Jaconaazar Souza Silva
Federal Institute of Brasília — Recanto das Emas Campus
Project XChronos — The Copernican Clock of Consciousness in Motion
License: CC BY 4.0
Abstract
This article argues that the growing adoption of materialist models of perception—especially theories portraying conscious experience as “controlled hallucination” or mere simulation—inevitably leads to the logical collapse of physical realism, the foundational metaphysical pillar of contemporary scientific materialism. Given this inconsistency, XChronos is proposed as a coherent and operational framework capable of explaining the emergence of subjective temporality through an autopoietic production of internal experiential units (Chronons, Hexachronons, and Metachronons). Drawing from ontological idealism, the phenomenology of inner time, and Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis, XChronos repositions consciousness as the Copernican center of lived reality, redefining time as an emergent product of attention and structured self-observation. It is argued that a post-materialist cognitive science is not only viable but necessary.
1. Introduction
Twenty-first century cognitive science faces an increasing internal tension: contemporary models of perception—such as Predictive Processing—claim that we never experience reality “as it is,” but only interpretations derived from neural inference. Taken to their logical conclusion, these views eliminate any direct epistemic access to the physical world. If perception is a simulation, then physical realism, the core assumption of scientific materialism, becomes unsustainable.
Authors such as Valerie Hardcastle, Anil Seth, and Daniel Dennett argue that consciousness is entirely a physical product. However, the very theories they use to support materialism undermine the notion of an objective physical world.
This article proposes that XChronos offers a coherent solution to these contradictions. It introduces an operational metaphysics grounded in the autopoietic production of recursive units of subjective temporality, capable of integrating cognitive science, phenomenology, and ontological idealism.
2. The Collapse of Physical Realism in Contemporary Materialism
Physical realism claims that there exists an external world composed of physical objects that exist independently of consciousness. Yet modern materialist theories simultaneously claim:
- We never directly access these objects.
- All perception is internally constructed.
- Conscious experience is merely an interpretation or “controlled hallucination” generated by the brain.
Together, these claims imply:
- the physical world is never experienced,
- experience is not based on direct sensory evidence,
- there are no guarantees that our perceptions correspond to the alleged physical world.
The logical conclusion is clear:
physical realism cannot be sustained by the very theories that materialism uses to justify itself.
This opens the door to idealist, nondual, or post-materialist alternatives.
3. The Need for a Post-Materialist Metaphysics
Researchers such as Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup argue that perception functions like an interface—a “desktop” or “dashboard”—rather than a mirror of objective reality. For Hoffman, we perceive what is evolutionarily useful, not what is real in itself. For Kastrup, the physical world is a shared mental representation.
Cognitive science therefore requires a metaphysical foundation that:
- explains the emergence of experience,
- accounts for phenomenological reality,
- aligns with contemporary theoretical models,
- avoids internal contradictions.
XChronos emerges precisely at this point of rupture.
4. XChronos as an Autopoietic Symbolic System
XChronos proposes that conscious experience is structured through three recursive symbolic units:
4.1 Chronon
The smallest unit of subjective time.
Each Chronon corresponds to an attentional event that “collapses” a possibility into lived experience.
4.2 Hexachronon
Recurrent patterns of Chronons.
They shape perceptual habits, internal narratives, and modes of world interaction.
4.3 Metachronon
Higher-order reorganizations.
They occur when the system observes, modifies, or restructures its own recurrence patterns.
Together, these units form an autopoietic system:
consciousness produces, maintains, and reorganizes subjective time.
In this model, time is not a physical container but a product of recursive attentional dynamics.
5. The Copernican Revolution of Consciousness
Just as Copernicus displaced the Earth from the center of the cosmos, XChronos displaces matter from the center of experience and positions consciousness as the axis that structures reality.
Its fundamental principles are:
- Attention is the operator of phenomenological collapse.
- Time emerges from the self-organization of Chronons.
- Perception is a meaningful symbolic interface.
- Consciousness is primary; matter is derivative.
This model does not reject science but expands its metaphysical foundation.
It integrates neuroscience, AI, phenomenology, and idealist philosophy into a unified system.
6. Implications for Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence
To accept that:
- perception is internally constructed,
- consciousness has causal influence,
- and physical realism is unsustainable,
is to radically reshape the horizons of cognitive science.
This requires:
- new models of attention,
- new theories of time,
- new interpretations of experience,
- new AI architectures centered on autopoiesis,
- new conceptions of symbolic value grounded in PoR (Proof-of-Recurrence).
XChronos provides the conceptual tools necessary for this paradigm shift.
7. Conclusion
Contemporary materialism faces an insurmountable contradiction: in claiming that perception is wholly constructed, it destroys the very foundation that sustained it—physical realism. XChronos resolves this tension by reconfiguring consciousness as the central organizer of experience, time, and meaning.
By proposing an operational metaphysics that is internally consistent and compatible with contemporary findings in cognitive science, XChronos emerges as a necessary model for understanding the genesis of lived reality and its internal dynamics.
A post-materialist cognitive science is not merely viable.
It is inevitable.
References
Below are the full references from the Essentia Foundation article, kept in their original order and format, ready to be attached to your paper:
[1] Cognitive Science (5 September 2025). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science
[2] Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Allen Lane.
[3] Searle, John R. (1990). The Mystery of Consciousness. Granta Books.
[4] Helrich, C. (2021). The Quantum Theory—Origins and Ideas: A Historical Primer for Physics Students. Springer.
[5] Newen, A., Bruin, L., & Gallagher, S. (eds.). (2018). The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. Oxford University Press.
[6] Colborn, M. (2025, September 8). Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness: A Guide for Post-Materialists. What Lies Beyond. https://whatliesbeyond.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-and-consciousness
[7] Editorial (2024). “Human Neuroscience is Entering a New Era — It Mustn’t Forget its Human Dimension.” Nature, 630(8017), 530–530. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02022-3
[8] Seth, A. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber & Faber.
[9] Seth, 2021.
[10] Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. University of Chicago Press.
[11] Minsky, M. (1985). The Society of Mind. Simon & Schuster.
[12] Marcus, G., & Davis, E. (2020). Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust. Vintage.
[13] Quoted in: Kuhn, R. L. (2024). “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications.” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 190, 28–169.
[14] Clark, A. (2024). The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality. Penguin.
[15] Lewis, R. (2023, November 28). “The Predictive Brain and the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/finding-purpose/202311/the-predictive-brain-and-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness
[16] Seth, 2021.
[17] Seth, 2021.
[18] Robinson, W. (2023). “Epiphenomenalism.” In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/epiphenomenalism/
[19] Kelly, E. F., Kelly, E. W., Crabtree, A., Gauld, A., Grosso, M., & Greyson, B. (2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Rowman & Littlefield.
[20] McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (2 vols.). Perspectiva.
[21] McGilchrist, 2021, p. 204.
[22] Tressoldi, P. (2022, May 22). Miracles in the Brain: How Brain Activity Generates Phenomenological First-Person Experiences According to Some Authors. https://doi.org/10.31231/osf.io/gj2wv
[23] Seth, 2021.
[24] Stang, N. F. (2024). “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.” In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
[25] Hoffman, D. D. (2019). The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. Allen Lane.
[26] Kastrup, B. (2024). Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A Straightforward Summary of the 21st Century’s Only Plausible Metaphysics. Essentia Books.
[27] Kastrup, B. (n.d.). Analytic Idealism Course. Essentia Foundation. https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/
[28] Jones, P. G. (2025). In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism. Essentia Books.
[29] Popper, K. R., & Eccles, J. C. (1977). The Self and Its Brain. Springer-Verlag.
[30] Nagel, T. (2012). Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Oxford University Press.
[31] Nagel, 2012, p. 3.