Consciousness the Messenger

A friend asks, "Is this page alive?"

We notice a fundamental correspondence, instinctively, a correlation between matter, life, and consciousness.

The notion that consciousness has no definite boundaries, and thus is present wherever energy or information is processed is attractive. My friend said page but he could also have meant paper page, web page, or someone reading something aloud, or even words as remembered dimly after a passage of time. What about a bookmark?

Useable conscious product is not necessarily as conscious as the conscious process that creates it. The page is a messenger, yes it has conscious dimension. If a writer were to pass, and all his works locked up in a password protected computer, what happens if his relatives wipe the hard drive?

Does consciousness die?

We're talking about something not unlike the fundamental physics of heat, and entropy. There has to be an expression akin to the second law of thermodynamics, that embraces consciousness as a form of reverse entropy. An alternative to static or chemical order, say for instance the order present in a fully charged battery. Is a battery conscious? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls after 2000 years represents a transference of consciousness - they were only pieces of rotting parchment were they not?

A new Paradigm for understanding Consciousness

To posit that consciousness is pervasive, might mean developing a theory for a new force field from within the corpus of modern physics. We might need to reexamine Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the existence of black holes, as a way of defining the limitations or interactions of a conscious field. While I feel that forays of consciousness theory into established physics will occur, I am skeptical of this approach.

David Chalmers has suggested that what is needed is a 'crazy idea', one that conjectures new groundwork, and possibly a new set of variables. Consciousness he argues simply cannot be modeled with the scientific vocabulary at hand.

A better theory of consciousness will provide an illusion of progress, but it also will keep us on the same side of the problem that we've been stuck in all along. We'll have more more variables and another field to experiment with. But our viewpoint will remain descriptive, and materialist. We'll have a belief system rooted in what we can see, touch and feel, and we'll have equations for everything else.

Rene Descartes dismissed consciousness with his quip, "I think therefor I am" and then devoted no more effort to the problem. Mathematics would penetrate the secrets of nature. Consciousness was a self-evident truth that needed no investigation at all.

There another way to approach Chalmers' 'hard problem'. Believe for a moment that matter is an illusion, that the material world, including sensory perceptions of it, sights, sounds and colors, buildings, rocks, bodies, and heavy pianos are notions made real by consciousness.

This is the Vedanta, the Eastern viewpoint. Matter is brought to life by consciousness. Without consciousness nothing would exist at all. Or put more simply, everything exists because of consciousness. Consciousness creates.

To summarize the Vedantist Indian thinkers, the two 'hard problems' are 'what is the universe?' and 'what is consciousness?'. Science being a product of consciousness, can only fact check, and report back what it has 'observed'. Yet the conscious mind knows of more than science. So science cannot possibly come to terms with consciousness except through a radical manipulation of numbers which that are not real to begin with.

Infiltrate into the camp of the animating spirit, consciousness, and we suddenly become aware that we've set up opposing categories. Dualities, in science as in reality, have a way of crashing down.

So with what perambulation of art or philosophy, shall we approach the call for a new paradigm of consciousness?

Let us rephrase the question: Isn't that call for a new paradigm about consciousness, simply a call for new consciousness? Isn't science pointing out a numeric tool for fact checking certain beliefs about reality are useful for some forms of understanding? But as the child of consciousness, science is a tool; it could not understand what conceived of it in the first place.

For five hundred years, the West has regarded consciousness as a fragile commodity. No hard evidence has surfaced of it wherever we go digging. Consciousness, the subjective experience, has never been located as stuff, measurable 'reality' according to a materialists model for existence.

Suppose imagination and consciousness create matter, not the other way around. Suddenly it's all alive, it's all conscious, it's all aware. The universe is intelligent, our galaxy is intelligent. Photons act consistently and bear consciousness wherever they go. All atoms participate in the grand calculation of possibilities, displaying color, logically interacting with each other to form giant miasmas of consciousness throughout the universe. A galaxy is alive. It thinks. It is endlessly patient and watches a succession of intelligent life forms come and go.

Is there more 'consciousness' in our Sun than on earth? More in the earth than in any of it's life forms? Are we to be democratic and say consciousness is spread evenly about, present to some degree in all matter? Or shall we create rules and laws governing the interactions of consciousness with matter, not unlike the interactions of the basic forces as defined by modern physics.

The simplicity of this question has materialist roots, granting to each bit of matter consciousness according to its size. Yet even our instincts tell us that cannot be so. It's a complex commodity, and perhaps one that all of Western science simply can never come to describe adequately, but certainly not through a quantitative and descriptive scientific method.

Complex and unknowable except through self-knowledge. This is the answer that we receive from the Vedanta.

So consciousness much change, ebb flow, move about, and change lives within matter, its carrier. As the animator of matter it must be the field of all fields. It cannot simply exhibit inverse square relationships with all other conscious bodies, as gravity does with massive bodies. No, consciousness, whether pervasive or universal [Chalmers], is growing in our universe. It is not constant. Consciousness is breaking out all over.

Could consciousness be everywhere you look because it is making everything you see?

Prove to me that something unobserved exists. It can't be done. Yet science insists on a reality independent of the observer.

I don't insist on either answer. The duality itself is a fiction, a product of consciousness.

A very early belief of mine was that Earth as a rock, the Sun, the Galaxy, every body, and thus all rocks, as well as photons individually, are all absolutely conscious. Inexorably and with a very high degree of complexity in the case of the geology of the Earth, and immediately but very simply in the case of the photon, they all display a conscious element.

One of the arts I do is pottery, and when I fire a wood kiln, I'm always of the feeling that the firing of a kiln represents a life, not unlike the life of a candle flame, or a person. When the fire is very large and very hot and burns for a week it is a form of advanced consciousness. The fire seems to make conscious choices. I've written a lot about this in other places on this blog.

The quantum personality of a photon also displays rudimentary decision making and the appearance of consciousness, So do identical twins separated at birth. What is the 'stuff' that keeps them connected as they live their separate lives? As materialists we have measurements of both behaviors, though most psychologists and neurologists will probably continue to scoff at the introduction of a new conscious dimensionality to this study.

The most serious quantum physicists do admit that their mathematical descriptions are objective and limited. Richard Feynman admitted to the unsatisfactory solutions offered by quantum physics to optical phenomena, even complained about it, essentially calling it 'an ugly theory that works'.  Most others would probably express these gripes privately.

If we admit that all systems process energy to some degree, and by definition are not isolated from the rest of the universe, then they'll display some measurable level of a soon to be recognized variable, a 'field of consciousness', not unlike that of gravity or electromagnetism.

What is the universe, but matter and consciousness? Western science has been starved of answers, but it's researches take it closer to the door of psyche. We are creeping up on truths recognized by Shaivism and the Vedanta for thousands of years. The great success of science may be realized at the moment it gives up, in the same manner as Einstein gave up when in a conversation with Tagore with the conclusion, "Then I am more religious than you!"

If we were to formulate a scientific materialist description of consciousness, then we would be brought paradoxically no closer to answers for the current mysterium. Yes, we'll have turned to face the problem. We'll have acknowledged Chalmers' 'hard problem', but simply added more flesh to the bones of a mathematical and descriptive solution.

Describing consciousness such that it could be written on a T-shirt would just drop us at the same bus stop we were at previously, except now we'll have a field of abstractions devoted to describing consciousness, but lack the means, by way of science at least, of seizing and understanding that conscious field. The progress will mimic a Death of Science, and an ebbing of Western thought. At least when getting off the bus, we'd now be facing the palace with a locked door.

Those laws, which I'm sure will follow, will be written off the springboard of scientific materialism which we will have clung to since the early Islamic scientists of the 11th-13th Centuries. We'll have objectified the subject, but will still stand outside our new subject, as we did before David Chalmers gave his 1994 talk.

Is the approach to consciousness a boundary to be progressively fought back? Or to understand it mustn't one in some way infiltrate to the other side of the barrier that stands in our way? I absolutely see the latter approach. We need a top down revision in our philosophy of science that admits our current science as a viable laboratory for testing and verification, but not of understanding.

I believe that while we need to understand a new set of laws, we need to think of consciousness as a manifestation of all systems, ranging from the extremely simple to the universally large and massively complex.

These questions are inherently philosophical, but they ask for scientific verification. Aren't we looking for giant revisions to our scientific philosophy that can be corroborated by our older observational science?

-:)(:-

The Monolith

A friend asks, what's the meaning of the black rock in "2001 Space Odyssey". There's devilish intent in her question, she insists I answer. Perhaps I'll see if my thoughts are insanely stupid or short sighted, after I re-read them in a number of years:

One pernicious myth, perhaps just hubris, is that humans are the apex consciousness on our planet, even our galaxy. Never mind that we still do not understand consciousness, we believe, as children believe, we are the best at it. Wander through the Museum of Natural History to get the picture. Human evolution is the supreme act, the pinnacle story of life Earth, look there go the giant dinosaurs, inferior because they died out.

Call it the standard model. Sense a certain house-proud disregard for the other more primitive beasts. Witness our evolution, up from the apes. Dioramas of early human societies, displayed in the same manner as collected bison, and creatures from Africa and South America.

Astronomers have more or less proven, by means of mathematical probability, that other life forms not only exist, but actually are very prevalent in the universe, simply because the universe is so large and the abundance of other solar systems and planets so great.

It is also a mathematical certainty that life forms exist which surpass us in age, history, technological and intellectual might. They may not even be carbon or water based life forms! Those that are confident of the existence of extraterrestrial life know this in their guts. Others know it from first hand experience, claiming to have been contacted directly, or abducted. For Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke in the late 1960's these were ground-breaking ideas.

What would contact with a higher level of consciousness feel like? How would we describe it? What would we see? Would the visitor leave signs, or a token that it had visited? I'll second what many before me have written and say the black monolith stands as a reminder left by a superior consciousness, that man has arrived at some stage of evolution, be it tool-making or space-travel . . . or life outside of time and space.

One might consider this notion another way. If the monolith is a sign of the passing presence of a superior intelligence, are we simply noticing it when we are ready to? In other words is the monolith put there for us to notice then, or now? On another axis, what evidence of superior life forms are we currently oblivious of, simply because our minds cannot recognize them as living?

And what if that alien consciousness does not live within three dimensions, like us, but rather exists in multiple dimensions? They would not be visible to us at all, unless, either intentionally or as a side effect of their presence, they left some sort of sign, like a crystal.

Hence that perfect black rock.

Do Numbers and Mathematics exist outside of Psyche?

This piece started as a response to one of those Facebook questions that asked: "Do Numbers and Mathematics exist outside of Psyche?

Where do the boundaries, and limits of intelligence and life exist? How might one distinguish that which lives from that which is supports life? A cow cannot live without grass, and fish cannot live outside water (some exceptions I realize exist).

Closed circles cannot be drawn around life, with labels that proclaim the balance 'dead' or inert. Consciousness, must be free roaming, or everywhere all at once, a force that life taps into.

Human beings are only one manifestations.

Would we recognize a more developed life form if one presented itself, and if not, does this mean we might be ignoring other aspects of the physical world that are living, alive, right now, that in our anthropocentric brains we currently assume are dead?

The question invites a re-evaluation of these categories. Please indulge me as I explore how this topic relates to Numbers and Psyche.
[I have written some other essays that deal with similar ideas, "Why the Fibrolatti Cut the Tail off a Squirrel", "The Perimeter of Consciousness", and "Conversation with Jeff Rosnik", and "Where is Consciousness?"]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Numbers do not exist outside of Psyche, but, Psyche is everywhere. Even stones possess it.

What? Do you think me crazy?

Grant me a moment.

Without trying to exhaustively define what Psyche IS, if we might settle upon the notion that Psyche is a man-made concept used to describe phenomena exhibited by living creatures at the very least. Might we also agree that only a living entity can possesses Psyche (regardless of whether one believes only humans can can exhibit Psyche), then we may proceed to some other questions:

Regardless of whether we insist that psyche is solely a human quality, or restricted in some way to higher mammals, or present to a degree in all life forms, I think we might also agree amongst ourselves that numbers, counting, and mathematics are abstractions devised by language forming intelligence at some level since like Psyche they represent abstractions that are not connected. A set of two anything requires imagination, intelligence, hence a bowl of two oranges or two letters in a box cannot know of the intelligent being that is imagining them for illustrative purposes.

Numbers are signs, requiring a degree of intelligence to maintain them as as notions symbolic of, but separate from physical reality.

So I repeat: numbers cannot exist outside of Psyche, yet Psyche is everywhere. Even stones possess it.

First some grammar: I'll use Psyche, capitalized, to mean the word and construct for what psyche (un-capitalized) might be in an ontological sense.

In other words I'll capitalize the linguistic usage, and let the general usage stand.

Most mathematicians believe that an alien intelligence, even one that might think and act perhaps with greater dimensionality than human beings, must ultimately possess a mathematics that closely resembles our own.

This is because for our mathematics to work at all we must accept the precondition that 1+1=2. We must accept the notion of a 'set'. There are ideas fundamental to Western thought that rely upon a mathematics that builds through a historicity of hypothesis, and proof.

I'll state that I agree with the findings of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell (Principia Mathematica), within the following frame of reference: an Earth-bound intelligence consigned to a three-dimensional space, perceiving, but not able to sense accurately, a fourth dimension, time, but having no access (other than psychic access) to any other dimensionality.

My broad-based disagreement is not what I'm presenting here.  All I request is that you agree, mathematics is a symbolic language, of signs and statements that may be employed in the physical world, but that as a language, is separate, abstract, and distinct from it. The physical world cannot have direct meaningful access to language except through a language-devising intelligence such as ourselves.

This means that if one is to argue, that fire or stones, or water, possess the same qualities that we define as living, or intelligent, we must admit that in some fundamental way they employ a kind of mathematics that is parallel to the physical. Just as we do.

No matter what happens to a building or a bridge, or a rocket engine, mathematics will not be affected directly by any of these entities, except by humans who might re-evaluate some of the applied math that was used to construct them. The physics of everyday life rarely yeilds measureable results that correspond exactly to a mathematical construct.

Yet as the forms of nature observed are smaller, and simpler, such as molecules of water, or a perfect gas, or the behavior of fire or liquids, the mathematical models more closely approximate the reality at hand.

Except when the level of experimentation is minutely small. Beneath the computational level of a single molecule. It is well known that photons may react even before a 'cause' that will cause one to fire off of a nucleus.The correspondence between the real world and the abstract world of symbolic language, is an active process requiring a manipulative intelligence. That manipulation is language, and languages are usually specific to those that devise them.

Clearly at a subatomic level, reality and language are much the same, as if all reality in fact was constructed BY language, and OF language.

Why should mathematics or physics be different than spoken languages? Yes the spoken languages may seem far more complex, but in reality we understand them far more easily than the subtle language that governs the interactions of all matter.

Even discoveries in particle physics may not be related back into the advanced theoretical physics and mathematics that led to these discoveries without the intervention of mind. The world of matter and energy has it's reality, and intelligence spends some of that energy to keep alive a language that describes that reality. One of those languages is mathematics, and a system of numbers.

As mindful creators we are also the keepers of the language of mathematics, and of Psyche as well.

Psyche, is originally a Greek word, . . .

"pronounced /ˈsaɪkiː/; etymology: Greek ψυχή psykhe "soul, mind, breath, life", refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, behavior and personality."  [Wikipedia]

Thank-you Wikipedia. Notice how the definition refers to 'forces in an individual'. Here immediately we notice the inability of our language to penetrate the soul; it resorts to metaphor even in a definition. Here is Wiki's own definition of force:

"Force is what causes mass to accelerate or become deformed."  [Wikipedia]

Statements in mathematics and psychology may only bear a resemblance to physical reality, a resemblance that is not pictorial, or descriptive, but rather predictive.

That is, the language of mathematics enables us to make manipulations that are useful. A prisoner counting footsteps outside his cell, may know if there's a guard in the hall. A farmer counting days since sowing his crop has a fair idea of his harvest. If math weren't useful, we wouldn't use it.

If I have six oranges on a table, I may also say that I have two oranges, or five oranges. But I cannot say truthfully that I have only two oranges on a table where six exist. The statement would be false. Yet whatever I say, since I could easily look at six oranges and say that I have nine elephants, and whatever conclusion I drew, true or false, requires a symbolic intelligence outside of the existence of the oranges themselves. The oranges exist, with or without the statement about them.

Do we agree so far? That statements about oranges or elephants on tables are fictions, creations of a language-possessing intelligence. That these statements can be true or false, but only we can determine whether they are true or false using the terms and conditions of that language itself. The oranges will never decide on their number for us.

So with Psyche. As inventors of the notion of Psyche and Number, we humans are comfortable with both as abstractions convenient for use by our symbolic minds for purposes of manipulation, thought and reflection.

But beneath the notion of Number, and also beneath the notion of Psyche there is also some thing 'real'. There IS number-ness.

Numbers are first and foremost signs, quantifiers assigning an aspect to a situation that a) must be perceivable or demonstrable, b) must be verifiable within the self-enclosed grammar of mathematics itself, and c) may be inherently independent of reality itself. The number sign enters the language of mathematics and is there used.

If '2' also meant '200' but without some kind of grammar to know when it meant two hundred instead of two, then the sign '2' would be useless.

The usefulness of language is maintained until it fails in purpose. When it fails, it evolves, by meeting the challenges offered by a new reality, or else some other more useful language is used in its place.

Astrology, until the time of Kepler's revolutionary work describing the motions of planets, was a predictive and interpretive language, considered in its day a subtle way to make predictions. Kepler himself, excelled as a graduate student with a brilliant prediction of a nobleman's death, using the 'science'/'art'/'practice', of astrology.

Yet that language, was not accurate enough for a species beginning to develop technologies, which required the precision of a new mathematics.

Since Kepler, astrology has been considered a back-room affair by most scientists, something amusing at best, but never to be relied upon.

I will not debate here, because my point is only that languages exist where languages are needed. Predictions about one's health, or success in war, were not as necessary then as predictions of tides, of where cannon shells would land, or of the physics of early engines.

The economic payoff, of a more precise, but less soulful language, was too great. History was led by the development of new languages, and old, very powerful languages, were trashed. This is history.

One mathematics gave way to another. Astronomy replaced astrology, Newtons's calculus replaced numerology. This is a gross simplification of a historical transformation that took place in man and have been taking place regularly with every advance in our abilities to wield consciousness, as truncheon, tool, or telescope (my three T's of conscious-nese)

Back to Psyche.

Indeed, Psyche takes it's place with-in a self-enclosed and self-reflecting language, and a grammar of character, of the human soul and spirit. It's a concept, not something we can lay our hands on. Yet it it describes something that is there. Using our concept, we know of it, through Pyche, within the language of Psyche, to describe it.

Psyche has been extraordinarily useful as a concept in the development of modern psychology.

Is Psyche the psyche? No. And here we come to the great mystery. The construct, the abstraction, only points in the direction of, the mystery. Psyche is a sign, the thing the sign refers to is . . .

     "If you read this here don't go this way,
      I know that she is there.
      I left this sign then went her way
      I'm no more, but I don't care."

The language is clearly defined, and makes careful use of definitions to show how various schools of thought disagree on certain points, and agree on others. The work through Freud, Jung, modern neuroscience, is carefully constructed. All theories are doggedly followed by an army of experimenters, seeking verification.

Our languages are maintained like systems of hedges, a classical garden in some parts, romantic in others. By far the greater part of the garden is wild, and not understood. We like to pretend that most of the garden is manicured, well described, managed, and sensible. But it isn't. We haven't got a clue. Man will begin to see once he realizes the thoughts he has are not in short supply.

Posted: Higher intelligence needed to appreciate greatest intelligence in Universe.

Furthermore, unlike precise experimental verification of mathematical concepts in physics and chemistry, data about the soul is problematic. The soul is not easily measured. Language about it must be complex, and metaphoric.

Show me a piece of 'psyche'. You can't.

This we also realize, but the wildness of the psyche must be explored. Theories will be offered for what is there, and why. And the language about it will perforce, continue to evolve.

So again with Mathematics. It has a boundary, of what is 'known' and accepted, and also recognizes huge regions for further exploration. Paradigm shifts occur, that may upset some of the previously agreed upon statements, but most doubt that it would ever be possible to unseat a statement such as 1+1=2. (More on that in a different essay.)

No matter what statistics we possess, statistics themselves are not the products of the reality they supposedly represent. Statistics, numbers, and mathematics are products of MIND.

So Psyche, and psychology, mythology, all of it. . . is a product of mind. They're languages. We use them all as a sets of symbolic tools to manipulate and try to understand the complex creatures that we are, and the complex universe that's around us, with varying degrees of success.

The scientific method also looks for results, that will confirm or unseat a hypothesis, and 'move on' as if life were a game, where previously discovered truths can't change.

That's child's logic!

Science also does this within categories laid out ahead of time, which are seldom questioned. A mouse is considered alive or dead, but it can't be both. A rock is dead, whereas you and I are alive. These categories are ubiquitous throughout all our systems of language. They are so pervasive as to be part of the myth that drives us, makes us who we are, and yet that we cannot see.

All that we've invented to conform to these initial starting conditions may break down at a later date. I'll present thought experiments later which will break them, but for now, what of mind.

What is mind? Again, it's a abstraction, referring to something we don't fully understand.

Might we agree that mind is only present where intelligence exists? That only intelligent entities possess mind?

We might be racing too fast in making this assumption. If we agree that intelligence has 'mind', might that intelligence be thought of as mindful, and conversely a complete lack of intelligence be thought of as having no mind, or being mindless?

Again we're just trimming the hedges of language, but this is necessary if I'm to open a gate to the wild areas beyond the garden.

If we agree here, then we come to the crux of the matter - what is intelligence?

For this I turn to any test that one can muster to determine if an entity is intelligent. Does water in its cascade from the tops of mountains 'forget' it's true nature and err in its calculation of how to pursue gravity? Never. Does it ever 'forget' its essence in the way that it flows, evaporates, boils, or seethes? Never. Doesn't it most intelligently, and massively, calculate the most efficient way to remove itself from a high spot to one that is lower, to boil, to freeze, or crystallize?

Water is always true to its inner nature, and so may be thought of as perfectly mindful. There is total mind in water. And so also in stones.

So when I say that stones possess psyche, I mean it absolutely. Stones are completely logical in their behavior. They yield to the grinding down of time. They obey the laws of physics, they react with light, chemical erosion, and other stones. They share photons with other atoms, with total mindfulness. It would take a quadrillion of our primitive computers to model the slow decay that occurs to a stone.

When worn down completely stones bond back together as sedimentary rock and become the foundations of the earth all over again. Mountains and sand are part of the same being. They exhibit a consistent inner nature - each atom within a stone interacts with it's neighbor according to a set of immutable laws of relationships between matter and energy.

Humans have quite naturally made the error of thinking mind and intelligence was theirs alone, as do children, since this is the prerequisite for any developing language. Begin speaking it. If no one else talks to you, assume you are alone.

The perfect behavior of water, stones, air, and fire are illustrative of a small point. Stones behave as stones should. Stones on earth are part of the earth, even though some are separated from the earth by erosion. They are products of energy, time, and evolution.

Here my detractors would argue, that humans do not always behave as humans should, and that it is next to impossible to accurately predict human behavior, and that this unpredictability is part of what makes us human.

I would comment back that while humans are difficult for humans to predict, chickens are easy. But this crude way of measuring intelligent 'contents' means very little. Try as we have, Homo sapiens has been forever been outsmarted by cold viruses since we evolved.

It's quite natural that find it easier to predict the actions of our pets than our parents. But 'prediction' is only a linguistic result. A series of observations taken within a linguistic context, allowing for measurement of a process.

Enter a game of tag with a crow, let's make that a hawk. You have a gun and can shoot the hawk whenever you like. (The hawk is already gun-shy). All the hawk has to do to win is touch the top of your head.

Who wins? The hawk, every time. Take your idea of intelligence and tear it up. It's meaningless. The human 'fire', our 'flame', is a language power that we've discovered. We've mistaken it for smarts. Language, intelligence and psyche, are all different, are not welded at the hip. Intelligence, even predictive intelligence, may evolve without a linguistic facility. Abstract thinking may exist without systems for setting it in language, hence manipulating independently of real action.

In fact there is every indication that language has the opposite effect. The burden of language is very great, and can have a paralyzing effect on intelligent action. Hesitation is a by product of a linguistic mind.

The so called laws governing interactions of matter and energy are a symbolic shorthand designed to approximate what we we are able to observe and know of nature. These 'laws' are forever being changed to fit the increasingly complex set of facts we uncover.

Homo sapiens, the language animal.

We can therefor agree at very least that there is no set of physical laws on this planet that have created humans that have not also created stones. An atom of iron, if it oxidizes, behaves perfectly in it's relationship with oxygen.

It breathes photons, and air. As do we.

If humanity was created, solely and uniquely out of a set of elements, principles and physics that are not earthly, or not bound by the same laws of chemistry and decay that the rest of our planet is bound by, then I could assert that the thoughts I am having are uniquely mine. But I cannot.

So I must conclude that I am no different than a temporary flame flicking from the surface of this cooling planet. No different than a rolling stone. What comes from me comes from it.

And my Psyche is but a symbol for characterizing, well, my character. My inner nature. Sometimes easier to predict than a rolling stone, sometimes not.

Psyche is an awareness, a phenomena that has no boundary. Our Psyche is as much made by iron (Mars) as it is by gold (Sun) and silver (Moon). We are Fire Air Earth and Water according to the Ancients, and by today's science we are a huge complex table of elements, and organic molecules each with intricate behaviors. We are DNA and Artemis, protein and Zeus. We are Id, and Ego, the Anima and Animus. We are as many languages that we can muster.

We are what we are... but what we think with and about ourselves are abstractions. Mind and Psyche are separate.

And remember that word help. Because in the end that psyche deep inside, is the thing that made the whole show happen, the thing that needs to be there to see everything else.

So who's to say water and stones don't have it? They have in excess.

We are indistinguishable from that of which we are made. So let me introduce you to the psyche of a stone - called planet Earth. We all carry within us Earth psyche.

Else where do we get our Psyche FROM?

Conversation with Jeff Rosnik

January 27, 1989      Conversation with Jeff Rosnick       Veselka Coffee Shop, New York City

Are there perceptions of perceptions?

'Of  course. We do not know the natural world directly, but rather through the vehicle of our language of signs. This informs our search, our very act of looking at some thing. There is no such creature as 'pure' perception, in the visual or optical sense. Our vision, our imaging process, is too tied up with what we know. For instance this container of sugar - you know that if you were to pick it up, the table would not come with it. That knowledge informs how you see the container, and the table as well; in spite of everything that is on it you imagine the top of the table as a plane. You imagine the 'unseen' parts, and have as committed a knowledge of what is denied to your eye, as what actually is seen via an image formed on your retina. This knowledge conditions the process of image formation, and the exploratory movements of your eye over the scene before you.'

Music - the idea that it can be reduced to a Fourier equation, and that it may achieve representation as a plot in two dimensions, some quantity versus time. A thousand violins, somehow expressible as one instrument, one plot of tonal intensity, 'the thousand-violin-instrument'. That, by a wire leading to a prisoner's cell, connected to a speaker, and thence to the cement of the prison floor, he could be educated.

This invokes the image of one media, one 'ether', which at any instant holds at any point, the sum of all electromagnetic activity within it, a jumble of different signals, visible light, heat, x-rays, as well as short wave messages from the heart of the Soviet Union. The idea looms that all this can be sorted out, with the proper filtering instrument, just as our eyes function as another selective tool for filtering.

Our minds are another such instrument, that can pull from the Fourier reduced signal of sound waves, the note made by a single tuning fork, midst an orchestra.

Rosnick has a number of excellent ideas - one of them the conjecture that thought is an activity in some mathematical dimension greater than three. Our minds may easily perceive three dimensions, but our perception of the fourth, time, is more difficult to rationalize. It is is on the hazy periphery of our natural experience. But we know it is there; life is inconceivable without it, and so we have invented instruments to measure it, and make it expressible in terms of the other three, a visual representation i.e. the face of a clock. But without memory, any measurements at all are meaningless. Memory and thought are inseparable. I ask, can thought be expressed as a Fourier compression along some n-th dimensional axis?

Now the limitations which we assign to the speed of light are known because of experiments conducted employing relations of the first four dimensional quantities. Our minds may conceive of a speed greater than the speed of light, as easily as we may conceive of an airplane faster than the one we just took a ride in. But light itself, holds the uppermost limit, at least in our current science-based mythology. So, does all matter seem to hold that knowledge. Measurements of distance obey the same relativistic behaviors. But thought, existing on some dimension beyond time, the n-th dimension, could conceivably supersede the velocity of light, or appear to move instantaneously, until some dimension beyond thought, beyond 'n', enables us to design a clock which would measure the top limit of thought-speed.

This topic came up because I had inquired about Fermat's last theorem., and wondered had any general theory of primes been developed yet? Why not I wondered. Jeff said because "God created the integers." and 'Man made the mathematics that relates them all!'. The limits of math may itself  then be the general theory that states that primes cannot be understood, by virtue of its failure to produce a conclusive theory. This hints at fields of inquiry which are forever unyielding, until the bedrock of mathematics gives way. Further work here will reveal valuable reflections on the terrain of thought processes, a map of the metaphysics of knowing.

If so, what dimension will intelligent beings next assume, and in what order greater than the present one, so that what today appears as thought and intelligence, in that future world will appear as simple as a nervous impulse, or as a measurement of some smaller unit of organization.

I relate this to Fredkin's concept of the universe as a computer. If the universe is a computer, and each quantum that occurs, and thus calculates then deforms or modifies its own space-time, then thought, or the biological representation of thought, is the only way for us to know of it. Thinking is not distinct from the natural world, rather it is part of it. One might even say that thought made the natural world. The distinction between man and his universe, is man-made.

A frame of reference creates a special set of conditions for 'thought to exist'. But our thoughts, as they occur, burn calories, and cause us to move our bodies, blink, etc. We significantly alter the thermodynamics of our environment and produce a measurable result on the immediate physical world surrounding us.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was always true. Two children dissecting an insect will certainly destroy the object of their experiment. As the dimensions become smaller, the stage of an electron microscope for instance, the limit at which an experimental method may proceed uninterrupted by mankind becomes smaller. At present that limit has produced quantum theory. But I dare-say science will go further than this.

Chaos theory brings on another dimension. The Mandelbrot set is certainly not chaotic. I doubt if it could produce a plot out of which the probability of plotting any given point is the same for any other point. The degree to which it will avoid certain points is a measure of its order, or inversely, its entropy.

A ruler is used in the first dimension to measure length, distance.  But to have a ruler it must at very least operate in a two dimensional space in order to measure the first. In the case of a chaotic system, one might argue is the final supreme order, a universal white-noise out of which any order could be Fourier filtered, an end-point, as opposed to the place which viewed as the origin of Fredkin's universal computer explosion, the seed of the beginning, or big-bang. It would  be difficult to 'measure' the chaotic-'ness' or entropy, because there is an infinite difference between an expression which systematically and forever avoids certain points, and one that does not discriminate at all, or at least conceptually become infinite. This is the problem with modern mathematics when used to make predictions based on past data sets, which is why math has failed so miserably at predicting financial markets. What is needed is a sort of 'chaotic ruler', i.e. a deformed measuring tool for taking a fix of chaotic phenomena and noumena.

A model for this in the interim, might be thought of as a Mandelbrot ruler. This is do-able now.

The theme of all these ideas, is the notion of 'thought-ness beyond thought'. A kind of infinite quantity that escapes our bodies and propagates according to a different set of rules than the ones that science has already formulated.

All this might be ventured bearing in mind the duality, and incompatibility of relativity, and quantum mechanics.

The derivative of one order leads to the next. From distance, a plot of velocity emerges, from velocity, acceleration and so forth. Time enters here as the quantum against which all else is plotted. The Newtonian principles deform as time intervals approach zero and velocities approach 186,000 miles per second The key to all this however, is derivative, at least the mathematical key is, which in some way a is a historical perspective of the old order, reduced in a Fourier-like manner, to its 'one-wire' component. This historicity itself is the thought process. Standing outside of thought, forming an idea of thought as a discrete dimension unto itself, requires that the historical idea be extended beyond thought, so that it can refer back. We are now talking about the philosophy of philosophy.

I told Jeff it would be fun to test our pattern perceiving abilities to create a multi-noted instrument, where all the visible stars, a huge number, were cast as metal pegs in a giant Swiss music box, and each star on a particular meridian, plucked by its assigned string. The thoughts highest in the sky or furthest, deserving the notes at the highest end of the audible scale, and the those closest or lowest, the lowest, and so forth. so that a giant symphony might be arranged simply by entering the positions and brightnesses of into a computer.

Hardly were the words out of my mouth when I realized I was sentimentally pining for a Kepler-like orrery, to make music with, when the electromagnetic spectrum contains a much richer variety of wavelengths than does physical vibration. Trade those sound waves in for photons!

Light does it. The Music of the Spheres, has always been sung, and still sings.

We have instruments to perceive it, our eyes and mind.

Which moves our hearts when we look up, on a clear, moonless night.

Dying Inside

What does a fish think when swallowed by another?

Suddenly dark, does it think: 'I breathe inside you'?
A fish swimming in an ocean, will die in that ocean,

Does it wonder who it dies inside?

Certainly the parting of the oceans . . . is just part of that fish's notion . . .

We are conscious, and our being is surrounded by the being of another . .
Mustn't we pass through a being once we die?

 . . . or else go on living inside it?

Speaking topologically, of course . . .
 . . . assuming consciousness exists beyond three dimensions.

Perhaps being has no perimeter.

Existence must have dimension:

So . . .

If a fish is swallowed . . . in three dimensions, by another fish,
Then its body must pass through the body of the fish that eats it . .
The life . . it’s soul . . . . . is part of something dimensionless . . .

or is it?

From where it swims, it views our heart, like . . .

adding milk to tea,
taking sand home from the beach.
rescuing bugs.

I am swimming . . . it is light
There is a flicker of something bright
I am swimming, it is wet
But cannot move my self just yet . . .

What does a mosquito see?
the moment a swallow flattens it,
against the roof of its swailed beak,

a brief impulse
to the swallow's brain
as it dies . . . inside . . .

I could get around some Chinese food right about now . .
I'll take it in . .
I sometimes eat venison . .
Oh, dear me . . .

I wonder who I am,
as I die inside you.

The Perimeter of Consciousness

Euclid teaches us that a point along either a straight or curved line on a graph possesses location, but has no dimension. A point by definition, is dimensionless. Unless it is a 'hypothetical' point on a plane, in space, multidimensional space, or space time, a point must have an exact location.

A point may therefor exist in topologies of more than three dimensions. A speck of dust at the bottom of a teacup may exist at a single instant, but the moment its life extends longer than an instant, its space-time is not a point. It is a creature of four dimensions, a point of three, living along a line in a fourth.

I leap from this, as crazed as a man attempting to trace the origins of gossip - consciousness must have dimension!

Just as the shadow of a knitting needle upon a tabletop defines its flat space, or an apple floats in a barrel of water, so consciousness rests against the broad back of space-time, aware that its own dimension bulges, a tumescence growing from a limitless universe of dimension entirely unseen by us, unmeasured, unclaimed, and unconquered. We nibble at the fringes of a vast medium, from which we draw sustenance.

So, if like bergs floating in an Arctic sea we are part below the surface, part above, what medium does our consciousness float within?

As a worker (of a previous age) who pauses and leans his back against a giant oak at midday, looking out upon fields upon which he has labored, consciousness focuses its perceptions upon the realm of the senses, through which it receives knowledge and information about the world. The front of our consciousness so to speak, is the world that we perceive.

And what is the broad trunk of the oak upon which we rest our backs? Is it akin to the part of the iceberg that plunges deep into the water unseen by anyone? Is it the same as the spine of the needle stuck into something that protrudes above its own narrow shadow?

The rear unseen edge of consciousness must be super-consciousness, a part of something greater to which we all belong. All conscious being float in the same universe, and while our senses provide different sets of facts about different parts of that universe, the part to which our conscious clod clings, is a whole-earth of awareness, a multi-dimensional super-volume of space-time-that may not be characterized by our senses at all, and consults instead with us through our dreams.

We act upon the world. Our dreams act upon us.

Why our dreams?

Because just as we receive news of the immediate universe through the senses (the apple senses the water that it floats within), so the back of our awareness must interact with the super conscious body of which it is an outgrowth. We are but mycellia, our existence really is more of our dreams than of our senses. More of the earth than of the air where the fruited body pokes its head. And the language of our eternal darkness is lit brighter than midday by the power of dreams, and myth.

For purposes of this model there is a 'conscious' dimension, just as there is a height to the knitting needle above the table, or, just as there is a fractal dimension for all topological forms.

Pursuing this argument for the sake of play only, if the conscious dimension of the universe that we perceive with our senses is 4, then the conscious dimension of our own consciousness is at least 5, and the conscious dimension of that which our consciousness backs against, i.e. super-consciousness is greater than 6.

Therefor our conscious 'body' has a perimeter, and that 'edge' may be described in part by all numbers greater than 5 but less than 6.

Edge effect, where birds and deer come out of the forest to feed. Why is it that sunlit places in nature are always the most dangerous for small creatures . . . . and forest is safety?

The fierceness of a prairie storm. Cormack McCarthy's pilgrims, whirled like dervishes into tornadoes which dropped like angry fingers of God, and cast them across the mountains, dashed to bits along with their words.

There is always some vortex or leak, connecting separate topologies. Each universe has the means of supplying material to another.

While it may seem frivolous to pursue such a rigid topology to something we cannot apply measurement to, bear with me while I list the advantages of such an exercise.

a) Once we admit to a perimeter to a conscious set, we can allow that consciousness has no limit in dimensional size, so long as the perimeter 'recognizes' itself. That defines consciousness AS a recognition of a border, between itself and something 'else' of another dimension. Consciousness if you like is the edge of where four dimensions meet five. It's where forest and prairie meet.

b) Self-recognition is a feature of consciousness. That we know. Reducing it to mathematics makes it easy to discuss just as the numbers 1 and 2 will be forever different. Is death therefor simply a relinquishing of one's grip upon all dimensions of four or less, and returning the contents of fivefold dimensionality to the subconsciousness of six or more?

c) Though we may not measure consciousness as easily as we may measure a piece of plywood, measurements of space and time may only be performed by beings of a higher dimensionality.

So alas we come to the perimeter of this exercise. The teacup we live within is paper thin.

It broadens to the sky. It contains hot liquid. The forces of nature clench its contents tightly within its boundaries, but it may be upended at any time. . . . and though the contents will be lost, the teacup remains . . . a shell . . . a memory.

And when the teacup breaks, its shards will scatter. But some being will perceive them as whole.

And when the shards return their atoms into the realm of lost teacups?

The fish looses itself within the body of another. The tea you spilled yesterday joins the tea of all time. And I breath Thomas Jefferson's air as do you.

Where IS Consciousness? What MAKES us Conscious?

Turn over any stone, molecule, cell, or anthill, open the cover of a book, or the backplate of a computer, and you will not find a bit of consciousness anywhere. You will be rewarded for your efforts as much, perhaps more, if you remove a man hole cover from a city street.

Go looking inside the brain of a human being and you will only see stuff. Probe around with an electrode and you may get a response, but you'll not notice to what particularly, or why the response occurs.

Is this a bias? Are these futile searches simply proof that we don't understand consciousness at all?

You will notice a generalized electrochemical activity in areas of the brain in response to certain stimuli. We have mapped 'locations' where the brain seems to do its processing. The Frontal Lobe is associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving, the Parietal Lobe associated with movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli, and so forth.

The purpose of this essay is not to review where modern psychologists have mapped responses to familiar faces, colors, sights, thoughts, or memories 'occurring' in the brain. Rather I'm observing that our mappings of consciousness, are for the most part self-serving. Having observed activity in the human brain while we think, and also experienced subjective consciousness simultaneously, we won't admit for instance, that worms might be also be conscious, albeit on a different level. Since we've assumed consciousness is a product of the mind/brain, it is located in the brain and therefor it cannot exist elsewhere.

Consciousness as an activity, i.e. thinking about something other than what one is seeing, is proof of subjective consciousness. Consciousness for a Western thinker, is a materialist concept. It's the one quantity that has no matter, needs no further investigation, since it is proof of itself. [Descartes, "I think therefor I am".] Since Decartes and Newton, materialists confined their energies to investigations of nature as matter exhibiting behaviors, that can be described via mathematics.

But have we given the consciousness of animals a fair shot? Certainly not, and while advances in psychology have postulated levels of consciousness in other creatures our scholarly culture is fairly dismissive of consciousness outside the human realm. Yet is is known ravens reason extremely well, they devise games to amuse themselves. Cobras remember faces. Our materialist Homo sapiens centered philosophy is slowly having to admit to faults in our paradigm.

If definitions of consciousness are thus ever expanding, and so long as they expand continuously and continue to embarrass the current generation of science, one can be assured that whatever our definition of consciousness, it is inadequate. The fundamental assumptions of science change continuously, this means by definition, the picture provided by science at any moment is incomplete.

The act of sight involves many levels of information filtration, suppression, and conformation to images rooted in experience. We do not see images the same way as a camera image supplied by the eye at all. That's just the sensory organ that does bear some similarities to a camera. But for human sight, the powerful organ is the brain, run by a highly subjective and complicated process, as unique and creative as remembering or replaying a powerful experience.

We do imagine that our mental perambulations occur in our head, within our brains. This indeed is what our science has taught us. And I agree. But I raise this obvious point simply to be able to counter that the Ancient Egyptians did not believe this at all. These were advanced human beings capable of elegant technologies, to whom the essence of a man was not located in the head or brains at all, but rather the liver stomach, lungs, and intestines. The Sons of Horus as they were called, were protected by four Gods assigned to their care after death, Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi, and Qebehsenuef. A dead pharaoh's four essential organs would have been put in jars resembling each of these gods for reassembly and rebirth.

The pharaoh's brain though, thought to be the origin of mucus, was discarded.

I raise this point to stress our notion that consciousness resides in the brain, is first and foremost a learned concept, proceeding from a science that has taught us that the brain is the body's computer. Had we been taught that our imaginings reside or originated in the heart, (still assumed by many to be the origins of love) we'd probably believe it.

So while we may sincerely believe that consciousness is a product of the brain, we also know that some brains may be technically alive, but cease to produce the signals of consciousness that modern science looks for with electroencephalograms, CAT scans and other forms of non-invasive monitoring of brain activity. I point to instances of the so called 'brain dead' victims of accidents, or the 'near dead' from disease, or even monks who are so deep in mediation they can't be aroused by outside stimuli.

Consciousness has no substance, quantity. We not isolated bits of it in a jar, and haven't produced means of storing it. It we define it as energy it seems refuses to play to the rules of electromagnetism and defies description by advanced mathematics.

Wait? Is this disconnect with matter really true? When I replay a video on YouTube am I not engaging in correspondence with an inert form of stored memory? No consciousness there right?

So what are the boundaries of consciousness? If we cut the mind away from all exterior stimuli, eventually it will cease to function. Does this mean that consciousness is to a degree reliant upon a semi-conscious exterior world?

It might be we have to enlarge the notion of consciousness to any system that processes information and energy. Yet this leaves a ton of unanswered questions.

No science has yet revealed where consciousness goes after death, or even after brain death, when the other organs may continue to function. It's as mysterious to our 21st Century science as it would have been to 17th Century materialists. But pagan Native Americans did not have doubts about this issue. Neither did the Ancient Greeks. Mythos and religion provided a structure for knowing. It seems where we are in the unfortunate position of knowing we don't know.

Consciousness might be described as distinctly subjective experience. So if a tree falls in a forest, does not the rest of the forest take note of this trees demise? Don't the birds hear it? Doesn't the ground give birth to new trees to take its place. Don't funghi rush in to decompose the dead limbs?

Is this not a display of consciousness by a system, by an ecology?

A dichotomy of matter and spirit has long divided the philosophies of East and West. Whereas Western scientific materialism has studied the universe from the vantage point of matter, its behaviors, mass, and interactions with fields that are hidden from human view such as electromagnetism, and gravity, doesn't mean that we discount the existence of gravity.

Could it be that our refuge, home base of 'safe thought' has always been decidedly and profoundly materialist? We see an inanimate universe. But yes we believe in matter. We sense, or at least believe that our senses tell us of of matter's existential being. We do not accord the same belief to consciousness. We refuse to grant it the same reality as a lump of rock.

Most modern cognitive psychologists shirk from the problem of consciousness. Those that face it head on, do so with an elaborate chimera . . claiming that it's entirely 'illusion'. But the 'illusion' they speak of smells more of 'delusion' because essentially they seek to deprive consciousness of essence, of fundamental reality, not material reality, but a permanence, a pervasiveness that may be as common in the universe as matter itself.

Fields of gravity, strong, weak forces, and electromagnetism are not as accessible to our senses as say the weight or imagined permanence of a stone. Our belief system extends to edges of forces and fields which are invisible, and we use physics, mathematics, to create the bridge of understanding of what we can't see. Laws of gravity, magnetism, and optics connect a world that can be sensed with the world that cannot.

Indian philosophy on the other hand views matter and consciousness as equal and opposite forces, yin and yang as it were, one not being able to exist without the other. Without consciousness no matter. Without matter no consciousness. Matter is 'enlivened' by spirit. Without consciousness matter has no meaning.

This leave Western physics in a quandary, left hoping to discover proof of consciousness such as might be written in equations. David Chalmers calls for a new set of ideas that can simplify the dimension of consciousness, and describe perhaps with a new set of variables, as matter and energy are described simply by modern physics. Most certainly our understanding of the cosmos has come against a 'Hard Problem' as Chalmers puts it. We can explain most things, but not the consciousness we possess as living beings.

And indeed it may be we cannot explain consciousness because possibly we incorrectly assume, or have assumed historically, that we Homo sapiens are the only ones that possess it. Only recently have we admitted with modern psychology that other mammals dream, think and are perhaps conscious.

Should we not think of consciousness as a dimension that is spread throughout the universe, varies in intensity, just as light and gravity vary in intensity. Shouldn't we extend the aspects of consciousness to beings greater than man as well as all beings smaller.

And, should we not consider what the fundamental units of consciousness are? A photon does exhibit semi-conscious behavior when subjected to twin photon experiments in a quantum  mechanical analysis. If the photon, or all leptons which are universal exhibit perplexing behavior that seems to mirror human action, then can we not extend a field of consciousness right down to the sub-atomic level?

Consciousness seems to break the back of modern physics, which is hopelessly materialist in origin. Our belief system took legs with the materialism of Descartes and Voltaire thru Isaac Newton who endowed modern science with a notion that God was the architect of all things, but that to understand God one needed to study nature.

God as the unseen element, the misunderstood dimension, persists in Western science up through Einstein, who said when face with the prospect of quantum mechanics, "God does not play dice."

Belief systems persist.

Forget all you know or think you know about consciousness - it's a topic that may not fully be understood by earth organisms. We believe we know consciousness exists, but as I shall show you, the converse of that statement is not knowable; the 'knowledge' of a 'state' of self-awareness may only be an illusion.

But the illusion, for the living, is what is most real. Here I don't speak of illusion as a psychosomatic phenomena, or a electro-biological bit of chimera, a phantom-scope within the brain. Rather I think of illusion as meaning something much more profound. The extreme product of thought, of mental activity, of consciousness itself.

Consciousness manifests itself through illusion. It produces illusion. It produces dreams. It produces movies, equations, novels, short stories.

Philosophers may tell you that consciousness is the product of a process that has no dimension, . . . that consciousness may reflect on what is not conscious, but what is not conscious may not reflect upon what is.

I argue that stones and pools of distilled water are as conscious as we are, but not in the way we are and believe that what is missing from this discussion is an admission that human thought processes are extremely limited, that most of our picture of the world that we carry about us is there to save us from the emergency of not knowing.

Certainty is comforting. All beings must possess a quantity of it.

Most human knowledge at its periphery, is in fact a bunch of blank pages where just about anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's.

Do physicists fully understand matter and energy? They do not. They have equations that model and describe matter and energy, but this is not understanding.

The Ancient Greeks possessed a number of cosmologies radically different from our own today, but those ancient philosophers were no less certain of what they felt they knew.

Are we getting closer to a complete understanding of the mysteries of the universe? Of creation, of dark matter? Yes on some matters, but within a frame of reference that is decidedly human. This leaves a universe full of mystery, with much left to be discovered.

I may stub my toe and see evidence of physical damage. Knock me on the head - if I black out one may argue that consciousness is a 'product' of the brain. Maybe so. Does this mean consciousness is 'in' the brain. Or that consciousness was 'made' by the brain? This is difficult. Go looking in the brain and you will find activity, yes, the cells there are doing something, burning energy, communicating with electro-chemical signals . . . but I want more than that. Find me the part that says: “I am, and I know that I am!”

This you shall not find.

Proving the lack of existence of Consciousness may be near impossible. 'Prove to me that a pebble is NOT self-aware!' . . . This IS a problem.

Go looking inside a pebble, and you will find atoms, in slow rates of decay. They behave perfectly. Our physics admits that within their bodies, laws of energy are conserved. The atoms decay slowly, emitting photons. Look inside a heap of garden soil being struck by the midday sun, and you will find activity of a much more lively nature.

Photons come and go, molecules break down, recombine, give off electrons, fuse with other atoms, et cetera. Bacteria live, die multiply. It's a massive supercomputer at work. . . take ten pounds of garden soil and you have a computer the size of the human brain.

That soil is not designed to do the same things that a human brain can do. But it can rear a corn plant better than the human brain could.

Probe a portion of the human brain with an electrode, and you may elicit a response from the owner, a memory perhaps. The patient may experience a smell, a lost love, or a deja vu.

Now go there with a knife, and remove that diseased section of the brain. This has been done with patients suffering from malignant tumors.

And upon doing that you will find the memory is still there. Only some other function, interest or aptitude may be lost.

Now take the same patients and let them smell a rose and some will experience much the same result.

In other words how, in the absence of proof of where consciousness resides, can we not be sure that some of that consciousness is in the stimulus, as much as what has been stimulated?

Does this mean consciousness is partly in the rose?

Consciousness is clearly not what we think it is. . nor where we think it is.

We believe it resides in the brain. . but can we be sure? And what makes consciousness happen?

Surely self-awareness is more than a badge earned when one's computational power achieves critical size. Whatever the mass, of a Chihuahua . . (small brain, very intelligent by human measurement) or a Great Dane (larger brain, not so intelligent), a meerkat, or a giant ball of herring in the sea, consciousness and intelligence are not a quantities that one can locate, covet, or keep.

Some worms may be divided in two pieces and completely regenerate, and insofar as a worm may be admitted to having some degreee of consciousness, one may argue that by dividing a worm in two pieces one has produced two 'pieces' of consciousness, where one existed previously. As soon as one relates the consciousness to the mass one is in trouble. Does such an act obey a law of Conservation of Consciousness . . . two bits where one existed previously, does each bit have half as much consciousness? Surely I am not thinking that a worm is conscious in the same way that a human is. . . but it has nerves, that function in much the same way.

Remove a worm-sized bit of brain from a human being and there will be little change. Surprisingly, data from accident victims who have lost large portions of their brain suggest a bizarre kind of resilience to consciousness itself. . . while psychological trauma may do far greater damage.

A holographic effect, where the contents of our 'minds' seems to be spread and conserved throughout the whole seems to be at work.

And what of the modern mind, which makes use of computers, digital assistants, iPhones, and vast arrays of servers to extend the reach of his consciousness. Without these 'lifeless' entities, we would indeed perish in a kind of conscious death. We need these things to think what we do. Our consciousness has extended into libraries, museums, Google, Facebook all part of our modern consciousness.

All of this seems to suggest that consciousness is in some way a by-product of the physical and electro-chemical activities of the human body, a fragile, and ethereal quantity that has little direct connection to any specific locus in the body, but seems, on the whole, to be associated with the brain.

While consciousness may seem to obey laws similar to that of holography - two identical holograms with half the resolution result when an original is cut in two with a pair of scissors. Consciousness is hardly so simple. Studies of psychiatric patients whose Corpus callosum (the nervous tissue separating the two hemispheres of the brain) was severed by a primitive surgical practice administered by doctors in the West during the 1950's and '60s hardly puts the issue to rest. Such patients continue to converse, walk, and talk. Specific behaviors however were affected negatively. Consciousness was present, but in two places - the patient had in essence two 'brains'. Whereas the operations may have been indicated to relieve schizophrenia, evidence of a 'split' personality persisted.

Networking science may provide analogies most useful for understanding consciousness and self-awareness as shared systems. The human beings behind a PC at each 'node' of the Internet, are at least from a human perspective, the only conscious or self-aware components of the internet that we know of.. Humans are in charge. As of yet, no massive computer system has conspired for ideological reasons, against man its creator. Massive amounts of computational power dominate the the internet, far from the remove of individual minds. . . . yet the Internet is an extension of the human nervous system, and that is all that it is.

And so is partly conscious?

With biological death we'll note that consciousness seems to disappear once and for all. Yet few traditional cultures would admit this. All mythologies point to the immortality of the soul. Evidence of 'transference' after death, where the contents of the psyche of the departed seem to rush into the living are well documented.

Rituals of death worldwide are remarkably similar in this respect - procedures designed to provide a safe journey of the 'conscious remains' to another world. Paranormal experiences, ghosts, contact with previous 'lives' further leavens the notion that consciousness, the soul, the Self, all are part of a quantity that flows, body to body, mind to mind, animating matter, without being material at all.

For all our science we seem to be rattling around the doors of the Vedanta, and Shivaism. Matter and spirit.

-:)(:-

Where IS thought? What MAKES thought?

Turn over an anthill, and you will not find a piece of consciousness anywhere. You won't find the central cortex of thought, or with a crude implement like a spade be able to determine what the critical size of the anthill is for maintaining itself as an organism.

Subjective thought doesn't exhibit substance, or quantity. It is not weigh-able, or measurable in any material way. The self-reflection of intelligence raises thorny issues the very moment we associate self-awareness and consciousness, with matter.

Forget all you know or think you know about consciousness - it's a topic that may never fully be understood by earth organisms such as ourselves. We believe it 'exists', but as I shall show the converse of that is not knowable, therefor such 'knowledge' of a 'state' of self-awareness may only be an illusion.

Reductio ad absurdio, we live, think, and dream through consciousness.

I may stub my toe and see evidence of physical damage. Knock me on the head - if I black out one might argue that consciousness is a 'product' of that part of the body. Maybe so. Does this mean consciousness is 'in' the brain. Or that consciousness was 'made' by the brain?

This is difficult.

Proving the in-existence of Consciousness may near impossible. 'Prove to me that a pebble is NOT self-aware!' . . . Now this IS a problem.

So where does consciousness reside? What makes consciousness happen?

Surely self-awareness is more than a badge earned when one's computational power achieves critical size. Whatever the mass, of a Chihuahua . . (very intelligent) or a Great Dane (not so intelligent), a meerkat, or a swimming ball of herring in the sea . . . consciousness is not a quantity that one can locate, covet or keep. It cannot be hoarded, guarded, or labeled. Some worms may be divided in two pieces and completely regenerate, and insofar as a worm is conscious, one may argue that by dividing a worm in two pieces one has produced two 'pieces' of consciousness, where one existed previously. As soon as one relates the consciousness to the mass one is in trouble. Does such an act obey a law of Conservation of Consciousness . . . two bits where one existed previously, does each bit have half as much consciousness? Surely I am not thinking that a worm is conscious in the same way that a human is. . . but it has nerves, that function in much the same way.

Remove a worm-sized bit of brain from a human being and there will be little change. Surprisingly, data from accident victims who have lost large portions of their brain suggest a bizarre kind of resilience to consciousness itself. . . while psychological trauma may do far greater damage.

All of this seems to suggest that consciousness is in some way a by-product of the physical and electro-chemical activities of the human body, a fragile, and ethereal quantity that has little direct connection to any specific locus in the body, but seems, on the whole, to be associated with the brain.

While consciousness may seem to obey laws similar to that of holography - two identical holograms with half the resolution result when one is cut in two with a pair of scissors. Consciousness is hardly so simple. Studies of psychiatric patients whose Corpus callosum (the nervous tissue separating the two hemispheres of the brain) was severed, hardly put the issue to rest. Such patients could converse, walk, talk. Specific behaviors however were affected negatively. Consciousness was present, in two places - the patient had in essence two 'brains'. Whereas the operations may have been indicated to relieve schizophrenia, aspects of a 'split' personality persisted.

Networking science may provide analogies most useful for understanding consciousness and self-awareness as shared systems. The human beings behind a PC at each 'node' of the Internet, are at least from a human perspective, the only conscious or self-aware components of the internet that we know of.. Humans are in charge. As of yet, no massive computer system has conspired for ideological reasons, against it's owner or creator. Massive amounts of computational power dominate the the internet, far from the remove of individual minds. . . . yet so far as we can tell the Internet is an extension of the human nervous system, and that is all that it is.

With biological death we note that consciousness seems to disappear once and for all.
Yet few traditional cultures would even admit this. All mythologies point to the immortality of the soul. Rituals of death worldwide are remarkably similar in this respect - procedures designed to provide a safe journey of the 'conscious remains' to another world. Paranormal experiences, ghosts, contact with previous 'lives' further leaven the notion that consciousness, the soul, the Self, all are part of a quantity that flows, body to body, mind to mind, animating matter, without being material at all.

Language, or the energy within food, or sunlight are similar. . . energy released from matter .. . cannot be seen. But without it life would stop. Ditto language. Ditto thoughts, dreams, daydreams, hopes, desires.

There seems to be individual consciousness and group consciousness without clear distinctions. A group may easily become 'aware' of something whilst an individual cannot. Yet understanding the boundary between group and individual awareness is as futile as a search for the water in yesterday's cup of tea.

However these last statements presuppose that your consciousness and my consciousness are to some degree separate. And I defy anyone to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are in fact separate, and not the same to begin with.

I breathe air, you breathe air. . is the air we breathe the same? . . . Yes and no .. . the consciousness identity issue is something like that . . . we have a 'lease' so to speak on consciousness, a lease granted when we took occupancy of our bodies. . ..

Yet it exists. So where does it exist? The question where assumes a material dimension when consciousness is not to begin with a material quantity. The body you say. If so, does it have a locus? Leonardo thought so. If it does or doesn't, whose is it? Is the consciousness that lives in you yours even to begin with? Where did it come from?


While there exists a system of thought that enables one to turn ANY other system of thought upside down or inside out, I'm not for a moment arguing that any of this could in any way be considered true by us. . . but I AM saying that systems of thought are compelling to their users. If I provide you with a system for measuring shoe sizes, and if everyone is using it you will to, even though it may have it's faults. It may for example not cover the range of foot widths, or the huge variety of foot shapes between the sizes of 7 and 10. Yet you will use the system that has been provided, but you will only buy shoes that you can return, if they don't fit.

So, what you are learning now is not so much something that will be debunked, or proven wrong, or dismissed as primitive. Rather it is the egg of a system of thought that gives rise to another such system. We cannot properly understand Darwin unless we properly understand Creationism, and without that we need an understanding of religion and all the changes that it went through.

I am not a Creationist, but for the same reasons that I am not a believer in God creating the earth in seven days, how can I properly consider myself a Darwinist? Perhaps a temporary Darwinist, but a skeptical Darwinist at that, as I'm certain that in due time, Darwin will be de-throned.

This is the evolution of thought within a historical perspective.

But what of beings that might be able to see time much in the same way we look at a landscape? As earthlings, possessed of three dimensions of visual measurement, and a fourth, time, which is not visible, surely there must exist life forms that easily perceive four dimensions with a kind of sight, and perceive some other fifth dimensionality, as a kind of fiction, much in the same way as we view time.

So what is that fifth dimension? Is that consciousness itself?

We see space (1,2,3 dimensions), we think time (a 4th), but we feel conscious (our 5th).

Asking the question then 'where is consciousness' is like looking for time in a bowl of soup. A 5th dimensional quantity cannot be placed into a 4 dimensional space. Have we been looking for self-awareness in all the wrong places? Is consciousness, rather than being a quantity which we can't see, is instead a quantity which in turn sees us?

Cause and effect? . . . Throw it away. . . .That's a vestigial necessity for thinking about time, whilst being unable to see time, or consciousness. The study of Consciousness lacks an Aristotelian innovation such as cause and effect, first cause, final cause and all that. The subject of Awareness has no such material bedrock.

So I say this. . . All of the "I" that is' thinking. . . . it's all real, and it's the only thing that is really real. The tag 'conscious' or 'self-aware or 'intelligent' may be thought of more as a endorsement by a lower collective that seeks consistency and reassurance in it's system of the moment.

Suppose I were to postulate that language is a banking card. Useful for getting cash but little else. That we evolve languages, learn them, and then throw them away when they prove inadequate at providing an income and that dead languages are the non-profitable languages which no longer provide for their users.

Here's another - suppose you were a being that didn't believe anything unless it was completely and wholly inconsistent with everything else that you already believed!

I'll leave this one for you to work out.