On naturalism and consciousness

[tjakey]

I lean to the other extreme. At the quantum scale it appears that entanglements between sub-atomic particles spanning space, and perhaps time, give every part of the cosmos a kind of Plank limit minimum of awareness. Every particle reacts to the state of other particles - aware in some way - of what is going on around them. So I regard awareness much like I envision any of the fields in physics, permeating and enfolding all of the interactions of energy / matter. Which makes awareness is as much a part of the physical universe as gravity or electromagnetism.

So consciousness is, in my view, a completely natural phenomena that is integral to the cosmos. Self-awareness is evident anywhere there is a sufficiently concentrated and complex enough series of quantum events, like that in a human brain. Conscious beings are places in the field of self-awareness dense enough to spark some level of intelligence, just like (on a different scale) stars are concentrations of mass / gravity dense enough to spark fusion. The measure of that self-awareness possible for human kind and individuals as we evolved on this planet, and what might be possible in other places and configurations in the cosmos, is an entirely different discussion.

This, it seems to me anyway, fits well with what has become one of my favorite quotes ...

"The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine." James Jeans