On Scientific American: Consciousness Goes Deeper Than You Think

I can't imagine how a rock might experience consciousness but perhaps, by putting the question the other way around, we might gain some insight: how does consciousness experience being a rock?

This is the really hard problem of consciousness.

I can't imagine how a rock might experience consciousness but perhaps, by putting the question the other way around, we might gain some insight: how does consciousness experience being a rock?

Somehow I missed the real meaning of this on the first read.

I really like the way you put that. 

And I think it gets to the heart of it!

Thanks.

While I would say that consciousness is ubiquitous, I wouldn't say that all conscious experience equates to the human conscious experience. Humans seem to have a particularly highly tuned and focused form of consciousness which allows self-awareness and the sense of "I am". Trees might have a radically different form of awareness attuned to the environment they exist in and perhaps nothing like the awareness of time that humans have. 

I can't imagine how a rock might experience consciousness but perhaps, by putting the question the other way around, we might gain some insight: how does consciousness experience being a rock?

Be the rock and find out. Be the cat, be the mountain...find the vibration and resonate with it. It's how animal healers, for instance, create a healing environment. Patient - healer resonance.

If rocks do experience consciousness, I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't doubt weather we are capable of the experience

While I would say that consciousness is ubiquitous, I wouldn't say that all conscious experience equates to the human conscious experience. Humans seem to have a particularly highly tuned and focused form of consciousness which allows self-awareness and the sense of "I am". Trees might have a radically different form of awareness attuned to the environment they exist in and perhaps nothing like the awareness of time that humans have. 

I can't imagine how a rock might experience consciousness but perhaps, by putting the question the other way around, we might gain some insight: how does consciousness experience being a rock?

I think that if we accept that reductive physicalism is false (including epiphenomenalism), we are basically left with 2 major options for consciousness and the mind-brain relationship, not just panpsychism:

 - Some form of panpsychism 

 - Some form of dualism; interactive substance dualism is where mind and body are two distinct substances with distinct essences, and the two substances interact, allowing the spirit to enter the body at some point in development , and apparently separate from the body at physical death and sometimes attempt to communicate. Many investigators of spiritualistic/mediumistic and other paranormal phenomena have been of this opinion, based on the paranormal evidence. The suggestion is that whatever psychophysical laws apply to this appear to promote consciousness only in brains, whose structure allows spirit consciousness to manifest in the physical.

I think that if we accept that reductive physicalism is false (including epiphenomenalism), we are basically left with 2 major options for consciousness and the mind-brain relationship, not just panpsychism:

 - Some form of panpsychism 

 - Some form of dualism; interactive substance dualism is where mind and body are two distinct substances with distinct essences, and the two substances interact, allowing the spirit to enter the body at some point in development , and apparently separate from the body at physical death and sometimes attempt to communicate. Many investigators of spiritualistic/mediumistic and other paranormal phenomena have been of this opinion, based on the paranormal evidence. The suggestion is that whatever psychophysical laws apply to this appear to promote consciousness only in brains, whose structure allows spirit consciousness to manifest in the physical.

I am not a philosopher nor do I understand much of the jargon that philosophers seem to delight in using - seemingly to keep non-philosophers out of their conversations (or maybe to appear so very clever?). However, from the little I have followed, I would probably fit the description of a monist idealist. I see no need for anything other than mind-stuff. Mind manifests the worlds we inhabit, creates the laws that those manifestations follow and allows for multiple forms and dimensions of reality to co-exist in the same "space". The physical brain may be the mechanism needed to focus a particular concentration of consciousness in the type of physical reality in which we find ourselves presently. Thus, dualism might be considered a subset or, perhaps, the next level down from the absolute fundamental that is mind (I think I need some of that philosophical jargon to help describe such a concept).

The deeper - indeed deepest - question is why does something exist at all? Be it mind or matter or both - it seems to me that the fundamental stuff, whatever it is, has always been there (in fact, "always" is quite meaningless when it comes to fundamentals).

I am not a philosopher nor do I understand much of the jargon that philosophers seem to delight in using - seemingly to keep non-philosophers out of their conversations (or maybe to appear so very clever?). However, from the little I have followed, I would probably fit the description of a monist idealist. I see no need for anything other than mind-stuff. Mind manifests the worlds we inhabit, creates the laws that those manifestations follow and allows for multiple forms and dimensions of reality to co-exist in the same "space". The physical brain may be the mechanism needed to focus a particular concentration of consciousness in the type of physical reality in which we find ourselves presently. Thus, dualism might be considered a subset or, perhaps, the next level down from the absolute fundamental that is mind (I think I need some of that philosophical jargon to help describe such a concept).

The deeper - indeed deepest - question is why does something exist at all? Be it mind or matter or both - it seems to me that the fundamental stuff, whatever it is, has always been there (in fact, "always" is quite meaningless when it comes to fundamentals).

I'm not a philosopher either. Your posts have given me the impression of panpsychism (everything has a mind of some sort), but you really believe everything is mind, which appears to be monistic idealism as you point out. I am sympathetic to that view, especially when considering basic issues like the question of what must be the ultimate nature of matter. It looks more like mind stuff than hard little balls of something. But in philosophy of the human mind I have more a liking for interactive dualism because it seems to me to be more in accordance with the evidence of parapsychology. I kind of think that both are true, each at their own level of applicability. At the macroscopic level of human affairs experience, the way things work in the mind-brain relationship seems to be in accordance with interactive dualism, but at the deepest level of existence everything appears to be some form of ultimate consciousness. Whatever that is it certainly isn't human consciousness.

Sir James Jeans eloquently summarized this view: "The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."