A Conscious Universe

[FallentoReason]

I guess I'll be the first to say that this sound like bullshit. One reason is the requirement that our independent consciouness have to all share the same environment when we are awake, but not when we are asleep or reading a story.

But so what? Who says the only thing you're "allowed" to experience is the one reality? What's the problem in wandering off into our own thoughts?

Another reason is that mathematics provides multiple non-physical solutions.

Please elaborate, because I can see the same problem with physics, unless you mean something that I haven't grasped properly.

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Bullshit. You can easily demonstrate how much consciousness is inherent to matter itself by hitting your head with a rubber hammer, or taking something that only very subtly inhibits the communication of neurons - bang, consciousness is gone. It's in the workings of the neural network.

You haven't proven anything. You've only given yourself an experience of sense-data, not a one-to-one relationship with matter. Refer to Plato's cave.

The "experience of consciousness" itself needs no separate explanation unless you can give me a solid reason why this experience can't be how the network experiences itself under certain conditions.

So you're saying that you believe matter can experience itself i.e. atoms, electrons, quarks, the lot, can become aware of themselves. Let's expand on this network that you talk about:

Suppose that our brain is an arrangement of cables and batteries. A successful arrangement then, you would say, would bring about consciousness i.e. the cables and batteries become aware of their own arrangement - of themselves. But if this actually does bring about awareness, then where is this awareness? It must be a material thing, because that's all that exists. Yet, there's nothing more than copper, lithium and electrons. You can't point to where the awareness exists. Now if we compare this to an *unsuccessful* arrangement, we obviously know its lacking awareness. Yet, the only difference lies in how it's built, and *not* what's in it. Thus, since matter can't be created nor destroyed, it means awareness came about through a means other than material since the awareness itself isn't materially inherent in the first arrangement, by virtue of this awareness not being materially present.

I think it's conceptually impossible to have an arrangement of matter that is then aware of it's own arrangement. At least, not 100% through material means. But if you'll allow immaterial things into your world view, then the project is simply pointless.