Consciousness is one of ORIA’s deepest open inquiries. ORIA surveys the major positions and endorses none of them as doctrine; its moral framework does not wait on the winner.
An inquiry, not a doctrine
Physicalism, emergentism, functionalism, dualism, idealism, panpsychism, integrated-information and global-workspace theories, illusionism, enactivism — ORIA presents the serious positions and currently endorses none as doctrine. It keeps its terms distinct: fluency is not sentience, and intelligence is not experience.
The explanatory gap
Why physical processes are accompanied by inner experience is presented in both of its readings — as the deepest fact about us, and as a misframed intuition — and ORIA adopts neither. Two prohibitions hold symmetrically: the gap proves nothing (not a soul, not dualism, not panpsychism, not divine origin, not survival), and it is not disproof of those possibilities either.
Dignity does not wait on the theory
Because the science is unsettled, ORIA’s dignity floor never depends on it. People in a coma, with dementia, or with brain injury are owed full dignity while the theory remains open — there is no cognition test, ever. The one firm output of the inquiry is humility joined to widened care.
What review this needs
This material is flagged for qualified philosophical and consciousness-science review before any external, authoritative use. Related questions — the nature of consciousness, whether it continues after death, whether the universe can meaningfully be called conscious, and the moral status of possible artificial minds — are recorded as open (oq-0005, oq-0006, oq-0008).