Oddbean new post about login | logout Brian Green thinks consciousness might be just an arrangement of fundamental particles in some structure we don’t yet understand. What do you think?
Sounds about as good (or better) as any other explanation ive heard. 🍻
I subscribe to the "radio receiver" concept. The neurons in our brain are complex enough to receive a sort of signal that we experience and call "consciousness", but no one knows the source of the signal, and different creatures could be receiving and experiencing it in different ways. The interpretation of the signal by the recipient makes it kind of subjective, but I can't get past the notion of the source being the same, unifying for all living things.
I’m more in the camp of it being a specific balance of chemicals that enables it, and that only some animals might have that.
Itzak bentov argues that consciousness is a continuum. Stones have it, but at a very unrefined level. Plants have it at a higher degree that stones. Bacteria, amoebas, and protozoa have it at a higher degree than plants. Then bugs et al. Animals have it at a higher degree than bugs. Primates and dolphins are animals with more than others. Then humans have it at a higher degree. So most things 'have conciousness' according to bentov, but some have higher refinement of conciousness' than others. Rather than saying some things have conciousness' and some don't, I agree with this approach.
There is no collective stomach, nor is there a collective mind. We may share ideas, but that doesn't make us antennas for some mysterical signal.
Could be the case. I don't feel comfortable asserting either position with certainty. But the fact that time itself is an emergent property of lower order primitives in the physical world, it wouldn't surprise me if there is a "mystical" (unknowable from our vantage point in the matter-layer of reality) integration with this layer. Given that we know so little of consciousness, perhaps that is why I attach the two in my mind's model of my experienced reality.
You don't have to assert anything with certainty to avoid not adding in additional and unnecessary components to explain something you're observing. Adding some imagined signal from some unknown location that is transmitting to some unknown receiver in every brain is a lot more complicated than just sticking with what is already contained within the skull. We can already affect consciousness with chemicals, which suggests that our internal chemistry plays a role in consciousness. Doing that for me doesn't affect everyone else, which also suggests that we aren't all conscious by the same linked mechanism. It isn't logical to make an explanation more complex than it needs to be. Then you have to start addressing a whole new set of problems, like where is the signal coming from? What is sending it? How did that get there? When you could just instead stick with what we can actually observe right now. We already have theories that may not be 100% accurate but also don't add additional complexity for no reason.
This is also a tactic that is often used to imply that two theories have equal weight when they don't just because the problem at hand is not yet fully understood. Consciousness coming from some external signal has no evidence. Consciousness being completely self-contained within the skull and arising from a combination of chemicals, impulses, and matter within the skull is directly observable right now. And can be tested by damaging the matter, interrupting the impulses, and changing the chemistry. Adding the whole external signal idea is unnecessary.
If consciousness exists, I'm more inclined towards quantum consciousness (Roger Penrose). The arrangement of fundamental particles in some random structure that works seems to involve a little too much randomness to my taste. But, first of all, I should listen to what the man has to say, before going to "Man, an extra dimension might be necessary!".
Consciousness exists in the spirit, not the brain...
Sounds a lot like Sean Carroll and his discussions / topics of “emergence.” Essentially consciousness is an experience that “emerges” out of the laws of physics, namely the interactions of fundamental particles that behave in predictable ways.
Consciousness is just an illusion created by complex patterns of information in the human brain.
The universe is a conscious being that disseminates it's understanding through us. We are the fundamental particles making up the structure of consciousness.