杏吧原创

LIFE at the moment seems full of questions where everyone has an opinion, but few can supply a convincing answer. By way of diversion, let us instead consider a question that invites few coherent opinions, but screams what seems to be a correct answer.

Ask 鈥渋s the universe conscious?鈥�, as we do on this week鈥檚 cover, and the brain-jerk answer is 鈥渘o鈥�. Consciousness is a case of the haves and have nots. Humans clearly have it; a rock, a star or other agglomeration of physical matter, such as the wider cosmos, doesn鈥檛. The venerable philosophical idea of universal sentience, or 鈥減anpsychism鈥�, says otherwise when it comes to inanimate things, but it seems to have no more place in modern science than a belief in fairies at the end of the garden.

However, an enquiring mind does well to leave its intuitions at the door. How certain arrangements of matter such as the neuronal circuits in our brains give rise to felt experience, while others don鈥檛, is a 鈥渉ard problem鈥�. It is difficult to set boundaries on consciousness when we don鈥檛 really know what it is. Does an octopus have it? A tree? A bacterium? A sentient robot?

鈥淢athematics has an extraordinary way of leading us to enlightenment by subverting our intuitions鈥�

Propose that all matter has consciousness in some form, differing only in degree, and you go some way to setting aside such basic problems. That still isn鈥檛 an argument. But the realisation that our mathematically most mature theory of consciousness, integrated information theory, gives succour to panpsychism, could well be.

Mathematics has, in physicist Eugene Wigner鈥檚 phrase, shown an 鈥渦nreasonable effectiveness鈥� in tackling hard problems of science, and has been an extraordinary way of leading us to enlightenment by subverting intuitions. Just ask any student of quantum theory or relativity where those theories lie in relation to the grain of our brains.

Of course, there are more things on heaven and Earth than are dreamed of even in mathematical philosophy. It may be that, as a tool developed by consciousness, mathematics reaches a limit in describing the phenomenon itself. Who knows 鈥� but what a delightful distraction it is to consider such esoteric questions at a time like this.