Consciousness as a Property of the Universe

  

It has been a busy, sometimes hard month and I have not posted on this blog in that time. The following are really rough notes about something I have been considering for a long time.

I invite you to think about the following and would love to hear about any further reading that any of you would suggest on the topic.

Thank you and be well.

Peace out...

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. 

Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. The word itself was coined by the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the sixteenth century, and derives from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).

BUT..."what is mind?—is more difficult and contentious. Here panpsychism is on neither better nor worse footing than any other approach to mind; it argues only that one’s notion of mind, however conceived, must apply in some degree to all things.

The panpsychist conception of mind must be sufficiently broad to plausibly encompass humans and non-human objects as well. Panpsychists typically see the human mind as a unique, highly-refined instance of some more universal concept. They argue that mind in, say, lower animals, plants, or rocks is neither as sophisticated nor as complex as that of human beings. But this in turn raises new questions: What common mental quality or qualities are shared by these things? And why should we even call such qualities “mental” in the first place?

from the (Peer reviewed) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (who knew?)

But what if we understand consciousness as a property of the universe, like elecrtomagnetic radiation or gravity. All living creatures have the ability to tap into this at greater or lesser degrees and perhaps by different mechanisms. Gravity affects us all, rocks, birds, people. Electromagnetic radiation...well

 Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy that is present all around us and takes various forms like microwaves, television waves, radio waves, gamma rays, X-rays, and visible light. 

We know different creatures experience different forms of EM radiation to greater or lesser degrees. We can see certain colors of light, but other species can experience a different range of colors (Ultraviolet is just light) 

  Our “self” or ego is the biochemical response to consciousness and is shaped by our particular circumstances and physical attributes,  but we are all part of the collective consciousness. We are all then truly the child in the detention center in Arizona, and the preteen struggling with their gender identity, and the mother and the old white gentleman. We are all the same. It is quite a concept and why should we believe that.? I don’t know but isn’t that a bit like God? Michael Pollan just released a book about the use of psychedelic drugs. It is on my list but still unread. I did listen to an interview he did and he talks of their successful use in medicine- specifically to treat anxiety and depression in concert with cognitive therapy. He also discusses their similarity to people’s reports of “near death experiences.” He describes it as kind of a “rebooting” of our egos. The drugs cause us to dissociate ourselves from our experiences. We can look at the particular stories of who we are that we tell ourselves (our egos) as if we are outside of ourselves. In this way we can see the destructive stories “objectively” and understand that we don’t have to keep telling them to ourselves. We can change. 

  But how do psychologists define ego? Freud, that sexually fixated, psychologist, did advance a framework still used today when he described the ego, id and superego. The id being our “primitive” desires/wants for immediate gratification, the superego being the “internalization of cultural rules/morality- ie our conscience and inner critic, and the ego as “our conscious awareness” whose job it is to separate out “what is real” or to “make sense of our reality”- even if we lie to ourselves/make up stories in order to have the input to our brains “make sense” (corpus collosum experiments). 

  Neuroscience tells us about the amygdala (primitive, emotion laden (fear, anger, lust, joy), immediate reward area of our brain and the prefrontal cortex (the executive planning, delayed gratification, more “rational” part of our brain) and the struggle between the two that we feel when we are presented with a decision point. We know that we are “fighting within ourselves” between which path to follow. But “who” is mediating this fight and who decides the winner? Why do we tend to follow the same paths over and over, even when they are destructive? 

 These are fascinating questions and I don’t have the answer. But the synthesis of my readings and experiences has led me to think of this idea of consciousness as a potentially viable one. What do you think? 

See also Annika Harris’s book “Consciousness” for further discussion of this idea. As well as “The Case Against Reality.”

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