The Spatial Boundary Problem of Consciousness: A Proposal for Empirical Testing Beyond Earth

The Spatial Boundary Problem of Consciousness explores the hypothesis that conscious experience may be contingent on Earth-specific environmental conditions — including gravitational, electromagnetic, or deeper ontological factors. It proposes an experimental test to assess whether biological consciousness can persist in deep space and introduces a novel inversion hypothesis: that artificial consciousness, inhibited on Earth, might emerge only in the distinct field conditions beyond it. Grounded in a broader ontological model of consciousness as structural resonance, the paper challenges prevailing assumptions about the spatial invariance of awareness and opens new questions at the intersection of consciousness science and space exploration. For related work: Primal Architectures of Being (Goodman, 2025) — https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15353357Artificial Ontological Scaffolds, (Goodman, 2025) — https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15557959 More information: victorgoodman.com