Apr 12, 2025 07:53 PM
https://iai.tv/articles/annaka-harris-co..._auid=2020
INTRO: For decades, our best intuitions have told us that consciousness is a product of complex brain processes, creating the taste of coffee or the smell of a rose. However, New York Times bestselling author, Annaka Harris, argues this view has been shattered by modern neuroscience. In this exclusive, in-depth article Harris draws from her recent documentary, Lights On, taking inspiration from the work of leading physicists, like Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin, and explains why consciousness is the most fundamental thing in the universe.
EXCERPTS: . . . These conclusions are very hard to parse if we’re trying to understand the universe in terms of nonconscious objects and events. But if felt experience is the intrinsic nature of everything in the universe (what matter is at bottom), then conscious experiences are the only things that are “real”— that exist. And everything we perceive “out there” is a representation of other conscious experiences arising in the universe—which are, in turn, shaping our own experiences.
If felt experience underlies everything, then obtaining a truly outside, or objective, view of anything in the universe should be impossible. The only thing that can exist in its own right—that can be known in and of itself, from the inside—is a felt experience. Is consciousness. And rather than being a confusing sticking point for all our current attempts to understand quantum mechanics, this intrinsically relational quality of everything would be the natural outcome of a universe in which consciousness goes all the way down.
[...] The view I’m attempting to construct has significant crossover with panpsychism and idealism, but it doesn’t fit squarely into either of those schools of thought. The most notable difference is that my view does not include “subjects,” which I take to be a manifestation of the “illusion of self” and which causes much confusion when attempting to imagine a universe where consciousness is Fundamental.
If consciousness is Fundamental, we can explain the phenomenon of human minds and of “self” even more deeply—as different moments of conscious experience in the universe that are woven together through the structure of memory. That is, what the entire universe ultimately consists of is fleeting conscious experiences coming in and out of existence—content, or qualia, taking shape in the “space” that is consciousness. Even the body of a single human being would represent countless experiences arising in each moment, only some of which would enter the stream of memory that constitutes the “self.” (MORE - missing details)
INTRO: For decades, our best intuitions have told us that consciousness is a product of complex brain processes, creating the taste of coffee or the smell of a rose. However, New York Times bestselling author, Annaka Harris, argues this view has been shattered by modern neuroscience. In this exclusive, in-depth article Harris draws from her recent documentary, Lights On, taking inspiration from the work of leading physicists, like Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin, and explains why consciousness is the most fundamental thing in the universe.
EXCERPTS: . . . These conclusions are very hard to parse if we’re trying to understand the universe in terms of nonconscious objects and events. But if felt experience is the intrinsic nature of everything in the universe (what matter is at bottom), then conscious experiences are the only things that are “real”— that exist. And everything we perceive “out there” is a representation of other conscious experiences arising in the universe—which are, in turn, shaping our own experiences.
If felt experience underlies everything, then obtaining a truly outside, or objective, view of anything in the universe should be impossible. The only thing that can exist in its own right—that can be known in and of itself, from the inside—is a felt experience. Is consciousness. And rather than being a confusing sticking point for all our current attempts to understand quantum mechanics, this intrinsically relational quality of everything would be the natural outcome of a universe in which consciousness goes all the way down.
[...] The view I’m attempting to construct has significant crossover with panpsychism and idealism, but it doesn’t fit squarely into either of those schools of thought. The most notable difference is that my view does not include “subjects,” which I take to be a manifestation of the “illusion of self” and which causes much confusion when attempting to imagine a universe where consciousness is Fundamental.
If consciousness is Fundamental, we can explain the phenomenon of human minds and of “self” even more deeply—as different moments of conscious experience in the universe that are woven together through the structure of memory. That is, what the entire universe ultimately consists of is fleeting conscious experiences coming in and out of existence—content, or qualia, taking shape in the “space” that is consciousness. Even the body of a single human being would represent countless experiences arising in each moment, only some of which would enter the stream of memory that constitutes the “self.” (MORE - missing details)
