Scientists and philosophers have long discussed what level of consciousness animals and plants have and whether they have at all. Some philosophers even questioned the existence of any consciousness other than their own, since they could not say with absolute certainty that other people also have it. All of these questions relate to creatures that we call living or organic.
What about inanimate objects? Can they be reasonable? At first glance, such an idea may seem ridiculous, but some modern scientists (not to mention the prominent thinkers of the past such as Plato) say that it is possible.
“The idea that a thermostat that regulates the temperature in your home even knows roughly what it is doing is, of course, contrary to common sense,” wrote Henry P. Stapp, physicist in his work on the interaction of mind and matter. a theorist at the University of California at Berkeley who worked with some of the founders of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, according to him, the idea of panpsychism, that is, the idea that all matter is animate, deserves discussion and can be considered from the point of view of quantum mechanics.
In quantum mechanics, the connection between consciousness and matter is so important that “it’s perhaps unnatural, and perhaps even retrograde, to think about the possibility of the existence of phenomena that are not psychophysical in nature,” he said. It was found that the process of observation, the impact of human consciousness affects the results of physical experiments.
However, Stapp in his theory leaves room for purely physical phenomena that have nothing to do with consciousness. Cognitivist and philosopher David Chalmers goes further.
He says that perhaps consciousness is a fundamental building block of physics, and therefore it exists in all things, from humans to photons.
Chalmers is Professor of Philosophy and Principal Investigator of Consciousness at Australian National and New York University. At a TED conference this year, he said that the science of consciousness research is in a kind of stalemate, and "radical ideas are needed to move forward." “I think we need one or two ideas that will initially seem crazy,” he said.
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One such idea is panpsychism
Chalmers admits that this idea may sound eccentric, but notes: "While this idea seems paradoxical to us, it is not so incredible for people from other cultures, where human consciousness is seen as much more connected with nature."
In the past, physicists had to accept newly discovered fundamental structural elements such as electromagnetism that could not be explained by more basic principles. Chalmers wonders if consciousness is another such structural element.
“Physics is unusually abstract,” says the philosopher. "It describes the structure of reality with a set of equations, but it doesn't tell us about the reality that underlies." He quoted a question asked by Stephen Hawking: "What breathes fire into the equations?"
“Maybe consciousness is breathing fire into the equations,” Chalmers says. The equations remain the same as they were, but we look at them as a means to describe the stream of consciousness.
“Consciousness does not hang out outside the physical world as something additional, it is here, right in his heart,” he says.
Chalmers does not claim that photons have the same consciousness as humans, but they may have a kind of primitive awareness.
Similar thoughts at different levels of understanding were considered by ancient Indian thinkers and the 17th century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. They assumed that inorganic substances were in a state of sleep; the animals are conscious, but possibly in a state similar to sleep; and people are aware that they have consciousness, they are more conscious than animals.
In the traditional beliefs of some Native Americans, stones are considered to be conscious, and the stone can even be spoken of as the "grandfather of the stone." A stone, for example, may be aware that it has been moved to another location. In Eastern spiritual traditions, it is sometimes said that the soul can be reborn not only as a person, but also as a plant, animal, or even a stone.
Prominent philosophers who supported the idea of panpsychism to varying degrees included Plato, Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Bertrand Russell.
Russell wrote in Fundamental Principles of Philosophy (1927): “My understanding is that [between mind and matter] there is no clear line, but a difference in degree; the oyster is less intelligent than man, but not completely unreasonable. " He said that memory is a key aspect of consciousness, inanimate objects have a kind of memory: "We cannot build on this basis [memory] an absolute barrier between consciousness and matter … inanimate matter to some extent demonstrates similar behavior."
Stapp also expressed the opinion that "the line between the living and the inanimate may not be perfectly clear."
The late Cleve Baxter, whose experiments in the 1960s. confirmed the idea that plants have consciousness, also revealed that eggs and yogurt can respond to threats. Baxter was a polygraph (lie detector) specialist. Some of his experiences were explained by Lynn McTaggart in her book The Experiment on Intent: “The live bacteria in yogurt showed a response to the death of other bacteria; the yogurt also showed a desire to be “fed” with bacteria beneficial to it. The eggs had a cry of alarm and then doom when one of them was placed in boiling water."
She explained, "Baxter found that body fluids showed responses that mirrored the emotional state of their host."
Chalmers is calling for a study of human consciousness that goes beyond exploring the relationship between brain regions and conscious experience. “It's still a science of relationships, not a science that explains. We know that these parts of the brain are consistent with certain types of conscious experience, but we don't know why,”he says. Research that goes beyond brain research may find consciousness in unexpected places.
