Is Consciousness Physical?
By David Christopher Lane
- Release Date: 2011-03-25
- Genre: Science & Nature
Description
The feeling that consciousness is not physical or that consciousness is distinct from our body is a very common one. Indeed, the very sensation of awareness almost prima facie convinces us that our "I" is not merely an "it." John Archibald Wheeler, the renowned physicist who once mentored Richard Feynman, famously quipped: "The universe and all that it contains ('it') may arise from the myriad yes-no choices of measurement ('bits')." For some who extended Wheeler's line of thinking even further, basing everything upon an informational notion of matter (versus one where matter "forms" data), the ultimate idea was that the universe wasn't at all physical, but rather the condensation of a mathematical reality which in itself was formless, akin in some ways to Plato's notion of universal ideals or archetypes.
