Even if the entire universe is a pseudo-brain, that doesn't mean you'll get to experience its conscious stream. I'm pretty sure that when a neuron in a brain dies, it's just dead. When a blood cell dies, it doesn't merge its consciousness with yours. When you and I die, we don't become the sun, nor the entire universe. At least I don't see a case for that at all. Imo we also know much more about consciousness than various philosophers are letting on. We know how to alter it (drugs, brain trauma), disable it (narcotics), and when those things happen naturally (senility, coma, sleep,...). We also know that split brain patients can develop two independently addressable selfs. It's just so obviously all about the brain. And the difficulty in defining consciousness is the same problem as defining what a complicated recursive function does, or if you will, defining the shape of a fractal. We just happen to be stable systems where part of our output feeds back into different input points, whether it's via the senses or inside the brain itself during thinking processes, or subconscious mechanisms that e.g. regulate hormones and vital organs. And those feedback loops/vortexes adapted evolutionary to yield results that are reality aligned enough to allow living organisms to navigate the world and recreate. To the question of why something can be experienced at all, I think that's like asking why a camera can take photos, or why chemical reactions exist. I guess some panpsychists would argue that THAT is the consciousness they mean, the sensing per se, the quantum of pain shooting through your nerves, or the signal that enters your brain after a single photon hit the retina just right. But the thing is, all kinds of such reactions also take place while you're in totally unconscious states like deep sleep, even absent-mindedness, and there remain unnoticed. Not to mention the constant biochemical reactions and highly organized changes going on inside the kidneys all the time, which we're never going to consciously tune into.
- If consciousness is as simple as sensing, why don't senses reliably lead to experience?
- If everything is conscious, why is there a disconnect between you and other things?
- If consciousness is fundamental, why can yours be deactivated?
- If consciousness is as simple as sensing, why don't senses reliably lead to experience?
- If everything is conscious, why is there a disconnect between you and other things?
- If consciousness is fundamental, why can yours be deactivated?