.To demystify consciousness we must look beyond known physical quantities. But how?One possibility, simple and bold, is that individual particles themselves are endowed with an innate attribute of consciousness—call it proto-consciousness to avoid imagery of elated electrons or cranky quarks—that cannot be described in terms of anything more fundamental.
That is, our description of reality must widen to include an intrinsic and irreducible subjective quality that is infused in nature’s elementary material ingredients. And it is this quality of matter that we have long overlooked, which is why we’ve so far failed to explain the physical basis of conscious experience.
How can a swirl of mindless particles create mind? They can’t.
To create a conscious mind you need a swirl of mindful particles.
By pooling their proto-conscious qualities, a large collection of particles can yield familiar conscious experience. The proposal, then, is that particles are endowed with a well-studied collection of physical properties (mass, electric charge, nuclear charges, and quantum mechanical spin) as well as the previously neglected quality of proto-consciousness.
Reviving panpsychist beliefs, whose historical roots reach as far back as ancient Greece, Australian philospher David J. Chalmers entertains the possibility that consciousness is relevant to anything and everything made of particles, whether a bat’s brain or a baseball bat.
—Brian Greene
UNTIL THE END OF TIME(heroic)
.Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, colour is colour, but in truth there are only atoms and the void.—Democritus 460–c. 370 BC.
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