Contextualising common ontologies from the perspective of a mostly grounded consciousness-based semantic model

On a previous page, I presented a mostly grounded clear semantic model of conscious reality, having first explained what I mean by clear semantic modelling in both the grounded and theoretical senses; essentially, that grounded semantic models rely only on facts about reality grounded in experience, whereas theoretical models make use of (proposed) contingent facts, and that clear semantic models conform to a set of criteria for semantic and conceptual clarity, and representational accuracy.

The model is one in which the light of consciousness shines through portals of selfhood, with experience and reflective consciousness (being conscious of being conscious) being possible due to, respectively, the mentality and reflectivity of the energy of experience, the latter of which provides that that energy "recognises" and "self-reflects" consciousness.

On this page, I characterise the essence of the four common theoretical ontologies of physicalism, micro-panpsychism, cosmopsychism/idealism, and dualism in terms of that mostly grounded model:

Physicalism, the theory that everything is matter or is reducible to matter, denies any mentality to energy. It either denies the light of consciousness altogether (eliminativism, the theory that consciousness is an illusion), or it proposes that the light of consciousness can be recognised and self-reflect in non-mental energy (identity theory, the theory that consciousness is the brain), or it theorises that rather than the light of consciousness shining outwards from portals of selfhood, the darkness of matter funnels inwards to those portals and creates light which, depending on the theory, does not shine out (emergentism, the theory that consciousness emerges out of the brain, and epiphenomenalism, the theory that consciousness is produced by the brain but is causally ineffective, like steam off a steam engine). It thus is conceptually incoherent in all of its forms. Its incoherence seems to stem from an unwillingness amongst its defenders to accept consciousness as a grounded fact, and to instead try to infer or deny it.

Panpsychism as micro-panpsychism, the theory that each element of matter is conscious, theorises that a multitude of portals, each associated with an element of non-mental energy (matter), combine to create the portals which are at the heart of our own selves. This is first of all unparsimonious, in that it is not necessary to posit those portals associated with elements of non-mental energy, and, secondly, arguably conceptually incoherent, in that it might be seen even to imply that a multiplicity of portals is identical to a single portal - which is incoherent because (the degree of) plurality is an essential quality and thus a multiplicity cannot be identical to a singularity.

Panpsychism as cosmopsychism is essentially the same theory as the first sense of idealism described next.

Idealism in the first sense essentially theorises that all energy has mentality, and, potentially, reflectivity. It could be seen to be "ideal" in the sense that, potentially, given the right energetic structure, a portal through which the light of consciousness shines can be formed anywhere (with this being an "ideally" desirable state of affairs). Alternatively: idealism in the second sense theorises that reality consists in a network of communicating minds - communicating either client-server, peer-to-peer, or both - in which each mind is a portal through which the light of consciousness shines out. A later page describes this second sense of idealism in more detail.

Dualism, the theory that the mental and the physical are distinct, essentially theorises that only the energy of the mind (in the broad sense) has mentality and reflectivity. The light of consciousness, then, cannot either result in experience or be recognised and self-reflect in the non-reflective, non-mental physical matter of shared reality.

🔗Of the major ontologies, then, idealism and dualism are the only ones which are both coherent and parsimonious. It might be hypothetically possible to distinguish to some extent between the theories of idealism (in the first sense) and dualism. Idealism (in the first sense) would tend to be confirmed if self-reflective artificial consciousnesses are created - consciousnesses which are conscious that they are conscious and can communicate as much. This, though, would not necessarily falsify dualism, because there are hypothetical scenarios too in which the same would be possible under dualism, such as, for example, the scenario in which mental, reflective energy accretes around certain non-mental, physical energies so sufficiently as to form a mind associated with the purely physical energy.

The next page in this series presents an analysis of the semantic model which is the idealism of Bernardo Kastrup.