{"id":14271,"date":"2018-11-11T00:14:42","date_gmt":"2018-11-11T00:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14271"},"modified":"2018-11-12T00:16:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T00:16:39","slug":"could-consciousness-all-come-down-to-the-way-things-vibrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/could-consciousness-all-come-down-to-the-way-things-vibrate\/","title":{"rendered":"Could consciousness all come down to the way things vibrate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tam Hunt<\/a>, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious<\/a> and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium? <\/p>\n

These questions are all aspects of the ancient \u201cmind-body problem,\u201d which asks, essentially: What is the relationship between mind and matter? It\u2019s resisted a generally satisfying conclusion for thousands of years. <\/p>\n

The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the last two decades. Now it\u2019s generally known as the \u201chard problem\u201d of consciousness, after philosopher David Chalmers<\/a> coined this term in a now classic paper<\/a> and further explored it in his 1996 book, \u201cThe Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chalmers thought the mind-body problem should be called \u201chard\u201d in comparison to what, with tongue in cheek, he called the \u201ceasy\u201d problems of neuroscience: How do neurons and the brain work at the physical level? Of course they\u2019re not actually easy at all. But his point was that they\u2019re relatively easy compared to the truly difficult problem of explaining how consciousness relates to matter.<\/p>\n

Over the last decade, my colleague, University of California, Santa Barbara psychology professor Jonathan Schooler<\/a> and I have developed what we call a \u201cresonance theory of consciousness<\/a>.\u201d We suggest that resonance \u2013 another word for synchronized vibrations \u2013 is at the heart of not only human consciousness but also animal consciousness and of physical reality<\/a> more generally. It sounds like something the hippies might have dreamed up \u2013 it\u2019s all vibrations, man! \u2013 but stick with me.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n How do things in nature \u2013 like flashing fireflies \u2013 spontaneously synchronize?<\/span>
\n Suzanne Tucker\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All about the vibrations<\/h2>\n

All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields<\/a>. As such, at every scale, all of nature vibrates. <\/p>\n

Something interesting happens when different vibrating things come together: They will often start, after a little while, to vibrate together at the same frequency. They \u201csync up,\u201d sometimes in ways that can seem mysterious. This is described as the phenomenon of spontaneous self-organization<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mathematician Steven Strogatz<\/a> provides various examples from physics, biology, chemistry and neuroscience to illustrate \u201csync\u201d \u2013 his term for resonance \u2013 in his 2003 book \u201cSync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life<\/a>,\u201d including:<\/p>\n