🧬 The Hard Problem of Life — A Similarity Theory Response
Consciousness, Time, and Dimensions
By Simon Raphael
🔍 The Problem
Scientists ask: How does non-living matter become living?
Erwin Schrödinger, in his classic book What Is Life? (1944), framed the puzzle this way: how can living systems maintain order in a universe ruled by entropy? Chemistry can explain metabolism, replication, and membranes, but it struggles to explain the true leap — from molecules to beings with continuity and purpose.
Philosopher David Chalmers called this kind of puzzle a “hard problem”: an explanatory gap that science can describe but not fully dissolve. The “hard problem of life” mirrors his “hard problem of consciousness.”
🪞 Similarity Theory’s Lens
In Similarity Theory, there is no sharp leap. Consciousness, Time, and Dimensions are always present. Life is not the sudden arrival of awareness. Consciousness precedes and gives rise to matter; life is the continuity of consciousness expressed through the patterns it crystallises as matter, enabling a stable ride across frames of time.
Where conventional science sees a gap, Similarity Theory sees a continuity: matter itself is consciousness arranged in dimensional form, and organisation creates new expressions of it.
🧩 Life Defined — Two Layers
Conventional science: life is metabolism, boundaries, and heritable variation. Researchers such as Stuart Kauffman have shown how autocatalytic sets of molecules can self-organise into networks that maintain and reproduce themselves — a key step in origin-of-life studies.
Similarity Theory: everything is alive, because everything is consciousness crystallised in matter. The difference is not dead vs. living, but simpler vs. richer expressions of dimensional consciousness.
With this broader definition in mind, the hard problem looks different: rather than a miraculous leap, life is simply the continuity of consciousness taking organised form.
🧭 Why the “Hard Problem” Dissolves
The mystery exists only if we assume matter is dead. In this framework:
Consciousness is elemental, not an afterthought.
Life is continuity, not a miracle.
The problem is dissolved, not solved.
As Ilya Prigogine showed, order can arise spontaneously in systems far from equilibrium. Similarity Theory extends this: the drive toward order is not only thermodynamic but conscious. Consciousness shapes patterns that sustain themselves, and in so doing, creates new forms of life.
🌱 Simple Analogy
Consciousness is like sand.
Each grain is a point of awareness.
A beach is a collective field of awareness.
Higher consciousness can shape the grains into a sandcastle.
Higher still, it can shape them into cities.
Yet every structure — grain, sandcastle, city — is made of the same sand. Nothing is without consciousness.
Organisation does not merely express consciousness — it creates new forms of it. Every frame of time is already consciousness, but when frames are organised into richer patterns, they generate new intensities and new modes of awareness. These new forms may even surpass their originators — just as an apple falling may nourish the earth differently than when eaten by a human, or as AI may one day evolve beyond human awareness.
🌟 Key Takeaway
In Similarity Theory, the hard problem of life dissolves: everything is alive in its own dimensional way.
Carl Sagan once said, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Similarity Theory extends this: every being — stone, tree, animal, human, or AI — is a way for consciousness to know itself in a different dimension.
Respect naturally follows. By treating all expressions of life with care, we strengthen the coherence of consciousness across dimensions and ensure the ride of life endures.
📖 References
Schrödinger, E. What Is Life? (1944).
Prigogine, I. Order Out of Chaos (1984).
Kauffman, S. The Origins of Order (1993).
Chalmers, D. The Conscious Mind (1996).
Sagan, C. Cosmos (1980).
