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Anyone here think that consciousness is a fundamental entity that exists both inside and outside brains? Would you guess that quarks have some level of consciousness, or that the universe as a whole has some level of consciousness?

GarytheGondolier 6 Oct 23
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Don’t know. Any opinion I offer would be the result of uneducated speculation and conjecture.

Best I give this one a miss!

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There are different levels and kinds of consciousness, which is not at all the same as self-consciousness. Even plants, which do not have brains, have a low level awareness of their environment and respond to it constantly. If they didn't they would quickly die. Read the Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. You could easily make the case that all life has a type of consciousness as all life is aware of and responds to its environment to some extent. However, to make the case that inanimate matter, including even quarks, maintain a level of consciousness is more of a belief based on the assumption that all motion and interaction requires consciousness.

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If you're suggesting that a tree has consciousness I vote no

lerlo Level 8 Oct 23, 2019
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None for me thanks.

skado Level 9 Oct 23, 2019
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It does seem there is a level of unknowable to our existence. We live in our own minds, I can not fully know what is in anyone else's mind but when expressed thoughts seem to connect with our own we feel connected. How does a blind person's sense of awe and beauty compare to a sighted persons? Personally I sense a non-verbal connection with some people. I meet others and feel repelled like the polar ends of magnets pushing away from each other.
The visual arts express the inner workings of the artists mind, some I like some I don't. The act of creating opens you up the the world outside your own mind. We seem to ebb and flow as we move about our day. I know I sure need more coffee right now.

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It is possible that the universe has some form of consciousness, not one that we would recognize as comparably akin to our own thought processes, more likely to be similar to an amorphous entity such as an amoeba.
However consciousness as a fundamental entity that exists both inside and outside brains is a concept I find unlikely. Consciousness is a result of active thought and is simply a descriptor to differentiate waking and sleeping, or active and passive states of brain function.
It is purely a set of internal chemical and electrical functions of the brain.

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The reality that we think exists around us is actually all created within our heads. We don't even know the true nature of reality - just what our senses tell us and they are rather limited. Our problems scientifically involve the fact that we have issues studying the observer. I am also beginning to suspect that perhaps consciousness is something that exists in the quantum world but not in the classical physical existence. Kind of like how gravity exists in the classical physics realm but not in quantum because it's actually the shape of space-time. I will keep digging.

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I lean toward the idea of universal consciousness. Many very prominent scientists have made such conjectures in one form or another, among them cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman. Several of the founders of modern physics advocated such an idea.

Here’s an interesting article on the subject.

[ecstadelic.net]

I fed Peter Russell my theories on consciousness and he stated:

"So much of this is still a mystery. It may always be so. Human consciousness may not be able to understand itself - a Goedel theory of the mind."

He may be the man and all but I don't buy that. I think every process to explain the universe and reality is eventually within our grasp. We just gotta keep pushing forward.

@JeffMesser I agree. We might not ever fully understand consciousness in the everyday terms that we use today, but maybe a new way of thinking will emerge, a new physics.

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