Thoughts on the Hard Problem: Symmetry of Consciousness
It is not the atom or quark, but symmetry that is the building block of everything.
The most interesting physics always involves symmetries. Matter and anti-matter. Charge-Parity-Time (CPT) symmetry. Noether’s theorem. Gauge symmetries. Supersymmetry. “Holographic duality”. Gravitoelectromagnetism.
In math you have many examples of duality. It’s a kind of symmetry, but it may be complicated or unintuitive. Functions and their Fourier transform. Vectors and bivectors in 3D space. Langlands.
The point is, duals are symmetries that can look very different. And reality is full of symmetries.
It could very well be that consciousness is the dual of something that looks nothing like it. Like physical reality.
If dual, could one still have slight precedence? Like oneself vs one’s mirror reflection?
Our perspective is the only of the two that can have a perspective. So if not intrinsically primary, perhaps a kind of pseudo-primary.
Where to start with the hard problem of consciousness?
I think the best place to start is to identify any symmetries.
Pre-birth and post-death seem to likely be the same state of (non-)consciousness. That would make the two ends of every lifetime symmetric.
May it be that any two conscious experiences are symmetric? Like how you may consider different permutations of a Rubik’s cube to be symmetric despite the labels not matching?
Does that mean Lie Theory, the study of continuous symmetries, can be applied to our continuous experience from birth to death?
At any instant, are we are moving infinitesimally in a direction tangent to the manifold of phenomenal experiences?
The places on the manifold of consciousness we never visit, do they exist independently? Is this the same as asking if the many-worlds interpretation is true?
What would the tangent space of the manifold of experiences represent?
Will?
Will sure feels like it directs experience. Is our will the tangent space?
Should the manifold and tangent space be not of individual experiences and wills, but the collective experiences and wills of all, to account for clashing wills with others or of nature?
If the manifold is of possible experiences, where does usual objective material reality fit into this?
Is the duality not between mind and matter, but mind and phenomena?
Is any of this testable?
Is all of reality all one big loan on zero?
Need +1? Need to take -1 too. Need a red color charge for your quark? Have to take green and blue too. Virtual particles. Etc.
So on and so on until there are enough symmetries for there to be a mechanism that separates matter from anti-matter long enough for us all to be born and be awfully dramatic about it.