Ontology II: From World–Brain Relation to Consciousness

Consciousness is ontologically grounded in the world-brain relation, a spatiotemporal structure that provides the necessary but not sufficient condition for phenomenal experience. The author argues that the world-brain relation, characterized by relational time and space, enables an 'upward spatiotemporal entailment' of consciousness, establishing a necessary a posteriori connection between brain and consciousness without invoking a separate concept of mind. This approach, based on ontic structural realism, dissolves the traditional mind-body problem, replacing it with a 'world-brain problem' where mental features are understood as ontologically continuous with the world-brain relation rather than requiring an additional mental substance.

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Abstract

How can we account for the existence and reality of consciousness and mental features in general? The present chapter complements the previous one by shifting the focus from the ontological determination of the brain to consciousness. I characterized the brain’s existence and reality by world-brain relation for which I presupposed relation and structure as basic units of existence and reality. This entails structural realism, that is, ontic structural realism (OSR). I now apply the definition of the brain by world-brain relation and OSR to consciousness. The main point is that I extend the spatiotemporal definition of world-brain relation to consciousness, that is, its phenomenal features as distinguished from neuronal (and physical) features (while leaving out other features of consciousness like cognitive features; chapter 7). Specifically, I argue that the world-brain relation provides the necessary non-sufficient ontological condition of possible consciousness, the “ontological predisposition of consciousness” (OPC) as I say. The world-brain relation is characterized by spatiotemporal structure with relational time and space which makes possible “upward spatiotemporal entailment” of consciousness. Accordingly, consciousness is entailed spatiotemporally by world-brain relation; this, in turn, makes possible necessary (rather than contingent) a posteriori ontological connection between brain and consciousness on the basis of their commonly underlying and shared world-brain relation. Importantly, this makes superfluous the introduction of the concept of mind to account for necessary connection of mental features to their underlying ontological basis. Therefore, I suggest replacing the concept of mind by the one of world-brain relation. This entails that the mind-body problem becomes superfluous and can be replaced by what I describe as “world-brain problem”.