Reality Beyond Actuality: Real-Imaginary Structure and the Emergence of Conscious Experience

Consciousness can emerge in a reality that is not originally conscious. Reductive physicalism cannot explain how interiority arises from purely external processes, while panpsychism avoids this problem only by assuming consciousness is already present from the start. A real-imaginary conception of reality, developed since 2003 and later extended into a quaternionic framework, proposes that reality includes an intrinsic dimension of structured possibility beyond present actuality. This structure grounds pre-subjective openness, and its quaternionic differentiation provides the basis for pre-phenomenal subjectivability. Conscious experience emerges when structured possibility becomes sufficiently integrated, self-referential, stabilized, and centered. Reality is originally structured to make the emergence of conscious subjects possible.

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Abstract

This essay asks what reality must be like if conscious experience can emerge within it without being present from the beginning. Building on the notions of pre-subjective openness and pre-phenomenal subjectivability, it argues that consciousness should be understood neither as an inexplicable product of closed actuality nor as a primordial feature of reality itself. Reductive physicalism fails to account for the emergence of interiority from merely external processes, while panpsychism avoids this difficulty only by assuming that consciousness is already present from the beginning, at least in latent or elementary form. Against both alternatives, the essay proposes a real-imaginary conception of reality, developed since 2003 and later extended into a quaternionic framework. In this view, reality is not exhausted by present actuality, but includes an intrinsic dimension of structured possibility. The real-imaginary structure grounds pre-subjective openness, while its quaternionic differentiation provides the formal basis for pre-phenomenal subjectivability. Conscious experience emerges when structured possibility becomes sufficiently integrated, self-referential, stabilized, and centered. Reality is therefore not originally conscious, but originally structured so as to make possible the emergence of consciously experiencing subjects.