Introduction
In this essay I would like to provide my perspective on what constitutes human consciousness. I am still learning about our consciousness myself, therefore, the perspective that I provide in this essay is still preliminary. However, I'd like to provide my perspective now, albeit being in its inconclusive form, for it has come to my attention that many of us are still stuck debating whether we are animals and I believe my perspective may shed some light on this issue. The essay begins by defining our consciousness (Part 1) and then explores into some essence of our consciousness (part 2).
If you haven't already, please refer the ongoing debate on consciousness between physicalism and dualism. Physicalism asserts that all phenomenon, including our consciousness, can fully be explained by things of the physical world. Dualism asserts that there is another realm other than the physical one, where our consciousness may reside (Wikipedia). I hope that my essay provides some insight to which is the more likely depiction of our world.
Part 1: Defining Human Consciousness
What is consciousness? There has been countless debates on this matter without yielding satisfactory conclusions. Understandably so, since I believe the focal point in the quest to understand consciousness is the definition of consciousness, and our current definition of consciousness is simply too broad.
The philosophy of mind defines consciousness as having knowledge and intentionality, and the abilities to experience and feel. Using this definition, we can arrive that many simple organisms would fit under this criteria. I am not asserting that these organisms are not conscious but, rather, the quality of their consciousness compared with a human being's consciousness is incomparable. Even with our current technology, we can most likely create a machine that would fit under that criteria, if not in the near future. These facts alone indicate that our widely accepted definition of consciousness is quite lacking in some respect. Thus, I would like to provide a more fitting definition of consciousness before delving into its essence.
Observing our furry animals, we can learn that these beings have feelings, emotions, and memories. Some even obtain knowledge and act with conscious intentions. But what is it that they differ from us? Some question their sentience, whether they have "souls" like us but most do not even consider that as a possibility. Does any one ever wonder if these animals will have an afterlife? No. As one can see, we innately understand that these animals lack in certain attributes compared to us. So what is the difference?
There are countless differences, from intelligence, connection, morality, to this ambiguous "feeling" that there's something sentient particularly to human beings. To articulate the core attributes of our human consciousness, I believe our search should start by noting what makes human a human- or what we'd consider to be of our level of consciousness.
In terms of consciousness, intelligence can be canceled out since we consider infants, who have minimal intelligence, to also have sentience. The feeling of connection would simply come from our ability to emphasize and sympathize with each other's emotions. Our sense of morality may come from myriad of human emotions along with our high sense of self. Even if someone lacks in any of these attributes so far, we would still consider them to have sentience, and thus share human consciousness like the rest of us.
This leaves us with this "ambiguous feeling". Even to someone with severe mental handicap or disorder, we innately feel there is something in them. Although their physical brain abnormality causes abnormal physical reactions, we can sense there is someone stuck inside that broken body. This is why we humans take care of our mentally handicapped parents, children, and friends. If we were to really believe that human consciousness stems from physical attributes only, I believe our world would be a much different place.
A simple animal consciousness can be fully defined from their physical attributes. The physical attributes include feelings, emotions, conscious thinking even, to planning. These attributes can be fully explained by physical phenomenon happening internally or externally of their bodies. Can any of the actions that arise from these physical attributes of animals be considered as novel?
What about a being who creates what has never existed? Wouldn't this be the most pure form of conscious action? Without relying much on external references, we humans can "consciously" create on our own conscious terms. Isn't what makes us different than mere animals is creating this great human civilization, something that no human has ever witnessed before us? Isn't being a human being about advancing to the bounds of possibilities and unknowns, and then creating our own reality?
The fact that we can imagine what has never existed physically and can create what has never existed physically are enough evidences that we aren't just some beings of physical phenomenon like rest of the animals. The most pure form of conscious action would be creating without utilizing any form of references. This means, if you believe in God, God's action of creation was the most conscious action there ever was and ever can be, since God relied on nothing to create this world but only with his imagination. It was the most original work purely and solely reflective of God's own self. This is what I mean by not relying on any references in our conscious actions to be qualified as a truly conscious in quality. Thus, one can say that creative actions are more conscious in quality than the ones that copies (references from) what are already known or exist.
To summarize so far, we innately understand that human consciousness is of different quality than that of animals', thus the widely accepted definition of consciousness which also validates the animal's consciousness in the same category as ours indicates we need a better definition, which led us to search for what makes us feel that we are of different quality, and henceforth came to the conclusion that it must be our ability to be original and creative that makes us differ from animals, since original and creative thinking by definition are actions done in pure self-deliberation- the only actions truly done consciously. Thus, the definition of human consciousness must include our ability to create (or imagine) what has never existed or never perceived.
In scientific terms, we have already established that particles, small pieces of matter that constitutes everything, have wave-particle duality, meaning it has two forms, one physical and one non-physical. All form of matter release at least bits of energy (entropy) and some releasing intense amount of energy like that of our sun. We humans are also one form of matter which we slowly but constantly release energy in various forms: thermal, kinetic, quantum, and etc.
I think thermal and kinetic are self-explanatory so I would like to discuss about our use of quantum energy. The quantum energy that I am referring to is the utilization of the energy from quantum particles that exist within our brain that are accelerating beyond that of speed of light (this process is elaborated in my other essay, "The Nature of Our World"), which allows us to peak into the realm of the future (since anything in acceleration beyond the speed of light lies beyond what can ever be perceived with our eyes since we see via light), hence explaining our ability to create what has never existed in our past or present.
I suspect this was mouthful so let me put this another way. In my other essay, I theorized that there are unending pattern of something making up something else, and in the smallest of scales, particles circle around some other, which indicates that they are in constant acceleration (centrifugal force). In order to explain various phenomenon observed in physics such as beta decays, I came to the conclusion that it must be that the speed of light cannot be the limit, and there are even smaller particles in greater acceleration than C^2. This explains various other quantum phenomenon as well. Thus, if you were to accept my words on this, then, naturally, you should also see the plausibility in our ability to tap into these small particles within us that are accelerating beyond C^2, the realm where we consider has yet to have happened. If so, then it explains why we humans have the ability to create "future" into our reality or imagine what we had never perceived.
I understand this is hard to believe as I personally do not fully believe this as a fact yet, but my intuition/subconscious wishes to believe this is the truth. I believe our subconscious holds the keys to bettering our understanding of human consciousness. Here is a reason why: I believe our thoughts can be broadly divided into two types of thinking, conscious thinking and subconscious thinking. Our conscious thinking utilizes our memories or some other references, while our subconscious thinking utilizes no easily articulable references. Our subconscious thinking just happens, storing information somewhere within our mind without our conscious knowing. How can we store information or piece together some memories without directly seeing or solving deliberately, as they happen all the time? It seems that without making physical neural connection, we can store information or create information.
The fact that we humans are dictating our future (deciding what we will do or become in the future) alone should be enough to suggest that we are no simple physical beings. Our ability to imagine is our gateway to glimpse into the realm of future (a realm of unknowns) and deliberately choose which future we wish to become our present (the realm of physicals). Thus, I believe imagination is what truly defines human consciousness.
When we look upon a baby, we don't simply see the baby in its present moment but also into the baby's future. When we look upon someone who is mentally disabled, we also see what they could've been. It seems that our current physical bodies do not comprehensively define our values as human beings, and we seem to subconsciously understand and see things beyond that of our conscious perception or memories. Instead, we perceive into the realm of possibilities as well as our past and present. Through our imagination, we are bestowed of our human consciousness, and, through our consciousness, we naturally perceive possibilities and unknowns as part of our very reality.
Part 2: Essence of Human Consciousness
Now that we defined what it means to have consciousness, I would like to discuss our essence. For those of you who wishes to understand more in-depth, explained in scientific terms, please refer to my essay, The Nature of Our World. I have theorized the possible energy sources of human mind and its possible implications.
I believe our whole consciousness observes and experiences our current world and life through our physical form, our human bodies. This physical form is quite limiting in a sense that it only allows partial access to a part of our overall consciousness. It is as if the two consciousness's (one in physical realm and the other beyond the physical realm) are communicating with one another through a small hole, and since our consciousness of the physical realm is limited to what are only physically perceivable and is physical, the communication and realization of the rest of our consciousness are one sided, meaning it is only natural that our consciousness of the physical realm cannot feel the rest of its self that lies beyond what is physical, yet the part that lies beyond our physical realm sees and realizes all. Thus, it require us to tap into our subconscious to be able to "feel" the rest of our consciousness.
The image below attempts to illustrate this relationship. The blue cloud represents the consciousness that lies beyond our physical body. It is as if this consciousness is perceiving out of a human body and thus confined to the limitations of the human body. Our physically derived feelings and experiences, including our articulation of thought processes, represent the limitations. There is a greater being within us with greater potential yet we can only understand what are perceivable to our senses allowed by our physical tissues. This is what differentiates us from animals: that greater being with greater potential is within us.
This means, those who rely primarily on their five senses will have much harder time tapping into their subconscious since it indicates that their "holes" are very restricted from disuse, but it becomes more accessible with more frequent usage. Our subconscious is a great source of energy and ability. Greater the size of our "holes" greater our access to this energy source.
I personally think being able to tap into this greater energy source can manifest in many ways depending by person to person. Those of us in our society with gifted talents in their field perhaps are indicative of having greater access to this energy source, whatever the talents may be. I do think that life experience generally allows greater access, making us wiser as we age.
Relying on my personal experiences, I came to the conclusion that what we perceive ourselves to be us in our present moment or us in our physical form are highly short-sighted and demeaning view of ourselves. We humans have achieved the impossible and our future is shining brighter than ever but we are still stuck comparing ourselves to mere monkeys and thus considering ourselves as some near worthless objects.
Although we may see ourselves without the due value because we are all surrounded by humans, but in fact we are one of the most valuable clumps of matter in the infinite universe. Don't let the sheer size difference between the infinite universe and our infinitesimal size scare you, as I once did too. We are not some insignificant momentary specs in the universe, but we are the fruits of the universe, the things that matter the most among the infinite things, the very purposes of the universe's existence.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this essay, I am currently writing a book that will comprehensively go over my perspective of the universe and our place within it, along with what future may hold for humanity. So, please refer back in couple months.