Cosmology & Consciousness
Is Consciousness Fundamental to Nature's Order?

Consciousness is a phenomenon everyone is familiar with yet no one really knows what it is. Is consciousness purely a result of brain activity or is it something greater existing beyond physical reality?

Consciousness, and conscious life, is factor that cannot be ignored. Any theory that describes the origin of the universe must also explain why we are here. Cosmologists refer to it as the anthropic principle.

Despite ongoing research... consciousness remains one of the most baffling concepts known to the biological sciences and philosophic arts. From all fields of research explanations always seem to fall short. One part of the problems is that consciousness is an ambiguous term, and often refers to various phenomena. In some instances it is referring to an individual’s waking state. Yet, in others it is referring to an organism’s state of being ‘alive.’ And in still another, it is referred to as a deliberate action, such as a ‘conscious attempt.’

Another problem is explaining common phenomenon such as the ability to categorize objects or moods; to react to various experiences; the focus of attention; the deliberate control of behavior; and the difference between waking and sleeping states. These problems, all of which are associated with the notion of consciousness, seem directly susceptible to standard methods of cognitive science. Typically they can be explained by computational or neural mechanisms. If these events and experiences were all there was to consciousness, then it would not prove to be such a complex problem. They are easy to describe in human terms, but difficult to explain as a biological mechanism that elicits such events. For example, ‘he said something I disliked, which angered me.’ Phenomenon, such as this, we take for granted and understand as part of the every day human experience. There are more difficult problems that resist scientific methodologies.

Experience is one of those. Every day we are bombarded with external stimuli (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching), and internal stimuli, things we dwell on (the great time last night, the upcoming game tomorrow, and ways to deal with the ongoing behavioral problem with your oldest son). We perceive the world around us, and think, in such a complex way that, it would be impossible to duplicate the essence of human behavior in a computer algorithm despite the fact that they are superb at complex computations. To exacerbate the problem, experience also contains a subjective element. For example, a group of four people attended a concert. Two of them loved it, one hated it, and the other liked it. Yet, all four were big fans of the performing artist and the two that enjoyed it did so for entirely different reasons.

Being a conscious organism, such as we are, is a complex and unique state with experience being a large and subjective aspect of existence. Our bodies are designed to cope with various sensations. We experience visual sensations such as darkness and light, as well as color or the perspective of depth in a visual field. We also experience sound, touch, and smell: the harmonic beauty of a symphony orchestra, the smooth soft sheets of bed, or the tantalizing aroma of a favorite meal. All of these are states of experience united by a unique quality to ‘being’ in them. Indeed, we can be in more than one state at the same time. So it is undeniable that we are subjects of experience.

The most perplexing problem is how these systems are subjects of experience. How is it explained that something exists to entertain a mental image, or to experience emotion? It is common fact that experience is derived from a physical base, but the explanation of why and how is lacking. Why should organic life produce a certain quality, or lack of for that matter, of inner life? Scientifically, it seems unreasonable that it should, but it does.

In a sense, consciousness can be understood as the occurrence or perception of experiencing by a living organism, and ‘awareness’ for the simpler events an organism encounters every day. Clearly, conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon occurring at nearly all levels of animal life, despite the fact that it is difficult to say what provides evidence of it in simpler life forms. Nevertheless, regardless of how a life form varies, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means that there is a point of view for that organism. There may be further implications about the form of the experience, and possibly about its behavior, but an organism has conscious mental states if and only if an organism has a perception or knowledge of its existence.