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My rambling thoughts on the combination problem, from the starting point of proto-consciousness in all particles.

When particles are in contact, their physical properties interact. Because of what we call physics, particles join to become atoms. Because of what we call chemistry, atoms join to become molecules. Because of what we call biology, molecules join to become life.

Suppose when particles are in contact, their mental properties, or property - proto-consciousness - also interacts. Perhaps what one particle’s proto-consciousness is experiencing is shared with what the other particle’s proto-consciousness is experiencing.

I wonder if there could be laws of psychics, as there are laws of physics, that govern the joining of individual particles’ proto-consciousness. And then higher levels of psychic laws, as the physical has chemistry and biology, governing how the smaller groups merge into ever larger groups. Could a particle’s proto-conscious experience be shared with only particles it is in physical contact with? Does it reach farther, as matter’s gravity reaches beyond what it touches? Does a particle’s experience add to its neighbor’s experience, even if only partially, so each has a combined experience? Or do the two form a single, larger, combined experience?

There’s not a lot going on with rocks. Every particle is experiencing pretty much the same thing as every other particle. Those on the outer layer experience contact with air, rain, sunshine, etc., which those in the interior do not. But that is only different because of what is being done to them. Which, as they are part of a rock, doesn’t have much of an effect on them. There isn’t a lot of differentiation within a rock. The particles are not part of any system or process, other than things like the very long-term process of erosion. So, if (for argument’s sake) all of a rock’s particles’ proto-consciousness had combined into one mental unit, the rock’s “consciousness” would be nothing more significant than what any of its individual particles’ proto-consciousness already had.

In Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam examine different types of minds. Molecule Minds. Neurons Minds. Module Minds. Absolutely fascinating to see the complexity grow, and the capabilities along with it.

But it’s all mechanical. We know intelligence does not require consciousness. And in the beginning, there is no intelligence. Just stimulus and response.

What if proto-consciousness is providing its rudimentary experience right from the beginning? Unlike a rock, different particles in even the simplest living things are doing/involved in/part of very different systems and processes. They are having different experiences. And they are sharing these different experiences with each other. How might such sharing work? Unlike a rock’s particles sharing their experiences, the combination would be something that no single particle’s proto-consciousness had on its own.

What might come of that? A particle that is experiencing one thing is also vicariously experiencing other things. And so many particles are in motion. Blood flows; signals travel along nerves; muscles move, taking skin and bone along for the ride; etc. A particle has an experience, just by existing. A rock’s particles have that. But these particles also have experiences of being a part of chemical reactions, coming into contact with uncountable other particles that are in different, sometimes very different, circumstances. All sharing their proto-conscious experiences with all the uncountable others. Sometimes cycling repeatedly, sometimes moving on.

Might something emerge from all that uncountable proto-conscious sharing? Unlike physical properties, the nature of proto-consciousness is experience. Physical properties of particles combine, and many different macro-properties energy that are not present in the micro. The property of liquidity is not present in a single particle, atom, or molecule. Same for the process of flight. We could name quite a few other things. When the experiential property of proto-consciousness combines, might human consciousness be something it adds up to?

My thought would be, how can we avoid the combination problem altogether?

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the kings horses and all the kings men,
Couldn’t put humpty together again.

And so it is with trying to build up consciousness from parts.


It is the problem with 10,000 things,

Instead. Start with the one, and see the ten-thousand things within the one.

Like waves in an ocean.

Or a wave function.

Our minds divide, our minds differentiate. Our minds find patterns, but patterns are themselves arbitrary.

Like Conway’s game of life.

Who is to say which pattern is “real”? The one which persists the longest?

Maybe it’s all noise.

But we choose which noise is important to pay attention to, and in doing so, we divide experience.

Have you ever just taken in experience without paying attention to anything?

Attention is active, awareness is receptive.

Awareness does not differentiate.

There is an already complete aspect of experience. Just don’t name things. Don’t categorise things, even in the slightest.

Then if you can do that, you can see nothing needs to be assembled, it’s already complete, our minds just disassemble it so as to work on it actively.

Just my thoughts, I also like your ideas.

You remind me of Eknath Easwaran in his introduction to his translation of The Bhagavad Gita:

Later philosophers explained maya in surprisingly contemporary terms. The mind, they said, observes the so-called outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consists of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because these are the conditions of perception. In a word, the mind looks at unity and sees diversity; it looks at what is timeless and reports transience. And in fact the percepts of its experience are diverse and transient; on this level of experience, separateness is real. Our mistake is in taking this for ultimate reality, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except his dream.

Nowhere has this “mysterious Eastern notion” been formulated more succinctly than in the epigram of Ruysbroeck: “We behold what we are, and we are what we behold.” When we look at unity through the instruments of the mind, we see diversity; when the mind is transcended, we enter a higher mode of knowing – turiya, the fourth state of consciousness – in which duality disappears. This does not mean, however, that the phenomenal world is an illusion or unreal. The illusion is the sense of separateness.