Why the central problem in neuroscience is mirrored in physics
The article talks about a philosophical concept called &quot;dual-aspect monism&quot; which, in the author&#x27;s interpretation, basically means that everything we think of as physical&#x2F;material has some kind of consciousness, and that our own consciousness emerges somehow from the interactions of the elementary consciousnesses of the particles in our brains. So consciousness is the hardware of reality and physical phenomena are the software, an inversion of the typical materialist view. (As a programmer, I&#x27;m not sure that metaphor really works, but I&#x27;ll allow it.)<p>The author presents this as an avenue for confronting the likelihood that even a perfect understanding&#x2F;modeling of the physical characteristics of a brain is unlikely to reveal anything about consciousness or subjective experience itself.<p>Seems plausible to me. Reality tends to make sense, so if it&#x27;s most likely impossible to make sense of consciousness by studying the brain, there&#x27;s probably some other way to look at it.<p>The idea that fundamental particles like electrons have some kind of subjective experience was hard to swallow at first, but then I thought about my cat. It&#x27;s safe to say that a cat&#x27;s consciousness is more primitive than a typical human&#x27;s. You can also say that cats (at least once you get to know them) are a lot more predictable than people and have a smaller set of possible behaviors and reactions. If my cat sees a bug on the wall, she&#x27;s going to do her weird hiss-snarl thing at it just about 100% of the time, and there&#x27;s 0% chance she&#x27;s going to roll up a newspaper and swat it.<p>If the consciousness of a particular entity can be ranked in comparison to that of other entities — like I would rank my consciousness as &quot;higher&quot; than my cat&#x27;s — and if entities with &quot;lower consciousnesses&quot; have fewer possible behaviors or reactions to stimuli (like my cat compared to me, or a broccoli plant in my garden compared to my cat), then it&#x27;s easy to imagine that something as elementary as an electron could be conscious in some way and still obey what appear to be totally deterministic rules. (Electron may have been a bad example since we can&#x27;t really observe them like we can cats, but the point stands.) Another way to state it would be that as consciousness rises, so does free will (or, at least, scope of behavior).<p>I&#x27;m also reminded of:<p>John 1:1-3 (NKJV) — &quot;In the beginning was the Word[0], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.&quot;<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Logos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Logos</a><p>Of course, consciousness potentially being &quot;the hardware of reality&quot; doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean God exists. But it fits.