Beyond Consciousness
- Philosophers have routinely assumed that there is matter and there is mind,
implying that there is nothing else.
- We humans have the
presumption to think that consciousness is the only thing in the universe
that is not material, "qualitative", not measurable.
- We don't quite know what causes consciousness, but let's assume (with John
Searle) that
"brains cause minds": but what makes us think that, say, crystals don't cause
some other qualitative phenomenon that doesn't have a name because we
don't have it? Brains "experience" the material world.
- Other things may have other kinds of qualitative phenomena that don't belong
to the material universe, phenomena for which we don't have a vocabulary
because we cannot possibly know that they exist. Trees may not be conscious
because they don't have a brain made of neurons,
but their structure may yield some other kind of non-material phenomenon.
- There might well exist an infinite number of non-material phenomena in this
universe, one of which is consciousness (caused by brains
and only by brains).
- Brains do not cause all the other non-material phenomena,
and therefore brains don't know that all those non-material phenomena exist
and that they share the same universe with consciousness.
(See my book on consciousness)
|
