Saturday, February 28, 2026

The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 27: Consciousness

There are many unanswered questions about how the universe works. Part of the wonder of science is appreciating that for every advance in understanding, there are always new horizons of the unknown to explore further.

I find that one existential frontier in understanding has to do with consciousness. Regardless of the various physical explanations about why we have conscious, subjective experience (of memory, drives, sensations, emotions, etc.) it remains truly miraculous that this occurs. It is true that consciousness exists on a continuum; it has definitely been sculpted by evolutionary forces, and is subject to a lot of variation, with diminished or gradually altered consciousness caused by sleep, fatigue, anesthesia, substances, neurological disease, etc. It is interesting to consider whether consciousness could be a property of nature itself, as opposed to a property only of a neurological system such as the brain. Some great scientists such as Roger Penrose have theorized about the mechanisms of consciousness; while I think such theorizing is interesting and worth following, I'm not sure that the result would impact my opinion of this matter too much. Even if there was a precise physical explanation, it does not lessen the miraculousness of it.

I find consciousness even more miraculous than "free will" since even if the universe was entirely deterministic or superdeterministic, there would still be human consciousness, which is something which deserves a feeling of wonder and awe. Some people would say that the phenomenon of consciousness is a manifestation of the divine -- and I guess I'd have to be ok with that, perhaps even as a foundational definition of the word "divine."

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