Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience
Journal of the American Philosophical Association January 1, 2018 Itay Shani, Joachim Keppler 88 citations
A novel variant of cosmopsychism is proposed, the view that ordinary conscious experiences are ultimately grounded in an all-pervading cosmic consciousness. The approach uses stochastic electrodynamics (SED) as its physical foundation, supplemented by insights from eastern philosophy and wisdom traditions. Cosmic consciousness is identified with the vacuum state of quantum field theory, from which ordinary consciousness dynamically emerges. The authors argue that this framework is well suited to address problems of phenomenal constitution, particularly concerning the qualities and structure of experience and the generation of subjects.