Consciousness may be the Universe Discovering what its Own Distinctions Feel Like

Consciousness may be the Universe Discovering what its Own Distinctions Feel Like

Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash

We tend to imagine reality as fundamentally logical.

There are objects, relationships, probabilities, equations, physical laws, mathematical structures, and information. We describe these things using distinctions: this rather than that, here rather than there, one state rather than another. Even the most sophisticated theories of physics ultimately depend upon our ability to distinguish one measurable state from another.

But there is a strange question hiding underneath all of this:

What exactly is a distinction?

If information is logically real, and if information exists because differences can be distinguished, then distinctions are not merely descriptions we impose upon reality. They are part of the structure we are trying to describe.

And if distinctions are produced through measurement, something even stranger follows.

A measurement does not merely tell us that two states are different. It makes that difference meaningful within a system.

This may be where the boundary between the logical and the animated begins to disappear.

The Reality of Information

Consider the simplest possible distinction.

Something is either here or there.

Something is either one state or another.

A bit is either 0 or 1.

We can represent the difference mathematically. We can assign probabilities to the alternatives. We can encode the distinction as information.

But information requires distinguishability.

If there were absolutely no possible difference between two states — not merely a difference that we have failed to detect, but no difference that could ever be distinguished — then in what meaningful sense would there be two states at all?

A distinction therefore seems to require more than two labels. It requires some mechanism by which the difference becomes real within a physical system.

This is what measurement does.

Measurement is the physical realization of a distinction.

And this gives us the first step:

Information requires distinction, and distinction requires measurement.

But now we have to ask what measurement actually means.

Measurement Is Not Merely Observation

We often use the word “measurement” as though it were something humans do to an already finished universe.

A scientist looks through a detector.

A camera records a photon.

A thermometer registers a temperature.

A neuron responds to a stimulus.

But measurement is much more fundamental than scientific observation.

Whenever a physical system responds differently to different states of another system, a distinction has been realized.

A detector that responds differently to two possible photon states has made a distinction.

A neuron that responds differently to two chemical concentrations has made a distinction.

A molecule that changes configuration depending upon its environment has made a distinction.

The important event isn’t necessarily a conscious person looking at a number.

The important event is that one physical state has become distinguishable from another.

Measurement, in this sense, is everywhere.

And if measurement is everywhere, then distinctions are everywhere.

Which brings us to the more difficult question:

What does it mean for a distinction to be made?

The Problem of the “Felt” Distinction

Suppose we define “felt” very minimally.

Not emotion.

Not human consciousness.

Not pain, pleasure, self-awareness, or thought.

Instead, imagine that “felt” simply means:

A difference is registered by a system.

A system is affected differently depending upon which state it encounters.

Something changes.

A distinction has occurred.

Under this definition, feeling becomes much more primitive than consciousness.

It becomes synonymous with the physical realization of difference.

A thermometer “feels” temperature in this minimal sense.

A photodetector “feels” light.

A neuron “feels” a chemical gradient.

An atom “feels” an electromagnetic field.

None of these statements require that the system possess human-like awareness.

They simply recognize that the system is physically responsive to distinctions.

This creates a provocative possibility:

Perhaps feeling is not something that appears after measurement. Perhaps feeling is what measurement is from the perspective of the system being measured.

From Logical to Animated

This is where the distinction between the logical real and the animated real becomes useful.

The logical real consists of distinctions, relationships, probabilities, mathematical structures, and information.

It tells us what can be distinguished.

The animated real is the realization of those distinctions.

It tells us that a distinction has actually occurred.

The logical real might contain the distinction between 0 and 1.

The animated real is the physical event in which a system actually becomes different depending upon whether the state is 0 or 1.

The logical real describes the difference.

The animated real enacts the difference.

These may not be two separate realities.

They may be two aspects of the same reality.

The logical is the structure.

The animated is the realization.

The logical describes possibility.

The animated is possibility becoming an actual distinction.

And this may change how we think about consciousness.

Consciousness as the Inside of Measurement

We normally assume that matter exists first and consciousness appears later.

First there is a universe of particles and fields.

Then chemistry.

Then biology.

Then nervous systems.

Then brains.

Then, somehow, subjective experience appears.

This creates what may be the hardest problem in philosophy: how does an objective, apparently non-experiential universe produce subjective experience at all?

Perhaps the problem begins with the assumption that the universe was ever entirely non-experiential.

If measurement is fundamental, and measurement is the physical realization of distinction, perhaps the primitive form of experience is already present wherever distinctions are physically realized.

This does not mean that electrons have thoughts.

It does not mean that rocks have personalities.

It does not mean that every physical system has human-like consciousness.

It means something more modest and potentially more fundamental:

A realized distinction may be the smallest possible unit of experience.

A complex nervous system would then not create experience from nothing.

Instead, it would organize enormous numbers of primitive distinctions into increasingly complex patterns.

Pain would involve extraordinarily sophisticated networks of distinctions.

Pleasure would involve others.

Memory would involve persistent distinctions.

Selfhood would involve distinctions between internal states and external states.

Consciousness, in its richest form, might be what happens when a system becomes capable of recursively measuring its own distinctions.

The Measurement Mind

This is close to the central intuition behind the Measurement Mind hypothesis.

Perhaps consciousness isn’t a mysterious substance hiding somewhere inside the brain.

Perhaps consciousness isn’t a separate ingredient added to matter.

Perhaps consciousness is related to measurement itself.

The universe continually produces distinctions.

Physical systems interact.

Information is transferred.

States become distinguishable.

Measurements alter the systems involved.

Those distinctions propagate through increasingly complicated structures.

At some level of organization, the distinctions become sufficiently interconnected that the system begins to model not only the world but its own measurements of the world.

What we call consciousness could then be the extraordinarily complex animation of measurement.

The brain would not necessarily be a machine that somehow manufactures feeling.

It would be a machine that organizes and integrates distinctions.

That distinction is important.

The Logical Real May Be Incomplete

If this is correct, then we have a problem with calling the logical real the whole of reality.

Logic can tell us that two states are different.

Mathematics can describe their relationship.

Information theory can quantify the distinction.

Physics can describe the interaction that produces it.

But none of these descriptions necessarily capture the distinction as an event occurring within a physical system.

The equation describes the relationship.

The system realizes the relationship.

The logical description tells us what the distinction is.

The animated realization tells us that the distinction is occurring.

Perhaps this is why purely logical descriptions of consciousness feel incomplete.

They describe the structure of information while leaving out the fact that information is physically instantiated.

The mistake may be treating the abstraction as more fundamental than the event that makes the abstraction possible.

Distinctions Cannot Exist Without Differences

There is another way to approach the problem.

Imagine a universe containing no distinctions whatsoever.

No differences in position.

No differences in energy.

No differences in state.

No differences in probability.

No differences in anything.

Such a universe would contain no information.

There would be nothing to distinguish from anything else.

There would be no measurement because there would be nothing to measure.

There would be no events because an event requires a change from one state to another.

In other words, distinction appears to be inseparable from change.

And if a distinction requires a physical realization, then reality may not fundamentally consist of static things.

It may consist of differences being realized.

Reality would not merely be made of objects.

It would be made of measurements.

Feeling as the Primitive Event

This brings us back to the word “felt.”

Perhaps we have historically reserved the word for humans and animals because our strongest examples of feeling are subjective experiences: pain, pleasure, fear, love, hunger, curiosity.

But these may be extraordinarily complex versions of something much more primitive.

At the bottom of the hierarchy there may be only distinction.

A system encounters a state.

The system responds differently.

Information has been registered.

A distinction has been made.

Something has happened to the system.

If we call that primitive registration “feeling,” then feeling does not need to be inserted into the universe at some particular evolutionary moment.

It was already implicit in the first distinction.

Life did not necessarily create feeling from nothing.

Life may have organized and amplified an already fundamental property of measurement.

From Information to Experience

The progression might therefore look something like this:

Possibility → distinction → measurement → information → integration → experience.

At the simplest level, a distinction is made.

At greater levels of complexity, distinctions become interconnected.

Those connections persist.

They influence future measurements.

The system begins to contain information about its previous measurements.

Eventually, the system can measure itself.

At that point, the distinction between observer and observed begins to collapse.

The measuring system is also part of what is being measured.

The measurement becomes recursive.

And perhaps this recursion is where the familiar human experience of consciousness emerges.

Not from nothing.

But from the increasing complexity of something that was already present at the foundation of reality:

the realization of distinctions.

The Animated Universe

This suggests a radically different picture of reality.

We don’t have to imagine a dead, purely logical universe that somehow becomes animated billions of years later.

Perhaps the universe was never purely logical.

Perhaps the logical and animated are inseparable aspects of reality.

The logical real is the structure of distinction.

The animated real is distinction in operation.

The logical real gives us the map.

The animated real is the territory being traversed.

The logical real describes information.

The animated real realizes information.

And if every physical measurement is a realized distinction, then perhaps the universe is not merely a collection of things obeying mathematical rules.

Perhaps it is an enormous network of distinctions continually being made.

Continually being registered.

Continually affecting other distinctions.

A universe in which information is not merely stored, but enacted.

A universe in which measurement is not an incidental activity performed by conscious observers, but one of the fundamental processes through which reality exists.

The Final Reversal

The traditional question is:

How does consciousness emerge from matter?

The Measurement Mind asks whether we might instead need to ask:

How does complex consciousness emerge from the universe’s fundamental capacity to make distinctions?

That is a different question.

And it leads to an even more radical possibility.

Maybe we should stop thinking of the logical and the animated as competing descriptions of reality.

Maybe the logical real is what reality can distinguish.

And the animated real is what reality does with the distinction.

If so, then the logical does not disappear.

It gives way to something deeper.

The logical real becomes the animated real when a distinction is actually made.

And perhaps every distinction, at its most primitive level, is already a tiny act of feeling.

Not feeling as emotion.

Not feeling as thought.

Not feeling as human consciousness.

But feeling as the fundamental registration of difference.

If that is true, then consciousness may not be the strange exception to an otherwise logical universe.

Consciousness may be the universe discovering what its own distinctions feel like.