3 ms·

It seems that this eventually would pave the road to some kind of Gaia theory.

ChrisGranger 11y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, as nobody has replied to explain their reasons for doing so, but the idea seems reasonable to me in this context. I could see taking it a step further: instead of a Gaia theory, by which I assume you mean that the Earth is a sentient system, why not have all things that are causally connected be part of a universal consciousnesses? At what distance apart in space or time or both do we reject that individual components of a complex system could possibly combine to be conscious? Also, do all components need to be of the same type (individual human beings, in the United States example)? Can not other mammals and birds and fish and insects and forests and fields contribute? The example in the article is a nation state, but is there any reason for rejecting a larger system? If the United States is conscious, does an American who goes to live abroad cease to be a bit of United-States-consciousness and become, for example, a bit of France-consciousness? What of astronauts, or those who will inevitably live on Mars someday? Is the number of bits of nation-state-consciousness significant? Would China be "more conscious" by virtue of having four times the population? Is Canada only dimly conscious, having only a ninth of the population? Finally, it seems strange to me that we'd use geographical borders to delineate separate nation-state-consciousnesses in an age when individuals so routinely communicate and travel outside of them. Nation states don't exist in vacuums, but interact and cooperate in many ways that affect each other mutually, for both good and bad. Perhaps all the people who speak a given language could be a conscious entity, regardless of where they live. This is all fun to think about, but I lean towards the so-called neurochauvanism mentioned in the article and have a difficult time wrapping my head around the concept that something outside of brains could be conscious.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, as nobody has replied to explain their reasons for doing so, but the idea seems reasonable to me in this context. I could see taking it a step further: instead of a Gaia theory, by which I assume you mean that the Earth is a sentient system, why not have all things that are causally connected be part of a universal consciousnesses? At what distance apart in space or time or both do we reject that individual components of a complex system could possibly combine to be conscious? Also, do all components need to be of the same type (individual human beings, in the United States example)? Can not other mammals and birds and fish and insects and forests and fields contribute? The example in the article is a nation state, but is there any reason for rejecting a larger system? If the United States is conscious, does an American who goes to live abroad cease to be a bit of United-States-consciousness and become, for example, a bit of France-consciousness? What of astronauts, or those who will inevitably live on Mars someday? Is the number of bits of nation-state-consciousness significant? Would China be "more conscious" by virtue of having four times the population? Is Canada only dimly conscious, having only a ninth of the population? Finally, it seems strange to me that we'd use geographical borders to delineate separate nation-state-consciousnesses in an age when individuals so routinely communicate and travel outside of them. Nation states don't exist in vacuums, but interact and cooperate in many ways that affect each other mutually, for both good and bad. Perhaps all the people who speak a given language could be a conscious entity, regardless of where they live. This is all fun to think about, but I lean towards the so-called neurochauvanism mentioned in the article and have a difficult time wrapping my head around the concept that something outside of brains could be conscious.