Is consciousness somehow a necessary component of existence?
Maybe yes, probably no
The ‘maybe yes’ version: if an inanimate object needs to be perceived in order to exist;
“if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Actually, a more rigorous version of this would be;
“does a tree in the forest exist if there’s nobody around to perceive it?”
Probably no: as far as we are able to tell (and that is the limitation of this sort of inquiry) objects are persistent on a macroscopic level.
Quantum stuff? whole different kettle of worms…
Very good question. However, this sounds like a Great Debate…
Well if a tree falls, and nobody hears it, did it fall? Similarly if a tree exists and nobody is aware of it, does it exist? Still, if one, who is conscience and of sound mind and body, perceives a tree, we would mostly agree that the tree exists.
An interesting aside: Young babies (and most animals I beleive) do not think something exists unless they are actually seeing/hearing/perceiving it at any given time. Perhaps this is due to a lack of long term memory and built up experience that tells us, eventually, that yes mommy is still in existance when not in our field of vision. This seems to be learned. It is arguably something with which 99.9999999% of humanity has reached a consesus on. Like a scientific conclusion that has been reached indepently by 5 billion people.
However, is what we see as a tree or a frog or log, and what we can classify as a specific tree that recurs through our experience (even though it may change or grow and matter replaced) really what is there? The tree outside my window is the same tree that was there when I moved into this apartment. However, in many ways it is completly different. It has lost all its leaves, it probably has lost and regained different matter. Why do I call it the same tree? It matches a set of qualifications in my brain to be the same tree. It is in the same location that I remember it being in, the configuration of the branches is the same, I have no memory of something being uprooted and something else being put there. Essentially I identify that tree out there as the same tree based on a bunch of pattern-matching going on in my head using my accumulated experience.
In the end, however, the tree is simply a part of the sea of atoms that is the universe, atoms come and go constantly from this thing I call the same tree I saw their when I moved in.
So in a way, yes, for me to claim this tree exists, as what I would call a tree, as the same tree that was here, I must remmember and clasify using my minds eye. Therefore consciousness in a necesarry component of that trees existance.
I’m going to take a stand (which I’m sure can be shot down rather easily) and say yes , because without consciousness we wouldn’t know existence, therefore it wouldn’t exist.
(gulp) shades of Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintainence comes to mind…
In that case, how did consciousness (in it’s current, material, human form) come into existence? Sounds like an argument for the existence of a deity…
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That’s a good one…
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I guess I’d have to change up my argument a little and say that for our current human existence consciousness is necessary…although I think I see a similar rebuttal around the corner…
No. If you bop someone on the head just right, you can render them unconscious. That unconciousness does not cause them to disappear from the phenomenal plane. Therefore consciousness is not a necessary component of existence.
Are you implying that rocks don’t exist? That rocks are conscious? Or that rocks only exist because we are conscious?