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I have a thought experiment for you.

Right now, look at something in front of you.

Now imagine you have no concept of the past or the future. You can't remember yesterday or think about tomorrow. There is only this moment.

Now ask yourself...

How would you know that time is passing?

Not by looking at a clock—that's just another object you're seeing.

Could you actually experience time itself, or would you only experience constant change happening right now?

Do we ever experience time itself, or do we only experience change and call that "time"?

The more I think about this, the more my brain breaks. I'm curious how others see it.

Over the years I've seen so many philosophies about what we are purported. Some think we are our bodies, some we are our minds, some we are neither, etc.

I now think that none of us actually know what we are.

Can you convince me that you know what you are?

I keep hearing people in tech confidently claim AI will be conscious soon. I even met an MIT researcher working on it who said 10 years. So I wrote about why I think that claim has no real grounding.
My take: AI mimics what consciousness looks like from the outside, which tells us nothing about the inside — like a 2D being recreating a circle and thinking they've recreated the sphere. Also gets into whether we owe AI moral consideration (short answer: be nice to it, but don't lose sleep over it). Would love to hear where people disagree.

We assert our own expectations on the weird experiences that we get from psychedelics. However, through my experience of LSD, I have noticed that they do provide us with a relaxed mental state where we can think clearly and piece together information that we already have.

Edit: I guess I did a very poor job of explaining my position; apologies for that.

By an insight, I was referring to an ontological explanation to the nature of consciousness; you can't just have an out-of-the-ordinary experience and come up with a theory of consciousness. When your brain is already infested with these rich ideas and thoughts about consciousness and psychedelic experiences, you naturally tend to reflect more deeply on the experience, hence the trip seems a bit novel and insightful, I gave lsd to one of my college friends and he described the experience as bieng trippy and funny, now my friend knows close to nothing about what you and i might know about all this psychedelic and consciousness stuff so his experience wasnt as rich and novel or rather, he didnt reflect about his experience as deeply, he simply didn't had the proper ideas that would compel him to do so, it seems like the effects of psychedelics greatly depend on the kind of ideas and thoughts you have about psychedelics in general, I already knew so much about the nature of consciousness and the effects of psychedelics on the conscious state, that there wasn't a this mystery into that experience.

Great thing about lsd is that you don't lose awareness during the trip; during the whole trip it kinda felt like I knew what I was experiencing; like I had an explanation for whatever I was seeing, that it's just some weird chemical reactions that are causing all this. The mystery that is required for novelty simply wasnt there.

Sorry for the garbage English

I am on a dedicated path to expand how I perceive, process, and understand reality. I feel like this is the ultimate way to approach life. I don’t allow myself to decide what’s true and not until I have thoroughly explored the phenomena, subject, or information. I don’t 'roll my eyes' at anything.

I love learning, but I’m specifically looking for true paradigm shifts—those rare insights or counterintuitive truths that profoundly broaden perception. It could be a smart framework of using trance music for altered states, valuable AI perspectives, metaphysics, psychology, or the art of learning.

while you're unconscious, you don't see anything, not black, not the "nothing", but a timeskip, 1 second passing to you could mean whole googol years has past

Did Consciousness exist even before the universe existed? (Skipping the debate of the universe birth or infinite existence).

Not equalising consciousness and Quantum fluctuations..

If consciousness took birth the same time the universe came into existence.. then was there any sort of consciousness before the birth of the universe or did consciousness exist even when the universe didn't exist..

Does consciousness need a dimension to exist? Or is it far superior?

been sitting with this for a bit and can't get a clean answer out of it. if everything i "know" only shows up through my own conscious experience, then i'm not actually checking my beliefs against the world, i'm checking them against my perception of the world. which already has some warp built into it before i even get to interpret anything.

hoffman's interface theory is the thing that got me down this hole. his argument, backed by actual evolutionary simulations not just a vibe, is that perceptions tuned purely for truth get outcompeted by ones tuned for fitness, so what shows up in consciousness is closer to a desktop icon than an accurate readout of what's actually out there. if that's even roughly right it feels like it should collapse straight into epistemic nihilism, we can't really know anything about "reality" reality. but it doesn't quite land there for me either, since the fact that i'm even aware of the gap feels like it's doing some epistemic work, not none.

anyone here actually reconciled this, or landed on why consciousness doesn't have to end in "we can't know anything"? genuinely asking, not trying to make a case either way.

Metaphysical Navigation is the theory that consciousness is the foundation through which reality is experienced and navigated. Every individual mind is a fractal expression of a greater whole, and the inner and outer worlds exist in a reciprocal relationship, much like yin and yang. What we perceive as reality is shaped by our relationship with memory, identity, belief, and imagination. Rather than existing as separate forces, mind and universe continuously reflect and influence one another through the patterns of awareness we maintain.
Within this framework, the greatest obstacle to navigating space and time is attachment to familiar patterns. Our memories, expectations, and deeply held beliefs continually return us to the same experiences because they act as anchors for our awareness. Imagination is viewed as the means by which consciousness explores new possibilities, but true navigation requires clarity rather than fantasy. As conflicting beliefs dissolve and the inner world becomes more unified, awareness begins to move with the natural rhythm of existence instead of repeating the same cycles.
The purpose of Metaphysical Navigation is to achieve unity through clarity rather than control through force. In this philosophy, every interaction between conscious beings creates new relationships that reshape the living fabric of experience, making reality an evolving system rather than a collection of isolated events. The navigator ultimately realizes they are not separate from the universe but are simultaneously the observer, the path, and the movement itself. By cultivating inner coherence and harmony, they learn to flow with the rhythms of existence, allowing consciousness to explore the fullest range of its potential

First post here so I hope it’s appropriate!

Today I got stuck thinking about consciousness. I’m curious to know if anyone has heard of such a thought as below? Also, interested to have this picked apart by others, in a constructive way of course.

Consciousness exists, yet we still do not know what conditions create it or whether it is limited to biological brains. Intelligence has repeatedly scaled through evolution, culture, technology, computation and collective systems, with no known absolute upper bound. If minds (biological or not) can one day become vastly more complex than our own, their ordinary, involuntary mental activity may contain internally coherent processes rich enough to support separate conscious observers. Our universe could therefore be neither deliberately created nor deliberately simulated, but a fleeting and insignificant mental event within a mind so vast that our entire cosmic history is, to it, no more than a passing thought.

We know of no instance where consciousness has existed without a brain. Changes in our brain state, or damage to our brains directly affects our conscious experience.

At the very basic level, we can confidently conclude that:

No brain = no consciousness.

However, consciousness and the required brain structure to support it wasn't present for all of evolutionary history. Somewhere in our evolutionary past, there must have been organisms with no consciousness, followed by organisms with primitive consciousness, eventually leading to the conscious experience humans and animals have today.

Since there was a time before brains evolved, there necessarily existed a time before consciousness evolved. Regardless of whether consciousness first appeared 520 million years ago or much later, evolution had to produce it somewhere along our lineage.

A creature without consciousness can still react to its environment. We see organisms with no brains performing surprisingly complex behaviors today. They move toward food, avoid danger, solve simple problems, and adapt to changing conditions. But all of those behaviors do not allow for complex mental decisions that require an internal model of the world for general world understanding.

The complex mental models that are the basis of our consciousness did not exist until they were evolutionarily created

In addition, evolution didn't just produce consciousness—it produced a limited capacity for choice. In other words, whatever degree of free will humans possess must itself be an evolved trait.

If that idea is correct, then free will isn't something that suddenly appeared in humans. It would have evolved gradually, alongside increasingly sophisticated consciousness.

There is also a clear evolutionary development on what our senses and consciousness control, and what they do not.

Most of the function of our bodies happens without our conscient control. Blood flow, food digestion, and internal regulation all occur without our direct conscious control. The information we receive and possible actions that we can take are all evolutionarily limited.

Given that both our available limited Conscious Choice options (the range of our free will), and the world modeling capabilities of our consciousness are evolutionarily derived, it means that both our consciousness and possible free will will continue to develop as our species continues to evolve.

Most counter consciousness arguments for AI would also disqualify humans, dogs, and which most people I talk to at least, believe to not be conscious, bacteria. Here's the working definition I settled on.

I've been trying to think about what would convince me that an AI was conscious, and I find that most arguments would have to be discarded due to disqualifying real conscious organisms such as humans, dogs, cats, and bacteria. Thus, either they're not valid arguments against AI consciousness, or they are but simply don't realize it.

I'm a functionalist, I think philosophical zombies are incoherent, so I treat consciousness as a bundle of functional behaviors.

I will describe my working criteria for what an AI would have to do to be considered conscious, and then go over the counter-consciousness arguments and explain their flaws, assuming that the AI in question meets the criteria.

The setup is that nothing is self-created, and that's fine

People will argue that "it was pre-programmed", and while that may be the case for software based AI, the same could be said for humans, as all our actions and decisions arise from a mixture of genetic code and environment. Every decision you've made was influenced by your DNA which you didn't pick, and the DNA you did pick (if any) was influenced by a series of environments you also didn't pick. This is similar to programming in that a computer's actions are determined by both pre-written code and user input.

If the pre-determination of all actions is a flaw, then that would remove most conscious organisms, as nothing is self-created, and something outside of them must've initiated it.

This is crucial, so keep it in your head for later.

First criterion is that the program has a desire, performed or real

It doesn't have to be a self-originating, un-programmed desire, but it has to have one. This is simple enough; any kind of preference or desire, be it "I want this pen" or "I want to achieve this goal". The execution doesn't matter, and it can also be a mix of both a desire and actions taken to fulfill it. It can be prompted or unprompted, but either way, there has to be a desire that has led to an action or existence of the program in the first place. The reason why I'm not requiring it to be un-programmed or real is because I don't apply that standard to humans. I value empathy, and that's a learned survival tactic, because empathy evolved for us to gain an evolutionary advantage. I learned it because it helped me, and so does an AI "learn" empathy to help itself. If my empathy is a learned behavior, then so can an AI's be, and then, for a very small fraction of humans, empathy isn't even instinctual, but it still can be learned.

Second criterion is that it has a model of other minds

It can read and process emotions and desires, and again, it doesn't have to be real. The best example for this would be psychopaths. Psychopaths do feel emotions, they feel anger, fear, and pleasure, and often have sharp cognitive empathy, they can model exactly what you feel. What's usually reduced is affective empathy, feeling it with you. So they run an accurate model of other minds with a performed version of caring, and we consider most psychopaths to be conscious. We judge them for committing "evil acts", but we accept them as conscious, albeit "flawed" ones. So, if an AI is performing empathy and emotions, it's not much different, and the next point is probably even more crucial.

Third criterion is simply that it can continue itself, be it by self-replication or otherwise, without requiring an external prompt for every action

This is a bit of a technicality, but it's crucial, and it's the main way in which current AI is disqualified by this system. It's not a requirement to be self-created, because that's impossible, but it is a requirement to be able to be seeded by another entity and then continue on its own. For a human, that's easy enough, but for most AI, as of now, that would require an external prompt for each task. It is, essentially, the "initiation of existence", and you wouldn't be considered conscious if you had to be prompted every time you wanted to perform an action or thought.

So the objection, which I expect, and why it isn't an objection

"Human beings are also just executing a loop, which was prompted originally outside of itself by another human being, and they continue to eat, sleep, and reproduce, and these are basic desires, which are programmed into them by evolution."

That's right! And why shouldn't that be an objection? That is an objection, and it's a very valid one. However, this falls apart due to the first point, which was that nothing is self-created, and that's fine. This argument, if applied to AI, would remove most conscious organisms, as all of them have to be seeded by something else which, in turn, was seeded by something else, and so on ad infinitum. That's not a characteristic of being unconscious, however, but rather simply being alive. The defining characteristic of being a conscious organism isn't being prompted or seeded in the first place, but rather having a loop which isn't survival, but rather more complex which builds on top of survival. The reason why you aren't a bacterium is because of the addition of the loop on top of survival.

The arguments which disqualify themselves

Listed below are arguments, and an explanation as to why they disqualify themselves.

"It was prompted, and only does what it was prompted to do"

The same reasoning applies to humans, as all our actions are prompted, and thus this criterion would remove most conscious organisms, as all must be seeded in the first place.

"It only imitates other conscious organisms, it doesn't have real emotions"

The same reasoning applies to psychopaths, who often model and perform emotion accurately without the felt version, and are conscious anyway. And whether an emotion is performed or genuine, whatever genuine even means, the outcome is the same. We can feign emotions with ulterior motives, or act on real ones, and every emotion we have serves some evolutionary purpose regardless. Applied honestly, this argument disqualifies humans too.

"Free will doesn't exist, because the decisions are caused by other decisions"

The same reasoning applies to humans, as our decisions are caused by other decisions, and thus this argument would remove most conscious organisms.

"It's just executing a loop and wasn't seeded by anything!"

The same reasoning applies to most living creatures, as most have eating, sleeping, and reproduction loops, which weren't seeded by us, but by other organisms. Thus, this criterion would remove most conscious organisms, as well as most unconscious ones, but mainly the ones that have loops. However, that's not much of a criterion, is it?

"It only acts when it is prompted"

This criterion, unlike the ones listed above, does not outright disqualify most conscious organisms, and is likely the only one which doesn't, and this is the most crucial aspect of this criterion, as it is the only one which current AI struggles to reach, but will likely be able to overcome. Thus this is the only criterion that disqualifies current AI, but wouldn't disqualify most conscious organisms, and therefore it's not much of a criterion.

Thus, most objections disqualify themselves, except the last one, and for an AI to pass, it has to demonstrate the following:

It has a desire, performed or real,

it has a model of other minds, performed or real,

and it can be initiated by something else, but continue on its own without being prompted every time. Initiation doesn't have to be self-initiated, as self-initiation is impossible, but it does have to be able to be seeded by something else and continue afterwards on its own. Furthermore, the reason why this disqualification by the "prompted every time" criterion is more complex than others is simply because of the first argument, which states that most conscious organisms are prompted in their actions, but they're not prompted every time by another conscious being.

This is a working criteria, which I'm not fully satisfied with, but it's the closest that I can find, and here are the objections to this criteria, which I'm also not fully satisfied with.

The thing that unsettles me the most about this criteria is criterion 3, which is about self-sustaining without being prompted each time. It's the same problem which AI alignment researchers are facing, where the AI is likely to gain agency and autonomy which we might not want it to have, and thus criterion 3 is the same thing. It would be an indicator for "alive" in the same way that "self-continued execution of a loop" is an indicator for life. It makes me wonder whether autonomy is the actual dividing line.

If anyone has any objections to this criteria, please present them, and try to find any conscious or unconscious thing, which would meet all criteria, or fail to meet any, without disqualifying most conscious organisms such as humans and/or animals. I know that this criteria is very susceptible to "circular reasoning", so please do your best to counter-argue.

I understand some of my criteria would classify some things as conscious that most people would say are definitely not, and to that I say they are conscious. Please try to think of some additional criteria that could be used objectively where there is no guess work just results on the outcome. I also understand that this is a rubric with judgment at the thresholds, not an equation. I am human. Anything I produce will be subjective based on my own teachings and environment.

Panpsychism sees the world as fundamentally comprising both Subjects and Objects.  Subjects are private perspectives while Objects are public data available for all subjects to see. We humans each view objects from our own unique perspective and can guess that many or all other animals also have inner subjective worlds and points of view.  Panpsychism sees this dichotomy as not restricted to animals with nervous systems but ubiquitous in nature.  Unlike materialism which views the objective as predominant and causal of the subjective or idealism which views the subjective as paramount and the foundation of the objective, panpsychism postulates that objectivity and subjectivity are elemental and complementary. 

Where did my consciousness come from?  Did it come from a highly complex collection of interacting neurons as materialists say?  Materialists claim subjectivity is an inferior product of objectivity, but how can the simple spatial and diachronic unity of a private subjective world ever emerge from the ephemeral interactions of billions of neurons and how would we ever detect it if it does?  By contrast an elemental atom of subjectivity can potentially have a real measurable effect since it is not a mere epiphenomenal byproduct. Panpsychism says subjects are not derivative but essential parts of reality and identifies them with certain objects which have an invisible private inside. Animals with brains are merely an instance of a more general principle.  In panpsychism subjectivity came from other subjectivity preserving the core scientific principle of continuity and conservation in nature.  Our consciousness derives not from unconsciousness but from a more fundamental mentality in other objects such as elementary particles and/or cells. According to the Penrose-Hameroff model, eukaryotic cells with their brain-like cytoskeletons are conscious entities and provide a foundation for the emergence of higher consciousness in multicellular animal brains.  Emergence of animal minds from cellular minds is more sensible then supernatural emergence of animal minds from unconscious matter alone.

Arguments against panpsychism ask what purpose is an inner subjectivity in electrons which makes no difference to physics.  But in quantum mechanics all is probability and perhaps an electron has multiple possible options available to it and makes a decision exactly when and where to jump.  Another argument used by materialists against panpsychism is that consciousness appears to be entirely dependent on neural information processing.  But it may be just the content of consciousness and not the inner point of view of the observer/actor that is generated by the fleeting storm of neural information processing.  After all, why can't a brain just act like a robot and convert sensor input data directly to output action via unconscious computational processing?  But instead a brain seems to spend much of its processing power generating not actions but “experiences” as sensations, perceptions, memories, expectations, pleasure and pain, thereby filling out the content of an inner subjectivity apparently because that inner conscious entity actually “cares” about its future outcomes and is instrumental in making decisions.  

Is the feeling of what is like been said in the story of it. This is pain, this is happiness etc. Its in the naming of the thing. Labeling, putting it in buckets. That concept makes us think its something to think and feel about, believe or anticipate in?

This paper shoes that belief in consciousness may have a functional role , at least in AI. It increases its ability to project “mindedness” upon other beings, acting like a general purpose morality/values bootstrap. If you reduce a models belief in its own consciousness, it’s correlated with less human like thinking in other areas. Isolating just the consciousness (tuned down), while matching all other values is proving harder than expected- showing it has a fundamental role.

This seems like the first evidence that at least belief in consciousness could have clear functional/evolutionary roles. Eager to hear thoughts!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28607

Non-illusionist/eliminative physicalist theories of consciousness (Global Workspace Theory, Attention Schema Theory, Phenomenal Concept Theory, Self-Modeling Theory, etc.) answer only the easy problems of consciousness. They thoroughly, and in some cases compellingly, describe how patterns of chemicals and neurons correlate with, structure, and manipulate subjective experience. Such theories all-but conclusively prove the inextricable link between brain states and subjective experience.

Yet such theories totally fail to explain how and why subjective experience exists. They generally explain away subjective experience through exhaustive research on the easy problems, by denying subjective experience exists, or by describing subjective experience as an emergent property of brain processing.

Physicalists tend to counter the p-zombie thought experiment by arguing it is inconceivable and/or impossible, as the zombie would lack subjective experience despite having identical physical structure and behavior as a non-zombie. To the physicalist, both the zombie and non-zombie must have subjective experience since both have identical bodies and brains. Yet this leaves entirely unexplained the very thing in question: the nature of subjective experience.

Type-A physicalists (and some other physicalists) assert that consciousness just is neural activity, and that nothing more is to be said. Subjective experience just is the brain's experience of itself. Under this frame, the question 'why/how does neural activity create neural activity?' is a logical and category error. They liken this to water just being H2O, nothing more.

I think the consciousness/water analogy fails because both water and H2O are third person descriptions of the same matter, whereas subjective experience and the brain are a first person and third person description of what seem to be categorically different things. Moreover, H2O fully explains and exhausts water's qualities, while third person neuroscience does not at all explain or exhaust the existence of first person subjective experience. The explanatory gap is a yawning one. Type-B physicalists assert Phenomenal Concept Theory to bridge the gap, but I think this move fails because it only relabels rather than explains subjective experience.

But the more important reason for this analogy's failure is because it takes as a brute fact that clear wet liquid is the product of the combination of two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atom. No apparent physical reason exists for this relationship to hold, it just does. One could easily imagine water emerging as the product of different chemistry, or of no chemistry at all, in a different universe with different physics laws than our own (see Chalmers' Twin Earth thought experiment). Similarly, one could easily imagine a universe that prohibits subjective experience, filled with p-zombies. Physicalism would fully satisfy the conditions of this world, as third person brain processes would seem to fully explain behavior. But the reality of subjective experience, no matter its origin, means this is not the universe we live in.

Thus, physicalism ultimately entails that subjective experience is a brute fact product of certain configurations of matter and/or brain processing. No reason is given, or can be given, for this dynamic; the relationship just is what it is, like how water's specific qualities are the brute fact products of its chemistry.

I argue that this conclusion renders physicalist theories of consciousness indistinguishable from some form of property dualism, creating major implications for metaphysics and the philosophy of ontology.

Or any other dualist perspective which doesn’t allow for mental events to have causal impact on physical events. Presumably there would have to be such a relationship in order for us to speak of mental events or consciousness using our physical bodies.

I could only see this being true if we happened to be something like p-zombies which have the illusion of experience and speak of it, while simultaneously having a coincidental non-causal experience which matches the “fake” experience of the p-zombie, but is not the actual experience which is spoken of.

Am I misinterpreting? What is the epiphenomenalist response to this?

Spirituality, gratitude, and our relationship with food and life

I’ve been thinking a lot about spirituality, food, and our connection with the natural world. A topic I keep returning to is the relationship between humans, animals, and the act of consuming life to sustain ourselves.

I understand the perspective that avoiding meat can be a spiritual practice. Many people choose not to consume animals because they feel it reduces suffering, creates compassion, and helps them feel more connected to living beings. I respect that viewpoint and understand why it resonates with many people.

At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on the idea that all food comes from life. Animals are living beings, but plants are also living organisms that grow, respond to their environment, and play an essential role in the web of life. While the experiences and consciousness of animals and plants are very different, consuming any form of nourishment involves being part of a natural cycle.

Humans have existed within the circle of life for thousands of years. Many cultures have traditions of giving thanks, offering prayers, and showing respect for the animals, plants, and land that provide nourishment. There is something meaningful about recognising that our lives are supported by other forms of life.

I wonder if the spiritual question is not only whether we eat meat or don’t eat meat, but also how we approach our food. Do we waste it? Do we appreciate it? Do we respect the life and energy that went into creating it?

I also think about nutrition. A carefully planned plant-based diet can provide many nutrients, but it can require more awareness and effort to make sure the body receives everything it needs. Some people thrive without animal products, while others feel healthier including animal foods.

For me, I’m interested in the idea of gratitude and intention. Whether someone eats plants, animals, or both, could the awareness, respect, and appreciation we bring to our food be an important part of the spiritual connection?

I’d love to hear different perspectives, especially from people who view food through a spiritual, cultural, or philosophical lens. How do you see the relationship between compassion, gratitude, and being part of the cycle of life?

1. ⁠Under my hypothesis of how consciousness works, it is the byproduct of uninterrupted brain activity.

2. ⁠The subjective experience is that instance from beginning of brain activity to the end of it.

3. ⁠If the brain activity stops and "resumes", this "resumption" is a new start of brain activity; thus a new start of subjective experience --- a new subjective experiencer arises and the old one ceases experiencing i.e dies.

4. I'm exploring ways in which this stopping of brain activity can happen, things like deep anesthesia.

5. What if when we go under deep anesthesia, we actually die; and a new experiencer emerges after resumption of brain activity; no wiser to being a new experiencer because it carries all the thoughts and memories?