Nature is a complicated organism and she operates in ways we find difficult to understand, but always she seems to operate via two fundamental modes. I am of course speaking of space and time. As such we can see that there exists a kind of causality or causation with regards to each. The most familiar expression of cause and effect is bound in time and idolizing it and the arrow of time leads to all sorts of deterministic philosophies. However, there exists another form of causality that is more closely related to space. It is a kind of causality that runs perpendicular to the “standard” temporal version of cause and effect and philosophers call it downward causation.
Consider, how you as a human being are a single autopoetic system, that is a self-creating and sustaining highly complex expression of energy, possess a multitude of hierarchical orders that work in tandem, from the bottom up to produce or bring about your conscious awareness.
Now, let me unpack that. Supervenience is an idea from the philosophy of mind that looks at the various hierarchical properties of (somewhat) closed systems. It seeks to explain how upper-level properties of said system are determined or cause by lower-level properties. Ad I think supervenes is a terrible word because it makes it sound like the opposite is taking place but no matter, I believe the spatial causality is a two way street. So how do we look at this?
Let’s consider ourselves as semi-autonomous living creatures and we’re going to go down and in. Anyone remember the Magic School Bus? And what makes up the top “level” of our constitution is our consciousness. In my model of downward causation, consciousness is the ceiling, for only under its umbrella is anything and everything known, including the universe. Plus, it’s irreducible and both existentially and transcendentally primary. This is the unorthodox way of considering it but let me continue.
We want to know how our “physical” bodies produce the ceiling, the top floor if you will for our bodies are middle level with regards to DC. So let’s go down some levels and I’ll explain as we go. The first level or order we meet with below consciousness is the realm of psychology. All things mind, both conscious and the unconscious, let’s also keep in mind that by consciousness I mean the awareness of, so you can be aware of mental states and properties, as well as aware of physical states and properties.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The next step we must take while going down and into ourselves illustrates the hard-problem of consciousness for here we meet with the bio-physical properties of the body that unceasingly work to bring about consciousness. Here we meet and incredibly complex system of systems within systems, of coordinating and cooperating organs that all function to not only produce feelings but awareness itself. And we know how it does it yet we don’t. We know neurons fire in the brain hyper-complex parallel incomprehensible algorithmic circuits and “produce” consciousness, yet all that fancy knowledge and understanding does not answer the hard problem, for the simple fact consciousness is NOT neuron firings.
But we can go deeper. A neuron itself is an electrically excitable cell that can process information via electrical and chemical signals and as a unit, it too supervenes on the entities that make it up. And the building blocks of neurons are molecules, which are just intricately combined atoms. And already, reaching the atoms that makes us up we’ve encountered a rock-bottom subatomic “particle.” The electron, the curious matter-wave responsible for the entire domain of chemistry.
Quantum Decoherence
Now, here’s where things get tricky again and we encounter another “hard” problem. As we move down from atoms to their subatomic constituents we meet with quantum decoherence. This is where a system moves from being classically represented to a quantum version. Classically, we know the position and momentum of particles, but in going deeper we meet with the quantum weirdness of wave functions and everything, all energy and quanta and charges acquire superpositions and everything gets spread out into their constitutive fields.
Now is this the fabric of reality of which we are. Yes. Does it go deeper. Probably. Bosonic string theory postulates 26 spacetime dimensions while superstring theory posits a mere 10. But I assert that we must, in some sense have access to these, for the simple fact that it is only by their existential constitution that we too exist. Now what’s fascinating is that at least in some incredible sense we are all this. As per the two way street, supervenience is from the bottom up, from quantum fields to atoms, molecules, cells, organs, nervous system, brain (hard problem), mind, we have processes and mechanisms in play that work to bring about and produce consciousness while downward causation from the top down our consciousness moves our bodies about and in willfully thinking most definetely effects neuron firings and all the way back down. These two directions, can also be compared to the modalities of consciousness of feeling and doing.
Personally, I would like to remove both “hard” problems in one fell swoop by making the claim that all is fields. Or at least field like. And all of the levels we passed through serve as complexity platforms that then stand as bridges to further expressions of complexity. And this is why we love learning things. Because complexity platforms in the mind do the same thing and we can see a lot farther from up here.
Some books on QFT: TheLightness of Being by Frank Wilczek: http://amzn.to/2oG2d4K
A beautiful Question by Wilzcek: http://amzn.to/2oFSStL
Evan Thompson’s book on consciousness: http://amzn.to/2pOPHkV
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