What’s the Point of Consciousness?

“If a general theory of reality has no place for consciousness, then that theory cannot be true.” – Philip Goff, Galileo’s Error

“Consciousness is also nature.” – Guy Armstrong, Emptiness

Two Views of Mind

Science has shown, time and again, that the workings of our world are rarely intuitive. We inhabit a universe with no centre, where time passes relative to motion, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and half the cells in our bodies aren’t even human. At the frontiers of knowledge, common sense holds no sway.

The greatest example of this tension between intuition and truth may concern our own minds.

Ask most people if consciousness—the felt quality of experience—serves a purpose, and they’ll think the question is absurd. Of course it does! For without consciousness, how could we make choices, form relationships, or pursue goals? Our bodies may be maintained by unconscious processes like digestion and circulation, but most of our thoughts, words, and actions depend, first and foremost, on consciousness.

Ask some neuroscientists or philosophers the same question, and you’ll get a very different reply.[1] If consciousness, which is nonphysical, emerges from the brain, which is physical, how could consciousness play a causal role? Why attribute causal power to a nonphysical entity when the physical, cause-effect nature of the brain can do the lifting on its own? Just as modern physiology displaced the soul as the animating force of life, so too (some claim) will modern neuroscience displace consciousness as the animating force of mind.

Under this view, consciousness doesn’t even serve a supporting role—it’s a mere byproduct of interactions of matter, energy, and information within nervous systems. Much like male nipples, which evolved but serve no function, consciousness is impotent.

Philosophers use the idea of philosophical zombies—beings indistinguishable from normal humans, but lacking conscious experience—to pry at intuitions about consciousness. But we need not imagine hypothetical beings, for we’re building (presumably) non-conscious systems that will soon (if not already) scramble assumptions about consciousness. Artificial intelligence systems follow laws of physical information processing, not laws of consciousness. Therefore, if AI can master human behaviour, including speech, fine motor control, and an ability to pursue complex goals, what use is consciousness? 

I think that both these views are wrong. Consciousness itself is not purposeful, nor is it powerless. It does not dictate our lives, nor is it just a shadow cast by the nervous system. It is part and parcel of reality, as much as trees or the sky. However, because of mistaken assumptions—many of which are baked into perception itself—we don’t recognize this.

The Knowing Quality

Before proceeding, let’s clarify what I mean by consciousness. Simply put, consciousness is the knowing quality of mind. It apprehends sensory objects, such as sights and sounds. Without consciousness, we cannot know the sensory world. And without our senses, we cannot make sense of anything.

But consciousness doesn’t just illuminate the outer world. It also allows us to be aware of inner phenomena, such as thoughts, emotions, sensations, and intentions. In its absence, our minds would be non-experiential darkness, ceaseless processions of events that can never be known. With consciousness as our light, the mind is illuminated.

And when our minds are free from distraction and cleared of neurotic thoughts, consciousness casts light on an unexpected landscape: one in which nobody is in control, yet everything happens.

It can seem like thoughts, intentions, and beliefs are produced by a conscious self. But consciousness knows these phenomena; it does not create them.[2] Although this might seem counterintuitive, it becomes undeniable when you watch the mind carefully.

Even without meditation, we can start to grasp this point.

For instance, I just absentmindedly rubbed my cheek. Consciousness registered my hand on my face but was blind to the instigating intention. Another example: when I think of evolution by natural selection, I believe it’s true. But consciousness did not choose this belief, for the belief is the product of past causes—laid down by my father, teachers, friends, and science communicators. Consciousness is a witness, not an agent.

Consciousness is like vision: it just sees what’s there. But, as we’ll discover, this is no passive act.

Assumption I: Dualism

When thinking about consciousness, we bring assumptions that often go unseen. Annaka Harris encapsulated one when asking, in Conscious, “How does felt experience arise out of nonsentient matter?”

To those of us lapsed from belief in the soul, it might seem obvious that experiential consciousness emerges from non-experiential matter. But this presupposes two fundamentally separate things: matter and immaterial mind. We may call ourselves materialists but, to quote Paul Bloom, we’re actually “common sense dualists,” viewing consciousness and the brain as distinct—yet related—entities.

The Abrahamic religions hold that the soul breathes life into matter. Common sense dualists flip this around: matter breathes life into consciousness.  

We should question this.[3] Over the past few centuries, scientific progress has replaced apparent dualisms with relations of interdependence. We once thought that light and matter were wholly distinct; we now know that they are complementary aspects of the same phenomenon. We used to think that matter and energy were two substances, until Einstein showed they are expressions of one reality—just as he later unified space and time. Maxwell, too, revealed a deep unity between the seemingly separate forces of electricity and magnetism. Even on more mundane levels, the old debate between nature and nurture is giving way to an understanding of ceaseless interaction and interdependence.

If so many dualisms have resolved into unity, why should the divide between mind and matter be any different?

Assumption II: Hierarchy

This next assumption is a subtle one. By believing that mind emerges from matter, we view some parts of the universe as more real than others—whereas, in truth, whatever exists simply exists. Nothing existing can be more or less real than anything else.

This assumption begins with the so-called fundamentals: matter, energy, and spacetime. These are taken as the objective truths of reality—the solid ground from which everything else arises. Less fundamental are chemistry, biology, and physiology. Yet because we can trace their pedigree back to physics, we still regard these as objective truths.

Then, we have minds. Here the chain breaks. We cannot map the causal path from matter to mind, which cleaves it from the realm of the objective. For this reason, we call mind subjective and treat consciousness as less fundamental—as somehow less true than the cosmos that surrounds it.

We say that subjectivity emerges from objective precursors.

But while emergence is a useful concept, it is more accurate to say that apparent levels of reality are interdependent—each aspect arises in relation to others. Scientific progress has repeatedly shown that reality is a seamless fabric woven from reciprocal conditions. This interdependence is one reason mathematics describes nature so successfully: its equations formalize the balance of interdependent conditions—often captured, quite literally, by the equals sign.[4]

For instance, we often say that chemistry emerges from atoms. And while it’s true that without atoms we couldn’t have chemistry, it’s equally true that wherever chemistry exists, so do atoms. Similarly with cells and organisms: cells sustain the organism, but the organism also sustains the environment in which the cells live. Or take the sun and sunlight: we might say that sunlight emerges from the sun, yet the two are not separate—the sun is sunlight radiating outward.

The same logic applies to consciousness.

When mapping brain states onto experience, neuroscientists refer to the neural correlates of consciousness—not the neural causes of consciousness. Even if scientists speak of mind emerging from matter, their terminology is agnostic as to whether the brain causes consciousness. For all we know, consciousness changes the brain just as the brain changes consciousness. Neither can be said to cause the other.

If we liked, we could call the neural correlates of consciousness the experiential correlates of neurons—reversing the implied causality while preserving the symmetry between mind and brain.

Nature knows no hierarchies. Reality simply is—equally real at every level, in every moment. This means that consciousness is as integral a part of nature as rivers and stones.

Assumption III: Physical

Most of us take it for granted that the physical world exists. But doing so erects a stark divide between mind and matter, obscuring consciousness’s place in the cosmos. By breaking down this assumption, we can resolve many of the tensions mentioned above.

This view—that reality is made of physical “stuff”—is rooted in perception. But, as we should know by now, perceptions give a haphazard view of what’s true. Trust perception absolutely, and you’ll believe that the sun revolves around the earth, life is animated by a “vital force”, and that AI-generated videos are real.

By thinking that the world is, at base, physical, we map mental perceptions—rooted in primate psychology—onto reality. Because vision and touch dominate how we perceive, we intuit a world whose essential nature can be seen and touched.

Vision perceives edges. When we visualize reality, therefore, we give it edges. These edges separate one thing from another—giving reality its physical flavour. When navigating the conventional world of human existence, edges make sense. Without them, I couldn’t make my morning coffee. When projected onto the ultimate nature of reality, however, they confine our view.

Modern physics has broken open our perception-oriented view of reality. The quantum world does not have independently existing properties: position, momentum, or spin depend on context. Entangled particles remain correlated across vast distances, meaning that what happens “here” cannot be fully described without reference to what happens “there.” Indeed, the very idea of separate particles has given way to a vision of interwoven fields. Our universe is a fluctuating, continuous whole.

This suggests that reality is not a collection of discrete, physical things. So what is it?

Two properties seem fundamental: interdependence and change. Nothing exists in isolation, and nothing is fixed. The universe is a web of shifting conditions, each arising in dependence on the rest.

Mind cannot be seen nor touched. Because it is invisible to the senses, it has no home in the physical paradigm—where intuitions around vision and touch reign supreme. But if reality is interdependent change, mind is on the same plane as everything else. Consciousness depends upon the world because without the world, nothing could appear in consciousness. And consciousness ceaselessly changes, as appearances come and go. In this light, the division between mind and the rest of reality dissolves.

If a non-physical reality seems outlandish, reflect on the fact that nobody has ever touched a physical world—for we only ever make contact with mind. Guy Armstrong summarized this nicely: “We walk around thinking that we live in the real, physical world, but we don’t. This is the illusion (Skt: māyā). We live in a representation of the world generated by our senses, brain, and consciousness. Everything we see is an appearance in consciousness, a production conditioned and limited by our sense doors and consciousness. This is the magic show.”

This view is not limited to mystics. Many brilliant scientists have understood, deeply, that the universe isn’t made of physical “stuff.”

Eminent physicist Arthur Eddington—one of the first to grasp the philosophical implications of modern physics—expressed this unreservedly in a series of 1927 lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh:

“[T]he stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by ‘mind’ I do not here exactly mean mind and by ‘stuff’ I do not at all mean stuff. Still this is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase.”

He continues, clarifying that he does not mean that the world is identical to individual consciousness—just that it has a similar nature:

“The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness.”

He then states that space and time are derived from this non-localized, undifferentiated mind-stuff:

“The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it. But we must presume that in some other way or aspect it can be differentiated into parts. Only here and there does it rise to the level of consciousness, but from such islands proceeds all knowledge.”

On this, Eddington is far from a lone kook. Other brilliant minds—Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, and Max Planck, to list a few—expressed similar sentiments.

Many people (my former self included) recoil from the idea that consciousness could influence the apparently physical world. Yet our minds affect our bodies, and our bodies affect our minds. Doesn’t this hint that they share a common nature?

But What’s the Point of Consciousness?

This all leads back to the mystery at the heart of this essay: does consciousness do anything? Because nothing exists in causal isolation, this is not quite the right question. The idea that a single process could do anything is a useful convention, not a reality.

What we call purposeful action—or “doing”—is, in truth, just a narrow slice of a vast confluence of unfolding conditions. Their relationships are so seamless, reciprocal, and distributed, that no system of human thought will ever fully comprehend them. Indeed, causation itself is a construct—a way to catalogue a ceaselessly changing whole so that its relations can fit into our limited minds.

Nothing in our universe is, ultimately, purposeful. Every moment is a meeting of conditions—never fixed, never final.

This understanding becomes tangible through meditation. When practice matures to a stage where impulses—to think, speak, or move—are seen from beginning to end, we start to appreciate that volition itself is conditioned. Impulses come as if from outside us. As this wider perspective stabilizes, the idea of “doing” stops making sense. From here, there is simply seeing, as we watch conditions unfold.[5]

There are no fixed points of causation, no points or processes privileged over any others. This is why, in Buddhism, dependent origination—the philosophy that all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena—is a natural law. The path to enlightenment involves understanding this law on progressively deeper levels.  

Here, science and spirituality converge: introspection reveals that things go together, science how they go together.

Consciousness, therefore, is just one of many conditions that influence our lives.[6] It does not determine anything—for it stands neither above nor apart from reality’s multifaceted unfolding. But, when consciousness sees what’s happening, the conditions that follow are different than when it doesn’t. This seeing leads to greater freedom—without needing to do anything at all.

Years ago, at Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s monastery in Burma, the Cambodian teacher Hor Tuck Loon explained this to a group of us. He said that there is no need to do anything, because the fact of bringing awareness to experience is itself the changed condition that leads to freedom—and, as he put it, “when you see this way, you cannot suffer.”[7]

By default, we slip into unawareness, as habitual patterns of grasping and aversion play out. When consciousness sees these habits, their momentum abates—and can, occasionally, cease altogether.

Our Nature is Nature

Consciousness is a natural, selfless process. No entity stands behind nature, directing its unfolding. Trees grow, rivers flow, and rain falls, of their own accord. Likewise, consciousness sees, without a seer. It is unique, however, in that we see the world through consciousness. For this reason, it is not some adjunct to reality. In the words of philosopher Galen Strawson, “Consciousness is the most certainly known natural fact.”

When we forget this, we lose sight of our place in the cosmos. When we remember, consciousness can become a lamp to dispel darkness, letting us rest at home in our being.

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[1]To be clear, this is not the mainstream view in neuroscience or philosophy. But it is out there, in various forms.

[2]Even if consciousness is fundamental, it does not create anything. Phenomena—material, mental, or otherwise—arise from the meeting of conditions, which in turn gives rise to new conditions. This interplay of conditions is the creative force of the universe, whatever its underlying substrate may be. (Indeed, there may be no substrate at all—only change itself.) More on this later.

[3] Some scientists already are. 

[4]Not all mathematical relations involve an equals sign; many are expressed through transformations, isomorphisms, inequalities, or other forms of correspondence. Still, the underlying point stands: mathematics articulates the relations among interdependent conditions rather than the behavior of isolated things.

[5]Words cannot convey how much of a paradigm shift this is. You really must see it for yourself. But you cannot “try” to see it, for the seeing of it is something that arises based on conditions—typically including a peaceful setting, limited distraction, good teachers, and few expectations.

[6]Studies have shown that brain states precede the conscious knowing of them—leading some to conclude that consciousness is purely epiphenomenal. This conclusion rests on many assumptions, but it is a moot point. Consciousness could follow brain states while still conditioning future states.

[7]Typically, familiarity with good teachings is also indispensable to realizing greater degrees of freedom. Otherwise, we easily forget that letting experience be is both the path and the goal.