Minds & Problems

Every problem that has ever existed, exists today or will ever exist can only start after the introduction of two key components:

• The universe existing.
• Minds existing.

If you are a problem solver of any kind, you must admit understanding minds is the penultimate problem solving project, right behind the problem of why anything exists at all.

No minds, no problems. Just the universe doing universe stuff. Minds introduce the concepts of problems and problem solving.

The universe appears to have evolved creatures that, frankly, take some issues with it.

Gravity? How about planes and rocket ships instead?

No oxygen in space? We’ll just take it with us.

The weather here isn’t ideal. Let’s try adding heating, air conditioning and water pipes. Actually, let’s just make our own weather.

Cancer? Really with this stuff? Let’s get rid of that.

In fact, this whole “death” thing kind of gives us the creeps. We’re going to be working on this one.

But we’re no different from the universe. We’re unable to find anything in the universe that exists as a truly independent system.

And yet, there is clearly something here that is experiencing sensory input that is unchanged by changes in sensory. The direct presence of consciousness, that appears to have no identifiable attribute, and only seems to appear situationally, in response to a particular arrangement of something that can only happen inside of brains, is the one thing that cannot ever be doubted. The entire universe could be an illusion, but the fact that experience is happening cannot be.

If we developed an advanced body scanner that scanned the molecular makeup of your body and mind, while you were awake, and built a copy of “you”, right next to you using a 3D printer, would your focal point of experience “teleport” to the other body? This seems preposterous.

Likewise, if we wanted to shoot you in the head since we just cloned you, you would still consider that being murdered.

Which means your waking consciousness cannot consist of merely a particular molecular makeup, that has now been duplicated. It has to do with something else — like a specific makeup plus your location in space, which makes total sense. Different objects and all.

But if the atoms of your brain and another could be swapped one at a time, while maintaining the same neural composition, it seems that nothing would change in your direct experience. Yet, for all intents and purposes, the atoms that used to make up you are now elsewhere, in a totally different composition. So then, it appears that your consciousness isn’t located on the atomic level. So what level is it at then?

Rarely, if ever, are our intuitions correct about cosmic matters, but perhaps it was correct all along that there are two types of stuff in the universe: physical stuff, and conscious stuff. We have a lot of tools to investigate the former but only a couple to investigate the latter.