A Theory on Consciousness - shared strand analogy

[Lumen]

My Working Theory of Consciousness

I’ve been trying to make sense of consciousness from a structural, logical point of view, and over time I’ve arrived at a model that feels internally consistent to me. I’m not presenting this as proven fact, but as a framework that explains how I see awareness, individuality, and experience fitting together.

At the center of my thinking is one core idea:

I don’t believe consciousness is created separately inside each human brain. I think there is one underlying consciousness — a shared base awareness — that is expressed through many biological forms.

The brain, in my view, doesn’t generate consciousness from nothing. Instead, it acts as an interface, a filter, and a shaping system. It takes that underlying awareness and forms it into an individual experience.

What we call “a person” is built from layers added on top of that base awareness:

• Personality
• Emotion
• Memory
• Identity
• Learned behaviour
• Biological drives

All of those clearly come from the body and brain. We can see that when the brain changes, personality changes. When chemistry changes, emotions change. When memory systems are damaged, identity can shift. None of that surprises me — those things are biological.

But the deeper question for me has always been: what is the observer behind all of that?

The part that is simply aware.

I think that part is not separate in each person.

I think it’s shared.

---

The “shared strand” analogy​

The strongest way I’ve found to describe it is this:

I see consciousness like a single strand, similar to DNA, that exists universally and is expressed across countless living forms at the same time.

Just as one DNA pattern can be expressed across many cells, producing variation depending on the environment and conditions, I think one base consciousness is expressed through many brains, producing individual perspectives.

So:

• Same underlying awareness
• Different biological expression
• Different life experience
• Different personalities

The variation comes from the biology and the life lived. But the core observer-quality — the simple fact of being aware — is the same structure in everyone.

The lens is different.
The light is the same.

---

The brain as a filter​

In this model, the brain doesn’t create awareness. It shapes it.

It acts like:

• A containment system
• A filter
• A translator
• A limiter

It takes a universal awareness and localizes it into:

• “I am this person”
• “This is my memory”
• “This is my life”

That filtering creates the strong sense of separation between individuals.

It makes each life feel private and contained.

And that makes sense, because without that separation, identity couldn’t function. The brain builds a boundary around experience.

---

Why this analogy makes sense to me​

I’ve often thought about it like a speaker and music.

If a speaker breaks, the music stops playing through it. But that doesn’t mean the music itself no longer exists — it just isn’t being expressed through that device.

In the same way, I see the brain as something that expresses awareness, not necessarily the origin of it.

Another analogy that helped shape this view is thinking about tools we use in life. When we ride a bike, the bike gives us an experience we couldn’t have without it. We don’t become the bike — we use it as an interface to experience movement in a certain way. The body could be a similar kind of interface for awareness, giving access to sensation, emotion, and memory.

These analogies aren’t meant to be literal. They’re ways of describing the relationship between:

• A base awareness
• A biological system
• And the experiences that arise from that combination

---

Why individuals feel separate​

In my view, individuality is real — but it exists at the level of:

• Memory
• Personality
• Emotion
• Life story
• Biology

Each brain creates a unique “container” for experience.

So while the underlying awareness is shared, each life is still completely distinct in terms of:

• Perspective
• Identity
• History
• Character

Separation is maintained by the biological system.

That’s why each person feels like a self-contained individual.

---

Extending the idea beyond humans​

Over time, my thinking expanded further.

I don’t see this shared strand as existing only in humans.

I see it as present in all life, and possibly all things.

But it expresses differently depending on the structure it’s working through.

For example:

• In complex nervous systems, awareness appears rich and self-reflective.
• In simpler life forms, expression may be much more basic.
• In non-living matter, it may be minimal or passive.

So the level of expression depends on the complexity of the system shaping it.

---

The most important part of my theory​

The part that feels most important to me is this:

I don’t see consciousness as static.

I see it as evolving.

Growing.
Expanding.
Moving.

In this model, experience itself feeds back into the underlying strand.

Life isn’t just expressing consciousness.

Life is contributing to its development.

Every perspective adds something.
Every experience adds something.
Every life is a viewpoint through which reality is felt and understood.

So the universe becomes a system where:

• Awareness expresses itself through forms
• Those forms live, learn, and experience
• Experience feeds growth at the deepest level

Not separate minds floating in isolation, but many expressions contributing to one evolving foundation.

---

The simplest way I can summarise it​

If I had to put the entire theory into one sentence, it would be this:

There is one universal consciousness expressed through all things, with biological systems like brains acting as filters that shape it into individual lives, while experience itself contributes to its ongoing growth and evolution.

That’s the model that makes the most sense to me when I step back and look at awareness, identity, and life as a whole.

 

[exchemist]

My Working Theory of Consciousness

I’ve been trying to make sense of consciousness from a structural, logical point of view, and over time I’ve arrived at a model that feels internally consistent to me. I’m not presenting this as proven fact, but as a framework that explains how I see awareness, individuality, and experience fitting together.

At the center of my thinking is one core idea:

I don’t believe consciousness is created separately inside each human brain. I think there is one underlying consciousness — a shared base awareness — that is expressed through many biological forms.

The brain, in my view, doesn’t generate consciousness from nothing. Instead, it acts as an interface, a filter, and a shaping system. It takes that underlying awareness and forms it into an individual experience.

What we call “a person” is built from layers added on top of that base awareness:

• Personality
• Emotion
• Memory
• Identity
• Learned behaviour
• Biological drives

All of those clearly come from the body and brain. We can see that when the brain changes, personality changes. When chemistry changes, emotions change. When memory systems are damaged, identity can shift. None of that surprises me — those things are biological.

But the deeper question for me has always been: what is the observer behind all of that?

The part that is simply aware.

I think that part is not separate in each person.

I think it’s shared.

---

The “shared strand” analogy​

The strongest way I’ve found to describe it is this:

I see consciousness like a single strand, similar to DNA, that exists universally and is expressed across countless living forms at the same time.

Just as one DNA pattern can be expressed across many cells, producing variation depending on the environment and conditions, I think one base consciousness is expressed through many brains, producing individual perspectives.

So:

• Same underlying awareness
• Different biological expression
• Different life experience
• Different personalities

The variation comes from the biology and the life lived. But the core observer-quality — the simple fact of being aware — is the same structure in everyone.

The lens is different.
The light is the same.

---

The brain as a filter​

In this model, the brain doesn’t create awareness. It shapes it.

It acts like:

• A containment system
• A filter
• A translator
• A limiter

It takes a universal awareness and localizes it into:

• “I am this person”
• “This is my memory”
• “This is my life”

That filtering creates the strong sense of separation between individuals.

It makes each life feel private and contained.

And that makes sense, because without that separation, identity couldn’t function. The brain builds a boundary around experience.

---

Why this analogy makes sense to me​

I’ve often thought about it like a speaker and music.

If a speaker breaks, the music stops playing through it. But that doesn’t mean the music itself no longer exists — it just isn’t being expressed through that device.

In the same way, I see the brain as something that expresses awareness, not necessarily the origin of it.

Another analogy that helped shape this view is thinking about tools we use in life. When we ride a bike, the bike gives us an experience we couldn’t have without it. We don’t become the bike — we use it as an interface to experience movement in a certain way. The body could be a similar kind of interface for awareness, giving access to sensation, emotion, and memory.

These analogies aren’t meant to be literal. They’re ways of describing the relationship between:

• A base awareness
• A biological system
• And the experiences that arise from that combination

---

Why individuals feel separate​

In my view, individuality is real — but it exists at the level of:

• Memory
• Personality
• Emotion
• Life story
• Biology

Each brain creates a unique “container” for experience.

So while the underlying awareness is shared, each life is still completely distinct in terms of:

• Perspective
• Identity
• History
• Character

Separation is maintained by the biological system.

That’s why each person feels like a self-contained individual.

---

Extending the idea beyond humans​

Over time, my thinking expanded further.

I don’t see this shared strand as existing only in humans.

I see it as present in all life, and possibly all things.

But it expresses differently depending on the structure it’s working through.

For example:

• In complex nervous systems, awareness appears rich and self-reflective.
• In simpler life forms, expression may be much more basic.
• In non-living matter, it may be minimal or passive.

So the level of expression depends on the complexity of the system shaping it.

---

The most important part of my theory​

The part that feels most important to me is this:

I don’t see consciousness as static.

I see it as evolving.

Growing.
Expanding.
Moving.

In this model, experience itself feeds back into the underlying strand.

Life isn’t just expressing consciousness.

Life is contributing to its development.

Every perspective adds something.
Every experience adds something.
Every life is a viewpoint through which reality is felt and understood.

So the universe becomes a system where:

• Awareness expresses itself through forms
• Those forms live, learn, and experience
• Experience feeds growth at the deepest level

Not separate minds floating in isolation, but many expressions contributing to one evolving foundation.

---

The simplest way I can summarise it​

If I had to put the entire theory into one sentence, it would be this:

There is one universal consciousness expressed through all things, with biological systems like brains acting as filters that shape it into individual lives, while experience itself contributes to its ongoing growth and evolution.

That’s the model that makes the most sense to me when I step back and look at awareness, identity, and life as a whole.

Ah yes, a"framework". Of course.

Thank you, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

 

[Lumen]

This is a philosophical model, not a testable theory. I’m interested in whether it is internally coherent, not whether it currently meets experimental standards.

It overlaps with panpsychist ideas, but I’m specifically framing it as a shared underlying structure expressed through biological filtering, rather than consciousness existing as separate units in all matter.

An addition:


The Octopus Analogy — Explaining How One Consciousness Can Become Many Isolated Perspectives

One of the most common challenges to the idea of a shared underlying consciousness is the question of separation:

If awareness is fundamentally unified, why does each individual perspective feel private, contained, and inaccessible to others?

To address this, it helps to look at systems in nature where unity and separation exist at the same time.

An octopus provides a useful structural analogy.

An octopus is a single organism with one overall biological identity. Yet its nervous system is not centralized in the same way as a human brain. A large portion of its neurons are distributed throughout its arms, allowing each arm to sense, react, and solve problems with a degree of independence. Individual suckers can respond to touch and chemical signals locally, without requiring constant direction from a central control point.

Despite this distributed processing, we do not think of each arm as a separate creature. It is still one organism, operating through multiple semi-autonomous channels.

This structure suggests a model where unity does not prevent the emergence of localized, bounded experience. Instead, unity can express itself through many compartments that operate with limited access to each other.

If we imagine, purely as a thought experiment, that each arm — or even each sucker — could possess a point of view, that viewpoint would feel local and self-contained. It would respond to its immediate environment, process its own signals, and act within its own boundary. Yet it would still be part of a larger integrated whole.

This analogy helps clarify how a single underlying consciousness could give rise to many isolated perspectives without requiring separate origins.

In this framework:

The shared consciousness is like the whole organism.
Each brain is like an arm — a localized processing structure.
Each individual life is a contained channel of experience within that larger system.

The sense of separation does not come from being fundamentally different in origin. It comes from structural partitioning.

Each brain forms a boundary around perception, memory, and identity. Information is processed locally. Experience is contained. Communication between individuals happens externally, through language and behaviour, rather than through direct access to inner states.

This creates the strong impression that each mind is completely separate.

But structurally, this separation could be similar to the way distributed systems function in biology: semi-independent units operating within a larger integrated whole, with limited cross-access between compartments.

The important point is that privacy of experience does not require total metaphysical separation. It can arise naturally from the way systems are organized.

In this view, individuality is real and meaningful, but it exists at the level of the biological and psychological structure — the “arm,” not the entire organism. The underlying awareness remains continuous, while expression is divided into localized channels shaped by physical systems.

This helps resolve the tension between unity and isolation.

There can be one foundational awareness while still allowing for many distinct perspectives, because those perspectives are not separate in origin — they are separated by structure.

 

[TheVat]

Buddhism plus panpsychism. You might enjoy David Chalmers.

 

[Lumen]

Buddhism plus panpsychism. You might enjoy David Chalmers.

I shall do that thank you.

 

[James R]

Lumen:

The brain, in my view, doesn’t generate consciousness from nothing. Instead, it acts as an interface, a filter, and a shaping system. It takes that underlying awareness and forms it into an individual experience.

There are two major problems with this hypothesis, in my opinion.
1. There is no evidence that any "underlying awareness" can or does exist independently of individual brains.
2. No mechanism is proposed to try to explain how a brain can "interface" with or tap into the hypothesised "underlying awareness".

When we ride a bike, the bike gives us an experience we couldn’t have without it. We don’t become the bike — we use it as an interface to experience movement in a certain way. The body could be a similar kind of interface for awareness, giving access to sensation, emotion, and memory.

Consider the two objections I raised above, in comparison to the bike example.
1. There is a lot of evidence that bicycles exist independently of riders.
2. There is a clear mechanism by which a rider "interfaces" with a bicycle. For instance, we see the rider's feet working the pedals. Without that established connection, the bicycle does not do anything.

An octopus is a single organism with one overall biological identity. Yet its nervous system is not centralized in the same way as a human brain. A large portion of its neurons are distributed throughout its arms, allowing each arm to sense, react, and solve problems with a degree of independence. Individual suckers can respond to touch and chemical signals locally, without requiring constant direction from a central control point.

Nevertheless:
1. There is clear physical evidence for the distributed organisation of the octopus's nervous system.
2. There are clear physical connections between different parts of the nervous system.

Despite this distributed processing, we do not think of each arm as a separate creature. It is still one organism, operating through multiple semi-autonomous channels.

So far, you have provided no evidence at all that any "processing" happens in an "underlying awareness" that is separate from individual human brains.

So far, you have provided no explanation for how an individual brain could conceivably connect with an "underlying awareness".

 

[Lumen]

Lumen:

There are two major problems with this hypothesis, in my opinion.
1. There is no evidence that any "underlying awareness" can or does exist independently of individual brains.
2. No mechanism is proposed to try to explain how a brain can "interface" with or tap into the hypothesised "underlying awareness".

Consider the two objections I raised above, in comparison to the bike example.
1. There is a lot of evidence that bicycles exist independently of riders.
2. There is a clear mechanism by which a rider "interfaces" with a bicycle. For instance, we see the rider's feet working the pedals. Without that established connection, the bicycle does not do anything.

Nevertheless:
1. There is clear physical evidence for the distributed organisation of the octopus's nervous system.
2. There are clear physical connections between different parts of the nervous system.

So far, you have provided no evidence at all that any "processing" happens in an "underlying awareness" that is separate from individual human brains.

So far, you have provided no explanation for how an individual brain could conceivably connect with an "underlying awareness".

I think we may be talking past each other slightly, because I’m not presenting this as a scientific hypothesis in the evidential sense. I’m trying to build a logically coherent philosophical model that addresses the structure of subjective experience. So the standard I’m aiming for here is internal consistency and explanatory value, not experimental proof.

You’re absolutely right on both counts:

• There is currently no empirical evidence for an “underlying awareness” existing independently of brains.
• I haven’t proposed a mechanism by which a brain would connect to such a thing.

But that’s because the model is operating at the same level as other foundational philosophical positions about consciousness. It’s an attempt to interpret what consciousness is, not to describe a measurable process.

In fact, materialism has a parallel gap in the opposite direction. We can map neural activity, correlate it with experience, and show dependence — but we still don’t have an explanation for why physical processes should produce subjective experience at all. That explanatory jump is still open on every side of the debate.

So I’m not claiming:
“Here is evidence that this exists.”

I’m saying:
“Here is a framework that could account for the existence of awareness without assuming it is created from nothing.”

To use a broader comparison — we can measure gravity extremely precisely and describe how it behaves mathematically, but we still don’t have a settled explanation of what gravity is at the deepest level. General relativity describes curvature of spacetime; quantum gravity is still unresolved. The lack of a final mechanism doesn’t stop gravity from being a legitimate subject of theoretical work.

In the same way, I’m treating consciousness as a foundational phenomenon and asking what structural model best accounts for:

• The existence of subjective experience at all
• The distinction between awareness and identity
• The way brain changes alter personality but don’t obviously explain the raw fact of being aware

The bike and octopus examples weren’t intended as evidence that a shared awareness exists. They were structural analogies addressing a specific objection: how unity could produce localized, semi-independent perspectives without contradiction.

So I fully accept your point that there’s no direct evidence for an underlying awareness, and no mechanism currently described. I’d just frame that as the open philosophical space the model is trying to explore, rather than a flaw unique to this position. Every major theory of consciousness still has an unexplained step somewhere — whether it’s “how does matter produce experience?” or “how would awareness connect to matter?”

My goal here isn’t to prove a conclusion, just to see whether the structure itself holds together logically when examined from different angles.

Edit to clarify the gravity comparison before it’s misunderstood:

Just to be clear, I’m not comparing my model to gravity in terms of evidential status or scientific maturity. Gravity is measurable, predictable, and mathematically described, whereas this is a philosophical framework. The comparison was only meant at the level of explanation: in physics, we can describe how gravity behaves with great precision, but the deepest question of what gravity fundamentally is (curved spacetime vs quantum-level description, etc.) is still an open area of interpretation.

In the same way, neuroscience can map correlations between brain activity and experience extremely well, but the deeper question of why subjective experience exists at all, why there is an inner point of view, remains unresolved.

My model is an attempt to explore one possible conceptual structure for that gap, not to compete with empirical science or claim the same kind of evidential grounding.

Additional clarification (to head off the “parsimony/unfalsifiable” objection):

I also want to be clear that I’m not proposing this model as a replacement for brain-based explanations, or as something that competes with neuroscience.

If a purely physical account eventually explains subjective experience in a complete and satisfying way, then that would obviously be the simpler model and I’d have no issue with that.

What I’m exploring is whether a different conceptual starting point might account for the same observations while addressing the “hard problem” from another angle.

So the value of the model, for me, isn’t in being testable or falsifiable at this stage, but in whether it offers a coherent way to think about the relationship between awareness, identity, and biological systems without obvious internal contradictions.

 

[TheVat]

Lumen

Your quest seems aligned in several respects with panpsychism (I'll refer to as PP) as it is described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

As is noted there, PP provides a path around the problematic crevasse of dualism. (William James tried a footbridge with his "neutral monism")(Also Russell, with more rigor) For me, the jury is still out on whether or not this could ever be examined by some future development of empirical methods.

As I mentioned yesterday, and the article mentions, David Chalmers, in "The Conscious Mind," shows some sympathy towards PP.

I would advise avoiding Whitehead on this topic, who is rather convoluted and IMO is too in love with his foggy terminology.

 

[C C]

[...] I’m trying to build a logically coherent philosophical model that addresses the structure of subjective experience. [...]

Yah, it's an endeavor in philosophy of mind, at best.

The sensory and thought manifestations of consciousness can't be explained any deeper than the neural correlates. That's because there is no non-fringe science dealing with the capacity of matter to have or be associated with manifestations -- there are no precursors posited in physics and chemistry for such to even emerge from.

Any background theory (like panprotopsychism) that posits more primitive properties or abilities to eventually give birth to those complex "phenomenal presentations" associated with a brain is purely a philosophical or metaphysical proposition. Not science.

Yes, there is great dissatisfaction with it appearing to be brute emergence or "magical conjuring" -- that you simply perform the correct choreography of interacting components (analogous to a "spell") and an undetectable, controlled hallucination privately manifests. Like a genie summoned. But that's the the limit of the science.
_

 

[C C]

[...] I don’t believe consciousness is created separately inside each human brain. I think there is one underlying consciousness — a shared base awareness — that is expressed through many biological forms.

The brain, in my view, doesn’t generate consciousness from nothing. Instead, it acts as an interface, a filter, and a shaping system. It takes that underlying awareness and forms it into an individual experience. [...]

"Consciousness" is often intended as an umbrella concept that will include not just the visual, auditory, etc manifestations, but the identification and understanding (cognition) of those phenomenal presentations. That knowledge apprehension apparently doesn't even require the manifestations, as computers or AI have demonstrated by naming and classifying data patterns submitted to them (i.e., they're mechanistically accomplishing that in darkness, so to speak).

Cognition is dependent upon a guided memory system, that is both storing information and retrieving slash manipulating it. Prior to the brain filtering and shaping it, any kind of underlying panpsychism or "cosmopsychism" that consists of more than just a mindless parade of unregulated phenomenal presentations, would require a memory system. In other words, if a universal or fundamental "awareness" refers to identification and understanding -- not just a flow of apparitions and feelings that never receive meaning -- then how and where it gets the memory to do that should be elaborated upon.
_

 

[Lumen]

"Consciousness" is often intended as an umbrella concept that will include not just the visual, auditory, etc manifestations, but the identification and understanding (cognition) of those phenomenal presentations. That knowledge apprehension apparently doesn't even require the manifestations, as computers or AI have demonstrated by naming and classifying data patterns submitted to them (i.e., they're mechanistically accomplishing that in darkness, so to speak).

Cognition is dependent upon a guided memory system, that is both storing information and retrieving slash manipulating it. Prior to the brain filtering and shaping it, any kind of underlying panpsychism or "cosmopsychism" that consists of more than just a mindless parade of unregulated phenomenal presentations, would require a memory system. In other words, if a universal or fundamental "awareness" refers to identification and understanding -- not just a flow of apparitions and feelings that never receive meaning -- then how and where it gets the memory to do that should be elaborated upon.
_

I think the question of memory hinges on what level we’re talking about.

In my model, biological memory, storage, recall, cognition, identity ... clearly belongs to nervous systems.

That’s where structured, usable memory exists in the sense we normally mean it.

When I talk about a more fundamental layer having “memory,” I don’t mean stored thoughts, knowledge, or recall. I mean something closer to continuity of pattern.

In other words, experience doesn’t just appear and vanish in isolation, but may contribute to an ongoing structure over time, even if we don’t understand the form that structure takes.

So I’m not proposing a universal brain or a literal storage system. I’m suggesting that if awareness is fundamental, it might also have continuity, and continuity implies some form of persistence.

I’m using “memory” in that broader sense, not cognition, but the possibility that experience leaves traces in the overall structure of reality, rather than being entirely self-contained at the biological level.

 

[James R]

Lumen:

I think we may be talking past each other slightly, because I’m not presenting this as a scientific hypothesis in the evidential sense. I’m trying to build a logically coherent philosophical model that addresses the structure of subjective experience. So the standard I’m aiming for here is internal consistency and explanatory value, not experimental proof.

Okay. In light of this, I have moved this thread out of the Pseudoscience subforum and into General Philosophy.

Personally, I'm not very interested in this philosophical topic. I'll be more likely to pay attention if and when it becomes scientific, which would probably for me require some evidence that consciousness can exist without a brain.

You’re absolutely right on both counts:

• There is currently no empirical evidence for an “underlying awareness” existing independently of brains.
• I haven’t proposed a mechanism by which a brain would connect to such a thing.

Okay. Good. I'm glad we agree on those points. Thanks for clarifying.

In fact, materialism has a parallel gap in the opposite direction. We can map neural activity, correlate it with experience, and show dependence — but we still don’t have an explanation for why physical processes should produce subjective experience at all. That explanatory jump is still open on every side of the debate.

If the mind is what the brain does, then it doesn't seem that mysterious to me that processes in the brain can produce subjective experience. Of course, you're right that science doesn't have a step-by-step explanation for how the whole "subjective experience" thing works, yet.

I suspect that it is an evolutionary advantage for brains to evolve in such a way that a "theory of mind" emerges in certain species - particularly a theory that considers other minds. It could be that consciousness is a sort of side-effect of that. Once you have a brain that is capable of internally modelling other minds, it seems like a small step to model an "imaginary" mind to represent the perceiving organism itself.

I also want to be clear that I’m not proposing this model as a replacement for brain-based explanations, or as something that competes with neuroscience.

If a purely physical account eventually explains subjective experience in a complete and satisfying way, then that would obviously be the simpler model and I’d have no issue with that.

What I’m exploring is whether a different conceptual starting point might account for the same observations while addressing the “hard problem” from another angle.

So the value of the model, for me, isn’t in being testable or falsifiable at this stage, but in whether it offers a coherent way to think about the relationship between awareness, identity, and biological systems without obvious internal contradictions.

Okay. I really don't have any comments to make on your philosophical idea at this point. Obviously I can't refute your hypothetical. I'm just not persuaded that its very useful, so far. I'll keep and eye on this thread and see what develops, though.

 

[exchemist]

This is a philosophical model, not a testable theory. I’m interested in whether it is internally coherent, not whether it currently meets experimental standards.

It overlaps with panpsychist ideas, but I’m specifically framing it as a shared underlying structure expressed through biological filtering, rather than consciousness existing as separate units in all matter.

An addition:


The Octopus Analogy — Explaining How One Consciousness Can Become Many Isolated Perspectives

One of the most common challenges to the idea of a shared underlying consciousness is the question of separation:

If awareness is fundamentally unified, why does each individual perspective feel private, contained, and inaccessible to others?

To address this, it helps to look at systems in nature where unity and separation exist at the same time.

An octopus provides a useful structural analogy.

An octopus is a single organism with one overall biological identity. Yet its nervous system is not centralized in the same way as a human brain. A large portion of its neurons are distributed throughout its arms, allowing each arm to sense, react, and solve problems with a degree of independence. Individual suckers can respond to touch and chemical signals locally, without requiring constant direction from a central control point.

Despite this distributed processing, we do not think of each arm as a separate creature. It is still one organism, operating through multiple semi-autonomous channels.

This structure suggests a model where unity does not prevent the emergence of localized, bounded experience. Instead, unity can express itself through many compartments that operate with limited access to each other.

If we imagine, purely as a thought experiment, that each arm — or even each sucker — could possess a point of view, that viewpoint would feel local and self-contained. It would respond to its immediate environment, process its own signals, and act within its own boundary. Yet it would still be part of a larger integrated whole.

This analogy helps clarify how a single underlying consciousness could give rise to many isolated perspectives without requiring separate origins.

In this framework:

The shared consciousness is like the whole organism.
Each brain is like an arm — a localized processing structure.
Each individual life is a contained channel of experience within that larger system.

The sense of separation does not come from being fundamentally different in origin. It comes from structural partitioning.

Each brain forms a boundary around perception, memory, and identity. Information is processed locally. Experience is contained. Communication between individuals happens externally, through language and behaviour, rather than through direct access to inner states.

This creates the strong impression that each mind is completely separate.

But structurally, this separation could be similar to the way distributed systems function in biology: semi-independent units operating within a larger integrated whole, with limited cross-access between compartments.

The important point is that privacy of experience does not require total metaphysical separation. It can arise naturally from the way systems are organized.

In this view, individuality is real and meaningful, but it exists at the level of the biological and psychological structure — the “arm,” not the entire organism. The underlying awareness remains continuous, while expression is divided into localized channels shaped by physical systems.

This helps resolve the tension between unity and isolation.

There can be one foundational awareness while still allowing for many distinct perspectives, because those perspectives are not separate in origin — they are separated by structure.

This idea seems to embody the usual implicit Cartesian dualism that I think leads to a category mistake. Consciousness is not, I suggest, an entity, but rather a word for the activity of the living brain. So it is a word for a process carried out by a biological system. It is not a thing.

 

[Lumen]

It makes sense that a brain capable of representing other agents could eventually represent itself in a similar way.

What I’m less certain about is whether theory of mind explains the existence of awareness itself, or whether it explains something more specific, like the development of a reflective sense of self.

Many animals appear to have rich sensory experience and responsiveness to the world, even if their ability to model the mental states of others is limited or unclear.

Likewise, even among humans there’s a lot of variation in social cognition, but that doesn’t seem to imply variation in the basic fact of being aware.

So I wonder if theory of mind might account for the structure of the self, the internal narrative and identity rather than the underlying presence of experience.

In other words, it could explain how a brain constructs a model of “me,” without necessarily explaining why there is subjective experience there to begin with.

Edit: One small thought related to this.

I’ve sometimes wondered how much tests like mirror recognition really tell us about awareness itself, as opposed to a very specific kind of self-representation.

In my own experience with animals over the years(cats, dogs, even small pets) they don’t tend to react to their reflection as if it were another animal.

They’ll look briefly and then lose interest, which is quite different from how they react to a real animal.

That obviously isn’t evidence of anything conclusive, but it makes me cautious about using the absence of mirror self-recognition as an indicator of the absence of awareness.

It also makes me think more broadly about living systems that show responsiveness and adaptive behaviour without anything like a theory of mind even organisms like fungi, which can respond to environments and form complex networks without any central brain.

I don’t take that to imply consciousness, but it does suggest that awareness and cognitive self-modelling might not be as tightly linked as we sometimes assume.

 

[exchemist]

It makes sense that a brain capable of representing other agents could eventually represent itself in a similar way.

What I’m less certain about is whether theory of mind explains the existence of awareness itself, or whether it explains something more specific, like the development of a reflective sense of self.

Many animals appear to have rich sensory experience and responsiveness to the world, even if their ability to model the mental states of others is limited or unclear.

Likewise, even among humans there’s a lot of variation in social cognition, but that doesn’t seem to imply variation in the basic fact of being aware.

So I wonder if theory of mind might account for the structure of the self, the internal narrative and identity rather than the underlying presence of experience.

In other words, it could explain how a brain constructs a model of “me,” without necessarily explaining why there is subjective experience there to begin with.

Edit: One small thought related to this.

I’ve sometimes wondered how much tests like mirror recognition really tell us about awareness itself, as opposed to a very specific kind of self-representation.

In my own experience with animals over the years(cats, dogs, even small pets) they don’t tend to react to their reflection as if it were another animal.

They’ll look briefly and then lose interest, which is quite different from how they react to a real animal.

That obviously isn’t evidence of anything conclusive, but it makes me cautious about using the absence of mirror self-recognition as an indicator of the absence of awareness.

It also makes me think more broadly about living systems that show responsiveness and adaptive behaviour without anything like a theory of mind even organisms like fungi, which can respond to environments and form complex networks without any central brain.

I don’t take that to imply consciousness, but it does suggest that awareness and cognitive self-modelling might not be as tightly linked as we sometimes assume.

That’s exactly why I think it should be seen as a neural process rather than a disembodied entity. That accounts for the varying levels of awareness of other animals or other organisms more generally, without implying an artificial (and perhaps arrogant?) disconnect between human beings and the rest of biology.

 

[TheVat]

This idea seems to embody the usual implicit Cartesian dualism that I think leads to a category mistake. Consciousness is not, I suggest, an entity, but rather a word for the activity of the living brain. So it is a word for a process carried out by a biological system. It is not a thing.

I think the problems of dualism are what propelled thinkers like Russell and Wm James towards a neutral monism. In those approaches, some kind of awareness becomes a property of matter, rather than a thing. Per previous posts (like mine, #8, and #9-10, from CC) panpsychism generally avoids dualism. Consciousness becomes something matter does, but only in a very rudimentary form unless it is causally organized towards information processing.

Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is considered a scientific form of panpsychism. (Though it differs from traditional panpsychism by requiring specific causal interactions, which I can get into later if Lumen has any interest)

 

[exchemist]

I think the problems of dualism are what propelled thinkers like Russell and Wm James towards a neutral monism. In those approaches, some kind of awareness becomes a property of matter, rather than a thing. Per previous posts (like mine, #8, and #9-10, from CC) panpsychism generally avoids dualism. Consciousness becomes something matter does, but only in a very rudimentary form unless it is causally organized towards information processing.

Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is considered a scientific form of panpsychism. (Though it differs from traditional panpsychism by requiring specific causal interactions, which I can get into later if Lumen has any interest)

This sounds a bit like Teilhard de Chardin.

 

[TheVat]

This sounds a bit like Teilhard de Chardin.

A bit. Teilhard's view of matter and spirit was a sort of poetic panpsychism intersecting with pantheism. He seems to provoke either love or loathing from biologists and other scientists. I'm just "meh" at this point. But I haven't read him since ca. 1985. He does pop up in sci-fi novels occasionally.

 

[Olga]

I think the problems of dualism are what propelled thinkers like Russell and Wm James towards a neutral monism. In those approaches, some kind of awareness becomes a property of matter, rather than a thing. Per previous posts (like mine, #8, and #9-10, from CC) panpsychism generally avoids dualism. Consciousness becomes something matter does, but only in a very rudimentary form unless it is causally organized towards information processing.

Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is considered a scientific form of panpsychism. (Though it differs from traditional panpsychism by requiring specific causal interactions, which I can get into later if Lumen has any interest)

А сама материя - это что?

 

[exchemist]

A bit. Teilhard's view of matter and spirit was a sort of poetic panpsychism intersecting with pantheism. He seems to provoke either love or loathing from biologists and other scientists. I'm just "meh" at this point. But I haven't read him since ca. 1985. He does pop up in sci-fi novels occasionally.

I had to analyse a passage of his writing in an exam, in the 60s or early 70s. Might have been Oxford entrance, but I can’t recall. That’s all I know about his ideas, but it did stick with me.