Homunculus of Consciousness

Consciousness consists with a qualitatitve experience of identity (either holistic or particular to a context), even if not necessarily apprehended, as a self, by the identity with which it is associated. Mortal (transitory living) experiences of consciousness are associated with a physical body/nervous system/brain/organism. Every physical body, whether or not organic, receives, stores, processes, and transmits quantitative, empirical information ... based on how the parameter limits that define it inter-function with a field that gives effect to choice making.

Mortal consciousness tends to be conceptualized in respect of a qualitative experience by an organism of quantitative information. Mortal consciousness entails feedback between qualitative experience and quantitative sensation or measurement. However, the qualitative aspect of that relationship does not emerge solely because of evolving relationships among purely, empirically-based physical phenomena (Nature). That is, some meta phenomena (God) plays a role in the feeding back of an unfolding experience of consciousness with each synchronized perspective of it.

Each particular perspective of consciousness, in respect of its synchronized unfolding with all others, is joined with all others in respect of a reconciling, holistic field of consciousness. From a holistic perspective, each experience of consciousness is "caused" by some aspect that synchronizes or causes all. From each particular perspective, it may seem as if an experience of consciousness, identified or imbued with a physical body associated with that perspective, is assserting its own independent free will, to participate in the unfolding causation of its own experiences. However, every local event and sequence is willed, decided, determined, or defaulted a split sequence before a local body/brain associated with it even knows it.

That is, the brain (or central coordinating function of an organism) will already have been assigned each decision at least a split sequence before such brain is even able to represent such decision to its conscious awareness. The brain takes each decision or thought to be its own, but it really is only sensing a delayed feedback that is caused in the parameter-limiting association of its body with some meta aspect that is beyond empirical-based physics. All such experiences of willed decisions are synchronized among all bodies that receive and store information relating to physical interactions.

To decide or determine entails a particular decision or determination from among an array or field of choices or possibilities. Insofar as those aspects of such field that are not selected for determination or manifestation, they remain unexpressed and beyond particular empirical analysis. That is, they remain, at least in their particular aspects (not necessarily in their holistically weighted aspect) beyond physical analysis, i.e., metaphysical. That is, they are beyond the empirical appreciation of mortal perspectives of conscious will, but not necessarily beyond the qualitative apprehension of a meta field that somehow effects choices from among the field of possibilities. If there were no field, for effecting choices or determinations, to interrelate with the field of possibilities, then the field of possibilities would never manifest anything other than fuzzy, unrealized, potentiality.

It is interesting to consider how the meta field that effects such choices may experience some quality (appreciation, interest, caring) of meta or holistic consciousness. Is such meta field conscious before it effects each choice, or only as a feedback consequence of each choice? Is God noun, verb, gerund, or mere feedback? To experience consciousness, must the meta field rely on feedback that unfolds from the experiences of particularly imbued perspectives of organisms of physically-stored, parameter-limiting, empirical information? Likewise, must each particular perspective, for its experience of consciousness, rely on feedback that is generated as a result of the synchronized choice-making of the meta field?

For a particular perspective to experience higher levels of self awareness and control over empirical manipulations, it seems the body/brain organism with which it is imbued, and the context with which it is associated, must evolve to such more complex organizations of matter and information as are compatible therewith.

CONCLUSIONS:

Consciousness may be an emergent quality. If so, its emergence arises out of interfunctioning between two meta fields, i.e., a "nature field" of possibilities and a "god field" that effects choices from among possibilities. Experience of the quality of consciousness may occur at local levels, where it arises in respect of interfunctioning among local fields.

Intuitively, some thinkers may conceptualize that consciousness also occurs at holistic level, in respect of capacity for synchronizing all local field interactions and experiencing the quality of holistic/summing feedback that seems requisite to such synchronization. If so, each level -- local and holistic -- may need the other (at least in potentiality), and, in relation to such other, may experience qualitative apprehensions that arise to the level of identity investment, emotional involvement, and feedback and projection of empathy and caring.

Insofar as consciousness appears necessarily to entail meta aspects, the efforts of empiricists to give a complete accounting for it, in terms that are entirely measurable, seem a bit like a superstitious notion of a homunculus inside the skull directing the activities of the brain. To try to explain consciousness as being entirely derivative of mere physics of brain (synapses, nerve impulses, electromagnetic pulses) is to try to capture the "homunculus of physics," i.e., the Higgs Boson. Philosophically, I sense no good reason to suspect any such an ultimate particle-in-itself should suffice for a complete modeling of existential reality, or for a mature model for a philosophy of morality based on inherent empathy and emotional caring for other expressions of consciousness. In other words, emotion, caring, empathy, involvement, and appreciation are not solely derivative of physics. Rather, they are qualitative aspects that are innate to physics and inherent to beingness.

When we talk about consciousness, we need to be mindful of the aspect in which we are discussing it and the various divisions in approaches, i.e., between the metaphysical and the physical, the qualitative and the quantitative, the mind and the brain, the inherent and the stimulated, the holistic and the particular, the unbounded and the finite, the willed and the pre-willed, the the choice maker and the choice offerer, the system-definer and the parameter limits of the system with which the system-definer is involved in unfolding.

In a way, "stored will" may be like stored energy or stored information. That which seems to be empirically determined may simply be expressive of those signposts or placeholders of material or substance which have been pre-willed. Thus, the results of an expression of will are empirically measurable, at least in potentiality. However, the quality of interest, caring, and appreciation of will is not empirically measurable. Although a person may sometimes be confident of how he will soon give expression to himself, his confidence is always inferior to his apprehension that his perspective is of limited influence within the field as a whole. Thus, he may, in prayer, appeal his unfolding cares and empathies to the synchronizing will power that abides with the field as a whole. It is not unreasonable to believe that such field, in reconciling all, may weigh the quality of the cares and concerns of all.