Noting that consciousness and free-will are separate, how do we know that consciousness is something that only animals have, and not something that is a feature of all ordered arrangements of sub-atomic particles?
This is not as wacky a question as you might think. Brain-imagining technology as sophisticated as fMRI (which follows the flow of glucose in the brain in real time) has yet to reveal evidence of the conscious experience we each know.
Meanwhile sub-atomic physicists have long noted that the pieces that make up atoms only become “solid” when observed, otherwise they exist in a “fuzzy probability field” which looks more like a wave than a particle. Yet, we all have this experience that the world outside ourselves is real and solid even in our absence. Perhaps it is, not simply because we see it, but because it all “sees.” Perhaps the cup sitting on my desk continues to set on my desk in the absence of my checking on it because the desk and the cup observe one another.
By: Nick P
About the Author:
Amber
