I’ve borrowed today’s blog title from Roger Penrose (b.1931), a “British mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics“. He argues that consciousness is “beyond anything that neuroscience, biology, or physics can now explain” (Nautilus). His ideas appeal to me.
The human brain is an organ that we can feel, see and touch inside our heads. The brain is like computer hardware. Consciousness is like software that is downloaded between conception and birth. You cannot feel, see or touch this “software”. We just know it’s there else we wouldn’t be functioning (eg, moving).
Our bodies consist of about 37.2 trillion individual cells. Still, we think, feel and believe that we are one (1) organism. That is the impact of our consciousness (my blogs). In my view, our consciousness defines us and our bodies are a vessel to accommodate our consciousness.
Consciousness is a bulk term, like Love (eg, agape, eros, philautia, philia, storge, xenia). We know that all lifeforms are conscious. Perhaps, even all matter is conscious. Moreover, “one of the oldest philosophical theories”, panpsychism (my blogs), argues that the entire Universe is conscious. The quantum theory may then indeed be the link between a conscious Universe and conscious humans.
Example: the varying levels of consciousness may be compared to the various levels of autonomous driving. Achieving level 5 of a self-driving car may still take many more years – or may never ever be achieved (eg, CNET, the Drive, TNW). Human consciousness may be compared to level 5 of autonomous driving.
Consciousness has 4 levels: (1) conscious, (2) unconscious, (3) subconscious and (4) superconscious. Levels 1 to 3 have each 4 dimensions: (a) known knowns or knowledge, (b) known unknowns or intuition, (c) unknown knowns or beliefs, and (d) unknown unknowns or imagination. In my view, only conscious knowledge (ie, 1a) can be “fully” automated. More would be dangerous. My diagram below may help understanding the above.
As always, the most important question is why because everything follows Why (my blogs). I suppose that consciousness is our self-learning and self-teaching operating “software”, like a conscious baby is becoming a conscious adult. Another word for this phenomenon would be Evolution (my blogs).
When we think about consciousness, we should ask ourselves: what is hardware (ie, 37.2 trillion cells) without software (ie, consciousness) ? I suppose, it’s like “matter that doesn’t matter”.
I’m Conscious (2019) by Carla dal Forno
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Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise.
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