Thomas Hayman
Consciousness is the ultimate question of existence. Nothing is more essential than our experience. Yet we have no consensus, and perhaps no clue, about what it actually is.
The trouble, in part, is that experts usually become invested in one theory, blinding themselves to alternative explanations that could aid progress. Instead, I embrace the diversity of consciousness theories across science, philosophy and religion – so long as they are built on clear arguments. In this way, over many years, I have charted more than 350 theories (and counting) onto a “landscape” of consciousness, which I will help you to explore.
From materialism, where only physical states are real, to idealism, where only mental states are real – and everything in between – it will become apparent, as we wander through these heady fields, how much is at stake. That’s because whichever theory of consciousness you favour determines many of your core beliefs about the world, such as your opinions on the nature of free will, the possibility of life after death and whether artificial intelligence can attain consciousness.
Mapping this landscape, I marvel not only at the sheer number of possible theories, but also at the astonishingly divergent scales and places where the magic of consciousness could make its home. Often, neuroscientists assume that experience emerges, somehow, from neurons firing in the brain, but there are many alternative theories – some of which have consciousness as fundamental, and some which have physical reality as an illusion. At the micro-extreme, does consciousness arise when quantum wavefunctions collapse into concrete reality? Or, on the grandest scales, is the cosmos itself conscious in some sense?
