Beyond Binary Consciousness: Organizational Continuity Between Life and Mind

Summary

Consciousness may not suddenly appear in nervous systems but instead emerges gradually from increasingly complex biological organization. This paper proposes a five-level continuum from passive physical order to reflective self-consciousness, arguing that nervous systems accelerate and centralize selection and coordination processes that existed before neurons. The hard problem of consciousness is reframed as the threshold where bounded, resource-constrained systems performing selection cross into phenomenal presence. This perspective suggests consciousness could exist in non-neural biological systems and potentially in artificial intelligence, challenging neurocentrism and the assumption that neurons are necessary for subjective experience.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This discussion paper argues that the transition from matter to mind is better understood as gradual rather than abrupt — grounded in increasingly sophisticated forms of biological self-organization, directedness, and environmental integration. Rather than treating phenomenal consciousness as an emergent discontinuity appearing suddenly in nervous systems, we propose a graded organizational continuum spanning five levels: passive physical order, adaptive biological organization, selectional and behavioral agency, phenomenal consciousness, and reflective self-consciousness. Drawing on evolutionary biology, recent work in bioelectricity and synthetic biology (Levin), and comparative neuroscience, we argue that nervous systems are best understood not as the origin of selection and coordination but as their acceleration, centralization, and integration. The hard problem of consciousness is not dissolved but located more precisely: the relevant explanatory gap lies not between matter in general and experience, but at the threshold where bounded, resource-constrained, selection-performing systems cross into phenomenal presence. Implications are drawn for the study of non-neural biological systems, artificial intelligence, and the substrate-dependence debate. If selection, coordination, and organization emerged before nervous systems, we may not need to begin the story of consciousness with neurons — and beginning it earlier may be precisely what allows us to understand what neurons eventually made possible. Main Papers: - Saka, H. (2026a). Toward a Reframing of the Hard Problem of Consciousness: Subjective Reality, Feeling, andthe Origins of the Conceptual World. Version 7.19. PhilPapers. https://philpapers.org/rec/SAKTAR - Saka, H. (2026b). Organizational Phenomenology: Artificial F1 and the Geometry of Coherent Agency. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20555024 Keywords: organizational continuity, phenomenal consciousness, hard problem of consciousness, neurocentrism, graded continuum, selection before neurons, bioelectricity, basal cognition, philosophy of mind, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, substrate independence

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