{"id":10293,"date":"2026-06-08T00:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T07:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/?p=10293"},"modified":"2026-06-07T05:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T12:23:18","slug":"the-landscape-of-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/2026\/06\/08\/the-landscape-of-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Landscape of Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think you’re gonna like this, or at least … I’d be pretty damn perplexed about how you couldn’t. <\/p>\n

Let’s start here<\/a>.
\n(Half an hour’s worth of the basics, a PBS production.)
\nThus:<\/p>\n

Materialism<\/em>: most of the Science\/tists and the professional\/managerial\/academic class.<\/p>\n

Dualism<\/em>: most of the Faithful and the regular folks, and historically ‘the church’. <\/p>\n

Idealism<\/em>: broadly speaking, where I sit, and in a less clarified way, where I’ve sat. <\/p>\n

These of course are not the only options, just the ones that matter most to the nominal ‘us’.
\n(I do really love Alex Gomez-Marin and his refusal to commit to anything beyond ‘intellectual pluralism’ at the seventeen-minute mark. You may prefer the split-the-difference panpsychism of Galen Strawson, near minute 23.) <\/p>\n

And next, instead of drilling down, let’s broaden out first. <\/p>\n

All 325+ Competing Consciousness Theories In One Video<\/a>
\n(A three-hour commitment, sorry, darlings; in which the interviewer from the first video becomes the interviewed, by our friend Hans from an earlier post.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is a snapshot from the 325+ video. <\/p>\n

But if you’re even still with me, and in for that penny, I’m afraid there’s a pound yet to come. <\/p>\n

This is a partial snapshot of the current iteration of the mapping tool (https:\/\/loc.closertotruth.com\/map<\/a>) about a year later, as of today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And, for further detail, here is the same basic information presented in a multi-page grid:
\nhttps:\/\/loc.closertotruth.com\/consciousness-theories<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet another (and also more complex) variation on the theme:
\nhttps:\/\/loc.closertotruth.com\/all-consciousness-categories-subcategories-and-theories<\/a><\/p>\n

And, if that’s not quite enough for you, a meta-analysis of the map that seeks to evaluate it in terms like scale, rigor, and complexity:
\nhttps:\/\/loc.closertotruth.com\/interactive<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For myself, I’ll be proceeding from the Idealism tab of the grid view, which … is still not nearly as far along as I’d prefer to be …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fortunately, all I need to know about the Western philosophical POV on this is …<\/p>\n

Plato \u2014 The Allegory of the Cave
\nKant \u2014 Critique of Pure Reason
\nHegel \u2014 Phenomenology of Spirit
\nEmerson \u2014 Essays & Lectures
\nSchopenhauer \u2014 The World as Will and Representation
\nand, in the latest flavor variation on Idealisms that are said to be Objective, the collected works of Bernardo Kastrup<\/a><\/p>\n

Setting all that dusty shit aside …
\n… frees me to directly experiment with the Eastern experiential tools like meditation and self-inquiry once more. <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

That last part is relatively irrelevant, to you.<\/p>\n

What matters to you is what you<\/em> choose to do with this gorgeous map that is, even so, not the territory. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think you’re gonna like this, or at least … I’d be pretty damn perplexed about how you couldn’t. Let’s start here. (Half an hour’s worth of the basics, a PBS production.) Thus: Materialism: most of the Science\/tists and the professional\/managerial\/academic class. Dualism: most of the Faithful and the regular folks, and historically ‘the church’. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10293"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10301,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10293\/revisions\/10301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}