A Wave-Particle Theory of Conscious Awareness (A Philosophical Viewpoint) - E-book - ePub

Consciousness is real. It exists at least for me when I assert that it exists. It is thus, at the very least, at those times, a thing in the universe. Consciousness comes and goes. There must be a change in some other aspect of the universe that makes at least these two transitions happen. Any change that induces these transitions must involve energy of some kind. Furthermore, whatever causal role we may ascribe to it, consciousness interacts with the physical world, at the very least to the extent that the brain governs the content of experience. We take the physical world to be made up of fundamental particles (quarks, electrons, and so on).
The candidates for the mechanism whereby consciousness comes about are such as: special arrangements of physical particles and changes in those arrangements (including e.g. emergence), OR transitions in the states and energy levels of those particles, OR interactions between particles of different kinds. Interactions, transitions, or establishing particular arrangements all involve energy (although emergence demands more elaboration).
Even the collapse of a wave function in quantum entanglement involves the energy of the interaction that triggers the collapse. Since consciousness comes about through an energetic transaction, it must at least for some time appropriate at least some part of that energy for itself (i.e. the energy from the interaction, process or whatever that brings it about). While energy is transmuted to underpin consciousness it is its own distinct form of energy (available to interact with like-energies in some characteristic way). Blakelaw posits that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, meaning we need look no further than this energy field, and the particles that might arise in it, for an explanation of consciousness. He calls this field the Gleeon Field and the particles that it supports Gleeons.