A Three-Dimensional Map of the Mind

The Map of Mind proposes a three-axis framework for situating any claim about human mentality. The vertical axis tracks Ontological and evolutionary complexity, distinguishing the bio-physiological substrate (Mind 1) from phenomenal animal Consciousness (Mind 2) and the culturally constituted person (Mind 3). The spatial axis subdivides each layer into an exterior behavioral register — the animal-environment interaction visible to a third-party observer — and an interior neurocognitive or experiential register hidden from direct view. This yields the A/B notation: Mind 1b is overt minded behavior; Mind 1a is the covert processing that underlies it.

The third axis is epistemological and carries the framework's most consequential claim. Mind 2, subjective Consciousness, is not merely difficult to observe from the outside — it is constituted by an interior, First-person epistemic vector. It arises from the inside out. Science as an Institution is methodologically committed to systematic third-person Empiricism, which means its vantage point is structurally misaligned with the domain it is trying to study when it turns to phenomenal experience. This misalignment is precisely what generates The hard problem of Consciousness and Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. No accumulation of propositional, third-person data bridges the gap to perspectival, first-person knowing — a distinction John Vervaeke draws sharply when he notes that knowing all the facts about a film is categorically different from the experience of watching it.

The framework's value is coordinative: it allows researchers and philosophers to specify simultaneously which layer of complexity is under discussion, which spatial register is being probed, and which Epistemological vector is operative. Confusions that have persisted for decades in philosophy of mind often dissolve once the relevant axes are made explicit.