QR6.3 Evolving Consciousness

People have long wondered how simple nerves can produce consciousness:

“How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the djinn when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story.” Thomas Henry Huxley, 1863.

But if nerve activity sometimes causes consciousness, why doesn’t it always? For example, we know what words mean but not the rules of syntax we use to combine them in sentences, and balance is another complex function that can happen without awareness. If functions like meaning require the cortex and midbrain to combine but syntax and balance can act effectively alone, perhaps brain-wide consciousness only evolves when needed, to bind distant areas together. Consciousness then increases the ability to observe, to let us see one visual field created by two hemispheres. However this evolutionary demand, to unify observations, applies to cells as well, so this section explores whether consciousness began at the cell level.

QR6.3.1 Cell Unity

QR6.3.2 Creating Synchrony

QR6.3.3 Nerve Unity

QR6.3.4 Brain Waves

QR6.3.5 Consciousness By Synchrony

QR6.3.6 Field Theories of Consciousness

QR6.3.7 The Entangled Observer

QR6.3.8 Consciousness Takes Time

QR6.3.9 Consciousness Scales

QR6.3.10 Consciousness Cascades

QR6.3.11 The Silicon Chip Speculation

QR6.3.12 The Nature of Consciousness