What If Consciousness Simply Is?
Every explanation has to stop somewhere. When physicists tell us that electrons have charge, that the speed of light is constant, or that quantum fields exist, we can ask: Why? Why do electrons have the charge they do rather than another value? Why does the universe obey these particular laws rather than others?
The honest answer is that we may never know — because some facts about reality simply lack deeper explanations. They’re what philosophers call “brute facts” or “irreducible properties”: features of the universe that are fundamental, that bottom out, and that just are.
This idea isn’t controversial in physics. As philosopher Eliot Sober notes in his review of Thomas Nagel’s work, “Scientists already leave room for brute facts… When they say that a law is ‘fundamental,’ they mean that it can’t be explained by anything deeper.”1Physicist Sean Carroll puts it even more directly: “At the deepest level, the laws of physics might just be brute facts. Asking for something deeper could simply be a confusion.”2
And it’s not just the laws—the regularities and patterns—that bottom out. The properties of matter itself are irreducible. We can describe what charge, mass, and spin do and measure their effects with extraordinary precision, but we cannot explain what they intrinsically are. They simply are.
But notice the assumption embedded here: that these irreducible features are purely physical. What if that assumption itself is the problem? What if the fundamental features of reality can’t be neatly classified as either purely mental or purely physical?
A Third Way: Neither Mind Nor Matter
Philosophers call this position ‘neutral monism’—the view that reality is fundamentally neither mental nor physical, but something more basic that differentiates into both. The mental and physical aren’t separate substances that interact, but different aspects or poles of a single underlying reality.
But neutral monism itself comes in two fundamentally different forms, and the distinction matters enormously.
Compositional neutral monism, developed by Ernst Mach, William James, and Bertrand Russell, works from the bottom up: reality is built from psychophysically neutral elements, and their organization determines whether they differentiate as mental or physical. Think of it as LEGO blocks that can be arranged into different structures. Russell argued that physics tells us only about the relational structure of matter—how things interact and behave—but nothing about their intrinsic nature. What we call “mental” properties (experience, consciousness) might be the intrinsic nature that physics leaves unspecified. In Russell’s framework, matter is what something is like from the outside (how it appears to observation and measurement), while mind is what it’s like from the inside (how it is in itself, experientially). Mental and physical states are built from the same neutral elements, just differently organized.
Decompositional neutral monism, a term coined by Harald Atmanspacher, works from the top down: it begins with a holistic, psychophysically neutral reality that differentiates into mental and physical aspects.3 Rather than building consciousness from smaller parts, this view holds that both the mental and the physical are aspects that arise from distinctions within an underlying wholeness. Think of it as a prism revealing different colors—the white light is primary and unified, while the separated colors are derivative aspects of that unity.
Atmanspacher’s framework formalized the structure implicit in the work of physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung. Over decades of correspondence in the mid-20th century, they developed what they called the ‘psychophysical continuum’—a framework in which a holistic, psychophysically neutral reality (which Jung called the unus mundus, the “one world”) differentiates into mental and physical aspects. They suggested that everything in reality exists somewhere along this continuum, participating in both aspects to varying degrees.4
These aren’t variations on a theme. They have radically different metaphysical structures—and radically different consequences for understanding consciousness.
Crucially, this is not the same as saying consciousness is built from proto-conscious parts. In the Pauli-Jung framework, the fundamental reality is not “studded with tiny bits of experience” that somehow combine into our unified consciousness. Rather, it is a holistic ground from which experiential and physical aspects jointly arise through differentiation, not combination. Although their framework drew on Jungian concepts, the core insight—that a psychophysically neutral reality differentiates into aspects rather than being assembled from elements—requires no commitment to Jung’s broader psychological theories.
From this perspective, the traditional mind-body problem dissolves rather than being solved. We’re not asking ‘how does matter produce mind?’ or ‘how does mind produce matter?’ We’re recognizing that both are aspects of something more fundamental—something irreducible precisely because it’s prior to the mental/physical distinction itself.
The key insight: what we call ‘physical’ properties are how reality appears from the outside—measurable, relational, structural, the patterns we detect with instruments and mathematics. What we call ‘mental’ properties are how reality is from the inside—experiential, qualitative, felt. Neither aspect is ontologically more fundamental than the other—both are differentiations of a deeper, psychophysically neutral reality.5
What This Is Not: A Note on Emergence
To be clear about what this framework does not claim: consciousness does not “emerge” from anything—not from matter, not from proto-experiences, and not from quantum processes.
Emergence is real and well established in many domains. Temperature, liquidity, flocking behavior, and solidity are clear examples of behaviors that emerge from underlying conditions. But in most cases, the emergent behavior—known as weak emergence—is of the same kind as the underlying conditions: temperature emerges from the motion of molecules, flocking behavior from the motion of birds or fish, and solidity from the motion of molecules. This is referred to as weak emergence.
Emergent language suggests that something genuinely new arises from the combination of simpler elements—that 2+2 somehow equals 5. But emergence in this strong sense is just a label for mystery, not an explanation. Saying “consciousness emerges from neural complexity” is just saying “somehow, when brains get complex enough, consciousness appears”—which explains nothing.6
If the mental is an aspect of fundamental reality and is embedded in the psychophysical continuum, it doesn’t emerge at some threshold. This doesn’t mean we can explain how the experiential and structural aspects of reality relate to each other through physical organization. We may not have the conceptual tools to do so — Nagel’s point about ‘forms of understanding of which we have not even dreamt’ applies here with full force. But the nature of the mystery has changed. We are no longer asking how something arises from what categorically excludes it. We are asking how aspects of a reality that already includes both relate to each other — a question that is genuinely open, but no longer incoherent.
The Collapse of Explanatory Asymmetry
For decades, reductive materialism held a powerful advantage: it explained more. The physical explained the mental, not the other way around. Physics was fundamental; everything else was derivative. This wasn’t just a scientific claim—it was an argument over which worldview was intellectually superior.
But the moment we accept that physical properties themselves are irreducible—that charge, mass, fields, and fundamental laws simply exist without further explanation—this supposed advantage becomes moot.
Consider what philosopher Galen Strawson calls a ‘large and fatal mistake’ of standard materialism: the assumption that we know what “the physical” is and that it can’t include anything experiential.7 But physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of matter. As Bertrand Russell argued nearly a century ago:
Physics is purely structural; it tells us nothing of the intrinsic character of physical events. If anything is known about intrinsic character, it is known through experience. Thus, the mental is the only example we have of intrinsic character; mind and matter cannot be categorically opposed.8
Whatever that intrinsic nature is, Russell concluded, it must be primitive and irreducible. Physics simply does not (and cannot) tell us whether that intrinsic nature includes, allows for, or relates to consciousness. Quantum mechanics makes the point concrete — the measurement problem shows that physics’ own deepest theory depends on a separation between observer and observed that it cannot itself account for.9 As Pauli recognized, this isn’t an incompleteness within physics but an incompleteness of physics as a framework for understanding reality as a whole.10
Pauli went further. He argued that mind and matter should be understood as complementary, a sense extended from quantum theory — both necessary for a complete description of reality, yet accessible only through mutually exclusive modes of investigation. The methods that reveal physical structure are constitutively blind to experiential quality, not out of ignorance, but because the epistemic framework that makes physical knowledge possible excludes first-person experience. From this perspective, the hard problem is misconceived. Asking why physical processes give rise to subjective experience is like asking why measuring position doesn’t simultaneously yield momentum. The answer isn’t that we need a better theory of position. Rather, position and momentum are complementary aspects of a single reality, accessible through incompatible frameworks.
Three Positions, One Structure
Once we see this clearly, the landscape shifts. Consider the three main metaphysical positions:
Physicalism holds that matter is fundamental and unexplained. Mind is derivative, somehow emerging from physical processes (also unexplained at the deepest level).
Idealism holds that mind is fundamental and unexplained. Physical structure is derivative, somehow arising from mental processes (also unexplained at the deepest level).
Neutral monism holds that neither mind nor matter is fundamental. Both are aspects of something more basic—call it the psychophysical continuum, or simply reality in its wholeness. How the unified reality differentiates into these two aspects remains unexplained at the deepest level.
All three positions rest on the same foundation: unexplained primitives. None explains “all the way down.” All three make a choice about what to place at the bottom of their explanatory hierarchy—or in the case of dual-aspect monism, recognize that the hierarchy itself may be misconceived.
The structures are identical in form. They differ only in what they designate as primitive or in whether they privilege one pole over another.
Why This Changes Everything
This isn’t merely a philosophical technicality. It fundamentally reshapes the debate about consciousness in three crucial ways:
First, it removes the supposed scientific high ground of reductive materialism. The claim that “consciousness must reduce to physical processes” isn’t a scientific conclusion—it’s a metaphysical preference for certain kinds of primitives over others. As Sober notes, science itself should remain “open to the possibility that some causal relationships are brute facts,” including those involving consciousness.
Second, it reveals the mind-body problem as potentially misconceived. If the mental is a basic aspect of reality—no less fundamental than the physical—then the question shifts from ‘how does non-conscious matter produce consciousness?’ to ‘how does the psychophysical continuum manifest through different configurations?’ This is still challenging, but it is a fundamentally different kind of challenge. We’re no longer trying to explain how something emerges from its categorical opposite — a task that may be not just difficult but incoherent. Instead, we face an open question about the relationship between aspects of a reality that includes both.
Third, it reframes the question from “which view is true?” to “which framework makes more sense given everything we know?” Here, the balance shifts. Physical properties like charge and mass don’t predict or necessitate consciousness—there’s nothing in the mathematics of quantum field theory that suggests “and this will produce subjective experience.” But if we accept a psychophysical continuum—if the mental is as fundamental as the physical—then the rich inner life of complex organisms becomes expected rather than miraculous, natural rather than inexplicable.
A Persistent Explanatory Gap
The expectation that consciousness can be fully explained in physical terms may be a category error. Thomas Nagel develops this theme in Mind and Cosmos, arguing that reductive approaches to consciousness systematically fail not because we lack detailed knowledge, but because the explanatory strategy itself is inadequate:
It may be frustrating to acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at which we find ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we have not even dreamt. Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that the tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.11
The felt quality of experience, the unity of consciousness, and the directedness of intentionality—these resist reduction because of their nature, not because of our ignorance.
You don’t have to accept Nagel’s controversial teleological conclusions to recognize the force of his critique: the reductive program hasn’t just stalled; it has encountered what appear to be principled barriers. After decades of neuroscience and cognitive science, we can map correlations between brain states and conscious experiences with exquisite detail. What we still cannot do—what many philosophers now argue we cannot do in principle—is explain why any physical process should feel like something at all.
The persistent explanatory gap isn’t a temporary problem awaiting the next breakthrough. It is telling us something important: that we’re asking the wrong kind of question and applying reductive strategies when irreducibility is the actual nature of things.
From Metaphysics to Consequences
So where does this leave us? Not with proof that dual-aspect monism is true—such proof may be impossible in principle. Not with certainty that reductive materialism is false—it remains a coherent metaphysical position, as does idealism. But with something equally important: recognition that all three frameworks are metaphysically legitimate choices grounded in comparable foundations.
No worldview can claim epistemic superiority on the basis of “explaining more” or “assuming less.” None can be ruled out by appeals to scientific superiority or explanatory parsimony. All bottom out in primitives and require metaphysical commitments beyond what science alone can establish. All must be evaluated by evidence, coherence, and consequences.
When considering equally legitimate metaphysical frameworks, key questions arise: What follows from living as if each were true? What does each worldview produce in terms of meaning, ethics, value, and action? What kind of world does each create when taken seriously? We can’t settle metaphysics conclusively, but we can evaluate what each framework produces when actually lived.
This matters profoundly for ethics. If the mental is a fundamental aspect of reality—if experiential interiority is native to the holistic ground of being rather than an accidental byproduct of neural complexity—then the nature of empathy changes entirely.
Within a physicalist framework, minds are fundamentally isolated; empathy is an imaginative projection, a generous yet ultimately subjective sentiment generated by one biological machine toward another. But in the decompositional view, when we encounter another conscious being—whether human, cetacean, or non-human animal—we are not projecting an illusion of kinship onto a meat-machine. We are encountering another manifestation of the same psychophysical continuum that hosts our own inner life.
This conclusion aligns with insights from within physics itself. Heisenberg’s speculation about a central order preceding the distinction between mind and matter12 and Pauli’s independent work with Jung, both suggest that the intrinsic ordering of reality includes the experiential. Ethics grounded in this recognition isn’t a human invention imposed on indifferent matter; it is an alignment with what is actually there.
Harming another mind is not merely a violation of a social contract or a biological system. It is acting against the grain of an underlying reality. The dignity of conscious beings isn’t conferred by us; it’s discovered.
This is the shift from metaphysical argument to pragmatic assessment — from asking ‘which is certainly true?’ to asking ‘which framework better serves truth, meaning, and flourishing when we live it out?’ Not to certainty about ultimate metaphysics, but to recognition that we face a choice — and that choosing has consequences we can evaluate, test, and live by.
Elliot Sober, “Remarkable Facts,” Boston Review, November 2012.
Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Oneworld Publications, 2016), 355.
Harald Atmanspacher, “The Pauli?Jung Conjecture and Its Relatives: A Formally Augmented Outline,” Open Philosophy 3, no. 1 (2020): 527–49, https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0138.
Harald Atmanspacher and Christopher A. Fuchs, The Pauli-Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today (Andrews UK Limited, 2017).
I use “differentiations” in an illustrative sense, rather than the more academic expressions Atmanspacher uses, e.g.: the mental and physical “emerge as a consequence of an epistemic split of an underlying ontic holism.”Harald Atmaspacher, “20th Century Variants of Dual-Aspect Thinking,” Mind and Matter 12, no. 2 (2014): 245–88.
For an expanded discussion of emergence, see my article “What Emergence Cannot Reach”.
Galen Strawson, “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism,” in Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?, ed. Anthony Freeman (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006), 4–5.
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Matter (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1927).
This is not a claim that consciousness plays a role in quantum measurement — Pauli was explicit that it does not.
Harald Atmanspacher and Wolfgang Fach, “A Structural-Phenomenological Typology of Mind-Matter Correlations,” The Journal of Analytical Psychology 58, no. 2 (2013): 224, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5922.12005.
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press, 2012), 3.
Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (Harper, 1958).
That last part almost made me spit out my whale-burger. All kidding aside, much of this applies to my own recent views on consciousness. Thanks for adding to the conversation. I’ll have to chew on some parts of this for a while.