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Ontology of consciousness

An interdisciplinary knowledge base mapping consciousness as an emergent property of dynamically coupled neural systems.

Topics — Consciousness · Neuroscience · Cognitive science · Philosophy · Psychology · Connectome · CNS physiology. See all tags.

Status

This site is being scaffolded. Content will arrive section-by-section across the multi-level ontology described in the project framing.

Levels

The KB is organized as a multi-level ontology — each level composes into the next, with cross-links naming the relations between them.

  • Terminology — etymology of consciousness; translations across world languages.
  • Neuroanatomy — neuron → ensembles → pathways → cortical parcellations → networks (DMN, salience, thalamo-cortical).
  • Neurophysiology — action potentials, synaptic transmission, oscillations, activity patterns.
  • Biochemistry — neurotransmitters (glutamate, GABA, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine), receptors, signaling cascades, the caffeine–adenosine system.
  • Energetics — ATP metabolism and its coupling to neural activity.
  • Computational models — predictive coding, Bayesian inference, global workspace theory, integrated information theory (Φ), dynamical systems.
  • Psychology / psychiatry — normal and pathological states.
  • Phenomena — illusions, dreams, lucid states, psychedelics.
  • Neural dynamics — ensembles, pathways, neuromodulation of activity patterns.
  • Experimental methods — EEG, fMRI, single-unit recording, connectomics.
  • Philosophy — hard problem, identity theory, panpsychism vs physicalism.
  • References — books, papers, concept glossary.
  • People — researchers, theorists, and writers the KB draws on or argues with.
  • Experiments — famous psychology and neuroscience studies and how much weight to put on them.
  • Thought experiments — philosophical scenarios used to test intuitions about mind and consciousness.
  • History — chronological skeleton of how consciousness has been studied, from the Upanishads to IIT.
  • Phenomena — distinctive states and quirks of conscious experience — visual illusions, pareidolia, apophenia (and later: dreams, lucid states, psychedelics).

About this repo

Project meta — the framing, decisions, milestones, and tasks — lives in docs/ at the repo root, separate from the published site. See CLAUDE.md and docs/README.md in the source tree.