Your Smartphone Might Be More Real Than You

The Circular Logic of Being Someone

Your certainty about being conscious rests on a house of cards.

You point to your thoughts and feelings as proof of your existence while denying the same to rocks and chairs. But who’s doing the pointing? Who’s making these grand pronouncements about consciousness? The pointer can’t point to itself.

Take your smartphone — it processes information, responds to stimuli, communicates with other devices. You dismiss it as an unconscious object while claiming special status for your own supposed consciousness. Based on what?

Your feelings about having feelings? Your thoughts about having thoughts?

The Prison of Personhood

Reality check: You can’t prove you’re more “real” than a character in Grand Theft Auto.

Both of you appear in awareness, follow programming, and vanish when the game ends. Your certainty about being a conscious entity comes from circular reasoning — you believe you’re conscious because you believe you’re conscious.

Here’s what’s real: Awareness itself. Everything else — including your precious sense of being someone who’s aware — is appearance only. The question “Are you a real conscious being?” is itself…