Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.

Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.

This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.

Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.

TLDR: i need to take shorter showers

    • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      If there’s a new force or field, then it’s still physical, it’s just unknown. But that’s not what you’re talking about, I think. It’s more like the notion of life, which is self organizing matter - which appears at first to go against the laws of entropy. But we can see how a chance configuration that self replicates is a natural phenomenon and actually accelerates entropy in the longer term. Life is still physical even though we can describe it as a concept that might seem to transcend physicality. Consciousness can just be the same. And yes, you can consider consciousness as some sort of other fundamental order, but it’s not scientific - it specifically cannot be since we can not measure it.

        • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 months ago

          People explaining their own consciousness is really not good enough. Simple llm ai systems can do that. I’m pretty sure that dogs are conscience, but we can never get their perspective. You cannot know anyone other than yourself is conscious.

            • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
              1·
              3 months ago

              Science is done by observing, theorizing, predicting and then testing. We cannot test anything on consciousness.

                • CannonFodder@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  3 months ago

                  Not really. We know that a human can detect those frequencies and output information related to them. Like any transducer. Like any computer. We cannot know what the experience is. The best we can do is describe our own experience, and compare the description to that which other people give, but that’s not really better evidence than what we’d get from a current llm ai which can do the same. It’s logical to assume other people have conscious, but we cannot test it empirically.