The Brain as a Consciousness Collector

November 24th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One understanding of the panpsychist viewpoint is that all phenomena of the world incorporate the property of consciousness, in the same way that they incorporate space and time. So, for example, a rock, in addition to having its incontrovertible extension into the three dimensions of space: height, width, and breadth, and in addition to its irrefutable persistence over time, also has a quality of consciousness as an aspect of its being. In fact, without this consciousness it could not be said to be engaged in the act of being at all. Alternatively, one might say that the dimensions of space and time, (which may not correspond with human understandings of three-dimensional spacetime,) are also dimensions of consciousness.

A possible product of this way of regarding the world is a redefinition of the brain not as the seat of consciousness as it is currently described, but rather as a kind of ‘collector’ of consciousness. Instead of mind emerging from the behaviour of neuronal networks as an entirely unique phenomenon, disconnected from the contents of that consciousness, as the emergentist viewpoint inevitably indicates, the brain concentrates and organises the consciousness of the universe like a vortex in water.

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