I'm not certain this addresses your thread exactly. We would not be having this rapport however without consciousness. What gives rise to consciousness?
Is the universe conscious?
...Then there’s University of Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose’s suggestion that our consciousness is actually “the reason the universe is here”. It is based on a hunch about quantum theory’s shortcomings. But if there is any substance to this idea, the framework of IIT – and its exclusion postulate in particular – suggests that information flow between the various scales of the universe’s contents could create different kinds of consciousness that ebb and flow depending on what exists at any particular time. The evolution of our consciousness might have, in IIT’s terms, “excluded” the consciousness of the universe.
Or perhaps not. There are good reasons to remain sceptical about the power of maths to explain consciousness, never mind the knock-on effects for our understanding of physics. We seem to be dealing with something so involved that calculations may not even be possible, according to Phil Maguire, a computer scientist at Maynooth University in Ireland. “Breaking down cognitive processes is so complex that it is not feasible,” he says.
Others express related doubts as to whether maths is up to the job, even in principle. “I think mathematics can help us understand the neural basis of consciousness in the brain, and perhaps even machine consciousness, but it will inevitably leave something out: the felt inner quality of experience,” says Susan Schneider, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Connecticut.
Philip Goff, a philosopher at Durham University, UK, and a vocal advocate for panpsychism, has a similar view. Consciousness deals with physical phenomena in terms of their perceived qualities, he points out – the smell of coffee or the taste of mint, for example – which aren’t conveyable in a purely quantitative objective framework. “In dealing with consciousness, we need more than the standard scientific tools of public observation and mathematics,” Goff says...
Why we need to invoke philosophy to judge bizarre concepts in science
...Take supersymmetry, the much-beloved (by physicists, at least) notion that every fundamental particle we know of has a much heavier partner that we are yet to discover. Its mathematical elegance sends proponents into rapture, but it is let down by the small matter of us not having a shred of evidence it is true.
Dark matter at first appears on firmer ground. Under our current best understanding of gravity, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, various lines of evidence point us towards the idea that 85 per cent of the mass within the universe is invisible. We see its gravitational effects throughout the cosmos. And yet, dark matter feels a bit too convenient. Yes, it explains a bunch of otherwise unexplainable phenomena, but given that we are yet to directly detect a particle of dark matter, that explanation feels uncomfortably like writing “here be dragons” in the margins of cosmology.
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