“Conscious” means being aware of oneself, one’s surroundings, thoughts, or feelings, being awake, or acting with deliberate intention, like a “conscious effort”. It refers to subjective experience and internal knowledge, differentiating from unconsciousness (sleep, coma).
It’s a spectrum, sure. But the spectrum is between ants and humans; not animals and plants.
The foundational idea behind what the user is talking about is called panpsychism, it’s the idea that consciousness or awareness is actually a fundamental quality of the universe like fields or forces, in that it’s in everything, but only complex systems have actual thoughts.
The theory(?) states that even a single electron or proton has a state of awareness, but without any functional way to remember any information or think it’s just like some kind of flash of experience like if you suddenly developed perpetual amnesia about literally everything… while you were hurtling through the universe at high speed. You would still have a conscious experience, it would just be radically limited in what that “means.”
I get the concept, but I don’t get the usefulness of it. It feels too close to people wishing The Force was real.
Guys. You are not getting your light sabers this way.
“Conscious” means being aware of oneself, one’s surroundings, thoughts, or feelings, being awake, or acting with deliberate intention, like a “conscious effort”. It refers to subjective experience and internal knowledge, differentiating from unconsciousness (sleep, coma).
It’s a spectrum, sure. But the spectrum is between ants and humans; not animals and plants.
The foundational idea behind what the user is talking about is called panpsychism, it’s the idea that consciousness or awareness is actually a fundamental quality of the universe like fields or forces, in that it’s in everything, but only complex systems have actual thoughts.
The theory(?) states that even a single electron or proton has a state of awareness, but without any functional way to remember any information or think it’s just like some kind of flash of experience like if you suddenly developed perpetual amnesia about literally everything… while you were hurtling through the universe at high speed. You would still have a conscious experience, it would just be radically limited in what that “means.”
I get the concept, but I don’t get the usefulness of it. It feels too close to people wishing The Force was real.
Guys. You are not getting your light sabers this way.