What is Consciousness?

Exploring what consciousness is and why it matters.

“First, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is nothing, and then suddenly, magically, at just the right moment . . . something. However minimal that initial something is, experience apparently ignites in the inanimate world, materializing out of the darkness.”

How do you know if something is real?

It may seem like a silly question, an academic game for philosophers. But when you contend with the question more rigorously, the intuitive answers quickly evaporate leaving you wondering what is real and important in life.

We know that we do not see the world as it truly is because the fundamental constituents of matter are subatomic particles — quarks and electrons from which our macroscopic world emerges.

If that’s the case, then your consciousness — every aspect of your life — emerges from the computer processing of ones and zeros.

(Note: As we will see later in the mind-body problem, this does not mean that consciousness could be reduced to those bits on a computer, merely that it somehow emerges from them.)

The experience of mourning someone’s death, falling in love, or biting into a delicious piece of fruit would be emerging from the complex computer code of such a simulation. But we can’t yet prove this one way or the other.

The fact is that it’s hard to prove the reality of anything. But there is one thing in this universe that you can know to be real, no matter its true nature or where it exists in space: your consciousness.

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