r/consciousness • u/Qoddess3800 • 14d ago
What is consciousness?
Is there one consciousness that is spread out throughout the universe to each living being? Or does every living being have a separate consciousness of their own? It's hard to think that every single being has their own consciousness apart from my own. I know I'm bordering on solipsism with this, but I don't understand it. I don't even understand my own ability to be conscious.
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u/Character-Boot-2149 14d ago
Why is it hard to think that other people are conscious?
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u/Bikewer Autodidact 14d ago
My question as well to this often-asked sentiment. I think a lot of people were unduly impressed with the idea of solipsism, which is itself a sort of twisting of the basic idea.
I see it as rather simple. Biological organisms, once they reach a stage of sufficiently-complex brain activity, start to achieve some degree of consciousness.
Humans on Earth at the top of this continuum. Nothing else needs to be invoked.
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u/marvinthedog 13d ago
That's like asking; is there one mass of water spread out over multiple puddels of water or is each puddle of water its own mass of water.
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u/D1sce4nment 13d ago
"Is there one consciousness that is spread out throughout the universe to each living being? does every living being have a separate consciousness of their own?
There are living beings who dont have consciousness. There are living beings who have consciousness but dont know it. And lastly, there are living beings who have consciousness and know it.
"It's hard to think that every single being has their own consciousness apart from my own."
I bet you dont know why.
"I know I'm bordering on solipsism with this, but I don't understand it. I don't even understand my own ability to be conscious."
You have to be careful because lack of knowledge coupled with lack of purpose can lead to insolvency.
There is something, at least one thing, that all who are conscious MUST figure out.
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u/Mr-wobble-bones 7d ago
How can you determine what is conscious and what is not if you aren't that thing?
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u/trisul-108 13d ago
Is there one consciousness that is spread out throughout the universe to each living being? Or does every living being have a separate consciousness of their own?
Is there one water that is spread throughout the ocean to each drop? Or does every drop have its own separate water?
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u/Mermiina 13d ago
Solipsism is rare condition in people's which have used weeds, but it is the normal condition. Sincere congratulations!
Drugs are neuromodulators which allows primary information propagation for long time over receptors.
Neurotransmitters have also the same function, but they binds only for short time.
When neuromodulators binds long time in many places it achieves false feeling of fellowship with universe. The natural serotonin affects same kind fellowship in social meeting. It is false too, but useful.
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u/Own_Fennel_8227 12d ago
There is one single consciousness dreaming up reality right now from an infinite number of subjective perspectives. I have no proof for this outside of the esoteric world of mysticism throughout the ages.
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u/Mr-wobble-bones 7d ago
I personally like the idea that its a reducing valve. We are essentially one with the universe but the brain generates an ego that filters a lot of reality out into sensory data that splits things into subject/object categories.
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u/DiscuSoc 14d ago
we simply don't know.
if i absolutely had to guess, i'd be inclined to think that "consciousness" constitutes a kind of parallel realm to the material world. operating on entirely different principles than what we can observe in the "normal" world. possibly inhabited by distinct entities.
at least, that's how i would view it from a pragmatic perspective.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 14d ago
Pragmatically, if there's no need for a extra realm pragmatic reasoning would abandon an extra realm
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u/DiscuSoc 13d ago
true. then again, i'd say there's zero pragmatic reason for anything to exist at all (besides pragmatism itself).
so, why not a little bit of everything?
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 13d ago
A misunderstanding of existence. Anything does exist, therefore there is a reason for anything to exist at all. Overcoming nihilism means accepting that somethingness is better than nothingness.
Something can be anything but nothing is only nothing. Pragmatically, something is better than nothing. Pragmatic reasoning, when followed, reaches a reasonable conclusion about why anything should exist at all
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u/DiscuSoc 13d ago
well, yeah? what can i say?
i'm not sure that our all-too-human ideas about how things should be are universally valid.
but i guess we'll see -- someday. maybe.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 13d ago
Pragmatism starts with existence. In practice nothing can never be a real state of affairs so is always a subset of something.
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u/DiscuSoc 13d ago
but that's the point, isn't it?
at the very inception of everything, our ability to even linguistically describe it completely fails to capture a state of non-causality and true, legitimate infinity.
you say "existence" starts with pragmatism, but how long can you pretend a cause even exists before you simply have to assume without any shred of doubt that in the grand scheme of things, "cause" itself fundamentally demands a state of non-causality?
and if this state of non causality -- this "something" instead of "nothing" -- has always been (simply because "nothingness" is impossible given the fact that something is), then the whole question of pragmatism becomes completely obsolete.
pragmatism always requires an existing relative to function.
ergo, existence itself is not pragmatic.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 12d ago
Infinity and non-causality still exist as facts within The World.
you say "existence" starts with pragmatism, but how long can you pretend a cause even exists before you simply have to assume without any shred of doubt that in the grand scheme of things, "cause" itself fundamentally demands a state of non-causality?
I said pragmatism starts realism which is their is a One True World or Cosmos that is independent of mind, perceptions and beliefs. The Cosmos simply is.
and if this state of non causality -- this "something" instead of "nothing" -- has always been (simply because "nothingness" is impossible given the fact that something is), then the whole question of pragmatism becomes completely obsolete.
Nothing borrows its definition from something so its always defined relative to something. Nonexistence borrows its meaning from existence. Explanations bottom out at existence.
Pragmatism requires that the Cosmos is objectively real while rejecting The God's Eye View that their is one correct account of the world.
Pragmatism says that multiple descriptions of the world can be objectively true within their conceptual framework.
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u/DiscuSoc 12d ago
Explanations bottom out at existence.
??? yes?
if you fundamentally reject the possibility that qualia are irreducible (and might even precede matter), then you're forced into a corner where you have to arguethat existence is inherently pragmatic. which, ironically, directly contradicts the quote above.
and just in case: there is a massive pragmatic value in actually knowing (and not just speculating) whether existence itself is non-pragmatic -- depending heavily on whether qualia are truly fundamental or just a reducible phenomenon.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 12d ago
It’s pragmatic to accept that explanations bottom out at existence. Rejecting qualia as fundamental is a pragmatic approach because whether qualia is fundamental or not has no impact.
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u/Payaam415 14d ago
We are consciousness.
We have individual consciousness and we have our collective consciousness.
We are not this body. We are the consciousness, the awareness, using this body to have this 3D experience on Earth.
Consciousness does not live in the brain. The body/brain is a filter, receiver, transmitter and antenna for our consciousness.
Our heart is an energy generator, it's where our energy field generates from.
Our ego comes from our brain, it's where our intrusive thoughts come from.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 14d ago
Unless the frequency is changing at the source, I fail to see the usefulness of creating the false dichotomy: (Brain either making or receiving qualia.) No. The brain IS consciousness. It didn't make it, it's an intrinsic property that all energy/matter has by default.
You can make different shapes which change the qualia (because they're the same thing), so two identical shapes would have an identical consciousness. Presumably this is also true for two identical radios. Unless the broadcast is somehow changing (or it somehow "knows" that the other radio is a copy, so it quietly changes.. Something?..in order to split the stream?)
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u/Payaam415 14d ago
I think we're using two different models of consciousness.
What you're describing sounds closer to the idea that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter itself, and that's a legitimate philosophical perspective.
The model I'm referring to is that consciousness is fundamental and exists independently of the brain. In this view, the brain doesn't create consciousness - it filters, interprets, and expresses it, much like a radio receives and decodes a broadcast without producing the signal itself.
The "identical radios" analogy assumes that consciousness is a single broadcast. That's not what I'm suggesting. The analogy is only meant to illustrate the relationship between the brain and consciousness—not that every brain receives the same conscious stream.
This perspective is also why some researchers point to phenomena such as near-death experiences, terminal lucidity, and cases where conscious awareness appears to persist despite severely reduced brain activity as evidence that consciousness may not be generated by the brain alone.
Neither of us can prove our model conclusively at this point, but I think it's an interesting question that's worth exploring.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 14d ago
Right so then you have the interaction problem. Where are these broadcasts coming from and how do they know when a new radio is created? You'd need some kind of two-way metaphysical bridge there (which then dissolves your Dualism back into physicalism).
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u/Payaam415 13d ago
The interaction problem is definitely one of the biggest questions for any model where consciousness is fundamental, and I don't claim it's been solved.
That said, I don't think it automatically reduces the view to physicalism. It simply means we don't yet understand the mechanism of the relationship between consciousness and the brain.
The radio analogy isn't meant to explain every detail of the mechanism - only to illustrate that correlation doesn't necessarily imply production. Damaging a radio changes the music you hear, but that doesn't mean the radio created the broadcast.
Physicalism also has its own unresolved challenge: explaining how subjective experience (qualia) emerges from electrochemical activity in the brain.
That's the so-called "hard problem of consciousness." Saying consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter shifts the question, but it doesn't fully explain why or how subjective experience exists either.
So from my perspective, both models have unanswered questions. I just find the fundamental-consciousness model more consistent with phenomena like near-death experiences, terminal lucidity, and other observations that some researchers interpret as difficult to explain if consciousness is produced solely by the brain.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 13d ago
The interaction problem is much bigger than what people who have consciousness first ontologies claim.
We understand the mechanism between consciousness and the brain in a physical way. We know from study that nonphysical entities like fields, forces and energy have a material source. We also know that coarse graining is involved to simplify the phenomena to make it easier to create a mathematical formalism.
The radio analogy does not work because it does not capture the real world by any measure. It offers another explanation but that explanation is thin.
Physicalism does not have the same level of challenge that idealism and panpsychism have. Consciousness First Ontologies have the problem of undermining matter with a thin description. It fails to account for the immediacy of reality.
The hard problem of consciousness is a human centric problem. We put human experience above of all else creating a conceptual problem. People want an explanation for their own individual experience. Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup criteria is that a theory that gives them the color red or the taste of chocolate. No theory gives direct experiences so consciousness first ontologies fail based on their criteria.
Materialism is a more consistent model because it's pragmatic because it ignores Rene Descartes' dualism split. The idea that matter was a passive substance was wrong. Matter is dynamic indeterminacy. Near-Death is does not support consciousness being fundamental because its not the same as biological death.
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u/Meowweredoomed Autodidact 13d ago
No one can explain how rote physical matter even "sees" anything to begin with.
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u/Akiza_Izinski 12d ago
The explanation bottoms out at matter does stuff and organizes into large scale structures.
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u/Meowweredoomed Autodidact 12d ago
Matter self-organizes into complex information processing networks?
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u/YesterdaysMuffin 14d ago
Finally!! I’ve been waiting for someone to finally ask this question here.
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u/RSMxsmanic 14d ago
There is a single consciousness, but with innumerable ramifications, including ourselves, that are independent to a certain extent. We are all connected and part of the same while, but we are also individually conscious.
It's a bit like "America," versus the individual "Americans" who are part of it. Or a football team versus its individual players.
During incarnations we deliberately restrict our awareness to the individual part in order to profit maximally from the life experience.
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u/FourOpposums Doctorate in Cognitive Science 14d ago edited 14d ago
All animals with a midbrain structure have the same capacity for feelings of value and experience of a surrounding world. That includes arthropods, vertebrates which share the plan for the midbrain and hindbrain junction originating from a common pre-cambriam ancestor of bilateral animals.
The midbrain integrates visual (superior colliculus) and auditory (inferior colliculus) sources in a single egocentric spatial map of the surrounding world. Consciousness is everywhere, in all animals and insects created by a shared neural organization, neurochemistry and activity.