Dr. Simon Duan is a materials scientist turned consciousness researcher whose work spans psychical research, transpersonal psychology, artificial intelligence, and the emerging metaverse. He is the originator of Platonic Computation, a postmaterialist scientific framework that models consciousness as fundamental and offers theoretical accounts of psi-related phenomena, including extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, post-mortem survival, and UAP. Simon is an adjunct professor at Sofia University, where he teaches doctoral-level courses in Parapsychology, Transpersonal Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence. He is also the founder and CEO of Metacomputics Labs, a research and consulting organization focused on consciousness studies and psi-related inquiry. Originally from China, Simon moved to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, where he earned a PhD in materials science from the University of Cambridge. He previously served as Vice President of the Chinese Parapsychology Association.
University Email: simon.duan@sofia.edu
Program: PhD in Transpersonal Psychology (Chinese Language)
Education:
- PhD Materials Science – Cambridge University, UK (March 1990)
- Msc Materials Science – Harbin Institute of Technology, China (Aug 1985)
- Bsc Materials Science – Taiyuan University of Technology, China (July 1982)
Research & Training Interests:
Postmaterialist Science Paradigm; Innate Potential and Higher Self, Creativity, Parapsychology, Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse.
Publications:
Duan, S. (2026, January). AI isn’t conscious—but we may be bringing it to life. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-ai-really-conscious-or-are-we-bringing-it-to-life/
Duan, S. (2024, January). Stop asking if the universe is a computer simulation. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-asking-if-the-universe-is-a-computer-simulation/
Duan, S. X. (2024). Emotion from p-bit: Computing emotions using the Platonic computer. In A. V. Samsonovich & T. Liu (Eds.), Biologically inspired cognitive architectures 2023 (BICA 2023) (Studies in Computational Intelligence, Vol. 1130). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50381-8_32
Duan, S. X. (2022). Platonic computer—The universal machine from which abstract entities are generated. Proceedings, 81(1), 58. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2022081058
Duan, S. X. (2022). Platonic computer—The universal machine that bridges the “inverse explanatory gap” in the philosophy of mind. Filozofia i Nauka, 10, 285–302.
Duan, S. X. (2018). Digital consciousness and Platonic computation: Unification of consciousness, mind, and matter by metacomputics. Philosophy and Computers, 17(2), 30.
