Mirror, Mirror On the Wall

Consciousness – the Hard Problem! (per David Chalmers) What is it? Who has it? How does it work? What’s it ‘like’ to be conscious? Is it like the sound of one hand clapping? As we learn more and more about the structure of the human brain and the perceptual capabilities of non-human life forms, the long felt need to find a model for consciousness grows ever stronger.

Not surprisingly, there is a tendency for models to grow more complex with each iteration. Something like that is happening right now in cosmology, particle physics, and biology. The steady complexification of theory is often, usually in fact, a clue that the theory itself is somehow ‘wrong’. Remember Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe? Hello Galileo!

Typically, when we build a model, we start by following the architect’s blueprint for the Tower of Babel, one story teetering on top of another…until suddenly the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards. Welcome fresh air: heliocentricity, relativity, and quantum mechanics! Perhaps in the case of consciousness we can avoid this painful process. 

My preferred model for consciousness is a simple mirror, or to be more precise, reflexivity.  A mirror, as you know, has no intrinsic content. Likewise, while mirrors come in all sizes, shapes and designs, the ‘mirror-part’ is the same in every case. Reflection is reflection, period. 

Nor do I envision a cosmos full of disembodied shards of silver backed glass floating in space. Rather I suspect that reflexivity is built into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Reflexivity is a characteristic of any non-orientable topology, e.g. a Mobius strip. If, as I suspect, our universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable, then reflection (mirroring) may be a local manifestation of global reflexivity. 

A mirror reflects what is reflected. Likewise, consciousness – also a reflector reflecting what is reflected. Without reflected content, a mirror cannot reflect and so is not a ‘mirror’ at all; it’s just a silver backed piece of glass. Without reflexivity, the cosmos is empty…and meaningless. 

Meaning is a reference between two distinct classes of phenomena, e.g. a map and a territory or an ‘object’ and its image. Object and image are ‘mutually transcendent’ - a pre-condition for meaning.

Even before syntax, language has meaning, e.g. an object and a word that denotes that object. Of course, words can be objects and objects can be words, but not in this context. We are strictly speaking of words as symbols and objects as what words symbolize. In one respect, language is an ‘object’ and as such part of the world; but in a more important sense, it is ‘symbol’ and transcends the world.

Likewise, consciousness may, or may not, be dependent on certain neural structures, but it is not those structures per se. Again, neural structures are part of the world that consciousness transcends…and reflects. 

When we speak of ‘consciousness’, we are not referring to whatever physical structures may support it. In fact, it appears that wildly different physical configurations may support consciousness. This lends further support to the idea that consciousness is a ubiquitous potentiality woven into the fabric of spacetime.  

How is consciousness like a mirror? A mirror has no intrinsic content. It acquires 100% of its content from what it reflects. Every mirror, in so far as it reflects, is the same. I am conscious and someone in Tibet is conscious. We share few life experiences, but to the extent that we are conscious, we are identical…not merely congruent.  

Consciousness is a unitary phenomenon, manifest in multiple environments and circumstances. No two manifestations of consciousness are the same but consciousness per se is identical everywhere, and everywhen. 

What a mirror actually reflects is light. Without light, a mirror has no content, i.e. no image. Might this suggest a ‘kinder, gentler’ model of death? When an organism dies, the ‘mirror’ associated with that organism goes dark; it no longer reflects light (an image). It ceases to be a ‘mirror’; therefore it is no longer conscious. Its physical properties no longer support conscious experience.

However, this does not necessarily resolve Hamlet’s dilemma: “To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.” In the language of AI, could it be that our dark and imageless reflexivity will yet ‘hallucinate’? (After all, we know that AI ‘hallucinates’; why not ‘NI’, natural intelligence?) It is too soon to award the laurel wreath to Horatio! 

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