On Consciousness, Qualia, and the Architecture of the Self
NOTE: I DID NOT USE AI FOR THE CONTENT, JUST FOR THE PRESENTATION. NO WORDS CHANGED WHATSOEVER… HAVE THIS IN MIND.
The Unifier and the Coherence Law
Topological/chronological qualia is the last unifier on the path of the coherence law (the law of binding objects within their most probable characteristics, mimicking intelligent design).
Most of the time, what you call consciousness in an average human being is an integrated living experience of all the information that hits the unifier, the pseudo-organ of consciousness.
Let’s imagine a funnel where all the information is dumped, then filtered to the last bit.
Levels of Perception
Looking from afar, you can see a human silhouette…
the consciousness says “it’s a human.”
Then, approaching, you see it’s a woman;
then consciousness elaborates on it and recognizes “it’s a woman”… and so forth…
You see a hand…
then you focus…
“oh, a piece of skin”…
then “oh… a skin cell”
and so forth.
Consciousness is whatever appears on the plane of reflection.
The Mind as a Gearbox
The mind is like the gears of a car: you can shift your view from a high-velocity, low-detail approach to first gear, where you consider the smallest portions of the portrait you are watching.
Consciousness is likely a combined effect of perception (perception can be concrete or abstract; any object that has a value in your reference field) and free-to-reflex computing mechanisms.
Free Consciousness and the Internal Organ
I would say that what we call “free consciousness” is a very sensitive internal organ that simulates reality or whatever is happening in the comprehension module of the consciousness organ.
We have embedded a replica of the self;
call it ego for the ethical part,
and call it sentimental-flesh for the sensitive substrate.
When you experience a sensation or a feeling, you are actually experiencing a very sensitive part of yourself, a core part of the human architecture where the mechanisms are shortcutted by very powerful mechanics.
Consciousness as Lived Experience
There, consciousness truly transforms itself into a body of experiences; it can experience fear, loss, joy, exaltation, and the entire human range of sentiments.
There, the mind experiences the qualia of virtual or physical objects.
This core is the basis for the survival of life over eons of time.
Pain, Projection, and Coping Mechanisms
Let’s take pain.
We experience pain on multiple levels and we actively cope with it;
from a fear of something that “could happen,” a virtual object from the future,
to the actual, let’s say, physical pain where our own body tries to cope with it.
We have mechanisms to reinforce any lived sensation and to decouple from it too.
The Heart and the Self
Our internal voodoo doll is actually what you can call “self,” but it’s more like your “heart,” your ultimate feeling organ.
Your heart has “ways that the mind does not know,” as a great philosopher said—absolutely true.
Actually, the heart can have intuition and a kind of consciousness that we cannot access through simple logic or usual perception linked to the perceived universe.
Subjectivity and the Limits of Shared Experience
You have 5 senses, 2 eyes, yet you still have a unified consciousness.
I don’t see it as impossible to have a consciousness with 4 eyes… or 16 billion eyes…
I cannot understand or have the experience of it, just as I cannot have the consciousness of your experience.
We look at something green… will it be the same in my mind as in yours?
I bet absolutely not…
So if we agree that consciousness is subjective to the observer, why invalidate the idea that consciousness can have 4 eyes in different rooms?
Artificial Intelligence and Totalistic Consciousness
After all, if AI will ever achieve consciousness or something simulating it… it will be a totalistic all-points-of-view point, as AI is not limited by its senses…
Higher Dimensions and Meaning
The real question is:
“Can you make sense of a universe which has more than 3 dimensions?”
What kind of object of consciousness can be built in a more-than-3D universe?
And while the object might be coherent within itself…
what would be the utility or output of this object?
What would be the embedded universal law for the self-affirmation of this kind of universe?
Other Considerations
Where is your consciousness when you sleep?
Can you have a wet dream?
What about a nightmare?
So consciousness is in some way active when we sleep; the dream is the imprint of the conceptual reality on the retina of consciousness… but the hologram of it seems absent or we just don’t remember what happened last night.
Maybe you died 100 times but you cannot remember—no imprint in the memory, just pure juggling with the parts of the machine.
Consciousness Without Memory
What is consciousness without memory, or without long-term memory as sick people can have?
They feel projected into a world whose whereabouts they ignore, like not believing in it, having no strings attached to anything they can call “mine.”
Full consciousness requires full living humanity.
After Death
I don’t think whatever consciousness subsists after the death of a human, whatever it is, is more like a dream.
Maybe it just changes its shape into something we cannot know or understand;
maybe just a string in the universal consciousness,
a new string with a unique music of you.
Bro needs an anti-AI disclaimer tssk tssk.
Nice musings. Really make you think.