A Conscious Universe

[FallentoReason]

I've come across this very thought-provoking article that I thought I'd share with all of you. It tries to solve the hard problem of consciousness by rethinking the problem. Instead of reducing consciousness to a material explanation, it reduces the material world into an explanation of consciousness. As the article puts it:

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We have two alternatives here: either both [matter and consciousness] are of material/physical type or both are of intangible/immaterial type since consciousness/experience seem to be immaterial. At this point, we don’t know which alternative is true, but we do know that materialistic alternative of reducing consciousness to physical terms leads us to incomprehensible conceptual difficulties...

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https://theproblemofconsciousness.wordpr...ciousness/

I think the first option, that consciousness can be explained materially, simply isn't sufficient. The best way of showing the difficulties of this are highlighted in the article:

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Some insist that consciousness/experience is a mere information processing and integration, but somehow they fail to realize that even though consciousness does have characteristics of information processing/integration and of intelligence and these characteristics can be simulated in a computer (aka artificial intelligence), these characteristics only abstract certain aspects of consciousness while forgetting about the experience itself, which is really the key characteristic. As Christof Koch beautifully put it: “You can simulate weather in a computer, but it will never be ‘wet’.”

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The key to this theory is that what we perceive as the outside world isn't necessarily *the* outside world. What I mean is that although things seem to be solid and matter-like looking, it doesn't mean that there's a material outside world producing this. As the article puts it:

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we believe we look into outside world and feel its solidity. But the image of the outside world and the feeling of solidity as well as all other sensations of it are just that – immaterial sensations inside our consciousness, sense data...we only see our sense data (we don’t see photons striking the optic nerve of our eyes – we only see colors correlated to the above process). The presence of this sense data in our consciousness does not prove at all that it is produced by the physical universe – it only proves it is produced by something.

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To cut a long story short, the article tries to justify that the universe is simply a Grand Mathematical Structure, since mathematics is purely concepts, immaterial thoughts, that don't reside within matter. This means that all that exists are literally mathematical equations - a literal matrix of "illusions" that produce what we experience.

A nice little feature about this way of perceiving the universe is that things such as particle entanglement and the duality of light (as waves and particles) aren't a problem. The mathematical equations that describe such behaviour *are* the actual reality of both phenomena, since the physical world doesn't exist under this theory.

One thing I don't agree with, and of course something that you all saw coming from the very beginning, is that the author then places God at the centre of it all - the Cosmic Consciousness that is responsible for, quite literally, thinking up this universe. He states that we are all smaller ripples of a larger consciousness, and that's why it's said we are created in God's 'image'. But the problem I see is the same as in the traditional materialistic view of the universe: why does there need to be a god that created everything?

Another problem I see, but with the whole theory in general, is that the universe is now quite fragmented. I'll explain what I mean by first explaining how in the traditional view, the universe isn't fragmented: everything that exists is causally related. Matter can't escape this closed system and be it's own entity because everything is being affected by something else at all times. Our minds are a physical construct that are bound by the material universe. Now, with this new theory, it seems like minds are in their own personal "space". There is no unity from me to you like there would be in a material world. There is only the illusion that we share, but beyond that, it seems like you're off "somewhere" else that isn't where I "am". And maybe it's a bias I have, that some Grand Theory of Everything should intrinsically have this unity, because it's quite the romantic idea. Or maybe I'm afraid to think that we're all truly alone, that pure conscious intimacy isn't enough.