About This Substack
I’m writing a book-length essay, Worlds of Awareness: Cetaceans, Evolution, and Cultures of Consciousness. It asks a question that sounds simple but turns out to be one of the most consequential we face: Is rich, complex consciousness a uniquely human accident, or might other species have evolved forms of inner life as deep as ours—even if utterly alien to us?
The essay argues for the latter. Drawing on cetacean neuroscience, philosophy of mind, evolutionary theory, and contemplative traditions, it makes a case that the mainstream scientific worldview—what philosophers call physicalism—cannot adequately account for what we’re learning about consciousness across species. And it explores what opens up when we stop treating that worldview as the only serious option.
The argument moves through several stages. It begins with orcas—specifically, with a mother named Tahlequah. In 2018, she carried her dead calf through the Puget Sound waters for 17 days and a thousand miles, captivating millions of people who recognized the unmistakable emotion in her behavior. From there, it examines why our dominant intellectual framework struggles to make sense of that recognition, tracing the evolution of complex brains and the interiority they imply, and surveying the philosophical territory that becomes available once physicalism no longer monopolizes the conversation. It culminates in what Thomas Metzinger calls Bewusstseinskultur—a culture of consciousness: the idea that cultivating interior life with the same rigor we’ve applied to mastering the external world isn’t a luxury but an urgent civilizational necessity.
This isn’t an academic monograph. It’s a work of cross-disciplinary synthesis—connecting dots across cetacean cognition, the philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, cultural evolution, and the contemplative traditions that have been exploring consciousness for millennia. I’m a retired environmental and engineering project manager, not a professional philosopher or other academic. My contribution is synthesis: a story about how the discoveries and implications of research in disparate fields support a broader counter-narrative about the nature of the world.
Who This Is For
If you’re scientifically literate but sense that the standard materialist story is incomplete—if you’ve felt the gap between the physicalist framework’s claims about consciousness and what your own experience tells you—I’m writing the essay with you in mind. Some people call it a “meaning crisis.” I think of it as a recognition that’s becoming harder to suppress: that our most rigorous account of reality has no room for the most immediate thing any of us knows—the fact of our own experience.
A secondary audience: if you care about cetaceans and ocean ecosystems, the essay offers a framework in which the sentience of at least some marine mammals is equivalent to that of humans—not as sentimental projection, but as a serious philosophical and scientific claim.
What You’ll Find Here
This Substack includes chapter and theme summaries of the book. Each post presents the core argument(s) in compressed form—enough to engage with the ideas seriously, not just skim the surface.
I’m publishing these summaries for two reasons. First, because I want these ideas to be be accessible to anyone interested in them. Second, because I’m actively looking for critical readers—people willing to engage with the full chapters and push back where the arguments are weak, the evidence is thin, or the reasoning doesn’t hold.
Why Everything Here Is Free
Nothing on this Substack will ever be behind a paywall.
A foundational premise of this project is that we need to take consciousness seriously as a civilizational program—that the cultivation of interior life deserves the kind of collective attention we currently reserve for technological development. It would be incoherent to make that argument while monetizing access to it.
Ideas that matter should circulate freely. The history of thought didn’t advance through paywalls.
An Invitation
My goal here is to participate in the growing conversation about the civilizational effects of our worldviews, and our desperate need to move beyond the intellectually constraining boundaries of the modern scientific perspective. I hope that the ideas stimulate others to continue expanding those critical conversations.
A secondary but personally important goal is to get criticisms that make the essay stronger. If something in these essays provokes you—whether in agreement or to sharp disagreement—I would like to hear from you. I’m looking for substantive pushback, incisive comments and questions, and especially anything you think I’ve gotten wrong. I’ll read all comments and respond when I can add something useful. You can also send me mail: rsm at 137fsc dot net. (I’m particularly interested in full-chapter critiques. Please let me know if you might be interested.)
A Note on Method
I’ve used AI platforms extensively in developing this project, relying on Anthropic’s Claude and other models for almost all technical aspects ( website, databases, document processing and control), as well as for research and editorial review and revision. This is not a disclaimer but a disclosure: the arguments, judgments, and errors are mine alone. The process of arriving at them, however, has been collaborative in a way that I think is worth being transparent about, especially in an essay that takes the subject of consciousness seriously. I rather enjoy the irony of working with a system that processes language but cannot experience anything.
To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.
