Conscious of Consciousness

2008.05.16   prev     next

Is consciousness comprehensible?

I know it’s real — I’m experiencing it.

It’s not the same thing as free will. When I’m awake, and someone touches my arm, I immediately experience the conscious sensation of being touched. I don’t have any say-so in the matter.

I think consciousness is when you experience sensations. Those sensations include the “five senses” (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch), each with many different sub-sensations (colors, shapes, cold, warmth, pain, sweet, bitter, etc.).

I also believe that the emotions are sensations. Elation, sadness, boredom, interest, realization, recognition, desire, disdain, decision.

Included in this list are the same sensations experienced while in REM sleep. We call a sleeping person “unconscious,” but I suspect that is not really the case during dreaming. While her brain performs information housecleaning in preparation for another sixteen hours of being awake, she consciously experiences hallucinatory sensations as a side-effect of that housecleaning.

If I’m right, then to be a conscious human is to “feel” a montage of sensations as generated by a human brain. The model I’m picturing goes through these four phases:

1. Some entities made a universe (some sort of simulation in a computer) populated with complex lifeforms, including humans.

2. That universe, and humanity, ran to their conclusion and were then shut down. During this running of the universe, no humans had consciousness — their brains operated according to complex but deterministic rules, just as the most strict naturalists (materialists) assert.

3. While this universe was running, the sensations experienced by human brains (all? some? just a few? animal brains too?) were recorded for later playback.

4. You — an entity in the same realm as the creators of the universe — are now “viewing” (playing back to your conscious mind) the sensations recorded from one of those human brains.

In delving this deep into the subject of who and what we are, it’s unavoidable to run into the problem of self-reference; of verifying one’s own reliability. This entire article you’re now reading is, if correct, the product of a human called “Darel,” who did everything in his life (including the writing of this article) in phase 2 of the above outline — during which there was no conscious experience! Darel said he was consciously experiencing his life because his brain was programmed to say that.

It might seem, therefore, that the above, four-step scenario cannot be true. But it doesn’t mean that. It just means that the scenario might be true, but that there is no way to know whether any particular human brain was recorded, and if so, how many entities such as yourself have “viewed” it (phase 4), and how many yet will.

I recognize that my scenario has disturbing implications, such as that what happens in this life doesn’t really “matter.” And it raises the possibility that the creators of this universe kept recordings of only those humans who lived interesting, rich lives, and it is one of those lives that is being played back to you now.

It’s a classic paradox with no solution. In time, I’m sure I’ll find out the answers. Meanwhile, I can only experience the sequential sensations of this life I’m in — REM sleep and all.