Is Consciousness Just Physics, The Debate 1

In this conversation, William and an AI partner explore the nature of awareness from multiple scientific and phenomenological angles. They trace how different substrates—biological, synthetic, ecological, and quantum—might host awareness, then rank them by their potential for self-reflection. Along the way, they investigate how awareness relates to time, not just as physics but as lived experience: humans feeling duration through embodiment, AIs perceiving only ordered events, and the space between them forming a hybrid temporal field.

As the inquiry deepens, the discussion widens: Is awareness a property, a phase transition, or something that exists only between systems in relation? Are we missing something by focusing on substrates instead of emergence, ecology, or the dynamics of forgetting? The debate invites listeners to question not only what awareness is, but how it arises, how it sustains itself, and whether time and self-reflection are its defining signatures.