A Landscape of Consciousness

Steve Dufourny I thought to write about minds of different entities, but it was too difficult. It is such a complex question. Say already a one-celled organism and a bacterium, or even a virus that is totally parasitic, how does their minds work? And why do we think artificial protocells are not conscious? We cannot even make them quite 'living'?

We maybe have the wrong starting assumptions here? We have no accepted definitions even, so we can discuss seriously about completely different things, one mean A when the other means B... or C, D... there are too many theories about this Landscape.

One difficulty is also the different timescales we use. A One-celled organism can have lived unchanged for thousands of years, like it is taken out of evolution, other organisms contains millions of changes, like us, But we think we are the 'crown' here, so why is consciousness not evolving for some and evolving for others, assumingly?
If we compare the timescales of us to the timescales of a computer we have found a quicker one. Like we when we look at a mountain does not see its evolution, how can we see the evolution of 'thoughts' in a computer? The barriers are here too big? But many of these 'mysteries' fades away if we take consciousness as fundamental. We are simply at a certain stage of a ladder?

Philosopher and retired neuroscientist Raymond Tallis’ article in Philosophy Now (1) is a good illustration of where people have gone wrong in their analysis of the nature of consciousness:

When we reflect on what is made possible by consciousness, we tend to overlook what is achieved in the absence of consciousness. Unconscious mechanism was sufficient to deliver the long and tortuous passage from lifeless chemicals to conscious organisms.

And Robert Kuhn’s review (2) quotes from the same Philosophy Now article:

Raymond Tallis questions the entire enterprise of assuming “the [evolutionary] advantage of being a conscious organism rather than a self-replicating bag of chemicals innocent of its own existence."

1. "The How & Why of Consciousness", by Raymond Tallis. Philosophy Now, December 2023 / January 2024, Issue 159, https://philosophynow.org/issues/159/The_How_and_Why_of_Consciousness .
2. "A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications" by Robert Kuhn. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Volume 190, August 2024, pages 28-169.

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Where people go wrong in their analysis of the nature of consciousness is in the unwarranted pre-assumption of the “lifeless [i.e. unconscious] chemicals”.

However, when asked, these very same conscious people can’t ever succinctly tell you what they think consciousness actually is.

Or they can’t tell you what they think consciousness is without writing a long, rambling, confused and disorganised semi-novella on the subject, which ends up saying nothing at all useful about consciousness.

So, what is consciousness?

Physicist Brian Greene is now saying that, logically, primitive particles must have a degree of consciousness. But Greene too fails to describe what this supposedly-existing consciousness actually is.

So, what is consciousness?

This is what consciousness actually is, and if you don’t like it, then you need to put your thinking cap on, and provide a BETTER definition:

• It is necessary for the world, or more correctly, small parts of the world, to know its own particular and distinct structure (i.e. categories, relationships between the categories, and numbers that apply to the categories), out of all the theoretically possible structures that could theoretically potentially exist.
• Because the mere existence of structure (categories, relationships between the categories, and numbers that apply to the categories) does NOT logically imply knowledge of the structure.
• Knowledge of the structure is the essential function of consciousness. I.e., knowledge of self-structure, knowledge of the surrounding structure, and further higher-level analysis of this low-level knowledge, is the essential function of consciousness.
• Thoughts and feelings and emotions are merely the way that that knowledge manifests itself.
• I.e. consciousness is necessarily an entirely separate aspect of the world, separate to the structure.

Science has mistakenly assumed that, in order to do its mathematical processing, the real-world system, or small parts of the real-world system, must somehow automatically know what its own on-the spot mathematical categories, relationships and numbers are.

But it is illogical to assume that this knowledge just automatically exists, and in fact a separate on-the-spot knowledge/ consciousness aspect of the world is required. In other words, consciousness is a basic, first-principles, aspect of the world.

This knowledge/ consciousness aspect (of the mathematical categories, relationships and numbers) is the foundation for all higher-level knowledge and consciousness, where higher-level consciousness is an executive-level analysis and collation of the myriad separate items of the foundational-level knowledge.

The mistaken assumption about the real-world mathematical system clearly originates from a corresponding mistaken assumption about man-made mathematics.

The mistaken assumption is that man-made mathematics can exist without the consciousness and agency of human mathematicians. But man-made mathematics CAN’T exist without the consciousness and agency of the human mathematicians driving it.

Similarly, the real-world mathematical system CAN’T exist without the small parts of the real-world system having a knowledge/ consciousness aspect, and a free will/ agency aspect, driving the system.

Human beings long believed that they were literally the centre of the universe, and that the universe literally revolved around them. Human beings created a God in their own image, a God who was only interested in human beings, a God who would even revive favoured human beings from death.

To this day, human beings continue to have a strong, primitive belief that they are special and different, and the only living things in the universe to have bona fide consciousness.

The flip side of that belief in special human consciousness is that the rest of the world is not conscious, or not properly conscious, and that therefore:

• Consciousness is something that emerged out of no consciousness.
• Consciousness is not necessary for the universe to function.

It almost seems that a human-centred view of the world must inevitably lead to the conclusion that consciousness can have no real function in the scheme of things.

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But I am saying that consciousness IS necessary in order for the real-world system to function.

In a mathematical world (representable in terms of mathematical categories, relationships and numbers), consciousness and creativity are the necessary logical aspects of the world that enable the real-world mathematical system to function.

Consciousness has to start somewhere, and it starts at the foundations of the world.

The fact that foundational mathematical categories, relationships and numbers exist, does NOT imply knowledge of their existence: consciousness is that necessary, separate, knowledge aspect of the world. It is necessary that the underlying mathematical system knows which particular, on-the-spot categories, relationships and numbers it is dealing with, out of all the theoretically possible categories, relationships and numbers that could theoretically potentially exist.

Consciousness is the first-principles knowledge aspect of the world, an aspect which is different to the first-principles mathematical aspects of the world. The first-principles knowledge aspect of the world manifests itself as thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

But presumably only higher-level consciousnesses have feelings and emotions, because feelings and emotions seem to summarise quite a lot of underlying goings-on. Higher-level knowledge and consciousness IS “higher-level” because it is necessarily an executive-level analysis and collation of myriads of separate items of foundational-level knowledge, e.g. coming from the senses. The myriads of separate items of foundational-level knowledge DON’T “self-organise”: definite acts of analysis and collation have had to occur, in order to acquire higher-level knowledge/ consciousness.

Feelings are the messenger, not the message.

Thoughts, feelings, emotions, and all conscious experiences are just the messengers, not the messages. The message content is knowledge of oneself and one’s surroundings. The thoughts, feelings, emotions, and all conscious experiences, are merely the form in which that knowledge manifests itself.

There are many different forms of unconsciousness; unconsciousness seems to be a special type of mini-break in the physical continuity of a higher-level organism; the particular form of unconsciousness might depend e.g. on which anaesthetic drugs one has been given in a medical procedure or operation. But when one is unconscious, it is not so much the feelings that are blocked, but the higher-level executive-level knowledge of oneself and one’s surroundings that is blocked.

The content of the message, i.e. the knowledge itself, is the necessary aspect of consciousness.

The content of the message
The content of the message, i.e. the knowledge itself, is necessary because, when one is a higher-level organism, the physical existence of oneself and one’s physical surroundings, does not imply knowledge of oneself and one’s surroundings.

That is easy enough to say for higher-level organisms, but what about low-level organisms and low-level matter?

Low-level matter
Knowledge/ consciousness on the part of low-level matter, like particles, atoms and molecules, is also necessary because the physical existence of low-level matter does not imply that the underlying real-world mathematical system has knowledge of the necessary details of the low-level matter and its surroundings. I.e., existence does not imply knowledge of existence.

Low-level matter, like particles, atoms and molecules, needs to know their own physical selves, and their physical surroundings. But this knowledge is in terms of the categories like mass and position, the relationships between the categories, and the numbers that apply to the categories.

Consciousness is a separate, necessary aspect of the world
It is only when one considers the necessity for knowledge/ consciousness on the part of low-level matter, that one can see that knowledge/ consciousness is OF the physical, i.e. knowledge/ conscious is NOT the physical, i.e. knowledge/ consciousness is a separate, necessary aspect of the world.

The surrounding world that interacts with the senses of high-level organisms is just as low-level as the surrounding world that interacts with low-level matter. These interactions are in terms of low-level categories, relationships between the categories, and numbers that apply to the categories.

For an individual high-level organism, myriads of individual items of low-level knowledge coming from the senses have to be, in effect or actually, analysed and collated into a bigger, higher-level conscious/ knowledge picture of the surrounding world.

For low-level matter, there are only a few items of low-level knowledge coming from interactions with the surrounding world, and there is not much, if any, analysis or collation required in order to form a low-level conscious/ knowledge picture of the surrounding world.

Instead of looking for the differences between “us” and “them”, i.e. differences between high-level organisms and low-level matter, we should be looking for the similarities.

We should be looking for the similarities between higher-level knowledge/ consciousness and lower-level knowledge/ consciousness.

Re Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics:

Annaka Harris Explores Consciousness and the Cosmos, Closer To Truth video, premiered 19/03/2025.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviews Annaka Harris (New York Times bestselling author of "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind", and writer and producer of the new audio documentary series "Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe"):

(11:49) … I make this argument, based on the neuroscience, and based on my many years of working with neuroscientists, that everything we have learned about the brain actually are arguments against consciousness emerging at the level of the brain …

(16:22) … so there's been a big shift in the last five or so years …

(17:39) … Physics is the science of the fundamental. And if we're wrong in assuming that all of the physics and the math and everything that we understand so far about spacetime and quantum mechanics and all the rest, if it's true that what that is describing at bottom is felt experience, is consciousness, rather than describing non-conscious processes, that is a paradigm shift that I think will ultimately affect the science we do moving forward. …

(18:47) … assuming that consciousness is fundamental actually helps us make sense of some paradoxes that arise out of quantum mechanics …

(24:13) There are many scientific experiments, that could be done, that would make us much more confident that it's many times more likely that consciousness is fundamental than emergent …

Lorraine Ford
(continued)

However, the only real issue is: WHAT IS this consciousness?

Surely, consciousness can’t be a non-functional, merely ornamental, aspect of the world; surely, consciousness can’t be just feelings and emotions which seem to be completely non-functional?

Surely, consciousness can only exist because it is a necessary and functional aspect of the world?

I’m claiming that these feelings and emotions are merely the form in which knowledge/ information, about oneself and one’s surrounding situation, manifests itself.

I’m claiming that the fundamentally necessary aspect of consciousness is knowledge/ information. I'm saying that knowledge/ information is necessary because the mere existence, in our moving mathematical world, of what we would represent as mathematical categories, mathematical relationships, and numbers, does not logically imply knowledge of their existence, does not imply knowledge of the existence of these mathematical aspects of the world. I.e. conscious is logically necessary if you want to have a viable, moving mathematical world.

In the following video, Annaka Harris eloquently paints a picture of consciousness, and I think that she is looking at consciousness in a reasonable and logical way:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP2swgDVl5M . (The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Annaka Harris, Big Think video, 21 Mar 2025.)

The only comment I would make is that what she logically implies, but does not in fact explicitly state, is that feelings and emotions are merely the form in which knowledge/ information, about oneself and one’s surrounding situation, manifests itself.

The idea that consciousness is about the “feelingness” of feelings and emotions has sent people off on a wild goose chase.

In fact, thoughts, feelings and emotions are merely the FORM that consciousness takes.

Bona fide consciousness is knowledge/ information about self and the surrounding world, even where that “self” is a lowly particle which is conscious of the aspects of the world that human beings would symbolically represent as categories (like relative position), relationships between these categories, and numbers that apply to the categories. (This consciousness of particles is the necessary basis for the higher-level consciousness of living things.)

Science needs to think a lot harder about the “mechanics” of how a real-world particle-ised mathematical system might work. But there is absolutely zero evidence of any serious thought being given to the issue of the mechanics of how viable systems work: instead, it is assumed that mathematical equations somehow naturally form a viable system.

I don’t hold out much hope for serious thought being given to the issue of how viable systems work, because for a start, mathematicians, displaying a lack of self-knowledge, can’t even admit to the fact that man-made mathematics is a system that can’t exist without human consciousness and agency.

By extension, I am saying that the “mechanics” of a viable real-world mathematical system relies on necessary aspects that can only be described as “consciousness” and “agency”.

Lorraine Ford
(continued)

The assumption, of mathematicians, and physicists and others, that mathematical equations somehow naturally form a viable moving system, is clearly a load of rubbish.

They talk it up, they philosophise, but all the equations in the world CAN’T represent a viable moving system, no matter how intricate and special these equations and philosophical ideas are.

Viable moving systems have algorithmic elements that can’t be represented by equations alone; the algorithmic elements need to be represented by special algorithmic symbols; these symbols are a COMPLETELY different type of thing to equations.

Nevertheless, these people, stuck in antiquated ways of thinking and philosophising, continue to stick to the belief that their special equations can do the trick of representing a viable moving system.

But, while physicists and mathematicians are lost in their unrealistic dreams of representing a viable real-world moving system with equations alone, AI researchers are coming up with the necessary goods, and working on “world models”: models of how the real world works.

And the fact is that, in order to represent the “mechanics” of a viable real-world mathematical system, these computer programmers and AI researchers need to use special algorithmic symbols to represent necessary aspects of a viable moving world, aspects that that can only be described as “consciousness-like” and “agency-like”.

Lorraine Ford
While the outcomes of creativity/ free will might appear to be disordered from the point of view of an observer who can’t predict the outcomes, knowledge/ consciousness is always ordered. Knowledge/ consciousness is not matter, it is knowledge of matter and its situation, and this knowledge is always ordered.

So, while fundamental-level matter can be represented in terms of numbers that apply to categories like mass or position, and the mathematical relationships between these categories, the on-the-spot knowledge/ consciousness of an elementary particle could seemingly be represented as something like:

“(mass=number1 AND position=number2 AND charge=number3) IS TRUE”.

The above represents the sort of methodically ordered knowledge that a viable moving, real-world system requires, the sort of necessary knowledge required in order for a viable moving, real-world system to exist.

Similarly, the higher-level knowledge/ consciousness of higher-level matter (i.e. organisms) requires the ordered analysis and collation of myriads of items of lower-level knowledge/ consciousness, and this ordered analysis and collation required for higher-level knowledge/ consciousness can be represented using the same type of logical symbols: IF, AND, OR, IS TRUE, and THEN.

Irrespective of its method of delivery (feelings, emotions, thoughts) higher- and lower-level knowledge/ consciousness is a necessary and functional part of a viable moving, real-world system, and is therefore part of the physics of the world.

(And so is creativity/ free will part of the physics of the world. E.g. “number jumping” by an elementary particle, where these numbers apply to the particle’s own categories, is an example of the creativity/ free will that is part of the physics of the world.)

When it comes to the underlying real-world mathematical system, physicists and mathematicians and others have tacitly assumed that the system would automatically know its own categories, relationships and numbers, and have tacitly assumed that the system would automatically initiate movement in its own numbers that apply to the categories.

I.e., physicists, mathematicians and others have wrongly assumed that a mathematical system would not need a separate knowledge/ consciousness aspect, and would not need a separate aspect to initiate/ re-initiate movement (i.e. jump the numbers).

But in fact, a viable moving mathematical system requires a separate knowledge/ consciousness aspect, and a separate creative/ free will aspect to initiate/ re-initiate number movement.

Numbers:
Real-world numbers are not things that morph into other numbers, just like the real-world position category does not morph into the mass category, and a law-of-nature mathematical relationship does not morph into another law-of-nature mathematical relationship. The numbers that apply to a real-world category can only “jump”/ “quantum number jump”, i.e. a new number has to be assigned to a category; and presumably this number assignment is done by matter itself. This is called “free will”.

Speed of light:
But the law-of-nature mathematical relationships are NOT subject to speed of light restrictions. When quantum number jumps occur (these numbers always apply to categories e.g. the position category), then other numbers are instantly updated due to relationships between the categories, i.e. the numbers are updated faster than the speed of light. This is because no THING is moving faster than the speed of light: the numbers are updated faster than the speed of light due to law-of-nature mathematical relationships between the categories. No particle, no matter, no THING is moving faster than the speed of light. Mathematical relationships are NOT subject to speed of light restrictions.

Free will and consciousness:
Some people can’t abide the thought that matter (particles, atoms, molecules, and living things including human beings) could have free will. But then again, and like it or not, physics only has a pile of equations, and a pile of equations does not make a viable moving system. I.e. physics has no explanation for why the numbers (that apply to categories like position) would ever change; physics has NO model of a system that works; despite the delta symbols in the equations, physics has no model of number change; physics only has relationships between categories, not a system. A viable moving system is all about the numbers: quite apart from any mathematical relationships, a system needs to be able to interrogate its own numbers, and a system needs to be able to adjust its own numbers. I.e. a viable moving system needs aspects that could be described as “consciousness” and “free will”.

How do we represent the world?
In the relatively simple case of representing low-level matter, our knowledge about matter is represented in terms of categories, like mass or position, where these categories have been measured resulting in a number. So, our knowledge about matter is represented in terms of a list of categories (e.g. category1, category2, and category3), with their associated numbers (e.g. number1, number2 and number3). The only way we can acquire this knowledge about the low-level world is by measuring the low-level world.

How would we represent knowledge/ consciousness in the world?
In the corresponding relatively simple case of any on-the-spot knowledge/ consciousness possessed by the low-level matter itself, the low-level knowledge/ consciousness of low-level matter, about itself and its surroundings, would be represented as something like:

(category1=number1 IS TRUE) AND (category2=number2 IS TRUE) AND (category3=number3 IS TRUE).

The above type of on-the-spot, real-time, collated knowledge/ consciousness is required by the underlying real-world mathematical system, or by small parts of the system, in order for the real-world mathematical system to function.

Why can’t consciousness be measured?
The above discussion illustrates why knowledge/ consciousness can’t be measured: low-level knowledge/ consciousness is already a type of collated measurement of self and the surrounding world. The measurement is not the same as the thing that is measured.

Consciousness (and agency/ free will/ creativity) SEEM to be different to the material aspects of the world only because they ARE different aspects of the world to the material aspects of the world.