Chapter 9: “Consciousness as Fundamental”
At the heart of science, we face an utterly perplexing question: What is physics describing? What is it fundamentally about? What are the natural laws, laws of? From the perspective of physics, the fundamental stuff of the universe still eludes us, especially if we try to fit the findings of quantum mechanics into a traditional conception of matter and energy. From the perspective of neuroscience, we’ve learned that the world “out there” is not a direct perception, and our perceptions may have even evolved to hide the truth from us, as Donald Hoffman argues. And then from the perspective of the philosophy of mind, my own research, reading, and further thinking leads me to believe that consciousness is more likely a fundamental property than an emergent one. Could this different approach help us answer the age-old question? And how would the sciences even attempt to move forward with the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental? How might we conceivably acquire evidence or validate it experimentally?
In this chapter, I review two emerging scientific theories that give me hope—Donald Hoffman’s “conscious realism,” which places consciousness at a fundamental level, and Sara Walker and Lee Cronin’s “Assembly Theory,” which is a theory about life, not consciousness, but which I think has implications for consciousness being fundamental. These, and other, creative and out-of-the box theories stand a chance of leading us into a new era of scientific exploration.
