Consciousness

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

The concept of consciousness has become a philosophical tar pit—an endless debate that feels “hard” largely because the key terms are used interchangeably. The Substack essay argues that the confusion lifts once a single distinction is made: awareness vs. consciousness. Until those two are separated cleanly, discussions keep mistaking derivatives for fundamentals and chasing contradictions that are actually semantic collapses.

Within the ISIT framework, this maps directly onto the prime duality. Awareness is the undifferentiated, free-floating experience of being—irreducible, not tied to any boundary, and ultimately definable only in terms of itself (awareness of awareness of awareness). This is why awareness is the more ISish pole in this dyad: it is presence prior to distinction, prior to segmentation, prior to “this versus that.” 

Consciousness, by contrast, is instantiated awareness. It arises when awareness becomes localized, bounded, and embedded within a form, and with that embedding comes differentiation: awareness of a body, circumstances, and oneself as a discrete unit among other discrete units. In other words, consciousness is still “about” awareness, but it is awareness expressed through structure—which makes consciousness the more ITistic side of this pair (relative to awareness), because it introduces boundaries, perspective, and separation.

That one distinction dissolves a long-standing paradox: people claim both that “consciousness is primordial” and that “consciousness emerges from physical systems.” The essay resolves this by assigning each claim to the correct concept: awareness is the primordial substrate, while consciousness is emergent—an expression of awareness encapsulated within physical systems, existing on a spectrum tied to the complexity of the system. The “hard problem” stops being a problem once we stop demanding that finite, differentiated consciousness fully comprehend the infinite, undifferentiated ground of awareness.

Seen this way, consciousness becomes a clean teaching lens for IS and IT. Awareness shows what IS is like: irreducible, unbounded, self-referential being. Consciousness shows what IT adds: instantiation, differentiation, localization, and structure. The point isn’t to downgrade consciousness—it’s to place it correctly. Clarity begins with distinction, and few distinctions matter more than separating the undifferentiated ISish ground (awareness) from the differentiated ITistic expression (consciousness).