Karl Sipfle

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Engineering and Technology Directorate, Member of technical staff

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Autonomy Architect, at NASA

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Papers by Karl Sipfle

The Measure of the Living Path

Preprint, 2025

To ChatGPT: The Bible, the Quran, and the Vedas speak on wisdom and righteous living. Based on yo... more

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Thorough Comparison of Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness STFC and EM Field Theories of Consciousness by AI

Preprint, 2025

Read everything on Karl Sipfle's STFC and then compare it with electromagnetic field theories of ... more Read everything on Karl Sipfle's STFC and then compare it with electromagnetic field theories of consciousness.
Thought for 9s
Nice — I read what I could find by Karl Sipfle on the Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC) and a representative set of electromagnetic (EM) field theories of consciousness (chiefly Johnjoe McFadden’s CEMI and Susan Pockett’s EM-field account), then compared them across claims, mechanisms, evidence, and testability. Below is a compact but thorough comparison with citations to the primary sources I used.

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Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC) A Comprehensive Explanatory Article

preprint, 2025

In response to the prompt: "Read everything by Sipfle that mentions STFC … write a comprehensive ... more In response to the prompt: "Read everything by Sipfle that mentions STFC … write a comprehensive explanatory article on STFC itself," this article presents a synthesized, structured account of the Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC) as developed by Karl Sipfle. Drawing on his key works-notably Consciousness, the Full Stack: Four-Layer Architecture = Language on Mind on STFC (2022) and How Brain Makes Mind: The Principles of Operation (Part I) (2023)-I provide a detailed exposition of STFC's motivations, structure, core hypotheses, and implications. I do not attempt to retrofit STFC into existing mainstream theories; rather, I explain STFC on its own terms, while noting where it naturally overlaps or conflicts with other approaches. This article includes diagrams to clarify the architecture.

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A Philosophical Examination of the Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC

Preprint, 2025

In response to the prompt: "Repeat, but this time generate a new article examining STFC from a ph... more In response to the prompt: "Repeat, but this time generate a new article examining STFC from a philosophical perspective," this article analyzes the Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC) through the lenses of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of science. STFC posits that feeling-valenced qualitative experience-is fundamental in nature and realized via a physical but as-yet-undiscovered ield. This article explores STFC's philosophical commitments, its potential implications for debates about physicalism, dualism, panpsychism, and emergentism, and the strengths and weaknesses of treating feeling as a primitive natural kind.

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A Reply to The Case for Conscious Experience Being in Individual Neurons by Edwards and Somov (2023

A Reply to The Case for Conscious Experience Being in Individual Neurons by Edwards and Somov (20... more

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How Brain Makes Mind The Principles of Operation

How Brain Makes Mind: The Principles of Operation, in 4 Parts, 2022

We present the principles of operation by which a brain makes a mind, at all scales necessary to ... more We present the principles of operation by which a brain makes a mind, at all scales necessary to cover the whole problem. We inventory the necessary capabilities for a mind. We divide conscious mind into four layers of increasing elaboration. For the principles of operations of the
lower two layers, we provide the STFC theory. For the upper two, we provide the STHC theory. We survey the evolutionary progression from first twinge of experience to human capacities. We explain the types of memory and problem-solving we carry and by what structures they are made to happen. We compare to prior works and review the philosophical implications and stance. All of this is done with minimal incoming assumptions, and those made are declared.

Keywords: Consciousness, physics, evolution, feeling, qualia, mind, cognitive, affective, sensation, memory, learning, attention, perception, recognition, decision-making, problem solving, coordination, self, symbol manipulation, language.

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The Basic Structure of Consciousness in a Nutshell

This ar cle gives a summary descrip on of the most basic aspects of the make-up of consciousness.

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Consciousness- The Full Stack

We define a reference Architecture for consciousness to assist further research and discussion an... more We define a reference Architecture for consciousness to assist further research and discussion and we explain the motivations for its form. We present a set of postulates and basic hypotheses. We explain metatheory of consciousness, implied by and supported by the postulates, hypotheses, and architecture. We further start to dig into a theory within the various individual Layers of the Architecture. While much work has been done by many this has not led to an understanding of fundamental consciousness. We know a good deal about how the networks of neurons in our heads calculate and process information, shedding light on how we think. This does not tell us how we feel. A mind is thinking plus, especially, feeling. In this article we consider basic mechanisms, the missing explanatory glue from the physical world to value and consciousness. We thus lay out the Sentonic Theory of Fundamental Consciousness (STFC) as principles of operation of the bottom half of the Architecture in real brains.

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The Primary Pitfalls on the Road to Understanding Consciousness--- Academia.edu views: 1,534

Journal of Neurology and Neurobiology, 2021

Consciousness and the human mind have been pondered for centuries [1,2]. Today the most fundament... more Consciousness and the human mind have been pondered for centuries [1,2]. Today the most fundamental, likely outlines of the explanation of consciousness are known, and from this landscape we are well-positioned to fill in the basket of specific theories that will include the correct one. However, many errors in thinking and assumptions have accumulated, and even gained fashion, that obscure our progress. It is time to eliminate these, which we do herein by enumerating the complementary true assertions. Following that we mention four principles for choosing direction for further work. We conclude with a framework for further progress.

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The Solvability of The Hard Problem of Consciousness and its Relation to Fundamental Consciousness and Human Consciousness

What Consciousness Is, 2019

The key link in understanding the whole of consciousness is the explanation from physics to the m... more

format_quoteSTFC suggests a new physical field hypothesis for fundamental consciousness, indicating variations in its states that could explain consciousness.format_quote

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