Domain
Life & Consciousness
Abiogenesis (Oparin–Haldane / “Primordial Soup”)
Life arose from non-living chemistry: simple organic molecules in early Earth conditions gradually self-organized into self-replicating systems.
RNA World Hypothesis
Proposes that early life relied on RNA both to store genetic information and catalyze reactions, before DNA and proteins took over those roles separately.
Hydrothermal Vent (Metabolism-First) Origin
Suggests life began not in a surface "soup" but at alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where mineral structures provided ready-made chemical gradients for early…
Panspermia
Proposes that life, or its chemical precursors, did not originate on Earth but arrived from elsewhere in space via comets, meteorites, or interstellar dust.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
A framing problem rather than a single theory: why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience at all, as opposed to…
Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
Proposes consciousness corresponds to a system's capacity to integrate information (measured as "phi"), in principle allowing consciousness to be quantified in any physical system, not just…
Global Workspace Theory
Models consciousness as information being broadcast widely across the brain via a shared "workspace," making it available to many specialized unconscious processes at once.
Panpsychism
Holds that consciousness, or some proto-conscious property, is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of physical reality, present in some minimal form even in basic matter.
Biocentrism
A fringe proposal that consciousness/life is primary and generates the physical universe, rather than being a late product of it — inverting the usual matter-first assumption.