English

Qualingua (essay by Christian Sawyer)

An essay submitted for the 2025 Berggruen Institute essay contest on the topic of consciousness. Themes: Fundamental epistemology, ontology, axiology; triadic metaphysics; linguistic closure, mysterianism; phenomenology, consciousness, qualia; language; spirituality, religion, history; artificial intelligence. Novel ideas: Abstraction, phenomena, and substance as the three fundamental dimensionalities of language, or as an "ontology of epistemology." The "bermuda triangle of consciousness" as a framework to understand metaphysical thoeries on consciousness. Superpostional metaphysics, contrasted with traditional positional and dispositional metaphysics. "Qualia blindness". "Cryptoesential qualia". "Qualingua" as a part of language. The "medium problem of consciousness" coinage and a "triple point" theory of brain-mind correlation.

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