Karl Sipfle

Additional peer-reviewed material may be found on: SSRN, Academia, PhilArchive, Zenodo (CERN), ResearchGate.

Karl Sipfle is a systems engineer and researcher who operates at the intersection of aerospace technology and cognitive neurophilosophy. He is most notably recognized for his engineering work with NASA's space systems and his formulation of S-Theory and its Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC).

🚀 Rocket Science

NASA Lunar Gateway: Karl served as the Autonomy Architecture Lead for the Artemis Lunar Gateway space station project, supporting NASA's ongoing mission to establish a sustainable lunar presence.

NASA Johnson Space Center: He has worked at the Software, Robotics, and Simulation Division in Houston, Texas.

Core Competencies: His technical background includes autonomous systems architecture and manned spacecraft engineering.

His short book Learning from Jeff Bezos: 23 Principles describes what he learned while at Blue Origin.

🧠 Theoretical Research & Neurophilosophy

Sipfle has published extensive research aimed at solving the "Hard Problem" of consciousness—specifically differentiating how the brain processes data versus how it experiences feeling.

The Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC): Sipfle developed STFC, an architectural and metaphysical framework positing that "feeling" is a basic, primitive element of natural science.

The Primitive Field: The theory posits that qualitative experience (qualia) does not merely emerge from computational logic or neural networks. Instead, it asserts that feeling is physically basic and realized via an intrinsic, fundamental physical field.

The Four-Layer Architecture: Sipfle organizes the conscious mind into a "Full Stack" four-layer architecture. The lower layers focus on fundamental sentience (governed by STFC) where raw feeling occurs freestanding without an observer, while upper layers introduce higher cognition, symbol manipulation, and language.

Prominent Publications: Sipfle shares his heavily-read academic papers openly across journals and major research repositories like ResearchGate, including:

The Nature of Consciousness (2018)

The Emergence of Qualia and Concepts from Physical Fundamental Consciousness (2019)

The Primary Pitfalls on the Road to Understanding Consciousness (2021)

Consciousness, the Full Stack: Four-Layer Architecture = Language on Mind on STFC (2022)

How Brain Makes Mind: The Principles of Operation (Four-part series, 2023)

Physics of Feeling (2023)

The Nature of Subjectivity (2026)

🔍 Nutshell Biography

University of Michigan alum.

Affiliations: NASA Johnson Space Center Software, Robotics and Simulation Division; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Research Focus: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy, Consciousness Architecture

Core Framework: Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC)

Veteran of six space, air, and land autonomous vehicle programs and three lunar projects.

Awards: Team lead winner of the 2020 NASA Robert H Goddard award; Certificate of Merit from the Association for Computing Machinery; #1 ResearchGate contributor for Johnson Space Center; SSRN Top Ten download author.

Karl is a member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and member and former officer of The Triple Nine Society.