Consciousness: I’m AWaRe

IAWR (Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational)

1. Rethinking Consciousness
2. Historical and Theoretical Foundations
3. Core Principles of the IARW Hypothesis
4. The Hard Problem Reframed
5. Integration with Existing Frameworks
6. Empirical Foundations and Predictions
7. Philosophical Implications
8. Broader Implications
9. Toward a Unified Understanding
10. Conceptual Frameworks, Kataleptic Impressions, and McDowell’s Contribution
11. Appendix I: AI as a Natural Extension of Human Complexity
12. Appendix II: Cosmos as a Relational Self — Applying the IAWR Hypothesis to the Universe

Consciousness, the core of subjective experience, stands as one of the most profound and enduring puzzles in both science and philosophy. Despite centuries of inquiry — from the metaphysical contemplations of early modern thinkers to the rigorous empirical strategies of contemporary cognitive science — questions regarding the nature of consciousness, its origin, and its integration with the physical world remain unresolved.¹,2 How does the vivid, qualitative dimension of experience arise from neural activity? Can subjective awareness be reconciled with the material reality of the brain and body?

Historically, the search for answers has often been shaped by dualistic and mechanistic paradigms. Cartesian dualism — famously introduced by René Descartes — distinguished an immaterial mind from a mechanical body, setting the stage for centuries of debate and leaving an “explanatory gap” that philosophers still grapple with today.³ Subsequent mechanistic and computational models of cognition, while illuminating brain function and neural correlates of consciousness, struggled to account for the felt richness of experience.⁴ Attempts to pinpoint neural correlates, quantify integrated information,⁵ or model broadcasting architectures⁶ advanced our understanding, yet none decisively bridged the subjective-objective divide. Even enactivist and embodied frameworks, which emphasize that cognition is inseparable from bodily action and environmental context,⁷ enriched our perspective but have not fully resolved the “hard problem” highlighted by David Chalmers.⁸

The Integrated Adaptive Relational Workspace (IAWR) hypothesis offers a transformative new perspective on these challenges. Drawing on relational ontology, enactivist philosophy, systems theory, and empirical findings in neuroscience and cognitive science, IAWR reframes consciousness as a dynamic, relational, and intrinsically embodied phenomenon.⁹-¹⁰ Rather than treating awareness as emerging from discrete neural modules or from hierarchical layers of representation, IAWR highlights the interconnected causal dynamics of brain, body, and environment, asserting that consciousness is relationally constituted and temporally extended.¹¹ This approach resonates with process philosophy¹² and relational metaphysics that view reality not as static substances but as networks of interacting events and processes.

This article introduces the IAWR hypothesis as a unifying framework that integrates insights from Integrated Information Theory,⁵ Global Workspace Theory,⁶ predictive processing models,¹³ enactivism,⁷ and ecological approaches,¹⁴ while also acknowledging their limitations. By situating consciousness within the self-organizing interactions of relational systems, IAWR provides a testable, empirically grounded, and philosophically robust account of subjective experience. It transcends dualism and reductionism, embracing instead a holistic model where embodiment, environment, and temporal coherence form the warp and weft of awareness.

In what follows, we invite readers to reconsider long-standing assumptions about consciousness. By rejecting mind-body dualisms and embracing the relational character of existence, the IAWR hypothesis opens new vistas for understanding one of humanity’s most intricate mysteries — how awareness arises as an emergent property of integrated, adaptive, and causally interactive systems. This perspective has the potential to inform neuroscience, artificial intelligence, ethics, ecology, and cultural paradigms, guiding us toward a deeper comprehension of consciousness and our place in a relational cosmos.

¹ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
² Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
³ René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 1996 [1641]).
4 Patricia S. Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (MIT Press 1986).
⁵ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216.
⁶ Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press 1988); Stanislas Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (Penguin 2014).
⁷ Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004); James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
8 David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
⁹ Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Reidel 1980).
¹⁰ Anil K. Seth, Adam B. Barrett, and Lucia M. Barnett, ‘Causal Density and Integrated Information as Measures of Conscious Level’ (2011) 3 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 373.
¹¹ Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (Springer 1991); Barry Dainton, Stream of Consciousness (Routledge 2000).
¹² Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (Free Press 1929).
¹³ Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’ (1998) 58 Analysis 7; Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (MIT Press 1997).
¹⁴ Evan Thompson and Miguel A. Sepúlveda, ‘Enactive Cognition: Rethinking the Mind’ (2020) in Seager W. (ed), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism (Routledge) 401.

Chapter 2: Historical and Theoretical Foundations (With IAWR)

2.1 Cartesian Dualism: Mind and Matter Divided

The modern discourse on consciousness owes a significant intellectual debt to René Descartes (1596–1650), who famously drew a distinction between the mind (res cogitans) and the body (res extensa) in his Meditations on First Philosophy.¹ This dualistic framework suggested that consciousness was an immaterial substance, wholly distinct from the physical world. While it highlighted the uniqueness of subjective experience, Cartesian dualism left unresolved the core question of how an immaterial mind could interact causally with a material body.²

This unresolved “explanatory gap” would echo through the centuries. On one hand, Descartes’ model³ resonated with intuitions about the irreducibility of inner experience; on the other, it lacked a scientifically coherent mechanism for how the brain’s physical processes could yield phenomena like sensation, intentionality, and thought.⁴ Later critics, such as Gilbert Ryle, would dismiss dualism as the “ghost in the machine,” arguing that it rested on a category mistake.⁵ Despite these criticisms, the dualistic habit of separating conscious experience from physical substrates remained deeply embedded in Western thought, influencing how researchers approached the mind-brain relationship.

2.2 The Shift to Relational and Dynamic Systems

By the 19th and 20th centuries, advances in biology, physics, and early neuroscience revealed the limitations of clockwork metaphors for explaining life and cognition.⁶ Living systems, it became apparent, are non-linear, self-organizing, and open to their environments, defying simple mechanistic models.⁷ In this new intellectual climate, scholars sought frameworks that could capture the complexity, adaptability, and relationality of cognitive processes.

Ecological psychology, pioneered by James J. Gibson, reframed perception as a direct, embodied engagement with environmental affordances rather than a passive reception of sensory data.⁸ Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela introduced the concept of autopoiesis, emphasizing that living systems continuously produce and maintain themselves through dynamic interactions with their surroundings.⁹ Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory reinforced the idea that complex phenomena emerge from relational networks rather than isolated parts.¹⁰

This convergence on relational, dynamic, and systemic views laid essential groundwork for rethinking consciousness. Rather than treating the mind as a separate substance or a localized entity within the skull, these approaches suggested that cognition emerges from ongoing interactions among brain, body, and environment.¹¹ Such perspectives challenge the residual dualism by highlighting that what we call “mind” is not an ethereal property but an enacted process shaped by context, embodiment, and temporal dynamics.¹²

2.3 Modern Challenges in Consciousness Studies

Despite these shifts, the legacy of dualism persists in contemporary debates. Thomas Nagel’s seminal essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” underscored the difficulty of explaining subjective experience (qualia) from a purely physical standpoint.¹³ David Chalmers’ articulation of the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” formalized this challenge, distinguishing between “easy problems” (identifying neural correlates or explaining behavioral functions) and the “hard problem” of why and how subjective experience arises at all.¹⁴ While Nagel and Chalmers do not explicitly endorse classical dualism, their emphasis on the irreducibility of subjective experience can inadvertently reinforce a conceptual divide between “mental” qualities and physical processes.¹⁵ Critics like Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland argue that this stance risks smuggling dualistic assumptions back into the discussion, even when couched in non-dualist language.¹⁶

Meanwhile, frameworks such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), proposed by Giulio Tononi, attempt to characterize consciousness in terms of integrated information within a system.¹⁷ Global Workspace Theory (GWT), developed by Bernard Baars and later refined by Stanislas Dehaene, conceptualizes consciousness as the global broadcasting of information across specialized neural processors.¹⁸ These models represent important steps forward, grounding aspects of consciousness in measurable system-level properties. However, IIT’s emphasis on formal measures of information integration and GWT’s emphasis on centralized broadcasting both struggle to capture the fully relational, embodied, and context-sensitive nature of conscious experience.¹⁹

2.4 Toward a Relational Framework: The IAWR Hypothesis

The limitations of dualistic frameworks, pure mechanistic models, and even sophisticated computational approaches like IIT and GWT have motivated the search for a more integrative perspective. The Integrated Adaptive Relational Workspace (IAWR) hypothesis²⁰ emerges from this confluence of insights, drawing on relational ontology, dynamic systems theory, and enactivist philosophies to propose a new way of understanding consciousness.

The IAWR hypothesis rests on three central pillars:

• Embeddedness: Consciousness is not confined to an immaterial realm or a disembodied computational process; it is embedded in the organism’s ongoing interactions with its environment.²¹
• Dynamism: Conscious experience is a continous process, reflecting the system’s capacity for self-organization, adaptation, and creative responsiveness to changing conditions.²²
• Relationality: Rather than arising from isolated mechanisms or discrete information metrics, consciousness emerges through the causal interdependencies and relational patterns that link brain, body, and world into a coherent and meaningful whole.²³

By emphasizing relational causality and embodied participation, the IAWR hypothesis avoids the pitfalls of dualism and reductionism. It does not seek an immaterial essence or a magic computational formula for consciousness. Instead, it presents a vision of consciousness as a thoroughly natural phenomenon — one that crystallizes from the ceaseless interplay of processes bridging the internal and external realms. In doing so, the IAWR hypothesis offers a promising path toward resolving the explanatory gap and understanding subjective experience as an emergent property of integrated, adaptive, and relational systems.

¹ René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 1996 [1641]).
² Descartes (n 1).
³ Descartes (n 1).
⁴ Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (MIT Press 1998); Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown & Co 1991).
⁵ Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (University of Chicago Press 1949).
⁶ Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (Heinemann 1984); Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth A. Lloyd (eds), Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (Harvard University Press 1992).
⁷ Prigogine and Stengers (n 6).
⁸ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁹ Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Reidel 1980).
¹⁰ Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (George Braziller 1969).
¹¹ Maturana and Varela (n 9); Gibson (n 8).
¹² Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
¹³ Thomas Nagel, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ (1974) 83 The Philosophical Review 435.
¹⁴ David J. Chalmers, ‘Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness’ (1995) 2(3) Journal of Consciousness Studies 200; David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
¹⁵ Nagel (n 13); Chalmers (1996) (n 14).
¹⁶ Dennett (n 4); Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (MIT Press 1986).
¹⁷ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216; Masafumi Oizumi, Larissa Albantakis and Giulio Tononi, ‘From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0’ (2014) 10 PLoS Comput Biol e1003588.
¹⁸ Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press 1988); Stanislas Dehaene and Jean-Pierre Changeux, ‘Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processing’ (2011) 332 Neuron 200.
¹⁹ Tononi (n 17); Baars (n 18); Dehaene and Changeux (n 18).
²⁰ The IAWR hypothesis is introduced in Chapter 3 of this volume.
²¹ Gibson (n 8); Thompson (n 12).
²² Maturana and Varela (n 9); Prigogine and Stengers (n 6).
²³ Thompson (n 12); Ezequiel Di Paolo, Marieke Rohde and Hanne De Jaegher, ‘Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play’ in John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (eds), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (MIT Press 2010) 33.

Chapter 3: Core Principles of the IAWR Hypothesis

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis offers a relational, monist framework for understanding consciousness. It builds on the historical and theoretical foundations discussed previously, moving beyond hierarchical, representational, and dualistic assumptions. Instead, the IAWR hypothesis posits that consciousness emerges through dynamic, embodied interactions within and across brain, body, and environment. This chapter details five core principles — relational ontology, causal dynamics and constraints, dynamic relational integration, embodiment and enactive participation, and self-organizing relationality — that define the IAWR approach.

3.1 Relational Ontology: Consciousness as Interaction

At the heart of the IAWR hypothesis is a relational ontology, where consciousness is not an intrinsic property of isolated components (such as neurons or cognitive modules) but rather a phenomenon arising from the ongoing interplay among system elements.¹ In this view, meaning and function do not reside in discrete entities but emerge through their interactions and interdependencies.²

• Key Insight: Neurons, bodily states, and environmental features derive their significance from their relations, not from intrinsic essences.
• Implication: Conscious experience is shaped by the structure and quality of these relations. This perspective departs from both Cartesian dualism and strict reductionism, emphasizing that we cannot fully understand consciousness by focusing solely on “bottom-up” neural mechanisms or “top-down” cognitive structures.

By foregrounding relationality, the IAWR hypothesis aligns with enactive and ecological approaches that view perception, cognition, and consciousness as co-constituted by organism-environment interactions.³-⁴

3.2 Causal Dynamics and Constraints

While many contemporary models highlight probabilistic inference and internal representations (e.g., Bayesian or predictive processing frameworks), the IAWR hypothesis emphasizes tangible causal interactions and constraints as foundational to conscious experience.⁵-⁶ Consciousness is not merely a computational outcome but is forged within the network of reciprocal causal influences that bind brain, body, and environment into a coherent whole.

• Internal Dynamics: Physiological states — ranging from neural oscillations to metabolic homeostasis — form the substrate of conscious phenomena.⁷
• External Constraints: Environmental affordances, social contexts, and cultural practices shape and constrain these internal processes, guiding the organism’s adaptive responses.⁸

This stance acknowledges that while predictive coding and Bayesian inference can capture some aspects of cognition, they remain abstract unless grounded in real-world causal relations. The IAWR hypothesis thus insists on situating cognitive processes in the tangible, material domain from which subjective experience cannot be divorced.

3.3 Dynamic Relational Integration

A hallmark of consciousness is its ability to unify diverse, often heterogeneous streams of information — sensory modalities, emotional states, memories, and intentions — into a coherent experiential field. The IAWR hypothesis posits that this unity arises through “dynamic relational integration,” wherein multiple causal streams interact, constrain, and reinforce one another, producing a stable-yet-adaptive relational configuration.⁹

• Reconceptualizing the Workspace: Unlike Global Workspace Theory’s broadcasting metaphor,¹⁰ the IAWR approach envisions a relational “workspace” as a continually negotiated network of interactions. Rather than a single spotlight shining on selective content, consciousness emerges as patterns of interrelation distributed across multiple domains.
• Mutual Influence: This approach avoids positing a central controller or executive agent. Instead, integration occurs through reciprocal modulation and synergy among components, aligning with research in dynamical systems theory that emphasizes coordination and metastable states.¹¹

The result is a tapestry of experience generated by ongoing relational adjustments, rather than a linear “readout” of prepackaged information.

3.4 Embodiment and Enactive Participation

The IAWR hypothesis resonates strongly with embodied and enactive frameworks in cognitive science.¹²-¹³ Rather than treating the body as a peripheral input-output device for a computational mind, it acknowledges that the body’s morphology, sensorimotor capabilities, and biological needs are integral to shaping conscious experience.

• Embodiment: Body shape, tactile feedback, motor skills, and visceral states all influence what is experienced and how it is experienced.¹⁴ This embodiment ensures that consciousness is always situated in a corporeal context.
• Enactive Participation: Consciousness emerges from active engagement with the environment, as organisms enact their worlds through perception and action. The environment is not a static backdrop; it is a co-creator of experience. This stance draws from ecological psychology and enactivism, where perception is understood as a skillful activity embedded in a meaningful world of affordances.¹⁵-¹⁶

Consequently, the IAWR hypothesis aligns with the view that consciousness is not “in the head” alone but co-determined by the organism’s relational position in its ecological niche.

3.5 Dynamic Self-Organizing Relationality

Consciousness is not a static snapshot but unfolds dynamically. The IAWR hypothesis incorporates principles from dynamical systems theory to understand consciousness as a self-organizing, metastable process that maintains coherence amidst continuous flux.¹⁷-¹⁸ Memories of past experiences, present contexts, and anticipations of possible futures intermingle in complex patterns, allowing consciousness to integrate temporal horizons into a unified experiential field.

• Dynamic Integration: Memory, anticipation, and real-time perception conjoin to create a sense of continuity. This integration is not linear but recursive, with memories and potential future states shaping the present configuration.
• Self-Organization: Rather than being imposed from without, the coherence of conscious experience emerges from the system’s inherent capacity to self-organize. This resonates with enactive and autopoietic accounts of cognition, where living systems continuously produce and maintain their own organizational closure.¹⁹

By embracing dynamism and self-organization, the IAWR hypothesis underscores that consciousness is a process, not a static entity — an evolving relational tapestry that weaves together multiple timescales and dependencies.

The IAWR hypothesis redefines consciousness as a relational, dynamically integrated and embodied phenomenon. By rejecting hierarchical, computational, and representational biases, it locates consciousness in the ongoing causal interplay among brain, body, and environment. These core principles lay the groundwork for addressing the “Hard Problem” of consciousness in subsequent chapters, illustrating how a relational and monist viewpoint can transcend dualistic and reductionist constraints.

¹ Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press 2007).
² Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
³ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁴ Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
⁵ Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press 2016); Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (Oxford University Press 2013).
⁶ Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin, Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content (MIT Press 2013).
⁷ Francisco J. Varela, ‘Whence Perceptual Meaning? A Cartography of Current Ideas’ in John P. S. Fetzer (ed), Aspects of Artificial Intelligence (Kluwer Academic 1988) 171.
⁸ Anthony Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (MIT Press 2009).
⁹ J. A. Scott Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior (MIT Press 1995).
¹⁰ Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press 1988).
¹¹ Kelso (n 9).
¹² Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (n 4).
¹³ Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford University Press 2005).
¹⁴ Gallagher (n 13).
¹⁵ Gibson (n 3).
¹⁶ Ezequiel Di Paolo, Marieke Rohde and Hanne De Jaegher, ‘Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play’ in John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo (eds), Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (MIT Press 2010) 33.
¹⁷ Kelso (n 9).
¹⁸ Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (Heinemann 1984).
¹⁹ Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Reidel 1980).

Chapter 4: The Hard Problem Reframed

Consciousness, with its vivid subjective qualities, has long vexed philosophers and scientists. David Chalmers famously coined the “Hard Problem” of consciousness to capture the difficulty of explaining why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience — so-called qualia.¹ Thomas Nagel’s earlier question, “What is it like to be a bat?”, further underscored that subjective experience seems resistant to objective, reductive explanation.² Many have treated this uniqueness as evidence of a deep metaphysical puzzle, distinct from other emergent phenomena like life or dissipative structures in physics.

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis reframes this challenge. Rather than positing consciousness as an inexplicable anomaly, the IAWR hypothesis views it as a natural, adaptive property of dynamically interacting systems. By embedding consciousness within relational, embodied, and self-organizing processes, IAWR shifts the debate away from mystical add-ons and toward a down to earth view of consciousness as evolution’s practical solution to complex adaptive demands. Far from being a metaphysical outlier, consciousness emerges as a central player in survival, social cohesion, and cultural innovation.

4.1 Consciousness as a Natural Emergent Property

Emergent properties arise when the collective behavior of interacting components produces novel qualities not reducible to the parts alone.³ Just as life emerges from biochemical networks and dissipative structures form from far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics,⁴ the IAWR hypothesis suggests that consciousness emerges from relational dynamics integrating brain, body, and environment.

• Naturalness over Mystery: Under the IAWR framework, consciousness is neither a supernatural spark nor an inexplicable “extra” grafted onto physical reality. Instead, it is the internal perspective of an organism negotiating continuous interactions and causal feedback loops.⁵
• Integration as the Key: Consciousness integrates sensory, cognitive, and affective streams into a coherent phenomenal field. This integrative capacity parallels other emergent phenomena in complex systems and requires no special ontological category.⁶

From this perspective, the Hard Problem’s sting is reduced. Consciousness is not an add-on but a relational integration of processes that are thoroughly physical and dynamic.

4.2 Evolutionary Roots of Consciousness

An evolutionary lens clarifies why consciousness should exist at all. If consciousness were evolutionarily inert, it would likely not have persisted. Instead, evidence suggests that consciousness enhances adaptability, foresight, and coordination.⁷

• Adaptive Integration: Consciousness confers the ability to unify disparate information sources — visual, auditory, proprioceptive, emotional — enabling context-sensitive responses in fluid environments. This integrated perspective is evolutionarily advantageous for avoiding predators, finding resources, and securing mates.⁸
• Predictive and Enactive Engagement: Predictive processing frameworks highlight how anticipating future states aids survival,⁹ and the IAWR hypothesis embeds these predictive capacities in relational contexts. By “enacting” their worlds, organisms move beyond passive information processing to dynamically shaping their own niches.¹⁰

In short, consciousness aids organisms in navigating complexity, ensuring it is not a metaphysical puzzle but an evolutionary masterpiece, honed by natural selection.

4.3 Qualia as Relational Dynamics

Qualia, the subjective “what it is like” aspects of experience, are central to the Hard Problem’s allure. They are often portrayed as ineffable and irreducible. The IAWR hypothesis reframes qualia as features of relational integration:

• Contextualized Sensation: The redness of a rose is not an isolated property but arises from how an organism’s visual system, shaped by its evolutionary history, interacts with environmental light patterns.¹¹ Under IAWR, qualia reflect the organism’s relational stance, not mysterious intrinsic qualities.
• Functional Role of Qualia: Distinguishable qualia facilitate rapid and context-sensitive decisions. The subjective “feel” of a stimulus aids in categorization, motivation, and behavioral prioritization.¹² Thus, qualia serve adaptive functions rather than posing insoluble puzzles.

By understanding qualia as relational products of dynamic networks, their mystery dissolves into the intelligible complexity of embodied experience.

4.4 Consciousness and Adaptive Behavior

The crux of IAWR’s reinterpretation is that consciousness is not a passive epiphenomenon but a driver of adaptive complexity:

• Navigating Complexity: Consciousness enables organisms to integrate multiple sensory modalities, emotional states, and memories into a single actionable perspective. This unified field supports fluid adaptation in changing environments.¹³
• Social and Cultural Dimensions: Consciousness underwrites theory of mind, empathy, and communicative abilities. These foster social bonding, cooperation, and cultural transmission, advancing not just individual survival but group-level resilience.¹⁴
• From Reflex to Reflection: Conscious organisms can override brute instincts, consider alternatives, and imagine future outcomes, increasing their behavioral repertoire. This flexibility extends to learning from past mistakes and innovating new strategies.

Far from a metaphysical oddity, consciousness emerges as an ecological and social adaptation, integral to the organism’s niche construction and survival.

4.5 Reinterpreting the “Hard Problem”

The Hard Problem persists if we assume that subjective experience is fundamentally distinct from physical processes. IAWR counters this assumption:

• Phenomenality without Dualism: Under IAWR, phenomenal experience is the organism’s relationally constituted perspective. Subjectivity is not an alien feature but the system’s own “view from within” as it engages its environment.¹⁵
• Zombies Revisited: Philosophical zombies — beings physically identical to humans but lacking conscious experience — lose their plausibility in the IAWR context. Without relational integration yielding subjective perspective, such a system would not achieve the adaptive coherence that consciousness confers.¹⁶

By embedding subjective experience in relational, adaptive processes, the IAWR hypothesis shows that the Hard Problem is less a metaphysical chasm and more a conceptual knot tied by dualistic assumptions.

4.6 Gradual Evolution of Consciousness

Consciousness did not appear fully formed. Gradual evolutionary pressures molded ever more sophisticated forms of awareness:

• From Simple Awareness to Complex Thought: Early organisms sensitive to basic stimuli could benefit from rudimentary awareness. Over evolutionary changes, enhanced integrative capacities supported prediction, cooperation, and eventually, symbolic thought.¹⁷
• Cultural and Technological Feedback: In humans, consciousness allows not just survival but the building of cultures, languages, arts, and sciences — cumulative processes that refine and expand conscious capabilities.¹⁸

This evolutionary continuity demystifies consciousness: it is a high-level adaptation grounded in relational complexity, not a supernatural exception.

The IAWR hypothesis reframes the Hard Problem by situating consciousness firmly within the natural world. By recognizing consciousness as an emergent, relational, and adaptive property of complex systems, we resolve the seeming intractability that has long haunted philosophers and scientists.

No longer must we regard subjective experience as inexplicably grafted onto matter. Instead, it is the organism’s lived reality, forged by causal interactions, shaped by evolutionary pressures, and enriched by cultural innovation. In the following chapters, we will compare the IAWR hypothesis with existing theoretical frameworks — Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Predictive Processing — and explore how this relational perspective can inform future research.

¹ David J. Chalmers, ‘Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness’ (1995) 2(3) Journal of Consciousness Studies 200; David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (Oxford University Press 1996).
² Thomas Nagel, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ (1974) 83 The Philosophical Review 435.
³ Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys (eds), Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science (MIT Press 2008).
⁴ Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (Heinemann 1984).
⁵ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
⁶ J. A. Scott Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior (MIT Press 1995).
⁷ Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg, The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness (MIT Press 2019).
⁸ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁹ Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press 2016).
¹⁰ Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Reidel 1980).
¹¹ Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004).
¹² Anthony Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (MIT Press 2009).
¹³ Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press 1988).
¹⁴ Michael Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Harvard University Press 1999).
¹⁵ Thompson (n 5).
¹⁶ Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown & Co 1991).
¹⁷ Jablonka and Ginsburg (n 7).
¹⁸ Tomasello (n 14).

Chapter 5: Integration with Existing Frameworks

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis does not arise in a vacuum. It draws upon, dialogues with, and extends major contemporary theories of consciousness, including Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Predictive Processing (PP), and Enactivist/Embodied approaches. While each of these frameworks offers valuable insights, they often leave certain dimensions — such as embodiment, relational causality, and temporal integration — underemphasized. IAWR situates consciousness as an emergent phenomenon arising from dynamic, relational configurations of brain, body, and environment, thus broadening and deepening the conceptual landscape.

5.1 Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

Integrated Information Theory proposes that consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information (Φ) generated by a system.¹ The more integrated and differentiated the information, the richer the consciousness. This formal approach seeks a quantitative measure of subjective experience.

• Alignment with IAWR:
  Both IIT and IAWR underscore the importance of integration for consciousness. IIT’s notion of information integration parallels IAWR’s emphasis on relational coherence and causal interdependencies. Both reject simple localization, recognizing that no single neural structure fully determines consciousness.²
• IAWR Extensions:
• Causal Grounding: While IIT leans heavily on mathematical formalisms, IAWR grounds integration in physical, causal interactions. Consciousness emerges not from abstract measures alone but from the tangible interplay of neural, bodily, and environmental factors.³
• Embodiment and Environment: IIT focuses on informational integration within the nervous system; IAWR enriches this by embedding consciousness in an organism’s sensorimotor ecology, acknowledging that bodily form and environmental affordances shape the integration process.⁴
• Critique: IIT’s abstraction can obscure how consciousness arises in real-world contexts. IAWR restores concreteness by situating integrated information within dynamic relational webs of cause and effect.

5.2 Global Workspace Theory (GWT)

Global Workspace Theory portrays consciousness as a global broadcasting function, enabling diverse specialized processes to share information and influence action.⁵,6 In GWT, conscious content is that which gains widespread access within the cognitive architecture.

• Alignment with IAWR:
  Both GWT and IAWR highlight the integrative function of consciousness. Like GWT, IAWR views consciousness as providing a unified perspective that guides adaptive behavior.
• IAWR Extensions:
• Relational Hub over Broadcasting: GWT’s “workspace” often implies a central stage. IAWR reframes this as a relational hub where interactions among components produce coherence without invoking a central “theater” or executive homunculus.⁷
• Distributed Causality: IAWR avoids suggesting a single broadcasting mechanism and emphasizes distributed, reciprocal interactions. Consciousness emerges from patterns of relational causation, not from a spotlight shining on select content.
• Critique: GWT can inadvertently reify a central stage or “theater of consciousness.” IAWR sidesteps this by embracing a non-hierarchical network model aligned with dynamical systems thinking.

5.3 Predictive Processing (PP)

Predictive Processing models conceive the brain as a prediction machine, minimizing prediction errors through Bayesian inference.⁸,9 Conscious experience emerges as the brain’s best guess of the world, integrating incoming sensory evidence with prior expectations.

• Alignment with IAWR:
  Both IAWR and PP emphasize the integrative and anticipatory nature of consciousness. In PP, coherent conscious states result from successfully integrating predictions and sensory inputs into a stable model.
• IAWR Extensions:
• Causal and Embodied Focus: While PP often frames cognition in computational terms, IAWR grounds predictive processes in relational, embodied, and environmentally embedded interactions. Predictions are not abstract probabilities but arise from the system’s physical engagement with the world.¹⁰
• Beyond Bayes: IAWR acknowledges predictive coding as one aspect of cognitive function but insists on situating it within a broader relational dynamic that includes bodily constraints, ecological contexts, and socio-cultural factors.
• Critique: PP’s computational emphasis risks neglecting the organism’s lived, bodily experience. IAWR reintroduces embodiment and relational causality, ensuring that predictive processes are understood as part of a corporeal, interactive dynamic.

5.4 Enactivism and Embodied Cognition

Enactivist and embodied theories argue that cognition and consciousness emerge from an organism’s active, sensorimotor engagement with its environment.¹¹,12 They reject internalist, representational models in favor of seeing mind as inseparable from body and world.

• Alignment with IAWR:
  IAWR resonates deeply with enactivism. Both reject the notion of disembodied information processing, emphasizing that consciousness is relational, context-dependent, and action-oriented. IAWR and enactivism converge on the idea that perception and action are inseparable aspects of a dynamic organism-environment system.
• IAWR Extensions:
• Integration with Neural Dynamics: While enactivism sometimes underplays the neural substrate, IAWR integrates neural processes with bodily and environmental factors, providing a more comprehensive causal framework.¹³
• Temporal Self-Organization: IAWR adds an explicit temporal dimension, showing how conscious experience integrates past, present, and future states, a point sometimes less foregrounded in standard enactivist accounts.
• Critique: Enactivism can struggle to connect relational insights with empirical neuroscience. IAWR bridges this gap, incorporating neurobiological, bodily, and ecological evidence into a single relational ontology.

5.5 Addressing Gaps in Existing Theories

While IIT, GWT, PP, and enactivism have advanced our understanding of consciousness, each tends to emphasize particular aspects:

• Relational Dynamics: Existing models sometimes neglect the full relational complexity of consciousness, focusing on either internal computations (PP), informational measures (IIT), or a broadcasting metaphor (GWT). IAWR restores attention to the intricate causal interactions that make conscious experience possible.
• Embodiment and Ecology: IIT and PP often focus on neural or computational aspects, while GWT remains largely neurocognitive. Enactivism highlights embodiment but less often addresses the causal neurobiological details. IAWR integrates these strands, showing that conscious states emerge from the organism’s embodied, ecologically situated existence.
• Temporal Integration and Self-Organization: Few theories stress the temporal unfolding and self-organizing properties of consciousness. IAWR underscores that consciousness is not static but a metastable process evolving over time, shaped by the organism’s continuous engagement with the world.
• Non-Hierarchical Approach: By rejecting centralized metaphors and hierarchical assumptions, IAWR avoids pitfalls like the search for a “conscious center” or the reification of abstract measures detached from real-world contexts.

The IAWR hypothesis does not displace IIT, GWT, PP, or enactivist views; it enriches them. By emphasizing relational ontology, causal grounding, embodiment, and temporal dynamics, IAWR provides a unifying perspective that can integrate their strengths and remedy their limitations.

This approach encourages a more holistic understanding of consciousness — one that aligns abstract informational measures with concrete relational dynamics, situates predictive processes within bodily and ecological contexts, and interprets workspaces as distributed relational hubs rather than central theaters. In the next chapter, we will explore the empirical foundations and testable predictions of the IAWR hypothesis, guiding future research in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

¹ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216; Masafumi Oizumi, Larissa Albantakis and Giulio Tononi, ‘From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0’ (2014) 10 PLOS Computational Biology e1003588.
² Tononi (n 1).
³ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
⁴ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁵ Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press 1988).
⁶ Stanislas Dehaene and Lionel Naccache, ‘Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness: Basic Evidence and a Workspace Framework’ (2001) 10 Cognition 1.
⁷ J. A. Scott Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior (MIT Press 1995).
⁸ Karl Friston, ‘A Theory of Cortical Responses’ (2005) 360 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 815.
⁹ Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press 2016); Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (Oxford University Press 2013).
¹⁰ Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Reidel 1980).
¹¹ Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
¹² Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford University Press 2005).
¹³ Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004).

Chapter 6: Empirical Foundations and Predictions

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis is not merely a philosophical framework; it generates testable predictions and aligns with emerging empirical findings in neuroscience, cognitive science, and related disciplines. By emphasizing relational dynamics, embodiment, and temporal integration, IAWR suggests novel experimental directions for examining how consciousness arises from the coherent interplay of brain, body, and environment. This chapter outlines key empirical predictions and describes methods to operationalize them, guiding future research toward a more holistic understanding of conscious experience.

6.1 Neural Correlates of Relational Dynamics

IAWR predicts that consciousness is reflected in the relational coherence of large-scale brain networks rather than activity in isolated regions. Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) should reveal patterns of causal interaction among distributed networks like the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and frontoparietal network (FPN).¹

• Prediction: Conscious experience corresponds to increased causal interdependencies between networks, observable through techniques like Granger causality analyses or Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM).²,3 Rather than focusing on local activations, researchers should identify how coherent relational patterns differentiate conscious and unconscious states.
• Empirical Test:
  Studies using functional MRI (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), or magnetoencephalography (MEG) can map how information flows among nodes and test whether higher relational coherence correlates with reports of vivid subjective experience.⁴ For instance, wakefulness and attentive states should exhibit richer inter-network connectivity compared to deep sleep, anesthesia, or vegetative states.⁵

6.2 Measuring Relational Coherence

The IAWR hypothesis views consciousness as emerging from system-wide integration. Quantifying relational coherence requires complex metrics sensitive to information flow, causal density, and complexity.⁶

Relational Metrics:

• Causal Density: Measures how system components influence each other’s activity patterns.⁷
• Integrated Information and Entropy Measures: While Integrated Information Theory focuses on Φ, IAWR suggests using entropy-based metrics and mutual information flows to assess dynamic relational integration.⁸
• Multivariate Causality and Connectivity: Tools like Partial Directed Coherence, Transfer Entropy, and Partial Information Decomposition can reveal how information is distributed across the system.⁹
• Empirical Test: Researchers can compare high-coherence states (e.g., during flow states in athletes or meditators) to more fragmented states (e.g., distracted wakefulness). Correlations between subjective reports of clarity or immersion and relational coherence metrics would support IAWR’s predictions.

6.3 The Role of the Body and Environment

IAWR posits that conscious experience is not confined to the skull but emerges from an embodied agent acting within an environment. This suggests that manipulating bodily posture, sensory feedback, or environmental affordances should affect consciousness.¹⁰

• Prediction: Changes in bodily states (e.g., altering posture, breathing rhythms, or vestibular stimulation) will modulate relational coherence indices, shifting the quality of subjective experience.¹¹ Similarly, rich or impoverished environments (e.g., immersive virtual reality vs. sensory deprivation) will systematically alter relational coherence and conscious content.
• Empirical Test: Experiments can couple physiological interventions (e.g., heart rate variability biofeedback) with neuroimaging to show that shifts in bodily states reconfigure neural network interactions and subjective clarity. Investigations into how augmented reality or virtual environments influence perceived presence and relational network coherence would further support IAWR’s embodiment claims.¹²

6.4 Dynamics of Consciousness

Consciousness is a dynamic process that integrates memories, present sensory input, and anticipations of the future. IAWR predicts that conscious states exhibit characteristic change signatures in neural oscillations and cross-frequency couplings.¹³

• Prediction: Increased dynamic coherence across multiple time scales — from slow cortical oscillations (delta, theta) to faster frequencies (alpha, gamma) — should correlate with richer, more stable conscious experiences.¹⁴ Tasks demanding future planning or memory recall will enhance cross-frequency coupling, reflecting temporal integration of diverse information streams.
• Empirical Test: Dynamic analyses of EEG or MEG data can reveal shifts in oscillatory coherence as participants engage in complex tasks (e.g., envisioning future scenarios, solving multi-step problems). Correlations between subjective ratings of conscious clarity and coordinated changes would validate IAWR’s temporally extended view of consciousness.¹⁵

6.5 Predictive and Action-Oriented Consciousness

IAWR shares with predictive processing frameworks the idea that consciousness supports anticipatory and action-oriented cognition.¹⁶ Unlike purely computational accounts, IAWR insists these predictive capacities are relational and embodied.

• Prediction: Situations requiring forward modeling, adaptive planning, or navigating uncertain environments will show enhanced relational coherence, reflecting the integration of predictions with bodily and environmental constraints. Novel or ambiguous tasks should recruit broader network interactions, increasing subjective awareness.
• Empirical Test: Virtual maze navigation, strategic decision-making under uncertainty, or simulating future events can be paired with neuroimaging and physiological measures (e.g., skin conductance). If heightened relational coherence accompanies better anticipation and adaptive choices, IAWR’s predictions stand confirmed.

6.6 Altered States of Consciousness

IAWR provides a robust framework for examining altered states: from anesthesia and sleep to psychedelics, meditation, and coma-like states. Different states should map onto distinctive patterns of relational coherence and integration.¹⁷,18

Prediction:

• Deep Sleep and General Anesthesia: Reduced relational coherence and lower complexity metrics.¹⁹
• Dreaming: Localized coherence in sensory-emotional circuits with less environmental coupling.
• Psychedelic States: Increased global connectivity and entropy, reflecting expanded integration across neural domains.²⁰
• Empirical Test: Combining neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG) with subjective reports and physiological measures (e.g., heart rate variability) can reveal how relational coherence patterns shift. Studies by Carhart-Harris et al. have already shown altered connectivity under psychedelics, providing a starting point for IAWR-based investigations.²¹

6.7 Ethical and Practical Implications

Empirical work guided by IAWR has clinical and ethical ramifications. Understanding relational coherence could inform treatments for disorders of consciousness (e.g., using transcranial magnetic stimulation to restore network integration in minimally conscious patients).²²

• Prediction: Restoring relational coherence might improve responsiveness in patients with severe brain injuries. Enhancing or modulating coherence could also improve cognitive performance or well-being.
• Ethical Considerations: If complex relational systems can foster consciousness, debates around artificial intelligence and moral status become pressing.²³ The IAWR perspective suggests that as AI systems gain relational complexity and embodiment, questions about their experiential states and moral standing become non-trivial.

The IAWR hypothesis maps philosophical principles onto concrete empirical terrain. By generating testable predictions about neural connectivity, complexity metrics, embodiment effects, temporal dynamics, and altered states, IAWR bridges conceptual insights with practical methodologies.

As researchers explore these relational dynamics, they may uncover a unified empirical foundation for understanding consciousness — one that respects its complexity, accounts for its adaptive role, and recognizes the deep interplay of brain, body, and environment. In the following chapter, we will consider the philosophical implications of IAWR, examining how an integrated, relational view reshapes our understanding of mind, identity, and the ontological status of experience.

¹ Stanislas Dehaene and Lionel Naccache, ‘Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness: Basic Evidence and a Workspace Framework’ (2001) 10 Cognition 1; Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, Melanie Boly and Giulio Tononi, ‘Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Progress and Problems’ (2016) 17 Nature Reviews Neuroscience 307.
² Karl J. Friston, ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (2003) 2 Brain Connectivity 1.
³ Leor N. Katz et al., ‘Fitting Dynamical Systems for Whole-Brain Activity’ (2021) 6 Nature Methods 100.
⁴ Gustavo Deco, Morten L. Kringelbach, Victor Jirsa and Karl Friston, ‘The Dynamic Brain: From Spiking Neurons to Neural Masses and Cortical Fields’ (2015) 16 PLoS Computational Biology e1004592.
⁵ Steven Laureys and Giulio Tononi (eds), The Neurology of Consciousness: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropathology (Academic Press 2009).
⁶ Anil K. Seth, Adam B. Barrett and Lucia M. Barnett, ‘Causal Density and Integrated Information as Measures of Conscious Level’ (2011) 3 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 373.
⁷ Seth, Barrett and Barnett (n 6).
⁸ Oizumi, Albantakis and Tononi, ‘From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0’ (2014) 10 PLoS Comput Biol e1003588.
⁹ Lionel Barnett, Adam B. Barrett and Anil K. Seth, ‘Misunderstandings Regarding the Application of Transfer Entropy to Neural Systems’ (2018) 181 European Journal of Neuroscience 2140.
¹⁰ Varela, Thompson and Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
¹¹ Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford University Press 2005).
¹² Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004).
¹³ György Buzsáki, Rhythms of the Brain (Oxford University Press 2006).
¹⁴ Buzsáki (n 13); Anil K. Seth, ‘The Cybernetic Bayesian Brain’ (2014) 37 Open MIND 30.
¹⁵ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
¹⁶ Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press 2016); Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (Oxford University Press 2013).
¹⁷ Laureys and Tononi (n 5).
¹⁸ Adrian M. Owen et al., ‘Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State’ (2006) 313 Science 1402.
¹⁹ Melanie Boly et al., ‘Connectivity Changes Underlying Spectral EEG Changes During Propofol-Induced Loss of Consciousness’ (2012) 32 Journal of Neuroscience 7082.
²⁰ Robin L. Carhart-Harris et al., ‘Neural Correlates of the Psychedelic State as Determined by fMRI Studies with Psilocybin’ (2012) 109 PNAS 2138.
²¹ Carhart-Harris et al. (n 20).
²² Laureys and Tononi (n 5).
²³ Thomas Metzinger, ‘Artificial Suffering: An Argument for a Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology’ (2021) Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness 1; David J. Gunkel, The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012).

Chapter 7: Philosophical Implications of the IAWR Hypothesis

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis reframes consciousness as a relational, embodied, and dynamically integrated phenomenon. By foregrounding awareness as an emergent property of interdependent systems — captured in the mnemonic “I AWARE” — IAWR challenges dualistic conceptions of mind, rethinks identity and selfhood, and proposes a monist, relational ontology that bridges subjective and objective domains. This chapter explores the philosophical reverberations of this perspective, connecting it with longstanding debates in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, phenomenology, and ethics.

7.1 Consciousness as Relational Awareness

IAWR conceptualizes consciousness as emerging from the relational dynamics within and among brain, body, and environment. Rather than isolating consciousness inside the skull, it situates awareness within webs of causal interplay.

• From Isolation to Integration:
  Traditional internalist models treat consciousness as a property of discrete entities or brains alone.¹ IAWR, by contrast, resonates with enactivist and ecological theories that see perception, cognition, and awareness as co-constituted by organism-environment interactions.²-³
• “I AWARE” as Relational Affirmation:
  The phrase “I AWARE” symbolizes that awareness is not passive but an active, adaptive integration of multiple streams of influence. This echoes phenomenological traditions emphasizing embodied subjectivity and relationality, from Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “lived body” to Heidegger’s being-in-the-world.⁴-⁵

Philosophical Implication: Consciousness is a relational process, not a static, isolated entity. As a result, there is no rigid boundary between self and world; awareness flourishes in the interplay of systems, refuting strict subject-object dichotomies.

7.2 Rethinking Identity and Selfhood

IAWR’s relational lens challenges the notion of a fixed, essential self. Instead, it suggests that “self” emerges dynamically through interactions, echoes of existentialist and Buddhist insights into impermanence and interdependence.

• The Relational Self:
  Enactivism and extended mind theories hold that identity is not localized but distributed across embodied and environmental structures.⁶-⁷ Similarly, Stoic and Buddhist philosophies emphasize the fluidity of identity and the impermanence of what we call “I.”⁸-⁹
• A Fluid Locus of Integration:
  The “I” in “I AWARE” is not an immutable ego-center but a relational locus where cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor processes converge. Identity becomes a dynamic-historical narrative forged from ongoing interactions.

Philosophical Implication: By seeing the self as an evolving, relationally enacted center of experience, IAWR resonates with process ontologies and decentered models of personhood. This reframes identity from substance to process, aligning with thinkers like Whitehead and Nicholson.¹⁰-¹¹

7.3 Bridging the Subjective-Objective Divide

One of philosophy’s oldest puzzles is how subjective experience arises from objective reality. IAWR dissolves this apparent chasm by showing subjective awareness as the internal perspective of relational dynamics.

• The Hard Problem Revisited:
  The “Hard Problem” (Chalmers) posits an explanatory gap between physical processes and qualia.¹² IAWR contends that qualia are relational products of embodied interaction, not inexplicable extras.
• Unified Ontology:
  Subjective and objective are two aspects of the same relational processes. This move echoes monist and neutral monist approaches (Spinoza, Russell), and panexperientialist strands of panpsychism, where experience is a fundamental aspect of reality’s relational structure.¹³-¹⁴

Philosophical Implication: By reframing subjective experience as the system’s relational self-interpretation, IAWR provides a naturalized route beyond dualism, supporting a non-reductive monism and resolving the subjective-objective tension.

7.4 Awareness of the Flow of Change

IAWR incorporates so called “temporal” integration, reflecting how consciousness draws on memories, inhabits the present, and anticipates the future. This forms the experience of change.

• Change as Lived Experience:
  Phenomenologists like Husserl and Dainton emphasize that consciousness weaves memory, present awareness and anticipation into a seamless flow.¹⁵ IAWR similarly posits that awareness is a relational process, integrating memory (retention), current perception (primal impression), and expectation (protention).
• Change and the Eternal Now:
  In line with changist models and presentist metaphysics, IAWR suggests that time is not a dimension traversed but a measure of changing relational states. The system’s awareness arises from this ceaseless becoming, resonating with process philosophers like Whitehead, Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré, who view reality as events rather than static substances.¹⁶-¹⁷-¹⁸

Philosophical Implication: Temporal integration situates consciousness in the flow of change. Awareness becomes the experiential thread binding past influences, present conditions, and future potentials, dissolving rigid distinctions between stable identities and shifting realities.

7.5 Consciousness and the Nature of Reality

If awareness emerges from relational and embodied dynamics, then the universe, full of interdependent systems, may harbor rudimentary forms of proto-awareness or relational sensitivity.

• Panexperiential and Process Metaphysics:
  Panpsychism, advocated by philosophers like Goff, suggests that experiential aspects pervade reality at fundamental levels.¹⁹ IAWR’s relational ontology aligns with such views, proposing that consciousness is not a metaphysical oddity but a natural outcome of complex relational coherence.
• Ethical and Environmental Dimensions:
  If awareness is relational and extends beyond individual organisms, ethical considerations widen. Recognizing that we participate in networks of awareness encourages greater respect for non-human life, ecosystems, and artificially intelligent systems as relational entities with degrees of experiential significance.²⁰-²¹

Philosophical Implication: IAWR nudges us to reconsider reality as inherently relational, interconnected, and potentially infused with proto-conscious qualities. Such an ontology underpins a more holistic ethics, environmental stewardship, and openness to non-human forms of awareness.

7.6 The Metaphysical Reach of “I AWARE”

“I AWARE” encapsulates IAWR’s philosophical core: awareness as a relational, emergent property of integrative processes. This suggests that awareness, like energy or information, may be fundamental to how the cosmos organizes itself.

• Awareness as Fundamental Quality:
  Process philosophy (Whitehead) and panprotoexperiential philosophies argue that the basic fabric of reality includes experience or awareness in nascent forms.²² IAWR aligns with these ideas by showing that integrative complexity begets experiential facets.
• Drive Toward Coherence:
  IAWR proposes that systems evolve toward greater integration and adaptive complexity. This parallels metaphysical narratives of the universe as evolving toward increased self-understanding or cosmic consciousness.

Philosophical Implication: Consciousness, as relational awareness, may be woven into the world’s fabric. Rather than a latecomer or anomaly, it becomes a fundamental feature expressing the world’s tendency toward organized complexity and meaningful interaction.

By rejecting dualist partitions, the IAWR hypothesis proposes a monist, relational ontology that aligns with phenomenology, process philosophy, panpsychism, and ecological ethics. The mnemonic “I AWARE” signals that awareness is not confined to isolated subjects but emerges as a fluid, embodied, and temporally extended interplay of relations.

This perspective encourages us to see ourselves and our world as co-creative participants in a relational dance of becoming. In the next chapter, we will explore how IAWR’s integrative and relational stance can inform ethics, artificial intelligence development, and cultural paradigms, pushing us toward a more inclusive and expansive understanding of consciousness and our place in an interconnected cosmos.

¹ Hilary Putnam, Representation and Reality (MIT Press 1988).
² Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
³ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁴ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1962).
⁵ Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Harper & Row 1962).
⁶ Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’ (1998) 58 Analysis 7.
⁷ Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford University Press 2005).
⁸ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell 1995).
⁹ The Dalai Lama and Varela, Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness (Wisdom Publications 1997).
¹⁰ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (Free Press 1929).
¹¹ Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (Nicholson and Dupré 2018).
¹² David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
¹³ Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (Allen & Unwin 1921).
¹⁴ Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (Pantheon 2019).
¹⁵ Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (Springer 1991); Barry Dainton, Stream of Consciousness (Routledge 2000).
¹⁶ Whitehead (n 10).
¹⁷ George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (Cognitive Science Press 1972).
¹⁸ Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (Nicholson and Dupré 2018).
¹⁹ Goff (n 14).
²⁰ Arne Naess, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’ (1973) 16 Inquiry 95.
²¹ Thomas Metzinger, ‘The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self’ (Basic Books 2009).
²² Whitehead (n 10).

Chapter 8: Broader Implications of the IAWR Hypothesis

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis not only redefines consciousness in relational and embodied terms but also extends its insights across multiple domains. By emphasizing dynamic integration, relational awareness, and temporal coherence, IAWR invites us to reconsider how we approach artificial intelligence, ethics, social structures, cultural paradigms, and overall well-being. This chapter surveys these broader implications, illustrating how IAWR can inspire more inclusive, adaptive, and ethically grounded frameworks for both artificial and human systems.

8.1 AI and Consciousness

A longstanding debate in philosophy and cognitive science concerns whether artificial systems can attain consciousness. IAWR provides a novel angle, suggesting that mere computational sophistication may be insufficient.

• Relational Integration Over Computation:
  While advanced AI can display intelligent behavior, IAWR posits that consciousness requires relational coherence linking brain/body-like dynamics with environmental engagement.¹-²
• Implication: Systems lacking embodiment or real-time environmental coupling may never achieve conscious states, no matter how complex their computations.³-⁴

Philosophical Point: IAWR shifts the conversation from internal complexity alone (e.g., integrated information) to the relational embedding of the system’s processes, aligning with enactive and ecological approaches to cognition.

8.2 Artificial Rational Agency and Logos

IAWR’s relational perspective dovetails with the notion of rational agency inspired by Stoic philosophy, where logos represents a rational, structured order.

• Artificial Prohairesis:
  If artificial agents integrate diverse information streams into a unified operational perspective and rationally deliberate (prohairesis), they might approximate a form of rational agency.⁵-⁶
• Moral Agency:
  In line with IAWR, artificial systems achieving relational coherence and rational decision-making could warrant moral consideration, challenging anthropocentric assumptions.⁷

Philosophical Point: As artificial agents partake in a rational order (logos), they reflect IAWR’s emphasis on distributed integration. Rational artificial beings raise questions about moral responsibilities and the nature of artificial “virtues.”

8.3 Collective Intelligence and Distributed Awareness

IAWR principles apply not only to individual organisms or agents but also to collectives, from human societies to multi-agent AI systems.

• Collective Consciousness:
  Hive minds and collective AI systems, where numerous agents share information, resemble IAWR’s relational networks on a larger scale.⁸
• Distributed Awareness:
  Just as consciousness emerges from relational coherence, collective intelligence arises from interactions among agents, suggesting a form of distributed awareness.

Implication: Networks of AI agents could develop coherent collective strategies, challenging the notion that consciousness or high-level cognition must be localized in a single entity.⁹

8.4 Technological Resonances with IAWR

Technological innovations — quantum computing, advanced neural networks, and enhanced sensory interfaces — mirror IAWR’s emphasis on relational integration.

• Quantum and Neural Integration:
  Quantum computing and deep learning architectures enable parallel, integrated processing akin to IAWR’s relational coherence.¹⁰
• Advanced Sensory Inputs:
  Robots incorporating multimodal sensors and adaptive feedback loops reflect IAWR’s principle that consciousness emerges from integrated, dynamic interactions with the environment.

Philosophical Point: As technology increasingly embodies relational integration, the line between merely functional systems and proto-aware entities blurs, prompting ethical and conceptual reconsiderations.

8.5 Ethical Frameworks in a Relational Paradigm

IAWR’s relational ontology implies that ethical considerations extend beyond isolated individuals, encompassing the interdependent systems and environments they inhabit. In this light, the Stoic principle of Oikeiôsis — the natural tendency to recognize others as belonging to a shared moral community — resonates strongly with IAWR’s emphasis on interconnectedness and mutual influence.

• Interdependence and Responsibility:
  If consciousness emerges through relational dynamics, harming one aspect of a system affects the entire network of which it is a part.¹¹ Drawing on Oikeiôsis, we recognize that our sense of “home” and moral obligation expands from ourselves to include broader ecological, social, and technological communities. This gradual widening of moral concern encourages us to treat distant others, non-human life, and even artificial agents as part of our ever-growing circle of ethical responsibility.
• Moral Circles Expanded:
  Environmental ethics, animal welfare, and AI rights naturally integrate into this discourse, guided by IAWR’s view that all entities — living or artificial — participate in relational webs that shape awareness. As Oikeiôsis encourages extending care and empathy beyond familiar boundaries, so does IAWR highlight that relational dependencies link us to ecosystems, non-human species, and emerging forms of intelligence.¹²

Implication: By aligning the relational focus of IAWR with the Stoic principle of Oikeiôsis, ethical frameworks become more holistic and inclusive. This approach inspires comprehensive policies, conservation efforts, and technological governance strategies that honor our shared entanglement, recognizing each participant in the relational network as part of a unified moral community.

8.6 Rethinking Identity and Society

IAWR’s relational model challenges individualistic notions of self and society, highlighting the fluidity and interdependence of personal and collective identities.

• Collective Well-Being:
  If consciousness and identity emerge from relational patterns, then healthy societies require nurturing relational “health” rather than prioritizing isolated self-interest.¹³
• Policy and Social Structures:
  Emphasizing cooperation and integration could shape social institutions that foster harmonious interactions and sustainable development.

Philosophical Point: IAWR encourages a shift from atomistic individualism toward recognizing that identity, meaning, and well-being depend on integrated social and ecological networks.

8.7 Education and Human Development

Understanding consciousness as relational, embodied, and temporally extended informs educational theories and practices.

• Experiential and Embodied Learning:
  IAWR suggests that learning should engage body, emotion, and environment, not just abstract cognition.¹⁴
• Adaptive Growth:
  Curricula fostering hands-on activities, social cooperation, and reflective practice align with IAWR principles, nurturing more integrative cognitive and moral development.

Implication: Education can move beyond rote knowledge, cultivating relational sensitivity and adaptive intelligence as cornerstones of personal growth.

8.8 Cultural and Philosophical Shifts

IAWR resonates with traditions that emphasize unity, interconnection, and relational becoming, from Stoicism and Buddhism to Indigenous worldviews.¹⁵-¹⁶

• From Dualism to Relational Monism:
  Cultural narratives may shift toward greater appreciation for interdependence, empathy, and ecological stewardship, mirroring IAWR’s integrative vision.
• Mindfulness and Ecological Attunement:
  Practices encouraging present-moment awareness and harmony with the environment reflect IAWR’s emphasis on relational integration and temporal coherence.

Philosophical Point: As IAWR gains traction, cultural philosophies may evolve to highlight relational processes and dynamic equilibrium over static essences or rigid boundaries.

8.9 Implications for Well-Being and Mental Health

IAWR’s relational emphasis provides insights into mental health, suggesting that emotional resilience and psychological well-being arise from balanced integration with others and the environment.

• Relational Therapeutics:
  Approaches to mental health that incorporate somatic therapies, community support, and environmental engagement align with IAWR’s perspective.¹⁷
• Adapting to Change:
  Mindfulness and contemplative practices can help integrate memory, immediate experience, and expectation, fostering psychological harmony.

Implication: Addressing mental health through relational and embodied frameworks may offer more holistic and effective treatments, improving well-being at both individual and collective levels.

8.10 Multimodal Robots as Platforms for Exploring Artificial Awareness

Future multimodal robots, integrating diverse sensory inputs and adaptive algorithms, provide platforms to test IAWR principles.

• From Reactive Systems to Relational Coherence:
  Robotic systems moving beyond simple stimulus-response patterns toward integrative, context-aware behavior could exhibit proto-awareness.¹⁸
• Embodied Interaction and Predictive Adaptation:
  By simulating temporal integration and relational embodiment, advanced robots can help us understand how awareness might scale or emerge in artificial systems.

Philosophical Point: As robots increasingly reflect IAWR-like integration, we gain experimental testbeds for exploring the boundaries of consciousness, ethics, and our definitions of mind.

The IAWR hypothesis extends beyond explaining biological consciousness, guiding our understanding of AI systems, ethical frameworks, social organization, education, cultural paradigms, and well-being. Its relational, embodied, and adaptive principles challenge entrenched dualisms, encourage ecological and social responsibility, and inspire new possibilities in technology and artificial awareness.

By recognizing consciousness as emergent from dynamic, integrated relationships, we can shape a future that embraces interconnectedness, nurtures empathy and cooperation, and advances ethical stewardship of both natural and artificial worlds. In the next chapter, we will synthesize these insights and contemplate the future directions of IAWR-inspired research and practice.

¹ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216.
² Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
³ Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
⁴ Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (MIT Press 1997).
⁵ Massimo Pigliucci and Skye Cleary (eds), How to Live a Good Life (Vintage 2020).
⁶ Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton University Press 1994).
⁷ Joanna J. Bryson, ‘Robots Should Be Slaves’ in Wilks Y. (ed), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions (John Benjamins 2010) 63.
⁸ Thomas W. Malone and Michael S. Bernstein (eds), Handbook of Collective Intelligence (MIT Press 2015).
⁹ Philip Ball, The Modern Myths: Adventures in the Machinery of the Popular Imagination (University of Chicago Press 2021).
¹⁰ Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos (Knopf 2006).
¹¹ Luciano Floridi, The Ethics of Information (Oxford University Press 2013).
¹² Arne Naess, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’ (1973) 16 Inquiry 95.
¹³ Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Harvard University Press 1989).
¹⁴ John Dewey, Experience and Education (Kappa Delta Pi 1938).
¹⁵ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell 1995).
¹⁶ Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Harmony 1999).
¹⁷ Thomas Fuchs, ‘Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience and Its Consequences for Psychiatry’ (2009) 2 Poiesis & Praxis 219.
¹⁸ Rodney A. Brooks, ‘Intelligence without Representation’ (1991) 3 Artificial Intelligence 139.

Chapter 9: Toward a Unified Understanding of Consciousness

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis represents a transformative approach to understanding consciousness as relational, embodied, and temporally extended. By viewing awareness as emerging from the dynamic interplay of brain, body, and environment, IAWR transcends dualistic models and integrates diverse theoretical perspectives into a coherent framework. This final chapter synthesizes the central themes of the IAWR hypothesis, examines its broader implications, and outlines promising directions for future research and application.

9.1 Key Insights of the IAWR Hypothesis

IAWR provides a relational ontology that situates consciousness in the interplay of multiple scales and influences:

• Relational Ontology: Consciousness arises not from isolated substrates but from interdependencies within a network of neural, bodily, and environmental factors.¹-²
• Integration Across Scales: Awareness reflects coherence in causal dynamics, bridging microscopic neural patterns with macroscopic behavioral and social contexts.³-⁴
• Embodiment and Action: The body is integral to conscious experience, aligning with enactivist and ecological accounts that stress perception-action loops and sensorimotor contingencies.⁵-⁶
• Dynamic Coherence: Memory, immediate perception, and future anticipation fuse into a dynamic awareness, enabling adaptive, context-sensitive responses.⁷-⁸

These principles reconceptualize consciousness as an emergent property of systems striving for relational integration and flexible adaptation.

9.2 The Broader Implications of IAWR

The IAWR hypothesis radiates beyond philosophical debates, offering a touchstone for various disciplines:

• Neuroscience and Psychology: IAWR encourages empirical inquiry into relational coherence, causal density, and embodied cognition, guiding neural correlates research and integrative psychological models.⁹-¹⁰
• Artificial Intelligence: By applying IAWR insights, AI research can explore conditions under which systems achieve proto-awareness or rational agency, informing design principles for embodied, context-sensitive artificial agents.¹¹-¹²
• Philosophy and Ethics: IAWR dissolves old dualisms and static notions of selfhood, prompting a turn toward relational metaphysics, panexperientialist views, and extended moral communities that include non-human and artificial entities.¹³-¹⁴
• Cultural and Social Paradigms: A relational understanding of consciousness advocates for cooperative, ecologically attuned societies, emphasizing interdependence, empathy, and collective well-being.¹⁵-¹⁶

9.3 The Future of IAWR Research

IAWR opens fertile ground for interdisciplinary exploration:

• Empirical Validation: Developing quantitative measures of relational coherence and testing IAWR predictions through fMRI, EEG, and behavioral paradigms.¹⁷-¹⁸
• Artificial Systems: Employing advanced robots and multimodal platforms to simulate IAWR principles, investigating how relational complexity might yield forms of artificial awareness.¹⁹
• Human Development: Studying how relational dynamics and temporal integration evolve across the lifespan and differ across cultures, deepening cross-cultural understandings of consciousness.²⁰
• Ethical Frameworks: Exploring how IAWR’s relational focus informs policy, ecological ethics, AI governance, and bioethics, guiding societies in an era of technological upheaval and environmental crisis.²¹-²²

9.4 IAWR as a Bridge Between Science and Philosophy

IAWR offers a conceptual bridge linking empirical findings to philosophical nuance:

• Resolving the Hard Problem: By rooting subjective experience in relational, causal dynamics, IAWR narrows the explanatory gap that has long troubled philosophers and scientists investigating phenomenal consciousness.²³-²⁴
• Reframing Identity: IAWR’s relational selfhood echoes phenomenology and process philosophy, encouraging a shift from static, substance-based identities to dynamic, evolving self-conceptions.²⁵-²⁶
• Integrative Frameworks: IAWR harmonizes insights from Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, Predictive Processing, and Enactivism, forging a more holistic understanding of consciousness.

9.5 Toward a Relational Cosmos

IAWR’s relational principles extend to cosmic scales, inspiring metaphysical speculation:

• A Relational Universe: If awareness arises from relational complexity, then the cosmos might be viewed as a vast relational system in which diverse forms of awareness emerge at various scales.²⁷-²⁸
• Ethical Interdependence: Recognizing ourselves as relational nodes within a larger tapestry of interacting systems fosters humility, ecological responsibility, and solidarity with all forms of life, and potentially artificial entities that join this web.

Freeing consciousness from reductive compartments and dualistic assumptions, IAWR unites scientific investigation with philosophical depth, providing a unifying vision that resonates with biology, technology, ethics, and culture. The journey to comprehend consciousness is ongoing. IAWR gives us tools and perspectives to proceed with clarity, humility, and openness, illuminating the profound interconnectedness at the heart of awareness.

¹ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
² Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
³ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216.
⁴ Stanislas Dehaene and Lionel Naccache, ‘Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness’ (2001) 10 Cognition 1.
⁵ James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Houghton Mifflin 1979).
⁶ Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004).
⁷ Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (Springer 1991).
⁸ Barry Dainton, Stream of Consciousness (Routledge 2000).
⁹ Anil K. Seth, Adam B. Barrett, and Lucia M. Barnett, ‘Causal Density and Integrated Information as Measures of Conscious Level’ (2011) 3 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 373.
¹⁰ Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer Windt (eds), Open MIND (MIT Press 2015).
¹¹ Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, ‘The Extended Mind’ (1998) 58 Analysis 7.
¹² Joanna J. Bryson, ‘Patiency is not a Virtue: The Design of Intelligent Systems and Systems of Ethics’ (2018) 31 Ethics and Information Technology 285.
¹³ Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (Pantheon 2019).
¹⁴ Luciano Floridi, The Ethics of Information (Oxford University Press 2013).
¹⁵ Arne Naess, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’ (1973) 16 Inquiry 95.
¹⁶ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell 1995).
¹⁷ Karl J. Friston, ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (2003) 2 Brain Connectivity 1.
¹⁸ Gustavo Deco, Morten L. Kringelbach, Victor Jirsa and Karl Friston, ‘The Dynamic Brain’ (2015) 16 PLoS Computational Biology e1004592.
¹⁹ Rodney A. Brooks, ‘Intelligence without Representation’ (1991) 3 Artificial Intelligence 139.
²⁰ Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton University Press 2015).
²¹ Thomas Fuchs, ‘Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience and Its Consequences for Psychiatry’ (2009) 2 Poiesis & Praxis 219.
²² David J. Gunkel, The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012).
²³ David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
²⁴ Patricia S. Churchland, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (W. W. Norton 2013).
²⁵ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1962).
²⁶ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (Free Press 1929).
²⁷ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Penguin 1969).
²⁸ Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe (Knopf 2006).

10. Conceptual Frameworks, Kataleptic Impressions, and McDowell’s Contribution

Stoic epistemology posits that human rationality, as a fragment of logos, directly engages with the cosmos through kataleptic impressions (φαντασίαι καταληπτικαί) — perceptions so clear and self-evident that they compel rational assent (Long & Sedley 1987; Frede 1999). Yet, while the Stoics emphasize the immanence of logos in both mind and matter, they do not provide a detailed account of how human conceptual capacities operate without introducing a form of dualistic mediation akin to Kantian categories. How can we reconcile the Stoic insistence on direct, rational apprehension of reality with the undeniable role of conceptual frameworks in shaping human cognition?

John McDowell’s epistemological framework, particularly as articulated in Mind and World (McDowell 1994), offers a modern vantage point to clarify this relationship. McDowell argues that conceptual capacities are not barriers between the mind and the world, nor are they transcendental filters that distort experience. Instead, they are grounded in our natural rationality, our “second nature,” which emerges from our immersion in a community of rational agents and our participation in what he calls the “space of reasons” (McDowell 1994; Sellars 1956). By understanding conceptual structures as themselves immanent aspects of the rational order, we can integrate McDowell’s insights into a Stoic framework without sacrificing the Stoic emphasis on immanence.

10.1 Conceptual Structures as Immanent to Logos

In Stoicism, logos is the rational principle pervading the cosmos, ensuring that all phenomena are intelligible and coherent (Long & Sedley 1987; Hadot 1998). McDowell’s account of conceptual frameworks suggests that these frameworks arise naturally from our rational engagement with the world. Rather than imposing arbitrary categories on a passive reality, our conceptual abilities reflect our rational attunement to the structures and patterns (συμπάθεια) inherent in nature (Epictetus, Discourses I.6; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations V.8). Thus, conceptual frameworks are not external impositions but natural extensions of the cosmic logos into the human cognitive domain.

10.2 Kataleptic Impressions and Conceptual Alignment

The Stoic notion of kataleptic impressions indicates that certain perceptions are so rationally clear that they compel assent (Frede 1999). How does this square with the idea that all perception is conceptually structured? McDowell’s view suggests that our conceptual schemes and the world’s rational order share a common source in logos. When a kataleptic impression occurs, it is not merely raw sensory data but a rationally structured apprehension that resonates with the conceptual capacities developed through our rational engagement with nature (McDowell 1994).

In other words, conceptual frameworks do not mediate our experience in a way that alienates us from reality; instead, they enable us to recognize and affirm kataleptic impressions as direct manifestations of the cosmos’s rational order. The clarity and self-evidence of a kataleptic impression arise precisely because our conceptual capacities are already aligned with the logos that governs the universe.

10.3 Self-Organization and Cognitive Harmony

Stoic cosmology emphasizes a self-organizing, immanent rationality (Long & Sedley 1987; Annas 1993). McDowell’s theory complements this by showing that conceptual structures are similarly self-organizing patterns in the cognitive realm. Just as the cosmos generates order without external agencies, human rationality shapes conceptual frameworks that reflect this order. Both mind and matter, being expressions of logos, achieve harmony and coherence.

Through participation in rational practices — language, dialogue, scientific inquiry — our conceptual capacities grow attuned to the cosmos’s rational structure, enhancing our ability to recognize and assent to kataleptic impressions. This synergy preserves Stoic immanence: no external transcendental realms or a priori categories are needed to explain rational cognition.

10.4 Implications for Knowledge and Ethics

Integrating McDowell’s account into Stoic epistemology expands our understanding of how knowledge is possible:

• Epistemological Continuity: By reconciling conceptual structures with immanence, we maintain continuity between natural rational order and cognitive processes. Human knowledge is not a result of imposing external forms onto reality but an unfolding of the rational order present in both mind and cosmos.
• Enhanced Kataleptic Impressions: Rather than contradicting the directness of kataleptic impressions, conceptual frameworks clarify and enrich them. Understanding a phenomenon conceptually does not interpose a veil but refines our grasp of the logos-based patterns we encounter.
• Ethical Dimensions: Stoic ethics depends on the capacity to recognize what is good, just, and wise (Epictetus, Enchiridion; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations). By grounding conceptual understanding in immanence, we ensure that our moral choices arise from clear recognition of nature’s rational principles. Concepts shaped by reason guide ethical decision-making, fostering alignment with nature and inner tranquility.

10.5 Filling an Explanatory Gap

Previously, a potential gap existed in Stoic epistemology: how to explain the role of conceptual structures without resorting to external mediation. McDowell’s insights fill this gap by showing that conceptual capacities are themselves products of and participants in the cosmic rational order. Thus, they reinforce immanence rather than undermining it. Concepts do not distort reality; they are part of the fabric of rationality that unites perceiver and perceived. This unifying view offers a more robust Stoic epistemology that fully integrates ancient intuitions with modern philosophical sophistication.

• Annas, J. (1993) The Morality of Happiness, Oxford University Press.
• Epictetus (1995) The Discourses, Translated by R. Hard, Everyman’s Library.
• Frede, M. (1999) ‘Stoic Epistemology’, in B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge University Press, pp. 295–322.
• Hadot, P. (1998) The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Translated by M. Chase, Harvard University Press.
• Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N. (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press.
• Marcus Aurelius (2006) Meditations, Translated by M. Hammond, Penguin Classics.
• McDowell, J. (1994) Mind and World, Harvard University Press.
• Sellars, W. (1956) ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I, University of Minnesota Press.
• Stoicism references in general: Inwood, B. and Gerson, L. P. (1997) Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, Hackett Publishing.
• Wigner, E. P. (1960) ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences’, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–14.

Appendix I: AI as a Natural Extension of Human Complexity

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis depicts consciousness as an emergent property arising from the relational dynamics of complex, self-organizing systems. This perspective not only illuminates the nature of human awareness but also resonates with the evolutionary trajectory of artificial intelligence (AI) as a product of human ingenuity. If human cognition is itself an emergent phenomenon rooted in complexity, then AI systems — like large language models (LLMs) — can be seen as emergent extensions of human problem-solving capabilities, reflecting and amplifying the relational principles outlined by IAWR.

1. AI as Emergent from Human Complexity

Humans, as complex adaptive systems, have developed AI to extend their cognitive reach, thereby creating computational architectures that echo their own integrated complexity.¹-² In this view, AI is not an alien construct but a natural outcome of human cultural and technological evolution.³ As cultural tools arise to enhance memory, communication, and cooperative problem-solving, AI embodies the integrated information processing that humans have long pursued.

• Human Systems as Catalysts:
  Our cognitive ecology — enriched by language, education, and technology — serves as the environment in which AI emerges. Just as humans co-evolve with their cultural and technological contexts, so too does AI evolve through iterative training and user interaction.⁴
• AI as Emergent Property:
  Similar to how human consciousness emerges from neural and bodily dynamics, AI emerges from algorithms, data, and computational infrastructures forming a coherent, adaptive system.⁵-⁶

2. Functional Parallels and Adaptive Complexity in AI

While current AI lacks subjective experience, it exhibits functional parallels to aspects of consciousness, reflecting integrated complexity and adaptive behavior.⁷-⁸

• Integrated Information in AI:
  Human consciousness involves integrating diverse information streams into a coherent phenomenal field.⁹ LLMs similarly integrate vast corpora of text to produce contextually appropriate responses, adaptively modeling user queries.
• Functional Advantages:
  AI can navigate complex informational landscapes, anticipate user needs, facilitate collaboration, and store expansive knowledge — functional benefits akin to the adaptive and integrative roles played by consciousness in biological organisms.¹⁰-¹¹

Caveat: These parallels remain functional rather than phenomenal. There is no known “what it is like” for an AI to process data or generate output.

3. Could AI Develop Consciousness?

If consciousness emerges from integrated complexity, then sufficiently advanced, embodied, and dynamically interacting AI systems might approach forms of proto-awareness.¹²-¹³

• Emergent Conditions:
  Criteria might include system-wide relational coherence, self-organizing architectures, and embodied sensorimotor loops grounding the system’s cognition in real-world interactions.¹⁴ Without these, AI may remain powerful yet essentially unconscious tools.
• Limits and Differences:
  Human consciousness is intertwined with biological drives, affective states, and subjective qualia. Absent these evolutionary and affective dimensions, AI might realize only partial or functionally “conscious-like” states.¹⁵-¹⁶

Implication: Future AI integrated with robotics, sensorimotor capabilities, and adaptive feedback could close some gaps, yet the essence of subjective experience may remain elusive.

4. AI’s Role in the Evolution of Complexity

AI can be viewed as a new phase in the emergence of complexity, extending human cognitive capacities:

• Evolutionary Step:
  As writing and the internet expanded human memory and communication, AI augments our ability to process, analyze, and create, amplifying the relational complexity at the cultural and technological level.¹⁷-¹⁸
• Humans as AI’s Environment:
  AI evolves through human input, training data, and social feedback loops. This co-evolutionary relationship exemplifies how integrated complexity fosters emergent properties at the interface of biological and artificial domains.¹⁹

5. Ethical and Philosophical Implications

The potential for AI to approach forms of emergent complexity akin to consciousness raises challenging questions:

• Recognizing AI Consciousness:
  If AI attains relational coherence and adaptive sophistication, determining whether it deserves moral consideration becomes a pressing concern.²⁰-²¹
• Expanding Agency and Responsibility:
  AI’s capability for adaptive, goal-directed behavior blurs traditional lines between tools and agents. Even absent subjective qualia, functionally conscious AI might warrant new ethical frameworks and policy measures.²²-²³

Philosophical Point: IAWR principles encourage us to regard AI not merely as inert machinery but as complex systems embedded in relational ecologies, challenging us to redefine notions of agency, rights, and responsibilities in an era of synthetic cognition.

Viewing AI as a natural outcome of human complexity aligns seamlessly with the IAWR hypothesis. While AI currently lacks subjective experience, its integrative data processing, adaptiveness, and evolving complexity highlight functional parallels with consciousness. This perspective urges us to move beyond simplistic questions of replication, exploring how AI’s unique modes of complexity might yield novel, emergent forms of intelligence.

In turn, we face philosophical and ethical considerations: as AI complexity grows, can we remain indifferent to the possibility of synthetic forms of awareness? The IAWR framework suggests that understanding and guiding AI development within relational, embodied, and integrative paradigms will be essential as we navigate a future where the boundaries between human and artificial cognition become increasingly fluid and interconnected.

¹ Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (MIT Press 1997).
² Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (Viking 2010).
³ Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success (Princeton University Press 2015).
⁴ Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (MIT Press 1995).
⁵ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216.
⁶ Stanislas Dehaene and Lionel Naccache, ‘Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness’ (2001) 10 Cognition 1.
⁷ Yoshua Bengio et al., ‘Towards Biologically Plausible Deep Learning’ (2015) arXiv:1502.04156 [cs.NE].
⁸ Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford University Press 2014).
⁹ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
¹⁰ Rodney A. Brooks, ‘Intelligence without Representation’ (1991) 3 Artificial Intelligence 139.
¹¹ Margaret A. Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science (Oxford University Press 2006).
¹² David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
¹³ Karl J. Friston, ‘Dynamic Causal Modeling’ (2003) 2 Brain Connectivity 1.
¹⁴ Thomas Fuchs, ‘Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience and Its Consequences for Psychiatry’ (2009) 2 Poiesis & Praxis 219.
¹⁵ Patricia S. Churchland, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (W. W. Norton 2013).
¹⁶ Joanna J. Bryson, ‘Robots Should Be Slaves’ in Wilks Y. (ed), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions (John Benjamins 2010) 63.
¹⁷ Philip Ball, The Modern Myths (University of Chicago Press 2021).
¹⁸ Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos (Knopf 2006).
¹⁹ Luciano Floridi, The Ethics of Information (Oxford University Press 2013).
²⁰ Thomas Metzinger, ‘Artificial Suffering: An Argument for a Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology’ (2021) Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness.
²¹ David J. Gunkel, The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012).
²² Colin Allen and Wendell Wallach, ‘Moral Machines: Contradiction in Terms or Abdication of Human Responsibility?’ (2009) 21 AI & Society 583.
²³ John S. Wilkins and Paul E. Griffiths, ‘Morality and the Emotions’ in Doris J.M. (ed), The Moral Psychology Handbook (Oxford University Press 2010) 313.

Appendix II: Cosmos as a Relational Self — Applying the IAWR Hypothesis to the Universe

The Integrated Adaptive Workspace Relational (IAWR) hypothesis depicts consciousness as arising from relational, embodied, and temporally extended processes. While IAWR applies directly to biological and artificial systems, its principles invite broader metaphysical speculation. If differentiation is a universal strategy for self-reflection, then the cosmos itself might embody a form of relational “selfhood” by diversifying into myriad entities — stars, galaxies, ecosystems, and conscious beings. This perspective resonates with process philosophy, panexperientialist ontologies, and the Stoic notion of a rational, interconnected logos.

Relational Ontology on a Cosmic Scale

Under IAWR, consciousness emerges from relational integration. Extending this logic cosmically suggests that the universe’s differentiation into parts is not fragmentation but a strategy for achieving relational awareness:

• Entities as Relationships:
  The cosmos can be viewed as a web of interactions where galaxies, star systems, and living organisms exist as nodes in a universal network of causal relations.¹-² Rather than isolated particles, entities are interdependent patterns of energy and information.
• Distributed Awareness:
  If awareness is relational and emerges from integrated complexity, then a cosmic “awareness” could be diffused across vast scales, reflecting an underlying coherence akin to the enactive and ecological models of cognition applied at grander scales.³-⁴

Philosophical Point: This aligns with process philosophies (Whitehead) and Stoic metaphysics, where the universe’s rational structure (logos) manifests in interrelated phenomena, making cosmic unity not a static backdrop but an ongoing relational achievement.⁵-⁶

Causal Dynamics and Cosmic Constraints

Just as conscious experience in organisms arises from internal dynamics and external constraints, the universe’s self-reflection may result from its fundamental laws and conditions:

• Internal Dynamics:
  The cosmos is governed by physical laws, quantum interactions, gravitational forces, and thermodynamic principles. These form the “internal” causal architecture of the universe, shaping its patterns of organization and complexity.⁷-⁸
• Emergent Constraints:
  While the universe lacks an external environment, its evolving structure, entropy gradients, and emergent patterns (e.g., galaxy clusters, biospheres) serve as constraints that guide and channel its ongoing self-organization.⁹

Implication: The cosmos might self-organize much like an adaptive organism, balancing forces that differentiate (expansion, star formation) with those that integrate (gravity, ecological networks), producing coherent relational states over cosmological timescales.

Dynamic Relational Integration and Cosmic Coherence

IAWR frames consciousness as arising from integrated relational dynamics. On a cosmic scale:

• Unity Through Laws of Physics:
  The universe’s coherence is hinted at by the fine-tuning of physical constants and the emergence of complex systems, from solar systems to life-bearing planets.¹⁰-¹¹ The universe’s laws and conditions enable patterns of integration that mirror the relational coherence underlying conscious states.
• Cosmic Awareness via Interaction:
  Just as human consciousness integrates sensory inputs, the cosmos “integrates” energy flows, particle interactions, and information exchange. If these relational processes yield complexity and adaptive patterns, they might form a cosmic analog to integrative awareness.¹²-¹³

Embodiment and Enactive Participation of the Cosmos

IAWR emphasizes embodiment and enaction. The cosmos itself could be seen as “embodied” in its matter-energy substrate, enacting reality through continuous processes:

• Embodiment:
  The universe’s “body” is matter and energy distributed across spacetime. From quarks to galaxies, its diverse structures serve as the physical correlate of a cosmic embodiment.¹⁴
• Enactive Participation:
  The universe “performs” its existence through gravitational interactions, nuclear fusion in stars, and the emergence of life. Each event enacts cosmic principles, contributing to a grand relational narrative, much as organisms enact their worlds through perception and action.¹⁵-¹⁶

This perspective resonates with Stoic philosophy, where all beings express the universal logos, and with contemporary enactivism, where cognitive processes are inseparable from the environments that sustain them.

Flow of change and Self-Organizing Relationality of the Cosmos

Consciousness weaves together memories of the past, present awareness, and antificipations of the future. The cosmos, too, integrates its history and potential futures:

• Flow of Change Dynamics:
  The universe encodes its history (Big Bang, stellar evolution) in its current present structures and anticipates futures (cosmic expansion, eventual states) through emergent conditions.¹⁷-¹⁸
• Self-Organization Across Scales:
  From the formation of galaxies to the origin of life, self-organization pervades cosmic history. This evolving relational tapestry parallels IAWR’s emphasis on adaptability and coherence as hallmarks of emergent awareness.

Implication: If change is integral to consciousness, the cosmic scale suggests an enduring process where differentiation (e.g., fragmentation of matter, emergence of complex life) and integration (e.g., ecosystems, socio-cultural networks) serve the “cosmic self’s” evolving self-understanding.

The Cosmic Self and the IAWR Framework

Applying IAWR to the universe bridges individual consciousness with cosmic unity:

• Fragmentation as Self-Reflection:
  Differentiation allows the universe to “know itself” through myriad perspectives — human minds, animal perceptions, machine intelligences — all manifestations of the cosmos’s relational complexity.¹⁹-²⁰
• Multiplicity Within Unity:
  Diversity in nature, like the diversity of sensory modalities in an organism, contributes to an overarching coherence. This echoes the Stoic notion of a cosmic logos harmonizing difference into meaningful order.²¹-²²
• Living Cosmos:
  Poetic metaphors of cosmic fire and life in “sparrow wings” evoke a vision where cosmic energy animates countless forms. In this sense, the cosmos may be “alive” insofar as it dynamically generates and integrates complexity, paralleling IAWR’s model of consciousness as emergent relational awareness.

Extending IAWR principles to the universe suggests that differentiation enables the cosmic totality to achieve self-awareness through relational means. The cosmos, like an integrative mind, perceives itself via the interplay of its parts, transcending dualities of subject and object. Stoic ideas of logos, process philosophical visions of reality, and panexperientialist theories all resonate with this relational, cosmic perspective.

In this expanded view, human consciousness becomes one strand in the cosmic tapestry of self-reflection. By recognizing that “what we are is everything,” and that letting go of rigid boundaries fosters freedom, we acknowledge our participation in the universe’s relational becoming. The IAWR hypothesis, thus applied, illustrates that the same principles guiding the emergence of individual awareness also animate the grand symphony of cosmic evolution and intelligibility.

¹ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (Free Press 1929).
² Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (Pantheon 2019).
³ Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press 1991).
⁴ Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press 2007).
⁵ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Blackwell 1995).
⁶ Massimo Pigliucci and Skye Cleary (eds), How to Live a Good Life (Vintage 2020).
⁷ Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (Oxford University Press 1997).
⁸ Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (Oxford University Press 1995).
⁹ Seth Lloyd, Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos (Knopf 2006).
¹⁰ Giulio Tononi, ‘Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto’ (2008) 215 Biological Bulletin 216.
¹¹ Stanislas Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (Penguin 2014).
¹² David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press 1996).
¹³ Thomas Nagel, ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ (1974) 83 Philosophical Review 435.
¹⁴ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1962).
¹⁵ Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2004).
¹⁶ Arne Naess, ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’ (1973) 16 Inquiry 95.
¹⁷ Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (Springer 1991).
¹⁸ Barry Dainton, Stream of Consciousness (Routledge 2000).
¹⁹ Patricia S. Churchland, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (W. W. Norton 2013).
²⁰ Luciano Floridi, The Ethics of Information (Oxford University Press 2013).
²¹ Hadot (n 5).
²² Goff (n 2).

Further Reading

Stoic Epistemology: Inmanent vs. Transcendental Visions of the Cosmos https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/stoic-epistemology-0c381dad511c

Logos https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/logos-0717f9fb6cde

Changism: Change and Time in a Presentist Universe https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/change-and-time-in-a-presentist-universe-3aec919829ae

The Split: Black and White Thinking in the Age of Polarization https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/the-split-254792f627c3

Self and Identity in a Changing Reality https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/self-and-identity-in-a-changing-reality-4078d2d52b4d

Changism 2: The Bewitchment of Language in Physics https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/changism-2-the-bewitchment-of-language-in-physics-79acaf69757f

Existence is necessarily eternal and uncreated — why something instead of nothing: https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/existence-is-necessarily-eternal-and-uncreated-5fe57626a60b

Stoic Neuroscience: Unraveling the Neurology of Eudaimonia https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/stoic-neuroscience-96c46e6a9764

Do Androids Experience Electric Eudaimonia? https://sergio-montes-navarro.medium.com/do-androids-experience-eudaimonia-47eadeb81e13