Consciousness

Behaviour is not evidence of inner experience. We have no detector for consciousness in any system we did not already believe to be conscious.

The brain as transducer, not source — proposed by James, Bergson, Huxley. Compatible with neural correlates but harder to falsify.

The view that the universe as a whole is conscious — sometimes called cosmopsychism. Distinct from panpsychism (which puts mind in atomic matter) and from idealism (which says reality is mental).

The materialist / physicalist view: lesions, drugs, anesthesia, and imaging all show tight brain–mind coupling, and physical mechanism explains an enormous range of phenomena. Why neural activity feels like anything at all remains the open exception.

If consciousness is basic, the 'hard problem' dissolves. The cost is a major break with the standard physicalist picture.

From Berkeley to Kastrup: matter is appearance within a more fundamental mind. Coherent, ancient, contested.

Descartes' view that mind and body are two distinct substances that somehow interact. The most intuitive position; also the one neuroscience has worked hardest to discredit.

If basic matter has a hint of experience, complex brains can build complex minds. The 'combination problem' is the catch.

What consciousness is, how it relates to brains, and whether it's basic to reality.

The nature of subjective experience.

Mind–brain relation, qualia, intentionality.

Whether anything of mind continues.

Cryptomnesia, anoxia models, cold reading. Counter-anchors.

A comparative guide to materialism, dualism, panpsychism, idealism, filter theories, and consciousness-first interpretations.

A balanced synthesis of the strongest and weakest evidence across afterlife, consciousness, reincarnation, mystical, psi, and practice claims.

The standard sceptical argument against AI consciousness; required reading for any serious treatment.

Reference for claims that the universe itself is divine or conscious; it helps keep poetic, religious, and metaphysical versions of the claim distinct.

Frames the anthropic / multiverse / design debate that simulation, mathematical-universe, and theism claims all engage with.

The reference work for what 'physicalism' even means before any empirical question is asked.

Functionalism is the implicit metaphysics behind the case that AI could be conscious.

Use this as the philosophical background for solipsism and for disputed minds in non-human or artificial systems. It is context, not direct evidence that any specific entity is conscious.