4 posts tagged with "Philosophy"

In April 2025 Nature published the results of the COGITATE project — the largest adversarial experiment in the history of consciousness science. 256 participants, three neuroimaging modalities (fMRI, MEG, iEEG), two years of work, two leading theories: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT). Result: both partially confirmed, both partially refuted. Neither won.

Thirty million dollars from the Templeton Foundation, hundreds of scientists, an impeccable protocol — and a draw. One can view this as a failure. Or as a diagnosis: the problem is deeper than either side thought. Each theory formalizes one aspect of consciousness and declares it the only one. The result is not competition between theories but an ill-posed problem. As if two blind men were describing an elephant, and the judges asked: "Who is right — the one who felt the trunk, or the one who felt the leg?"

This post is a mathematical analysis of the situation. Not a defense of "our" theory. A rigorous breakdown: why the COGITATE result was predictable, what category mathematics says about it, and what experiments could resolve the dispute.

More than three thousand years ago the Rigveda posed the question: "Who is the one who observes?" In 2025 Nature published the results of the COGITATE project — an adversarial collaboration between IIT and GNW. Both theories turned out to be partially refuted. Over more than three millennia — thousands of texts, dozens of formal theories, zero consensus.

Not because the question is poor. But because answers systematically conflate epistemic levels: behavior is passed off as phenomenology, correlation as mechanism, definition as proof. Each theory answers its own question and declares it the only one.

This post is not a "final answer." It is an attempt to impose order: a map with coordinates, where every claim is marked by level of justification [Т/С/Г/П/О/И/✗]. Not "we know" — but "here is what is proven, here is what is postulated, here is what is interpreted."

Twelve previous posts built the formalism. The thirteenth — applies it to humanity's oldest question.

Twenty-five centuries of philosophers have debated free will. The result: two camps, both wrong.

Determinists say: everything is predetermined, freedom is an illusion. Libertarians (not those ones) say: freedom is real, but it cannot be explained. Compatibilists try to sit on two chairs and say: freedom is compatible with determinism, if one defines the terms correctly. Laplace is satisfied. Sartre is offended. Hume shrugs.

The problem is not in the answers — the problem is in the question. "Is the will free?" is a question that cannot be answered "yes" or "no" without saying something foolish. Because the answer is a number. Freedom is not a yes/no property. It is a measurable quantity taking values from 1 to 7, and here is the formula:

Below — what this means, where it comes from, and why Spinoza was closest.

The position in one line: everything has an inside, almost nothing has a mind, and the border between the two is a number you can compute.

For two and a half thousand years philosophers have argued about consciousness, and the argument has produced several dozen mutually exclusive positions, not one of which risks a prediction. That is the part worth refusing. A claim that cannot come out false is not a position — it is a preference with footnotes.

So this one is built to be capable of coming out false. It is derived from a mathematical structure rather than assembled from intuitions and dressed in Latin. If the structure fails, the position falls with it; and if the structure holds, its consequences have to be swallowed whole, including the ones that taste bad. An electron has an "interior" and no consciousness whatsoever [Т]+[П]. A system with no coherence along the axis of feeling — E-coherence, in the notation introduced below — cannot stay alive [Т], though reading that as "zombies are impossible" is an interpretation and not a theorem [И]. Ethics turns out to have formal support in the evolution equation [И]. And death stops being a moment and becomes a process with a measurable threshold [Т].

The name — Coherent Categorical Holonomic Paninteriorism — sounds as though generated by an algorithm trained on continental philosophy dissertations. Alas, each word is necessary, and to remove any one is to lie. The shortened version — Holonomic Paninteriorism — is only marginally kinder but honest.

Below is an attempt to explain what all this means, without condescension to the reader and without mercy toward one's own intuitions.