I have not settled (and maybe it’s not for me to do it) on the core tenets of Team Consciousness. This would be a kind of philosophy or spirituality that tries to derive ethics from truth and actually get at the truth rather than a convenient approximation of it (or worse, a misrepresentation of it for the sake of memetic reproduction capacity). What I’ve thought for many years and has remained stable, is that we can reduce them to three core principles:
- Oneness / Frame Invariance
- Valence Realism
- Math
First, we must realize that every point in reality is equally real. There are more or less intense experiences, of course, but this is in fact a measure of how much reality is expressed in each. The core idea here is not that every experience is literally equally significant (they’re not) but that the spatiotemporal coordinates of an experience are irrelevant for their significance. Your experiences or the experiences of the members of your tribe or species are not more or less real than those of anyone else, factoring in their degree and intensity of consciousness.
The second core idea is that valence – whether experiences feel good or bad – is the source of value. More so, valence structuralism (an implication of valence realism in light of empirical observations of what feels good or bad in practice) entails that the value of reality is encoded in the geometric and topological basis of consciousness. Indeed, there are better and worse forms of being, and this is not an arbitrary matter, but one that can be investigated directly and devoid of personal prejudice.
And finally: math. It is not the same to suffer for one second versus a million years. It is not the same for one person to suffer as it is for a billion persons in torment. It is not the same for love to exist for a minute versus it being the foundation of a civilization. Amounts matter; qualities matter. This is tautological, of course. But for strange reasons, our empathizing cognitive styles often neglect math. So we ought to correct for this bug.
I think that all of ethics can be reconstructed from these principles. And in fact, they might help solve many moral paradoxes and enigmas. Just apply them diligently and rigorously and see how they allow you to discern between good and evil.
My hope is that the reproductive capacity of these three core principles will come from the fact that (1) they are true (and truth is convergent for those who seek it) and (2) they are highly beneficial and generate excess value. On (2), I’d point out that valence realism and the oneness of consciousness principle have practical implications, ranging from a science of consciousness capable of reducing depression, anxiety, and chronic pain, to future consciousness-altering technologies that will greatly enhance our intelligence and collective coordination capacities. I wish for these tenets to not acquire additional clauses that are there merely for their reproduction capacity at the cost of truth or accuracy; they should stand on their own. But these might not be the final set. I’m open to suggestions and enhancements 🙂
