A treatise on consciousness

I submit thus hoping to try an experiment and challenge philosophically minded people and to find out if these notions can trigger any pushback or feedback.

Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” might be the most profound sentence written.

It is a quintessential crystalized conception regarding our human condition, psychology and introspective human mind – but, it has zero to do with the physical biological world that we are embedded within and that created our body/brain, which in turn produces our mind full of thoughts.

Think about it, Descartes lived and died before real sciences existed! Descartes and his philosophy are embedded within the theological world dominated by the Catholic empire, which he bowed to.

Today, David Chalmers is a genius professor of that intellectual tradition. A tradition that can’t seem to see past the bubble of our human mind. Chalmers and supporters insist that biology will never bridge the gap between matter and thought, at least not without admitting to some metaphysical something.

For support of their “Hard Problem” belief, they have beautiful arguments with opinions and words piled on top of words, insisting the gap between matter and thinking cannot possibly be found upon 100% pure physical, biological, scientific evidence. It requires, well … it requires something extra, they insist.

Then they look for consciousness within the brain and neurons, without explicitly recognizing that our introspective mind is but the extreme end of the consciousness spectrum.

Human introspective consciousness would be impossible without the support and substance of all those older, lower layers of consciousness that permeate our body but we aren’t directly aware of.

Serious science has been busy learning about these revelations and sharing with all who are curious.

We live in a new world reality, scientists have evidence mitochondria communicate and coordinate with each other – and they live within each cell! Intercellular awareness and communication are also a documented thing. Research into independent single-celled creatures are recording the same behaviors being documented in complex animals.

There has been a paradigm shift in biological sciences that smashes through all those quaint medieval ego-driven notions of human exceptionalism, oh which theological and philosophical thinking are built upon.

Physical science has even unraveled the mystery of “vitalism,” and it isn’t sprinkled down upon Earth by God or anything else. It turns out to be a product of Earth herself!

“Vitalism” was invented over 4 billion years ago by chemistry in partnership with Earth and time, it is found in the Krebs cycle, where quite literally, geology and chemistry figured out how to harness electricity, thereby inventing biology. That is what life sprang from.

For details, read Nick Lane’s “Transformer” and his previous books, among others.

All of this requires a modern philosophy brave enough to blast through the entrenched faith-based platitudes, to vocally grapple with our human mindphysical reality divide and begin appreciating all that unfolds from that recognition.

Within our body, each of us possesses a genetic heritage going back over half a billion years. Our body is the product of all those untold successful generations piling on top of the previous one, living, learning, surviving one day at a time, leaving offspring behind to take up the gauntlet. As they, in turn, transform heritage into legacy.

Science is making it clear that the best way to understand consciousness is to look at the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself. When are those realities going to start getting enthusiastically discussed within philosophical circles?

– Peter Miesler, Hesperus