If you want to know why

enfieldacademy
Thu, 26 May 2011 22:52:32 +0000

yes, but there is something peculiar about that fact that we are conscious. Yes, humanity has to be conscious because we’re sufficiently evolved, have language, etc., but why do I have to be? Why do you have to be? I could imagine a universe which was the same in every way except for the fact I never actually perceived anything in it. So why do I? And if I do, why is the visual stimuli coming through these particular eyes, in this particular place, and not where anyone else is, why am I perceiving from this particular being, and not one on another planet, and who or what decided that. How does that work?

So I think we are in some sense assigned to the location in space we perceive from, to those people. I think our consciousness’ can arise from our brains, and that we can also think about them, ourselves, at the same time as in some sense being assigned. It sounds contradictory, I agree.

But I think you have to have something else. It’s not enough to say consciousness comes from the brain, that people with certain brains (brains that are healthy, that work well) are conscious. One has to ask additionally why one is one of those conscious brains, why one so different from all the people around them in the way that everything is centralized to them (why they only experience their own thoughts, and not other’s, or their own pain or happiness, etc.).

Personally though I don’t think we are assigned really; or I think that the assignment is a illusion which makes us think we’re tied down to one person, to seeing from perspective, etc., but I think its also a necessary, unavoidable illusion for those who are conscious.