Consciousness is the most familiar yet mysterious feature of the universe. The idea that it is an object of scientific analysis — to one day be explained by experiment and observation — is a popular one, however a growing number of scientists and philosophers are entertaining a strange hypothesis: that consciousness is “fundamental”.
What exactly this means is perhaps difficult to explain, but it broadly suggests that the fundamental “stuff” of the universe is consciousness. Not that the true “atom” — the genuinely smallest divisible foundational particle — is conscious, but that it is consciousness.
It is generally assumed that consciousness requires immense complexity, such as we find in the human and animal brain. But could it be that the complexity of our brains simply allow for other phenomena — such as memory, a sense of self, and complex emotions — which rely on consciousness to function, but are perhaps being confused for consciousness itself? These are the phenomena which allow us to communicate our conscious states with each other, but could there be rudimentary forms of experience which lack the ability to report such experiences?
Such a view may help to explain the confounding existence of consciousness in a world of material things. If it is difficult (or impossible) to imagine it emerging from matter, then perhaps it does not. Perhaps it is already there at the root. Perhaps matter is better thought of as emergent of consciousness.
It sounds crazy. Happy to admit as much is Annaka Harris, today’s guest. Harris is a materialist who wrote a book on consciousness, and has recently produced a long audio documentary on the same subject, called Lights On. This documentary tracks her investigations into consciousness, mostly consisting of interviews with experts from a variety of fields, and the reasons why these investigations led her to the unexpected conclusion that consciousness being “fundamental” is a hypothesis to be taken seriously.
She joins me to discuss where the popular understanding of consciousness goes wrong. We explore split-brain patients and the appearance of two consciousnesses within them. We discuss the “illusion” of the self, and what it means to be made up of consciousness, instead of creative of it.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Annaka’s Documentary on Consciousness
03:45 – How Has Our Understanding of Consciousness Evolved?
12:31 – How Can We Study Consciousness?
26:01 – Split-Brain Patients
39:55 – What is ‘The Self’?
47:50 – Is Consciousness Fundamental?
58:59 – Consciousness at the Foundation of Science
01:07:34 – Do Conscious Experiences Create a Unified Self?
01:22:04 – How Is the Brain Relevant to Consciousness?
