What might a larger consciousness "look like" from within?

[Sy Borg]

Questions about the hard problem of consciousness and the observation problem have given us cause to wonder about the nature of consciousness - what it is and where it is found. As far as science is concerned the question of a greater containing consciousness has been resolved to the extent that mainstream science has long given up the search for it.

Researchers have looked from the atom to the cosmos for signs of intelligence and found no evidence better than the ingenious creativity of nature's evolution. Yet, if one was looking for a greater consciousness outside of ourselves, be that of "Gaia", the Sun, the galaxy or the cosmic web, what might it look like?

If our cells were sentient and were testing a hypothesis that there could be intelligence in their "cosmos", what might our consciousness look like to them? Like the weather? Chaotic or strange, unexplained phenomena? Might the "cell scientists" devise theories about the electrical activity, blood flow, hormone release and protein production of our bodies, using complex equations to predict the interactions of the processes? What phenomena might suggest to them that their environment is conscious?

[Duckrabbit]

What if consciousness is not really a thing? This is a crude way to put it so I’ll try to explain what I think I mean. Perhaps consciousness is just a concept; something we ascribe to ourselves and others. And rather than there being a sharp line between what counts as consciousness and what does not, maybe it is matter of degree.

Plants react to light and water. Some people talk to and play music for their plants, maintaining that they respond positively. One usually does not say plants have consciousness but we do attribute reactiveness to them, which may be only a slight verbal maneuver away from saying they are aware of their environment. How much does that really differ from being conscious? I would maintain that many people, including myself, interact with their pets as if with conscious beings. When I talk to my dog, while looking him in the eye, he will tilt his head as if to show he is trying to understand. And of course he does understand many commands and expresses himself pretty well when he has needs, is excited, is unhappy. Is the dog not aware of itself?

Babies have a clearly developing consciousness and self-awareness. All the way we address them as we would to a conscious being. It is perhaps only the words we use and the complexities of the interactions which change over time. Yet we seem determined to draw a sharp line as to where consciousness begins. It seems we treat some beings as conscious but then draw a line where their “soft” consciousness ends and our “hard” consciousness begins. Then we go looking for this mysterious thing in the human brain: where does it come from? How does it get in?

I think this kind of consciousness we attribute to ourselves and not to plants, animals, and babies, is what I would call “consciousness squared”. We are conscious that we are conscious. But is there really a difference in kind between squared and unsquared consciousness? Is it really more enigmatic and mysterious? Or is it really just because we can talk to ourselves? And is that not just imagining ourselves talking to someone else?

I am sure this is not an original hypothetical. Nevertheless, suppose a human baby washes up on a desert island, is raised by wolves or whatever (may or may not be important), and never encounters another human. It is doubtful that this person – call her B – would ever develop human language as there would be no one to teach it to her and she would have no use for it. If she talks to herself, yet had no language, what would this talk consist of? B would have imagination but it would be essentially different from our imagination wherein we put our imaginings in words and/or imagine we are explaining them to someone else. I think B would lack the consciousness we attribute to ourselves but not that which we attribute to plants, animals, and babies.

I am not sure that consciousness is of a different kind than other concepts such as unwillingness, patience, fortitude, high-mindedness, and interest for example. Yet we would not use neurobiology or other science to try to find out what these things are. Because they are concepts, not things. It is a bit like declaring war on terror and then go trying to find it so we can bomb it.

These musings do not address many hard issues which are certainly important to this conversation. Free will certainly seems to present many quandaries. Yet I do not know if B (our island girl) would know she has free will. Of course in some sense she could still be said to have it. But I wonder if it is our reflecting on these concepts which makes them into stumbling blocks. This would also bring into question whether there is something greater than ourselves that we somehow participate in called “consciousness”.

[Sy Borg]

What if consciousness is not really a thing? This is a crude way to put it so I’ll try to explain what I think I mean. Perhaps consciousness is just a concept; something we ascribe to ourselves and others. And rather than there being a sharp line between what counts as consciousness and what does not, maybe it is matter of degree.

... It seems we treat some beings as conscious but then draw a line where their “soft” consciousness ends and our “hard” consciousness begins. Then we go looking for this mysterious thing in the human brain: where does it come from? How does it get in?

I think this kind of consciousness we attribute to ourselves and not to plants, animals, and babies, is what I would call “consciousness squared”. We are conscious that we are conscious. But is there really a difference in kind between squared and unsquared consciousness? Is it really more enigmatic and mysterious? Or is it really just because we can talk to ourselves? And is that not just imagining ourselves talking to someone else?

I am sure this is not an original hypothetical.

True, it isn't. As scientific information becomes ever more standardised and disseminated, it's only natural that people will come to similar conclusions: memoireonline.com/02/10/3198/m_Panmobil ... ism10.html

Some of our ideas are surprisingly similar. onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtop ... 97#p254897

I am not sure that consciousness is of a different kind than other concepts such as unwillingness, patience, fortitude, high-mindedness, and interest for example. Yet we would not use neurobiology or other science to try to find out what these things are. Because they are concepts, not things. It is a bit like declaring war on terror and then go trying to find it so we can bomb it.

I would consider "unwillingness, patience, fortitude, high-mindedness, and interest" to be subsets of consciousness.

These musings do not address many hard issues which are certainly important to this conversation. Free will certainly seems to present many quandaries. Yet I do not know if B (our island girl) would know she has free will. Of course in some sense she could still be said to have it. But I wonder if it is our reflecting on these concepts which makes them into stumbling blocks. This would also bring into question whether there is something greater than ourselves that we somehow participate in called “consciousness”.

I think of it more simply - either all of the larger systems in reality are less sentient than humans or not. Either option raises fascinating possibilities. If humans and equivalent intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos are the most sentient and broadly aware entities in the universe, I imagine a model where consciousness in the universe is represented by light with all non-conscious entities were dark; the more advanced the life, the brighter. In such a model, the Earth would appear to be the only star in the galaxy, or one of few. Such a universe might even look Ptolemaic.

What of the larger systems in which we live?

BTW Merry Christmas :)

[Duckrabbit]

Wonderful, Greta; thank you especially for the two links, both of which I found fascinating and provocative! And I thought I was so clever and original with my "consciousness squared" thing! Well, it's not too devastating to learn you've been scooped by one of the world's great mystics.

I cannot help, however, feeling de Chardin was tragically over optimistic about humanity's divine evolutionary mission:

"No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively.'"

Would that it were so. Merry Christmas to you as well. Maybe next Christmas there will be peace on earth. As humans not only can we think, we can dream as well.

Peace

[Sy Borg]

And I thought I was so clever and original with my "consciousness squared" thing! Well, it's not too devastating to learn you've been scooped by one of the world's great mystics.

You were being clever and original - as were all the others before you - and those yet to have the idea :)

I cannot help, however, feeling de Chardin was tragically over optimistic about humanity's divine evolutionary mission:

"No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively.'"

So restrictions are a sign that one is living in a larger conscious system?

The entire point of the systems we create - political, economic, social and existential - is to introduce individual limitations with utilitarian benefits, eg. outlawing of homicide and theft. As I said earlier, much like penguin huddles and ant colonies. Systems by definition reduce the freedom of their component parts.

Each cell of which we are comprised contains a voluntarily enslaved microbe; long ago free swimming mitochondria were out-competed by the mitochondria that were co-opted by larger cells to provide energy. Similarly, we humans are ever less capable of surviving away from the protection of civilisation as we become increasingly enmeshed in the systems we create. Also like the mitochondria, individuals each provide energy to our containing system.

If the internet is the formative nervous system of a new superorganism, it currently operates more like the nerve nets of sea sponges than a central brain with branching nerves. However, as population rises and readily available resources deplete, increased central controls are inevitable because scarcity favours command societies. If resources are scarce, not everyone will survive and the chances are that more coordinated societies will out-compete less coordinated ones, other things (eg. geography, history) being about equal.

Aside from restrictions of freedom, might there be other signs of larger conscious systems in which we live?

Maybe one day there will be peace on Earth but, barring a comet strike, it won't next Christmas!

[Philosch]

I also agree in some sense that consciousness is a matter of degrees but be careful about the difference between an awareness and a "self" awareness. There is more evidence then you realize on the level of consciousness or "self" awareness that babies, dogs, plants and other animals have. Babies are not "self" aware till I believe around 3 yrs. of age. There are brain structures in humans that have been linked to the distinctly human ability to be wholly self aware. These facts don't really detract from the point you were trying to make. We are still in our infancy in understanding consciousness to be sure, but neuroscience has made some progress.

Partly because of our own "self" awareness or consciousness, humans are masters as anthropomorphizing everything from dogs and cats to larger "systems" that appear to act with purpose and self knowledge. So while I might agree that there may be a level of consciousness, i.e "earth" or even a collective universal consciousness, I would think it may be either so subtle or grand that we will have a hard time relating to it. I think the "self" part of self awareness may actually be a primitive evolutionary step to a consciousness where the apparent individuality and separateness between us humans turns out to be an illusion. Imagine how threatening that realization might be to a world filled with 9 billion ego's.

[Belinda]

Before we can reasonably discuss the question we need to know what the OP meant by "a larger consciousness".

I think that most people presume that the OP referred to some sort of consciousness that is better than other sorts of consciousness. The cause of our presumption is cultural; we are acculturated into the presumption that waking rational consciousness is the best.

Other sorts of consciousness are hallucinatory consciousness, paranoid consciousness, depersonalised consciousness, dreaming sleep consciousness, lucid dreaming consciousness, hypomanic consciousness, depressed mood consciousness, ecstatic consciousness, etc probably many more etcs than I have ever heard of.

Neuroscience identifies very many sorts of consciousness both by subjective reporting, and by objective knowledge about brain anatomy, brain physiology , and brain biochemisty.

It's waste of time philosophers setting out to reinvent the wheel that science has already invented and used.

[Doolhoofd]

the Sun

There you have it.

[Sy Borg]

Before we can reasonably discuss the question we need to know what the OP meant by "a larger consciousness".

I thought I'd made this clear but seemingly not. Our cells live in a larger consciousness. How does our consciousness affect them? How might they perceive it? What does it feel like to live in a larger consciousness? Could we be living in one now? If so, how would we know? What would it feel like? What would be the affects?

It's waste of time philosophers setting out to reinvent the wheel that science has already invented and used.

Science is not interested in the question of what consciousness feels like to those existing within a larger conscious entity. I can't see how I am re-inventing a wheel that's seemingly not even been considered by science, let alone invented by it.

-- Updated 29 Dec 2015, 16:01 to add the following --

the Sun

There you have it.

More please.

[Doolhoofd]

More please.

See my post in the "Is God Real"-thread. Or

http://doolhoofd.deviantart.com/journal ... -468286878

[Sy Borg]

I will re-frame the OP and make more specific the question of the OP to allay any suspicions that I have a covert theist agenda. I am more interested in phenomena than religion and politics.

So take humans out of the equation and consider my dog. She is the entire world to her vast colonies of symbiotic bacteria, even godlike. What would it feel like for her microbes to live in her consciousness? Would they notice her consciousness? How might it affect them?

My first thought was that if she felt, say, agitation when she barked an alert, then the adrenaline released has different effects on different cells. For example:

Adrenaline in [her] bloodstream achieves its effects on [her] heart rate by stimulating the adrenergic receptors on cells throughout [her] heart tissue. Once stimulated, these receptors pass the fight-or-flight message to a specialized type of protein called a G-protein. In turn, G-proteins stimulate other substances inside [her] cells that trigger a cascading alert effect. The overall result of this process is an increase in your heart rate, as well as an increase in the force of each individual heart contraction.

It occurs to me that when storms strike humans engage in a flurry of activity - passing on messages to others act or evacuate.

Reality operates via imperfect fractals. Dynamics (eg. aggregation, consumption, growth) repeat again and again through different realms of existence - be it the large, small, geological or biological. Why would consciousness be so unique? Why could it not exist in different forms in different realms like everything else does? I am obviously not referring to human consciousness, which is obviously exclusively for humans in the same way as dog consciousness is only found in dogs.

We know consciousness is not material, more a network of processes than a thing, so obviously it's not something that will be found by looking for particles. Consciousness consists of brainwaves that move through particles and other waves, influencing their behaviour to varying extents. My point is that, if there are larger systems with some kind of consciousness, how would we know? What might be the signs? What would changes in a larger consciousness feel like to us?

[Logic_ill]

A larger conscious may look like it permeates everything external. It looks like there's an intelligence surrounding it all, and the curious internal consciousness is always trying to figure it out.

-- Updated December 29th, 2015, 7:59 pm to add the following --

Just wanted to comment on the idea of self awareness being unique to humans. It may be unique to humans in a sense of degree. I mean self awareness in humans may or may not be more developed than in other animals. Maybe some other animals possess it, or experience a different sort of self-awareness.

[Sy Borg]

More please.

See my post in the "Is God Real"-thread. Or

http://doolhoofd.deviantart.com/journal ... -468286878

Cheers. I have some sympathy for sun worship. But which one? Our creator is actually the giant star (or stars) whose supernova or collision debris provided the material for our Sun to form and sustain us.

Why stop there? An even greater entity is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

-- Updated 29 Dec 2015, 19:45 to add the following --

A larger conscious may look like it permeates everything external. It looks like there's an intelligence surrounding it all

What would intelligence surrounding us feel like?

I agree with you re: animal self-awareness. Plenty of species have passed the mirror test.

[Platos stepchild]

Maybe consciousness doesn't look, or appear as anything, because as an experience there's nothing for it to appear or look like. If we are, indeed inside of a larger mind, I don't believe there's any test we might conduct to verify it. Surely the stuff-of-reality would continue to feel just as real, as before. Positing such a mind, however could well be aesthetically pleasing. (We might then ask whether we would consider ourselves as worth thinking about). Anyway that, I believe is the only criteria by which to judge whether we're indeed the thoughts of a larger mind.

[Misty]

I think consciousness is simply life. A larger consciousness is simply life of all and all of life.

Without the so called lower organisms the so called higher organisms would not exist. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, co exist bringing life to all. The larger consciousness "looks like" the culmination of all that creates it.