Return to Consciousness: A Philosophical Journey from Materialism to Meaning
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 3, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21168563 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Physicalism Consciousness Materialism Metaphysics Idealism Existentialism Conceptualism Subjectivism Absoluteness Epistemology Philosophical theory Intuition Phenomenology philosophy Qualia Thought experiment Contemplation Individuation |
| Key points | Argues that the scientific method's conflation with materialist metaphysics inverted the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, and that analytic idealism—treating consciousness as an ontological primitive and dissociation as the mechanism of individuation—resolves explanatory burdens more symmetrically than physicalism. |
Abstract
Abstract: The one thing every investigation of nature presupposes — conscious experience — has for over a century been treated as a byproduct of the things it was used to study. As the foundational synthesis of the Return to Consciousness project, this essay traces how that inversion occurred — not through philosophical proof but through a historically contingent conflation of scientific method with materialist metaphysics — and argues that reversing it resolves more than it costs. Developing analytic idealism's proposal — consciousness as ontological primitive, dissociation as the mechanism of individuation — the essay compares each framework's residual explanatory burdens symmetrically. Physicalism must generate experience from primitives that exclude it; idealism must explain why consciousness dissociates into finite minds and why into these specific patterns. Both are genuine debts, named here as such. A central finding: the widespread intuition that lawlike regularity is "natural for matter" but "surprising for mind" is itself a bias, not a neutral observation. Drawing on convergent structural patterns across physics, contemplative phenomenology, and independent cosmological traditions — developed across the project's supporting essays — the assessment proceeds by comparative plausibility under explanatory pressure, not certainty. The implications extend well beyond metaphysics. Keywords: analytic idealism · physicalism · hard problem of consciousness · consciousness-first metaphysics · comparative ontology · explanatory burden · dissociation Part of the Return to Consciousness research program — 30 philosophical essays exploring consciousness-first metaphysics. Full project: https://returntoconsciousness.org/