Science Still Can't Explain Consciousness...Here's Why

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Science Still Can't Explain Consciousness...Here's Why

Arvin Ash 17.04.2026 140 046 просмотров 5 101 лайков

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Support the Research Behind this Channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arvinash REFERENCES Quantum consciousness https://youtu.be/bqk1oL42r5s When AI became Self Aware https://youtu.be/afIuJpZNCVA Is consciousness God? https://youtu.be/7bhFvGgKQp4 CHAPTERS 0:00 Why does matter become aware? 0:47 What is consciousness (scientific perspective)? 1:52 WHERE is consciousness?(Scientific perspective)? 4:40 Is quantum mechanics at the root of consciousness? 6:45 The reductionist approach 7:17 "I think therefore I am" 9:22 Three choices for how consciousness emerges 10:39 Penrose and Hameroff idea of entanglement link to consciousness 13:02 Matthew Fisher's idea of nuclear entanglement 15:00 The "Hard Problem" of consciousness 16:25 Solipsism 18:47 Scientific basis of Solipsism 20:27 Is reality objective or subjective? 21:03 Are we in a simulation? 22:45 Are Ais conscious? 25:05 Panpsychism 26:25 Julio Tononi's scientific definition of consciousness 27:55 Could the universe be conscious through black holes 29:20 Does the universe need to be conscious? 31:33 What explains the fine tuning of the universe? 32:30 Where are we? SUMMARY Consciousness is one of the deepest mysteries in modern science. It shapes every thought, sensation, and experience we have—yet despite major advances in neuroscience and physics, we still don’t understand why matter should ever become aware. Is consciousness simply what the brain does, or could it be something more fundamental, built into reality itself? One leading scientific approach is to locate consciousness within the brain. Some researchers point to specific regions, such as the claustrum, as potential “control centers” that integrate information into a unified conscious experience. This view suggests that consciousness is a physical process emerging from neurons, synapses, and brain activity. While this explanation grounds consciousness in biology, it doesn’t make it any less remarkable—it simply means it may be a natural, rather than supernatural, phenomenon. #consciousness But even if consciousness arises from the brain, the brain itself operates according to the laws of physics. This raises a deeper question: could consciousness depend on quantum processes? Some scientists, like Roger Penrose, have proposed that quantum mechanics might play a role in generating conscious experience and even free will. However, this idea is controversial. Critics argue that the brain is too warm and noisy for delicate quantum effects to survive. Alternative proposals, such as nuclear spin mechanisms, attempt to address this issue, but none have been experimentally confirmed. More importantly, even if quantum processes are involved, they still don’t explain the “hard problem” of consciousness—why physical processes give rise to subjective experience, or qualia. This leads to a philosophical challenge: how can we know that other minds exist at all? The idea of solipsism suggests that only your own consciousness can be known with certainty. Science can measure brain activity and behavior, but subjective experience is only accessible from the inside. This creates a fundamental limit—consciousness cannot be directly observed from the outside, making it difficult to fully explain using objective methods. Taking this even further, some theories propose that consciousness is not just produced by brains but is a fundamental feature of reality itself. This idea, known as panpsychism, suggests that consciousness may exist at all levels of the universe. In this view, the cosmos might not just give rise to conscious beings—it might, in some sense, be conscious. In the end, consciousness may be rooted in physical processes, but it also raises questions that extend into physics, philosophy, and cosmology. Until we understand how mind, matter, and time fit together, consciousness remains one of the most profound and unresolved mysteries in science.

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Why does matter become aware?

Consciousness is one of the most fascinating mysteries in modern science. It shapes every thought, every sensation, and every experience you've ever had. And yet, despite everything neuroscience and physics have discovered, we still don't know why matter should ever become aware. Is consciousness simply what the brain does? Could it be something more fundamental woven into reality itself? or is our understanding of mind, time, and the universe still missing something essential? To answer that, we need to examine the science, philosophy, and physics behind consciousness. Stay tuned because that's coming up right now.

What is consciousness (scientific perspective)?

We tend to treat our consciousness as a mystery, perhaps even as a supernatural quality of being human. Something that might even be divine connecting us to a higher power. But could the source of consciousness really just all be contained in the neurons, synapses, and other connections within our brain? New research seems to point us in one of these directions. What is it that makes it so mystical for us? What is consciousness? No one knows for sure, but scientists seem to agree that consciousness has to involve the integration of activity from several brain networks, allowing us to perceive our surroundings. It integrates all our sensory input, sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste as one single unifying experience rather than isolated sensory perceptions. It connects us to our present memories of our past and to our emotions in a single egocentric perception. All these things shape who we are and what we believe to be the world around us. Even if we don't know what it is, can we at least find out where it is? Just days before he

WHERE is consciousness?(Scientific perspective)?

died in July 2004, Francis Craig, who co-discovered the structure of DNA, was working on a paper that suggested that our consciousness needs some kind of conductor to put all external stimuli and internal perceptions together. He hypothesized that this conductor would need to rapidly integrate information from different parts of the brain and put them into a hole. For example, if you are sitting outside and you smell a neighbor's barbecue, you might instantly be able to imagine the kind of food he's cooking. You may remember its name, its texture, and even its taste instantly. You may even recall any past experiences, memories, emotions associated with the smell of a barbecue. All these things happen instantly. Crick suggested that the claustrum, a thin sheetlike structure that lies hidden deep inside our brain, is perfectly suited for this job. Well, 10 years later, in a 2014 study, scientists at George Washington University in Washington DC were trying to manage a patient's epileptic seizures. After trying many different treatments unsuccessfully, they tried a long shot. They put a probe near this woman's colostrum. When they stimulated it, the woman's consciousness seemed to completely turn off. She stopped reading and stared blankly into space. She didn't respond to auditory or visual commands, and her breathing slowed. This was not like being in a coma or going to sleep. She just simply stared into space with seemingly no perception of the world around her, almost as if a switch had been turned off. As soon as the stimulation stopped, she immediately regained consciousness, but had no memory of the event. The colostrum may be like the light switch in her house. It can turn consciousness on or off by the flick of a switch. If consciousness can be controlled by a physical object in the brain, this is compelling evidence that her consciousness does not exist outside of the brain, but rather within it. and not only within it but also located in a very specific spot in the brain. This seems to indicate that our consciousness is not some kind of spooky spirit or force that resides in a realm independent of the brain cells that make it up. Unless further experiments prove otherwise, this evidence seems to indicate that perhaps our consciousness can be understood. It is a manifestation of all our thoughts, sensory inputs, emotions, and experiences combined together with the help of an orchestra conductor called the colostrum. But even if consciousness is tied to the brain, that may not be the full story

Is quantum mechanics at the root of consciousness?

because at the deepest level, the brain itself is governed by the laws of physics. And some scientists have wondered whether those laws, particularly quantum mechanics, might play a role in consciousness itself. This raises a deeper question. Could consciousness emerge not just from neurons, but from the strange behavior of reality at the quantum level? There's a reductionist claim that we humans are not that far removed from these machines. that we are sophisticated versions of self-driving decision-making cars. They claim that everything about us reduces ultimately to physics, that we are mere results of an underlying unchanging set of physical laws and rules that determine our behavior. And any perceived consciousness is just as much a result of the underlying physics as automatons are movement of gears and levers. Ultimately, the free will that we believe we have may not really exist because at the core we are bound by the mathematical underpinnings of reality. That the entire universe is the sophisticated kind of clock ruled by the laws of physics and we as part of that mechanism are subject to the same set of laws that govern all the processes including the ones taking place in our brain that results in consciousness. And these could delude us to think that we have any semblance of control over our inevitable destiny. Are we just sophisticated automatons? You might say, well, what about quantum mechanics? Isn't it inherently not deterministic that behavior at the quantum level can never be predicted? That we can only know the probability of certain outcomes, but never be able to predict it in advance unless a measurement is made. And doesn't this unpredictability of natural laws give us at least some degree of free will? Well, that is a great question that certain scientists, most notably Sir Roger Penrose, tried to tackle. Is there quantum physics connection to consciousness that ensures that we have free will? Can we know the truth? We may be able to get close by looking at the evidence on both sides of the argument. Roughly speaking

The reductionist approach

reductionism is the idea that any complex system is the sum of its simpler, more fundamental individual parts. For example, a reductive approach by a materialist would be that the complexity of your consciousness is the sum of all the chemical and electrical interactions that occur in your brain. Matter and energy and the laws of physics that determine how they interact is all there is. Physics is fundamentally at the core of any perceived complexity. There is nothing else. [snorts] Opposition to this claim

"I think therefore I am"

hinges on the subjective and objective observation that life and specifically consciousness is somehow different. For example, if a human being was nothing more than matter and energy, then what would be the difference between a person who is alive and the same person immediately after his death? All the matter and energy of the person would not have changed. Yet something is different. What is that difference? There seems to be at least one main difference and that is consciousness. In 1641, Renee Deart proposed the idea of a malicious demon or evil genius. He asked what if a demon with utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. Deart says that such a demon could take over his mind to create a dream or delusion about the reality that he lives in that nothing may actually exist. He asks, "What if I don't really have eyes or flesh or any other senses, but believe that I do? " Not only our physical reality, but any decisions or free will we may perceive to have could also be part of this elaborate hoax. The movie The Matrix explores this idea in a science fiction context. Would there be any way for us to know the truth? The card said there is one thing that even the evil demon could not delude me of and this is my sense of existence because if I don't really exist the demon would have to create the illusion of existence but in order to create this thought he would need a thinker. He famously said I think therefore I am. I can only be fooled if my mind exists. Everything else can be a delusion. And if my mind cannot be fooled about my existence but every other part of my body can then according to Deart my mind must be separate from my body. And this idea of mind body dualism is sometimes used to justify free will because if the mind is separate from the body then it is not physical and not subject to the laws of physics. The choices if made by this non-physical mind are then entirely my own. And that's what free will is. There appears to be three

Three choices for how consciousness emerges

choices for how consciousness could arise. One is the idea of Deart's dualism where it's not controlled by physical laws but is perhaps eternal and always has been present in the universe. Many religious and spiritual approaches are similar to this viewpoint. Free will is explained in this view. But this would by definition be supernatural since it's not subject to physical laws. The second is the materialistic point of view that consciousness is not independent of conventional physics but is a direct consequence of it. It is nothing more than the emergent property of complex neurological interconnections and results from the chemical and electrical activity within the brain. There's nothing beyond this. But this view also poses the difficulty of explaining free will. There is a third possibility and that is that consciousness results from the discrete and unique physical processes that are not yet fully understood. This is not the dualism of deart that involves the supernatural but essentially says that consciousness is so unique that it cannot be fully described by the processes we currently understand but is ultimately scientifically explainable. We just have to discover what this science is. Enter Roger Penrose who

Penrose and Hameroff idea of entanglement link to consciousness

embraced this third idea. He partnered up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hammerov to show that there are aspects of brain functioning that are non-determinable based in the laws of quantum mechanics. There are fine structures in the brain called microtubules made of proteins called tubulant that facilitate the delivery of neurotransmitters in the neurons of brain cells. Penrose and Hamarof show that the tubulant can switch between two states of phosphorilation and hypothesize that it can also exist in a superposition of these two states. If this is true then each tubulant molecule could act as a quantum bit a cubit and these microtubules could be computing devices responsible for memory. Consciousness is the result of the collapse of the superposed states of this tubulant. they argue. And since this quantum collapse is not predictable, this quantum mechanical effect in the brain could be the root of conscious free will. Roger Penrose is one of the greatest living physicists around. So this theory cannot be dismissed. But his stature has not prevented some scathing reviews of this idea. Most notably from MIT physicist Max Tegmar who did a detailed analysis and concluded that the brain is too wet and warm for delicate quantum effects. What does this mean? Superposition of quantum states is notoriously difficult to maintain. It requires isolation such that the system does not interact with other atoms or any other classical materials such as the various fluids and structures in the brain because in the language of quantum mechanics the quantum system would become entangled with its environment and decoheree so that it would no longer be in superp position. Think of this as the wave function collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation. Max Techmark showed mathematically that any superposed state in microtubules would decoher within 10^ the -13 seconds. This is 10 orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for any known brain process to occur. So such vast quantum mechanical effects influencing brain functioning is hard to imagine. Hammeroff and Penrose have revised their theories over the years based on some of these criticisms, but the theory remains highly controversial and is generally not embraced by most physicists. Professor Fiser, however

Matthew Fisher's idea of nuclear entanglement

did find a loophole. He proposed another theory where quantum superposition could perhaps be maintained and that is in the nucleus of atoms. Some atoms have what is called a nuclear spin. These are like little magnets with poles pointing in one direction and certain chemical reactions can produce spin correlated nuclei where the spin of one nucleus is dependent on another. Since nuclei tend to be more isolated being in the center of atoms, the quantum correlation or entanglement can be maintained for longer periods of time. Fiser identified an atom in the brain which would be an ideal candidate for nuclear spin correlation and that is phosphorus. He found in lab tests that the decoherence time for phosphate ions is about 1 second which is ample enough time for it to have an effect on brain processing. Such ions are the basic unit of energy within cells and molecules called ATP which contain a string of three phosphate groups. The quantum behavior in the phosphorus nuclear spins would be protected from decorence. Fisher says that the phosphate ions are incorporated into larger molecules called pausner molecules. There is some evidence that these objects can exist in living cells and may play a role in neuronal functioning. And this is how quantum mechanics could affect consciousness, but this has not been proven. It should be noted that none of the theories linking quantum mechanics to consciousness so far has been proven correct by any experimental evidence. Others say look even if we find evidence of quantum mechanical effects in the brain the question still remains how exactly do those quantum effects result in consciousness and free will just because the collapse of the superposed states is nondeterminable the mechanism linking that to free will is not straightforward and would need to be explained if we find that brain functioning is purely physical we would

The "Hard Problem" of consciousness

still need to explain what Australian cognitive scientist David Chowmer calls the hard problem of consciousness. the subjective quality of the experience that you have. The easy problem is figuring out how your eyes see things or how pain is transmitted. The hard problem is explaining your subjective feelings about the things you might see or the pain you might feel from getting hurt. This subjective conscious experience is sometimes referred to as qualia. What is it about the processing in the brain that gives us the feelings that we feel that somehow seem different from simply mechanical sensory processing? What gives rise to this qualia that we call consciousness? Or is this, as materialists point out, nothing more than a combination of sensory inputs from all the parts of your body, processed by the brain, enhanced by memories you may have retained, and made special by the unique combinations of firings of neurons and chemistry in your brain? Could it be that the combinations of inputs and processing in our brains is so complex that we feel compelled to assign it a supernatural or even spiritual meaning? when all it may be is simply complex classical physical processes of a verifiably beautiful but ultimately mechanical automaton. Even if quantum physics plays a role, it

Solipsism

still doesn't answer the most fundamental question. How do physical processes, classical or quantum, give rise to subjective experience? And more importantly, how can we ever verify that anyone else is conscious at all? This leads to one of the most unsettling ideas in philosophy. Solopsism. What do you really see when you look in the mirror? A scientist might say that when you look through your eyes, packets of electromagnetic radiation called photons enter the pupil of your eye and get focused by a lens, hit your retina and trigger electrical signals in your optic nerve that travels back to the LGN, then to the visual cortex in the back of your brain where it gets interpreted and is made available to your consciousness. A philosopher might say that you are the consciousness behind your eyes. The you is the awareness of yourself and your surroundings and your place in the universe. You are a sentient being with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, needs, and desires along with other sentient beings on a planet floating in a vast universe in a time you call the now. A solopsis shares a slightly different viewpoint. He or she believes that she is the consciousness behind her eyes. All right? But the difference is that she believes she's the only consciousness. She believes not only that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, but that only her consciousness is fundamental in the universe in which she resides. You can only be certain that you are here. Everyone else may be a mirage at worst or irrelevant at best. There was a great movie called The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey where an entire reality TV series was created around Truman played by Carrie. Truman was born in this world and it is all he had ever known. But the world was really an elaborate movie set and everyone around him was an actor. Truman was the only person who didn't know that he was on a television show. Could the universe be kind of your very own show where everything is really just revolving around you? You know you exist because your consciousness says so. You can't be sure anyone else really exists. Is there any irrefutable proof of anything other than the existence of yourself? If that's the case, then is it rational to assume that anything else actually exists?

Scientific basis of Solipsism

What does science have to say about this? There is something called the information theory that says that in a closed system and presumably your universe that revolves around you is a closed system, can I generate something more complex than itself? The question is, is your universe more complex than yourself? The answer would probably be yes. The universe behaves in mostly predictable ways following a set of laws that you probably did not come up with. You're not Einstein, Max Plank, or Nicola Tesla. Right? Since you are not the scientist that came up with the laws of this illusion of the universe, how would you explain the fact that other people whom you don't think exist came up with the laws that explain your world? What about some of the greatest creations like from Mozart, Shakespeare or Michelangelo? Explaining this may be more difficult than concluding that perhaps you're not the only conscious being. But maybe everything is perceived by you as being more complicated and more creative than you are. But maybe it isn't. Maybe complicatedness and creativity could be part of the illusion too. Science doesn't claim to know the ultimate reality. At least not yet without a theory of everything. But even if we had such a theory, if everything is an illusion, then science can only tell us what is true within that illusion. Science treats reality as a foundation. The universe exists apart from our own mind and senses. It says that we are going to see the same things whether we're in a subjective or objective reality. So now the question is, is reality objective or subjective?

Is reality objective or subjective?

Most scientists will say that it is objective, that objectivity is a given. It's the canvas on which the laws of physics make predictions. Science only assumes that objective reality exists, though. In a paper published in 2019 by Masimilliano Poreti at Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh, experimentally replicated a famous thought experiment proposed by Eugene Wigner. This research seems to indicate that at the quantum level, two different realities could both be correct, suggesting that an objective reality may not actually exist, at least not at the quantum level. If reality is subjective

Are we in a simulation?

then could it all be a simulation? Like in the movie The Matrix? But if we're living in a simulation, then everything is an illusion, including what you know is you. The simulation is apparently so complex that it can simulate consciousness in at least one of its characters, you. But why would the simulation only simulate one conscious character out of billions? Maybe to save memory space. But this would not make sense because then you would have to create a separate world for every conscious creature that you are simulating. If simulating humans, it would mean 7. 5 billion different worlds, one for every human being. This would increase the memory requirement. Wouldn't it make more sense to simulate all humans in one matrix instead of billions of separate matrices? Maybe advanced beings want to test the theory of solopism in a simulation. Maybe you are something special and they want to build a world around you. But then why would advanced beings be so interested in one particular avatar? What would be the purpose of that? But one of the questions that even solopsists have to ask themselves is are you even conscious? Scientists cannot solve the problem because there's no such thing as a consciousness detector. There's no objective measurement of consciousness. If there was, we could settle this question in 5 minutes once and for all. Now, this could be easily solvable in the future, possibly if we can figure out a way to connect with other brains. Some futurists like Ray Kerszswwell estimate that we'll achieve this within 30 years. Once you can go inside my brain, you'll know for sure whether I'm conscious or not. But what is consciousness anyway? Does it require a nervous system? The ability to learn and adapt to new circumstances? Does it require free will? Are all animals conscious? What about jellyfish or trees

Are Ais conscious?

that don't have a central nervous system? Can AIs be conscious? They're just a mass of metal, silicon, and other non-biological materials. They learn. They can change their behavior independently of any humans. They will develop a kind of free will in the future. Their behavior cannot necessarily be predicted, but their brains are dealing in binary language consisting of ones and zeros. Does this mean they're not really conscious? If they're not conscious, then what makes you think you're conscious? In many cases, they're smarter than us. They can beat us at chess. They can design better cars. They can even program. And if we ask an AI of the future, he might say that he is indeed conscious. How will we know for sure? If we declare that they are not really conscious, then how can we be sure that any human is conscious? They are made of material just like us. Different material but material nevertheless. And their behaviors are also determined by firings of electromagnetic signals inside a central processor. So are humans. Our processor just happens to be called the brain. We all live in our own subjective realities. Is the human mind really capable of being truly objective? Our realities all interact and we're able to independently observe the same things. Shouldn't that mean that we are all part of the same reality? A soypis will say not necessarily because you could be a figment of my imagination or we could both be figments of somebody else's imagination. Or maybe nobody exists and everybody is imaginary. You think, therefore you are. You don't know if anyone else really thinks and therefore you cannot know whether they are. The problem is solypism is not disprovable. But lots of things are not disprovable. This does not make it true. You could argue that solypism is completely useless because it cannot be disproven and it doesn't give you much in the way of making your life better. But its uselessness does not make it false. Note that solypsism is not synonymous with narcissism. There are many people who treat life as if they're the center of the universe and many tend to be narcissists. You probably know one of them. Solpsism is unsettling because it exposes a hard limit in the study of consciousness. Science can measure behavior, brain activity, and information processing. But subjective

Panpsychism

experience itself is only directly available from the inside. And once you accept that problem, another even more radical question appears. What if consciousness is not just something brains produce, but something built into reality at a deeper level? That leads us to pans psychism and to the possibility that the universe itself may be conscious. The lazy answer goes something like this. We humans are made of pieces of the universe. We are conscious. So the universe is conscious through us. This is the standard short answer to the question of is the universe conscious? But could the universe have a consciousness separate from us? This concept has a name. It's called pansychism. It's an essential aspect of many religions from the Old Testament's omnipresent God to the Brahman of Hinduism and Buddhism. In fact, in Buddhism, nothing exists except consciousness. Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, the man who conceived of the Dyson sphere, embraced pansychism and said that the universe not only operates through our consciousness but a consciousness of its own. So could this be true? First we have to establish what consciousness is. Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Julio

Julio Tononi's scientific definition of consciousness

Tenoni at the University of Wisconsin Madison has proposed a way to measure how conscious a thing is. He proposes that consciousness has to do with how much control a being has over itself or other things around it. This theory separates intelligence from consciousness, which are two different things. Supercomputers, for example, which are highly intelligent, can routinely outthink humans and beat them at chess and Jeopardy. But they don't have a will of their own. The programmer controls it. So intelligence and consciousness are two different things. A being need not be intelligent to be conscious. Based on this line of thinking, we can say that a tree is more conscious than a rock. A worm tree. A cat is more conscious than a worm. A human is more conscious than a cat. And the ultimate consciousness could be the universe itself. If this is the way that consciousness works, then the complexity of an organism's brain has something to do with its level of consciousness. And scientists in fact have good evidence that the seed of consciousness resides in brains. Consciousness seems to be an emergent property of highly interconnected and communicating systems like the brain which is an interconnected network of neurons. And what are neurons? They're triggered by certain stimuli and can send signals to each other. And large complex networks of these neurons seem to emerge into consciousness. Is there any evidence of such a brain or network of connections

Could the universe be conscious through black holes

in the universe? There is a humongous network of galaxies in the universe. Many hundreds of billions of galaxies. This is not dissimilar to the network of billions of interconnected neurons in our brain. The difference appears to be that each of our brain cells can communicate or at least fire signals to other brain cells. Do the galaxies have such a communication mechanism between them? It doesn't appear so. But you have to remember that at the center of almost all galaxies, there is a black hole. It's like the nucleus of a brain cell. What's happening inside a black hole? We have no idea because our equations break down at the singularity at the center of a black hole. This is the point where time and space cease to exist and Einstein's equations don't work. Is it possible that something is happening here that we just don't know about? The black hole could be analogous to a brain cell if somehow they were connected to each other and could send signals to each other. If that was the case, a vast network of communicating trillions of black holes would act like a gigantic information processor and indeed be intelligent and possibly conscious. This would truly be a kind of superconsciousness that could theoretically control not only our universe, but perhaps time and space itself. But I think I'm getting way too excited about a completely speculative possibility. Practically, we have to

Does the universe need to be conscious?

ask, does the universe need to be conscious in order to arrive at its present state? In other words, does what we see around us need a consciousness to direct the events that led up to what we observe that lead to life? Would what we see right now be any different if the universe was utterly without consciousness? There is no evidence that consciousness is necessary to direct the events that led up to the present state. Science allows for evolution to occur on its own over long periods of time with no conductor necessary. What about the beginning of time? Did a consciousness direct the Big Bang to occur? This cannot be ruled out. It's possible that a consciousness had a hand in it, but assigning that event as being divinely inspired through a cosmic consciousness with no evidence is just as speculative as saying that it was made through laws of physics which have not yet been discovered. In addition, there's no evidence that anything after the Big Bang has been under conscious control because events after the Big Bang can largely be explained within the laws of physics we understand. And these laws do not need a consciousness to be carried out. Neuroscientist Kristoff Ko, former professor at Caltech, believes that biological organisms are conscious because when they approach new situations, they can change their behavior in order to navigate it. He believes this is the way to measure the level of consciousness of an organism. So even a tree is conscious because it changes its behavior like shedding leaves in winter, fighting disease. Would our universe be considered conscious given this standard of measurement? The universe does not seem to change course given a situation. The laws of physics appear to apply uniformly all over the observable universe and no deviation from these laws has ever been observed. Yes, there are things we don't understand like dark matter and dark energy, but they are present everywhere uniformly and behave in a way we can predict. If the universe was making decisions, we would likely see some change in the universe's behavior that were not predictable, that could only be explained by a conscious decision maker. What then explains the finetuning of the universe? The

What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

gravitational constant being what it is, for example, being so precise. Other laws like entropy and gravity having a magnitude such that galaxies can form out of stars and planets can form from the leftovers of stars and complex molecules can form on these planets whose interactions over time lead to intelligent beings with consciousness as the end result. Is this just an accident or the product of something deeper? perhaps some kind of consciousness that permeates the universe and gives it purpose. The faithful will argue that God had a hand in it. The pansychist will argue that a conscious universe set up these laws from the moment of creation in order to maximize its value. A materialist will argue that there is no finetuning, no decision maker, that given enough universes in a multiverse and enough time, a universe such as ours where conscious intelligent beings can evolve is inevitable.

Where are we?

So where does that leave us? Consciousness may be rooted in physical processes in the brain, but the experience of consciousness remains difficult to verify from the outside. which is why the problem of other minds still survives. Some theories push further, suggesting that consciousness could be a fundamental feature of reality itself and that the universe's laws may be fine-tuned in a way that permits conscious observers to emerge. And when we follow the question all the way to time, entropy, and the future of the cosmos, consciousness begins to look even stranger. Because if thought depends on ordered physical processes, then consciousness may exist only in a universe far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Until we understand how mind, matter, and time fit together, consciousness remains one of the deepest mysteries in science. Thank you for watching. I'll see you in the next video, my friend.

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