Today, I want to talk about something that I honestly don’t really know how to talk about. When I think about who and what I am, I often strip myself down to this “thing” that I call consciousness. However, the use of the term consciousness confounds precisely what the thing is I’m trying to describe. I will attempt to clarify what I’m talking about here.
What makes me “me?” If I grant that the world is at least partially deterministic—that the world, much of the time, follows a chain of events where one event will generally be responsible for the coming about of another event—then I would expect a part of who I am to be a result of various events that came before me. My parents got together and produced offspring, of which I was the first. My genetic material came from them, so I am in some way a part of my parents physically. Furthermore, during my early years, my parents taught me many things about the world, attempting to prepare me for a time when they would no longer be around. That training is also a part of who I am; through habituation and experience I view the world a particular way and understand the world a particular way. They were a significant part of the outside influences that affected me growing up, and so I am in some way a part of my parents psychologically as well.
Further to all this, my time spent alive has given me opportunity to encounter much more of the world than what my parents might have liked. I’ve encountered many other people beyond my parents. I’ve encountered many non-human entities, such as the pets I had growing up, or other animals encountered in travels. I’ve also interacted with countless non-living entities, from pencils to cars to buildings. All of these things I’ve encountered have left their mark on me as well, in various ways. The impact of seeing the majestic beauty of a mountain, or even simply stubbing my toe on the coffee table in my living room.
All of these interactions, at least in part, make up who I am. Those that view all of these as the ONLY things that make up who and what I am would likely be called Empiricists, as the Empiricists believe that all knowledge ONLY comes from my sensible experiences. In a purely deterministic world, one that is entirely governed by chains of causes and effects, it would make much sense that I am only as much as I have thus far described. That I am akin to a very complex, biological machine that follows a very predictable pattern of actions and choices. Given enough information, anyone could determine what I would say and do at any time.
But there is something more. It is hard for me to describe, but there is something else (perhaps) within me that is beyond simply these genetic and environmental aspects. Stuff happens in my mind. Even as I type these words, within me I am thinking about what I what to write, reasoning out the order of the words as well as why I want to use these words. It might be argued that this is still deterministic in nature, but it seems to be beyond simple sensible experience. Within me, I have done something with the experiences I have received and turned them into something else. If I consider that part of me that is processing all this information from my experiences to be “me,” then I might be considered following the Rationalists, who suggested that true knowledge comes from reason and reason alone. If this were true, then who and what I am would likely more closely align with my mind, and could be conceived with the absence of my body. After all, I am simply the processing part of this experience machine.
When I consider these views, I think to myself that there is still something about me that is not captured in either viewpoint. At least not entirely. There does seem to be a part of me that experiences the world, providing me with a lot of raw information that I can use. And there does seem to be a part of me that reasons, taking all this raw information and turning it into decisions and choices. But there is something else within me that I have an even harder time explaining.
Here and now, I “see” the world, like from a “first person perspective.” Sort of like the video games that have become so popular. I use the term “see,” but it is so much more. I hear the world, taste the world, feel the world. But more than that, I reflect on the world and on myself. I talk to myself, from within. Others cannot hear it, but I have an inner voice, that only I can hear. In addition to that voice, I also hear music as well. Patterns of sounds and feelings. I generally refer to this thing as being my consciousness. However, the term “consciousness” seems to be incomplete. For one, it seems caught up in the idea that I am awake. If I restrict its meaning to when I am awake, then I am no longer a conscious being when I am asleep. If that were to be a requirement of consciousness, then when I am asleep, I am no longer a conscious being; during that time, I am something less.
It is possible that I am hoping for there to be more to it. It is possible that there is not. Perhaps when I am asleep, there really is no me to speak of. And then, when I wake up in the morning, I come to exist once again. Or perhaps, as CGP Grey suggests, “every night’s slip into unconsciousness, the warm embrace of the Reaper, and every morning the first and only day of a new creature’s conscious life,” here suggesting that my consciousness ends each night, and the consciousness that comes about each morning is simply a unique consciousness that perhaps resembles the previous consciousness, but is in fact something altogether different. His “The Trouble with Transporters” YouTube video is, in my opinion, the best discussion of this topic ever, and I highly recommend taking a moment to watch it (https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI).
Taking all this seriously, I have come to the conclusion (for now) that this thing within me, that I generally call consciousness, is something akin to fire. I talked about this briefly in my previous post entitled “I am not solid.” That my consciousness is not a monolithic, nor static, thing but something fluid and dynamic. I do not think it is a coincidence that many ancient philosophers, such as Heraclitus, held that fire was a fundamental element involved with much of what we are. If I am correct, then the consciousness I now presently possess is the equivalent to a raging bonfire, made up of a massive amount of these smaller atomic consciousness elements, while when I am asleep, it is equivalent to the glowing embers of coals, made up of a very small amount of smaller elements. Furthermore, this would suggest that consciousness could present itself in larger and smaller forms, such as perhaps a lesser consciousness within a non-human animal like a dog or a cat. That these “lesser” beings have a consciousness comparable to our own, yet not the raging bonfire, but perhaps more like the ample campfire used to cook marshmallows on.
This seems (to me) to be consistent with my interpretation of how my dreams have operated. That while dreaming, where I may not be aware I am dreaming, the world and my faculties seem to be diminished. The best example of this occurred when I was quite young, when I had a very strange nightmare. In the dream, I had no sensory input; I did not see anything, hear anything, taste, smell, or feel anything. Furthermore, I could not remember anything from moment to moment, my memory lasting all of a second perhaps. The entire dream was me saying to myself (using my inner voice), “who am I,” followed by “where am I.” Unfortunately, after saying one phrase, I would forget having said the other phrase, so I would repeat the other. The entire dream was simply me saying “who am I,” then “where am I,” then “who am I,” then “where am I,” over and over again. Only once I awoke did I remember everything that had taken place. I could not tell you for how long I was in this insane loop, but it was for quite a time. This happened before I was 5 years old; it probably illuminates a lot about how I have come to be as I am today.
In other dreams, while dreaming, I would not know or understand certain things, but upon waking up, I would recognize that I had been dreaming and would suddenly understand the things I could not understand in the dream. It seemed to me that I was able to understand things in a downward fashion, into the dreams, but not in an upward fashion, out of the dreams. Upon reading René Descartes and his discussions about greater and lesser realities (in his argument to how God must have imprinted his stamp on us for us to have a concept of infinity), it seemed to me that perhaps that is how dreams also work. That the dream is the lesser reality, and from the dream I can only understand the world of the dream and any other lesser realities than the dream. However, from a greater reality, such as when I am awake, I can understand the waking world, and any lesser realities such as the reality of the dream. If this were all true, then it is conceivable that there are greater realities than this one, where I in some way awake from this dream, into a greater world. It puts an interesting spin on the idea of an afterlife.
These perspectives given to me by my dreams and by my other experiences leads me back to this first person viewpoint that I have, from within my consciousness. I considered the possibility that it could be like a passive observer, like a pilot flying an airplane on autopilot, simply watching the plane fly. However, without any interaction at all, how would my conscious mind have any idea that the passive observer existed, after all there is no interaction in the passive situation. Thus, the observer must be at least in some small way active. There has to be an interaction between the observer and the consciousness for the consciousness to have an understanding of the observer. At least this holds in a world that is deterministic, where the nature of the interaction follows from cause to effect. If there was another method of interaction that allowed for the observer to be detected, then perhaps it is this other method of interaction that is taking place.
Unfortunately, I presently cannot imagine another way of interacting than through cause and effect. That event A has some impact on bringing about event B is to say that events A and B interact in a way. If event A does not contribute to the bringing about of event B, or the other way around, this is to say that events A and B do not interact. However, in the case of a passive observer, there is still an interaction. While the passive observer does not necessarily cause events to occur, the events from the world (through the body in some way) do bring about something for the observer to observe. Perhaps the issue isn’t whether there is or is not an interaction, but in which directions the interactions occur or do not occur. Both the passive and the active observer are in some way affected by what happens, as they observe what happens. The difference is then that the passive observer does not induce a reaction back in the opposite direction. And as my conscious mind is somehow aware that there is something like an observer, then the observer has induced something of an effect on my conscious mind. Therefore, it cannot be a passive observer.
I have made a lot of progress here, but I have also barely scratched the surface. The best I can suggest at this point is that this thing I have been calling a consciousness, this thing that is me, is some sort of an active observer. The question I might pose next, is how much does this active observer contribute to my conscious mind.