Unifying Consciousness with the Universe

The following is a summary appearing at the end of one of the chapters:

Lets take a moment to take stock of what has been said in this chapter.  The irreducibility of consciousness, and the failure of the chemicals in the brain to have enough physical variability to represent different experiences, require us to give up on a purely reductive materialistic theory.  The conscious property is a new property of matter.  The conscious property contains conscious content in the form of a representation.  It is not an existence by itself, but simply belongs to some matter.  The difference between the conscious property and consciousness is that, while they both carry representational content, only consciousness has awareness along with it.  Consciousness is a third type of existence in the Universe, along with matter and energy.

The conscious property is a third type of property that exists in matter and energy.  Both matter and energy have particle-like and wave-like properties.  I am proposing a third property, namely the conscious property, that can exist in matter or energy.  This property, that exists in the form of representational content, does not affect other properties or functions of matter.

The conscious property requires two functions that act on other conscious properties of nearby matter.  The conscious property must be able to be transferred from one structure of matter to another.  The conscious property must also be able to perform the matching process.  Certain, but not all, biological cells in our brain are designed to perform these two functions.  A conscious producing neuron will transfer its neutral representation into its neurotransmitters.  The neurotransmitters are stored in the terminal buttons at the end of the neuron.  When the neuron gets activated, it sends out the neurotransmitters with the conscious property, containing its neutral representation, already stored in them.

The matching process involves one neuron gathering the conscious properties of all of the neurotransmitters that the neuron receives at one time, and then matching it against the neuron’s neutral representation.  If the match is close enough, then the matching process will result in a real conscious experience being generated.  The conscious experience comes into existence by borrowing energy from the cell.  The borrowed energy is transformed into a conscious experience because of the facts that consciousness is a third type of existence, and there is an equivalency relationship between consciousness and energy, and, hence, matter as well.  The amount of energy borrowed to generate a conscious experience is very small according to my estimate of the equivalency relationship C= Ec².  C in this equation refers to consciousness.  Consciousness exists in packets that do not depend on the amount of information in the experience but it depends on the amount of time it exists for.  A conscious experience will exist for a brief period of time, lets just say it is anywhere from 15 to 200 milliseconds for now.  In a later chapter we will get a theoretical estimate of 100 milliseconds.  Once the time is up, the conscious experience ends and the borrowed energy is returned to the cell.

In our brain, different conscious experiences are constantly starting and ending in different areas.  We do notice that certain associated groups of neurons are very closely coordinated in the time that they are all activated.  This means that groups of neurons that correspond to a particular experience all become activated at the same time.  This would make all of the parts a one particular conscious experience active at the same time.  So, the experience as a whole starts at the same time and ends at the same time.

The following is an excerpt from a different chapter:

Matter, for example, would have both wave and particle properties, and it would also contain the conscious property of my theory.  The wavelike properties of matter restrict where the particle-like properties can manifest themselves.  The particle must exist somewhere in the wave, and there is a probability distribution within the wave that shows the likelihood of the particle to be observed at some point.  Also, when the particle is observed at some point, then this restricts where the wavelike properties will be located around.  So, the wave and particle properties restrict each other.  I would therefore conclude that the conscious property joins this relationship by following the same restriction as to where the conscious property exists.  The conscious property exists as a representation so I don’t see how it can contribute to the wave and particle aspects of matter.  There is no need for it to contribute anything observable.  This is because consciousness is separate from matter and energy.  The conscious property of matter only affects what the representational content of consciousness will be.  And this conscious property of matter is simply representational content stored, or is a part of, the particle of matter.

If consciousness is a third type of existence, should it have wave and particle properties as well?  Consciousness has some of these aspects in its nature.  Consciousness exists at some point or in some general area in space.  But consciousness is not like matter or energy at all.  I think that the idea of the conscious property in my theory probably requires that matter and energy have conscious-like properties, and that’s exactly what the conscious property is.  The conscious property is the consciousness aspect in matter and energy.  This aspect of m