How many seconds are in eternity?
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∞
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Ask someone at the DMV.
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How many firsts are in eternity?
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That’s easy…
Okay, how about this: to the extent that a thing is capable of experiencing events, it’s conscious.
Much like the heat analogy, this gives you a continuum where a rock would be like a degree Kelvin - a rock experiences events, but only on the most very basic level imaginable.
It also implies a series of thresholds of complexity where the quality of experience is transformed as you go up the scale, obviously enough.
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That you know of.
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Aye, AFAIK is short for as far as I know.
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Ah, misread that acronym.
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No worries.
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I definitely thought of this comic while I was composing my post
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Cowboy sheriff toys, too.
And dinosaurs, and pigs, and Slinky dogs…
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Charles Schulz addressed this decades ago:
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Everything, even a rock, has some degree of consciousness
Sounds like a really bad case of projection. Then again, if I try to be really open-minded about the idea… If a rock has a consciousness (to some degree), then, following the same logic, why would the following not apply too?
Everything, even a rock, has some degree of…
- Metabolism
- Sweetness
- Evil
- Fatigue
- Smelly socks
- Friendship
- Penis
- Bibliography
- Vacuum
- Phone number
Really. Think about it. More importantly: what are the implications? Universal declaration of rock rights by the United Nations? What is this going to cost us? Will this, as a conversation starter in a pub, increase the chances of me getting free sex?
Feeel the Force… flooow through you.
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Do rocks have a conscience?
What is a thing? Do parts of a thing have a consciousness independent of the larger thing? Does my fist have a consciousness? Every cell in my body? Organelles? Every atom in every cell? Subatomic particles?
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If I open my hand, did I murder my fist?
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So a number of years ago my wife was studying neurology, and we started going to conferences on The Science of Consciousness at the University of Arizona at Tucson (every other year - it alternated between Tucson and non-US locations.) It had a bunch of different types of people there, between neurologists, philosophers like David Chalmers (known for “the hard problem” and for singing a really good “Philosophical Zombie Blues”), anesthesiologists like Stu Hameroff, FMRI brain researchers (often studying brain effects of meditation), other academics, a few psychedelic researchers, and occasional woo-woo folks who were into Quantum or whatever. Some of the people were into the panpsychic idea.
There was also another conference on The Science Of Consciousness in Arizona, up in Phoenix, run by Deepak Chopra and a bunch of woo-woo folks with at most dubious scientific credentials. And eventually Chopra started providing literature for the academic conference, and for a while was providing some of its funding, which was a bit odd, but hey, academic conferences need funding too.
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All I know is, I cycle my spoons so they each get a go and can fulfil their function.
Imagine how unbalanced the universe might become if spoons went unused!
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