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Consciousness Is Not a Thing
On minds as abstract, overlapping perspectives
In a recent article titled “The Single Mind Theory of Consciousness” I made an argument that consciousness cannot be conceived as “belonging” to individual people, but rather must be thought of as a singular, abstract space in which different consciousnesses exist as subspaces. This is a difficult concept for people accustomed to thinking of a “mind” as synonymous with a “brain”, and drew fire from some commenters as an unjustified speculative leap. In this article, I want to justify the argument further, and tease out more of its implications.
What does it mean to say that consciousness is abstract? I use “abstract” not to mean “unreal” or “imaginary,” but to refer to that which is defined by relational form rather than by material substance. An abstract entity, in this sense, is one whose essence lies in its structure or configuration, not in any intrinsic, spatially located stuff. Consciousness, I claim, is abstract in this sense, while clearly also being closely derived from or dependent upon concrete brain structures and activity. Physicalist philosophers of mind would say that it supervenes on brain states, meaning that mental states depend on brain states and not the other way around.
