Mind-Matter Unity: Consciousness and Subjectivity in EQT Process Philosophy of Nature - Softcover

Li, Kaisheng; Li, Longji

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798996139477

Publisher: Gradient Physics Press, 2026

Synopsis

Mind--Matter Unity: Consciousness and Subjectivity in the EQT Process Philosophy of Nature develops a systematic account of consciousness within the framework of Energy Quantum Theory (EQT). The book begins from the hard problem of consciousness: why physical processes are accompanied by first-person experience, rather than remaining merely silent operations of structure, function, and information processing. Instead of claiming to dissolve this problem by definition, function, emergence, or identity alone, the book proposes a more restrained strategy: to clarify everything that can be structurally and physically explained, and to mark precisely the residual point that cannot be reduced.

The central thesis is that first-person experience and specific gradient configurations of the frequency-resolved energy quantum density field, (\rho_f), are isomorphic at the strongest level: they are two aspects of the same underlying process. The structure of experience is argued to correspond to five sources of richness in (\rho_f): single-frequency gradient configurations, frequency families, master-equation evolution, resonance modes, and transient timescale spectra. These five sources are used to account for qualitative variation, differences among qualitative kinds, the stream of consciousness, unity and binding, temporal thickness, and memory.

The book then distinguishes structural isomorphism from given-ness. Experience is not merely a structure; it is given from within. This given-ness is characterized as internal--external co-evolutionary freezing within a bounded interior. The boundary of life, especially the membrane as the first topological interior, becomes the gate that separates living given-ness from non-living physical interaction. This allows the book to reject both panpsychism and functionalist substrate-independence: not every coupled system has experience, and artificial systems without a genuine life-boundary do not possess the precondition of given-ness.

A further part of the argument explains how sensation becomes cognized experience through memory transients, knowledge structures, comparison, language, and symbolic organization. It also develops an account of subjectivity: experience becomes "mine" through (\mathcal{B})-demarcation, the attributional projection of dominant coherence. Disorders such as depersonalization, thought insertion, split brain, dissociation, and covert consciousness are treated as test cases for this framework.

The measurable side of the theory is expressed through the projection tensor (\Psi=(\tilde{A}, C, \mathcal{B})), where (\tilde{A}) refers to the dissipative power required to maintain non-equilibrium co-evolution, (C) to differentiation and integration, and (\mathcal{B}) to the boundary of coherent co-evolution. The book connects these quantities to EEG/MEG, fMRI/PET, TMS-EEG, effective connectivity, and other empirical interfaces. It also presents falsifiable predictions, especially the frequency--quality correspondence and the frequency--timescale relation (\tau_{\mathrm{retain}} \sim \tau_0/f).

Philosophically, the book defends an open-process dual-aspect monism. Mind and matter are not two substances, nor is consciousness reduced to function or eliminated as illusion. Rather, mind and matter are two directions of access to the same (\rho_f) process: externally as gradient structure and co-evolution, internally as given experience. Yet the book also preserves an irreducible final cell: why the internal side of this process is experienced at all. This residual point is not treated as failure, but as the honest boundary of physical and structural explanation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gradient Physics Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798996139477
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 556