I would agree, you don't need to be self aware to interact physically...you just need to be conscious.

I do believe that science and religion will on day converge into one philosophy known as "The Truth"!

Being self aware is certainly one major aspect of consciousness but I its not the only important part. Maybe people in comas are not self aware but still conscious in some way.

But again why is consciousness synonymous with interactions of matter? Why is not something that can only arise when matter is organized in particular ways?

Mind and matter definitely interact. If we look to quantum mechanics we can come to an almost chicken or the egg issue. Observer needs to be made out of matter, yet matter must be observed to exist as we know it.... I think that what we call "mind" is just one form of a universal "thing" that we can call consciousness. The brain is a machine that can manipulate this "thing" to create unique states we call the mind. Nature is famous for manipulating what is in its environment.

Now I have no idea what consciusness is then and how to study it, but I think that we can since we can technically speaking detect anything that interacts with matter and since mind and matter interact we should be capable of detecting it. We may need better equipment with greater resolution but it will be found in the brian one day.

But that observer doesn't necessarily have to be a conscious human being. It could be anything like a geiger counter or any other piece of matter.

There is definitely a chicken in the egg issue but I think it has less to do with consciousness and more to do with unconscious stuff interacting in a way we can't logically comprehend.



I think its possible that something like this could be going on. But why is mind a product of consciousness and not consciousness a product of mind? A computer has a kind of mind but its not conscious.

Maybe consciousness is not the appropriate word then...



Lets say we've mapped everything in the brain completely and know how it all works all of human physiology. If this still doesn't show how consciousness can be formed from just a slew of chemical reactions (because it might not and so far it hasn't in a way that people find satisfying) then yes there would be a need for something interacting with the matter to create what we are currently calling universal consciousness. Kinda like dark matter we only think its there because regular matter can't explain certain things. This can be studied. Or at least guide our experiments to a point where we can one day study them.

But again I do not think universal consciousness is an appropriate word because that implies intelligence and I don't think this thing if it exists is intelligent.

A bit of a random tangent on the spirituality/science debate, but I read this and wanted to share it. The quote comes from Simon Buxton, head of the Sacred Trust here in the UK, that teaches shamanic practinioners based on core methods adapted by Dr Micheal Harner from shamanic methods used across cultures all over the world.

He is also an initiated Bee Shaman, and author of The Shamanic Way of the Bee, that details his extremely intense initiation into this very ancient European shamanic path.

I have been in contact with him for a while, and did a shamanic drumming weekend workshop with him in London a few months ago. He is a very focused, rational, dedicated individual, and a very genuine, decent man.


"What is it, this life?
I know, I know, that between the investigations, the calculations, the quantifications, and the rationalizations of the scientist, there is a gap, like the white spaces between words or the pause in a sentence that gives meaning to the spoken word."


Burnt I really value your contribution to the Nexus...I think this place would be much worse off without your intelligent, objective, rational and grounded contribution, and I consistently agree with at least 95% of what you say, probably more actually...as a species we could do with more people with minds like yours.

I think, as a species, we have so much more to learn about the universe we inhabit...I think we are very much in our infancy. There are some Bristlecone pines in the US that are around 5,000 years old...the oldest living things on Earth. One single tree has been around for the vast majority of our important developmental history as a species. Science is an ever expanding frontier, but only the highly arrogant or highly naive (I'm not having a dig at anyone here) would state that science has everything plotted, and all the answers to all the mysteries slotted away in our journals...of course I'm not saying that science couldn't reach this culmination one day in the future, but I think that day is some way off yet. I say this as a guy undertaking a science degree myself, and I would like to think I am a rational, open minded yet skeptical individual.