faith

We can't know anything -- we can't be absolutely certain of anything. Hence, even if there is an objective reality, we have no way of knowing about it, so there doesn't need to be an objective reality, so why bother having one? Perhaps everything that we perceive as existing is merely believed to exist. Not by human per se, since we didn't exist until recently, but by.. god.

But Occam's razor: it is simpler for there to be an objective reality. Much simpler than a God!

Well, objective reality doesn't seem to include consciousness. That needs to come from somewhere. That's the only thing a conscious entity needs in order to explain its existence. Let "god" just be a word referring to the source of consciousness. We haven't got a clue how it can exist, or where it comes from, but we're conscious, so..


Isn't it simpler to believe that consciousness arises from the vast computational complexity of the brain?

Um.. it is not clear. There is no mechanism within the constructs of computational theory for consciousness, and there is no mechanism within the known mechanisms of physics for consciousness. You might say that our brains happen to house a special as-yet-unknown physical and/or computational construct that accounts for consciousness, but that is a very odd -- not simple -- explanation, since nothing that humans do seems beyond the abilities of a purely computational brain executed on conventional well understood physical hardware. So it would be very odd for such a construct to happen to be in our brains, despite a lack of need for it.

So, where are you claiming consciousness comes from then?

Well, perhaps this "god" is conscious of everything in the universe that it believes exists, and perhaps humans get a disproportionally high amount of attention since they are so interesting, compared to asteroids and open space. In this view, our perceived consciousness would actually exist within god as it is observing and understanding the activity of our brain.

Hm.. well, if you're right, that our brains could do what they do without consciousness, then wouldn't that activity include writing blog posts like this about consciousness, despite not actually being conscious?

I suppose it would. And that does seem strange. Of course, it would be difficult to observe this actually happening within some universe without being so aware of what was going on -- for instance, being able to speak the language, which would include being intimately aware of how these beings perceived their universe -- that we would practically be gods in our powers of observation over that universe. Hence, it may not be possible to observe the "odd" behavior you are talking about without allowing for the sort of god I'm talking about.

Do you really believe this? This is crazy.

I don't really believe anything at all.