My Take On Consciousness

May 21 2025, 14:43:07

Approx. 12 minute read

One problem I don't think we'll ever solve is understanding consciousness.

That being said, I do believe that we can make some progress in understanding it, or at least, rationalizing it.

I've had a lot of discussions about this with people, and honestly over the years I've changed my thinking on this a lot.

So... here are my thoughts on the matter.

Definition

One thing that makes talking about consciousness difficult is that depending on who you talk to, you're likely talking about different things.

For some people, it's the ability to think and reason.
For others, it's the ability to be aware of your surroundings.
For others, it's the ability to have emotions.
For others, it's the ability to have subjective experiences.

Simply put, this post, and my take on consciousness is about the ability to have subjective experiences.

Frankly put, the only interesting thing about consciousness is the ability to have subjective experiences.

The other definitions are largely physical realities. Regardless of how it's implemented, the ability to think, to be aware, to have emotions are things we can attribute to things such as LLMs, or even computers in general.

I'd posit that "we" are no different than a very complex version of:

const being = new Being();

while (true) {
  const tasks =
    being.processWants()
      .sort(being.prioritize())
      .take(being.capacity());

  being.enqueue(tasks);
}

What I mean by this is that thinking is a physical process, it's computable. Even if LLMs and Neural Networks don't think like we do, I don't believe they underlying process is materially different.

You take in context, information. You process it, and you output a result.

Likewise for awareness and having emotions. These are physical feedback mechanisms that help physical systems adapt or optimize for some output.

On the other hand, when I talk about subjective experiences, I'm talking about about the "side effects" of these processes.

It's like adding a console.log(being) to the example above.

Subjective Experiences

To be very specific, a subjective experience is the ability to have a "first person perspective" of the world around you.

Literally the screen you view the world through, the actual feeling of your senses and emotions, not the senses and emotions themselves.

I think this is the most important part of consciousness and the part that makes it so difficult to understand.

This concept is explored extensively in the academic literature on qualia — the intrinsic, experiential qualities of conscious states.

For a comprehensive introduction to these ideas, David Chalmers' foundational paper "Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness" (1995) and his book The Conscious Mind (1996) remain essential reading.

My Background

For the vast majority of my life, I would have described myself as a:

Physicalist
Materialist (see materialism discussion)

To summarize these thoughts, I was largely of the mind that if we could understand the low level physical building blocks of the universe, we could understand anything.

If we can model every interaction for every atom.
We can model anything that can happen in the universe.
Everything that exists or can exist is a result of these interactions.
Therefore, we can model anything that exists or can exist.

I still largely believe this, but of late, I've had a revalation that my own subjective experiences are not something I can... model in this way.

By this I mean... what does your subjective experience weigh? Where is it? What's it made of?

These qualia are things in a different sense to how a "bike" is a thing.

I'd go as far as to say they're the only thing we know of that is strictly not physical.

The belief that there are physical and non-physical — ineffable — things aligns with dualism, which I now ascribe to.

René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) established the classic formulation of substance dualism, though modern property dualism offers more nuanced approaches to the mind-body problem.

The Thought Experiment

I'll demonstrate this with the following thought experiment:

Assume you can invent a machine that perfectly replicates "living things".
Like the above example, it has needs and wants.
It takes in external information and processes it.
It might take in internal information too.

Take this example far enough and let's assume you're able to create a cute little robot dog, or even a human capable of speech.

Well, I'd argue for all intents and purposes, you've no reason to assume this robot is any different from the real deal.

**But, if you were to ask me if this robot is conscious, I would say no.

When exactly did you implement consciousness? -- You didn't.

I genuinely believe that LLMs, neural networks, image recognition, etc. are on the right track to implement the "inputs" to our subjective experiences.

They might not be there right now, but think in twenty years. As the technology matures, I think we'll be able to create a machine that can "see" and "hear" the world around it.

Black Boxes

One of the things that makes talking about consciousness so difficult is that it's faith based whether or not it even exists.

By this, I mean that we have no way of knowing if other people are conscious or not -- we're all just black boxes.

This leads to the problem of solipsism — the idea that only your own mind is sure to exist.

Thomas Nagel's famous essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) explores this fundamental epistemological problem of accessing other minds' subjective experiences.

I think this is a very real problem, and one that I think is largely unsolvable.

Solipsism can easily lead to (negative) nihilism, I largely get by by having faith that other people are equally as conscious as I am.

I'll continue the rest of the post with this in mind.

Panpsychism

I think the most interesting take on consciousness is the idea of panpsychism.

Galen Strawson's Consciousness and Its Place in Nature (2006) and Philip Goff's Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (2017) have been instrumental in reviving serious academic interest in panpsychist theories.

Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and that all things have some degree of consciousness.

This is a very interesting idea, and one that I think is worth exploring.

Basically, the idea is that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like mass or charge.

Just like how mass or charge are axiomatic -- they just are -- consciousness very well could be the same, hence the immaterial nature of qualia.

To summarize:

Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.
All things have some degree of consciousness.
Your subjective experience is a result of the interactions of these fundamental properties.
Because you're a complex system, you have a more complex subjective experience.

Cats, dogs, and even plants have some degree of consciousness, but it's not as complex as ours. This is a function of the complexity of the system.

To that end, rocks, water, and even atoms have some degree of consciousness also. They "experience" in their own "subjective" sense.

The key here is the "subjective" part. Just as you're a "subject" of your own experience, so too is a rock.

Rocks don't have senses, so their subjective experience is very different from ours. But they still have one.

I guess one could argue as a result, our robot example is conscious too -- but alas.

The Mind Body Split

Traditionally, the mind body problem has been a philosophical problem that has plagued humanity for centuries.

The idea that the mind and body are separate entities is a very old one, and one that I think is largely incorrect. But the argument still holds with respect to consciousness.

While the mind is a complex, deeply interconnected system, our thoughts and feelings are largely a result of the interactions of these systems -- they're emergent but very much still physical.

However, our consciousness could be used as a drop-in replacement for the "mind" in the mind body problem.

I've personally experienced a phenomenon where my consciousness is "experiencing" my thoughts and feelings, but I have no control over them.

"I" -- the "subject" -- am just along for the ride.

This was a very strange and disconcerting experience, but it completely shattered the illusion that "I" am in control of my thoughts and feelings.

Under normal conditions, your subjective experience is taking in the information from your senses and emotions, and processing it.

But think about dreaming, or going under anesthesia. I don't believe your consciousness is "turned off" in these cases, your brain is just behaving differently, so your subjective experience is altered.

In the case of going under anesthesia, you're memory centers aren't recording. There might not be anything to record.

But alas, your consciousness remains -- it's fundamental.

Per the code analogy, it's like altered mental states are experienced thusly:

const being = new Being();

while (true) {
  let tasks;

  switch (being.state) {
    case "dreaming":
      tasks = being.processMemory().store().generateTraining();
      break;
    case "anesthesia":
      break;
    default:
      being.processWants();
        .sort(being.prioritize())
        .take(being.capacity());
      break;
  }

  const tasks =
    being.processWants()
      .sort(being.prioritize())
      .take(being.capacity());

  being.enqueue(tasks);
  console.log(being); // your subjective experience is here
}

Animism

I've oft wondered if there was some truth underlying the idea of animism.

Graham Harvey's Animism: Respecting the Living World (2017) and David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous (1996) offer compelling contemporary examinations of animistic worldviews and their relationship to consciousness studies.

animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.

Is it purely a coincidence that ancient cultures believed that everything had a spirit?

What about monks and shamans who claim to have a "spiritual" connection to the world around them?

People who are able to meditate deeply, or people taking psychedelics often report having a oneness with the universe.

What about Shinto beliefs that everything, namely old, special objects have a kami or spirit?

Perhaps this is the result of our consciousness is a unified, fundamental property of the universe?

I'm unsure. But I do believe that my panpsychic beliefs correlate largely with the idea of souls.

Theism

Despite my dualist and panpsychic beliefs, I don't believe in (a) god(s) in the traditional sense.

If there is some "creator" god, whatever they are must be so far removed from us that we can't even begin to comprehend them.

The universe is vast and complex. If we were created by an "outside" force (i.e. not aliens...) then per the copernican principle we are likely not special in any way.

We're just one of many, many "different" things and to assume some special connection to this "creator" is a bit egotistical.

I don't reject this idea outright, but in terms of organized or traditional religion, I think such a thing is highly unlikely.

Or, better stated, if a god exists, I don't think they care about us -- there's no further meaning "they" give us.

The Meaning of Life

I called out the idea of (negative) nihilism earlier, and I did so very intentionally.

Nihilism is the idea that life is meaningless, and that there is no inherent value in anything.

Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere (1986) explores these existential questions, while Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) offers the classic treatment of finding meaning despite apparent meaninglessness.

I actually very much believe this, but I don't think it's a bad thing.

I think "meaning" is a property that is ascribed to things by some creator.

Since I doubt the existence of a creator, I don't think there is any inherent meaning in anything.

I've had other experiences where I disassociate and my consciousness starts thinking thoughts like:

The symbols I use to understand the world are arbitrary.
Morality is a human construct, maybe its game theoretic, but it's not inherent.
We are the result of random interactions of atoms, and the universe is indifferent to our existence.

But I believe this is liberating, actually.

"You" exist despite everything. Somehow, "you" find yourself "here" against all odds.

Maybe in an infinite universe, the odds of "you" being "here" is certain, so maybe that doesn't matter... but:

Your subjective experience is all you'll ever know.
You experience things that feel "objectively" good or bad.
You have hopes, dreams, and desires.
You're here for a fleeting moment in time.

So just live. Try to be happy. Use your uncanny existence how you see fit. Live to your goals and that's enough.

I think it's important in my personal philosophy not to push people to "make the world a better place".

Since there is no meaning, and the only perspective we have is our own, I think it's important to live for yourself.

If that means being selfish, then so be it. If that means being altruistic, then so be it.

Just... do whatever it is you want to do.

Conclusion

I think consciousness is a very interesting topic, and one that I think is worth exploring.

I used to see myself as extremely set in my beliefs -- logical, rational, and scientific.

It wasn't until I had uncontrollable experiences that I felt like my reality was shattered.

Those were difficult experiences, but I'm glad I had them.

If my younger self read this, they'd be very... skeptical and dismissive to be frank...

But alas, I think that's exactly why I'm proud of my experiences. I'm more open minded now — in some ways.

I still see myself as a rationalist, but I've decoupled myself a little bit from our human-biased understanding of the universe.

I don't think we'll ever understand consciousness — it's not like we can understand mass, or charge — we just see the effects of it, and that's ok.

Let's be whimsical and explore the universe around us!