Is consciousness nonlocal?
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7 Answers
Clare Levijoki, Author (2016-present)
The best answer to this is “we don’t know.”
Matter vs. consciousness is something of a “chicken and the egg” problem.
Some scientists believe that consciousness is created by physical processes in the universe; others see reason to believe that the Universe may be created by consciousness, with physical reality arising as a consequence of conscious desires.
Because it is impossible to verify whether something is conscious - we can only see how something behaves, not directly see whether it thinks, feels, or experiences - it has been impossible to answer this question to the standards of scientific rigor.
Most scientists come down on the side that matter came first, then consciousness:
There is a great deal of evidence from neuroscience that human cognitive functions (thinking, feeling, etc.) are determined largely by physical processes. We know this because when the “hardware” of the brain becomes damaged, thoughts and emotions change as well.
However, neuroscientists are still not definitively able to say what creates consciousness. Some recent promising evidence has come to light that the “clostrum” - a sheet of cells in the brain that is so small that scientists missed it for many years - may be responsible for integrating our brain activity into conscious experience. Temporary disruptions to the clostrum also temporarily disrupt consciousness in human test subjects. But more resource is needed.
We also know from evolutionary history that creatures with sufficient intelligence to make tools, for example, did not appear on Earth for many billions of years after the Universe was created. Some say this indicates that consciousness was not present until evolution made it possible, while others argue that this just means the Universal consciousness has different goals and values from our own.
Other scientists come down on the side that matter was created by consciousness, citing discoveries in physics:
It has been observed that if any of the laws of physics were even slightly different, life as we know it could not exist in this Universe. These folks subsequently suggest that the Universe was designed specifically for the purpose of supporting life, in which case of course there must be a designer.
Most physicists say that this is not the case: that the Universe appears “fine tuned” to us because there are an infinite number of Universes with different laws of physics, and that we just happen to be one pocket that is capable of supporting our kind of life.
Many mathematical equations in physics support this idea of the infinite multiverse, but there is no direct evidence for the existence of this infinite multiverse. So it is impossible to say to standards of scientific rigor that this is the case.
Other physicists point out that human observation seems to directly effect the behavior of particles at the quantum level. In quantum physics, observation of a “probability wave” - the state in which un-observed particles exist - causes the wave to collapse into a particle, effectively collapsing infinite possible futures into one definite future.
That has led some physicists to speculate that physical reality at all levels is in fact determined by consciousness, not the other way around.
Ultimately, there’s a lot to unpack here.
When we say “consciousness,” do we mean the kind of intelligence that humans have, or do we mean some more passive type of experiential observation?
It’s a lot to think about.
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