Barnesfolio

The Definition of Consciousness
Me, I, My and Us, the MIMU of Self
BY LYNARD – JULY 2022

At the end of this discussion we define consciousness. In our next discussion we provide the syllogism behind the definition.

Required for the definition is consideration of the amazing findings of neuroscience, the observational tenets of psychology, and the unheralded, little appreciated entanglement of cultural based rationalizations. These cultural based considerations include both spiritualism and science itself. We clarify the me, I, my and us–MIMU. Philosophy subsumed by science.

By consciousness we mean the classic “I think, therefore I am”. Self-awareness. We do not mean consciousness as simply being alive. All animals are conscious if the criteria is interaction and responsiveness to the environment.

There is an issue here. Life and existence. Existence and life. Accidental or evolutionary change versus agency directed change. There can be existence and life with evolutionary change. But not necessary agency directed change. When we discuss consciousness, we mean life capable of directing change to its environment while quantitatively independent of its environment. This pretty much rules out rocks and other inanimate objects. It also rules out the majority of life-forms on the planet. A majority, but not all. It also does not mean that life forms which are not conscious and not self-aware are incapable of evolving into consciousness that makes them self-aware. From the present state of our knowledge, life-forms starts with a blueprint which may or may not include the capacity of evolving consciousness.

The Three Questions

There are three questions at the core defining consciousness.

                                                      1. Who are you?
                                                     2. Why are you here?
                                                     3. How did you get here?

Go anyplace on the planet and pose these three questions to anyone you encounter, regardless of their level of education or literacy. Predictably, they will answer all three questions within the same context, from the same perspective. We take the answers as evidence of the independent agency of a consciousness. The “I”–the you in this instance–asking the questions assumes you yourself are evidence of an independent agency of a consciousness, your consciousness.

Ask a computer programmed to emulate intelligence, artificial intelligent, and you may or may not get answers using this same “human” perspective, depending on whether the programmer tinkered with the identity matrix. Which might go something like:

                                            1. “I am a computer intelligence named Eve.”
                                            2. “I am here to assist you.”
                                            3. “I am programmed to help you. That is why I am here.”

Within the context of science, these are very good answers. However, if you note carefully, the answers are really questions for you.

Other animals which may have consciousness–other primates, as well as dogs, dolphins, elephants, etc.–are incapable of understanding the questions so cannot answer and give no indication that they understand the questions. They do not have human consciousness.

In PART 7 we mentioned that modern humans are at least 300,000 years old. The first documented social organization of humans occurred at least ten thousand years ago. If considered from the perspective of biology, modern humans began to emerge 3.7 billion years ago when all carbon based life began. How much life emerging 3.7 billion years ago affected the eventual life-form we call modern humans has not, to my knowledge, been quantified. One thing is clear: the earth’s environment acted upon life as life acted upon the environment. A process. We add to this observation of a process the innate social organizing drive of humans (a biological determinant) and we have the elementary foundation for any discussion of consciousness.

While apparently 98.8 percent of human DNA does not code for proteins and is called “junk” DNA as a result, the ultimate origin of this DNA some 3.7 million years ago is part of the process of life. It is a process that resulted in one species, humans, ascending to a level of interaction with the environment that challenges the environment itself.

Life forms. Species. Humans. The second person You emerges. You ask three questions of another life form that has undergone the same process of life you have undergone. To this other life-for, you are a distinct and separate You. Each of you are an “I”, which is, at its foundation, a shared deception. Mutual perception. Mutual perspective. Mutual deception. The key to socialized humans. The root of consciousness. The foundation of all religious organizing in all societies: that the individual “I” is out of touch with the Creator.

Mutual shared reality. And there is the problem with Rene Decartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. It is the I.

From the consuming perspective of the dominant species on the planet–meaning, it is the only perspective that counts–“I” is similar to the concept of the geocentric model of the universe. “I” is not the center of life nor of consciousness as the Sun is not the center of the universe–even theoretically. The anchors of a thought, the perspective forming an erroneous idea have consequences. For instance, we now know that the earth revolves around the sun. If we did not know that, we may never have discovered that the earth and even the sun revolves around a barycenter –a common center of mass for everything in the solar system2. It is entirely possible someone, some “I”, knew this truth tens of millennia ago but was lost in the process of socialization. The same can definitely be said about the definition of consciousness. Human socialization has demonstrated a tendency to wander from deception to deception, fantasy to fantasy.

If “I” is not the center of an existence and “I” is not evidence of consciousness, what is?

Science and Religion as Cultural Waypoints

Deceptions and fantasies.

In relatively recent times, the demarcation between science and religion crystalized after Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution. On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. The tension between modern science and modern era religion was foreshadowed by the banning of books by Nicholas Copernicus in 1543 and Galileo Galliei in 1632.

The quest for a definition of consciousness naturally sprung from this tension between religion and science because Western societies were being held in subservience to an unknown, unknowable entity presiding over the collective affairs of humans.

Since the time of Decartes the line dividing the religio-philosophical and scientific definition of consciousness has split between those who advocate substance dualism (brain and mind as separate substances) and property dualism (mind originates from the brain). Substance dualism has the tinge of spiritualism if not outright spiritual or religious dogma. Yes, says adherents of religious dogma, humans have brains but the mind is an unfathomable mystery endowed with the attributes of a god. For science, mind is merely an output manifestation of the brain. Occam’s Razor (“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”¹)–the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation. Hence, substance dualism is the scientific view on the basis of mind and consciousness. There is no rational argument against the scientific view. Except . . .

Is there a compromise position between religion and science here? No. But then, as science continues to unravel the workings of the brain, no compromise is needed. Religion must accept the human endeavor of science and science must acknowledge the over seven billion variables of human consciousness. It is not a win-lose situation.

Even religion–and those adhering to the substance dualism of consciousness– must come to the realization that science is not toiling away in a vacumn vacumn. There is no societal vacumn. Never was. Never will be. There are not two sides to the definition of consciousness. There is only Me, I, My and Us, the MIMU of consciousness. One consciousness. The tricky part, the part that both science and religion avoids like a vampire avoiding the light of the Sun is why is there a You? We answer that question in the final part or defining consciousness.

© Lynard Barnes, 2020