In Monday’s article, I mentioned that under the “mathematical universe” view, the universe is essentially a static structure. The flow of time may not be an objective reality at all, but an “illusion” produced by subjective experience.
This hypothesis strongly suggests that consciousness, like any other physical reality, is a very fundamental component of the structure of the universe. It may sound like a bit of “pop-science crackpottery” at first, but it really is a possibility that some philosophers are seriously thinking about—
Perhaps the world did not first have some supposedly “objective” physical reality, out of which living beings later emerged and eventually developed “subjective” conscious experience.
Perhaps, at its source, the world has always had both a “subjective” and an “objective” side.
The source of the world (whatever it actually is) gives rise to conscious experience and physical reality at the same time. What we call the subjective and the objective are really two sides of the same source. Everything in the world has a physical-reality side, but also a subjective conscious-experience side.
—This philosophical view is now called “double-aspect theory” (or dual-aspect monism).
“Double-aspect theory” identifies a very powerful way to think about what the subjective world and objective physical reality have in common.
That unsettling commonality is this: whether we are talking about objective physical reality or subjective conscious experience, all we can do is describe, as fully as possible, their relationships with other things outside themselves—yet we are completely unable to describe what they are in themselves!
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Take objective physical reality. Tell me: what is an electron?
You will find that even after exhausting the most cutting-edge knowledge in physics, you can only answer questions such as what electrical properties an electron has, how it responds to another electron, and how it interacts with other particles—and all of that is about the electron’s relationships with the world around it! The one question you simply cannot answer is: what is an electron in essence?
In fact, this is how we answer questions about all fundamental physical constituents. We can describe the relationships between particles, forces, and the world, but we cannot answer what these particles and forces actually “are.”
And, astonishingly, our descriptions of subjective conscious experience run into exactly the same difficulty!
The development of psychology and neuroscience has enabled us to describe, in ever greater detail, what kinds of biochemical reactions and neural activity in the brain correspond to which experiences. Yet we remain completely unable to describe what “conscious experience” itself actually is.
The thought experiment known as “Mary’s room” gives the most vivid account of this predicament:
Mary is a future neuroscientist whose field is color vision. In her time, science is highly advanced, and neuroscience has achieved a complete understanding of color and color vision. Mary therefore knows all the physiological and psychological facts about them.
The irony, however, is that Mary was born color-blind. She knows everything there is to know about color, but she cannot experience it.
One day, a surgery that restores color vision becomes available. After the operation, when the bandages are removed from her eyes, the first thing Mary sees is a bouquet of roses in the room. This is her first real sight of red, and only then does she finally understand what red looks like to the eye.
Clearly, this experience teaches Mary that there was something about color and color vision she had not understood before.
The contradiction is that before seeing red, she already knew all the knowledge related to color.
In other words, whatever the subjective experience of “seeing red” is like has nothing to do with any objective physical fact that produces that experience!
Of course, for a person to see red, photons of a particular wavelength must strike the retina, after which the optic nerve and visual cortex process them in a series of steps. But none of these objective facts can describe the subjective experience of “seeing red” itself.
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And so, at the most metaphysical level, subjective conscious experience and objective physical reality confront humanity with almost exactly the same predicament: whether we are talking about the subjective world or the objective world, they seem to have only “relationships,” and no “essence.”
From this starting point, the seemingly crackpot thinking behind “double-aspect theory” looks a little less idealist. If the subjective world and the objective world are both forms of existence with relationships but no essence, they may be the same thing! Or they may be two sides of the same source.
So, although it sounds wildly unbelievable, perhaps the universe already had consciousness from the very moment the Big Bang happened.
References:
1. Double-aspect theory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doub…
2. WANG Weigang. Elite Daily Lesson 3: Either Electrons Are Conscious, or Everything Is an Illusion
Note
- This article from the “New Psychology Knowledge Mini-Course” series was a short popular-science essay/ramble written at the time to accompany content related to Zhichao Wei: New Psychology Knowledge Course. It was published on the now-shut-down platform Fantuan, and the original link no longer exists.
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