousness would confront immense challenges and uncertainties, Huang says that this model suggests a preliminary and falsifiable neurodynamic hypothesis as a bridge to future research: a unique 'anti-phase' theta-gamma coupling, where sensory gamma activity (A) and prefrontal gamma activity (AoA) are driven by opposite phases of the same theta rhythm (Huang, 2024).

Huang claims that the Dynamic Self-Model can address the deep and persistent theoretical schism in consciousness studies between higher-order theories (a mental state becomes conscious via a separate higher-order representation) and reflexive theories (consciousness is an intrinsic, built-in property of experience itself) by offering a temporal dynamic solution instead of traditional static structural solutions: "It is precisely because reflexive theories are empirically grounded in phenomenological observations that the above new dimension enables a true synthesis of the two opposing views by demonstrating how an ontologically two-tier (higher-order) structure can—through a dynamic process—create a phenomenologically single-tier (reflexive) experience. Simultaneously, since this process generates the self as an effect rather than serving a pre-existing one, it dissolves the classic infinite-regress problem in higher-order theories" (Huang, 2025).

Sarma’s Nonphysical Systems

Systems engineer A.S. Sarma posits that consciousness is a nonphysical system that does not involve matter or energy; it is a zero-energy system that is not instrumentable. It existed before the Big Bang, and exists after the Big Bang as part of Nature, which includes the human brain.

Sarma takes two approaches: a system engineering study of the brain, mind, and consciousness, and a study of the physics of nonphysical systems and their role in nature. Consciousness is a noun, he says; awareness is its property. The first approach integrates the brain and René Descartes's mind, which includes intellect and processes knowledge. Consciousness's function is to experience knowledge. Only Consciousness experiences knowledge and is the ‘I-ness.’ Input sensors change the states of incoming sensory information to neural states. When states change, knowledge jumps the state by abstraction. Intellect presents knowledge to consciousness in the state in which the brain's sensors received it; this is the presentation format. Consciousness cognizes or experiences knowledge by abstraction from the presentation format. Abstracted knowledge does not contain matter. Like consciousness, it is a nonphysical, zero-energy system, and not instrumentable.

The second approach leverages the physics of nonphysical systems, where the presence of matter makes the system real and physical, and systems without matter are non-real and nonphysical. There are many nonphysical systems in Nature. Before the Big Bang, matter did not exist. Only the primordial void, which itself is a nonphysical system. Matter and physical systems emerged from the primordial void as Nature. Nature has nonphysical parts, which are a combination of “dynamism” (knowledge, memory, time, space) and consciousness. Nature is aware. This is consciousness, the experiencer of Knowledge.

N. Murugesan’s Three Types of Consciousness

IT/AI professional and Indian spiritual practitioner N. Murugesan has consciousness as fundamental reality—eternal, indestructible, and irreducible. It does not arise from matter but is capable of associating with matter. Its defining attribute is the ability to be aware of oneself and of an external environment.

Murugesan posits three different types of consciousness, each of which is eternal. The first is ‘matter-consciousness,’ a homogeneous and minimally aware state, comparable to the faint awareness of deep sleep. The second is human, or individuated ātmanic consciousness, which is self-aware, possesses a unique and indestructible identity, and is capable of reflection and agency. The third is supreme consciousness, singular and all-encompassing, which grounds the other two and fully embodies awareness, knowledge, and bliss (Sat, Chit, Anand).

Conscious awareness involves three elements: the object (the external world), the subject (the conscious entity), and the medium (consciousness stuff). This medium, evolving from raw physical quantum matter to refined forms such as mind or soul, connects subject and object, much like language or mathematics conveys meaning. While consciousness stuff is universal, individual differences arise from consciousness itself, owing to the irreducibly subjective nature of experience.

Conscious states are neither identical with brain activity nor with the subject itself but are states of consciousness stuff shaped by both object and subject. Consciousness is unified and has no component parts. It is irreducible, non-physical, and does not admit degrees. Consciousness transcends space and time, existing non-spatially, while the material world is anchored in it. Quantum physics may explain how matter-consciousness functions as a medium, but consciousness itself remains beyond physical laws.

Consciousness is not passive; it can actively influence actions and decisions, shaping reality. All life forms possess consciousness, but its expression varies with the refinement of the medium, reaching its fullest development in humans.

Consciousness can never be fully grasped through third-person methods. Because consciousness is always the seer, it cannot be reduced to an object that can be fully seen. The seer cannot be seen. This limitation is not due to a lack of capability but to the intrinsic nature of consciousness itself.

Müller’s Co-Original Principles: Consciousness as Relational Appearing

Independent author Fabian Müller’s Co-Original Principles Theory proposes that phenomenal consciousness is neither a substance nor an agent but an event of “reflective appearing” that occurs when an Observer (defined strictly as the principle of seeing, rather than an a priori subject) encounters a counterpart capable of sustaining the relation—a condition he calls conditio speculi. The Observer is not itself the conscious subject; rather, subjectivity emerges through this relation. Consciousness can therefore arise, persist, or disappear depending on whether the relational conditions for phenomenal appearing obtain.

Müller situates this account within a metaphysics of four “co-original” and mutually irreducible principles: Being, Intelligence, Observer, and Love. Being is the condition for anything to be present; Intelligence is an ordering capacity more fundamental than articulated thought or language; Observer is the principle of seeing; and Love is treated as an ontological principle rather than simply an emotion. Consciousness is distinct from all four: it arises through their relational organization rather than constituting the ultimate ground itself.

The proposal has affinities with phenomenological accounts of intentionality and relational structure (Husserl, 1900–1901), but it adds an explicit metaphysical architecture. It also differs from analytic idealism, because consciousness is not the sole fundamental reality (Kastrup, 2019), and from panpsychism, because consciousness is not attributed ubiquitously to matter. Nor is consciousness said to emerge from a physical substrate or a derived physical mechanism. The theory’s distinctive claim is therefore a form of metaphysical pluralism in which phenomenal consciousness becomes present through a relation involving fundamental principles rather than being identical with any fundamental principle itself.

References

Husserl, E. (2001 [1900–1901]). Logical Investigations. Trans. J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge.

Kastrup, B. (2019). The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality. Winchester: Iff Books.