This is part 2 of my thoughts on Free Will and Consciousness. Part 1 assumed free will and looked at The Bell Curve of Free Will.

Part 3 will look at why I believe we have free will, but to get there I need to look first at consciousness.

Background

I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to ideas about what consciousness is. At the heart of this is the question, the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

We don’t know what creates consciousness, but we know that we integrate information from the physical world and that we are conscious of that world. We also know that the information we integrate from the physical world isn’t perfect.

I’ve said before that, “What we do know is that our perception of the world is based on models of the world and not actually the world itself. We have very faulty user interfaces, insufficient sensors, that warp our perception of reality…

Our user interface with the world is not accurate, we know this, but we also know that the world isn’t just an illusion. We know the sun emits light and heat, we can see the light on surfaces in our field of vision, and we can feel the heat on our faces. But I can’t know that my experience of the colour blue is exactly like yours, or that my comfort with the heat of the sun is similar to yours either. But I wonder how much our upbringing, and the culture we live in influence how we interpret the world around us?”

So we don’t see/hear/feel reality as it is. We have a faulty interface with reality. That relates to our senses, but what if our inner understanding of consciousness is even more faulty than our outer senses are, as they relate to our perception of our reality. What if we can’t grasp what our unconscious mind does because there is a faulty interface with our conscious mind. I think this is why it is so hard to understand free will, because we don’t understand how consciousness works and there is a black box of understanding that separates our conscious and unconscious minds. But I’ll delve into free will another time, for now, I want to look at what consciousness is?

Before I dig into this a little deeper, I’m going to take a stance that relates to the “Integrated information theory” of consciousness… the idea that consciousness comes along with integrated information. This Nova video, ‘Can we Measure Consciousness?‘ is the clearest look at this idea that I could find.

 

Here are my thoughts:

Increased consciousness beyond survival is not fundamental it is incidental. It’s an accident that is born out of intelligence having idle processing time, (in a way, think of this as smart systems being bored).

To begin with I will assume that every living thing has consciousness. The moment life enters into the equation, then the first ‘desire’ is reproduction. Procreation is hard-wired into living. From one-cell organisms to plants to mammals, the moment there is an opportunity to reproduce, then there is simple consciousness that drives a species  to continue life, to avoid harm, and to continue the species. This is the simplest form of consciousness. I used the word ‘desire’ to suggest a form of choosing, or of wanting, that is fundamentally different than non-living things. This is my twist on panpsychism,

With more evolved brains, that have a greater amount of neurons firing, consciousness is greater than in un-evolved brains or entities. I think of this kind of like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Consciousness can be found within the smallest of organisms. Consciousness increases through evolution, when species develop and move up Maslow’s hierarchy because they have additional time to ‘think’ beyond basic primitive and primary/primal needs. Organisms only consciously worry about physiological and safety needs until their predecessors brains have enough neurons and/or time to ‘think’ beyond survival and reproduction. If a species has the capacity and time to think beyond basic survival then they can think of things like community. Communities in turn create efficiencies that create more time to think beyond survival, which then permits a higher level of consciousness. Look at how far humanity has advanced in the past few hundred years, only after farming and urban living have produced significantly more time for us to be idle, to be creative, and to think about thinking. Our consciousness now allows (most of) us to spend time higher up on Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Put another way, life requires consciousness, and it starts with the desire to reproduce. From there, consciousness coincidentally builds with an organism’s complexity and boredom, or idle processing time, when brains do not have to worry about basic survival. Our consciousness is created by the number of connections in our brains, and the amount of freedom we have to think beyond our basic survival.

But we are not the only conscious animals. To me, an animal or a tree showing some compassion to another species suggests consciousness beyond what is normally attributed to other living things. Whether it is a bear saving a crow,

or a cat rescuing a fish,

or a dying tree that feeds another species of tree which is more likely to survive during a drought,

there appears to be a level of consciousness, thinking, understanding, or intelligence that all living things have. Why else would a bear, a cat, or a tree have compassion for another species if they were not conscious?

I started by saying, “Increased consciousness beyond survival is not fundamental it is incidental. It’s an accident that is born out of intelligence having idle processing time.” I don’t really have an argument to suggest that consciousness is incidental or accidental. Maybe I should state, “Higher consciousness is fundamental, it is a by-product of processing ability and excess time to process.” This would give life itself more reason to exist, but my hunch is that intelligence was not intentional, it is a by-product of abilities exceeding needs. However if I changed my mind, I wouldn’t have an argument for consciousness being fundamental any more than it being incidental and accidental.

Final thoughts:

What prevents us from getting to full actualization of self? The story about the tree above might be a hint. It would seem that trees are interconnected by a symbiotic relationship with microbial fungus to create a greater consciousness of the entire forest. Maybe the challenge we have is that of letting go of the self and connecting our consciousness to other humans or other species in a profound way? What is the next level of consciousness that we can achieve? Maybe I’m wrong and consciousness is truly fundamental. Maybe it is the reason for life, and we are on a journey to understand how all consciousness is connected.

My second bullet below is intentionally (un)bolded to suggest both of these ideas… either way the concepts each fit with my other conclusions.

Conclusions:

• Every living thing has consciousness.
• Higher consciousness is not fundamental, it is incidental or accidental, (a by-product of processing ability and boredom).
• Consciousness increases in relation to two things:
  1. More neurons or more processing ability.
  2. More idle time.
• When basic physiological and safety needs are met by an organism they develop higher order consciousness if they have the processing ability and the time to use their consciousness.