Research Program / Claims / artificial-guilt-12
There is continuous communication between humans and the environment; the environment itself is conscious and alive, and no closed systems exist.
人与环境之间持续沟通，环境本身有意识、有生命，不存在封闭系统。
Concept artificial guilt · Domain Belief Dynamics and Mind–Body Regulation · ontological claim · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.
Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
There is currently no adjudicating experiment for the full proposition: the boundary of the environmental agent must first be specified, and what observations can distinguish subjective consciousness from non-conscious regulation must be defined. A weaker component can be tested first: using three laboratories with a total of approximately 600 independent plant individuals, conduct pre-registered cue-resource associative learning, reversal learning, and transfer-to-novel-situation experiments; include unpaired stimuli, pseudo-random sequences, and non-biological sensor controls, synchronously recording bioelectric activity, strictly controlling light, temperature, humidity, and mechanical stimulation, over 18-24 months. Positive results would only support specific information-processing capabilities and cannot adjudicate overall environmental consciousness.
Suggested paper title
Bioelectric Dynamics and Flexible Cue Learning in Plants: A Preregistered Multilaboratory Study
What it would overturn
If independent and widely accepted evidence of consciousness were obtained, it would revise the assumption that subjective experience requires nervous system organization; merely discovering signal exchange or learning cannot accomplish this revision.
Candidate labs / funders
Michael Levin，Levin Laboratory，生物电与基础认知研究：[研究介绍](https://drmichaellevin.org/research/)
Specificity of Seth's formulation
Viewing the entire environment as alive and conscious goes beyond ordinary ecological interaction, but no boundary, consciousness criterion, or prediction distinct from physical exchange is provided; the empirical content is instead unclear.
Note
Material, energy, and information exchange between humans and the environment has a solid scientific basis, but it cannot be inferred that the environment as a whole has subjective experience; thermodynamic closed systems allow energy exchange, isolating systems do not exchange matter or energy, and neither is equivalent to 'no communication.'
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim artificial-guilt-12, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/artificial-guilt-12