Irreducibles

What If Consciousness Simply Is?

Every explanation has to stop somewhere. When physicists tell us that electrons have charge, or 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 some other value? Why does the universe obey these particular laws rather than different ones?

The honest answer is: we don’t know. More importantly, many physicists argue we may never know—because some facts about reality simply don’t have deeper explanations. They’re what philosophers call “brute facts” or “irreducible properties”: features of the universe that are fundamental, that bottom out, 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.” Elliot Sober, “Remarkable Facts,” 50 Review, November 7, 2012 Physicist 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.” Carroll, Sean. 2016. The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. New York: Dutton. p. 355

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, 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 in nature. What if that assumption is itself the problem? What if the fundamental features of reality can’t be neatly categorized 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 manifests as 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 whose organization determines whether they manifest as mental or physical. Think of it like 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 states and physical states are built from the same neutral elements, just differently organized.

Decompositional neutral monism works from the top down: it begins with a holistic, psychophysically neutral reality that differentiates into mental and physical aspects. Rather than building consciousness from smaller parts, this view sees both mind and matter as aspects that emerge when we make distinctions within an underlying wholeness. Think of it like a prism revealing different colors—the white light is primary and unified, while the separated colors are derivative aspects of that unity. Philosophically, decompositional neutral monism is functionally identical to the form of dual-aspect monism developed by Pauli and Jung: a single psychophysically neutral reality with two derivative aspects.

These aren’t variations on a theme. They have radically different metaphysical structures—and radically different implications for understanding consciousness.

The most developed version of decompositional thinking comes from an unlikely collaboration between 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. Everything in reality, they suggested, exists somewhere along this continuum, participating in both aspects to varying degrees. Atmanspacher, Harald, and Christopher A. Fuchs, eds. The Pauli–Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2014.

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. It is a holistic ground from which experiential and physical aspects jointly arise through differentiation, not combination. While 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 gets 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 that is 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 through instruments and mathematics. What we call ‘mental’ properties are how reality is from the inside—experiential, qualitative, felt, what it’s like to be something. Neither aspect is ontologically more fundamental than the other—both are derivative manifestations of a deeper psychophysically neutral reality.

What This Is Not: A Note on Emergence

To be clear about what this framework is not claiming: consciousness does not “emerge” from anything—not from matter, not from proto-experiences, not from quantum processes.

Emergence language suggests that something genuinely new appears 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.

If consciousness is an aspect of fundamental reality—woven into the psychophysical continuum—then it doesn’t emerge at some threshold. Rather, the question becomes: what is the relationship between this fundamental aspect and physical organization? How does the intrinsic, experiential aspect of reality manifest through different configurations of the structural, behavioral aspect we call physical?

Some philosophers worry about the “combination problem”: if fundamental reality has experiential aspects, how do these combine into the unified consciousness we experience? But this worry applies primarily to compositional approaches that try to build consciousness from proto-conscious parts. The decompositional view sidesteps this entirely. Consciousness isn’t assembled from smaller pieces that need to be combined—it manifests as an aspect of holistic reality through physical organization.

In his introduction to Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, Isaac Asimov warned readers to “question the limitations we set to our Universe generally.” If consciousness is genuinely fundamental—truly prior to the physical/mental distinction—then our current conceptual tools may simply be inadequate to grasp its nature. As Nagel suggests, we may need to develop “forms of understanding of which we have not even dreamt.” The challenge isn’t to explain consciousness using categories derived from physical science, but to recognize that those categories themselves may be partial perspectives on something deeper.

The Collapse of Explanatory Asymmetry

For decades, reductive materialism claimed 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 about 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 deeper explanation—this supposed advantage becomes moot.

Consider what philosopher Galen Strawson calls “physically-inflationary metaphysics”: Strawson, G. (2008). “Real naturalism,” in Real materialism and other essays (pp. 53–74). Oxford University Press. the assumption that we know what “the physical” is, and that we know it can’t include anything experiential. But physics actually 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. Russell, Bertrand. 1927. The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

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. Almost a century later, Strawson argues for the irreducibility of consciousness:

It’s ironic that the people who are most likely to doubt or deny the existence of consciousness (on the ground that everything is physical, and that consciousness can’t possibly be physical) are also those who are most insistent on the primacy of science, because it is precisely science that makes the key point shine most brightly: the point that there is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff. Strawson, Galen. 2016. “Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter.” New York Times, May 16, 2016.

Three Positions, One Structure

Once we see this clearly, the landscape transforms. Consider the three main metaphysical positions:

Physicalism says: Matter is fundamental and unexplained. Mind is derivative, somehow emerging from physical processes (also unexplained at the deepest level).

Idealism says: Mind is fundamental and unexplained. Physical structure is derivative, somehow arising from mental processes (also unexplained at the deepest level).

Neutral monism says: 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 is 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 choose as primitive, or whether they privilege one pole over another.

Why This Changes Everything

This isn’t just 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. Science itself, as Sober notes, 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 consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality—as basic as the physical aspects—then asking “how does matter produce consciousness?” is like asking “how does the universe produce charge?” The question becomes not ‘how does non-conscious matter produce consciousness?’ but ‘how does the psychophysical continuum manifest through different configurations?’ This is still challenging, but it’s a different kind of challenge—one about how a holistic reality differentiates into aspects through structure and organization, rather than about something emerging from its absolute opposite.

Third, it transforms the question from “which view is true?” to “which framework makes more sense given everything we know?” And here the balance shifts. Physical properties like charge and mass don’t predict or necessitate consciousness—there’s nothing about the mathematics of quantum field theory that suggests “and this will produce subjective experience.” But if we accept a psychophysical continuum—if consciousness is as fundamental an aspect of reality as physical structure—then the rich inner life of complex organisms becomes expected rather than miraculous, natural rather than inexplicable.

The Corroborating Evidence

This isn’t idle speculation. Thomas Nagel, in Mind and Cosmos, argues extensively 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." Nagel, Thomas. 2012. Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford: Oxford University Press

The felt quality of experience, the unity of consciousness, the directedness of intentionality—these resist reduction not because of our ignorance but because of their nature.

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 in exquisite detail. What we still cannot do—what many philosophers now argue we cannot in principle do—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 may be telling us something important: that we’re asking the wrong kind of question, applying reductive strategies where 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 resting on comparable foundations.

No worldview can claim epistemic superiority based on “explaining more” or “assuming less” or being “more scientific.” All bottom out in primitives. All require metaphysical commitments beyond what science alone can establish. All are metaphysical commitments, different in content but not in kind, and all must be evaluated by evidence, coherence, and consequences.

The Pauli-Jung psychophysical continuum represents one promising starting point for such a framework—grounded in serious interdisciplinary work by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the founder of analytical psychology. Physicist Harald Atmanspacher has developed their ideas further, showing how the decompositional structure avoids the combination problem of panpsychism and the interaction problem of dualism while providing testable predictions about mind-matter correlations. Harald Atmanspacher, “The Pauli–Jung Conjecture and Its Relatives: A Formally Augmented Outline,” Open Philosophy 2020; 3: 527–549 But even if you’re not convinced by this specific approach, the key point remains: consciousness-as-fundamental cannot be ruled out by appeals to scientific superiority or explanatory parsimony.

As equally legitimate metaphysical frameworks, a question arises: What follows from living as if each were true? What does each worldview generate in terms of meaning, ethics, value, and action? What kind of world does each create when taken seriously? When metaphysical proof is impossible but practical consequences are undeniable, the question transforms. We can’t settle the metaphysics conclusively, but we can evaluate what each framework generates when actually lived.

This matters profoundly for ethics. If consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality—if experiential interiority is native to the holistic ground of being rather than an accidental byproduct of certain physical configurations—then when we encounter another conscious being, we’re not looking at “a biological machine that happens to feel,” but at another manifestation of the same fundamental reality from which our own consciousness arises.

This grants ontological dignity, not as a comforting fiction or moral sentiment, but as recognition of what’s actually there. In the decompositional view, all conscious beings—humans, cetaceans, other animals—are different manifestations of the same psychophysical continuum, different ways the holistic ground differentiates into experiential and physical aspects. The difference between these frameworks isn’t merely academic—it shapes how we see and treat other minds.

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 actually live it out?”

The modern scientific worldview, taken to its logical conclusions, suggests that consciousness is an accidental byproduct, that meaning is illusion, that purpose is projection. It has given us tremendous technological power while leaving us, as many now recognize, in a meaning crisis—able to manipulate matter but unable to say why anything matters.

A consciousness-inclusive worldview—whether dual-aspect monism or another framework that takes mind seriously as fundamental—suggests something different: that mind isn’t a cosmic accident but a fundamental aspect of reality, that the rich experiential lives of humans and other conscious beings aren’t aberrations but expressions of something basic to reality itself. And if that’s the case—if we’re living as if consciousness is fundamental—then the consequences ripple outward in profound ways, particularly for how we treat other minds.

This is where our inquiry leads: 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.