WTF is consciousness?

And Is it really something special as we like to believe it is?

This piece was heavily inspired by most of the writings of Joscha Bach. He is a Cognitive Scientist from Cambridge MA who helped me articulate all of my thoughts on consciousness, what I understand about it, and bringing it all together, by breaking it down through abstraction, which helped me understand it from a holistic POV.

Prologue

Consciousness has always been elusive. Something mystical and extravagant. It’s right in front of us but always out of reach. There’s nothing we can do to understand consciousness at its fundamentals (at least not for now). So how on earth can we even comprehend it? Or even begin to make an attempt at understanding it?

I seriously don’t want to claim that I have the answers. Nor am I qualified to make such assumptions. I just have a vague understanding that’s backed by a generalist knowledge of cognitive psychology with a sprinkle of neuroscience here and there. However, this sadly means that I’m not at the forefront of the research material. Just up to date with it. So many years down the line, when new research and findings are uncovered, this piece I’m writing can either be incorrect, outdated or just the first step of a still yet to be discovered understanding of the human psyche.

However, this insight was uncovered by using abstraction to study the human brain and how it processes information. The Cognitive and Neuroscientists at the forefront of this particular research, helped us understand or develop an idea as to what consciousness really is at its core and where it originated from.

Surprise surprise. It’s such a bland and mechanical answer, like how the rest of the universe is. It’s nothing more than an objective information processing system.

Let’s set one thing straight

Before we get into the nitty-gritty mechanical “01010101” details of consciousness, let’s get one thing out of the way. Consciousness isn’t a special phenomenon. It isn’t something abstract or mystical, but we are still intrinsically driven to have a tendency to think and feel that way. Mostly because the body, the brain and our ego want us to feel that way because it’s essential to our survival. We’re all special little snowflakes that are trying to find meaning and purpose in this meaningless world.

If we instead set off into the world knowing that we’re all just

“An organism that benefits from a complex information processing system (consciousness) that enabled us to evolve a bunch of fat cells into a biological computer (our brain). Where these biological computers count the impulses of its sensory neurons so that it can predict future sensory input of the world in extremely fancy ways with respect to the personalised needs of the organism.”

— Joscha Bach, Cognitive Scientist

We’d go absolutely bat-shit crazy, and that’s the last thing we want to think about. All that would do for us is take us down this existential rabbit hole and eventually come to the conclusion that we’d rather be happy to blow our brains out with a gun than to understand this ego destroying idea.

But it’s okay. We’re living in 2022. And we don’t always have to cater to our intrinsic drive to feel like we’re special, and that we have a purpose in this world where either God or the universe has concocted a plan for us.

Mostly because if I tell you otherwise, you can’t really burn me on a stake or pelt me with stones and shout “HERESY!!!” anymore. So thank goodness for Law and order.

However, if you’d like to take another existential trip with me (It’s almost a hobby at this point) Then keep on reading :)

Author’s Note

Fundamentally I am a Systems’ Designer that specializes in OOUX and Behavioural Design. Primarily, I utilise an Object-Oriented UX design process (OOUX) to understand the systems of reality that we interact with, through the process of abstraction, in order to construct experiences for my users to interact with. And breaking down the patterns that make up these systems, and the objects that form these patterns through this methodology allows us to understand what consciousness is from a holistic POV.

This enables us to look at consciousness for what it is (as per the objective information available produced by scientific methodologies) and not for what we think it is.

There is one particular system of the reality we live in that we will be diving deep into which can help us acquire some insight as to the origins of consciousness. It is called Emergence Theory.

Emergence Theory

“How stupid things can do smart things together”

— Kurzegesagt, in a nutshell

I like to think of emergence theory as one of the fundamental laws of reality. It’s a fascinating aspect of our universe and is described as the phenomenon where many simple things work together or interact with one another to create something larger than the sum of its parts.

In other words, emergence theory is an attribute of the universe that allows complexity to arise from simplicity and it’s a very abstract concept to wrap your mind around because we don’t really know why the universe behaves this way.

It just does…

In order to make it easier to understand, I just like to think of emergence theory as a kind of computer software that runs in the background of our reality. And the reality we live in is governed by this programming (among the many others).

I say this because you can find emergence in EVERY SINGLE FACET OF REALITY. From atoms and molecules to stars and galaxies. It is a fundamental property of this universe.

When you think about it.

• Atoms working together create molecules
• Molecules working together create proteins
• Proteins working together create cells
• Cells working together create organs
• Organs working together create biological organisms (ex: humans)
• Biological organisms working together can create complicated intricate structures like tribes, animal packs and societies.

And it’ll keep going on and the complexity will never stop until the universe ends.

It all started from the atom, and with every step the complexity shoots up exponentially. However, this complexity can only arise when there are rules that the simple parts (objects) must adhere to when they work or interact with one another.

It’s almost as if the universe is just a space where a bunch of randomized information is stored. Emergence is (one of the many) computer software that organizes this information in a particular way. And the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are the rules that the objects must adhere to when influenced by the program running in the background. It’s like we’re living in an extremely intricate and complex video game.

Since you can find emergence infused in every facet of our universe. And since consciousness is just another part of this universe. Wouldn’t this same principle apply?

However, I don’t think Emergence is the only computer software used to generate consciousness. You will need a couple more programs layered on top of each other such as chaos theory, natural selection and evolution to run in the background in order to create the output that we call consciousness.

The development of consciousness is most probably an extremely slow and meandering process, and it starts from a non-conscious organisms
(ex: Trichoplax) basic drive to find food to fuel its body with energy. It is not aware of the world or itself. All it wants to do is find food to maintain energy.

You could call it the computer program of Life.

1. Find food.
2. Maintain energy.
3. Live another day.

And over the course of millions of millions of years through evolution, its successors developed mechanisms like other sensory organs as tools (sight, hearing, smell etc.) to find energy more efficiently by being more aware of the world around it. As these organisms need more energy to maintain the energy requirements of their body and central nervous system.

And life slowly transitions from a non-conscious organism to a base conscious organism. An organism that is aware of the world around it but not as aware of itself but gradually, as each generations goes by, over millions of years it becomes slightly aware of itself over time. There are certain animals today that do have a kind of “self-awareness”. Not as convoluted as ours but just enough to cater to the needs of its biology in order to survive. There’s a reason why your pet dog understands you’re referring to him/her when you call their name as they associate the sound you make to itself.

And out of all the organisms alive, under the governance of natural selection, the one that lives the longest will gradually develop a form of self-awareness and create the convoluted consciousness that you and I experience today.

This is how the complexity of consciousness could arise from its simpler counterparts. I still say could because this can’t really be tested. But we can comprehend this abstract concept through the use of abstraction by applying the knowledge we have today based on evolutionary biology, cognitive and neuroscience.

In short, the origin of our aspect of consciousness was a slow and gradual process of biological organisms influenced by millions of millions of years of natural selection, evolution and chaos theory. And every generation of biological organisms that comes after their predecessors, will always be marginally, by an extreme fraction, smarter than them.

This is because when the predecessors interact with the world. It allows them to learn, develop and adapt by processing information that is available to them, understanding what information is needed for survival, and passing that information down to their successors through their genes or through intraspecies communication so their successors will always have more information in order to survive when compared to its predecessors.

Eventually, Biological organisms will gradually arrive at a state of convoluted consciousness from a state of non-consciousness.

You could say that’s the primary purpose of life and every single organism on this earth is just trying its best to acquire energy to survive another day and consciousness is a kind of computer program that allows it to do so. And the longer a species of an organism survives not through strength but through its own intelligence, adaptability and intraspecies collaboration, the higher its chance of developing a state of convoluted consciousness.

This creates an interesting question though.

What if the purpose of life is just run by a computer program that’s objective is to survive and acquire energy as efficiently as possible, and what if consciousness is just a computer program that an organism uses as tool to do so more efficiently as the complexity of its own consciousness increases?

So the logic for the computer program we call Life and consciousness could be:

Acquisition of energy by a life form is directly proportional to the complexity of its consciousness and vice versa.

What if that’s the purpose of life?

An organisms intrinsic drive to acquire energy. And the more complex the organism gets the more energy it needs to accumulate. However, this understanding of its true nature isn’t enough for the organism to survive when it has created a convoluted consciousness. In fact the organism might drive itself crazy at realizing the nihilistic nature of itself and reality.

So it creates an ego or a self that the organism uses to make sure it doesn’t drive itself crazy, JUST so that it can keep surviving and acquiring energy…

I mean look at us. We’ve gotten to the point where we can harness nuclear energy… and there’s no stopping how much more energy we can harness as the universe is infinite from our feeble perspective and we’re free to acquire as much energy as our technology and mind determines.

So long as we don’t destroy ourselves in the process.

I honestly don’t know what to say to this…

The Origin of consciousness is not the miracle

We have this common misconception that the “Origin of Consciousness” is the grand miracle of nature. But as stated earlier through the use of abstraction (The process of breaking down complicated systems into their basic fundamental components).

It is entirely possible to “comprehend” what consciousness is and how it originated. Granted even though this was an object-oriented analysis of the origins of consciousness. We cannot scientifically test this conclusion (maybe). Only piece together the past with the knowledge we have today.

However, the TRUE miracle of our convoluted consciousness, is not in its origins, but with the fact that our consciousness convinces us that:

We exist.

That YOU, are who you think you are, and YOU truly believe that the person you refer to as YOU, is an actual entity that exists within the fabric of our reality.

Consciousness by itself is neutral: it does not want anything, nor does it identify with anything. As stated earlier it’s simply an information processing system. It is nothing more than an organisms biological computer program that allows it to observe the reality it resides in and act accordingly to the information it receives like a computer program.

However, to make our consciousness go beyond this base state of neutrality, the biological organism corrupts the software with an elaborate motivational system, creating pleasure, pain and various impulses. This motivates the organism to either move towards or avoid future instances of pleasure and pain. And this is referred to as Base Consciousness, which all biological organisms possess (except for the non-conscious microscopic organisms).

And now to take it a step further, to make this consciousness identify with anything, the organism corrupts the software with experiences of its own subjectivity, its perception, agency, and individualism mixed with the ability to separate itself from others, through the unique story constructed by its past experiences. This is what we call Convoluted Consciousness, and we still don’t know why or how it works that way.

This is the true miracle and mystery of life and consciousness. That a piece of biological software, believes that it is a person, a body, a social being, someone who experiences pain and sorrow, has values, expectations and so on. And to do that, your mind has to tell itself a story, and then start listening to that story in a way that makes it believe that it IS the person in that story.

As of now, scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how our minds are even capable of doing that, and for that, there is still a lot to be uncovered and a lot to be known. Hopefully, we do figure it out someday and I’m still alive to be there.

The fascinating aspect is that once you realise that you are just a perspective created by your mind and not the perspective itself. It becomes easy to dissolve your sense of self and look at the world from the neutral perspective of consciousness. An information processing system that’s only purpose is to observe and process the world it lives in.

You can acquire this state through a state of depersonalisation, either by meditation, psychedelic drugs or a traumatic experience that disrupts our belief in the self, and the representation of ourselves becomes opaque and we start to notice that:

Who you are is nothing but a story.

But thankfully its your story at least, and there’s no one else in this world that has lived the story that you’ve lived.

Authors Note (again)

Thank you for reading this far! This piece of writing. Honestly is one of my favourites. Because I’m left with more questions about the world than when I first started writing this piece. The existentialism and nihilistic understanding I’ve acquired from this is honestly the most exciting thing ever. My mind is just filled with questions and the anxiety turns into excitement knowing that some day hopefully we’ll get all the answers we need. I do hope I’m still alive by then to be able to write about it.

I apologize if this piece leaves you a bit… lost. Cause I feel it too. But we don’t have to be afraid of it. It’s a part of our human experience. It’s best to embrace the absurd and laugh at it with each other through pure moments of acceptance and lucidity. Instead of running away from it in fear.

Because when we face the chaos we call life that is filled with absurdity, and despite that we still find the time to create moments of joy within it?

That’s when we know, we will be alright, cause life may be meaningless. But that doesn’t mean its not worth living.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

— Albert Camus