The Consciousness Singularity, some people are very familiar with the topic, but many have not quite heard of this concept yet. There are also a lot of unanswered questions about the Consciousness Singularity, such as, how do we know that we are not already in a Singularity and that is reality is simply a dream of unified consciousness?

The Consciousness Singularity is a completely different theory from the Technological Singularity. There are some similarities, the idea of many minds connecting together as one, however the way this is intended and the concepts of reality - are completely different. The Consciousness Singularity is about the mind transcending the body and the reaching a higher state of consciousness, where it connects with other minds and forms a unified conscious mind. The Technological Singularity is about using technological devices to allow many minds to connect together and form one, much larger mind that becomes a single consciousness. Now this is something of great interest to many people, how do we go about bringing a Singularity? Well, like all things, the concepts to bringing such a change should be kept simple. What we are looking at is a possible point in evolution where human brains will be able to communicate to each other without using a sense. In essence, you would be linking human minds together in order to form a larger and more powerful one - when all conscious minds become linked together, that is called the Consciousness Singularity.

Think of it like this, a single personal computer is not capable of calculating complex equations, but.. if you link thousands of personal computers together, you have a supercomputer. Yale University is actually running a program between three universities and thousands of computers where they use the PCs processing power to help calculate complex equations when the owner isn't using it. Here's an interesting thought, right now it is economically impossible to build a computer that can emulate the human brain, this is mainly because of power consumption, however, if a person were to link thousands and thousands of computers together and use their processing power to form a massive neural network, you could very well have the next 'matrix'. These are the same concepts of the Consciousness Singularity, link many minds together and become something beyond what any single conscious mind is capable of.

So, how do we get all those computers to link together? Through the Internet right? Well, in order to bring about a Consciousness Singularity, we need an Internet for the brain. Actually we could put the brain on the Internet, well in some ways, it already is. You communicate over the Internet using your sense of sight, in this way, there is a limited form of connection. What is needed for a Consciousness Singularity is to have a stream of thought so that the neurons in one brain could communicate to the neurons in another one. What happens after that is the neurons begin forming new pathways on a much larger scale, absolutely massive if you think 7 billion people connected together - we cant even emulate one brain, let alone the power of 7 billion of them.

The raw thinking and cognitive abilities of such a thing are so immense that it would supersede everything else and this, is where we have our consciousness singularity. Each mind could be responsible for a small piece of the puzzle, just as how each PC adds a little bit of processing power to the supercomputer. The most powerful computers in the world could be toppled if enough cheap PCs were linked together. Its almost unimaginable what such a thing would be capable of, 7 billion minds connected together, the possibilities are endless. Another interesting point about the Consciousness Singularity is that should it occur, or if it already has, then we never really die. Rather, we are preserved in a collective consciousness, so our memories and personality - everything, would be preserved in the stream of consciousness. The Consciousness Singularity is mainly about the mind surpassing the body and then those minds unifying together.

Have you seen those ugly zombie looking Borge from Star Trek? Well, the Borge is essentially what would happen in a Technological Singularity gone wrong, similar to the matrix but not identical. Essentially, to go back to my supercomputer analogy, if you link a bunch of computers together - someone needs to tell them what to do. What happens is one rules all, that harpy woman who is ordering all the Borge soldiers around is the one making sure everyone does their job. So why wouldn't this happen in a Consciousness Singularity you ask? Because each mind is like one neuron, no single cell precedes any other. So every mind would be equal and it is the result of all these minds working together that creates something more. This is the same as how many neurons work together to form something more powerful than any individual neuron.

Also, the Consciousness Singularity is much more evolutionary and mentally based where as the Technological Singularity is about using science to cause Singularity. The Consciousness Singularity can draw from a lot of science, especially neuroscience but it doesn't necessarily have to. The Consciousness Singularity is about the mind transcending the body, this can be by religious means, meditation, enlightenment, astral projection, ect. This means that the Consciousness Singularity could come about in one of many ways or perhaps by a combination of methods. Perhaps the real need is a change in human thought, an enlightenment of the mind, perhaps this will allow us to move forward in bringing about the Consciousness Singularity. Places like Brain Meta are important, because they allow people to work together in thoughts and ideas in order to bring about new ideas and insights. Could you imagine what it would be like if everyone on Brain Meta had a clear and unfiltered flow of conscious thoughts from one person to the other? Imagine the insights we could gain and how much deeper our understanding would become.


Think about this, if you knew the experiences, the thoughts, the skills and the insights of every person on this planet, you would be capable of such tremendous things! Its this concept which makes the Consciousness Singularity so exciting, imagine all at once you knew exactly what Einstein thought and you could speak every language in the world, you would know everything about science every known and you could do anything to your hearts desire. This is really no different that connecting computers together and sharing the information between each computer. For example, lets say you needed to do Brain Surgery, you could draw on the experiences of the worlds top neurosurgeons and conduct the best possible operation. This is primarily because you would have the sum of all their experiences, so lets say there are 1,000,000 neurosurgeons, they vary in experience from 1 - 50 years. So you could very well have 100 million years worth of experience in preforming neurosurgery! Now perhaps you can see just how startling and world changing the effects of a Consciousness Singularity would be. The sheer volume of information is mind boggling, for the amount of memory a computer would need to store all of it - your are talking about numbers that do not even exist yet. The most difficult subjects facing scientists today would seem to be something of extreme stupidity to such a powerful mind, everything we think is hard to do and to think about would seem to be the most easy thing in the world to a singular consciousness. Subjects like Mathematics would be reduced to the amount of thinking required to breath.

The key to remember is Consciousness Singularity, not Unconscious Singularity, if we are not Consciously aware of the Singularity then it is like having a Ferrari in your Garage but riding a bike instead.


Such an occurrence would change the world and reality to such an extent, it is almost incomprehensible. At that point, one very well may be considered some sort of God, by then you would probably know how to make your own universe and life itself.

Excellent essay, Max! What remains is working out the details.

expand cingulate cortex and
sync with others brains
sync thalamic rhythms with other brains click. :

or simply allow oneself tof all in love with other brains and get everyone elses brains to fall in love with you

may the 4th be with you

I suspect that the assumption of an external world, with cingulate cortices, brains, and thalamic rhythms, while a necessity to maintain nowadays for any scientific discourse or progress, will be found to be a very incomplete picture of things. The question is, to what extent will this incomplete picture of reality prove a hindrance to breaking out of the human consciousness box and to the realization of the consciousness singularity?

I am somewhat less enthralled...optimizing communication through direct interfacing is certainly desirable, but "open access" is not something I would be interested in.



This is a misconceptualization.

No its not a misconceptualization, its simple learning functions put onto a larger scale. The more trials a person goes through, the easier they are able to preform the task and the more they will learn about said task. When you first ride a bike you have a great deal of trouble with it, but after x# of trials you are able to get the basic handling of it. Now if you had the experiences of a world class biker before you stepped on a bike, your mind would already know how to ride a bike.

On that note, another instresting throught is if we were able to download experiences from somewhere else. Or prehaps through some form of hypnosis be able to go through hundreds of trials in minutes.

This is possible for two reasons,

A. The Brain Recieves the same sensory input for something being visualized as being actualized.
B. The Brain does not have a set internal perception time, it is capable of experiencing hours worth of learning in seconds.

We know this from clinical trials and the inital experiments from Copper and Erickson. Now it is infact possible, to learn at a very fast rate. So if we cannot connect to others yet or download skills from something, then this should suffice for now.

My point, Maximus, was simply that, while it may be theoretically possible for a cybernetic system operating within the larger composite structure of a "super-consciousness" to possess ubiquitous access, it would not be possible for it to possess the knowledge of the super structure itself. I think you would agree with me that this is bordering on a tautology, but your choice of wording left matters unclear.

BTW, I have nothing against the concept of a "consciousness singularity", it is just that my focus is more on the relational dynamics that must necessarily evolve between agents for such a system to be functionally viable.

I talked about this in my first post, its not a conscious singularity unless we are consciously aware of it. We could very well be in a singularity but not a unified consciousness because we believe to have individual minds instead of a collective.

Yes, and I am telling you that I want no part of your "collective consciousness" and I suspect that there will be a sizable percentage of individuals who are of a similar mindset.

Hmm, first time ive heard resiliancy towards the consciousness singularity. You know, there may already be a singularity, you just might not be aware of it ^.=

Your claim that there may already be a "conscious singularity" has buddhistic undertones (eg, universal consciousness). There's nothing wrong with that, but it is indicative of certain ontological commitments which are, atleast currently, indemonstrable.

I don't see this as a "right or wrong" issue, but a matter of morality and what our Will compels us to desire.

It could very well be that there will be multiple independently evolving collectives with varying degrees of interconnectedness.

Indeed, although my thoughts on the Consciousness Singularity are not buddhist in nature as I know little about buddhism. The core of the Consciousness Singularity is in philosophy, people all around the world have thought about this topic without any relation to religion. Buddhism certainly seems to have Unified Consciousness as one of their goals, so I suppose it could be good to see what the buddhist solution to the Consciousness Singularity is.

If there were a singularity right now, it would most likely be responsible for the existance of this reality and individual consciousness' (us) would use this reality as a form of communication and entertainment.

You could also say that Buddhism rallies itself around the conscious singularity but one would have to awaken to that which inspired Buddha and his own experience of that.

Morality is something that is wrapped up with a label. The direction of the expanding universe is always forward regardless of what the ego wants to think is good for human growth and experience.
In retrospect when one takes their awareness beyond their selfish motives and ideals perfection always presents itself.

The collective contains both ideas. The experience of the collective doesn't force those who don't have one to have one and those who don't have the experience can't take away the experience of the collective from those who have it. Go figure.
Some things are not altered by a democratic majority.




Has , is and always will be.
Recognising connectedness is enhancing to awareness rather than detremental.

Just 'cause you aint seein it don't mean it aint there.

I partially agree, but I also see technology and consciousness as being indivisibly linked. Technology is a particular form of ("useful") knowledge. People often confuse a tangible artifact as being technology, when really it is only a physical correlate of the technology in question. For instance, strange as it seems, an actual car is not technology. The knowledge of how to build a car and how to operate a car is the technology. Interestingly, one of the only forms of "pure communal knowledge" that presently exists is technology. IOW, it is universally shared knowledge that is not subject to interpretation (there is little interpretation over what the purpose of a car is).

Applying technology to consciousness related domains, wouldn't it be safe to say that one form of knowledge is expanding recursively and exponentially, and thus creating the fertile ground out of which other forms of conceptual and experential knowledge can grow?

As I said, there is a risk of the technological singularity going bad, but that same risk doesnt occur in the consciousness singularity due to a non centralized structure.

The consciousness singularity is really a society whose interaction occurs through consciousness rather than physical bodies.

allow me to play devil's advocate:
perhaps Max and Techno are trying to conceptualize something that can't be conceptualized with human consciousness, like a monkey trying to understand calculus?

If it cannot be conceptualized by the conscious mind then it cannot exist, the key here is the Conciousness Singularity, if our consciousness is unable to conceptualize it then it is unable to actualize it. If this were the Unconcious Singularity, then prehaps the conscious mind could not conceptualize it.

So if I understand you correctly, you are saying that some type of technological singularity is not necessary for consciousness singularity? If so, we are much further apart in our conceptualization of things then I had at first thought.

Technological Singularity and Consciousness Singularity are two diffrent things. Consciousness Singularity entails that a person is connected through consciousness rather than their body. Technological Singularity is about using devices to interface peoples brains to eachother.

Wow, I'm really not trying to be argumentative but...

I view consciousness as an evolving, emergent process. There are things which could not be imagined 10,000 years ago which are imaginable today. Still, the general constraints imposed on us by our neurobiological substrate are considerable. There is an upper limit to human level intelligence and imagination, just as there is an upper limit to the cognitive capacities of our primate cousins. Technological augmentation is the next step in the evolution of intelligence (or, dependingn on your semantics, consciousness).

How do you propose we attain consciousness singularity through non-technological means? Group meditation?


(And for the record, I am a functionalist philosopher of the mind who subscribes to the concept of supervenience)

Depends on the way you see reality, read around about the diffrent perceptions of reality and the ways reality works on a quantum level and maybe youl get it.

Trying to solve a mystery with a mystery is one of the oldest conceptual errors.

All posts that are irrelevant to the discussion have been deleted.

Let's all take a deep breath and try not to let our egos get overly-emotional here!


yet the Universe existed well before anyone conceptualized it. Or is it the Mind of God that conceptualized it? I think you're wrong here, Max. Monkeys cannot conceptualize calculus yet it exists mathematically, quite independent of whether there are humans to conceptualize it. The fact that we cannot adequately conceptualize the Consciousness Singularity (since by definition, the Consciousness Singularity is beyond human ability to conceptualize or imagine what it's like), does not rule out its actualization. No more than water's inability to conceptualize a snowflake rules out it's ability to actualize a snowflake.

Technologist's linkage of the Consciousness Singularity to the Techno Singularity is an interesting idea. Do you really consider modifying the wetware of the brain to be "technology"? If so, then yes, they are linked. However, many people define technology in terms of computers, not in the general form that you are espousing; in which case, the Techno Singularity and the Consciousness Singularity would not seem to be necessarily related.

Lucid you got my creative juices going, I hadnt thought that universe could of existed before consciousness, or could it? I guess this goes back to the if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

Very intresting thoughts though, my thought was that the unified consciousness works similar to the computer that runs a game. Your character does not think about the dynamics of firing a bullet, the game calculates that out for you. Individual consciousness' do not think about the meaningless things, rather the unified body of consciousness does it. Like in a dream, you dont think about every little detail, the sub-conscious does it for you.

Lucid, essentially what I am doing is developing the concept of technology from an uncommitted monistic framework (as opposed to dualism). By this I mean that I am not taking a firm stand on the nature of the one substance which reality consists of because this often muddles the dialog with unnecessary semantical baggage. One could very well be a Berkeleyan idealist and still agree with the logic I'm espousing.

I understand what you're saying about how people popularly conceive of technology and that was my main point; that their conception is generalized and misguided. Technological evolution is both a product of and catalyst for cultural evolution. Anthropologically, one could trace this inter-relationship back thousands of years. The advent of external data storage (writing) allowed for the literate guilds which solidied religious tenets and moved modern human culture away from the amorphous animism of prehistoric times (along with many many other effects). The invention of the prinitng press, which amplified the projection of cultural norms and brought with it the formation of nation states. And telecommunication, and fiber optics, and... What are all of these technologies doing? Optimizing information transfer and allow for the more rapid advance of cultural evolution (which we are all instantiations of -- there is no logical way that any of our perspectives could have existed 500 years ago).

I can already hear the objections. Yes, certainly there have been massive improvements in communications over human history, but none of these advances even remotely approach the type of intimate communication that is being conceived of with a consciousness singularity. To this I would argue that the perceived differences are not qualitative but quantitative. An optimized transfer of data, whether it could somehow be engineered for mind-to-mind link ups, or just "non-sentient storage facility"-to-mind is still, by definition, a form of information transfer.

Yet many may still not be satisfied with my conception of consciousness singularity. Some would say that "Consciousness singularity" requires an even more intimate connection where experiential knowledge can be shared. Ah, now this is the crux of the matter. And quite frankly, such a sharing of knowledge is not possible as long as a super-consciousness remains distributed. This is because experiential knowledge is necessarily interpretive. It can not be thought of as a passive absorption of sensory data, but as a consequence of functional interaction between a cognition and its environment. Of course, the super system could restructure itself to be homogenous. This would allow for unified experience by the system, but also at the expense of what some cognitions perceive as autonomy.

From my perspective, cognitive transcendence does not even need to be a communal affair. Even with my paltry human level cognition, I already feel some measure of transcendence when pursuing my quest for uber-rationality. Improving one's heuristic methods, and with it the refinement of hir realism, is certainly enlightening. With technological augmentation of cognition, this optimization process will reach unprecedented heights.

All of what I have stated is based on a physicalist (not traditional materialism) interpretation of reality. Consciousness is a process that supervenes on a physical substrate. Meaning is produced through the functional relationships between objects, which is analgous to the fields of mathematics (quantity, structure, space, change). As this theorizing is substrate neutral, psychological properties are multiply realizable (iow, cognition can operate on a biological or synthetic substrate).

Also, there is one other thing I would like to mention. Maximus, as you've requested of me not to mistake your position for religious mysticism, I would also kindly ask you not to mistake mine for traditional naturalism.

I am a systems theorist who has, as of late, been focusing on second order cybernetics.

An interesting and age old question. For all we know, we could be residing in some type of advanced simulation as postulated by Bostrom, but these types of metaphysical speculations are utterly unresolvable from our current vantage point. Fortunately, if one embraces Bayesian probablistic reasoning and the principle of causality there is no need to make an intellectual commitment (ie, belief) one way or the other while constructing a maximally consistent conceptual framework.



The belief in a unified consciousness is unsubstantiated. There are increasingly sophisticated accounts of how intelligence has evolved on this planet. The dualist intuition that makes the idea of a universal consciousness seem plausible is representative of making an intellectual commitment where noncommitment is the appropriate response.

Take inverted spectrum arguments. Why is 475 nm electromagnetic radiation perceived by my cognition as the quale of blueness and not the quale of redness? For starters, this questions use of the term quale demonstrates certain ontological commitments, namely, that qualia actually exists and isn't just an aspect of our cognitive psychology. But even if we assume that qualia do exist (a big assumption), this doesn't topple functionalism as the superior framework for considering consciousness. This is because qualitative experience corresponds to the acquisition of sensory data. Electromagnetic radiation that is within the visible spectrum for human beings serves the functional purpose of accurately informing us about our surrounds. As such, 475nm light had to be represented by our minds as something. Why it was represented as one something and not another something is, I will quickly admit, quite mysterious. However believing that this is necessarily a mystery of consciousness when there is also the possibility of it being a mystery of reality itself is, once again, an unjustified assumption.

[PS - I wrote a response to your PM but I'm not sure if it went through as my I don't see any messages archived in my sent box...do basic members not get a sent messages archive or is there something funky with my account?]

these are some great thoughts, Technologist. So you're a monistic functionalist? You say "such a sharing of knowledge is not possible as long as a super-consciousness remains distributed" but I'm not so sure since holographic models are such that the whole is represented in each individual. In fact, small-world networks where each node is highly causally interdependent on most or all other nodes will have the activity of the whole contained within each individual. You also say that "the perceived differences are not qualitative but quantitative" but this seems a bit iffy since what technological development needs to do is enhance the wetware of the brain, functionalism notwithstanding. Just because there are a 100 billion neurons in the human brain does not mean that 100 billion Chinese ppl talking on cell phones can reproduce the activity of the human brain (and give rise to some societal consciousness on a par with human consciousness) because the complexity of the interconnections and activities of individual neurons is such as to render functionalism essentially meaningless in all but theory (since we can never fully mimic the full complexity of individual neurons and their activities). Technology certainly helps us in many ways and improves information flow between people, but for the Consciousness Singularity, the wetware of the brain will have to be augmented and enhanced, most likely not solely through silicon implants, but through growing and augmenting living neurons in the brain. The exact relation between the Techno and Conscousness Singularities is an interesting one regarding their interdependence and whether one implies the other. I do understand what you're saying and the monistic and functionalist approach you take (and it is a very interesting one), but this to me seems to be treading on shaky ground, and that a firmer footing would be found by staying within the human brain, which we know is associated with our consciousness, and talking about enhancing the human brain, whose continued enhancement will result in the Consciousness Singularity. While functionalism is very reasonable, it still requires a lot of faith that we fully understand the functionality behind consciousness, and this is the assumption that I would question. The brain is the most complicated system in the known universe, and to presume that we can represent it's consciousness-producing activities functionally, distinct from its peculiar wetware implementation, is currently untenable.

Thank you lucid.



The notion of a "holographic universe" is not diametrically opposed to my perspective. As I said earlier, I am not your typical naturalist who believes all phenomena must be reconciled with the dynamics of biological evolution. What I do believe, based on my flavor of realism, is that naturalism gives us a practical starting point, as well as making apparent the fact that many properties which have traditionally been associated as "mind dependent" are causally connect with natural phenomena. There are many ways to interpret contemporary physical theory, Bohm's being among them. I do not feel the extent of our collect knowledge allows for strong belief in such speculative areas of inquiry, but if someone were to hold a gun to my head then I would side with the holographic principle (which is information theoretic), if for no other reason than it represents the most elegant metaphysic. But I digress.

The position I'm advancing is a particular morality with an emphasis on the value of identity. What I am not claiming is that the "nodes" of a super-consciousness couldn't be precise (or nearly precise) duplicates of one another. What I am claiming is that there would then exist a shared identity between these duplicates. This melding of identity is objectionable to someone such as myself who places a great deal of importance on "continuity" and "volitional directionality". Stated differently, the nature of my Will is such that it wishes to express itself fully and independently. In some far off future, where our capacities have been radically altered, instead of being collectivist I could just as easily establish a super-consciousness where the individual "nodes" were duplicates of my identity. This is why I stated earlier, "I don't see this as a "right or wrong" issue, but a matter of morality and what our Will compels us to desire. It could very well be that there will be multiple independently evolving collectives with varying degrees of interconnectedness."

Never, as in never never, as in never never never? Never is a very long time my friend. All we can establish with any degree of certainty is that theory conforms to current empirical findings. Biologically based cognitions is definitely complex, but if we have a valid theoretical understanding of what is going on, and if what is relevant to cognition is functional relations, then there is no reason that cognition couldn’t be produced with a nonbiological substrate. This is a purely theoretical claim. Although I hope that such developments take place in my life time, I am fully aware that this level of progress may lie off in the distant future and be of no benefit to myself personally. So be it. Any estimations made on technological progress are necessarily speculative and amount to future betting.



Now this is an interesting point of contention! It amounts to asking, "are you willing to put your money where your mouth is." Indeed, there is a degree of faith (presupposition) in even the most rational perspectives. Take for example that I presuppose the fact that you (and the rest of humanity) possess inner subject experience in much the same way I do. This presupposition seems reasonable to me. The behavior of other humans indicates to me that they are aware of their environment. If an artificial intelligence demonstrated the same level of awareness as human beings, then what rationale besides from bio-centricism would I have to deny that they possess consciousness?

This bias seems particularly dangerous to me, as it could result in a future form of discrimination, much likely the racism of today, where nonbiological cognitions are viewed by biological cognitions as being inferior (unconscious automatons).

If and when functionalism demonstrates its validity by producing artificially intelligent systems that can fully operate in the physical world, I will then have a sufficient level of confidence to augment my cognition via the same technology that made AI possible,

(Add on: Along with this position is a strong intuition on my part that philosophical zombies are logically impossible).

The thing about never ever completely simulating real neurons in their full complexity in silico is that, since they are chaotic systems, we will never be able to fully simulate them in full detail since there is not enough material in the observable universe to guarantee infinite precision in simulation calculations.


If you can interface with it. Currently the crudeness of silicon, even with nanotechnology, does not come close to matching the intricacies of real neurons, with the result that brain-machine interfaces are largely a matter of punching a bunch of holes in the brain with electrodes. The beauty of augmenting the wetware is that interface issues are largely non-issues.

I found this statement by brainmeta’s founder which, I’ll assume, expresses the site’s orthodoxy on what is meant by “consciousness singularity”.



I view this as an advanced perspective with a great deal of underlying theoretical development. One can’t help but notice the similarities between natural and buddhistic philosophy. Both of these framework in their own way view the self as an illusion (see Metzinger). As a functionalist, I do subscribe to the position worked out by metzinger and see the self as a “self system”, however this doesn’t impinge on my moral framework or its conceptualization of “Being”. Consequently, in relation to my position I view Shawn as attacking a straw man and not recognizing his opinion as a moral interpretation (though perhaps he does and just chooses to state things in an authoritative manner). For Shawn, concerns about identity are seen as a byproduct of “myopia of the mind”. For myself, entertaining the notion of a “universal consciousness” amounts to unjustified conceptual liberties being taken in the form of “omniscient objectivity”. I would contend that these two moral frameworks are antipodal, and that their origins can be traced back to the contrasting selective forces (group and organismal) of the evolutionary dynamic.

Being aware of the epistemological shortcomings that the respective positions possess is essential for a proper understanding. It could be argued that the weakness in my position lies in how I structure my reality based on perceived confidence levels, whereas the weakness in the contrasting position is its presumptiveness regarding the perceived nature of consciousness - and reality itself.

One of the most obvious objections to the thesis of universal consciousness (as it is being argued for here) is the fact that there is currently no empirical evidence whatsoever for the connectivity of minds other than through physical media.

What a great find! Thanks Technologist. Metzinger is familiar to me from his Neural Correlates of Consciousness (2000) but I was not aware of this other book, and am pleasantly surprised by what he seems to be proposing.


I don't follow you here. How are you tracing this back to group and organismal forces?

Well, if you dig that, then I think you'd also enjoy this video lecture by Metzinger. (hhmm, too bad there is no "thumbs up" emoticon for these boards...)

Being No One: Consciousness, The Phenomenal Self, and the First-Person Perspective

The Precis of "Being No One":
http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzin...ationen/BNO.pdf

As I said earlier, I consider naturalism to be a practical starting point for my cogitating. Regardless of how advanced a perspective is, if consciousness is tied in largely (if not entirely) to evolutionary processes, then a great deal can be learned about our personal dispositions or “Will” by utilizing speculative domains of knowledge such as evolutionary psychology. Making the rather general claim that there is a group psychological component to human consciousness doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me (how can voting in a national election be explained through a rational egoist framework?). Furthermore, it is not at all certain that advanced perspectives which have an awareness of these underlying influences will always rebel and override that which it is, to varying degrees, in their nature to do. On the contrary, I actually believe that the opposite is true. Usually a volition will settle in on a value set which conforms to whichever side of the spectrum it is predisposed to, and then override those imperatives which run counter to the predominant dispositional state and manifest those imperatives which bolster it. In other words, advanced perspectives, although highly refined, tend to become more polarized, not less.

The desire to merge minds - to attain a communal consciousness - is indicative of group psychological influences. The choice between pursuing ultra-intelligence as some hybrid collective (which currently could be looked at as a type of disjointed cybernetic system) or a distinct cybernetic system is purely arbitrary, and a product of the innate dispositions that we all possess. I can recognize this fact while still enjoying the process of doing that which it is in my nature to do.

BTW, saying that individual instantiations of consciousness are the universe being aware of itself is a vacuous statement from my perspective. Wow really, you don't say? It begs the question. Why is it aware of itself? What purpose does intelligence serve? And in this regard, my metaphysic, although necessarily speculative, is the more reflexive, more elegant, conceptualization of reality.

A rather bold statement on my part, but one that I feel I can defend if require to do so. The intuitive leap of faith lies in the fact that I suspect intelligence, which at the moment is only a "conceptualizer", will eventually figure out a way to become an "actualizer".

That would be to surrender to something greater than the individual self.
Being a conduit for Universal Mind.

Because, why not?

I could have told you that!!! Just kidding, Tek. I guess that's just my way of expressing how much I like where you are going with your thoughts on this subject. Keep at it.

And the answer to this question is... Er, help me out here, Tek! I know you have an answer that I am going to like. And try to keep it in layman's terms.

Why am I becoming aware of myself? Because it's what I want.

"The need to know new things." --Silicon life forms on Star Trek, the original TV series.

Back to the naturalist framework, beings evolved desire to be aware because they function better that way. The question begged is this:

If there were no evolutionary advanatage to consciousness, would it still be a good thing? I say yes.

Indeed, Consciousness in itself, self awareness of ones own existance.

Buttons, basically, why do you know you exist? Do plants know they exist? This is the nature of consciousness. Self awareness allows us to adapt to our environment and the more we know about ourself, the easier it becomes to make any desired changes.

Your posts here are really a true gem. You hit the nail dead-center in the head. Thanks.

I'd say yes too, but only from my egotistical perspective as a human being. Why would you think it (consciousness) is a good thing, Rick?

Why not?

This goes back to the age old question, to be or not to be. To have consciousness or not have consciousness - your basically asking someone whether they want to exist or not.

Begs the question might have been a poor choice of wording on my part. What I meant was that the nature of consciousness needs to be further elaborated on…

Asking what some individuals believe to be the “ultimate question” – how can something come from nothing? – is a consequence of misunderstanding the nature of nothingness. I would argue that nothing can only be defined or conceptualized as a relational property of two or more somethings. Thus, nothing comes from something, and not the other way around. If reality consists fundamentally of one substance, and that one substance is *mind* or *consciousness* or *awareness* or what ever you’d like to call it, then that substance is the something, beyond which it is nonsensical to beg the question. So, mea culpa.

With that said, refining (if we can even call it that) our understanding of this fundamental substance is reasonable, and even imperative on our parts. So, here are some vague, philosophically unrespectable thoughts, compliments of yours truly:


(1) The type of awareness that we currently have definitively knowledge of is a rather insignificant example of the connectivity of reality. If we entertain the radical form of monism that I have put forward - which really amounts to a hybrid form of simulation – then intentionality, in the philosophical sense of the word, is mind-to-mind connectivity.

(2) Witnessed from the condition of Being, awareness will always appear as process, as becoming, because we can not escape temporality. However, from the impossible vantage point of omniscient objectivity there would be no potentiality, only actuality.

Similarly, for a cognition, that which is directly observed, or which falls safely within a strictly established epistemic criteria (like the wall of china for those of us who have never visited Asia), are actualized possibilities. The infinite subset of infinite logical possibility that falls outside of these boundaries are merely perceived as possibilities – not actualities. Such goes the nature of Being.

(3) The kind of awareness that we are all familiar with are actualities, but they are not actualizers; at least not in the narrow sense of the word which I have in mind. We can take solace in our actuality while still yearning for more. An actualizer can produce environments in which other actualities developed. Of course, notions of production and development are how we interpret reality from within Being, but there is really only actuality of infinite complexity.

(4) Getting even more ridiculously speculative… If actualities exist within an actualizer, then those actualities are the actualizer, and with this idea comes the idea of there existing a strong level of intimacy between the actualizer and its actualizations. And if the actualizations themselves become actualizers, then the intimacy extends outward through the vastness of possibility.

I suppose, Joesus, that some of our differences are semantical, as I have no problem accepting the fact that I am a finite being existing within an infinite reality, nor do I have any issues with the idea that my being may possibly serve some kind of functional purpose in the grander scheme of things.

One of the reasons that I enjoy visiting a venue such as brainmeta is that the participants here aren’t afraid to let things hang out a little bit. There’s nothing wrong with engaging in speculation so long as one recognizes the activity as such.

Are we conceiving of consciousness as something other than information processesing? Rick, is a philosophical zombie something that your intuitions tell you is logically possible?