This is very logical. If your friend answers “well” to the question of how he is doing, that excludes a whole lot of other possibilities. Therefore, he is, in fact, telling you a lot in that one single answer. By saying that he is doing “well” he is also saying that he knows how he is doing (so he is not “unsure”), that he is not doing “terrible”, or “just ok”, etc. That single answer comprises information about many other possibilities regarding how he is doing. On the other hand, if nobody picks up the phone when you call him to check if he is at home, that message only excludes one other possibility (namely, that he is at home), so it does not convey much information at all.
The information content of something is a measure of how many other things can be discerned from it. Therefore, information is intrinsically associated to the ability to establish a difference, or to make a distinction, between possible states. The smallest amount of information, as computer enthusiasts know well, is that contained in a “bit”. A bit is a message that can assume one of only two possible states, or values, like zero or one. A discrimination between two possible states, zero or one, is the minimum amount of information conceivable. We can then say that information only exists when at least two states are possible. This is the information-theoretical basis for philosophical statements like: “you can only know light if you have experienced darkness”, or “you can only know joy if you have experienced sadness”, etc. Someone who has been born and raised in light full-time, and has never experienced darkness, cannot possibly have a conception of light. The information simply is not there. The very concept of “light” would be void in that case, since there would be nothing it could be contrasted to. The conception of light can only arise from the contrasting experience of the absence of light. Information requires polarities, contrasts, differences. We can only acquire information if we can contrast and discriminate one thing or state from another. Information requires the existence of a “foreground” and a “background” that can be separated and told apart.
Our previously-inferred universal process of consciousness enrichment is, by definition, intrinsically associated to information. Whatever potentials of consciousness are progressively realized through this process of enrichment can only be conceived as operating through an acquisition of information. What new conscious insight could be gained if there were no new information to trigger it? How could consciousness be enriched if not through new information? If there were “no news”, then there would be no enrichment. It would be like a phone call where you and your friend stayed silent. The absence of new information entails stagnation, the very opposite of enrichment.
Now we can take this thought one step further, thanks to Shannon: a universal process of consciousness enrichment can only take place in the context of a foreground and a background that can be separated and told apart. Without it, there can be no information and, therefore, no enrichment. Keep this idea in mind for now. We will return to this after we add, below, one more necessary ingredient to our exploration.
Earlier, we could not find a logical reason for why the universe would be such that consciousness is trapped within the narrow confines of brains. Such entrapment seems utterly unnatural and inconsistent with what we surmise about the nature of consciousness. Having found ourselves in a logical hole, the only alternative left is to hypothesize that such an entrapment somehow was not the original state of nature. Perhaps nature was, originally, such that consciousness was boundless. A boundless consciousness emanating from yet unknown aspects of reality would, in fact, be consistent with Wigner’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, as well as with the philosophical view that consciousness precedes material reality ontologically.
There is a profound implication to this hypothesis. If consciousness was boundless, then consciousness was necessarily one. A boundless consciousness would be directly conscious of all there is in the universe, thereby eliminating the possibility of separate, individualized manifestations of consciousness. Indeed, if you and I were concurrently conscious of each other’s thoughts (i.e. mental symbol associations), there would be no difference between objects in my consciousness and those in yours. Our consciousnesses would be effectively one and the same.
Such a notion of one consciousness permeating the entire universe, directly aware of all there is in it, seems strikingly powerful. However, there would have been no background/foreground contrast from the point of view of such a unified consciousness. The reason is subtle but crucial to our argument: conscious entities identify themselves with whatever they are directly conscious of. In the case of human beings, we identify ourselves with the mental models in our heads, which give us our identity (indeed, you would still have the same sense of identity if you lost a limb, so you do not really identify yourself with your body). Boundless consciousness would also naturally identify itself with whatever it would be directly aware of, which would be all there is. This way, there would be nothing that it would not identify itself with; there would be nothing that it would not be; there would be nothing left for it to contrast itself against. In Shannon’s terminology, there would be just one possible message, which carries zero information. The very concept of information is impossible in a hypothetical state of unified, all-encompassing consciousness.
By entailing boundless awareness, such state of consciousness would have been analogous to that of a human being born and raised entirely in a brightly-lit white room. Visualize it as a room with seamless walls, floor, and ceiling, with no windows or doors. No sound or aroma would ever penetrate the room. The human being living in it, through his sense of vision, would be entirely aware of the room. Yet, that awareness would consist of constant, solid, uniform, white light, nothing else. There would be nothing such perception of uniform white light could be contrasted to, or discriminated from. In such circumstances, the human being would be forever unable to conceive of the idea of “light” itself, even though his awareness would be immersed in it. Like the human being in the white room, a boundless consciousness would not have had any references, in the form of a background, to contrast to the foreground of its experience. All of existence would have been like a uniform foreground. In fact, a boundless consciousness would have been structurally unable to be aware of its own existence, or to know anything about itself.
This is not a trivial concept to grasp. You may need to meditate on it for some time to become convinced of it. But the key idea is this: without a separate background reference on the basis of which it could define itself as an entity to be discovered and understood, an all-encompassing consciousness would not have been aware of itself. It would not have been able to learn, or to accumulate insights about itself through information. It would not have known itself.
The inference here, motivated by information theory, is that a boundless consciousness could have been aware of all there is without being able to conceive of its own self as an entity. Without a conception of the self, derived from contrasting the self against something that is not the self, self-awareness is logically impossible. And there is a yet deeper, more complete state of self-awareness: the awareness not only of your self, but of your own awareness. I am nearly convinced that my cat is conscious and, therefore, has awareness. I am also nearly certain that my cat can conceive of itself as an entity with needs and wishes. But I am not at all convinced that my cat is self-aware in the sense that it is aware of its own awareness the way you and I are.
This deeper state of self-awareness is a key enabler of discovery and understanding because it allows us to analyze and evaluate our own thought processes about what we observe. Through it, we can question and criticize our own logic and conclusions, thereby refining our mental processes. We can frame our analysis itself as an object of meta-analysis, which in turn can be framed as an object of meta-meta-analysis, and so on. Thus, from now on, let us understand self-awareness in this deeper sense. You are self-aware because you are aware that you are aware … that you are aware of your own awareness. This is an in
finite recursion of self-awareness that plays out in our minds in finite time, like Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise.3 And all of it is only possible because we conceive of ourselves as individuals (the foreground) separate from others and from our environment (the background).
You may have had the experience, during difficult times in life, of observing yourself in despair. It is like there are two of you: a “subject you” going through the emotion of despair, and a “witness you” observing the “subject you”. The “witness you” may even say to “himself” with surprising calm and composure: “look how sad and desperate I am right now, and how the world seems to be falling over my head.” This reflects “his” awareness that the “subject you” has awareness. It allows the “witness you” to analyze the experiences and emotions of the “subject you” and try to establish causal relationships. It allows “him” to learn about the “subject you”, that is, to learn about himself. Yet “he” does all that as if looking from above, watching the world fall under his feet. We are only able to have this “schizophrenic” experience because we very clearly conceive of ourselves as entities separate from the world. It is that separateness of identity that creates the “subject you” going through the emotions of despair, so the “witness you” can observe and learn about it in a self-aware manner. Separateness from a contextual background is essential to self-awareness.
It is ironic how the very state of all-encompassing consciousness, from an information-theoretical point of view, seems to preclude the possibility to learn about not only the self, but about external things and laws the way we do. Indeed, our ability to be aware of things and laws as objects in our consciousnesses, as well as to learn about them, are a consequence of the very fact that our consciousnesses are “trapped” inside our brains. It is this entrapment that allows us to perceive ourselves as individualized “foreground” beings separate from the “background” of other entities in the universe, so we can learn about these other entities and about ourselves. It is this entrapment that allows information to exist.
Wait a moment. Here is our answer, staring us in the face.
If the original state of nature was such that a unified consciousness had boundless awareness, then, contradictorily as it may sound, there would have been a very significant way in which that state would have prevented consciousness from being aware of itself and of the universe as a whole. Nonetheless, the very existence of consciousness would have entailed the potential for self-awareness and understanding of the universe. It is that originally unrealized potential that would have left room for a process of universal enrichment. If that was so, we can then reasonably postulate the existence of an intrinsic universal tendency for the realization of that potential, since this seems to be the only conceivable reason for the dynamic existence that we are all witnesses, and parts, of.
Such universal tendency towards the enrichment of consciousness would have necessarily led to an unfolding of natural events such that the unified consciousness would have become “fragmented”, in a way. The “fragmentation” would have enabled the creation of a foreground/background dynamics in the universe, the emergence of information itself. Different “fragments” of the originally unified consciousness would have become individualized. Each individualized consciousness would then have become capable of identifying itself as a foreground in contrast to a background of other natural entities, including other individualized consciousnesses. Only then could the individualized consciousnesses be able to investigate and study the universe itself, thereby becoming progressively more aware of all its aspects. Only then could they, or should I say “we”, understand the laws and entities of nature, its dynamics and, ultimately, its purpose. It is only by being an individualized consciousness yourself, separate from the book you have in your hands, that you can reflect upon what is being said in it.
The “fragmentation” of unified consciousness allowed an individualized “fragment” of consciousness to interact with other individualized “fragments”, accumulating understanding about their behavior, motivations, aspirations, feelings, etc. That, ultimately, means an accumulation of understanding about the unified self. By means of “fragmentation”, unified consciousness could learn about itself through the observation of “fragments” of itself by other “fragments” of itself; the creation of subject and object from a unit, for the purpose of self-understanding.
This must have been the history of us: from a single boundless consciousness to the individualized and limited conscious beings we now are. And, counter-intuitive as it may be, from a logical perspective this was not a step backward, but one forward in the enrichment of consciousness.
Following this line of thought to its natural conclusions, we can infer that our known material reality is the means by which consciousness becomes individualized. The known material world creates an “information playing field”, if you will, for the foreground/background dynamics necessary to the ultimate goal of understanding and self-awareness. When “fragments” of an originally unified consciousness interact with the universe through the confines of our material brains, their awareness becomes restricted to the indirect, mental models of reality each one of us holds in our neural structures. Similarly, the memory records stored in each brain confer upon each “fragment” of consciousness the illusion of having a separate identity.
Notice that a process of enrichment logically could never fundamentally eliminate an originally-realized potential of consciousness. That would contradict our entire articulation thus far. A consciousness that once was as broad as to be all-encompassing logically could not fundamentally lose some of its own reach and scope. Therefore, at the most fundamental level of nature, consciousness must still be all-encompassing and boundless.
Consequently, the process of consciousness “fragmentation” inferred above must rather have entailed the creation of a self-imposed illusion of fragmentation. Our intelligence, with the indirect models of reality it encompasses, is the mechanism for the creation of such an illusion. In this context, any direct awareness of reality would necessarily allow our consciousness to break out from the confines of the brain, return in awareness to its intrinsic boundless state, and defeat the purpose of individualization. By confining conscious awareness to the indirect models of reality of our intelligence, nature enables a natural process of evolution towards understanding and self-awareness.
We can visualize this hypothesis in the following way: unified consciousness emanates from as-of-yet unknown aspects of reality as a kind of field. Such field, unified and all-encompassing as it is, may perhaps permeate all of nature. Wherever the right material structures (for instance, brains) are present in the known, material world, the consciousness field can manifest itself, gain material awareness through the models of intelligence, and interact causally with the material world.
In a way, this may be analogous to the electromagnetic field we call radio waves. Radio waves are everywhere, whether you have a suitable receiver or not. If you are driving your car, whenever you turn on your car radio, which is a suitable material structure for the “manifestation” of the field, it plays music. Nonetheless, you may drive around town all day with your radio off, and never realize that there are radio waves permeating the entire space you are driving through. Still, the fact that your radio is off does not change anything about the existence of that field permeating space. Similarly, a field of consciousness may be everywhere, but interact with the material world only when suitable material structures are present and functioning.
Continuing on with our analogy, the electromagnetic field of the radio waves is unified and “all-encompassing” in a way. It is emitted from a transmitter antenna as a single signal broadcast in all directions. When the information in the radio wave is tapped and translated into sound waves by an individual radio receiver, the “all-encompassing” electromagnetic field becomes individualized in that specific radio. The driver can then change radio stations, volume, and otherwise
interact with the broadcast radio signal in myriad individual manners. In fact, different drivers can set up their radios so as to receive different stations or to equalize the sound in totally different and separate ways. However, none of those individual interactions can change the fundamentally unified nature of the radio signal that is being broadcast.
If consciousness is, fundamentally, an all-encompassing and unified field permeating the whole universe like a radio signal, physical brains may be the transceivers through which that field becomes individualized. The neural structures of our brains, which keep the records of memory and host indirect models of reality, are the means by which the illusion of separateness is created. Awareness becomes “trapped” in the dynamics of our neurons, preventing an easy return to a state of direct, boundless awareness. The consistent history reflected in the memories held by each transceiver creates the illusion of a separate identity. Through such crucial illusion, information emerges as a property of reality and a process of progressive build up of understanding and self-awareness can take place.
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