The Universe and Us –
Brain activity, artworkThe Universe is devoid of the power to think. It has no consciousness … Is this true?
Imagine an individual in a coma with a damaged and defective brain. The brain of the individual is able to keep body parts functioning, but it is incapable of perception or thought. It is absolutely unconscious although its life-supporting organs work perfectly.
In order to stimulate the consciousness of the individual which now seems to be lost, a technology is developed that inserts tiny nano sensors into the brain. This stimulation, however, is not effective: yes, the brain can process what is perceived but it lacks cognitive processing skills that make it possible to analyse and learn from that perception.
So, the scientists go back to the drawing board and create another kind of nano sensor connected wirelessly to a powerful computer with artificial intelligence capacity that can analyse the information received, rationalise it through a language that makes it capable of learning and storing memories of experience in order for it to form its own personal conclusions about the stimulus it is receiving via the neural implants. These conclusions are then retransmitted back into the mind, providing a new, computer-processed consciousness to replace the awareness it lacks.
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Now, imagine that scientists, seeing their success with this creation of artificial consciousness, decide to take the experiment to a further degree and, before the subject has been able to develop a sense of identity with his or her new consciousness, a new AI machine is attached to the supercomputer giving it a second autonomous input that uses a different language and receives information from a different part of the world.
The supercomputer is programmed to filter and analyse the information in such a way that the two different languages are translated into a third language and the experiences received are sifted, selected and categorised by the central computer according to interest and relevance, the most irrelevant material being trashed.
In this way, our brain damaged individual will have the sensation that he or she can shift between one experience and another whenever he or she wants. Or, the individual can simply surf between the two in order enrich his or her own knowledge about the world outside. At first this is a disorientating experience for the individual as it starts to develop its new identity. The scientists involved in the project, however, are intrigued by the process, especially as the individual, now lacking the prejudices imposed through normal individualisation and socialisation, begins to assimilate its own bipolar reality developing a hunger for more and more subjective experiences.
When the scientists discover the amazing potentials in gathering and centring different subjective experiences into one enormous intersubjective mind, they increase the number of sensors by millions by relaying the information of thousands of personal computers interconnected via the internet and accessed through the intricate wireless set up of nano sensors in the individuals now super-sensorial brain.
PART TWO: THE ALLEGORY MADE MORE REAL
What we have in this narrative is an attempt at an allegorical description of our relationship with the cosmos, in which each one of us along with each of all the sentient organisms in the Universe, are sensorial supercomputers, and the consciousness-absent body is the actual Universe.
Of course, the allegory is not an accurate description of reality: in our narrative the information is projected from outside the individual, whereas in reality we are in the Universe, even our minds, and the Universe is in us. From the position of quantum theory, everything is information, and the Universe receives information about itself from our perception and understanding of it. To make it more realistic in this sense we would have to imagine nano-sized, self-conscious supercomputers with their own sensorial systems being injected into the blood and body of the individual in order to give the individual not only a picture of its own corporeality, but a deep and rich amalgam of information derived from each nano-chip-computer’s individual experiences with the world in which it is immersed. All information would depend on the experience gathered from being in the individual’s body, and because of this basically tautological relationship with reality the nano-chips themselves need to be imbued with the power to think creatively and produce its own world within the world it inhabits, although with this power also comes a need for such a creative power to be conscious of the need to develop its own habitats in harmony with the delicate metabolism it occupies.
Seen in this way, we can apprehend how the Universe can learn about itself and its problems, and even, perhaps correct its problems, by observing and listening to itself via what the conscious and self-conscious elements in it can perceive and understand about it.
We can also see why self-conscious organisms exist, and that they need to exist, not only to make the Universe itself exist through self-consciousness, but also to satisfy the desire we believe any existence intrinsically must have for endurance and ultimately permanence. Without permanence existence is not authentic. There is no authenticity in the ephemeral.
(CONTINUED IN PART THREE)
