Consciousness

This site is about you. It's about me. It's about us. Ethos is the identity of the speaker, and if we're going to get anywhere at all, we need to get one thing out of the way: there is no "I" in consciousness. Okay, there is that one letter 6/13 of the way into the word itself, but that's different and you know it.

The picture above is a Greek depiction of the ancient riddle, "The Ship of Theseus." Essentially, it goes like this: Theseus, a legendary hero of Athens, has a ship whose boards are replaced after sufficient wear has rendered them too damaged to be seaworthy. At some point, the last of the original wooden planks is removed, and a new one put in its place. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Ownership issues aside, this is the riddle of identity, and although the Greeks may not have had the medical technology to prove it, they modeled our present situation with an impressive accuracy. Our bodies are the ship. The cells that make them up are the boards. Cells wear out, die, and are replaced all over our bodies, inside and out, at a steady rate. We imagine ourselves as a stable individual that begins as a small creature and grows into adulthood, but the truth is closer to Theseus' vessel - we are entirely different on a basic physical level at many points throughout our lives, and at some point soon after birth, there is no original cell left.

We are not our bodies.

Of course, contemporary medicine has rightly located the cerebellum as the primary source of activity for our mobility and sustained existence as physical beings, so we want to think that we have outstudied the Greeks and arrived at the correct interpretation of how it works by imagining that it is our brains that maintain the stability and consistency of self throughout our lives. But is this the case?

You don't need to look to an expert for this answer: just find your thoughts.

Neuroplasticity is somewhat well-known, and refers to the fact that areas of the brain can "take over" for another. This means that the brain is not "hard-wired," but dynamic. This also means that we cannot locate any one area from which our thoughts arise. Microbes in our digestive tract can affect thoughts and impulses every bit as much as chemical changes from the brain itself. Spatially, attempting to create a one-to-one ratio of electrical activity to idea is an act of absurdity. There is no hard-drive in your head, and no motherboard to route the thoughts around in a simple or linear manner.

Consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity - it is the other way around.

If your patellar tendon is struck by a mallet, your knee will twitch, bringing with it the swing of your calf and shin (and your foot, in turn, if you have one). This activity is an autonomic response, and involves brain activity, but you are not conscious of it. You cannot control it. It is as simple as stimulus and response.

So where does the line exist that creates a boundary between reflex and interpretation? Is this consciousness? Is this the kernel of human agency?

Legally, in the United States there are accommodations for striking back at a person who attacks you that provide for a claim of self-defense. But when you are struck, do you really not have a choice?

And if your body is doing something over which you have no control, who is doing it?

Feel your body: what do you have control over right now? Where is your consciousness? Do you imagine your brain as a processor of information, churning out the algorithmic solutions to a series of linear input?

There is more than that.

Assume for a moment that there is a one-to-one relationship between the neurochemical reactions in your brain and the thoughts you have. Now break it down further: what are the chemicals? They are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks and other subatomic particles.

At that scale, causality is violated - everything exists as a function of probability, and the existence of any particle can be represented as a collapsed wave-function that relies on the act of observation.

Who is observing you right now? Who is observing your thoughts? Where do the chemicals originate if they are all that are responsible for these thoughts?

There is a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement - this is when the spin of any one particle is instantaneously affected by the observation of the other, with which it is entangled. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance," and the implication is that it allows for the instantaneous transfer of information outside the constraints of the speed of light. Time does not exist for the quantum entangled particles. Literally.

Let's consider this for a moment: somewhere in your brain, there is every possibility that the thoughts you have, the urges, the dreams, the construction of self, the horrors and wonders of your experience as a sentient being - all of it - is being informed by a relationship between particles that is entirely unbound by the time-space continuum.

You are existing out of time right now.

There is a consciousness that transcends this universe, and with which we are constantly (having had always will be) dancing.

Can we even call this human? Do we need a body to know this? Should we bother to call it anything?

Whatever it is, the moment you speak a name, it is no longer there. It is the flame you cannot hold in your hand, because the act of grasping will snuff it out. The attempt to capture this knowledge corrupts it. It is not uncertain, it is uncertainty itself.

To what expert would you turn to verify this?

No one. It is what we all already know, and requires no authority to prove.

This is the experience.