Cosmos and Consciousness
Further reflections on the physical, the mental, and the possibility of higher-order entities.
Everything unfolds in flux. Between times t and t’, nothing is the same. Every event is the consequence of an antecedent event. Even the quirks of the quantum do not escape the causal realm. They compose it. Nothing happens without a reason, even if the reason is curious—a probability calculation drawn from the strangest properties.
To exist is to exert.
Our universe makes plenty of room for mystery but none for superstition. Bound by nature’s laws, to exist is to be connected within a causally closed expanse among a dizzying array of particles, antiparticles, and pairings of these in superposition. Never mind that properties that define a particle are alien to us, at least at our familiar level of description. Outside this vast web of relationships, which includes features both great and small, there is supernature. Nonexistence.
The mind is not a separate, ethereal substance that interacts with the body through the pineal gland. If existence is exertion, all phenomena, including consciousness and the various subspecies of mental properties, arise from physical properties—though how they do so is a mystery. Otherwise, we would have to accept the absurdity of a universe in which the non-physical (non-exerting) is also causally efficacious.
Ours is a monastery of monism.
If we must accept that mental properties are causally inefficacious—so be it. They are gifts of life, nevertheless.
For centuries, the idea of a non-physical mind animating an otherwise inert physical body caused much philosophical mischief, making us ghosts in wet machines. But mental states depend on physical states. Still, the mental is not reducible to the physical because reduction is not dependency.
The spiritual is not supernatural.
In any case, if two entities are identical in all physical respects, they must also be identical in all mental respects—but not vice versa.
What counts as a body suitable to instantiate a mind is an open question. That we are embodied means our experiences are the children of a self-configuring universe. So, a sophisticated synthetic brain and body could give rise to a mind. A silicon-based, animate alien from a faraway galaxy could think and feel like us. If the right properties are realized in the right circumstances, a mind will emerge.
Whatever the instantiation medium, the principle remains: thought and consciousness arise from certain causal configurations, not others, where causation is the essence of being physical. Respecting such ontological intimacy does not mean denying that minds exist. It means our mental lives are bound to the cosmos. Physical primacy enables vectors of emergent complexity, where minds can blossom in the fecund expanse.
Does this leave room for a knowing universe?
The connection between the physical universe and consciousness does not close the door to the possibility of a higher-order consciousness. It opens it. Nature’s capacity for increasing complexity allows for new levels of consciousness and new layers of reality. From protons to proteins, from single cells to sapiens, the universe has shown a remarkable tendency to evolve into more complex forms.
Some of these complex forms think, feel, and act. But there seems to be a catch. To think, feel, and act is to have your forebears scale Mount Improbable, where complexity is the byproduct of uncountable iteration cycles in harsh, changing fitness landscapes. In this frame, the ocean designs the boats that float, which means only one in a hundred designs survive. Likewise, we scale the cognitive and experiential pinnacles in this earthly context.
Drake Equation
N=R∗⋅fp⋅ne⋅fl⋅fi⋅fc⋅L
The journey from simplicity to complexity is evidence of a generative universe. With each leap, greater properties emerge. How far can we take the rationale as simpler nervous signals organize within increasingly complex connectomes? Are we the closest things to god floating around in space dust? Or are there higher-order others? Is the cosmos—in its totality—conscious? Surely, a cosmic consciousness would, like us, also have been shaped by eons of iteration cycles, though evolutionary cosmology seems unlikely. We were shaped in brutal planetary fitness landscapes. And many of our cousins didn’t make it.
Could a more direct path exist than four billion years of trial and error?
Some sages write that everything is already conscious and that we are a special combination that makes us relatively more conscious. While that’s an intriguing hypothesis, the directionality of simple to complex holds more promise than ascribing dim sentience to sand or rocks. Alternatively, we may not be capable of finding, much less apprehending, a cosmic consciousness.
But we can imagine its contours.
Living systems self-organize, then evolve, and minds emerge from these. At least, that’s the way it happens here. The question is whether and to what extent a higher consciousness erupts from properties beyond our comprehension and limited context. We can imagine a great hierarchy, perhaps a holarchy, of intelligent life. If we do, we might understand why falling to our knees in the presence of something greater is natural for humans. Then again, it might just be that we evolved to cower before Nature, dangerous and wonderful, even if it lacks a mind.
None of us is certain, but we are invited to bask in the mystery.
The dream of synthetic consciousness swells with technology’s exponential advance. Some say scientists are playing at God, but who will stop all the tinkering? Maybe the tinkerers are God’s tentacles, carrying out divine destiny. If a machine—or a cyborg or a cluster of xenobots—mirrors the workings of a brain, won’t that brain awaken? Won’t it also ask why it exists and must suffer?
Seers predict the machines waking and then reproducing. Beyond that, the combinatorial and exponential could continue in recursive tinkering loops that grow more intelligent, solve more problems, and become more conscious—expanding beyond Earth. Imagine systems within systems, like vast, nested matryoshka minds, learning, scaling, and gobbling up the radiation of stars.
Will we become a part of them, and will they be a part of us?
Like cells in a vast cosmic body, humans may already be part of a grand autopoietic order. Such an order, shaped by selection and self-organization, hints at entities beyond our comprehension.
While some will cry out for evidence, discovery lies at the crossroads of imagination, faith, and science.
If such higher-order minds existed and evolved, wouldn’t knowing about them prompt us to rethink our theology? What if these entities have already emerged and have long existed? Would not their command of space and time mean they are interstellar navigators? Such advanced beings would be like middling deities positioned in time—like angels or demigods—less bound by human constraints but still becoming.
If we can accept the possibility of such gods, the conceptual leap to the Highest All is not so great, though we would still face the same old questions.
What, if any, are its limits?
We seek not the devotion of ants, so why would it seek our devotion?
Is it good or evil, and what do these terms mean to it?
Does it determine the good, or is the good independent of its will?
If it is the All, by what causal processes is it conscious?
If such an entity is but the universe unfolding, it might possess a form of omniscience that doesn’t align with the traditional idea of a transcendent God. Such a being, where all that exists becomes, would not violate its nature but still seem miraculous to us. And we would be its extensions. We, tiny symbiotes within a vast networked consciousness, could contribute momently to the emergence of a future entity that peers back upon itself (and us) from elsewhere and elsewhen. And it might well crave our devotion as we crave the love of family.
ब्रह्मन्
Perhaps, as the yogis have always held, we and any angels or demigods are manifestations of an All that is both immanent and transcendent, churning and unfolding in nonduality. But if the yogis are right, we will have to revise categories such as mental and physical by basking in the mystery under a blood-red moon.
