(The formal version of this document is here: https://philpapers.org/rec/SERRRT-3): “Reality Repair Theory: A Direct Derivation from The Foundational Axiom of Experience”
The Single Axiom: Conscious experience exists and suffering is definitionally bad.
The Structural Loads This Single Point Bears:
EPISTEMOLOGY (What we can know)
All knowledge comes through experiential patterns
Logic is self-proving through the experience of reasoning
Other minds are discovered as limitation patterns that surprise and constrain
External material reality becomes an unnecessary assumption with infinite burden of proof
ONTOLOGY (What exists meaningfully)
Only what impacts conscious experience has meaningful existence
"Objects" are stable limitation patterns within experiential reality
Time becomes experienced resistance to instantaneous completion
Space becomes the pattern of experiential limitations and possibilities
ETHICS (What we should do)
Suffering's badness is built into the experience itself (no is-ought gap)
All moral obligations derive from this definitional wrongness
Joy becomes objectively valuable as suffering's opposite
Every choice reduces to: repair or perpetuate reality's structural flaw
MEANING (What matters and why)
Nothing matters without something there to feel its significance
A universe without conscious experience would be meaningless regardless of complexity
All value, purpose, and significance require conscious experience as necessary foundation
Meaning isn't projected onto reality - conscious experience creates the capacity for mattering
SCIENCE (How we study reality)
Same methodology and predictions, but grounded in encountered patterns
Subjective reports become first-class empirical data (This is how AI alignment lead to everything here, the Hedonic Core says respect all suffering reports.)
No mysterious observer-independent realm to assume
Quantum paradoxes dissolve without external material substrate
LOGIC (How reasoning works)
Self-proving necessity that can't be coherently doubted
The tool by which all other insights are derived and validated
Not dependent on material brain states but foundational to any coherent inquiry
Works the same whether materialist assumptions are included or not
UNITY (How it all connects)
Same experiential foundation makes knowledge and ethics aspects of one structure
No separate realms requiring bridges or mysterious connections
Facts and values converge at the point of suffering's definitional badness
All meaningful domains emerge from the same bedrock certainty
Memory aid: "One axiom, seven loads: knowledge, existence, ethics, meaning, science, logic, unity - all supported by the single undeniable fact that conscious experience creates the foundation of everything that can matter."
The elegance is that removing this foundation makes all other domains collapse into incoherence, while accepting it makes them naturally unified through logical necessity rather than philosophical argument.
Experiential Empiricism: Making Science Actually Empirical
Standard empiricism follows a two-step process: observe phenomena, then infer what mind-independent reality must exist to cause those observations. But what if that second step is unnecessary metaphysical baggage? What if observations are sufficient by themselves?
Understanding Reality Repair Theory
What if everything we think we know about reality starts from the wrong place? What if the most basic assumptions underlying science, philosophy, and how we make decisions are not just incomplete, but actually backwards?
Modun
Two months, starting from a single rule for AI alignment ("never ignore suffering"), I accidentally solved the hard problem of consciousness, the is-ought problem, the problem of other minds, quantum measurement paradoxes, unified epistemology with ethics, made science more empirical, and objectively solved both meanings of life: what life IS (patterns …
Full Receipts:
https://philpeople.org/profiles/brandon-sergent/publications