Simple Disproof of the Idea of a Single Conscious Being
i.e., the written word
[For present purposes, consciousness is taken to be ‘reflexive awareness’: to be aware that one is aware of one’s existence (and things, events, etc.).]
In Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds the Martians attack Earth. They have as their goal the death of every human being. We are powerless against their weapons, and our weapons have no effect on them. Spoiler alert: suddenly, the Martians start dying. In a few days there is not one live Martian left on Earth. The virus that causes the common cold in us humans turned out to be 100% lethal for the Martians.
The solution to a problem can be surprisingly simple. For instance, the simple observation that no human being has any choice but to effect choices turns out to be the starting point for a truly universal ethic of justice.* Simply creating money as needed to fund a ‘democratically distributed income’, i.e., a guaranteed minimum income for which any (adult) citizen could become eligible (in an amount a person could actually live on ), turns out to be the starting point for an alternative monetary paradigm that would solve the problems of unemployment, poverty, taxation/public debt, and sustainability (among others) — while making the (existing) economy self-regulating.**
A debate exists as to what consciousness actually is. Here, we’ll leave that aside by positing that the definition at the top of this essay is good enough for present purposes. The focus here is on a topic that is unaffected by any definition of consciousness that might be (reasonably) proffered.
There is also an idea that there is a single consciousness of which all individual beings partake. That is also a different matter.
Here the concern is the idea that it is at least possible that there is only one conscious being. All other people, things, etc. are immaterial products of that consciousness: one being exists who is imagining, if you will, all that is perceived by that consciousness to exist — to include a physical self for it to inhabit.
Since I am a conscious being, I must be it. Of course, anyone reading this little essay is a conscious being, therefore must be it.
That gets us to this disproof of the notion of a single conscious being in this world: the written word.
Before writing was developed, all communications were oral. In a situation where all communications are oral a person can only receive information from other people (whether ’real’ or ‘imagined’) directly from them, hearing them relate that information. Thus, the thesis that there is only one conscious being would be difficult to disprove, since any and all information received by that being could conceivably have been ‘imagined’ by that being— be a product of that being ‘imagining’ one or more other beings relating information to it.
With the written word, that situation no longer exists. For any conscious being that does exist there is information that exists that was obviously in no way the product of that consciousness. If all books, for example, were the product of a single conscious being, that being would be able to look at the cover of any book and know its contents.
A person might argue that the specific content of any book that being reads (or just looks through) is created by that being ‘in real time’, but that cannot negate the thesis being related here. It is a simple fact that content exists, in the form of words, pictures, diagrams — equations! — etc. farther along in the book (or whatever), information that is already in place but of which the conscious being is ignorant.
Mention of equations brings to my mind the further point that all information ‘received’ by a single consciousness must be comprehensible to it. That consciousness would have to be able to understand everything that is written — regardless of the language in which it were written — to include the ‘language’ of math. A conscious being could perhaps ‘imagine’ receiving information that it could not comprehend, but in that case the ‘information’ would not actually exist.
An argument might be made that since I can’t do any of that, I am not that one conscious being. Since I do perceive that I am a conscious being, however, the only question is whether I am the only conscious being. Since I am aware that I do not know the content of every book in the world (for starters, where the written word is concerned) or that I can comprehend everything in every book, etc., I know that I am not the only conscious being in the world.
The thesis that there is only one conscious being in this world is disproved.
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*”Can’t Get Any Simpler” (a “3 min read” here in Medium with links to articles about the idea from various perspectives)
**”A Most Beneficial Economic Change” ( a “2 min read” here in Medium with links to articles about the idea from various perspectives)
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