A Theory of Consciousness
You can experience the electric force by rubbing a balloon on your hair. After doing this, when you hold the balloon near your hair, you will see your hair being tugged toward the balloon. The tug is the electric force.
You can experience the magnetic force with a magnetic compass. The tug on the compass needle that keeps it pointing north is the magnetic force.
And you experience the gravitational force all the time. The tug on your body and everything around you toward the center of the earth is the gravitational force.
These are all gross effects, meaning that they are so large that you can directly experience them. Each of the gross effects turns out to be the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects. Experiments have been designed to observe the corresponding microscopic effects by magnifying or amplifying them.
Each set of microscopic effects turns out to have an elementary explanation. The elementary explanation of the electric and magnetic effects is Maxwell's Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. The elementary explanation of the gravitational effects is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
There are some other gross effects that you constantly experience in everyday life: the effects of consciousness. The gross effects of consciousness are that you are aware, that you reason and learn, that you choose what you want to do, and most importantly, because it is experienced by other people as well as yourself, that you operate your body to do what you have chosen.
It seems possible that just as with the gross effects of electricity, magnetism and gravitation, the gross effects of consciousness are actually the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects. If so, it is possible that experiments will be designed to observe these microscopic effects, particularly the operation of consciousness on microscopic amounts of matter.
The conventional wisdom is that the gross effects of consciousness are somehow outgrowths of complex combinations of microscopic effects we have already observed and explained. However, one can study the edifice of theoretical physics for many years, and eventually realize that it has little more to say than freshman physics does about how the gross effects of consciousness might somehow emerge in complex physical systems. In short, the effects of consciousness remain to be explained. And if the gross effects are in fact the aggregate of microscopic effects, new microscopic effects may yet remain to be observed.
Scientists doing experiments to study the chemistry of the simplest living things are probably the closest to making observations of these hypothetical microscopic effects. If we had observations of microscopic effects of consciousness, and if we had an elementary explanation of them, and if the gross effects were understandable as the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects in the same way that the tug on a magnetic compass needle is understood from Maxwell's Theory, that would be a Theory of Consciousness.
You can experience the magnetic force with a magnetic compass. The tug on the compass needle that keeps it pointing north is the magnetic force.
And you experience the gravitational force all the time. The tug on your body and everything around you toward the center of the earth is the gravitational force.
These are all gross effects, meaning that they are so large that you can directly experience them. Each of the gross effects turns out to be the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects. Experiments have been designed to observe the corresponding microscopic effects by magnifying or amplifying them.
Each set of microscopic effects turns out to have an elementary explanation. The elementary explanation of the electric and magnetic effects is Maxwell's Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. The elementary explanation of the gravitational effects is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
There are some other gross effects that you constantly experience in everyday life: the effects of consciousness. The gross effects of consciousness are that you are aware, that you reason and learn, that you choose what you want to do, and most importantly, because it is experienced by other people as well as yourself, that you operate your body to do what you have chosen.
It seems possible that just as with the gross effects of electricity, magnetism and gravitation, the gross effects of consciousness are actually the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects. If so, it is possible that experiments will be designed to observe these microscopic effects, particularly the operation of consciousness on microscopic amounts of matter.
The conventional wisdom is that the gross effects of consciousness are somehow outgrowths of complex combinations of microscopic effects we have already observed and explained. However, one can study the edifice of theoretical physics for many years, and eventually realize that it has little more to say than freshman physics does about how the gross effects of consciousness might somehow emerge in complex physical systems. In short, the effects of consciousness remain to be explained. And if the gross effects are in fact the aggregate of microscopic effects, new microscopic effects may yet remain to be observed.
Scientists doing experiments to study the chemistry of the simplest living things are probably the closest to making observations of these hypothetical microscopic effects. If we had observations of microscopic effects of consciousness, and if we had an elementary explanation of them, and if the gross effects were understandable as the aggregate of large numbers of microscopic effects in the same way that the tug on a magnetic compass needle is understood from Maxwell's Theory, that would be a Theory of Consciousness.
posted by Brian Hill at 11:37 PM
