An eight-minute visual explanation of the catalogue of 222 theories of consciousness: how it has been built, what the connection graph reveals, and why the seven clusters and the five core theories emerge.
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The video opens with the project's underlying question: what is consciousness? That existential puzzle that humanity has been chasing for centuries serves as the excuse to introduce the catalogue of 222 theories and their 864 documented connections at mapadelaconsciencia.es.
The methodology is then briefly explained: the Louvain algorithm —"like that of a social network, but applied to philosophers and scientists"— finds seven major clusters in the graph (embodied cognition, computational functionalism, contemplative traditions, idealist metaphysics, sociocultural consciousness, empirical neuroscience and indigenous worldviews).
Building on that, the minimal library of five core theories is identified — five theories from which 96.4% of the catalogue is reachable in just two conceptual hops — and their historical balance is highlighted: from the 8th century to the 21st, across several disciplines and cultures.
The central part of the video constructs two unified models with those same five pieces:
Model A — idealist (Vedanta as foundation). Universal consciousness is the only thing that exists; the physical brain is a filter or antenna that tunes it into individual experience. The building is constructed from the top down: from the universal field to the everyday self.
Model B — emergentist materialist (IIT as foundation). Only matter exists at the origin; consciousness emerges when physical organisation reaches a sufficient level of integration (high Φ). The same building, constructed literally upside down: from the material foundations to the narrative attic.
The closing shifts the focus: the project's purpose is not to crown a winner, but to stop treating disciplines as rivals and to start seeing them as hierarchically complementary pieces of the same edifice. The question remains open: is consciousness the fundamental fabric of the cosmos, or a miraculous by-product of super-organised matter?
Welcome to this explainer. Today, we're taking on what is arguably the most massive, dizzying challenge in all of human inquiry, mapping the mind itself. We're going to explore a fascinating project that literally catalogs millennia of human thought into one structured interactive framework. If you've ever felt completely overwhelmed by how many different ways people try to explain the brain, the soul, and reality itself, well, you are absolutely in the right place. Okay, let's dive right into this.
What exactly is consciousness? It's kind of the ultimate mystery of human existence, isn't it? Are we just highly complex biological machines, or is there something fundamentally cosmic about our awareness? For centuries, philosophers, neuroscientists, spiritual leaders, and sociologists have debated this over and over, leaving us with a vast, confusing, and completely unmapped territory. But today, we're going to chart that territory together using some incredibly brilliant data science to finally make sense of it all. Here is our map for the journey. We'll start with mapping the mind, then look at the seven clusters of consciousness, moving
on to the five pillars of thought. After that, we'll explore the idealist model and the materialist model. And finally, we'll wrap up by asking, which world are you? Let's get started. Section 1, mapping the mind. So how do you even begin to organize thousands of years of philosophical debates? Well, an interactive encyclopedia project took a really incredible approach. They decided to treat the entire history of philosophy, science, and spirituality like a massive data set. They mapped out exactly 222 distinct theories
of consciousness. And we're talking about absolutely everything here, from cutting-edge empirical neuroscience and AI all the way back to ancient indigenous worldviews and mystical traditions. Nothing was left off the table. But they didn't just throw these into a random list. They mathematically linked these 222 theories, identifying exactly 864 connections. These connections represent real things, lines of influence, theoretical inheritances, and critical dialogues between the ideas. They essentially built a literal, interconnected web of human thought.
Then they took this massive web and applied something called the Louvain algorithm. If you know network science, you know this is used to find natural groupings or communities. And guess what? It found exactly seven distinct clusters of thought with a really high modularity score of 0.561. In data science terms, anything over a 0.4 proves these aren't just random algorithmic flukes. These are real, measurable philosophical continents that have naturally formed over human history. Section two, seven clusters of consciousness.
Now, what's really interesting here is what these algorithmic clusters actually represent. We've got amazingly diverse continents of thought. There's C2, the computational functionalism of the West, C3, contemplative traditions like Buddhism. C4, idealist and quantum metaphysics. C5, viewing consciousness as a socio-cultural construct. C6, strict empirical neuroscience, and C7, indigenous and animist worldviews. But I really want you to look at C1, embodied and inactive cognition. This cluster actually sits right at the structural center of the entire graph.
It acts as the ultimate hub, brilliantly articulating philosophy, cognitive science, and biology all together. Section 3. 5 Pillars of Thoughts Alright, so we have 222 theories spread across 7 continents. That is a lot to process. To make sense of all that heavy material, researchers use synthetic scores, measuring things like historical persistence and global reach, to funnel the data down to a minimal library. They mathematically narrowed it down to just five backbone theories. We've got inactivism, integrated information theory, computational cognitivism, the ancient
Vedanta Advaita, and the social constructivism of the self. What is absolutely staggering here is that these five theories cover 96.4% of the entire 222 theory catalog in just two network steps. Literally, if you grasp these five, you hold the keys to almost all human thought on the mind. Before we start building our unified models, let's clearly define a couple of these pillars so we're completely on the same page. First up is an activism. Remember, this is our crucial bridge theory. It basically states that cognition isn't just a brain passively recording the world
like a video camera. Instead, consciousness is an active bringing forth of a world. happens through the dynamic, physical interaction between an embodied organism and its environment. Now, jumping over to the hard, physical science side, we have integrated information theory, or IIT. So the crucial point is this. IIT argues that a system is conscious if its physical architecture maintains information as a unified whole that cannot be mathematically reduced to its separate parts. They call this irreducible value phi. Essentially,
it provides a very strict, measurable structural foundation for consciousness. Section 4, The Idealist Model This brings us to maybe the most fascinating part of this explainer. Researchers realized you can take these five exact pillars we just talked about and actually stack them hierarchically to create a unified theory of consciousness. And because the ultimate origin of reality is still and unknown, you can stack them in two completely opposite ways without breaking the logic. Let's look at the idealist funnel first. Here, consciousness itself is the fundamental building block of the universe.
We start right at the base with Vedanta Advaita, the idea that a universal, boundless consciousness is primary. Then, IIT's physical architecture acts like a filter, condensing that universal field into a localized, individual point of view. From there, inactivism explains how that localized individual projects the world through a biological body. Next, cognitivism acts as the functional processing software for navigating that world. And finally, constructivism layers on the social narrative, the I formed by human culture. So in this stack, universal consciousness literally creates the individual.
Section 5, the materialist model. But let's move on. and see how this builds if we completely flip the foundation, what happens then. In this materialist emergentist funnel, physical matter is primary. It starts at the base with IIT, where matter organizes into complex structures with high integrated information. From that seemingly dead physical base, inactivism kicks in, as biology evolves, creating a living organism that's coupled to its environment. Then, cognitivism emerges as the functional operations of the brain.
On top of that, constructivism builds our social, narrative self. And finally, at the very peak, a highly evolved, deeply trained mind can experience Vedanta. In this view, it's a phenomenological peak where the brain simply recognizes its own pure background of awareness. So in this stack, matter creates consciousness. Section 6. Which world are you? And this brilliantly illustrates the ultimate beauty of this entire mapping project. Both of these unified models perfectly organize the exact same five structural theories.
They don't contradict the data, and they don't leave out any field of science or philosophy. They just start from completely inverted starting points. The idealist model says a universal consciousness generates individuated matter and minds. The materialist model says structured matter generates emergent consciousness. As of right now, science cannot definitively prove which stack is the absolute truth. are perfectly, logically sound. But they offer wildly different perspectives on what a human being is and the purpose of life. In one, you're the inevitable peak of a mechanical
universe trying to wake up. In the other, you are the universe itself, playing a temporary, localized role. So, I want to leave you with this lingering thought. We've charted the map together. We've seen the 864 connections and the profound mathematical harmony of human philosophy. But the final coordinate? Well, that's up to you. Look at the evidence. Look at the five pillars we just built. Are you a biological machine generating a mind or is the universe a mind generating you? Thank you for joining me for this explainer. Keep wondering, keep learning and I'll see you next time.
This video accompanies mapadelaconsciencia.es/en/, an interactive encyclopedia of 222 theories of consciousness categorised by discipline, era and region, grouped into clusters and analysed through five distinct relevance scores.
If you prefer audio format, there is also a 38-minute podcast that goes deeper into the unified models (idealist and materialist) built upon the five core theories.
Project created by Ricardo Forcano with Claude Cowork. April 2026.