Annaka Harris
About
Author and consciousness researcher; podcast guest discussing consciousness, including the audio publication 'Lights On'
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Claims by Annaka Harris (20 of 57)
Both physicalism and idealism start from an assumption
Letting go of the hard problem by assuming that matter causes consciousness to arise is no more justified than assuming consciousness is fundamental everywhere; either way one is simply choosing an unproven assumption about how consciousness relates to matter, so taking consciousness as fundamental is at least as legitimate a starting point.
Science crosses the boundary of evolved perception via math
We can gain access to truths about reality outside the boundary of our evolved perceptual systems through science, math, and logic; for example, we have no evolved perceptual intuition for what light is, yet through scientific theory up to quantum mechanics we have gotten much closer to its nature even though it remains mysterious.
Causality should be reframed as relationship beyond time
Because our concept of causality is defined by something in the past producing something in the future and therefore depends on time, in a framework where time is not fundamental causality should be redefined as connection, relationship, or influence rather than one event producing another in temporal sequence.
Consciousness may be experience of a deeper dynamic
It is possible that consciousness itself is not the dynamic but is the experience of deeper non-conscious fields or structures unfolding, which would require going to a level more fundamental than consciousness; Gödel's theorem hints that what can be written down is trivial compared to what cannot, pointing toward something even more fundamental that consciousness is exploring.
The term agent imports misleading anthropomorphic baggage
Calling the fundamental units of consciousness 'agents' is unnecessary and misleading because it sounds anthropomorphic and smuggles in notions like free will and selfhood that many neuroscientists regard as illusions; neutral terms like 'conscious unit', 'connection', or 'relationship' better fit a fundamental level where causality and free will do not apply.
Consciousness Could Go Deeper Than Science Assumes
What began as the question of whether consciousness goes deeper in nature than the sciences assumed led to the conclusion that if it goes deeper at all, it must go all the way down, making the real question whether consciousness is fundamental.
Memory Determines Likelihood of a Self
Wherever there is more memory there is a greater chance of an experience of being a self, because memory creates continuity through time; a liver shows no signs of memory so any experience it has would be minimal and fleeting with no sense of being a self, whereas systems like a Venus flytrap exhibit primitive memory.
Consciousness As Fundamental Would Be a Paradigm Shift
If scientists become as convinced that consciousness could be fundamental as they currently are that it emerges, this would constitute the next paradigm shift, generating entirely new questions and going in directions no one can yet imagine.
Physicists Largely Agree Space Is Emergent
Physicists are broadly in agreement that space is emergent and not fundamental, whereas time remains in a different category without scientific consensus; just as the color green is not out there but is how the brain represents a wavelength, three-dimensional space may be how the brain maps an underlying non-spatial structure.
Sharing Memories Would Dissolve the Self
If technology allowed the experiences another person had yesterday to inform my experience now — just as my own past experiences inform my present through memory — there would be no principled reason I couldn't have a memory of being you making breakfast, which would naturally dissolve the felt separateness of the self.
Quantum Mechanics Plus Relativity Violates Locality
Combining quantum mechanics with relativity violates locality in Einstein's most basic sense — the stipulation that all things have a location — because making the Heisenberg uncertainty principle observer-independent means a particle's different positions are no longer mutually exclusive, so the same particle could be found in two places at once.
Web of Time Visualizes the Block Universe
The flow of time as an illusion can be visualized as a web of nodes where we experience only one node at a time as a spotlight travels across it inch by inch; the whole web already exists, so apparent causality (A causes F) merely illuminates pre-existing connections, a dynamic modern version of the block universe view.
Consciousness Cannot Be Observed From Outside
Consciousness is unique among everything science studies because it can never be directly observed from the outside; the only evidence for its existence is intrinsic, on the inside, so no external behavior can announce that there is something it is like to be a system.
Yellow Is Generated By the Brain Not Found Outside
The felt experience of seeing yellow does not exist in the world — only light wavelengths do; the brain generates the experience of yellow, and since cameras, computers, and plants also process light wavelengths without our assuming they have experience, it is mysterious why brains should produce a felt experience at all.
Whether Consciousness Is Fundamental Is a Physics Question
If consciousness is fundamental, then because the science of the fundamental is physics, the question of whether consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe is ultimately a question for physics — though it must be heavily informed by neuroscience.
Two Starting Assumptions: All or Some Conscious
When we don't know how consciousness arises, we are faced with two possible starting assumptions about which collections of atoms are conscious — all or some — because we know the answer isn't none given our own direct experience; science chose 'some' as a natural starting place, but 'all' (consciousness fundamental) is an equally legitimate starting position to explore.
Consciousness Is Not the Author of Our Actions
A large body of neuroscience disproves the strong intuition that consciousness is causal — that our felt experience of making a decision is what authors our thoughts and actions; in fact most brain processes show the reportable conscious experience comes at the tail end of processing, not as the initiating lever.
The Strong Assumption Lacks Good Evidence
The 'strong assumption' — that consciousness arises out of complex processing in brains and central nervous systems — is an assumption science made because we are conscious creatures who can only gather evidence by communicating with systems similar to ourselves, but we actually have no good reason to begin with it.
Memory Not Multiple Streams Explains Unity of Self
Rather than thinking of the brain as containing multiple streams of consciousness, it is more useful to think about memory — how different conscious experiences get tied together through time; the sense of being a single concrete entity moving through time is false, as each moment is a new conscious experience affected by previous ones through memory.
Plants Process Light in Vision-Like Ways
Research since around 2014 shows plants can perform complex tasks based on detecting light in ways that resemble vision and that they have more photoreceptors than humans, which raises the question of why we assume our light processing requires a felt experience of seeing while comparable or more complex processing in nature does not.
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