We Know Exactly What Consciousness Is — Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise
Casper Wilstrup is the CEO of Abzu. Follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter to keep up with AI, consciousness, and thinking machines.
There is a strange misconception, often preached with fervent certainty, that we simply do not know what consciousness is. This claim is fundamentally flawed, the product of centuries of indoctrination that prevents us from seeing the obvious fact. We know exactly what consciousness is. It’s everything else that we are unsure about.
Don’t believe me? I propose you conduct an experiment: Try answering this question, “What exactly is mass?”
Perhaps you would proceed to define mass in terms of other physical properties, say energy and velocity, or perhaps force and acceleration. But then, what is force? What is energy?
If you continue this game, you will find that you are inevitably led down a never-ending spiral of definitions and questions. It won’t be long until you are back to the starting point — to mass. Try as you might, you will find yourself entrapped in a circular argument, going round and round ad infinitum. That is, of course, until you bring consciousness into the mix. You see, mass is something that is experienced or sensed by us in certain ways under certain conditions. With this reference to our own consciousness, we find a way to end the infinite loop.
This plants a big flagpole in a crucial point that is strangely often overlooked. Physics was not created to describe some external, objective world. Rather, it was created to explain how something that we label as the ‘objective world’ is experienced by conscious beings such as ourselves. Physics, at its heart, is an elaborate set of mathematical models designed to link various concepts that seem to exist externally, to allow us to predict our own experiences.
Conscious experience isn’t just a byproduct of science; it’s an integral piece of the construction. Without it, the entire scientific edifice would collapse. So when we assert that we comprehend mass, energy, time, and space, yet dismiss consciousness as an enigma, it appears rather nonsensical.
Why do so many hold such a belief? Perhaps it’s a consequence of centuries of academic conditioning, wherein the very mention of consciousness was considered almost heretical, a taboo subject straying too far from the path of observable facts.
The irony is that consciousness is arguably the concept we understand the most intimately. It is what we are. Even without the constructs of science, or its precursors that all creatures employ in their day-to-day existence, we would still comprehend one thing: we exist.
I don’t want to undermine the power and beauty of science. It is a magnificent tool, a lens through which we have decoded the cosmos, transformed societies, and achieved wonders. As a lover of science, I respect its potency. Yet, I find it disheartening when science veers off its core mission, which is to relate the external world to our subjective experiences, and starts to dismiss the existence of experience itself.
In 1931, one of the greatest scientist working on the new field of Quantum Mechanics, Max Planck said:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
— Max Planck, 1931
Hopefully now, you understand what he meant. We need to remind ourselves of the central role consciousness plays within the mathematical framework we call science. The notion that consciousness does not exist, or is somehow beyond our grasp, is a fallacy that I would love to debunk. Consciousness, after all, is not just central to reality — it is reality itself — and you know exactly what it is.
Further reading about the nature of physical reality:
- Objective Reality Doesn’t Exist. We’ve Known This for a Century. It’s Time to Embrace It and Move On.
- The Single Subject: Exploring Connectedness in Physics and Consciousness
