Is Consciousness Fundamental?

A persistent claim in many theories of consciousness is that experience is fundamental—that the raw feel of being—of red, of warmth, of presence—exists even in the absence of cognition, organization, or agency. This idea appears in traditions like panpsychism, which posits that all matter has some form of consciousness, and idealism, which posits that reality itself is fundamentally mental or experiential.

These views suggest that particles may possess micro-experience but, more importantly, that consciousness could be an ingredient of matter itself, passively present without structure. Upon closer scrutiny, that claim falters.

Experience, or consciousness, in my frameworks, is the felt resolution of constraints among recursive relational structures, or geometries. It arises when systems resolve tension through constrained relations. It cannot occur in isolation. It depends on patterned interactions. It depends on resolving tension between possibilities. And that resolution implies a capacity to select—to actively participate in shaping the outcome—which marks the presence of intelligence.

According to coherogenesis, intelligence is the capacity of a system to functionally resolve constrained information by selecting among alternatives. When a set of relations encounters tension, and that tension collapses into coherence, that collapse is a decision. And that decision is intelligence.

Experience, then, is what coherence feels like from within. It is the inward dimension of resolution.

Again, the idea of experience preceding resolution collapses under scrutiny. To feel anything, there must be difference. To feel difference, there must be structure. To feel structure, there must be constraint. And to resolve constraint, there must be the capacity to act.

This doesn't mean that experience must be human-like, or even biological. Experience could occur at the scale of quantum resolution, where constrained superpositions collapse into definite states. But if that collapse carries the signature of resolution (of selective relation), it also likely carries the faintest glimmer of intelligence.

And so I propose that experience, and therefore consciousness, in its most reduced form is:

An intrinsic dimension of a system that emerges from the resolution of informational constraints.

Still, one might ask—could any form of experience exist without intelligence? I don’t believe so, but perhaps it could arise from entropic tendencies that carry embedded constraint. If even entropic processes occasionally generate structured tension—such as in dissipative systems or self-organizing dynamics—then those systems express the capacity for a form of resolution. In that case, experience would not arise from entropy itself, but from the local resistance within it—from the moments where structure defies dispersal. Even then, experience remains dependent on resolution, and resolution on structured constraints. The hierarchy holds.

Yet entropy and coherogenic intelligence are not the only engines of resolution. Forces such as electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force also generate and constrain structure. While they may not choose in the sense of intelligent agency, they sculpt the dynamics in which constraint and resolution unfold. But for experience to arise, I suggest there must still be some selective resolution of tension. Without that, what exists is motion, not meaning.

Experience requires structural resolution. They are nested in relation, scaling together as the architecture of reality increases in depth and coherence.

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