To Whom, the Illusion?

On consciousness and limits

The greatest mystery of the universe is with you every minute, every second you’re awake. But fish probably don’t think much about water, nor birds about air. Our attention rarely, if ever, goes to the ever-present. It remains invisible and unexamined.

What I’m talking about, of course, is your consciousness—the very fact that there is something in your head that is having experiences and reactions to those experiences. How and why does this happen? Turns out, that’s a good question. In fact, it’s so good we label it “the hard problem.”

The Hard Problem

For a long time, the assumption was that it was pretty simple and obvious—the brain produces consciousness. There are good reasons for thinking that: physical damage to parts of the brain can produce more-or-less predictable changes in consciousness, we can see activity in certain parts of the brain correlating to certain states, and drugs can change brain activity in ways that map to changes in consciousness.

But none of this is as neatly, perfectly reliable as we’d hope. And there’s still no hint, or at least no consensus and no plausible physical model to explain how the conscious experience is actually generated.

It's possible, of course, that an explanation may come and it may turn out to all be chemicals and electrical currents, but, honestly, it doesn’t seem likely and none of the current candidates even come close.

For a long time, the leading idea was that consciousness is an “emergent phenomenon of complexity”. In other words, as brains get more and more complicated from flatworm to monkey to human, at some point the light comes on and the animal says “Oh, I’m Bob. I think, therefore I am.” The only problem is, there’s no reason at all to think this is true and it certainly does not have to be that way.

And, of course, this idea of emergence gets a reboot in the current discussions about AI; it’s easy to assume that as these programs and associated hardware become more complex, at some point the light might come on and the computer may start asking some difficult questions.

There are other cool ideas—like the idea that microtubules in brain cells might allow for some quantum effects somehow creating consciousness. There are also ideas that consciousness might arise when a network becomes connected enough, or information becomes shared and available between different processing nodes. There are also some wacky ideas that maybe everything is conscious, including your socks. (Spoiler alert: I’m not sure this one is so wacky.)

In Search of the Worst Possible Answer?

In fact, the hard problem is so hard that some scientists just wished it away by saying the whole thing is an illusion. This is going from bad to worse—from inadequate solutions to admitting complete failure.

It is a radical position, and it’s as silly as you think it is: the fact you think you are conscious is wrong. You aren’t conscious. All of your experience is somehow less than meaningless because it’s just a mistaken perception.

How did we get here? First, there was a movement which demoted conscious experience as untrustworthy because it cannot be reliably reproduced. From there, it was a short hop to “insignificant” because experience is unique to the individual.

Scientific ideals of universality and reproducibility are strong in physical experience—we should expect the same thing when we connect a battery to the same circuit no matter where we are in the world or how the stars are aligned, but no one ever stopped to think that maybe these rules don’t apply to other domains.

Well, it wasn’t so much that as the tacit assumption that there are no other domains—materialism can only conquer completely if everything is material. Perhaps it’s not stated directly, but that assumption is always there, in the background, running as a filter that shapes what we can perceive, what we can talk about, and what we can think about. It’s a filter that shapes our reality—an ontological choice.

In that world, it makes sense to say that conscious experience doesn’t even exist. The arrogance and foolishness of this should be obvious: all of human experience sidestepped with a trick—just say it’s not real. This approach could be dangerous if it were not so obviously unworthy of serious consideration.

But if I were forced to give a reply to someone who believes this, I’d ask just one question: to whom, precisely, is that illusion presented? Who or what is being fooled? Are we back to turtles all the way down?

Where Are We Going with This?

I’m not going to solve the hard problem here. In fact, I would suggest that a solution to the problem of consciousness cannot come from within consciousness itself. I’m trying to help you feel the problem, to become aware of it. And, yes, I might be able to show you where I think the answer is, but not today.

This morning, I started with looking back over what I’ve written in First Fire. I realized that much of what you’ve seen is probably not a good indication of where we are going. (Always beware of extrapolation!) Much of what I’ve written was safe and rational, or at least my attempt to pretend to be both. I do have a few more drafts of pieces that focus on rationality—looking at qualities and mechanics of beliefs and pointing to what I see as profound errors in religious belief systems.

Today, I just wanted to get you thinking about your own conscious experience—about what goes on in your head (though it’s not clear to me that it’s only in our heads)—maybe you could say thinking about thinking. I’ll publish a few more of those rational/logical pieces, but here are some of the topics I’m really excited about:

• Looking at the quality and ranges of states of consciousness, including what we’d broadly call “altered states”. Why would we want to experience them and what can we do with them?

• How to experience them? Of course, our society is talking about psychedelics, and we are beginning to see tremendous potential for therapeutic uses here. Traditional cultures have long used these substances to explore altered states. I have some experiences and opinions here, and I think this is a critically important topic.

• What other paths are open to someone who wants to explore the far country of human experience? How to get there? I’ll look at meditative and contemplative tools to see if we can understand why that meditation app is probably keeping you from getting there.

Along the way, maybe I’ll be able to share a few answers here and there, but what you should really expect are questions. I’m a seeker, not a teacher.

Dare to step into the Mystery. We won’t solve it, but maybe, just maybe, we might begin to know It.