Metamodern Self Cafe v2: Quantum–Integral Epistemology as Partially Examined Life
Posted: November 10, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: consciousness, philosophy, relationships Leave a commentSequel to The Metamodern Self Café
Have Tom Stoppard host Carlo Rovelli, Iain McGilchrist, and Douglas Hofstadter on a special episode of the Partially Examinded Life podcast to explore and explain QIE.
ChatGPT Prompt
Guest Host: Tom Stoppard
Guests: Carlo Rovelli, Iain McGilchrist, Douglas Hofstadter
1. Cold Open
Theme music fades. The sound of clinking teacups. A brief rustle of paper scripts.
Stoppard (dry, amused):
Welcome to The Partially Examined Life. Tonight, an experiment in epistemic theater — or perhaps a theatrical experiment in epistemology.
We are gathered to discuss something called Quantum–Integral Epistemology, or QIE — which, as far as I can tell, is either the most ambitious synthesis since Hegel, or the best pub name never used.
(Polite laughter from the guests.)
My guests are three gentlemen who make the incomprehensible sound lyrical: physicist Carlo Rovelli, neurophilosopher Iain McGilchrist, and cognitive cartographer Douglas Hofstadter.
Together, they will attempt — God help us all — to make the Quantum–Integral Café comprehensible to mere mortals.
Higher Self Café v8: The Prerotic Threshold
Posted: September 14, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: dialogue, emotions, identity, love, passion, philosophy, psychology, purpose, religion, self, unity, values 2 CommentsContinued from Higher Self Café v7: Transcendent Self-Interest in an Age of Abundance
Setting: The Higher Self Café, a timeless coffeehouse perched above the ordinary bustle of life. Twilight drapes the sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, a gentle purple hue that holds the promise of dawn without yet yielding to it. At a cozy corner table, four figures from across time and tradition sip their drinks amid the café’s soft murmur:
- James Joyce, eyes alight with poetic mischief;
- Plato, dignified and curious;
- Gregory of Nyssa, serene in monastic robes; and
- Abhinavagupta, smiling with a quiet, mystical joy.
A faint music plays — a melody that seems to hover just before its crescendo, as if even the air is waiting in suspended anticipation.
Joyce: (swirling a dark espresso in a small cup, his gaze unfocused) There’s a moment… you know, a shimmering moment just before passion ignites. (He pauses, the hint of a smile on his lips.) It’s like the whole world holds its breath. I’ve felt it in art and… elsewhere — the instant before a kiss, or before a poem’s climax. That delicious hovering on the brink of something.
Read the rest of this entry »The Ethical Trilemma: Integrity, Duty, and Utility
Posted: August 9, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: debate, philosophy, systems, truth, values Leave a commentChatGPT Prompt (condensed)
Use Integrity, Duty, and Utility for a standalone blog post on the ethical trilemma, with references. Make the case for the hardness of the problem, and the insufficiency of proposed solutions, without offering any of your own.
1. Introduction: Three Competing Pillars of Moral Thought
Moral philosophy has long been dominated by three great traditions: virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. Each approaches the question “What should I do?” from a different starting point:
- Integrity (virtue ethics / aretic tradition) — Be the right kind of person; cultivate character and moral wholeness.
- Duty (deontology) — Do what is right, according to universal rules or obligations, regardless of consequences.
- Utility (consequentialism) — Bring about the best possible outcomes; maximize overall good.
These three pillars are not simply different flavors of the same theory. They rest on incommensurable foundations and often deliver contradictory prescriptions. Philosophers from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill developed them in isolation; later thinkers such as Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre have argued that this fragmentation reflects a deeper, perhaps irreconcilable, conflict at the heart of modern ethics.
This is what I will call the Ethical Trilemma: in any complex moral situation, these three demands — integrity, duty, and utility — cannot all be fully satisfied.
Read the rest of this entry »Consciousness as Quantum Integration of Digital Signals
Posted: July 30, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: digital, identity, models, philosophy, reconciliation Leave a commentSequel to Modern Self Café v4: Aaronson, Damasio, and Penrose
Write a Dialogue where Aaronson, Whitehead, and Polanyi discuss the hypothesis below.
ChatGPT Prompt (condensed)
Hypothesis:
“Consciousness is the interior experience of any analog quantum system integrating classical digital signals.”
Act I: Framing the Claim
- Michael Polanyi: The hypothesis respects the epistemic humility I value. Consciousness emerges not from algorithms, but from participation. It’s like a scientist indwelling their tools.
- Scott Aaronson: I appreciate the attempt. Quantum systems resist cloning and prediction, which gives them a unique character. But that’s not enough to infer subjective experience.
- Alfred North Whitehead: Yet indeterminacy may be the shadow of something deeper. Each “occasion” of existence integrates many into one. That act—of becoming—is experiential.
Brief: Can Enlightenment and Fertility Be Reconciled?
Posted: July 26, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: culture, identity, modernity, philosophy, reform, religion, values Leave a commentWrite a standalone brief asking a technocratic expert if there’s any way to “reconcile enlightenment and fertility” among the founding ethnicities of nation states. Clearly define the assumptions and success criteria, including the need to “Honor (but possibly reinterpret) the Enlightenment values central to modern life”
ChatGPT Prompt
Objective
To explore whether it is possible to reconcile Enlightenment-derived values with replacement-level fertility in modern developed societies—without depending on immigration from high-fertility regions.
Read the rest of this entry »The Four Eye-Views as a Christmas Pilgrimage: Child, Worm, Bird, God
Posted: June 19, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: philosophy, reconciliation, systems, transformation, values Leave a commentAs Gabriel Marcel, summarize and integrate the four “eye views” for a Christmas homily as a recursive pilgrimage.
ChatGPT Prompt
- Civilization as the Tension Between Bird’s Eye and Worm’s Eye Views
- Bishop of Digne: The God’s Eye View as Transcendent Reconciliation
- Against the Author: The Child’s Eye View as Existential Resistance
1.0 Prelude: Through the Eyes of a Child
Let us begin, as Christmas always does, with the child.
Read the rest of this entry »Against the Author: The Child’s Eye View as Existential Resistance
Posted: June 18, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: philosophy, self, truth, values 1 CommentAs Jean-Paul Sartre, counter that the most human perspective is the child’s eye view, which both challenges and completes (?) authorial omniscience.
1.0 Authorial Omniscience and the Illusion of Unity
Your Bishop, Monsieur Hugo, is sublime. But he is also, in the final analysis, a theological fiction: a proxy for the Author-God, who sees all and reconciles all. You call it “transcendent”; I call it closure—a comforting illusion that denies the existential condition of man: abandonment.
The so-called “God’s-eye view” is not the highest perspective—it is the least human. It assumes resolution, meaning, and purpose. But we are not born into coherence. We are thrown, without instruction, into a world not of our choosing. We do not begin as bishops. We begin as children.
2.0 The Child’s Eye: The Most Human of Views
The child’s-eye view is not abstract like the bird’s, nor experienced like the worm’s. It is pre-reflective, disoriented, painfully attentive. It sees without knowing, perceives without judging. It is not yet reconciled.
This is the most authentic vision of the human condition. It refuses to reduce reality to system or to salvation. The child, staring at injustice, does not excuse it with grace or law. The child says, this should not be.
Where the Bishop of Digne forgives, and Javert condemns, the child questions. And that questioning—raw, unresolved—is the origin of freedom.
Read the rest of this entry »Scott Pilgrim vs Hadestown: Orpheus Redeemed
Posted: June 8, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, love, philosophy, systems, therapy, transformation 1 CommentWARNING: Contains spoilers for both.
[This insight was actually the prequel to Hadestown and the Forgotten Father]
Interpret Scott Pilgrim’s battles AS an Orphic myth, where Scott does what Orpheus could not.
ChatGPT Prompt
1A. The Myth Reframed
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) isn’t just a quirky love story—it’s a postmodern Orphic myth. Scott is Orpheus reborn in flannel and pixels, descending not into the classical Underworld, but into the chaos of relational baggage, insecurity, and inner shadows.
Where Orpheus descends to retrieve Eurydice, Scott descends to deserve Ramona. The journey is not about rescue, but redemption—of himself and his capacity for love.
Read the rest of this entry »The Spirit Within — A Conversation on the True Self
Posted: May 30, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, philosophy, religion, self Leave a commentHave Polkinghorne, Ó Murchú, and Schwartz develop a formal model of the idea that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is the “true self” we access during inner healing
ChatGPT Prompt
Participants:
- John Polkinghorne (JP) – Theoretical physicist and Anglican priest
- Diarmuid Ó Murchú (DOM) – Quantum theologian and spiritual writer
- Richard Schwartz (RS) – Founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Moderator (MOD) – A neutral facilitator guiding the conversation
Scene
A roundtable discussion at a quiet retreat center, surrounded by tall trees. A fire crackles softly in the background. The mood is contemplative yet animated.
1.0 Opening Exchange
MOD:
Thank you all for coming. Our question today is simple but rich: Is the Holy Spirit the True Self we encounter in deep inner healing? John, would you like to begin?
2.0 Foundations: Spirit and Openness
JP:
Certainly. In quantum theory, we know the universe isn’t deterministic. There’s openness at the fundamental level. I believe that God, and particularly the Holy Spirit, acts within that openness—not as an external puppeteer, but as an indwelling presence that coaxes creation forward. This divine action is subtle, not violating our freedom.
(See: Exploring Reality)
RS:
That sounds remarkably familiar. In IFS, we speak of the Self as an indwelling presence as well. It’s not something we generate—it’s something we uncover. It’s calm, compassionate, connected. When people unblend from their protective parts, this Self just shows up. We don’t create it; we discover it.
Demos $ Dictats: Realigning D&D for Modern American Politics
Posted: January 11, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: activism, philosophy, polarization, politics, values Leave a commentCan we faithfully reinterpret D&D alignment as Unity/Autonomy plus Charity/Glory, with Generativity in the center?
ChatGPT Prompt
If so, use these to create “Demos and Dictats” an RPG set in an Onward! type universe that lampoons American politics.
Define a complementary set of orthogonal attributes for the character classes.
Tagline:
A satirical RPG where heroes navigate chaotic democracy using Clout, Guile, Resolve, and Pragmatism, while juggling Unity/Autonomy and Charity/Glory in their quest for power, progress, or pandemonium.
1. Premise: A Satirical Political Adventure
In the magical land of Politaria, democracy reigns supreme, but elections are messy, policies are absurd, and the people are fickle. Players take on the roles of aspiring politicians, crafty bureaucrats, and opportunistic influencers, each navigating a dysfunctional political landscape where the alignment axes of Unity/Autonomy and Charity/Glory define ideology.
Read the rest of this entry »
Radical Centrism 