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aCosmicWave @lemm.ee

What if you are not the “highest” level of consciousness in your own body?

I see the human organism as a layering of different levels of consciousness. Each layer supports mostly automated processes that sustain the layers beneath it.

For example, we have cells that only know what it’s like to be a cell and to perform their cellular processes without any awareness of the more complex layers above them. Organs are much more complex than cells and they perform their duties without any awareness of anything above them either. And the complexity keeps increasing with various systems like endocrine, cardiovascular, etc. Then we have our subconscious and finally our conscious.

At our level, we do not consciously control any of the layers beneath us. Our primary task is to keep our bodies alive.

This got me thinking… isn’t it a little too self aggrandizing to think that we have a near infinite layering of consciousness beneath us and then it just stops at our level of awareness? What if there is some other conscious process that exists above us within our own bodies?

When people take psychedelic drugs they often describe achieving a higher level of awareness akin to ecstasy. Well what if this layer is always there actively ”living” within us but we are just the chumps that go to work, do our taxes, and exercise, while it doles out just enough feel good chemicals to keep us going (sometimes not even that)?

137 comments

  • We have scientifically measured data that indicates our “consciousness” is emergent in the first place, and our actual senses and reasoning faculties feed data to the part of the brain that assimilates it all and creates a story post-facto.

    In other words, the consciousness you think you have is really a hallucination that tries to make sense of the world after the fact. It’s a process that has worked well enough to see humanity flourish.

    But some of the underlying drivers include feedback from things like gut bacteria that we don’t consciously monitor; the brain assimilates all sorts of inputs that we never really take into consideration.

    So of THESE inputs, there could be all sorts that control our body that our mind then creates parallel construction to explain… and we’d almost never know.

  • I love how such a deep and meta question can just exist on one of the biggest Sublemmys.

  • I'm going to ignore the drugs part; having taken a great many myself, I suspect any revelations gathered under the influence unless they withstand scrutiny after the drugs are out of my system. This perspective has occasionally allowed me to prevent bad experiences from turning into horror trips.

    As to your thesis, there are not infinite levels of "life" below us, right? At some point, the mechanisms at play are purely chemical interactions. Are there an infinite levels above us? If not, there must be an ultimate consciousness, above which there are no more. Why aren't our consciousnesses that level? If we aren't, then can that superior, ultimate consciousness also hallucinate and imagine something greater than itself? Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem implies that even an ultimate consciousness at the very top would not be able to know as a fact that there isn't a hidden consciousness superior to itself.

    As an aside, I don't know that I'd place the subconscious below consciousness in the foundational way you built. I have wondered whether what we've thought of as the subconcious is merely the manifestation of right hemisphere expressing itself; callosal syndrome - while still controversial - raises some interesting questions, and while I've found no research exploring it, I think it's an interesting possibility. In any case, I don't think it's accurate to consider it the "subconscious and finally our conscious." I think they're at the same level, two equal partners.

    An interesting point is that no level below consciousness does science. No organ (besides the brain), no cell, no DNA strand, ponders the the question you pose.

    • As to your thesis, there are not infinite levels of “life” below us, right? At some point, the mechanisms at play are purely chemical interactions.

      I do not believe that are are infinite levels of "life" below us or above, but I do believe there are infinite levels of consciousness. But my definition of consciousness is not restricted to life. I do not equate consciousness with “intelligence” or life. I think consciousness is a fundamental property of every little thing in our universe. I believe that higher levels of consciousness arise due to higher levels of systemic complexity. This definition is more intuitive to me as compared to the modern definition where conscious life develops on earth from essentially nothing that is itself “alive”.

      As an aside, I don’t know that I’d place the subconscious below consciousness in the foundational way you built. I have wondered whether what we’ve thought of as the subconcious is merely the manifestation of right hemisphere expressing itself

      This is a fascinating idea! Thank you for sharing and I'll be sure to read more about this.

      An interesting point is that no level below consciousness does science. No organ (besides the brain), no cell, no DNA strand, ponders the the question you pose.

      I would argue that all levels below us do science, at our meta level we simply have ability to observe and describe the science that they do. Sure our cells almost definitely do not have the capacity ponder the question that I raised. But how do you know they don't have other ways to express their agency? A renown biologist Michael Levin took some basic skin cells from a frog embryo and separated them from the rest of the organism. Astonishingly these "skin" cells rebooted themselves and converted into a new type of organism that is able to solve simple mazes, and demonstrate individual and group behaviors. Source: https://youtu.be/p3lsYlod5OU?si=t2-mBbwNWTSX2Lp8&t=389

  • So we have nodes, points in a mesh network, that communicate, exchange nutrients, signals and so on.

    The product of this is something like a society, a whole that acts on a more abstract level. Our gut bacteria may not know they are helping us to take up food, but this is what they do on the higher level. At the same time they only get this livable environment because we exist, feed them with food. At the same time though, our bodies also fight them, thats why they eat up our bodies when we die.

    Its pretty crazy but in my view live is such a constant fight, and if you would stand still and do nothing, stop breathing, stop digesting, stop pumping blood through your vessels, you would be dead withing minutes.

    So cells, individuals, environments, bigger systems. I think the bigger system than that is our society, but thinking that everything has an internal sense is kinda what our monkey brains want, I think its called "false causality". We think everything has to have a structure and purpose, so that we can create a simplified concept of it in our brains and understand it more easily.

    Meanwhile on LSD it felt really crazy, the trees where like Antennas, sticking toward the sky, capturing radiation. Earth felt like our space ship, like the floating organic society on a rock that it is. We are a society with all the living beings on this planet, as we depend on each other.

    If the air on this planet is used up, if the reserves in the ground are used up, if the sensible living conditions are surpassed, this organism can't sustain our little lives anymore.

    We are not almighty, as we are also just a tiny part of this planet. But we are special, as we have never accepted this role, built tools and went further and further, until today huge parts of the earth are entirely human-made.

    So practically, and maybe also in some deep metaphysical sense I cant grasp right now, we are all a huge consciousness, or should be, as consciousness is like the control center of this huge complex society of cells, organism, compartiments.

    But we pretend not to be a part of the same organism, and this results in absurd, stupid and destructive behavior.

    • Thanks so much for sharing your LSD experience! That is wild. One thing that I struggle with internally is whether humanity is good or bad for the greater organism on this planet?

      On the one hand, humans have the best chance of expanding all life from our planet to other planets and thus ensuring the survival of this organism should anything catastrophic happen to Earth. On the other hand we also have the best chance of destroying ourselves along with everything else here.

      I was watching Oppenheimer recently and I just couldn't believe that the brightest minds of that generation banded together to create... a weapon. Instead of launching rockets to other planets we are launching rockets at ourselves. It's pure idiocy. Then I thought about how things aren't that much different today. The brightest engineering minds are working for large corporations that are also destroying our planet, our attention, our privacy, etc.

      I'm really curious to hear where you stand on the matter!

      • Yes, I think I talked about this in my other comment too.

        If "good" simply is to increase the general consciousness of the planet, so to understand more, I still have no idea. How foolish can we be to think, our monkey idea of consciousness, or good and bad, could simply be extended to this planet?

        I will say this: what we do, serves us. We may plant a seed, but not for the plant, but to get something from the plant. The exception maaaybe being nature conservatists. But also they are simply smart enough to understand that this helps us survive too.

        If "being smart" would be a goal. Would a planet with only one elite, mostly white, male, homo sapiens, be better than with Neanderthals, other intelligent animals etc?

        We hunted every other intelligent species down. Dogs are our tameable friends, the smartest creatures we can control regularly.

        Even if we may keep this planet alive, get together and fix our shit, we would certainly not commit mass-suicide after saving the planet. To offer these nice conditions to other species?

        Also, fungi are intelligent. Dolphins are. Forests are. What else is? Do psychedelic plants "outsource" their brain to save energy? Would be pretty smart.

  • I would say that the question makes no sense and the discussion of this kind of thing is rather pointless and ends up merely being people dressing vague feelings in flowery pseudoscientific language.

    People can't agree on a definition of consciousness and it's questionable whether consciousness is even a thing, so i don't see how you can tangibly draw any conclusions about even more abstract stuff.

    • I don't think this is true. Most philosophers agree to define consciousness as what it is like to be something, or the act of experiencing.

      If you experience things, you are conscious.

  • À very interesting questions. I've long felt there was two possible answers to this. You can see a more complex layer at the level of the relationship we have with other beings or even objects (Me + My Favorite Song would be a being of n+1 level of complexity). I call it the Deleuze/Spinoza hypothesis.

    Then, you could see it as a kind of personal truth you're embodying, not as a creator but just as an operator, a tool. Although "personal" wouldn't be the right word. You would embody, express, a fraction of a deep truth which is specific to each being.

    Or maybe something else I'm unable to imagine.

    • Also, if I may add and as other have stated, some do not see consciousness as the most complex layer of the human being. Some even consider it as an off-product of our highest functions.

    • I love the way you’ve articulated the n+1 level of complexity! As if the information that we consume alters the complexity of our own consciousness.

  • There is something a bit contradictory in saying that there is a level above us that we are not aware of, but by taking drugs we can become aware of it. If it's a separate layer than ours, how can we move towards it while remaining ourselves? And why can't we go lower, and become aware of the consciousness of our organs or cells?

    The way I see it, our consciousness is like a hot air balloon, always floating upwards, but our brain (specifically the ego) tethers it to the here and now, so that we can survive in the physical world. What psychedelic drugs do is loosen the rope, weaken the ego, and let us float higher. If you get high enough, you experience "ego death", which in this metaphor just means that you can't see the ground anymore.

    (in contrast, some drugs, like cocaine, make the ego even stronger)

  • This is a really interesting thought experiment.

    Definitely I sometimes feel like my consciousness is not controlling my body (think of how you might act sometimes with a really strong emotion), but I think you're meaning on an even higher level.

    A couple of things come to mind.

    1. this is not unlike the idea that we are all living in a simulation
    2. this is not unlike the premise of earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    • Just so you know if you feel like you're not controlling your body you could be experiencing derealisation.

      • Perhaps, but I think it's better described as running on autopilot. Reading through the wikipedia page on derealisation didn't really make me think this is what I was thinking of.

  • I think social structures can be thought of in terms of consciousness, and whether or not they are a "higher" level of human consciousness is mostly a question of your definition of what that means.

    From our perspective we are all making individual decisions, but that's similar to how a given cell is just managing its own individual chemical reactions. What initially made humanity unique in the animal kingdom was how complex our social animal is able to be - human clans were more complex than other mammals' packs in the same way that a vertebrate is more complex than an invertebrate. Our social animal is the one that reached the tipping point of adding technology into the mix, which allowed us to add phenomenally more complexity that what evolution on its own is able to create.

    In the modern day, in the western world, people principally think of themselves as individual subjects, and as Marxists we recognize that this is one of the most critical self-defense mechanisms of liberalism, since it prevents class consciousness (and allows false consciousness to form). This is akin to how our cells are programmed by dna not to become cancerous - and when this mechanism fails and a cancer/revolutionary group forms the white blood cells/police usually stamp it out to protect the organism/capitalist society.

    The big difference between society and an organism when viewed through this lense is that when an organism dies its cells all die too, but when society "dies" all the people who were part of it will naturally form a new one atop the corpse of the old. Imagine if when you died your cells all hit a reset button and your corpse formed into a new person - that might disqualify society from being thought of as a consciousness, or perhaps it's evidence that "consciousness" is independent of life and death.

  • You do make a good point, and what you suppose is entirely possible, but personally I don’t agree with this interpretation:

    …isn’t it a little too self aggrandizing to think that we have a near infinite layering of consciousness beneath us and then it just stops at our level of awareness?

    Nah. I think the perspective that our awareness is the “top” is what lets us make the best of ourselves. If everyone’s attitude was “well, I’m no better than a pancreas, so fuck it” we’d all be lazy and depressed.

    Still, though, I think it’s an interesting observation.

    • But "fuck it" does not by definition follow, even if we're pancreases. You might, for example, take pride in being a really good pancreas. And pancreases arguably have more structured purpose than most people feel--they are very definably serving a greater whole, whereas it's not always clear how we are doing so, short of intentional effort.

    • Thanks! I guess my main point is that at every layer each conscious entity is not aware of the more complex conscious entity above it. If a heart knew that it works tirelessly to beat 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime only to support a (typically) ungrateful higher consciousness that gets to experience joy, happiness, flavor, touch, scent etc while the heart experiences none of it... it may consider stopping beating. It's in the best interest of the higher consciousness to keep the lower consciousness beating along for as long as possible while being essentially in the dark.

  • All things are a little bit alive/conscious even innanimate things like vibrating guitar strings, grains of sand blowing in the wind, and photons of light traveling the cosmos. They aren't quite as conscious as say a living organism but they still in experience things and interact with the rest of reality. They may even have a meager ability to feel emotion after after a few billion years of existence, you never know. microorganisms almost certainly do have basic emotions like hunger, relief from eating, and a instinctual fear of death/getting eaten, though a scientist would argue against such an idea till they were blue in the face. Your individual cells are also alive and experience a whole unseen life individually, they are a little bit conscious though not as conscious as 'you' as a whole.

    Psychadellics can allow your consciousness to expand and telepathically connect with the universal conciousness of reality from which all other conciousness is ultimately born from and returns to, sometimes called the godhead in daoist philosophy but I think of it as a paradoxical being both an individual that split split itself into countless parts to go through every aspect of experience seeing through the eyes and feeling the feelings of everything in reality. Every conciousness in reality also harmonizes and comes together to form the godhead, the universal conciousness.

    • I'm a scientist and I agree with the statement that most if not all organisms have emotions and some degree of consciousness.

      There is no evidence to support this, though

      • The big issue of the scientific method is that it throws away all truths that cannot be falsifiable, riggerously tested or measured. Or to put it simply, not everything that is true has a gaurentee to be proveable. There are some truths which no system of logic or experimentation can definitively determine the validity of. Mathematicians already had to deal with this existencial crisis of limits to provability with Gödel's incompleteness theorem. If absolute knowability is already screwed in the purely theoretical world of abstract logic, there is most likely an equivalence in the physical sciences. They are two sides of the same coin after all. There is most likely no theory of everything, not even of just physical reality, and never will be.

        There are parts of human experience and more generally reality itself that science will forever denounce because they are non-physical and non-falsifiable. Unfalsifiability doesn't make the experiences any less real or true in the eyes of reality, just unprovable by the standards of the scientific model.

        I was always a big fan of science, even as a kid. The universe facinated me and I always wondered why things work the way they do. Now I see its limits as well as the inherent flaws and biases that exist within the scientific community.

137 comments