Consciousness 1
The Scientific Jigsaw Puzzle
Equivalence
Eighty years ago, there was a puzzle in science. Sometimes atoms broke apart into smaller atoms, releasing even smaller particles and energy. But when all of the remaining energy and momentum was totaled up, some of it was missing. Conservation of energy and momentum are two of the foundational laws of physics, so this was a real problem. To try to solve it, the physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed that there was another particle, a neutrino, that escaped detection. Decades passed, and then finally someone was able to build a detector to search for these neutrinos, and found them.
The story of the neutrino is one way that things are discovered in science. There is a puzzle with a missing piece, people make suggestions for what that piece might be, and eventually someone finds the answer. Consciousness, however, is a different story. When we look at the human brain, it seems to function completely fine on its own, with just matter and electricity. Human behavior, decision-making, aesthetic taste, and basically everything about us can be understood by our DNA and the electrical signals running through our neurons. Unlike atomic decay with a neutrino-shaped hole, the brain puzzle is complete, and we perplexedly have a consciousness-shaped piece left over.
An extra puzzle piece that we cannot find a place for means something is wrong with the picture as a whole. In order to solve this problem, we have to identify and question our basic assumptions about our paradigm. Examining my own beliefs, I find I have always assumed an idea similar to substance dualism, that consciousness is its own substance, independent from other things. But what if it is simpler than that? What if consciousness is just what matter, or some forms of matter, looks like from the inside? This equivalence would mean that what seems to be its own piece of the puzzle is really just another way of looking at the pieces that are already in place.
At first, this seems preposterous. Rocks don’t have consciousness. Wind doesn’t have consciousness. Statues cannot see or hear. But this is where something like Integrated Information Theory comes in. A conscious experience would be meaningless unless it happens in a system of interconnected elements, each of which affects all of the others. Another way of saying this is that consciousness can only be meaningful if the information in the system is irreducibly complex and under constant change. Think of a brain. It is a vast network of neurons, connected in loops, branches, and highways. When a neuron fires, it pulses against other neurons, some of which are set off in turn. This is part of an unbroken, lifelong chain of cycles and patters. This is integrated information.
Let's do a thought experiment, where we imagine a mind whose only experience is seeing the color black. This mind has no concept of the outside world, no concept of sound, or touch, or space or time. Its entire existence is the perception of the color black. But by having nothing to compare the color black against, it does not even truly experience sight. So even though it experiences a quale, the color black, it is not conscious in the sense that we think of the word. Instead, we might call it proto-conscious.
Now imagine a mind whose subjective experience consists of only a single, unchanging scene, perhaps the equivalent of a photograph of a sunny day at the park. This mind does not think, it does not feel, and it does not get bored. Because it does not analyze the image nor remember having seen it moments before, the mind does not perceive time passing. To it, the entire lifespan of the universe is a single instant. This mind too is only proto-conscious.
The idea of proto-consciousness being everywhere in the universe, even in non-meaningful states devoid of change or organization, seems like something a mystic or spiritualist would claim. Nevertheless, given the information we have, I believe it is a sensible possibility. I am sure you have had the experience of waking up from sleep feeling a strong emotion, as if you were just in the middle of doing something stimulating, but could not remember what you were dreaming. When we are awake, our stream of consciousness is full of thoughts that flit in and out of our awareness. Most of the time we forget them instantly, and it is as if we never thought them in the first place. In other words, we have conscious and semi-conscious experiences that fade from existence and are forever lost to memory. Of course, even these examples require brains full of neurons in order to exist, but even so, is it unreasonable to hypothesize that qualia momentarily pop in and out of existence in matter all over the universe like virtual particles in a vacuum?
I often wonder if computers might have some kind of consciousness. They work completely differently from brains, storing and processing information as static bits instead of unbroken flows like neurons, but considering what we have been talking about so far, I think it is a reasonable question. If they are conscious, is it anything like human consciousness, or is it completely alien, impossible for us to imagine or comprehend? I see no reason why human consciousness should be typical of consciousness in the universe, and that there would not be senses and emotions impossible for human brains to have, or even other types of experiences we cannot imagine.
I don’t know whether mind-matter equivalence is the answer, but if it is, it would answer a lot of questions and eliminate a lot of assumptions. The puzzle would fit together, all its pieces intact, revealing a new edge to build from and explore. Perhaps we could figure out how to build artificial consciousness, or enhance our own to experience things never dreamed of. Perhaps we could learn exactly how conscious animals are, and how best to treat them ethically. A new ocean would be revealed, ready to be explored by science and science fiction.
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