A "Proof" for the Existence of God, Part 3: Consciousness, Information, Complexity, and Morality

[Disclaimer: This series is not really going to deliver a proof for God's existence. This is why the word "proof" is in scare quotes. It is, rather, a suggestive line of argument. However, "A suggestive line of argument for God's Existence" isn't a very good blog title. So, the goal of the series is not to arrive at a Q.E.D. moment. It is, rather, to end with a "That's an interesting argument" moment.]

If consciousness is brute the issue becomes: Why are some physical systems conscious and others are not?

Tables, pens, oceans, and coffee mugs are not conscious. But people, dogs, fish, and mice seem to be conscious (not self-conscious but experiencing creatures). What is the difference between these two classes of objects?

David Chalmers suggests that the difference is that the latter are information processing systems. That is, people, dogs, fish and mice appear to process various physical inputs resulting in physical outputs in a lawful fashion. An ocean doesn't take in external inputs, store inputs, manipulate inputs, or produce outputs. But a dog does. And so do we.

So it appears that consciousness is intimately related to information processing physical systems. True, there is still a great deal of mystery here, but "information processing" does seem to separate conscious from non-consious physical systems.

The next obvious question is, how sophisticated does the information processing have to get to manifest consciousness? For example, the simplest information processing system is a one-bit processor. Like a flashlight. Such as system can process/store one bit of information: 1 or 0 (On or Off). Neurons, as information processing systems, are like flashlights. They can Fire or Not. So, how many flashlights do you need to "connect" to get human-level consciousness?

Chalmers offers an interesting proposal. If consciousness is brute and is connected to information, it seems reasonable (!) to assume that consciousness comes in a "quantum" (i.e., bundled) unit associated with a bit of information. That is, there is something in feels like to be a flashlight. However, this "bit of consciousness" is so degraded that for all intents and purposes we can treat it (from an ethical perspective) as an un-experiencing object.

But when we string enough bits (informational and conscious) together we start getting nervous systems like we see in rudimentary organisms like worms or ants. We can speculate that worms have "pains" and "pleasures." But again, these experiences are so degraded that we don't sweat the ethical status of these creatures (although some religious start to...). If we scale up the informational complexity we see a correlated increase of consciousness. For example, think of a rat scaling up to a dog scaling up to a chimpanzee scaling up to a human. As the informational capacity increases the conscious experience grows richer and richer, and, as a result, ethical considerations begin to kick in at each level of complexity.

Clearly, this vision implies a kind of panpsychism, where consciousness in all its forms, is ubiquitous. Personally, I like the idea of thinking about the feelings of my flashlight. (Or to be more precise, its feel--singular--since it can only process one bit.)

But even if you beg off on panpsychism I don't need it much for my subsequent argument. All I wanted to do in this post is to note the correlation between informational/physical complexity and the richness of conscious experience. I also wanted to highlight the link between consciousness, complexity, and morality. So, for future posts hold this relationship in mind:

Informational/Physical Complexity : Conscious Complexity : Onset of Moral Considerations