Energy And Consciousness

Causes and effects are connected empirically and contingently, not logically. An effect is neither identical with nor entailed by its cause. Their relationship is observed, not deduced. On Earth, it has been learned that electrically firing, chemically interacting neurons cause consciousness. Neurons, detected and observed by neurologists, are objective. Conscious behavior is observed. Thus, we can objectively state, e.g., that a cat stalking a bird is conscious of the bird. However, consciousness itself, e.g., the cat's perception of the bird, is subjective. How does the objective cause the subjective?

Sf writers imagine alternative causes of consciousness.

"Stable plasma vortices...thought."

-Poul Anderson, "Kyrie" IN Anderson, Going For Infinity (New York, 2002), pp. 344-354 AT p. 347.

 

Each of these vortices is:

 

"...a form of ions, nuclei, and force-fields. It metabolize[s] electrons, nucleons, X rays..." (ibid.)

 

It maintains itself and thinks.

 

"'On the edge of the Coal Sack the McCrary fleet encountered a life form of a completely unprecedented nature: a stable, self-contained electromagnetic field, rather like Earthly ball lightning, capable of moving as freely through empty space as a bird flies in the air or a fish swims in the sea.'"

-James Blish, The Star Dwellers (London, 1979), 1. p. 17.

Anderson and Blish imagine conscious energy. Might some as yet undetected energy field help to explain human consciousness?

"'The personality is a semistable electromagnetic field; to remain integrated it requires the supplementary computing apparatus of a brain, as well as an energy source such as a body, or this case we live in, to keep it in its characteristic state of negative entropy. Once the field is set free by death, it loses all ability to compute and becomes subject to normal entropy losses. Hence, slowly but inevitably, it fades.'"

-James Blish, Midsummer Century (London, 1975), 3, p. 18.

In this account, brains do not cause but support consciousness. However, no such semistable electromagnetic fields have been detected and, even if they were, the mind-body problem, the question of how objectivity cause subjectivity, would remain.

We think that organisms with central nervous systems become conscious because brains cause consciousness. In Anderson's "Kyrie," stable plasma vortices cause consciousness/become conscious. In Blish's The Star Dwellers, stable, self-contained electromagnetic fields cause consciousness/become conscious. In Blish's Midsummer Century, a semistable electromagnetic field remains conscious as long as it is supported by a brain and an energy source. Thus, here are four objective phenomena:

our brains

Anderson's vortices

Blish's stable, self-contained electromagnetic fields

Blish's semistable electromagnetic fields

How does any of these empirically detectable, objectively existent entities cause subjective experience?