Philosopher David Chalmers offers two original ideas that could form the basis for the study of one of the most mysterious phenomena of our world.
Consciousness is the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. Why do we have consciousness? The answer to this question is not yet known to anyone. There is a chain of explanations in which physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology partially explains psychology. But consciousness doesn’t seem to fit into that picture. Consciousness is a kind of anomaly that needs to be included in our vision of the world, but we do not know how. I suggest taking a closer look at a couple of ideas that seem crazy, but in the future may be useful.
First crazy idea: consciousness is fundamental. Physicists take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space, time, mass. They deduce fundamental laws that govern them, like the law of universal gravitation or quantum mechanics. These properties and laws are no longer explained. They build a model of the whole world. I think that if consciousness cannot be explained in terms of existing elements – space, time, mass, charge – then it should be included in this list. It would be natural to establish self-consciousness as a fundamental element of nature. The next step is to study the fundamental laws that govern consciousness, the laws that connect consciousness to the rest of the basic principles. Sometimes physicists say that the basic laws should be so simple that they can be written on a T-shirt. I think it’s the same with consciousness: we want to formulate its basic laws so simply that they can be written on a T-shirt.
Second crazy idea: consciousness is universal. Every system is conscious to some extent. This vision is sometimes called panpsychism: “pan-” means “everything”, “psycho” – “mind”. All systems have consciousness: not only people, dogs, mice, flies, but even microbes and elementary particles. Even a photon has consciousness, to some extent. The idea is not that photons have intelligence or thinking. It’s not like the photon is tormented by anxiety, thinking, “Ah, I’m running back and forth at the speed of light. I will never slow down, never inhale the scent of roses. No, not at all. But perhaps photons have some element of primitive subjective sensation, some primitive precursor of consciousness.
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- M. Mamardashvili “Consciousness and Civilization”
Perhaps the simplest and most powerful way to identify the fundamental laws that connect consciousness with physical processes is to associate consciousness with information. Wherever the process of information processing takes place, there is also consciousness. Complex processing of information, as in humans, is a complex consciousness. Simple information processing is simple consciousness.
Think about how a panpsychic view can change our relationship to nature, our ethical ideas. I used to think that you should not eat anything that has consciousness. So I need to become a vegetarian. But if you share the ideas of panpsychism, you will have to go hungry forever. From the point of view of panpsychism, for our ethical and moral considerations, it is not so much the fact of consciousness itself that matters, but its level and complexity.
The question immediately arises about consciousness in other systems, such as computers. How about Samantha from the movie “Her” – a computer system with artificial intelligence (1)? Does she have consciousness? If you look from the point of view of information, panpsychic, it definitely takes place complex information processing and integration. So the answer is, rather, yes, she has consciousness. If this is the case, then very serious ethical problems arise. For example, is it ethical to disable and dispose of intelligent computer systems?
The panpsychic vision is radical, and I’m not sure it’s the right one. And this vision raises many questions. For example, how these little pieces of consciousness fit together into the complex consciousness that we know. If we can answer these questions, then I think we’ll be on our way to a serious theory of consciousness. If not, then it will be the most difficult problem in science and philosophy. But I’m sure we’ll resolve it eventually. We just need the right crazy idea.
(1) Directed by Spike Jones, 2013.
David Chalmers, Australian philosopher, author of The Conscious Mind (Librokom, 2013).