Translator: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Maria K. Good afternoon everybody. I'm going to speak on the emergence of universal consciousness.
Now, admittedly, that's a controversial topic. And it's a controversial topic because so far universal consciousness has not been scientifically proven to be true. But this conception that things need to be scientifically proven in order for them to be true is itself false.
And that's neatly demonstrated each and every time scientists discover something new, something that we didn't know before. Most recently, scientists are finding evidence for the Higgs boson. But if it's true that it exists, then it means it's existed for millions and millions of years, it's always been true.
So, I think the way to play a game of philosophical chess is to try and start with just one sentence, one sentence that we can maybe agree upon, and then see if we can take it forward one step at a time until the next sentence just seems too improbable or too outlandish, and that's really where we should stop. By the end of this talk, you might agree or disagree with everything I say, and that's fine. If you should find yourself coming to agree for the first time that some of these concepts are possibly true, then that could change the way you possibly think about many things.
So I'd like to start with a simple proposition, and one that is credited to Aristotle: "The whole is something greater than the sum of its parts. " Or put another way, everything that exists, exists both as a whole unto itself as well as a component of some greater holistic system. Now, there's a lot of evidence for this proposition.
For example, we know that electrons are individually charged particles. But we also know that electrons are components of atoms. Atoms are components of molecules.
Molecules are components of organisms. Organisms arise within systems and ecosystems. Ecosystems are located on planets.
Planets are components of solar systems. And solar systems are components of galaxies, and galaxies are components of universes. So it does seem that everything that exists, exists both as a whole unto itself and as a component within a greater whole.
Now if that's true, then it suggests that your true, holistic identity consists of both your narrow self-identity and your component-identity within a greater system. And if you can come to accept that it is your narrow self-identity that is endowed with your self-consciousness, then you can at least begin to question whether the holistic system of which you're a component has holistic consciousness. And we'll come back to that question in a minute.
But we need to start by discussing, what do we mean by 'consciousness'? There's no uniform, scientifically accepted definition of the term 'consciousness. ' I think consciousness means the ability to sense or to respond to what you sense in your environment, whether it's your internal or your external environment.
That's what I think consciousness is. Imagine this example: You wake up a little bit late one morning and you decide to skip breakfast. You're on your way to a meeting and you're walking down the street, and you smell some freshly baked croissants coming from a nearby bakery.
The smell triggers a chemical response in your brain, which stimulates your appetite. You turn, you walk into the bakery, and you order a croissant. So what about plants?
Well, when plants experience their environment, why don't we call it consciousness? We know that leaves will turn to face the sun, to absorb its energy. We know that an entire field of sunflowers will all face east in the morning when the sun rises and they detect the sun's rays.
They will then track the sun across the sky throughout the day and then all face west at sunset. We know that plants' roots will penetrate the earth and then extend in various angles as they seek out water, but we don't call this consciousness. I think consciousness is an attribute.
It's not a measure of one's ability, it is something that you either have or you don't have, and you can have it in different measures. So, with plants, why don't we call this consciousness? We call it things like holotropism, and we tend to say with plants it's not consciousness because it's fundamentally a chemical process, it's not consciousness.
But neurobiologists are telling us that our own brains are fundamentally super-chemical computers, and that our own decisions, the actions we take, and indeed our entire state of consciousness at any particular time, is fundamentally influenced by chemical processes in the brain and the chemical balance in our brain at any particular time. So, I think not calling non-human things conscious is a weak distinction to make, and frankly, egotistical. We need to get over ourselves in that way.
Surely any living thing that can experience its environment, and that can respond to what it senses in its environment, is conscious. But conscious in a way that makes sense to that thing, makes sense to its ability to sustain its own life. What about even really, really small things, like bacteria?
Well, we know that inside your own human gastrointestinal tract, there are up to 1,000 different species of bacteria. And over the last 20 years, scientists have been discovering ways in which bacteria can signal and communicate with each other to coordinate community processes, ranging from maintenance of their population, to resisting or aiding an infectious disease. But if these bacteria are signalling and communicating, then they too are conscious.
And then this is where it gets really interesting. If those bacteria are living inside us, and we are their environment, then we are their conscious environment too. They live inside a conscious environment even though they could never know it.
They're not aware of our higher holistic consciousness. What about things that we don't typically regard as living things? Things I've mentioned already, like electrons that orbit an atomic nucleus?
Or planets that orbit a sun? Well, we know that electrons are negatively charged particles that seem to orbit at relatively high speeds around a nucleus without ever crashing into each other. They don't crash into each other because two negatively charged atomic particles will magnetically detect and repel from each other when they get too close.
If you're an electron, it's not relevant to be able to smell a freshly baked croissant. Your world is about electromagnetism. So magnetically detecting other charges is what's relevant to an electron.
What about planets in orbit? We know that planets also occupy specific orbital patterns around a sun and don't crash into each other. And yes, I do know that with planets, it's the attracting force of gravity that holds them in their orbital paths and not the attracting force of electromagnetism as in the case of electrons.
But philosophically speaking, the similarities are striking across such vast scales and such different forces that are at play. And it tends to support the hypothesis of everything being part of a transcending, enveloping understanding of everything. There's no doubt that the smaller system occurs many, many times over within the larger system.
Now when you came to this event today, you hopefully didn't crash into anyone on the way. And that's because you used your senses to detect things that are physical in the way that you are, and to avoid them, and hopefully, everybody else was using their senses to do the same thing. But if you'd lost consciousness for a few moments, or if you'd simply been driving much too fast, it might have been unavoidable that you were going to collide with someone.
And it's the same with subatomic particles. We can make them collide by accelerating their speeds to such an extent that it's impossible for them to avoid a collision. And that's what particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider do.
They accelerate particles, they make them collide, and then scientists get to watch and observe what smaller components those particles break down into. So it seems that under certain conditions, a form's innate ability to respond to what's going on in its environment in a way that is appropriate to sustain itself is insufficient. And when that happens, whether as a sudden collision event, or as a result of imbalances gradually accumulated over time, that form will begin to break down to its component states.
Viewed this way, life and death are both processes. Life is the organization of energy into form. And death is the liberation of energy from form and the reduction of a form back to its component states.
We know that to endure, any form first needs an awareness of its environment, internal and external, in order to compensate for the changes taking place. The tendency of a form to compensate for change can be observed across a vast range of natural phenomena, and it's evidenced by the interplay between the second law of thermodynamics and what we call self-organizing dissipative systems. The second law of thermodynamics holds that for every process of energy transfer in a system, there is an increase in entropy in the system.
That means that for every random event that takes place, the disorder of the system will increase. In other words, systems, or forms, need to be able to respond to this disorder in such a way that preserves their relative stability. Spiral shapes such as can be seen on a number of things from a simple hermit crab shell to the shape of the Milky Way or Andromeda galaxies, are examples of the complex patterns and structures that can emerge during a process of dissipation to retain stability over periods, in particular, of rapid expansion.
Now, organisms are, by definition, organized. And if we can see the organized properties of even very large systems, then it's only really culture that stops us from referring to very large systems as organisms. I believe that consciousness will emerge wherever and whenever complex organizing systems and forms emerge.
But it will be a consciousness of a type that is relevant to that complex system or form. If consciousness plays a role in ensuring survival, then we should begin to question: What role does consciousness play in the process of evolution? Darwin argued that seemingly random genetic mutations that took place in genetic codes resulted in beneficial adaptations that thrived.
But there is growing evidence to support the view that genetic mutations are environmentally responsive. For example, experiments by scientists such as Barry Hall have observed that the genetic rate of mutation in bacteria increases under environmentally stressful conditions. So, if genetic mutation is environmentally responsive, then it's not a very distinct process from what we regard as innovation, because in both processes, it is the processing and feedback of information, that results in the formation of something new.
Enter social media and wearable tech. Something we should expect to arise if the promotion of information networks in a system is going to enhance the ability of a system to communicate across different components of itself. Your social media stream might eventually evolve to become your externalized stream of consciousness that you choose to share with other people.
This belief, that we are all part of one thing, is perfectly encapsulated by the Zulu word 'simunye,' which means 'we are one. ' And this simunye hypothesis is one that is as old as philosophy. It suggests that humans should understand ourselves within this organism to be semiautonomous, conscious, measuring agents of a complex adaptive system that is constantly adjusting and responding and adapting.
If the universe itself is, as science might ultimately prove, a complex dissipative system, then not only would the universe have consciousness, but that consciousness would be as old as time, and it would envelope all other forms of consciousness within it, including yours and mine. Thank you.
