The unending quest to explain consciousness

Re:The unending quest to explain consciousness by grabbalacious on Friday December 06, 2019 @11:49AM (#21723530)

Yes. The way I think about it, to be conscious, one has to be conscious of something. The only way to do that is to have a representation of that thing in memory. When the representation matches incoming sense data we then perceive the relevant thing.

Thus, a single atom cannot be conscious. It could at a stretch be regarded as a miniature body, perhaps, but could it contain a memory system? Presumably not.

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Re:The unending quest to explain consciousness by thecupisblue on Friday December 06, 2019 @08:27PM (#21727819)

Isn't it actually what panexperientalism is?

The universe is one giant state machine with the memory of it's current state and it's current state deciding what to invoke next.

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Re:The unending quest to explain consciousness by grabbalacious on Saturday December 07, 2019 @04:00PM (#21732514)

I don't know about panexperientialism. My understanding of panpsychism is that it means that everything in the universe is at least a little bit conscious. Which I doubt for the reasons I gave. I don't see how the universe as a whole could be conscious, either, any more than a child in the womb could be. There's not enough interaction between its body and the environment. Of course the universe as a whole lacks any environment.

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