As an armchair philosopher and neuroscience enthusiast, I’m much in agreement. However, I’m not really sold on the simulation hypothesis. I don’t rule it out, but I don’t think it’s necessary to explain consciousness. If we do live in a simulation, then it’s a universe-sized simulation, so what’s the difference? What do we gain from that understanding? I’m pulling the pragmatism card here. Since I’ll never be able to “get outside” the simulation, which I admit is an assumption but a plausible one, then what difference does it make? If the simulation is required for me to conscious, how could I be conscious of the “outside”? Would then another simulation be posited?
I think the only “hard problem” of consciousness comes from our over privileging human consciousness. Granted, it certainly has a privileged status due to being the only consciousness that we are intimately aware of. But I flip the necessary and sufficient argument on its head. I think much of human consciousness is sufficient for sure, perhaps overly sufficient, but not necessary at all for something to be conscious.
I’m one of those weird panpsychists. I think everything is conscious in its own way. Every cell in our body has its own level of awareness, and subsequently every protein, every atom… So too does higher levels of organization. A group or society has consciousness. A city has its level of awareness, a biosphere, a planet, a solar system. Just like we are unaware, as intimately as we are of our own body’s level of awareness, of the experience of a liver cell; so too is the planet Earth unaware of of our individual psyches. That doesn’t it mean it doesn’t feel and act. It has its own memories in the geology of the rocks, in the rings of the trees, in the sediments of the ocean, and ice at the poles.
Why can I still “feel” my foot when it “goes to sleep”? Sure, maybe some neural pathways are still active, or I just feel the familiar weight of something hanging onto my leg without the attendant touch sensation. How is it that I can “feel” my car and the road as I drive? Sure, maybe I’m picking the vibrations. But aren’t those vibrations a type of communication just like our neurons? Why privilege the neuron or the neural network as the only way something can be conscious? I’m fairly certain the rock on a beach is aware of when it’s being warmed by the sun or when the wave washes over it and cools it off. It needn’t be much different than how we’re aware of the same thing. We just have a neural apparatus that tells a bigger, more cohesive story. Again, that neural apparatus is certainly sufficient, but I don’t think it’s necessary to explain consciousness. The rock feels, on a primal level, the same way we do. The primal level of stuff and stuff happening.
As for the intuition of the soul. I think it’s part ego, the narrative of our body being told by the linguistic parts of our brain, and part knowing that we are connected to different levels of consciousness both inside and outside our bodies, as I spoke of before.
Sorry for the long response. I so rarely find someone who seems capable of picking up what I’m putting down. I hope I didn’t ramble too much! Thank you for a great article! And keep questioning!
