Thought Experiment to Understand Consciousness
Hypothetical world of electricity revealing beyond common experience knowledge
Photo by Federico Beccari on Unsplash
Imagine a world consisting of electricity and electrical devices only. In such a world, let’s assume that, owing to the magical touch of electricity on the devices, they not only begin to function but also become aware of themselves and others.
When a bulb gets switched on, it glows and becomes conscious that it is glowing. Also, it becomes aware of the fan, refrigerator, washing machine, and so on.
Existence and Its Cause
A question can be raised: can the devices exist, suppose, there were no electricity at all? The answer is no. Let’s assume they exist, then who would know that they exist or not, since they gain awareness only upon the passing of electricity through them? Therefore, in the absence of conscious devices, the existence of any of them can’t be confirmed, and it is meaningless to have considerations otherwise.
Further, can electricity alone exist without devices? Logically, it can be affirmed so, because the dead, insentient devices become alive and start to function or get aware owing to the contact with electricity only. That means they must have borrowed this property of being conscious from electricity. Otherwise, how can something that doesn’t have an inherent property impart that to others? Thus, electricity should possess consciousness and know of its existence. Since it can know that it exists, it becomes plausible for it to exist even without the appliances.
What are the cause(s) of a device? There can be broadly two causes
1. Material — The various elements that came together to give the device its form and satisfy the pre-conditions required for its functioning.
2. Efficient — The factor that powers the device and grants it its functionality.
It is not hard to recognise the efficient cause of the devices, i.e. electricity. Since this is an independent system, the material cause must have been generated within the system and should have originated from the absolute entity of the system. The alternative is that the material elements were produced in some other independent system and then dumped into our system. This is contradictory and nonsensical.
This absolute entity should also have served as the material(if any) and efficient cause of electricity as well. It is thus deduced and becomes necessary to establish an absolute principle that is the cause of the consciousness of electricity and the materiality of the devices.
The Conscious Function
A live bulb, let's say, can become aware of all other live devices because when they are in functional mode, they have become existent. What about a switched-off refrigerator? Does it become aware of it? The answer is yes. It happens despite the refrigerator being non-conscious because the conscious bulb becomes aware of the potential of electricity being able to flow through the refrigerator.
In short, the device becomes aware of the various potentialities within this attributed system. The potentiality, in turn, is a function of the homogeneity of the things suspended within the framework. Whether a device becomes active or inactive is an awareness of a second degree built upon the underlying awareness of that potentiality. The entire network of electricity, all devices(irrespective of their functional status), and thus whatever is present within this system, is homogeneous. They exist because they are homogeneous and vice versa.
Although the device may seem to be conscious of its own functions, and also conscious of other appliances, both functioning as well as shut, however, if we follow it from the source, then it is electricity that is becoming aware of its various potentialities through the varieties of devices. It may know various names and forms, but what it knows essentially is its own potentiality.
The Absolute
The absolute principle, which is the cause of this entire system, has to remain free and undisturbed from all the functionalities within the variegated system that it has given rise to. Otherwise, a device wouldn’t be able to be conscious of anything with certainty due to the absence of a stable source of consciousness. In such a case, the functionalities of the world, including the flow of electricity, the glowing of bulbs, the cooling of refrigerators, etc., are reduced to imagination. Otherwise, if the absolute is not changing, then what can change?
Alternatively, it must so happen that the absolute principle is at the same time unchanging and changing. This is absurd, but it is not an entirely new idea, given that the dead and alive nature of Schrodinger’s cat is a widely accepted thought experiment. Owing to its unchangingness, it acts as the stable source of consciousness and owing to its inherent freedom of changing, it gives rise to various functionalities in this world.
Drawing Parallels in Our World
A conscious person can be aware of other conscious as well as unconscious objects. But this consciousness is not the inherent function of the body or the mind. Both of them are inert in themselves. A body is unconscious when it becomes dead, and a mind is unconscious when it goes to deep sleep. If they were conscious in themselves, then at no point should they have lost these abilities. Therefore, the consciousness is borrowed from the life principle that flows through the mind and body to make them conscious.
Since a conscious person can be aware of all objects that exist, all of them should be homogeneous. It is the potentiality of the life principle to pervade through various objects that makes them homogeneous. Anything that doesn’t have this potentiality isn’t homogeneous and therefore can’t exist for us to cognise. The important deduction that follows from here is that the permeating essence of our existence has to be the One to maintain the homogeneity.
Living and nonliving, whatever we perceive through our senses is nothing but the manifestation of the potentialities of that divine One. These are sufficient reasons for our conscious principle to be aware of all existing potentialities irrespective of the inertness. These objects, being themselves aware or not, become a subjective property of the second degree built upon the homogeneity. Homogeneity grants the soil, and sensory consciousness gives the fertility for awareness to bloom.
The One is, therefore, the absolute essence that powers the material and the efficient cause of our universe. All our consciousness is borrowed from the life principle, which is ultimately derived from the Absolute. Living or non-living, everything is interconnected by that one divine thread. The ego, which is an illusion amidst all this mystical creation, is a result of ignorance. Upon the dissolution of the ego, the oneness becomes self-evident.
Whether the absolute is unchanging and therefore, the world is an illusion, or the absolute is both changing and unchanging at the same time and thus the world has an existence, are both conceptions of the mind. Anything that can be said about the absolute is an act of delimiting it with the limited capabilities of the mind. Therefore, at best, words can point us in a certain direction, which the sages and wise people did to show us the direction in some way, but the realisation of the absolute is beyond words. This doesn’t mean that one saint/sage is right and the other is wrong; rather, everyone is pointing in the same direction from a different starting point.
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