Return to Consciousness: A Comparative Case for Consciousness-First Metaphysics
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) March 16, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19051873 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that analytic idealism handles the explanatory difficulties of consciousness more coherently than physicalism, while acknowledging that idealism still owes an account of why consciousness dissociates into finite minds and why into these specific patterns. Contends that regularity is equally unexplained under both frameworks and that the intuition it is natural for matter but surprising for mind is circular because it presupposes physicalism. |
Abstract
Abstract: This is the foundational synthesis of the Return to Consciousness project. 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. This essay argues that consciousness-first metaphysics — specifically Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism — handles the resulting explanatory difficulties more coherently than physicalism. Physicalism must explain how experience arises from non-experiential primitives; neuroscience has mapped correlates, but correlates are not the problem — no one has explained why there is experience at all. Idealism must explain why consciousness dissociates into finite minds and why into these specific patterns — genuine debts, named here as debts. Regularity — why reality exhibits mathematically precise, lawlike structure — is equally unexplained under both frameworks; the intuition that it is "natural for matter" but "surprising for mind" is circular — it presupposes physicalism to argue for physicalism. The standard throughout is comparative plausibility under explanatory pressure, not certainty. Keywords: analytic idealism · physicalism · hard problem of consciousness · consciousness-first metaphysics · comparative ontology · explanatory burden · dissociation Part of the Return to Consciousness research program — 26 philosophical essays exploring consciousness-first metaphysics. Full project: https://returntoconsciousness.org/