This topic has a tendency to get me off on a ramble (because I think about it ALL THE TIME), but I’ll try to be concise.
Consciousness exists in the brain (alternatively the brain acts as an interface between an intangible spirit and the meat, prove that and we’ll talk). Evidently it’s not clear just how this works, but I think it’s fair to say consciousness derives from a specific arrangement of matter; molecules and whatnot contained within the skull. Now, a bolt is not a car. But it is a required component to make one. It’s a mechanical bit. Similarly, a microtubule-associated protein does not constitute awareness or even a memory, but it plays a necessary role. It is a component of consciousness. Which leads me to consider all matter as being conscious to some degree, or more specifically, that consciousness is a state or property of matter. Thus, matter = energy = consciousness.
Now with that, I wonder what light feels like when it gets passed through a prism.
Everything you “feel” are coherent neural state variables. Through some mechanism, the brain has states and state transitions. And it’s all purpose built so that you will have a chance of reproducing. (even if the design was evolved)
So the light or other things that lack a complex brain aren’t conscious. Of course, you aren’t, either, it’s just a trick of perception.
Unless that spirit in the meat theory is true. But it probably isn’t.
Nice! So Descartes got it wrong. Should have been, “I think, therefore I might be, but I am probably not. My consciousness just makes me think I am.” Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it.
I ponder this differently. Consciousness is not midichlorians that each cell has and which accumulate into the Force.
I think that Consciousness is like Music: a byproduct of our evolved capabilities to hear (music) and think (Consciousness).
[ul]
[li]Consciousness is on a spectrum, with primates and dolphins and such closer to us and and more primitive organisms at the other end. [/li][li]Regarding Music: Humans evolved hearing that picks out patterns in order to survive.[/li][li]One can argue that Music is really about “tickling those survival sensors” - and since those survival sensors are linked to the most primitive neurophysical responses we have, Music has the deep affect it does on us. So, Music is a fascinating byproduct of having survival-tuned hearing and responses. [/li]
[li]Can a similar model explain Consciousness? [/li][li]Humans have developed a variety of neural/sensing systems. One could argue that our superior intellect is, in part, the ability to take in all of that input and make survivable decisions. I would submit that having some basic sense of “oneness”/Self is one approach (of many) that our systems can sort themselves out, set priorities and make decisions. [/li][li]What if “self awareness” / “Consciousness” is, similar to Music, a byproduct of developing a more sophisticated way to process inputs? That would scan with animals of greater intellect being closer on a spectrum to humans – they don’t quite have the same horsepower (heh) to play the complex “Consciousness Symphony” that we do.[/li][/ul]
I use computers, and have some idea of how they work. Computers, contrary to their appearance, are not magic (surprising, I know!) - they are made of chips and wires and such. These chips and wires and such are also not magic - they simply route electrons around according to precisely planned rules. The process operates entirely based on mechanical rules of physics, and thus can legitimately be analogized to a row of dominos. You tap one domino, and a bunch of other dominos react based entirely on their arrangement and physics to produce a result far larger and more wide-ranging than one might expect from tapping a single domino.
Now of course computers aren’t really sentient (yet) (by all evidence), but they are aware of certain kinds of inputs that they react to and do have memory. I’ve always considered computers analogous to the human brain. Brains, computers, and dominos all operate based on inputs and the laws of physics.
So let’s look back at the dominos. Is an individual domino aware of the whole pattern? Is its contribution to the pattern inherent in the makeup of the domino in a way specific to the domino distinct from its position and the universal laws of physics? The answer to that is no. The manner the dominos fall is entirely a result of the system and utterly independent of whether the dominos are conscious or not.
And so it is with the matter in our brains. The brain works because of how the matter and energetic particles within it is arranged, and how physics operate on that matter and those particles. There is no reason to believe that consciousness is inherent in all matter, and good reason to believe it isn’t - if individual particles of matter had consciousness and the ability to influence our overall behavior, what’s to stop them from going on strike? Why would the molecules on the left side of the brain bother getting along with the molecules on the right side of the brain? What’s to stop them from engaging in turf wars, and escalating to nuclear engagements? Plus, there are lots and lots and lots of particles in there. If even a tiny percentage of them are serial killers than the entire system would go dead in minutes.
That doesn’t seem to be happening, so I submit that the particles of matter in our brains have no more say in the result than individual dominos do - they are locked into their roles by physics, no matter how much they want to murder their neighbors.
Light slows down when it goes through a prism, so it reacts to that much the same way you do when you’re forced to sit through a traffic jam: with rage.
When you force light through a prism you make it want to murder you. This is why people who wear glasses die young.
Different sides of the same coin that not everyone will recognize as legit. It’s a tough sell to say an element IS representative of the whole of which it is a part. But if you can adopt a view of the universe as a single thing, superficially reduced to a collection of stars, planets, honeybees, molecules, and strings…then it totally works. Allowing a consciousness as a another state alongside matter and energy does all kinds of wonderful. For starters it gives you an all-knowing, omnipotent God comprised of a fundamental trinity in all things and in all places.
Which brings me back to the light and the prism. If all things are one, does motion and time even exist in any meaningful sense?
A subtle distinction. I didn’t mean to imply an atom has anything like a complete human-level consciousness, simply that it can be thought of as a particle of thought. A contributor to a field, if you will, that both exerts its own infinitesimal force on the overall, as well as contributing structurally to the overall, the net result of which is a pocket of awareness with its own peculiar qualities.
I think most people would agree “when a person dies their consciousness ceases to exist or goes somewhere different from their dead body”. But right after death, all the same pieces are in place (no decomposition yet). The difference is the pieces are interacting differently, or for the religious: the soul has gone somewhere else. This would suggest consciousness is emergent from the interaction of material pieces, or separate like a “soul”.
I recognize consciousness to be composed of thoughts, and thought as being the processing of information. Which means that for particles to engage in thought they’d have to have access to the information. (Plus there’s the question of what agent organizes the ‘particles of thought’ into complete thoughts in a coherent manner, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
I think we can assume that you don’t expect the atoms’ thought processes to be communicating with each other via physics domino-style, which means they would have to be communicating via some other force or medium, which I will arbitrarily call “magic”. (With, honestly, as little stigma a possible.)
So. Could atoms have a gigantic hive mind connected by magic? The answer is - yes! They sure could. There’s nothing stopping that.
However there is a hitch with trying to connect that theorized magical hive mind with human consciousness: the body obviously works on physics, not magic. We have chemicals and electrical impulses and our neurons are connected to each other physically and it’s all really quite mechanical. (A squishy kind of mechanical, but still mechanical.) And so for atoms to be imparting their wisdom to physical brains, they need to interact with them physically. And if these interactions are driven by magical thoughts from a hive mind, then these interactions will not obey the laws of physics. They’d be obeying the dictates of the magic hive mind, not physics. And since there’s an entire brain to push around, with all the millions of thoughts that pass through the brain each day to generate, these magically-driven non-standard physical interactions would have to be happening a lot. Constantly, in fact.
Constantly enough and pervasively enough to be both obvious on MRIs and to have prevented us from coming up with purely physical theories on how brain cells interact, in fact.
That isn’t how things have played out, so we can be quite confident that no magical hive mind (or magical souls) are piloting our brains from some extraphysical plane.
Note that this doesn’t mean our atoms aren’t magically sentient. It just means that if they are they’re unwilling passengers that constantly scream in horror at being prisoners within our unresponsive meat-shells that are constantly merging and tearing apart molecules without so much as a how-do-you-do.
In deference to the rest of your post, I believe this statement is at once false and also illustrates a significant fault in my previous musings. To wit: if matter = consciousness, why is the consciousness of an (illusory) individual affected and effected only by the brain. Shouldn’t eyeballs, guts, and toes have an even greater impact? Shouldn’t a haircut cause a significant change in awareness. Sure, lop off someone’s limb and that does indeed change their outlook, but I think we can agree their level of consciousness is not proportionately reduced.
As to “… no magical hive mind (or magical souls) are piloting our brains from some extraphysical plane.” I have to ask, why not? I’ve long been a fan of supposing ‘dark matter’ = ‘regular matter’ existing on a plane inaccessible to us except though influence. Why not let that be the realm of souls, which would exist as definite objects with their own mass. I want to see what begbert2’s got to say on the matter before I throw too much of my own pollution out there.
That crossed my mind as well, but I thought my post(s) were large enough already.
When we look at a car on the road, and watch how it’s functioning as it runs, we can look for the causes of things. It slows because the wheels slow; the wheels slow because the brake pads squeeze them, the brake pads squeeze because the squirrels in the engine pull on their cables; the squirrels pull on the cables because the because the brake pedal going down crushes their tails, and the brake pedal goes down because a human is pushing it down with their foot.
Okay, I’m not much of a car guy. But the point is that by observing the system in action (or even at rest) we can assess how the parts are interacting and trace backwards looking for causes.
When we do this with the brain, we don’t locate a driver’s seat for a soul. We don’t find places where a brain cell is producing orders to the brain from itself rather than merging the inputs received from other cells. No matter how we trace backwards, we find ourselves running around in circles through the brain cells, such that only the brain and physical things plugged into it instigate actions within the brain. There is no place for a soul to step in and start manipulating the levers.
Plus, what would those levers look like? When you talk about a supernatural or spiritual entity manipulating physical matter via supernatural forces, you’re talking about a freaking miracle. You’re talking about straight-up magical supernatural power in observable action. That’s the kind of thing we’d pay attention to! Particularly scientists - not only is that a bookcase worth of nobel prizes waiting for the person who upends physics, this would also be a chance to study spirits. To do a scientific study of actual genuine nonphysical matter. That would be amazing! There is no way we wouldn’t have ferreted this out if it was there to find - particularly if you could trace a path right to it just by following the footprints back from every single thought or action.
But no, sadly, instead of that all we find in our skulls is a squishy grey lump shooting electrochemical signals back and forth within itself. No spectral levers here. More’s the pity.
I’m not sure what mechanism you are asking about, but I know I have no idea about any mechanisms. Some food for thought: google “animals without brains”. I read about several sea creatures in this category, some of which I would have guessed had brains. And then there is the parasitic fungus that I thought infected and took over ant brains. Which would be weird: something without a brain manipulating a brain. But then there is this article which says it makes the ant do stuff without affecting the ant’s brain:
Which is also weird: something without a brain causing the ant to act in ways you would think were directed by its brain. As a side question: what is the consensus: does it affect the ant’s brain or not?
I suspect he may have been misreading your post as supporting the ‘soul’ theory to the exclusion of other theories, rather than excluding only the ‘molecules have minds’ theory while leaving both the ‘interaction of material pieces’ and ‘soul’ theories intact, as I think you intended.
