Inanimate matter possess a form of Consciousness
13-12-2024, 04:29 PM

Consciousness is the awareness of something and its surroundings. This awareness accumulates through experience and suffering, manifesting as pleasure, pain, and sensory experiences. The violet flower, for example, brings joy through its color and scent.
Consciousness is thought to be created by the brains of advanced living organisms and thus confined to a small part of the Universe, but there are indications that consciousness spreads throughout the entire Universe and is one of its basic features. Panpsychism is a modern philosophical school that embraces this idea.

According to this philosophy, Consciousness encompasses the entire Universe and evolves from basic matter to atoms, molecules, lower organisms like viruses and unicellular organisms, and finally reaches its peak complexity and development in the human brain. The human brain derives consciousness from a series of complex electrochemical reactions that connect its parts and create the unique inner world that distinguishes individuals from one another, despite the brain's basic material being the same for all.

This means that consciousness, rather than being a unique feature of human subjective experience, permeates reality; it is the foundation of the Universe, present in every particle and all physical matter. This may appear to be nonsense, but as traditional attempts to explain consciousness fail, the "panpsychist" viewpoint is being taken seriously by credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists, including neuroscientist Christoph Koch and physicist Roger Penrose[1].

New York University philosophy of mind professor David Chalmers outlined the "hard problem of consciousness[2]." in 1995, demonstrating that the question of what causes consciousness remained unanswered; even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question: Why is it conscious? This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will require more than just conventional scientific approaches. Consciousness therefore presents a hard problem for science, or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain.

The increased academic focus on consciousness itself as a result of Chalmers' "hard problem" paper has fuelled interest in Panpsychism. Philosophers at NYU, which has one of the leading departments of philosophy of mind, have made Panpsychism a feature of serious study. In recent years, there have been several credible academic books on the subject, as well as popular articles that take Panpsychism seriously.

One of the most popular and credible contemporary neuroscience theories on consciousness is Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory, which lends credence to Panpsychism. Tononi argues that something will have a form of “consciousness” if the information contained within the structure is sufficiently “integrated,” or unified, and so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Because it applies to all structures—not just the human brain—Integrated Information Theory shares the panpsychist view that physical matter has innate conscious experience[3].

Panpsychism was seriously argued for by thinkers like philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Arthur Eddington, but the movement lost steam after World War II as philosophy shifted its attention to analytic philosophical issues with language and logic. According to Chalmers, interest resurged in the 2000s as a result of the "hard problem" being acknowledged and the growing popularity of the structural-realist perspective in physics.

According to this perspective, physics describes structure rather than the underlying non-structural components. Eddington argued that there is a gap in our understanding of matter, which can be filled by consciousness.

In Eddington’s view, Goff writes in an email, it’s” silly” to suppose that the underlying nature has nothing to do with consciousness and then to wonder where consciousness comes from.” Stephen Hawking has previously asked: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a Universe for them to describe?” Goff adds: “The Russell-Eddington proposal is that it is consciousness that breathes fire into the equations.”

Some optimists tend to believe that the scientific methodology will be able in the future to frame the concept of consciousness and the legalization of its relations; they are optimistic about the great success achieved by the natural science up to date, but such optimism is based on a misunderstanding of the history of the natural science. Yes, natural science has witnessed unparalleled success, because it did not branch out and was limited to tangible quantitative relations, but these relations do not represent all aspects of reality.

Consider the emergence of conscious sight from chemical photosensitivity. We need first of all to remind ourselves that chemical or electrochemical sensitivity to light is not the same as awareness of light. To underline this point: a chemical effect of light is not awareness of the light that has caused this chemical effect.

We must not confuse causality with intentionality and imagine that the processes by which the light gets in are the same as those by which the gaze eventually comes to look.

These phenomena and many others cannot be explained by the methods of contemporary science alone; we need new insights to reach an integrated and comprehensive theory to understand the world around us as it is.

It’s of significant interest to highlight that the Holy Qur’an alludes to a form of awareness inherent in lifeless entities. This is exemplified in Surah 59, verse 21, which reads:

“Had We revealed this Qur’an upon a mountain, you would have witnessed it humbled, shattered from the fear of Allah. Such are the parables we put forth for mankind, so they may reflect.”
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[1] . Olivia Goldhill, Science reporter, the idea that everything from spoons to stones is conscious is gaining academic credibility, published January 27, 2018 Last updated April 3, 2018.
[2] . The Hard Problem of Consciousness, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy; a Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource.
[3] . David Robson, Giulio Tononi’s "integrated information theory" might solve neuroscience’s biggest puzzle, BBC Future, 27th March 2019