I Am a Strange Loop

Such musings might lead you to posing other hard questions, such as: What exactly constitutes a leaf pile? How many leaves, and of what size, does it take to make a leaf pile? Which leaves belong to it, and which ones do not? Is “belonging” to a given leaf pile always a black-and-white matter? What about the air between the leaves? What about the dirt on a leaf? What if the leaves are dry, and a few (or half, or most) of them have been crushed into tiny pieces? What if there are two neighboring leaf piles that share a few leaves between them? Is it 100 percent clear at all times where the borders of a leaf pile are? In short, how does Mother Nature figure out in a perfectly black-and-white fashion what things are worthy recipients of dollops of Leafpilishness?

If you were in a yet more philosophical mood, you might ask yourself questions such as: What would happen if, through some freak accident or bizarre mistake, a dollop of Leafpilishness got attached to, say, a leaf pile with an ant crawling in it (that is, to the compound entity consisting of leaf pile plus ant)? Or to just the upper two-thirds of a leaf pile? Or to a pile of seaweed? Or to a child’s crumbly sand castle on the beach? Or to the San Francisco Zoo? Or to Andromeda galaxy? Or to my dentist appointment next week? What would happen if two dollops of Leafpilishness accidentally got attached to just one leaf pile? (Or zero dollops, yielding a “zombie” leaf pile?) What dreadful or marvelous consequences would ensue?

I suspect, reader, that you would not take seriously a liphosopher who argued that Leafpilishness was a central and mystical aspect of the cosmos, that it transcended physical law, that items possessing Leafpilishness were inherently different from all other items in the universe, and that each and every leaf pile had a unique identity — thanks not to its unique internal composition but rather to the particular dollop of Leafpilishness that had been doled out to it from who knows where. I hope you would join me in saying, “Liphosophy is a motley belief pile!” and in paying it no heed.

Consciousness: A Capitalized Essence

So much for liphosophers. Now let’s turn to philosophers who see consciousness as an elusive — in fact, undetectable — and yet terribly important nonphysical aspect of the universe. In order to distinguish this notion of consciousness from the one I’ve been talking about all through this book, I’m going to capitalize it: “Consciousness”. Whenever you see this word capitalized, just think of the nonphysical essence called élan mental, or else make an analogy to Racecar Power^® or Leafpilishness; either way, you won’t be far off.

At this point, I have to admit that I have a rather feeble imagination for Capitalized Essences. In trying to picture in my mind a physical object imbued with a nonphysical essence (such as Leafpilishness or élan mental), I inadvertently fall back on imagery derived from the purely physical world. Thus for me, the attempt to imagine a “dollop of Consciousness” or a “nonphysical soul” inevitably brings to mind a translucent, glowing swirl of haze floating within and perhaps a little bit around the physical object that it inhabits. Mind you, I know all too well that this is most wrong, since the phenomenon is, by definition, not a physical one. But as I said, my imagination is feeble, and I need this kind of physical crutch to help it out.

In any case, the idea of a sharp dichotomy between objects imbued with dollops of Consciousness and those deprived of such leads to all sorts of puzzling riddles, such as the following:

Which physical entities possess Consciousness, and which ones do not? Does a whole human body possess Consciousness? Or is it just the human’s brain that is Conscious? Or could it be that only a certain part of the brain is Conscious? What are the exact boundaries of a Conscious physical entity? What organizational or chemical property of a physical structure is it that graces it with the right to be invaded by a dollop of Consciousness?

What mechanism in nature makes the elusive elixir of Consciousness glom onto some physical entities and spurn others? What wondrous pattern-recognition algorithm does Consciousness possess so as to infallibly recognize just the proper kinds of physical objects that deserve it, so it can then bestow itself onto them?

How does Consciousness know to do this? Does it somehow go around the physical world in search of candidate objects to glom onto? Or does it shine a metaphorical flashlight metaphorically down at the world and examine it piece by piece, occasionally saying to itself, “Aha! So there’s an entity that deserves one standard-size dollop of me!”