Consciousness, Freedom, and Evolution

Consciousness, Freedom, and Evolution

The subject of consciousness would overflow even a very large tome devoted to describing it. The purpose of this post must be limited to demonstrating consciousness as the exemplar of good in the universe. Part of the task consists of showing how consciousness develops in evolving species like our own, and how freedom flows from consciousness.

My reasoning about consciousness in the context of these post on the “justification of the good” rests on the assumption that the growth and development of consciousness stands out as a commonly accepted instance of something which is good. Anyone reading this paragraph will probably agree or they would not be reading this or anything else. While it is true that a person suffering clinical depression might prefer sleep to wakefulness, wish they had not been born, and become suicidal, they and anyone who loves them would clearly see their state as a tragic misfortune. Much of psychotherapy consists of enabling people to enjoy greater consciousness. The same can be said of most medical care and of almost all education.

Do we know what consciousness is?

           

A seemingly insurmountable problem faces us at the beginning of any conversation about consciousness, namely, trying to state clearly the very nature of consciousness. For starters, it is indefinable. Consciousness stands alone as a reality that does not belong to any genus and is not like anything else. But although we cannot define consciousness, we can describe it in the literal sense of the word “describe,” meaning that we can write about it. We can also talk about it and certainly think about it. We come to understand consciousness by contrast to unconsciousness as when we temporarily lose consciousness because of an accident or anesthesia. Other contrasts include sleeping and wakefulness, dreaming and awareness of our external surrounding, and boredom compared to full interest.

Further, we can look at conscious development both in the individual and in the species to show how consciousness moves from mere sensation, to perception, judgment, reasoning, and beyond. A problem presents itself in that all of these methods assume that we already know what consciousness is. The good news is that in fact we do know what consciousness is. Everyone who has ever thought of this question already knows what consciousness is. So the only task of this work is to articulate and interpret consciousness to show how it exemplifies the problem of the good. 

We can clarify our understanding of consciousness by comparing the poles of a spectrum from material to spiritual. If there is a totally non-consciousness being, what is it like?  Imagine a particle of matter as conceived in traditional Newtonian science. It appears to be dead, inert, moved and determined only by external forces, and impenetrable. By contrast, whether or not we believe that any non-material being exists, we can think of a pure spirit, in contrast to matter, as conscious, self-determined, and able to enter communion with other spiritual beings. We humans are obviously not pure spirits and we have much of Newtonian inertness about us. But if we have a degree of self-awareness, self-determination, and openness to community, then we are to that extent spiritual. An increase in spirituality as I use the term here, coincides with an increase in consciousness. 

            When we have moments of heightened awareness, we experience a more clear and intense knowledge of our world, a greater sense of freedom, and a feeling of oneness with people and perhaps things around us. Such heightened states may be generated from a wide and diverse range of human activity as reported by those who experience life-threatening emergencies, sports, music, contemplation of nature, and traditional religious meditation.  We can imagine that consciousness, freedom, and communion extend to infinity as all of our ordinary physical and psychological limitations lose their hold. Every spiritual tradition claims saints and mystics who actually experience unity with infinite being. More on the next post.