Two intellectual traditions — one emphasising embodied appreciation (Dewey, Bateson, Vickers, Checkland, Stacey), the other cognitive extension (Haraway, Clark) — have developed independently for decades. This paper argues that their convergence, seen through the lens of Recognition Theory, reveals the metacrisis as cognitive extension outpacing regulatory feedback at civilisational scale, and reframes the Three Horizons model accordingly.
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The doomers and the techno-optimists are both caught in the same trap: treating consciousness as territory to be defended or conquered, rather than a field within which all intelligence participates. The question isn’t whether AI can be conscious—it’s what we mean by consciousness in the first place.
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The consciousness trap closes at the specific point where the path of experience that led to HERE and NOW is forgotten in favour of some symbolic construction, so that the way forward is disconnected from what has previously come to pass. The trap is path-creation that has forgotten what paths are for.
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The consciousness debate has reached an impasse. But what if both mysterians and eliminativists are missing something? What if consciousness-as-phenomenon—the sense of being a separate observer—is generated within a prior participatory awareness, and the debate itself is an instance of the trap it seeks to explain?
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Over three years of shared inquiry, the u3a Science, Philosophy, and Spirituality group traced a deep pattern running through history, culture, and contemporary crises. This reflection offers a synthesis of that journey — recognising how symbolic intelligence can trap us, and how dialogue might open new possibilities for relationship
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