When we think about consciousness, we usually focus on the human experience. Human-centered thinking shapes our ideas about awareness, thinking, and being 'conscious'. But as we deepen our understanding, it's time to expand our conception of mind beyond human-centric models.
I’m glad to share my notes with you as I try to learn about this stuff.
If you don't want to read the whole paper, here's the gist: We need a framework for understanding consciousness beyond homo sapiens.
TIME TESTED
This is an old idea. Indigenous belief systems and ancient philosophical traditions recognized consciousness as a fundamental aspect of reality, not limited to human beings. Animistic beliefs in various cultures attribute consciousness or spirit to natural phenomena, animals, and even inanimate objects.
Viewing consciousness as exclusively human is a recent development, associated with post-Enlightenment Western philosophy.
Some ancient Greek traditions suggest a more expansive view. The pre-Socratic philosopher Thales famously declared that "all things are full of gods," implying a panpsychism where consciousness pervades all of nature. Similarly, the Stoics conceived of a universal reason or logos that animates and orders the cosmos, resembling modern ideas of universal consciousness.
In ancient Indian philosophy, we find the concept of Brahman - the ultimate, all-encompassing reality that is consciousness itself. Brahman consciousness is not just a property of human minds, but the fabric of reality.
Many Native American traditions view all of nature - animals, plants, mountains, rivers - as imbued with spirit and consciousness. In traditional African philosophies, we find a holistic worldview where the distinction between the animate and inanimate, the physical and the spiritual, is less rigid than in modern Western thought.
In the Western tradition, we can trace non-anthropocentric threads. The Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno proposed that the entire universe is animated by a universal mind or soul. Later, Baruch Spinoza developed a philosophy that equated God with Nature, suggesting that a divine consciousness pervaded reality.
These traditions emphasize direct experiential knowledge over intellectual understanding, suggesting one can experience awareness that transcends individual human consciousness. They invite us to consider consciousness as a fundamental and pervasive aspect of reality.
Just because a view is ancient doesn’t make it right. The point here is that our anthropocentric view isn't the only way to conceive consciousness. It's the default mode, and it limits our understanding of the mind and awareness of the universe.
SCIENCE
More people in the hard sciences are beginning to recognize that human-centric models of mind and consciousness may be inadequate to explain awareness and cognition.
Panpsychism has regained interest among philosophers and scientists. This theory suggests that consciousness or proto-consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, present in all matter to some degree. Philosophers like David Chalmers and Galen Strawson argue that panpsychism may solve the hard problem of consciousness (how subjective experience arises from physical processes).
Unfortunately, this solution creates a new one: how consciousness would then bind to the material world.
Contemporary versions of panpsychism offer a more nuanced and scientifically grounded approach to non-anthropocentric consciousness than their historical predecessors. Rather than attributing human-like awareness to all matter, modern panpsychists like Philip Goff propose that consciousness might be a fundamental feature of the universe, manifesting in different degrees of complexity. This view aligns with the idea of consciousness as a continuum, potentially bridging the gap between physical processes and subjective experience. While still controversial, these updated panpsychism theories provide valuable conceptual tools for exploring consciousness across diverse systems.
If consciousness is fundamental, rather than emergent, we might avoid the problem of explaining how subjective experience arises from purely objective physical processes. Maybe consciousness is a ubiquitous aspect of the universe, manifesting in different degrees of complexity and integration. Maybe.
Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, proposes that consciousness is a fundamental property of any system that integrates information in certain complex ways. This theory is decidedly non-anthropocentric, as it suggests that consciousness could exist in varying degrees in a wide range of systems, from simple organisms to complex networks, and potentially in non-biological systems.
IIT presents an intriguing non-anthropocentric approach to consciousness. However, recent developments and critiques have highlighted both its strengths and limitations. While IIT offers a quantitative measure of consciousness (Φ) that could theoretically apply to any system, concerns have been raised about its empirical testability and philosophical implications. Recent work has attempted to address these issues, including efforts to develop more practical approximations of Φ and to reconcile IIT with other theories of consciousness. Despite these challenges, IIT remains a valuable contribution to non-anthropocentric consciousness studies, pushing us to consider consciousness as a fundamental feature of information integration rather than a uniquely human phenomenon.
Recent advances in consciousness research have yielded new techniques for measuring and assessing consciousness that move beyond human-centric paradigms. The development of the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI), for instance, offers a way to quantify consciousness that could potentially be applied across species. Other promising approaches include the use of information integration measures inspired by IIT and the application of predictive processing frameworks to animal cognition. These methods allow us to investigate consciousness in non-human animals and even artificial systems without relying on anthropocentric criteria like language or self-report.
This has profound implications for Artificial Intelligence. How can we tell if something is conscious? Could we be accidentally (or purposefully) creating a computer consciousness? How can we determine if a system that seems conscious is actually conscious? Our human-centered understanding is limited.
Awareness may exist on a spectrum, manifesting in different forms and degrees across entities and systems. Consciousness thus would not be binary but multidimensional.
Consciousness is a relational phenomenon, arising from interactions between entities and their environments, or even a fundamental aspect of reality itself.
To understand consciousness, we must be open to slightly different forms of awareness.
SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
So now we're on a treasure hunt. How can we understand this non-anthropocentric consciousness? Mystical and spiritual traditions offer some clues. They present us with worldviews and practices that point towards awareness beyond individual human minds, challenging our notions of self and consciousness.
Buddhism, with its concept of universal consciousness, suggests that awareness transcends individual human experience. Some Buddhist ideas suggest that the potential for awakening - a state of expansive, non-dual awareness - is inherent in all sentient beings. The implication is radical: consciousness, in its most fundamental and enlightened form is a universal potential (although the phrase “sentient beings” is doing a lot of work). Buddhist ideas point to the interdependent nature of all phenomena. Consciousness is not possessed by individuals but is a dynamic, relational process.
The Advaita Vedanta philosophy in Hinduism points to a non-dual reality where individual consciousness is seen as part of a larger, universal consciousness. In the Advaita Vedanta tradition, we find the concept of Atman-Brahman non-dualism. Atman, often translated as the individual soul or self, is ultimately identified with Brahman, the universal consciousness or ground of being. The apparent multiplicity of individual consciousnesses is, at the deepest level, an illusion. All consciousness is a manifestation of universal awareness.
Sufism, with its emphasis on the unity of existence, also provides a framework for understanding awareness beyond human boundaries. The Sufi concept of wahdat al-wujud (unity of existence), developed by mystics like Ibn Arabi, posits that all of existence is a manifestation of a single, divine reality. Individual consciousness is seen as a localized expression of the universal divine consciousness. Sufi poets like Rumi describe states of consciousness that transcend individual human experience, pointing to a vast, cosmic awareness in which all beings participate.
Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart speak of a union with God that transcends ordinary subject-object distinctions.
The Kabbalistic tradition in Judaism describes states of consciousness where the boundaries between the individual and the divine dissolve.
I find it particularly interesting that these mystical traditions offer practices and techniques for experiencing expanded states of consciousness. Whether through meditation, contemplation, dance, poetry, or other ecstatic practices, these traditions offer methods for transcending the limitations of ordinary awareness.
The experiential reports are incredibly similar. Mystics from various cultures and time periods describe boundless awareness, dissolution of the individual self, and a profound sense of unity with all of existence. Our ordinary state of consciousness, centered on individual selfhood, might be a kind of localized eddy in a larger ocean of universal awareness.
Noticing that awareness has no bounds doesn’t tell us much about it. But that word “boundless” is important – everything rendered has to be included. This brings to mind some questions about awareness vs. consciousness that I’m going to rudely ignore.
Our everyday sense of being a separate, bounded self isn’t the only form of human consciousness. There appear to be states of awareness where this sense of separation dissolves. There’s a form of knowing or understanding not based on sensory perception or conceptual thought but on an intuitive apprehension of reality.
Consciousness might not be tied to individual human minds but could be a more universal phenomenon in which individual minds participate. The mystic traditions challenge our subject-object dichotomy, suggesting awareness where the distinction between the knower and the known breaks down.
NOTE: I’m leaving the above paragraph in so you can see how my head was working, but I think I’ve nuanced my opinion based on this note from a friend: “Non-dual awareness doesn’t actually point to a more universal phenomenon in which individual minds participate. It’s just that you have a rendering of a self (subject) and world (object). It turns out that those are the same thing if you look closely enough”.
The universality of these experiences across cultures suggests that they might be tapping into fundamental aspects of human consciousness, rather than being merely cultural constructs. This aligns with theories in consciousness studies that propose consciousness as a fundamental feature of reality, rather than an emergent property of complex brains.
What we normally consider to be the boundaries of our awareness - the sense of being a separate self, distinct from the world around us - might be more fluid and less fundamental than we usually assume. There are modes of awareness that are vastly more expansive and inclusive than our ordinary waking consciousness.
These mystical perspectives challenge our ordinary, ego-centric experience of consciousness and hint at the possibility of forms of awareness that are not bound by human limitations. They suggest that what we typically consider "human consciousness" may be a particular mode or subset of a more expansive field of awareness.
If our individual awareness is part of a larger field, it suggests that consciousness might not be strictly localized to our brains or bodies. This aligns with reports from mystical experiences where individuals describe a sense of expanding beyond the confines of their physical selves.
The mystical view implies a deep interconnection between all apparently separate consciousnesses. Just as waves on the ocean are not truly separate from each other or from the ocean itself, our individual awareness might be fundamentally unified at a deeper level.
If our ordinary consciousness is a limited mode of a vaster awareness, it suggests the potential for experiencing more expansive states of consciousness. This is precisely what many spiritual practices aim at.
It won't surprise you that most of this is speculation - these are hard ideas to verify scientifically, and they come from subjective experience.
The notion that human consciousness as we typically experience it might be a subset or limited mode of a vast field of awareness is a radical departure from the common Western scientific and philosophical view. Our ordinary experience is characterized by a strong sense of individuality, of being a separate self distinct from the world around us. We perceive reality through the filter of our personal thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences. This ego-centric consciousness is what we usually identify as "me" or "I." The idea that awareness might be a fundamental aspect of reality, rather than an emergent property of complex brains, is a radical departure from the materialist paradigm that has dominated much of modern science.
This perspective, often referred to as "primacy of consciousness" or sometimes as a form of idealism, suggests that consciousness is not produced by the brain, but rather that the physical world, including our brains, arises within a more fundamental field of consciousness.
If consciousness is fundamental rather than emergent, it would mean that awareness in some form pervades all of reality. It challenges our usual notions of the relationship between mind and matter. Rather than the mind emerging from matter, this view suggests that matter and mind might be two aspects of a more fundamental reality, or that matter might emerge from or within consciousness.
These traditions often emphasize that this expanded awareness is not something to be achieved or gained, but rather recognized as our fundamental nature.
ANIMALS
In a paper about non-human-centered consciousness, it seems appropriate to consider animals. It's hard to talk about consciousness (although it seems clear that my dog loves me), but we can talk about cognition and make some interesting assumptions.
New Caledonian crows, for instance, have been observed crafting and using tools in the wild, a behavior once thought to be uniquely human. In laboratory settings, they've solved multi-step puzzles that require planning and causal reasoning.
Great apes have complex social structures and tool use in these species. They possess a sense of self-awareness and can recognize themselves in mirrors.
Chimpanzees can understand the mental states of others, including their knowledge, beliefs, and intentions. This suggests a level of social cognition and empathy that approaches human-like levels of awareness.
Dolphins and whales show signs of self-awareness, complex social behaviors, and even cultural transmission of knowledge. They have large, complex brains and might have cognitive capacities that are no less sophisticated than our own.
Octopuses, with nervous systems that are unlike our centralized brains, demonstrate problem-solving abilities, playfulness, and tool use. This raises profound questions about the nature of consciousness - how might awareness manifest in a being with such a radically different neural architecture?
Elephants have a complex emotional life, including apparent mourning rituals for deceased members of their herd. They've also demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests and shown remarkable memory capabilities.
Recent research has even revealed surprising cognitive abilities in insects. Bees, for instance, have demonstrated the ability to learn abstract concepts and to use tools, challenging our notions of what's possible with a tiny insect brain.
Cognitive ability is not uniquely human. Consciousness too, rather than being an all-or-nothing property that humans uniquely possess, it might be better understood as a continuum, with different species exhibiting different types and degrees of awareness. The distributed intelligence of an octopus or the collective cognition of an ant colony might represent modes of awareness that are fundamentally alien to human experience, yet no less valid or complex.
The study of animal consciousness has advanced significantly in recent years, moving beyond anthropomorphic interpretations to more rigorous, empirically grounded approaches. Recent studies have employed innovative methodologies to investigate consciousness in a wide range of species, from insects to cetaceans. For instance, work on metacognition in rats and dolphins suggests forms of self-awareness previously thought unique to primates. Meanwhile, research on pain perception in fish has challenged our assumptions about consciousness in non-mammalian species. These findings underscore the importance of developing species-specific measures of consciousness, rather than relying on human-centric benchmarks.
The growing body of research in animal cognition invites us to expand our circle of consideration when it comes to minds and consciousness. It challenges us to recognize and respect the rich inner lives of non-human animals and to consider forms of awareness and intelligence that may be profoundly different from our own.
Artificial Intelligence
So why does this matter? Well, AI is coming. As AI systems become better, a serious question is emerging: Can they possess consciousness? Do they need an internal world simulation in order to be understood as conscious? What would machine consciousness look like? How would we recognize it if it emerged? If we create a system that can flexibly solve problems across domains, would such a system necessarily be conscious?
One of the key debates centers around this question: Is consciousness an emergent property of a system, or does it require some to-be-discovered physical property?
Some researchers argue that once AI systems reach a certain level of complexity and integration, consciousness might naturally emerge.
Others argue that there's an explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experience - the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. The "hard problem" of consciousness, a term coined by philosopher David Chalmers, highlights a philosophical and scientific issue: while we can study and understand the physical processes of the brain, we struggle to explain how and why these processes give rise to subjective experiences, or qualia.
This perspective suggests that even if we create AI systems that can perfectly mimic humans, we still wouldn't necessarily have created conscious machines.
The "hard problem" of consciousness, traditionally framed in human-centric terms, takes on new dimensions when viewed through a non-anthropocentric lens. Instead of asking why human neural processes give rise to subjective experience, we might consider consciousness as a continuum across diverse forms of life and potentially non-biological systems. This perspective invites us to explore how different types of physical or informational organization might give rise to various forms of experience, potentially quite alien to our own. By broadening our inquiry beyond human consciousness, we may find new avenues for addressing this fundamental philosophical question.
What about self-awareness? Do the machines know they exist? And does the nature of being self-aware impact consciousness? This is a philosophical argument we're still having.
And then we get into ethics. If we create these systems and they are on the spectrum of consciousness, what is our moral obligation to them?
Some theories of consciousness suggest that consciousness arises from an organism's embodied interactions with its environment. Can a disembodied AI system ever be truly conscious?
These are a lot of questions, and the point here is not to answer them. That's for people smarter than me. But I do have point, and it's this - check your assumptions. We often define consciousness incorrectly and in very human-centric terms. We are using AI like a philosophy laboratory, and we will be forced to rethink our systems and boundaries around consciousness itself.
DEFINITIONS
So what do I mean by "mind," "awareness," and "consciousness"? I'm broadly defining mind as the seat of cognition and subjective experience, awareness as the state of being conscious of something, and consciousness as the subjective experience of being. These are hard definitions.
This is similar to the striking ineffability of the religious traditions we describe above. Mystics often struggle to put their experiences into words, stating that they transcend ordinary language and conceptual thinking. Yet despite this difficulty, the descriptions that do emerge show remarkable similarities across vastly different cultural and historical contexts.
My definition of "mind" attempts to do two things: capture cognition and subjective experience. But from a non-anthropocentric perspective, mind could be the collective "mind" of an ant colony, or a computer chip processing information.
Awareness is "the state of being conscious of something," but what does it mean to be conscious? It does seem like it's broader than merely attentional focus. I can be focused on writing this paper on my laptop, but I can be aware of the plane passing by overhead without losing that focus. Plants can have complex responses to the environment, including touch. Is that awareness?
And of course, the real doozy here is "consciousness". The whole paper is about defining it. Even my definition, "the subjective experience of being", is rooted in a human perspective. As we discussed above, consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe, present to some degree in all systems that integrate information. This would suggest a vast spectrum of consciousness, from the micro-awareness of fundamental particles to the complex consciousness of human brains and beyond.
It's crucial to remember that these definitions are still works in progress, and language itself is shaped and limited by human experience. It is virtually impossible to discuss consciousness fully in language, a challenge akin to Dionysius the Areopagite's Via Negativa. It may be that the only way to describe consciousness is like Dionysius's description of God: we can only talk about what it's NOT. The challenge is to remain open to possibility.
OUR LIMITED PERSPECTIVE
Our human perspective is so limited. We cannot directly experience the inner lives of other beings. Accepting our limits is critical.
This reminds me of Thomas Nagel's paper, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?". In it, he says that even if we knew everything there is to know about bat physiology, neurology, and behavior, we still wouldn't know what it's like to be a bat from the bat's subjective point of view. This is because the bat's sensory apparatus and way of interacting with the world (through echolocation, for instance) is so fundamentally different from our own that we cannot imagine or conceptualize the bat's subjective experience.
We are trapped within our own subjective experience. When we try to imagine the inner life of a bat, or an octopus, or a tree, or an artificial intelligence, we inevitably anthropomorphize to some degree. We project human-like qualities onto these entities because that's the only form of consciousness we directly know. But this projection may be deeply misleading when it comes to understanding radically different forms of awareness or cognition.
An AI's goals or motivations might be entirely alien to biological imperatives. Trying to understand or empathize with such a form of consciousness stretches our conceptual frameworks to their limits.
To shape this, we should consider new conceptual frameworks and language as they emerge.
A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
Let's be clear - I understand basically nothing about this. But I needed a life preserver to cling on to while thinking about it, and these three key principles of non-anthropocentric consciousness emerged: Interconnectedness, Multiplicity, and Spectrum Consciousness.
What I'm looking for here is flexibility and humility in theory of mind. I want something that helps us understand that consciousness is very different than how we initially describe it.
Interconnectedness means recognizing that individual minds or consciousnesses may be part of larger, interconnected systems of awareness. Our minds don't exist in isolation. They're connected as a system and exist for and with each other. This idea comes from an understanding of the mystic traditions, but also more practical systems theory ideas. It acknowledges the context. It also opens up the possibility of collective consciousness.
Multiplicity: Our consciousness can be in things other than brains. In other words, it's not tied to the physical. It allows for understanding alien life, for realizing silicon-based consciousness, and for giving credit to the octopus's amazing nervous system. It challenges us to think more deeply about what the word even means if it exists outside of the brain.
Spectrum Consciousness: Rather than viewing consciousness as a binary state (present in humans, absent in others), we should consider it as a continuum with varying degrees and forms of awareness. It has various degrees. It manifests differently in different systems. It moves from rudimentary proto-consciousness to complex awareness and sentience.
Of note, seeing it as a linear spectrum is probably flawed. There are a lot of consciousnesses that might not fall neatly on a spectrum. One potential approach is to consider consciousness as a multidimensional space rather than a linear spectrum. Different forms of consciousness might vary along multiple axes, including:
1. Scope of awareness (from narrow, localized awareness to expansive, universal awareness)
2. Degree of self-reflection
3. How cognition interacts with time
4. How information gets integrated
5. Types of subjective experiences
6. How it interacts with the environment
These might be collapsable, and it might be possible to just have consciousness on a “more” or “less” scale. I’m not sure.
ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
Thanks for sticking with me till the end. The implications of this are pretty weird, and I don't know what to do with them. There do seem to be some important ethical things to discuss.
Of note, I do think we should spend time looking to the mystical traditions. They've been grappling with the ethical consequences of non-anthropocentric consciousness for thousands of years and have figured a few things out.
But there's no way around it - rethinking consciousness requires us to rethink our moral boundaries. Ethics can no longer be all about us.
This is a new frontier of ethical expansion, one that transcends the boundaries of our species and potentially even the boundary between the animate and inanimate.
The biggest questions seem to fall into categories of rights and moral status. Is it ok to eat meat? Is factory farming justified? What are our obligations to a computer that is capable of suffering or joy? Unlike animals, machines can communicate in our language. Does that change our moral obligation?
Adopting a non-anthropocentric approach to consciousness has profound implications for both scientific research and philosophical understanding. By moving beyond human-centric models, we open up new avenues for investigating the nature of experience across biological and potentially non-biological systems. This perspective challenges us to develop more inclusive theories of consciousness, to create novel experimental paradigms, and to reconsider ethical questions about our relationship with other conscious entities. As we continue to explore consciousness in its myriad forms, a non-anthropocentric viewpoint will be crucial for advancing our understanding of this fundamental aspect of reality.
We need to fundamentally reconsider human supremacy. We are not the masters of all we survey - we are the stewards and caretakers of a vast consciousness. We are part of the world, not above it.
APOLOGY
Thanks for reading. If you know a lot about this subject, you’ll be disappointed in my lack of research here. This is my apology.
Books I haven’t read that I should have before writing this include I Am a Strange Loop, The Mind's I, The Master and His Emissary, Other Minds, Consciousness Explained, and Being You.
I didn’t talk about free will, which is really important. I also didn’t dip into plant “consciousness” which is maybe not real and certainly controversial. I didn’t talk about the Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind. I didn’t mention Jung or any of his ideas around collective consciousness.
I imagine I oversimplified a lot of the religious stuff — for example, I’ve become pretty well-read on Christianity, but only included one throwaway sentence on the world’s biggest religion. I didn’t go deep into Buddhism but there’s tons to unpack there.
I didn’t talk about where consciousness is “located” (is it in the mind?). I also was inconsistent with how broadly I talked about the constraints of a consciousness. Is an ant colony conscious? Is the internet? I don’t think so, but it’s not 100% clear why I don’t think so.
Despite all that, I hope there was something useful here. Thanks again.