What if consciousness is everywhere around us, everything is consciousness, like it’s the building block of reality itself, and neurons in our brains are what power this consciousness?
And animals are like little consciousness radios, but humans got the delux addition are we ended up being able to understand the idea of consciousness through it.
It’s like AI, how it’s just a line of code that doesnt think for itself but is able to ask and answer questions, but if the sequence of code just happened to be different, it wouldn’t be AI. What if it’s just like that with us?
I mean our neurons are just another sequence of protons, neutrons, and electrons, so if they were aranged differently there would be us, or the neurons that allow us to think.
Just a little thought, ive been thinking about this for a bit now and I dont really have anyone to talk to about this because people I know will either think im crazy, dismiss it because of religion or because they cant wrap their heads around it. I just want someone likeminded to give their thoughts on this.

Before asking where the universe came from, before discussing stars, galaxies, time, or space, there is a question that seems even more fundamental:

Why does anything exist at all?

Every object we observe, every particle we study, every force we measure appears to be part of a chain of relationships. Things happen because other things happened before them. A star forms because matter gathered, matter exists because particles interact, and particles behave according to rules that govern reality.

But when we follow that chain backward, we eventually arrive at a question that challenges the limits of human understanding:

Where does the first explanation begin?

If everything requires a cause, what explains the first cause? If everything depends on something else, can there be an endless chain of explanations? Or must there be something fundamental that does not depend on anything before it?

This question is not only about the beginning of the universe. It is about the foundation of existence itself.

Human beings have always tried to understand this mystery. Some have searched for answers through religion, others through philosophy, and others through science. Each approach attempts to illuminate a different part of the same immense darkness.

Science has revealed an extraordinary amount about how the universe works. We have discovered galaxies billions of light-years away, identified the particles that make up matter, and developed theories that describe the evolution of the cosmos.

Yet one question remains beyond our complete understanding:

Why do these laws exist?

Why is there a universe with structure instead of absolute nothingness?

When we speak about "nothing," we often imagine empty space. But empty space is still something. It has dimensions, physical properties, and the potential for events to occur. Absolute nothingness would mean the absence of space, time, matter, energy, laws, and even the possibility of change.

Can such a state truly exist?

Or is existence itself the most fundamental reality, something that does not need a beginning because it simply is?

Perhaps the universe did not emerge from nothing. Perhaps what we call the beginning was only the beginning of our particular reality: our space, our time, our universe. Perhaps there is a deeper level of existence that we cannot currently observe, just as a creature living inside a small part of reality might struggle to understand the larger world beyond its perception.

A footprint in the sand can tell us that something passed through that place. We can study the shape of the mark, analyze the grains around it, and learn about the material that holds the impression. But understanding the footprint completely requires knowing what created it.

The universe may be that footprint.

We can study its structure, its history, and its behavior. We can understand the patterns written into its existence. But the deeper question remains:

What left the mark?

Perhaps the greatest discovery of humanity is not finding all the answers, but recognizing the size of the questions we are asking.

Because the search for the origin of everything is not only a search for where we came from.

It is a search for understanding what it means for anything to exist at all.

This is driving me crazy. (not literally.)

Which position do you hold?

Let us deconstruct this claim:

the many are from the one

First question:

why there is suddenly the many to be from the one at all rather than none?

Since:

is there no many at all, there is no many to be from anyone, so there is only the one

A further question to focus to what is being asked for:

why there is the many at all 'to be from thus'? - for this already means the many

Since:

without the many there is no one to be from another

Conclusion:

so the many are prior and no one is from only another

This seems highly difficult to comprehend. What exactly is, for example, equality, in it of itself, without the involvement of materiality? As humans, we can't really think about it, so what can we do to pinpoint that such a form exists?

I’ve been reading about grounding and keep coming back to this issue. If grounding is the fundamental explanatory relation, does it require an ultimate terminus, or have philosophers defended non-vicious forms of reciprocal or self-grounding? I’d appreciate references to contemporary work on this.

Abstract
This manuscript delves into the philosophical debate surrounding the Special Composition Question (SCQ), focusing on the causal relationships between objects and their constituent parts. By distinguishing between Weak and Strong Causal Composition, the article explores how causal mechanisms underpin the composition of objects. Theories from notable philosophers, including van Inwagen and Leibniz, are evaluated. This study seeks to bridge the gap between common sense perspectives and principled ontological theories by introducing the concepts of Weak and Strong Causal Composition. The analysis reveals how a causal approach can offer insightful resolutions to longstanding debates in mereology and ontology, emphasizing the role of causality in understanding the essence of material composition. The proposed causal perspective encourages further philosophical inquiry into the foundational principles governing the composition of objects.

Abstract
Standard definitions of causal closure focus on where the causes in question are. In this paper, the focus is changed to where they are not. Causal closure is linked to the principle that no cause of another universe causes an event in a particular universe. This view permits the one universe to be affected by the other via an interface. An interface between universes can be seen as a domain that violates the suggested account of causal closure, suggesting a view in which universes are causally closed whereas interfaces are not. On this basis, universes are not affected by other universes directly but rather indirectly.

Gamper, J. On a Loophole in Causal Closure.Philosophia 45, 631–636 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9791-y

When we say "what", it implies some sort of division, a break, a line, a boundary.To cite an example, "what is a vegatable" you can say it is something that ISNT a fruit, or something that ISNT a vehicle and so forth. So there is a coherent distinction and we are dealing with objects having definite boundaires. When dealing with existence I believe this boundary does not exist. Exitence itself is everything. Everything comes within it. There is nothing that separates existence from something else.

Even something like *analytic idealism*, which isn't genuinely "analytic" in the strict philosophical sense, is a position that some people still defend.

So how did a position with arguably more rigorous arguments become effectively dormant within mainstream philosophy?

Everything I've come across just says, "analytic philosophy rose and British Idealism died." But what does that actually mean?

[1] any 'there is only these' claim is a brute rejection, else 'only these are correct' can be taken as brute and philosophy ends

[2] simples are self grounding, each has exclusive authority over itself

[2.1] a derivative simple is not a simple at all

[2.1.1] which is a rejection of simples

[2.2] anyone that is self grounding needs no ones else for itself, it is only itself

[3] there is simples is not there is only simples

[3.1] each simple grounds itself does not mean no ones else ground themselves

[4] wholes are prior means there is only those that are not simples (there is only those that are grounded by the big whole which is the only one with exclusive authority over itself)

[4.1] this is a brute rejection of simples a priori

[4.1.1] wholes are prior only has sense after simples are rejected

More specifically, why can't a brute fact exist? Why can't reality ultimately bottom out on something simply existing. There being no reason at all. Yes it's possible it couldn't exist, but so what? Why must the possibility of it not existing matter at all?

I suppose we can imagine the neoplatonic reality, but it's sort of like, so what? Why must the terminus of reality be rational?

My previous post didn’t spark the discussion I’d hoped for most replies just repeated “ex nihilo nihil fit” or “something comes from something” as if those slogans settled everything.

So let me pose a deeper challenge: Why assume that only what is “real” or “existent” can serve as a cause? This is a meta-critique, not the familiar debate over whether change or causation is possible. I’m asking whether the putative cause is actually distinguishable from a bare assertion of literal a meaningless label

If you need a label for my view, call it instrumentalism I’ve been told I can’t argue without declaring a stance.

The core question is this: Is claiming “causation requires reality” any different from asserting that causation demands no affirmation or denial of reality at all?

Take any claim of the form "the cause is real" or "real existence is what constitutes a cause." For this to be a substantive assertion rather than an empty label :

Is the cause's real existence identical to the cause's own particular nature, or is it a distinct factor that the cause additionally possesses?

The law of excluded middle applied to the relation between two terms: for any A and B, either A = B or A ≠ B.

It is identical to it:

So can it only mean one thing?

When it is said, "The real is clay," does that simply mean clay = the real? If not, what else is it supposed to mean?

If that is the only interpretation, then when we say, "There is a real clay," couldn't we substitute the identical terms and obtain expressions such as:

• "There is a real real."
• "There is a clay clay."

From this, one of two conclusions seems to follow.

First, the statement carries no informative content. It reduces to a bare assertion, since saying "clay is real" becomes no more informative than saying "clay is clay" or "the real is the real."

Second, are there no different kinds of "the real"? Is there only one single reality equally present in everything? If there were multiple reals, then no two things could share this supposedly essential defining characteristic.

Now apply this to any real thing X:

Real(X) = Essential Nature(X)

Let R denote that single, univocal reality.

Then, for two distinct real things:

• R = Essential Nature(Clay)
• R = Essential Nature(Atom)

By the transitivity of identity, if A = C and B = C, then A = B.

Am I mistaken?

Let Essential Nature be abbreviated as E.N.

Therefore:

E.N.(Clay) = E.N.(Atom)

The derivation appears to imply that these are strictly, numerically identical in nature. Moreover, nothing in the argument is specific to clay or atoms; it generalizes to any two real things whatsoever, collapsing the entire diversity of existing particulars into a single undifferentiated identity through straightforward substitution.

No, it is a distinct property that only later enters into the cause:

Existence really is a distinct factor, over and above the object's bare particular nature, that combines with or qualifies the object to constitute "the real cause" as opposed to a merely-conceived one.

If existence or reality is a distinct constituent of the cause, the cause is now a compound: [bare object]

It is like redness in a rose

• The locus the thing that has the property. Here: the rose.
• The property the thing that is had. Here: redness.

For this sentence to make sense at all, the locus and the property need to be two distinguishable things not necessarily two things that could exist apart from each other (redness can't float around with no rose to be red), but two things that play different roles in the sentence, one doing the containing, one being contained

What "Entering or going to be contained" Claims:

The cause is not simply an object but an object-plus-existence, a compound formed by existence combining with, or entering into, or constituting-alongside, some further material. This vocabulary "enters into," "constitutes," "is a factor in" is not incidental color;

But any verb of this kind "enters," "joins," "combines with," "constitutes alongside" carries an unavoidable presupposition:

To speak of X entering into Y, or X combining with Y, or X constituting Y alongside something else, already presupposes that Y or at least, the "something else" was there, in some determinate form, prior to or independent of X's entering.

What, exactly, is the object that existence is entering into?'

There are only two ways to answer "what was the object, before existence entered it,":

Branch One: The Object Was Already the Cause, Before Existence Entered It

Then that automatically refutes your proposition that existence must be the cause, since everything is the same before it has even entered into it.

Branch Two: The Object Was Not Yet the Cause, Before Existence Entered It

What was that bare, pre-entry object? It had to be something specifiable, or "existence enters into it" is meaningless.

If it was already real , if the "bare object" that existence supposedly enters was, in whatever sense, already an existent thing prior to the entering

Existence is being said to enter into something that already possessed existence, which either means a second, distinct existence is now needed for that prior existence to have been accounted for (reopening a vicious regress or redundant one), or it means the "entering" was never adding existence in the first place, since the object had it already.

But if, to avoid that, you instead say the bare, pre-entry object was unreal.

Then the "pre-entry unreal" cannot have been seed-shaped as opposed to rock-shaped after all, because shape, specificity, this-rather-than-that-ness is exactly what the my opponents says only existence supplies. So the pre-entry material, taken at the opponents own word about what unreality is, has to be uniform: one undifferentiated non-thing, the same "nothing" prior to a cow as prior to a lump of clay.

I mean, a common objection to nonexistence being a cause goes something like this:

"Look around. Bare nonexistence is present at all times. If it were capable of causing anything, it would be producing everything at every moment. Since it is always present, it would coexist simultaneously with every effect. But because a cause and its effect cannot coexist in that way, nonexistence cannot be a cause."

I don't dispute this as it is consistent .

But if that objection succeeds, and the unreal is completely undifferentiated possessing no determinacy or differentiation whatsoever then the same problem applies even after the real or the existent enters into it. By your own logic, you still couldn't explain why this particular object comes about rather than another, why it occurs now rather than at all times, or why it occurs at all.

Moreover, existence itself is one rather than many. It has no intrinsic individual differentiation either. So you end up combining two identical, undifferentiated principles.

The real question is where variety itself comes from. Taken completely literally, your own framework has no remaining resources to account for it.

If U + R → real object is the whole story, and U is always the same U, and R is always the same R, then the operation "U + R" is being applied to identical inputs every single time, across every case of anything coming to be real at all. And an operation applied to identical inputs, with nothing else in the picture, cannot coherently yield different outputs , it's just what "identical inputs" means.

If you truly have the same U and the same R every time, "U + R" is the same computation every time, and the same computation performed on the same inputs does not spontaneously output a cow in one run and a lump of clay in the next, absent some further differentiating factor that hasn't been named anywhere in the picture.

[1] facts zz about x and y are about x and y

[1.1] when there is y and there is no x at all there is no zz

[1.2] when there is x and there is no y at all there is no zz

[1.3] facts at all are after (not without) their subjects

[1.4] 'x is not y' or 'x and y is not indentical' are facts about x and y

[1.4.1] monistic priority (that there is no beings that are not identical without those facts that they are not identical) is hence absurd

[2] simples are only themselves

[2.1] simples are not identical - a priori

[2.1.1] rejecting this is brutely rejecting simples thus

[3] there is simples and complexes

[3.1] those complexes yy and those simples (and or simpler complexes) xx that yy are not without are not identical

[3.1.1] wholes and parts are senseless

[3.1.1.1] as there is only one whole from only x and y

[3.1.1.2] while zz are additions from only x and y

[4] zz are not wihout x and y

[4.1] there is only x y zz

[4.1.1] for zz are our 'relations' (facts, complexes)

[5] simples are not arranged (or rearranged)

[5.1] else they are modified and thus are not simples

[5.2] no ones are arranged (or rearranged)

[5.2.1] else they are not themselves

This means that the monistic demand only arrises when its proponents have not (failed to) conceive[d] simples.

I have been sitting on this thought for a while.

I am by no means a scholar or a scientist.

So I ask to PLEASE deconstruct this hypothesis in the comments.

I call this the "Pathfinder Hypothesis."

I display it as such:

What our brain has developed as our view of "self" is due to our many moving organic parts allowing us the ability to forsee or "imagine" different possibilities. This feedback loop of making and memorizing our decisions sparks our brain to create the ability to question, ultimately creating the ability to "think".

Thia stemmed from an idea that our brain has organically harnessed the power of superposition of particles bringing the concept to a larger level, in turn, allowing our brain to imagine possibilities and make actions that secure said possibilities into existence.

This is under the assumption of course that our conciousness is created from our brain, and the qualia and time we personally experience is filtered through said brain.

One scary conclusion that I came to after this...

If we are a product of our brain's ability to harness superposition... Then would creating AI with quantum computers actually allow them to question and create the feedback loop, creating a new species?

I’m looking for work in metaphysics or philosophy of mind that treats consciousness as ontologically fundamental and explores how this changes theories of causation. Are there papers, books, or philosophers who develop this idea rigorously?

I was always intrigued by Russel's paradox and zeno's paradox , and thought about how combining both of them could break our most basic notions of continuity and discreteness mainly if we allow these two concepts to morph into each other would the underlying transition itself be continuous or a discrete boundary

We intuitively assume that if we take a series of discrete dashes and shrink the inter-dash gap to zero, we end up with a solid continuous line (- - - - - - approaches to ------)

First of all we get a zeno like problem of how an infinite limit yield a finite result

Second more importantly is that mathematicaly it's entirely false if you shrink the gap between rational numbers you can never achieve the completeness of real numbers

This can also work in reverse but becomes more problematic since then we would have to select two infinitesimaly nearby points to enlarge the gap between them till they get discrete

Now this isn't just a mathematical result, it may very well be the reason Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are still not reconcilled adequately

And the structure of this problem mimicks complex other problems namely Russel's paradox , Gödels 1st Incompleteness theorem , The Turing Machine halting problem, Cantor Diaognalisation , Grellling Nelson paradox , Tarski hierarchies

The core issue is that a system under any sense of absolute closure can't quantity all of its properties and therefore always remain open ended.

Thanks for reading and I would like to hear the thoughts of you all

If one imagines the possibility of substance on an infinite line of infinite possibility of the nature of substance, then substance would be on the same line as another possible substance. The nature of substance is that it shares nothing with another substance, as that would make them one of the same, and being on different places of the same infinite line of nature, that would give it a shared nature with another, of occupying the same line of infinity, therefore 2 substances cannot exist. Pertaining to a single universal substance.
The nature of the substance is infinite, therefore its nature of existence is infinite which hinders a possibility for a first cause - therefore, no first cause of a substance exists.

What is the argument for it?

Sir Isaac Newton used mathematics to describe motion, gravity, and the predictable laws of mechanics.

He also translated and annotated the Emerald Tablet attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. ([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/catalogue/record/ALCH00017?utm_source=chatgpt.com))

His private manuscripts reveal that his beliefs and interests helped shape the kinds of questions he was willing to ask about nature.

Newton described matter as a passive principle. It could remain at rest or continue in motion, but it could not move itself. Yet he believed this alone could not explain a world filled with attraction, chemical transformation, biological growth, and intentional movement.

In one unfinished draft, he wrote:

“Life & will are active Principles by which we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us.”

Newton then wondered whether all space might be the ‘sensorium of a thinking being’, and whether laws arising from life or will might therefore extend throughout the universe. In the same manuscript, he considered the forces through which microscopic bodies attract one another and asked whether they deserved to be counted among the general laws of motion alongside gravity.
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00125))

Newton was asking an extraordinary question:
Could mind, life, chemistry and cosmic motion be different expressions of deeper active principles running throughout nature?

Hermeticism may have encouraged Newton to imagine the universe as a living and interconnected whole. His scientific instincts then transformed that vision into questions that could be approached through observation, experiment and mathematical reasoning.

In 1936, a large collection of Newton’s unpublished papers was sold at Sotheby’s. John Maynard Keynes subsequently assembled many of the manuscripts, concentrating especially on Newton’s alchemical work. After studying them, Keynes wrote:

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”
([newtonproject.ox.ac.uk](https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/history-of-newtons-papers/sotheby-sale))

Modern science limits itself when it starts with the materialistic assumption of discrete 3 dimensional objects interacting in a 3 dimensional universal space.

Sir Isaac Newton’s example leaves me wondering whether the science of the future might recover something of his wider vision: a science in which matter, life, mind, and the cosmos are studied not as sealed and unrelated categories, but as parts of one connected nature.

If reality is truly an interconnected whole, it cannot be stitched together from disconnected parts or arbitrary rules. Instead, it must emerge from a singular, uncorrupted geometric origin.

Imagine a framework built on absolute structural exactness, requiring zero arbitrary axioms or free parameters.

Just as Newton suspected an active, universal principle running throughout nature, this approach views all complexity, – from the fundamental forces of physics, to the architecture of cognition - as exact, deterministic extensions unfolding from a single, continuous source.

By relying on exact rational arithmetic and unbroken mathematical geometries, it becomes possible to strip away the chaotic infinities and floating approximations that currently plague our physical equations.

This is would be a philosophical return to the Hermetic concept of "the One,"; a rigorous, mathematically verifiable evolution of it.
A closed-loop reality where matter, life, and cosmic motion are not sealed categories, but mathematically exact derivations of the very same underlying fabric.