Poster 890 · Session 2 · Wednesday 14 October

The Scoring of 50 Theories from Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness

Six Crucial Questions Science Asks — Who Answers?

From the paper The Continuum Standard for Theory Progression Across Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness · Patrick Hogue, Institute for Reality Advancement

The problem

Kuhn’s Landscape of Consciousness catalogs more than 400 theories across ten categories on a physicalist-to-nonphysicalist axis. It assesses each against four implication questions and, by design, does not rank them.

It is a catalog, not a comparison.

This work supplies the comparison: a standard of theory progression assembled entirely from external, prior sources and applied identically to a 50-theory sample.

Where does your theory stand?

Every position was scored against one standard, fixed before any position was read. This is how the fifty fell out.

level 6
2
level 5
1
level 4
9
level 3
7
level 2
6
level 1
21
below gate
4

Fifty positions, each scored against one standard fixed before any of them was read. Continuous Being Theory is entry 51 and is counted separately.

Only the tested can fail

1
Twenty-five of fifty have never been testedTwenty-one positions offer a way to fail and have never had it tested. Four offer no way to fail at all. Several of the most discussed positions in the field are among them.
2
The top of the ladder is physicalist, and it is not a victoryGlobal Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theory reached the sixth level by entering a collaboration designed with their rivals. Neither came through intact. In one case a stated falsifier was looked for and found absent.
3
Two tests were powered to detect what they predicted. Both returned a negative.Of nineteen positions tested at level 3 or above, five report a usable effect size and eleven report none.

Every recorded failure on this board belongs to a theory that submitted to a test. A theory with a clean record has usually earned it by not being tested.

The standard

Six levels and a gate. Each level states what a position has and what it still lacks, so the level names the next step rather than awarding a grade.

6
critic-tested— the top of the ladder
Mayo 2018
5
replicatedlacks critic-testing
EBM hierarchy
4
blindedlacks replication
EBM hierarchy
3
pre-registeredlacks blinding
EBM hierarchy
2
testedlacks pre-registration
EBM hierarchy
1
falsifierlacks a test
—
GATE
Is a falsifiable observation on offer?Below the gate a position is not given a level.
Popper 1959
0
lacks a falsifierOff the ladder rather than beneath it.
—
Standings are not assigned by judgment. A published rule set maps each theory’s evidence record to a level and is applied identically to all fifty. Anyone can rerun it, and anyone who disagrees with a rule can change it and rerun the whole field.

A second instrument

Does reported experience have an order?

The field offers static correlates of whether an experience is present. No entry in the catalog carries a tested account of how one unfolds. Structural Metaphysical Dynamics codes four content-defined elements in first-person near-death narratives, between the body at the start and the physical return at the end. It asks one question: do people who have nothing in common report them in the same order?

Seeing→Passage→Adventure→Boundary

Independent raters have now reported. Five reviewers, blind to the predicted order and to every machine label, coded the same 47 accounts and recorded 168 forward transitions against 9 — a forward share of 94.9% against a null of 0.50. The minimum results were specified in advance, and were met.

What remains open

Sources

Positions reflect the published record as of 11 October 2026. Theories advance.