Synthesis:Beliefs and Worldviews

Emergent phenomena are profoundly intertwined with beliefs, metaphysics and philosophy. Source traditions (religions, philosophies, spiritualities) but also in many cases academic and scientific disciplines usually revolve around specific stories of the origins and ends of the world, the nature

This domain includes a huge variety of relative idiosyncratic or culturally informed beliefs of the individual, as well as their ultimate beliefs — usually the same as or related with their cultural's worldview but not always — around questions like reality, substance, causality, properties, relations, categories of beings, universals, particulars, space, time, freedom, etc. We'll go over the following aspects:

• Metaphysics
  • Cosmology  (Origins of the world)
  • Epistemology
  • Ontology
  • Soteriology
• General beliefs or views about life in general
  • Implicit
  • Explicit

Note that the following is a draft that needs to be re-written.

A word on metaphysics

Metaphysics is the realm of our most deeply held beliefs about and representations of the universe and the beings it contains, its origins, the nature of our experience, and what may lay beyond our subjective experience — whether they be the images of ourselves we hold in our hearts, our sense of the cosmos we inhabit, our notions of what is real or not, and what at the innermost level we hold as being true. One may reasonably argue that all people have metaphysical beliefs, whether they are aware of them or not. In fact, some claim that "whole cosmologies are wrapped up in single perceptions" (Rob Burbea). Thus it is very interesting — and has been a very common practice throughout history and even today — to ask questions about metaphysics and shed an introspective light on our own beliefs.

Worldviews are infinitely varied. Many authors, schools of thought, religions, philosophies, and even scientists, have proposed views and conceptions about the beings that populate this universe, the ultimate nature of our experience or of the cosmos, and of the ways to reach truth. Depending on what they consider as "really" existing and whether that is one, two, or many things, we can distinguish between various systems.

A word on epistemology

How can we know what is ultimately true, or is true for us? This is the question of epistemology.

Scientific epistemology relies on empirical testing and retesting (reproducibility), reliability and predictive power.

Religious epistemologies often stresse the authority of specific texts or doctrinal sources.

Contemplative, phenomenological, and mystical epistemology often rely on direct experience, but also other modes of knowing such as revelation, intuition, oracles, etc.

Revelatory epistemology: "Revelation from the Beyond through Mediums is how we get Truth" (Prophetic perspective in the Bible and Torah; State Oracles in ancient Greece and contemporary Tibet; Various divination method in the Roman republic, described by the Augur Cicero in De diuinatione, etc.).

Rationalist epistemology (Descartes, mecanistic philosophies) would see reason a the source of any valid knowledge; or

Empirical epistemology (the British Empiricists) considering that only through experience and experimental procedures do we derive "true facts" — taken to the extreme, leads to positivism (Comte) and culminates in scientism, the idea that only "science" can lead to "truth" and statements such as "what exists is what can be measured" (Kelvin), evacuating intuition and human subjectivity.

Transcendental epistemologies such as Kantian idealism which distinguished between a posteriori (or empirical) knowledge, and a priori knowledge (non-derived from experience).

Pragmatic perspectives (William James): "by their fruits shall ye know them"...

One of the core aspects of the work underlying the EmergeWiki is to explore how epistemic pluralism is possible, and how we can reconcile various perspectives in a coherent whole.

The classification we give here should be taken with a grain of salt. The reality of people's views is, as always with people, vastly richer than this. People rarely agree on all aspects of their beliefs. In fact, they rarely even agree with themselves about their views: someone can very well hold implicit beliefs which contradict their explicit beliefs, without being aware of it or not, and even consciously hold contradictory beliefs without it being a problem at all. Thus, these types of views should be seen as this: schematic types.

Substantialist Metaphysics

A question of Substance

"Substantialism" refers to all beliefs that consider that there are truly, independently existing "entities", "beings", "things", or "essences", which may or may not correspond to the objects and subjects of our everyday experience.

"Substance" comes from latin substantia, and is composed of the prefix "sub-" which means "under", and "stance" from "stāre", which means "to stand". For the etymology geeks out there, sub is the latin equivalent of the greek "ὑπό", or "hypo"; replacing the latin prefix by the greek yield the word "hypostasis"” which is a commonly used word in metaphysics.

Thus, one may hear the word substance as pointing to what stands under appearances, to the real being that corresponds to the fleeting phenomena we experience.

In many ways, this touches on the essence of metaphysics : what stands under appearances ? What is the relationship between appearances and real being ?

It is immediately clear that the answer to this is not straightforward and could invite many, many types of theories, answers, and even speculations about what is "out there".

Prominent critic of metaphysical speculations, Friedrich Nietzsche, called these "other worlds" existing beyond our experience "backworlds" and considered these as figments of the imagination which only served to distract us from the real experience of our actual lives.

One may disagree with Nietzsche, but his words do point to a recurring theme in all human societies : the beyond, and the relationship with the beyond.

A particular meaning of the word "metaphysics" (René Guénon, Oriental Metaphysics) is that it refers to what is beyond ("meta-") the physical world ("physis", a Greek word which can be translated as "nature"). Physics and metaphysics are related terms. If physics is concerned with the laws of nature, then in some literal sense then, metaphysics is concerned with what is "beyond" or "above" (in latin, super-) nature": the super-natural.

Interestingly, this would imply that physics, the physical world, is the world of appearances, of our experience. If we accept this meaning of the term, then we realize that the current meaning of scientific physics is a reversal of its original use, since physics is presently concerned, not with a description of our natural, lived experience, but with the description of the laws and theories about the realities which "govern" these appearances, which are never directly manifest inexperience, but somewhat produce them and can be indirectly deduced from the observation of experience.

The epitome of this gap is embodied by the most advanced of physical theories, quantum mechanics, which seems to describe a quantum world that is so exotic and seemingly foreign to the world of our everyday experience that physicists and philosophers alike have been shocked and baffled by it since its inception in the 20 th century.

One must see clearly, here, that, keeping in mind the previous definition, quantum mechanics is a metaphysical theory. One that is rooted in scientific methodologies, empirical testing, and continual revision, allowing for a level of technical control and predictive power which is unparalleled — but a metaphysical theory nonetheless.

The question is then - what is the status of scientific theories? Current cutting-edge approaches, rather than substantializing or re-ifying - that is to say, "making into a real thing" - the objects and laws described by contemporary physical theories

By contrast, a non-substantialist perspective would argue that there is nothing that stands under, or beyond, appearances. An interpretation of physical theories that may stem from such an attitude, could be to consider that instead of representing an external substantial reality beyond appearances which the theories describe, these theories are formalizations of know-how and prediction-making tools, which account for there probabilistic nature - instead of reality being inherently probabilistic. This is beyond the scope of our discussion, but students interested in this may look into recent developments in the area of philosophy of science which seek to provide a phenomenal grounding to quantum theories.

Monisms

Monist theories generally believe that there is only one real substance and this substance exists independently of my experience of it").

Idealist Monisms

Monism can be idealist ("there is only thought, or consciousness, or ideas"), and there is quite a variety of idealist monisms (e.g. Stoicism, Cittamatra philosophy, authors like Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel) depending on what the specifics of the really existing substance are.

Materialist Monisms

There are also materialist monisms (who hold that "there is only matter") — but what that substance is varies —subatomic particles, atoms, brain...

These doctrines vary in their account of lived experience: illusory epiphenomenon for eliminativist physicalism, which holds that we should reduce the illusory level of lived experience to the "true level" of material forces or brain structures; phenomenal representation of the unknowable "thing in itself" belonging to the domain of the "noumenon" for kantian idealism; a universal property of material objects for pan-psychism — meaning that panpsychists hold that there is only "matter", but that all matter contains as a property the fact of "being conscious", like it has mass or spin; "phenomena" as aggregate of sensations with no "underlying substance" beyond lived experience, except that there is a god that makes all this happen, but this god is absent from experience and unknowable and irrepresentable (Berkeley); Federico Faggin's theory of CU's and quantum fields is a form of realist monism which echoes Leibniz' older monadology; Franklin Merrill-Wolff, etc.

Other Monisms

Then there are sort of strange monisms such as Spinoza, who posited one true substance — God — with an infinity of attributes, two of which constitute human life — "Thought" and "Extension", mind and body (including sensations), essentially — these being considered as distinct but not ontologically separate, two sides of the same one coin. This is sometimes called dual-aspect monism, but Spinoza considered there were infinitely many aspects of the one being,

Dualisms

There are also Dualisms. Schematically, these tend to believe that "there are two really existing substances which are different" and the question is then how these interact. Descartes comes to mind, but also lots of traditional spiritualities ("there is the body, there is the soul, there is this material/experiential world, and there is the beyond where the soul goes back to at death" — e.g. Allan Kardec's Spirit ideas, or certain interpretations of Neo-platonism (The One, The Noous, The Intellect, etc.).

Notice that both monisms and dualisms of this type are realist in some way, or more accurately, substantialist, as they posit the true existence of some "thing" (res, in latin) independent of the perception of it; and then the question is, "how do we know that thing?", which is a question of epistemology.

Pluralisms

Plato's theory of forms is an idealistic pluralism.

Allan Kardec and spiritist ontologies.

Theosophy

Anthroposophy

Akashic records.

Etc.

The similarities between the different types of substantialist perspectives led to Wittgenstein's famous assertion, that "both realism and idealism, taken to their extreme, lead to the other" — ie, materialist and idealist monisms are logical equivalents.

However, there are other perspectives which open things out more — various perspectives which are less substantialist or not substantialist at all.

Non-substantialist or non-essentialist metaphysics

The idea is that non-substantialist metaphysics do not consider that there are real "objects" (res; onta) or "entities" (ens) which exist independently or, or "stand under" appearances, or independently of the act of observing. In some sense phenomenal or phenomenological ontologies could hardly be seen as "metaphysics" proper, as they modify reverse or cancel the meaning of "metaphysics" understood as a view of that which is beyond appearances, since these positions consider that being and appearing are strictly equivalent, a position which defines phenomenological ontologies. How can something be metaphysics if it states there is nothing beyond the "natural" world of appearances? If we just take the word to refer to "theories of reality", then this problem is fixed.

Phenomenological ontologies

Being as appearing

A phenomenal ontology hinges on the premise that "Being is Appearing" (phenomenalism), and relies on the suspension (in greek, épochè) of the implicit beliefs in the intrinsic existence of objects of perception.

"[Phenomenology] simply claims that being is identical with the phenomenon."

Eugen Fink, Proximité et distance, Jérôme Millon, 1993, p. 127

"A central, though disputed, premise of phenomenological ontology is that being is strictly coextensive to appearing. The list of quotations of phenomenologists who support this is almost inexhaustible. [...] According to it, being is nothing above and beyond appearing.”

Michel Bitbol, Consciousness, Being and Life. Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 50, 2019, p. 127-161

In other words, classical phenomenology, as its name indicates, is a radical return to the lived-world, the Lebenswelt, to the "mothers of all knowledge", or as Husserl expressed it: going "back to things themselves". In fact, Classical Phenomenologists (authors like Heidegger, Sartre, Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty, Renaud Barbaras, Michel Bitbol) basically all have in common is the idea that objective knowledge and in fact any objectivities, objects of perception of all types, are constituted within, by, and as lived experience; in other words, they reverse the status of transcendence: transcendance is constituted within and as immanence.

A major consequence is the suspension of transcendence — in the sense of an independent existence above and beyond appearances, which is in fact the mode of being we tend to attribute to the objects and subjects of our daily lives, naturally, implicitly. This is a crucial point: the natural perception we have of the subjects and objects that populate our lived experience always "transcend" our experience of them. as to This is why Husserl, a major figure of classical phenomenology, called this the "natural attitude". The épochè gesture of "suspension" of these pro-jections, and the re-direction of attention to phenomena as they manifest( “the method of phenomenology is to go back to things themselves”)  This means that "sub-stance" in the sense of "what stands under appearances" (see above) is "suspended" or negated. Clearly different phenomenologists actually hold different ontologies, but they generally share a degree of such non-substantialism.

Phenomenological approaches are epistemologically correlationist — they all have in common that they acknowledge the role of the experiencer in the constitution of objects of perception, and conversely. This is sometimes called a transcendental perspective, and is in fact a landmark of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophies: knower and known are co-relative, they co-constitute each other and are mirror-processes. Note that many people use the word "transcendental" to mean "transcendent", or to refer to something extraordinary.

While classical phenomenology is often seen as an abstract philosophical movement, it actually seems to be its own source-tradition, as its found Husserl for instance, wrote that

“[the phenomenological quest implies] a complete personal transformation which can be compared prima facie with a religious conversion”

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 1936, p. 156

“A true philosopher is one who has taken the decision to make of his life a life devoted to the absolute… a life entirely devoted to the idea of the supreme good.”

Philosophie première, PUF, 1972, p. 9, 15 As such its "methods" can be seen as emergent modalities:

"Phenomenology is a new kind of discipline that merges knowledge, ascesis and ethics. But instead of seeking salvation by means of a variety of knowledge suffused with spirituality (as Gnostics do), phenomenology seeks knowledge by basing it on a carefully channeled variety of spiritual exercise."

In Consciousness, Being and Life. Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 50, 2019, p. 127-161

"To inquire into mindfulness according to its own standards, a phenomenologist must accept to undergo the "complete transformation"that… goes along the practice of mindfulness."

In Consciousness, Being and Life. Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 50, 2019, p. 127-161

This then questions the usual status of scientific theories, and sets limits to what they can and can't do: are they images of a "real" world given "out there" beyond and independent of everyone's experience? Or, are they intrinsically experiential themselves, through and through, and thus, for instance, are entirely powerless in providing any ultimate account of lived experience and thus, in fact, reality, since, as a matter of fact, any scientific or philosophical theory pre-supposes experience in order to even manifest: how could they explain something which they need in order to even come into being?

Épochè and reduction

"The Phenomenological Épochè [...] does not limit itself to the suspension of discursive judgments about the world and society. It aims at suspending the perceptive, pre-discursive spontaneous position of objects, and neutralizing the tacit "natural" belief in an objective world allegedly given out there from the outset. [...]"

In Consciousness, Being and Life. Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 50, 2019, p. 127-161

Phenomenology of Life

"Insofar [...] as the world of the spirit, with its own laws and creations, rests, it seems, on a nature, on a human or animal corporeality, this nature is precisely not the world of science with its abstract idealities, it is that of life - a world to which there is no access except within a sensibility such as ours and which never gives itself to us except through the endless game of its constantly changing and renewed subjective appearances. The illusion of Galileo, as well as of all those who, following him, consider science as an absolute knowledge, was precisely to have taken the mathematical and geometrical world, destined to provide a univocal knowledge of the real world, for this real world itself, this world that we can only intuit and experience in the concrete modes of our subjective life.

But this subjective life does not only create the idealities and abstractions of science (as of conceptual thought in general), it first gives form to this world of life in the middle of which our concrete existence takes place. Because a reality as simple as a cube or a house is not a thing that exists outside of us and without us, in a way by itself, as the substratum of its qualities. It is what it is only thanks to a complex activity of the perception which poses, beyond the succession of the sense data that we have of it, the cube or the house as an ideal identical pole to which all these subjective appearances refer. Each perception of a face of the cube or of the front of a house refers to the potential perceptions of the other faces not yet perceived according to a game of indefinite relations. It is the same for any object in general, for any transcendent formation, which implies each time a specific synthetic operation of the transcendental subjectivity without which it would not be.

Undoubtedly in our daily life we do not pay attention to this consciousness which constitutes the world of our habitual environment.  We perceive the house and are inattentive to our perception of the house. We are always aware of the world and never aware of our awareness of the world. It is the task of philosophy to bring to the forefront this untiring activity of the consciousness that perceives the world, that conceives the idealities and abstractions of science, that imagines, that remembers, etc., thus producing all the unreal representations that never cease to accompany the course of our real life."

Barbarism, p. 20

Michel Henry: I am the truth, p. 156-157, denies that such a thing as a subjectivity or fixed identity, an "empirical individual", could be found as an object or subject within or as experience. His radical critique of what he called elsewhere “transcendental egotism” is thus summarized: “If by man we understand, as is usual, the empirical individual” [p.156], “man doesn’t exist”. “Worldly man is but an optical illusion.” [p.157].

Michel Henry, whose work was heavily influenced by Meister Eckhart, went further and claimed that what he found out is also the essential meaning of the Christian revelation, and in this he seems very close from contemporary mystics like Bernadette Roberts.

The Chiasma

Merleau-Ponty

We are immersed in Being, and witness its self manifestation qua lived experience, and we try to extract stable formal features from this experience, that we define as scientific objects. If such views were more widespread, no one would be tempted to embrace materialism which is seen as a confusion between forms and being, between objects of science and reality Michel Bitbol

Still, phenomenal ontologies are substantialist to a certain degree, since the absolute self-affectivity of Michel Henry's phenomenology of Life, seen as the essence of manifestation, or the "pure experience" in William James' so-called radical empiricism, is considered as the substrate or "stuff" that reality is made of. This could be seen as a subtle form or reification.

Non-foundationalist non-substantialism

A non-foundationalist perspective considers that no absolute or ultimate metaphysical conclusions can be drawn from empirical evidence, because this relies on epistemological assumptions which cannot be given any ultimate ground; there are no ultimate foundations to knowledge.

What is the absolute justification that empirical experience from phenomenal observation is a valid source of truth about reality? Suppose that there is a  "real reality" out there from which our lived reality (consciousness) originates. Why suppose that it obeys the laws of our phenomenal existence? And why suppose the genesis of our phenomenal existence happens in ways which resemble the causality our lives seem ruled by?

This is rarer, as it means that epistemologically one considers there is no ultimate foundational principle, thus emptying out or pulling the rug under the whole concept of truth. Obviously, all the philosophical schools mentioned previously are all more foundationalist than not.

Some ,modern and post-modern thinkers come to mind: Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Foucault, William James, Lyotard in some ways aligned with this overall stance. But several philosophers, mystics, and logicians throughout history and in different world religions, also arrived at similar views.

The relationship between states and metaphysical beliefs… and back

Bitbol on the relationship between particular mind states and metaphysical theories:

"Instead of hoping that the nature of conscious experience will be revealed by a theory, it is from now on inevitable to instead ask fluxing experience itself to exhibit the nature of theories. [...] Each thesis about conscious experience depends on a state of conscious experience; [...] abstractedly defending a theory about conscious experience amounts to contracting into one of the possible postures of experience being lived. [...] There is a mutual dependency between conceptions of consciousness and the state of consciousness of those who defend them."

The logic of being

Many branches of Buddhism — madhyamika in particular and related prajñaparamita-influenced schools — are non-substantialist, meaning that, going one step further than phenomenal ontologies which don't consider that there is any "really existing" entity or substance "out there" beyond appearances, they also deny, usually through elaborate logical reasonings, that phenomenality or "pure experience" are not to be reified into a "really existing" thing independent of the experience of it in the moment either) and also non-foundationalist.

Consider, for instance, the question of subject–object duality from a logical perspective. Madhyamika reasoning can help us understand and see how "consciousness" and its "objects" cannot be ontologically distinguished, either spatially or temporally. See stanza 93, chapter IX in Śantideva's magnum opus, the Bodhicaryāvatara, which is about "wisdom", and which shows the problem with introducing "spatial" distinctions between "consciousness" and "the world":

"If a space separates the faculty from its object,

How would they come into contact?

If no space separates them, then they will be one,

And in this case, what would come into contact with what?"

This applies to "moments in time" also. Examine a moment in time, with a beginning, middle and end. Then take another moment of time. What could be the connection between these distinct moments? They would be entirely external to one another.

Such powerful and concise arguments seem to go a step beyond some of the phenomenological ontologies we just reviewed. In particular, the paradoxes implied in Michel Henry's affirmation that reality is "absolute self-affectivity with no distance" are revealed in a clear light, and intuit how philosophies of unity or "co-incidence" can actually become sterile.

The Eleatic school, formost among which was Parmenides, also employed logical arguments to show the intenable paradoxes of ordinary ontological categories and destroy all dualities — which in Greek are called doxa (δόξα), the "opinions of mortal men", the appearances of the "natural" world. The most famous one is about Achilles and the tortoise, which is not often presented as the deep negation of the possibility of movement as it is ordinarily conceived, but rather as a sort of logical game illustrating the mathematical notion of limit. However, it goes much deeper than that.

Compare the opening stance to Nāgārjuna's Fundamental wisdom of the middle-way:

"Whatever is dependently arisen is Unceasing, unborn, Unannihilated, not permanent, Not coming, not going, Without distinction, without identity, And free from conceptual construction."

With section VIII of Parmenides' Poem:

VIII

One path only is left for us to

speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that

what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete,

immovable and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for

5 now it is, all at once, a continuous one. For what kind of origin

for it. will you look for ? In what way and from what source

could it have drawn its increase ? I shall not let thee say nor

think that it came from what is not; for it can neither be

thought nor uttered that what is not is. And, if it came from

10 nothing, what need could have made it arise later rather than

sooner ? Therefore must it either be altogether or be not at

all. Nor will the force of truth suffer aught to arise besides

itself from that which in any way is. Wherefore, Justice does

not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass

15 away, but holds it fast.

" Is it or is it not ? " Surely it is adjudged, as it needs must

be, that we are to set aside the one way as unthinkable and

nameless (for it is no true way), and that the other path is real

and true. How, then, can what is be going to be in the

20 future ? Or how could it come into being ? If it came into

being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is

becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.

Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more

of it in one place than in another, to hinder it from holding

together, nor less of it, but everything is full of what is.

25 Wherefore all holds together; for what is; is in contact with what is.

Moreover, it is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains, without

beginning and without end; since coming into being

and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away.

It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself.

30 And thus it remaineth constant in its place; for hard necessity

keeps it in the bonds of the limit that holds it fast on every side.

Wherefore it is not permitted to what is to be infinite; for it is in need of nothing ; while, if it were infinite, it would stand in need of everything. It is the

same thing that can be thought and for the sake of which the thought exists ;

35 for you cannot find thought without something that is, to which it is

betrothed. And there is not, and never shall be, any time other, than that which

is present, since fate has chained it so as to be whole and immovable.

Wherefore all these things are but the names which mortals

have given, believing them, to be true –

40 coming into being and passing away, being and not being,

change of place and alteration of bright colour.

Where, then, it has its farthest boundary, it is complete on

every side, equally poised from the centre in every direction,

like the mass of a rounded sphere; for it cannot be greater or

45 smaller in one place than in another. For there is nothing

which is not that could keep it from reaching out equally, nor

is it possible that there should be more of what is in this place

and less in that, since it is all inviolable. For, since it is equal

in all directions, it is equally confined within limits.

50 Here shall I close my trustworthy speech and thought about the truth.

Henceforward learn the opinions of mortals,

giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words.

Mortals have settled in their minds to speak of two forms, one of which

they should have left out, and that is where they go astray from the truth.

55 They have assigned an opposite

substance to each, and marks distinct from one another. To the

one they allot the fire of heaven, light, thin, in every direction

the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The other is

opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body. Of these

60 I tell thee the whole arrangement as it seems to men,

in order that no mortal may surpass thee in knowledge.

A dream-like world: Neither Being nor non-Being, nor Both, nor Neither

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Shakespeare, The Tempest

The prajñaparamita refutation of all ontological affirmation, best exemplified in the concise text of the Heart sutra, insubstantiality leads to a fundamental groundlessness and the playful, mysterious display of appearances seen as devoid of substance, which finds poetic expression in the Diamond sutra:

“So I say to you –

This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:”

“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;

Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”

“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”

Unknowing and mystery

Many of the world's great mystics expound views of this sort. After all, the word "mystic" comes from "mystery". that of these systems which exhibit the radical limitations of any objective knowledge, theoretical knowledge, representational knowledge. This is sometimes done in favor of non-objective knowledge. Thus we are brought back from the order of metaphysical theories to the realm of practice — for non-objective knowledge is practical knowledge.

This is sometimes dismissed as "Mysterianism".

For instance Meister Eckhart or his forebear Dionysius the Areopagite.

The cloude of Unknowing.

Can we say anything about the "origin" or "nature" of "consciousness"?

So, on the epistemological level, and using Kantian terms, QRI asks a question of an a priori type (having to do with intuition not deduction) and seeks to answer them through a posteriori procedures (empirical evidence), or in his and later uses of these terms, confuses the empirical and the transcendental. Methodologically, this then calls to use objective empirical methods to explore "something" non-objective — for consciousness is not an object in the way that a "ball falling to the ground" is an object. If it was, then what is it that would observe that object, since "consciousness" is supposed to be "what observes"? Not only is consciousness non-objective, but it cannot be distinguished from its objects — this is both an experiential fact and a logical necessity: examine Santideva's verse

"If a space separates the faculty from its object,/How would they come into contact?/If no space separates them, then they will be one,/And in this case, what would come into contact with what?"

Note that if by "consciousness" is meant a more restricted meaning of "the mind" or "the mental sense sphere", then one only needs to apply the previous reasoning to the specific faculty to prove that it is not a product of "the brain". But this is not an empirical observation. Empirical observation can't say anything about the brain, because empirically speaking, there is no brain, i.e., the "brain", as all objects, is a transcendent, it transcends individual experience (and according to some, is the cause of it, and "experience" is a sort of byproduct or even representation "in the brain", which also implies that the brain cannot be observed.)

Finally, more generally, there are logical issues which apply to realist approaches in general, but which in this context point to specific problems regarding the "causes" and the notion of an "origin" of consciousness (viewed as a "thing", i.e., reified). The paradoxes of realist views are thoroughly examined in philosophical texts such as the prajñaparamita literature (Heart and Diamond Sutras being some of the best known examples as well as  Nagarjuna's works), which uses deep logical arguments disprove substantial/independent existence. The pre-socratic Eleatic school employed similar logical arguments to arrive at comparable conclusion, as seen for instance in Parmenides' poem, although his treatment is less systematic and extensive, but more poetic.

Epistemology

Methodology

As I understand it, using empirical methods to test that a theory is "true" or not, means conceiving a model of how reality "really is" and then logically devising the necessary consequences of this theory being true through the laws of cause and effect. Specific consequences of the model can be turned into predictions (i.e., "if model X is true, then observation Y should be possible in such and such context"), and there should be specific observable effects in the world of experience. Actual empirical observations will then conform to predictions or not, and they are then said to offer evidence in favor or against the theory - which is a metaphysical view, basically.

This forgets the initial epistemological made above. A priori knowledge is knowledge that cannot be derived from experience, or maybe better said - is presupposed in all experience : e.g. the a prioris of sensibility in Kant's system are "time" and "space". I would say that "consciousness" (although I use an expended definition of this compared to IONS) is presupposed in all experience, i.e. there cannot be any experience without there being "experientiality" or consciousness that co-arises with it and as its very phenomenal substance.

Madhyamika reasoning can help us understand and see how "consciousness" and its "objects" cannot be ontologically distinguished, either spatially or temporally. See stanza 93, chapter IX in Śantideva's magnum opus, the Bodhicaryāvatara, which is about "wisdom", and which shows the problem with introducing "spatial" distinctions between "consciousness" and "the world":

"If a space separates the faculty from its object,

How would they come into contact?

If no space separates them, then they will be one,

And in this case, what would come into contact with what?"

This applies to "moments in time" also. Examine a moment in time, with a beginning, middle and end. Then take another moment of time. What could be the connection between these distinct moments? They would be entirely external to one another.

Some logical issues

Secondly, on a more logical level. The implication of this proposal is that there are causes and conditions of consciousness which can be investigated empirically and that observation can give solid if not absolute bases for sound knowledge. This is implied in the physicalist theories they try to disprove, certainly (i.e., "consciousness arises from neurons"), but it is also the implication of engaging in procedures that test the validity of a metaphysical theory (on the nature of consciousness).

If there are causes to consciousness, these causes must be different from consciousness. They must be temporally distinct from consciousness, as effects follow causes in time.  If consciousness is an effect of some temporally other cause then the cause exists in a different moment than consciousness, at a different point in time. This raises the insurmountable contradictions of positing that there are ontologically distinct moments of time, ontologically distinct substances, and ontologically distinct spatial locations. All of the paradoxes that arise from realist/substantialist theories follow. These are examined and thoroughly debunked in Nagarjuna's philosophical classical, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle-Way, and other prajñaparamita texts. I could not do it justice here, but regarding the issues with realist views, this classic text will be reflected on fruitfully.

The following contains a summary of the four main types of logical reasonings used in the madhyamaka tradition to e : https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/mipham/four-great-logical-arguments.

Conclusion

Finally, regarding the argument that "the dominant worldview is physicalism": (1) I don't think it's true, as many people are in fact not that, and (2) conclusive proofs (such as the ones outlined here) have already been given that disprove physicalism, and the issue of disproving it only remains in contexts which implicitly take for granted the metaphysical realism, epistemologies and methods of such perspectives.

Trying to disprove physicalism within this context will be difficult if not principally impossible, and does not seem particularly useful.

Thus, my tongue-in-cheek empirical proposal is that the money of this prize could be put to better use than trying to prove something, which has already been proven, by using methods which cannot yield the sought-after proof.