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\nSomehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here. (Sir Roger Penrose<\/em><\/span>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
So, what is consciousness?\u00a0 Consciousness is a way of being in the world that appears to go beyond any known physical properties in the material universe, in the sense that it manifests itself as an enduring phenomenon that cannot be reduced or accounted for by\u00a0 any physical law or properties other than through association.<\/p>\n
While we might use the term\u00a0 frequently and on a casual basis –\u00a0 suggesting an implicit understanding of what consciousness is all\u00a0 about \u2013 when we are pushed to elaborate exactly what it is that we are referring to,\u00a0 we will likely run out of vocabulary when it comes to describing\u00a0 its defining features.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, we keep trying to come up with some kind of explanatory account for it that goes beyond association\u00a0 and accommodates it solidly within the\u00a0 known laws of physics.<\/p>\n
The philosopher David Chalmers has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental property of nature existing outside the known laws of physics, and one might be led to agree with that as to date science has not be able to account for it in any way as a function of a material law of the universe.<\/p>\n
But while philosophers and scientists continue to\u00a0 struggle to make sense of consciousness\u00a0 and eminent physicists such as Sir Roger Penrose<\/em><\/span> and Archibald Wheeler<\/em> have begun linking it to the intricacies of Quantum Mechanics, and a concept I have been trying to get my head around in another post that can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
What we can say about consciousness is that, in the first instance, it provides us with the realm or opportunity that we might refer to as sentience and awareness where we are able to\u00a0 acknowledge the reality our own existence in the here and now, in the sense\u00a0 that without it we would simply not be here – or anywhere else for that matter.\u00a0 That is no more than saying ” I think, therefore I am”,\u00a0 as the philosopher Ren\u00e9 Descartes once proclaimed\u00a0 in his 1637 Discourse on Method.<\/span><\/p>\n
As well, and a presumption no doubt implicit in the previous paragraph, one must be in the realm of the living as a necessary condition for consciousness to be present, as to date consciousness as a phenomenon has only been observed in association with life and the living, be it in man or beast or other forms of life that appear to be capable of exhibiting this phenomenon.<\/p>\n
At least, this is how we understand consciousness to be present when making a determination whether someone\u00a0 or something is conscious\u00a0 and basing this\u00a0 on the\u00a0 ability to respond to\u00a0 a stimulus of sorts. We should allow for the possibility that some creature, be it man or beast that is presumed to be conscious might be\u00a0 entirely unable to respond to whatever stimulus because of some form of paralysis or other condition that prevents it from doing so.<\/p>\n
What we do not know however is\u00a0 that being a life form of sorts is also a sufficient condition for consciousness to occur or be present, as minimally as that might be the case.\u00a0 For instance, trees and plants are alive, but we would typically not attribute\u00a0 consciousness to them, if only because we have no way of detecting the presence of it. As well,\u00a0 we do not know what exactly we would be\u00a0 looking for when we try to detect the presence of it at the level of trees and plants.<\/p>\n
Clearly, the absence or presence of consciousness cannot be a function of our ability to detect it, and for that reason it would be more reasonable to give it the benefit of the doubt and\u00a0 assume that\u00a0 consciousness is an intrinsic property of life regardless of the kind of life-form we might want to consider for this. I believe it is simpler to hold this view than to postulate\u00a0 further conditions\u00a0 that must be met by a\u00a0 living entity before it can be said to have\u00a0 consciousness, or to have at least\u00a0 the capacity for it, e.g., that it must at least have a central nervous system to\u00a0 be capable of it.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0 my task here is\u00a0 less concerned about determining at what point living things such as\u00a0 plants or more advanced organisms might be capable of\u00a0 consciousness – or when we\u00a0 might be able to detect it – and more about being able to determine what the nature of consciousness is beyond merely tagging it as an intrinsic function or attribute of life.<\/p>\n
In this context\u00a0 – and given a basic definition of life such as\u00a0 “the condition that allows a given arrangement of organic matter to utilize its environment to sustain itself, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change until death” –\u00a0 it would be reasonable to assume that, for any living organism,\u00a0 none of these capacities would be particularly useful unless there was also an innate capacity to monitor, coordinate and maximize these functions successfully and in the interest of its sense of self-preservation as a living organism.<\/p>\n
This leads me to say that\u00a0 the nature or essence of consciousness is in fact life’s interest in self-preservation, and what I want to refer to as “the will to live”. It is an emergent property of organic matter\u00a0 that\u00a0 eventually manifest itself as what we have come to refer to as “consciousness” as it goes up the evolutionary ladder towards\u00a0 ever more sophisticated ways of being in the world.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 property’s main function might be to acquire\u00a0 a growing awareness of itself and its environment, to the point of being able to interact and manipulate the latter directly in relation to itself and presumably in the interest of self-preservation but not necessarily limited to that. Here I like to think that life – as an emergent property of the material universe and by way of its evolutionary nature – has\u00a0 further goals and objectives in mind (so to speak) that go beyond the need for mere survival and address what I see as the larger question about life: survival for what purpose, i.e., what are we here for, or – for that matter -why should there be any life at all?<\/p>\n
As to the question how consciousness resides in life-forms is as much a mystery as to how life resides in matter, but in either case they appear to be emergent properties and – as I suggested earlier –\u00a0 a function of the degree of organizational complexity of its material\u00a0 constituents,\u00a0 when they allow for the emergence of these\u00a0 properties to the extent that they are able to exhibit them.<\/p>\n
All this being said,\u00a0 it would\u00a0 perhaps be simpler to hold the view that – rather than seeing consciousness as an emergent property of matter – it is in fact the true nature of reality, i.e., there are no other realities,\u00a0 and that what we refer to as the physical attributes of the world are merely a manifestation of its complexity and a means to evolve beyond its current status towards a future state the purpose of which we are clearly not able to apprehend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here. (Sir Roger Penrose) So, what is consciousness?\u00a0 Consciousness is a way of being in the world that appears to go beyond any known physical properties in the material universe, … Continue reading