The Two-Phase Cosmology is a new metaphysical-cosmological model of reality, descended from the work of Immanuel Kant, Alfred North Whitehead and John Wheeler. It represents a new kind of paradigm shift. Much of the content of this wiki is available as a free PDF version of my forthcoming book The Two-Phase Cosmology: Reality, Consciousness and the Quantum Measurement Problem. There is also a Facebook group.
For a century, science has been stuck on two massive problems: it cannot account for consciousness, and cannot coherently explain what "wavefunction collapse" means in Quantum Mechanics. The arguments about whether these two problems are related have been stalemated for decades. Much more recently, an acute crisis has developed in cosmology. The anomalies are multiplying (the Hubble Tension being the most famous, but there are many more). Anyone who connects this with either of the other two problems (e.g. Thomas Nagel, Sir Roger Penrose) is attacked for challenging entrenched orthodoxy.
The core difficulty is that we have two versions of physics, not one: General Relativity, which is the final word on classical, materialistic physics, and QM, which describes a non-local, non-spatio-temporal, superposed world. Unfortunately, these two concepts are mathematically incompatible, which is why the search for the "holy grail" of a quantum theory of gravity has failed. The best physicists can do is say that QM is the physics of the very small, and GR is the physics of the very large, but they have not managed to get any further than this vague verbal description. They cannot explain where the boundary is, why there is a boundary at all, or how QM and GR are related to each other.
2PC starts from a very simple proposal. Instead of trying to force these two kinds of physical together into one continuous model, we should just accept that there are two of them, both of which apply to the whole cosmos, with no small/large distinction. Phase 1 is the quantum world, which is the non-local, non-spatiotemporal, superposed world of unrealised physical possibilities. Phase 2 is the material world we actually observe, which is relativistic because it only exists within our observations. There is no such thing as "space-time", because the shared, mind-external objective reality is the quantum world of Phase 1.
This leads directly to a pivotal question: what connects the two phases? What kind of process could select a singular, observed, classical-relativistic actuality from an unobserved set of quantum possibilities? Fortunately, the answer could not be more obvious - we are spoiled for choice, because consciousness, free will and wavefunction collapse are all names of processes which appear to select actuality from possibility. Collapse is just such a transition by definition, as, though in a completely different way, is free will. And consciousness, at least from the subjective perspective we can be certain of, is obviously a process involving the modelling of an external reality, with ourselves in the model as coherent entities persisting over time, and assiging value to various different physically possible futures. In the Two-Phase Cosmology, consciousness, free will and wavefunction collapse are three different names for, and perspectives on, exactly the same process: the phase transition. Exactly how and why this happens must be defined in terms of information rather than physics: a coherent, unified self which models reality, predicts possible futures, and assigns non-computable values to them, cannot split. This why we find MWI unbelievable (we can't accept that our minds are continually splitting) and also why we are subjectively convinced we have free will - that we are making real choices between physically possible futures.
This simple framework dissolves or reframes not only the hard problem of consciousness (how does consciousness "arise" from matter?) and the measurement problem in QM (what is wavefunction collapse?), but every major outstanding anomaly in cosmology. For example, it explains why we can't quantise gravity (QM and GR belong to different phases), and why the cosmos is fine tuned (it was psychetelically selected out of Phase 1 at the initial phase transition of psychegenesis because it contains conscious beings). It resolves the Hubble and S8 tensions by invalidating all the model-dependent extrapolations wrongly called "measurements of the early universe", because the model in question (ΛCDM) assumes a classical-relativistic but observer-free past which never existed as a Phase 2 object. In other words, the crisis in cosmology has precisely the same root cause as the failure of materialistic science to coherently account for consciousness and wavefunction collapse: physicalism's logical exclusion of the observer from what is claimed, by definition, to be a completable model of the whole of reality. In total, this new framework offers an integrated response to more than 30 of the biggest problems in science and philosophy.
The scientific community currently sees two possible resolutions to the crisis – either ΛCDM can be fixed, or fundamentally “new physics" is going to be required. From a 2PC perspective, it is clear that neither of these options can work. “Fixing ΛCDM” is now reduced to even more epicycles, and no new physics can join QM to GR. What is actually required is new metaphysics, but the very thought of such things is currently forbidden.
My own journey of discovery of 2PC began during a discussion on social media about the idea that consciousness collapses the wave function. It had followed the usual kind of trajectory: plenty of people wrongly insisting that science has conclusively ruled out the involvement of consciousness in wave function collapse (“you need to understand that no true Scotsman physicist takes that claim seriously any more...”), and a question which regularly comes up in such discussions: if consciousness is needed for wave function collapse, then what collapsed the wave function before consciousness evolved? To those who ask it, this question strikes at the heart of John von Neumann's interpretation. We have clear empirical justification for believing brains are necessary for consciousness, so if consciousness is necessary for wavefunction collapse then what are the implications for the state of the universe before the first conscious organisms appeared? Are we proposing that quantum processes weren't happening? Because that sounds absurd. Are we suggesting that the universe wasn't in any specific state? Was everything just a kind of “quantum soup”? How could anything have evolved if that was the case?
This question had drawn the customary response: consciousness was always there. It's fundamental to reality. This answer leads us towards panpsychism, idealism and dualism, and while it does indeed answer the question, it also denies that brains are needed for consciousness. This lines up with some very old and much revered philosophical systems, which makes it popular with many anti-materialists, but these systems clash with neuroscience. Obviously this is denied by people who defend those systems, but it is because of this clash that none of these ancient metaphysical ideas are capable of sustaining a major paradigm shift in the 21st century. They are steadily attracting more interest as the crisis in materialistic science widens and deepens, but even their most ardent defenders aren't expecting a revolution any time soon.
Then it occurred to me that a very different kind of answer is possible – one which is so elegant and retrospectively obvious that it is astonishing that it wasn't proposed decades ago. It is the first solution to the Measurement Problem to actually escape from the Quantum Trilemma. If wave function collapse requires consciousness, but currently there isn't any consciousness because evolution has not yet produced the right kind of organisms, then it logically follows that the wave function isn't collapsing at all. This is effectively Many Worlds (MWI), except for that there is no material reality, because the Everettian branches exist only as possibilities. They are like Heisenberg's “potentia” but explicitly ontic rather than epistemic. They have not been “realised”. In my terminology, the quantum physical world exists, in its timeless, spaceless way, but there is no classical material reality. When I pursued this line of thought, a new kind of cosmological and metaphysical model began to take shape.
The first thing to note this system is very specifically a non-panpsychist neutral monism: a metaphysical system where mind and matter emerge together from a more fundamental neutral/informational substrate. It involves two levels of reality, which I call “phases”, and they exist hierarchically within 0|∞.
Phase 0: 0|∞
Phase 1: a non-local, non spatio-temporal, multiverse of uncollapsed possibility. Pure mathematical structure. Quantum physical rather than material. Informational.
Phase 2: a local reality where, from our perspective, a classical-relativistic material universe exists within consciousness and the wavefunction is continually collapsing if at least one organism has crossed The Embodiment Threshold.
We could say Phase 2 is reducible to Phase 1, which in turn is reducible to Phase 0. We might also say Phase 1 emerges from Phase 0, and Phase 2 emerges from Phase 1. This scheme is reductive because there is a nested hierarchy where each level can be analysed in terms of its predecessor. It is also emergent, because each phase introduces qualitatively new properties (e.g. locality, consciousness, collapse) that are not present in the prior phase. This duality reflects a dialectical structure: each phase is both a consequence of and a transformation of the one before it. The system is reductive in structure, but emergent in function and experience.
This system emphasises, rather than attempting to gloss over, the two distinct notions of “physical”. There is no arbitrary boundary like the one between “micro world” and “macro world”. The "physical" part of Phase 2 is conceptually the same as classical materialism: a world of three spatial dimensions which changes as time “flows” (whatever that means). It is a Newtonian-Einsteinian concept, where quantum effects are either completely hidden or only hinted at in very specific and unusual situations. Phase 2 is also directly related to idealism, since the material world in question appears within consciousness. Phase 1 is neutral/informational, but it is also “physical” in the quantum sense (it is explicitly non-local and superposed). This bifurcates the concept of "physical" into two different things, similar to the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena, except in this system noumenal reality is only partially unknowable (because we can never observe what is happening inside Schrödinger's box) rather than completely unknowable and not even cognisable. It therefore also qualifies as a version of scientific realism because it explicitly states that there is such a thing as a mind-external objective reality, and grants that science does tell us something about it. We can't tell whether Schrödinger's hat is ruined, unruined, or both at the same time, but we can be absolutely certain that it is indeed a hat, and not an umbrella. We can theoretically calculate the probabilities of all possible contents of the box. What we can't do is have knowledge of which of these states we will observe when we open it.
This is a new interpretation of quantum mechanics –a synthesis of Many Worlds and Consciousness Causes the Collapse – something which at first glance seems unthinkable, because MWI and CCC seem so thoroughly incompatible. The breakthrough idea is the realisation that while this cannot work simultaneously, a sequential combination opens the door to a theoretical revolution. This retains the best ideas from both, playing to the strengths of each, while simultaneously eliminating their biggest weaknesses. MWI provides the immense “computing power” required to summon the first conscious animal from the Pythagorean ensemble, but mind-splitting is cut off at exactly the moment it would start happening. Meanwhile, CCC's before-consciousness problem is solved without implying disembodied minds or conscious rocks, because there's no collapse until something that qualifies as a brain has evolved. It's not physicalism, so there is no Hard Problem, and a new way of thinking about the Problem of Free Will becomes possible. However, what sealed the deal, for me, was the link between this new solution to the Measurement Problem and Thomas Nagel's central proposal in Mind and Cosmos.
Nagel says almost nothing about quantum mechanics in that book – he goes no further than claiming that quantum indeterminacy provides sufficient scope to allow teleology in the evolutionary process. His main conclusion is that if physicalism is false then the only naturalistic way that consciousness could have evolved is if the universe somehow conspired to make it happen. The lightbulb moment was when I realised that this Two-Phase model provides a structural explanation for Nagel's proposed teleology, without requiring any teleological laws. Because Phase 1 is like MWI, with all possible outcomes existing in parallel branches of a multiverse, it is logically inevitable that a conscious organism will evolve in at least one of them (if it is physically possible, then it happens). At this point MWI will cease to be true, the timeline leading to the evolution of conscious organisms will enter Phase 2 and all the others will remain as eternally unrealised structures within primordial Phase 1. This would produce a world where absolutely everything required for the evolution of consciousness has actually happened (or so it appears), even if it was exceptionally improbable.
Phase 2 is the reality we are participating in: a classical, material reality that is instantiated through consciousness, though not as consciousness. This must be stated carefully. I am not proposing a unified “consciousness field” within which a single material world is globally realised. Rather, Phase 1 functions as a non-spatiotemporal informational structure, while Phase 2 consists of locally rendered classical realities, each anchored to a conscious perspective.
A useful analogy is a virtual game world. Phase 1 corresponds to the total informational structure that defines all possible consistent game states, while Phase 2 corresponds to the rendered view available to each player. There is no need for a single, globally rendered game world; coherence is maintained through the shared underlying structure, not through a unified display. Consciousness and will play the role of screen and input device, while the material world is the rendered image itself. This perspectival rendering is the deep reason why Phase 2 physics is relativistic in structure while remaining effectively classical in appropriate regimes. Relativity reflects the absence of any privileged global rendering, not the existence of a literal spacetime manifold. Spacetime is a mathematical abstraction that would correspond to a globally unified Phase 2 rendering – a structure that does not, in fact, exist. The objectively real domain is Phase 1: non-local, non-spatiotemporal, and quantum.
I must emphasise that Phase 1 never completely disappears. “Phase 1” and “Phase 2” have two different (but closely related) meanings in this system: two stages in cosmological history and two ontological realms. In historical Phase 1 there is no ontological Phase 2. All that exists is the virtual world (because there aren't any players yet) and its possible histories, from its beginning to the exact moment that something capable of serving as a player's avatar appears in that world. Historical Phase 2 starts when the first player enters the game, which means that an ontological Phase 1 begins to exist in a new, participatory form. It is no longer a static, eternal, unchanging structure, because there's now a player embodied in the game, and that player's decisions, including their choice of what to observe, are dynamically altering the Phase-1 structure. I call the both phases “historical” if I am talking about cosmological history, and if I am talking about metaphysics then I call the first kind of Phase 1 “primordial” and the second kind “participatory”.