01: WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2025 4:55 pm
The definition of consciousness is very important here. Of course, it is usually important. But I think moreso here. I know many will always think the idea I'm championing is nonsense. But the definition of consciousness needs to be clear for those willing to consider the idea.
In short: Consciousness is subjective experience. I have heard that wording more than any other, but I prefer Annaka Harris' "felt experience". I think feeling is what it all means. When Nagel asks "What is it like to be a bat?", the question is really: "What does it feel like to be a bat?" Not how it feels physically, although that may be a part of it. Not how it feels emotionally, although that may be a part of it. It's the overall feeling of being.
Really, that's it. If you want detail, then you don't understand this idea. There is no detail to consciousness. Let's see if some quotes help...
In this article, Goff writes:
It's the same situation with consciousness. When we compare two different things, it's not the consciousness of the things that's different; it's the nature of the conscious things that are different.
We think of consciousness from a human perspective. It's the only perspective we have, after all. But our mistake is we have decided that what we are conscious of is what consciousness is. We think; we are aware, we are self-aware; etc. So we decided consciousness means thinking, awareness, self-awareness, etc. And we try to figure out which other things are conscious, meaning do they have enough thinking, awareness, and self-awareness to be considered conscious.
That is all wrong thinking.
Let's start at the beginning, with particles. What is the nature of a particle? Well, it's the most basic thing there is. Just simple existence. Mass, charge, spin, whatever the specific particle has. Those things are what a particle subjectively experiences. It does not know it is experiencing these things, because it does not have mental capacities.
Humans are conscious. What are we conscious of? We take in sensory data. Photons hit the retina, and information of the event goes to the brain. Not only the information that the event took place, but specific information of the event. Vibrations in the air hit the ear, and information of the event goes to the brain. These physical processes are all joined together as one entity. Which means they are conscious - they have felt experience - as one entity. And that entity experiences photons hitting retina and sending signals to the brain as vision. It experiences vibrations in the air hitting the ear as hearing.
I have jumped quite a distance from particles to humans. Let me go back and explain some things.
Every group of particles does not experience as a group. A rock does not experience as a rock. A rock has... quite a few particles. All of which are experiencing their instantaneous memory-less moments. They are all experiencing the same thing, which isn't anything to write home about. There's not much going on. Particles on the surface might experience more light, warmth, physical contact with things that are not part of the rock, and other things, when compared with particles in the interior of the rock. But they aren't doing anything. There Is not even any movement relative to each other. There's nothing there to make the group experience as a group.
Physical proximity isn't enough. even particles that are working as a unit are not necessarily experiencing as a unit. Not if it's only brute, physical activity. Tools with multiple parts that only do physical work are not experiencing as a unit. A windmill grinding grain. An internal combustion engine. A Rube Goldberg Machine. It's all just physical interaction.
So what is needed to make a group of particles conscious - subjectively experience - as a group?
INFORMATION
and that information is processed in the brain. We are conscious of the various processes, and subjectively experience photons of certain wavelengths as red. We subjectively experience vibrations of the air with frequency of
A rock experiences being a rock. What does that entail? Well, not much, from my point of view. A rock doesn't have any mental characteristics or processes. It doesn't think about being a rock. It doesn't have memories of being a rock. It doesn't have preferences of any sort, to any degree, in regards to anything. It doesn't have perceptions, of itself or anything other than itself. It doesn't even have any activity that's what we think of as purely physical. No part of a rock is moving relative to any other part of the rock. If a rock is scratched, the discussion of its experience of the scratch begins and ends with the simple fact that it was scratched. The rock's experience of its existence is different after the scratch, because some of it was scraped away. But there is no discussion of the rock being scratched, because it has no memory, thought, or feeling of the event.
A human experiences being a human. Being human entails very different things than being a rock. A rock is an object. Of course, we are as much physical objects as rocks are. But our consciousness is about far more than just our physical bodies. A human is processes. If a human is scratched, the discussion of their experience is far more than the simple fact that they were scratched. We have all kinds of sensory input, of ourselves and of things not ourselves. We are information processing system upon information processing system, with feedback loop upon feedback loop. These things are not human consciousness. Rather, these things are what humans are conscious of.
I don't know what this line of thinking might lead to. I don't know if it makes any difference to think worms have lesser consciousness and we have greater, or worms have a felt experience of a smaller number of information processing systems and feedback loops and we have felt experience of a larger number of information processing systems and feedback loops. As the saying goes, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? But maybe one of you can take this somewhere significant, or at least interesting.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
In Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness David Chalmers asks:
2) A widely discussed topic is where consciousness begins. Are all species of animals conscious? Are only species with certain features, or certain kind of brains, conscious? Are plants conscious? At what point does a human become conscious? I just saw an article:When Does Consciousness Emerge in Babies? Here's a paragraph:
1) How do we know when infants have a felt experience of physical damage, an experience that we call pain?
2) How do we know when infants have a felt experience of their feedback loops, an experience that we call a sense of self?
If consciousness is everywhere, then processes also experience their own existence. A tornado. An avalanche. A door closing. A ball flying through there air. Wood burning. But, as with any static physical thing, if there are no systems for things like thinking, memory, or making decisions, then there is no understanding or recognition of the experience, and no way of reporting what is experienced.
When I speak of experiencing being a human, I'm referring to experiencing the many processes of which we are composed. The physical brain and body are vital, to be sure. But my consciousness, my experience of myself, is not of ions and membranes, the molecules of neurotransmitters, the length and width of my neurons, or the shape of any structure of my brain. My consciousness is of my brain's activity. The processes. The physical brain and body are the medium of the information processing systems that make us what we are. But it is the processing that we think of as ourselves, and what we wouldn't give up.
IWhen one thing means something else, and an action takes place because of that relationship, the process is conscious. In humans, the many processes are intertwined, are feedback loops, and all function together as one unit. That unit experiences itself as a unit. Traditionally, we call this human consciousness, and many think human consciousness emerges from these processes. But "human consciousness" is actually the felt experience of those processes. Our self-awareness is the felt experience of feedback loops.
If everything subjectively experiences, then I have to think about building blocks and wholes. If an atom of iron experiences being an atom of iron, and it becomes part of a human, it is now part of the experiencing human. Obviously, the human experiences itself as a whole. Is it still experiencing itself as the atom? That idea might not be as crazy as it sounds. The famous split-brain phenomenon of having two consciousness units in one person, as well as confounded twins, are much more extreme than a particle retaining it's individual experience when it becomes part of a bigger unit.
According to this idea, any AI, like everything else, is already conscious. That is, there is subjective experience of being the machinery that has AI. It's a matter of what the AI is experiencing. What most people have usually thought of as "human consciousness" is actually the experience of all the things we are and do. No AI is or does anything close to that, so it can't experience that. Still, it experiences whatever it is. Electricity running through a system that processes certain kinds of information according to it's programming.
From Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged From Chaos, by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:
In Annaka Harris' audiobook Lights On, starting at 25:34 of Chapter 5 The Self (contributed), David Eagleman says:
In short: Consciousness is subjective experience. I have heard that wording more than any other, but I prefer Annaka Harris' "felt experience". I think feeling is what it all means. When Nagel asks "What is it like to be a bat?", the question is really: "What does it feel like to be a bat?" Not how it feels physically, although that may be a part of it. Not how it feels emotionally, although that may be a part of it. It's the overall feeling of being.
Really, that's it. If you want detail, then you don't understand this idea. There is no detail to consciousness. Let's see if some quotes help...
In this article, Goff writes:
In this Ted Talk, Chalmers says:Panpsychism is sometimes caricatured as the view that fundamental physical entities such as electrons have thoughts; that electrons are, say, driven by existential angst. However, panpsychism as defended in contemporary philosophy is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, where to be conscious is simply to have subjective experience of some kind. This doesn’t necessarily imply anything as sophisticated as thoughts.
Of course in human beings consciousness is a sophisticated thing, involving subtle and complex emotions, thoughts and sensory experiences. But there seems nothing incoherent with the idea that consciousness might exist in some extremely basic forms. We have good reason to think that the conscious experiences a horse has are much less complex than those of a human being, and the experiences a chicken has are much less complex than those of a horse. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. But it is also possible that the light of consciousness never switches off entirely, but rather fades as organic complexity reduces, through flies, insects, plants, amoeba, and bacteria. For the panpsychist, this fading-whilst-never-turning-off continuum further extends into inorganic matter, with fundamental physical entities – perhaps electrons and quarks – possessing extremely rudimentary forms of consciousness, which reflects their extremely simple nature.
In Panpsychism in the West, Skrbina writes:Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent, or thinking. You know, it’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, "Aaa! I'm always buzzing around near the speed of light! I never get to slow down and smell the roses!" No, not like that. But the thought is maybe the photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling. Some primitive precursor to consciousness.
The consciousness of different things is not different. Not different kinds of consciousness, and not different degrees of consciousness. There's no such thing as higher consciousness. The differences and details are in the nature of the things experiencing their own existence. Let me try an analogy. Think of consciousness like vision. I can look at a blank sheet of paper. I can look at the Grand Canyon. I can look at my wife. I can look at a Monet painting. I can look at a bolt of lightning racing across the sky. I can look at a blade of grass. My vision does not change depending on what I'm looking at. The things being looked at are what's different.Minds of atoms may conceivably be, for example, a stream of instantaneous memory-less moments of experience.
It's the same situation with consciousness. When we compare two different things, it's not the consciousness of the things that's different; it's the nature of the conscious things that are different.
We think of consciousness from a human perspective. It's the only perspective we have, after all. But our mistake is we have decided that what we are conscious of is what consciousness is. We think; we are aware, we are self-aware; etc. So we decided consciousness means thinking, awareness, self-awareness, etc. And we try to figure out which other things are conscious, meaning do they have enough thinking, awareness, and self-awareness to be considered conscious.
That is all wrong thinking.
Let's start at the beginning, with particles. What is the nature of a particle? Well, it's the most basic thing there is. Just simple existence. Mass, charge, spin, whatever the specific particle has. Those things are what a particle subjectively experiences. It does not know it is experiencing these things, because it does not have mental capacities.
Humans are conscious. What are we conscious of? We take in sensory data. Photons hit the retina, and information of the event goes to the brain. Not only the information that the event took place, but specific information of the event. Vibrations in the air hit the ear, and information of the event goes to the brain. These physical processes are all joined together as one entity. Which means they are conscious - they have felt experience - as one entity. And that entity experiences photons hitting retina and sending signals to the brain as vision. It experiences vibrations in the air hitting the ear as hearing.
I have jumped quite a distance from particles to humans. Let me go back and explain some things.
Every group of particles does not experience as a group. A rock does not experience as a rock. A rock has... quite a few particles. All of which are experiencing their instantaneous memory-less moments. They are all experiencing the same thing, which isn't anything to write home about. There's not much going on. Particles on the surface might experience more light, warmth, physical contact with things that are not part of the rock, and other things, when compared with particles in the interior of the rock. But they aren't doing anything. There Is not even any movement relative to each other. There's nothing there to make the group experience as a group.
Physical proximity isn't enough. even particles that are working as a unit are not necessarily experiencing as a unit. Not if it's only brute, physical activity. Tools with multiple parts that only do physical work are not experiencing as a unit. A windmill grinding grain. An internal combustion engine. A Rube Goldberg Machine. It's all just physical interaction.
So what is needed to make a group of particles conscious - subjectively experience - as a group?
INFORMATION
and that information is processed in the brain. We are conscious of the various processes, and subjectively experience photons of certain wavelengths as red. We subjectively experience vibrations of the air with frequency of
A rock experiences being a rock. What does that entail? Well, not much, from my point of view. A rock doesn't have any mental characteristics or processes. It doesn't think about being a rock. It doesn't have memories of being a rock. It doesn't have preferences of any sort, to any degree, in regards to anything. It doesn't have perceptions, of itself or anything other than itself. It doesn't even have any activity that's what we think of as purely physical. No part of a rock is moving relative to any other part of the rock. If a rock is scratched, the discussion of its experience of the scratch begins and ends with the simple fact that it was scratched. The rock's experience of its existence is different after the scratch, because some of it was scraped away. But there is no discussion of the rock being scratched, because it has no memory, thought, or feeling of the event.
A human experiences being a human. Being human entails very different things than being a rock. A rock is an object. Of course, we are as much physical objects as rocks are. But our consciousness is about far more than just our physical bodies. A human is processes. If a human is scratched, the discussion of their experience is far more than the simple fact that they were scratched. We have all kinds of sensory input, of ourselves and of things not ourselves. We are information processing system upon information processing system, with feedback loop upon feedback loop. These things are not human consciousness. Rather, these things are what humans are conscious of.
I don't know what this line of thinking might lead to. I don't know if it makes any difference to think worms have lesser consciousness and we have greater, or worms have a felt experience of a smaller number of information processing systems and feedback loops and we have felt experience of a larger number of information processing systems and feedback loops. As the saying goes, if you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? But maybe one of you can take this somewhere significant, or at least interesting.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
In Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness David Chalmers asks:
The answer is, because consciousness is a fundamental property of our reality. We don't ask why things have mass, or charge. For the same reason, we don't need to ask why things are conscious. If there was nothing but the physical, it would all go on "in the dark." Why wouldn't it?Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on “in the dark”, free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.
2) A widely discussed topic is where consciousness begins. Are all species of animals conscious? Are only species with certain features, or certain kind of brains, conscious? Are plants conscious? At what point does a human become conscious? I just saw an article:When Does Consciousness Emerge in Babies? Here's a paragraph:
The answer is: All things are conscious. The question never need be asked. A baby is always conscious. The zygote is conscious. The sperm and egg are each conscious. The questions from the article should be:Understanding the experiences of infants has presented a challenge to science. How do we know when infants consciously experience pain, for example, or a sense of self? When it comes to reporting subjective experience, “the gold standard proof is self-report,” says Lorina Naci, a psychologist and a neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. But that’s not possible with babies.
1) How do we know when infants have a felt experience of physical damage, an experience that we call pain?
2) How do we know when infants have a felt experience of their feedback loops, an experience that we call a sense of self?
If consciousness is everywhere, then processes also experience their own existence. A tornado. An avalanche. A door closing. A ball flying through there air. Wood burning. But, as with any static physical thing, if there are no systems for things like thinking, memory, or making decisions, then there is no understanding or recognition of the experience, and no way of reporting what is experienced.
When I speak of experiencing being a human, I'm referring to experiencing the many processes of which we are composed. The physical brain and body are vital, to be sure. But my consciousness, my experience of myself, is not of ions and membranes, the molecules of neurotransmitters, the length and width of my neurons, or the shape of any structure of my brain. My consciousness is of my brain's activity. The processes. The physical brain and body are the medium of the information processing systems that make us what we are. But it is the processing that we think of as ourselves, and what we wouldn't give up.
IWhen one thing means something else, and an action takes place because of that relationship, the process is conscious. In humans, the many processes are intertwined, are feedback loops, and all function together as one unit. That unit experiences itself as a unit. Traditionally, we call this human consciousness, and many think human consciousness emerges from these processes. But "human consciousness" is actually the felt experience of those processes. Our self-awareness is the felt experience of feedback loops.
If everything subjectively experiences, then I have to think about building blocks and wholes. If an atom of iron experiences being an atom of iron, and it becomes part of a human, it is now part of the experiencing human. Obviously, the human experiences itself as a whole. Is it still experiencing itself as the atom? That idea might not be as crazy as it sounds. The famous split-brain phenomenon of having two consciousness units in one person, as well as confounded twins, are much more extreme than a particle retaining it's individual experience when it becomes part of a bigger unit.
According to this idea, any AI, like everything else, is already conscious. That is, there is subjective experience of being the machinery that has AI. It's a matter of what the AI is experiencing. What most people have usually thought of as "human consciousness" is actually the experience of all the things we are and do. No AI is or does anything close to that, so it can't experience that. Still, it experiences whatever it is. Electricity running through a system that processes certain kinds of information according to it's programming.
From Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged From Chaos, by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:
Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam wrote:A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.
In Annaka Harris' audiobook Lights On, starting at 25:34 of Chapter 5 The Self (contributed), David Eagleman says:
David Eagleman wrote:I think conscious experience only arises from things that are useful to you. You obtain a conscious experience once signals makes sense. And making sense means it has correlations with other things. And, by the way, the most important correlation, I assert, is with our motor actions. Is what I do in the world. And that is what causes anything to have meaning.