{"id":204450,"date":"2025-01-24T13:18:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T19:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/consciousness-isnt-self-centered"},"modified":"2025-01-24T13:18:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T19:18:21","slug":"consciousness-isnt-self-centered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/consciousness-isnt-self-centered","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness Isn\u2019t Self-Centered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/consciousness-isnt-self-centered.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <i>combination problem<\/i> may, in fact, be a reason to favor a version of <i>panpsychism<\/i> in which <i>consciousness<\/i> is fundamental in the form of a continuous, pervasive field, analogous to spacetime. Just as spacetime and gravity have an interactive relationship, <i>consciousness<\/i> can be thought of as a fundamental \u201cfield\u201d that interacts with, and is integral to, matter. We typically don\u2019t think of spacetime as bits and pieces that build on each other (it\u2019s simply <i>everywhere<\/i>), and I don\u2019t think we should be tempted to think of <i>consciousness<\/i>, if it is indeed a pervasive field, as divisible into building blocks either. Rather, it makes more sense to talk about a field that contains a range of <i>content <\/i>\u2014the <i>content<\/i> depending on the other forces or fields it\u2019s interacting with. In the same way that gravity is a two-way street\u2014matter warps spacetime and the shape of spacetime determines how matter moves\u2014a <i>consciousness<\/i> field would imbue matter with another property, giving rise to the range of <i>content<\/i> <i>experience <\/i>d. Under this view, <i>content<\/i> is divisible, but <i>consciousness<\/i> isn\u2019t. Therefore, <i>consciousness<\/i> is also not interacting <i>with itself<\/i>, as it would be in the act of \u201ccombining.\u201d Considering <i>consciousness<\/i> to be fundamental allows for matter to have a specific internal character <i>everywhere<\/i>, in all of its various forms.<\/p>\n<p>If <i>consciousness<\/i> is fundamental, then the questions that prompt the <i>combination problem<\/i> are potentially the same as all the other questions we might ask about spacetime in which we don\u2019t anticipate this problem. All matter would entail <i>consciousness<\/i>, and complex systems, such as human brains, would give rise to certain types of <i>content<\/i> in those locations in spacetime. Even if each individual atom has its own <i>experience<\/i>, <i><i>consciousness<\/i> itself<\/i> is not necessarily isolated. The matter might be isolated, and therefore the <i>content<\/i> associated with the <i>consciousness<\/i> at that location is isolated. But <i><i>consciousness<\/i> itself<\/i> would not be said to be isolated. Again, we can think of <i>consciousness<\/i> as analogous to spacetime: How it\u2019s affected by matter depends on the matter in question (its mass, in the case of spacetime). Similarly, a <i>consciousness<\/i> field might be \u201cshaped\u201d by matter in terms of experiential quality or <i>content<\/i>. And this line of thinking yields interesting questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The combination problem may, in fact, be a reason to favor a version of panpsychism in which consciousness is fundamental in the form of a continuous, pervasive field, analogous to spacetime. Just as spacetime and gravity have an interactive relationship, consciousness can be thought of as a fundamental \u201cfield\u201d that interacts with, and is integral [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}