A Conscious Universe

[Alex K]

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.

Sounds like a pretty horrible experience to me.

I think you and the others are missing the point a little. All the things we consider physical reality work AS IDEAS. Saying that reality is idealistic is not to throw away science, or the Big Bang, or the joy of getting hit in the head with a hammer. It is to say that deep down under the hood, there is no reality to be found except for formulas, experiences, ideas, and relationships between them. There's no pot of gold at the end of the physics rainbow where we find the most fundamental "thing" of which other things are made.

That may be true. But how does what you say here have any connection to the OP?

Not true, you say? Okay, what shape is a photon, and how much volume does it occupy?

They are very small and pointy.

But in seriousness, to remain in your vein - according to our current theoretical description of photons, they are quantum mechanical point particles occupying no volume in space as particles. Their wave functions can be extended in space in the theory, but are not observable per se. This does not mean that nature itself has these properties, and it's not even clear what it would mean if it had.

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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.

I have no clue what you are trying to say here.

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.

Not quite, not individual electrons. I'm precisely arguing against that. A complex network of matter as we have it in our brains can process information, and I see it as the most likely explanation that this includes what one might call internal experiences of its own making, and exhibit one is the fact that interrupting these internal workings ever so slightly makes the latter go away. So it's apparently in the constellations and interactions.

Let's expand on this network that you talk about:

Suppose that our brain is an arrangement of cables and batteries.

And switches which receive input voltages and generate a weighted output based on them - i.e. neurons.

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.

So it seems.

But if this actually does bring about awareness, then where is this awareness?

Why would it be anywhere in particular. It's in the interactions of the system.

It must be a material thing, because that's all that exists. Yet, there's nothing more than copper, lithium and electrons.

A highly complex arrangement of these things with switches, feedback loops, memory...

You can't point to where the awareness exists.

Why should I need to?

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.

Yes, that's exactly my argument why awareness, consciousness or what have you, is not some kind of transcendent property of matter. It obviously depends on the arrangement, the interactions, the whole process.

Thus, since matter can't be created nor destroyed,

I'm not sure whether that is 1. correct and 2. why it is relevant here

it means awareness came about through a means other than material

No that doesn't follow. How do you conclude that again? Connecting a passed-out brain such that it gains consciousness again does not require some substance called consciousness to be created. What happens is that the interactions between the parts, which were cut off, are now possible again, and the machine runs unhindered.

since the awareness itself isn't materially inherent in the first arrangement, by virtue of this awareness not being materially present.

I don't know at all what "materially inherent" means, can you elaborate?

I think it's conceptually impossible to have an arrangement of matter that is then aware of it's own arrangement.

Is this a conclusion from what you've said before? Because I don't see how