The problem is that there seems to be no logical reason to draw the line at dogs, or sparrows or mice or insects, or, for that matter, trees or rocks.
Since we don’t know how the brains of mammals create consciousness, we have no grounds for assuming it’s only the brains of mammals that do so – or even that consciousness requires a brain at all.
The argument unfolds as follows: physicists have no problem accepting that certain fundamental aspects of reality – such as space, mass, or electrical charge – just do exist. They can’t be explained as being the result of anything else.
Explanations have to stop somewhere. The hunch is that consciousness could be like that, too – and that if it is, there is no particular reason to assume that it only occurs in certain kinds of matter.
For me the trouble is everyone gets it wrong. It’s not about understanding what the puzzle represents as a whole, it’s about inventing new pieces of the puzzle to accommodate our curiosity.
It’s about creation, which is what consciousness seems to be doing all the time: creating more and more new ways of experiencing this thing we call life.
Our experience of reality is comprised of the human senses internalizing a world that is actually made up of frequencies and energy fields. Our brain just interprets such as being a solid living reality.
One we are conditioned to believe that it is outside of us.
The truth is, all of reality is happening within our consciousness.
Example of a tree falling in the forest. Does it make a sound, If no one is there to hear it?
Science would say that the tree does not make a sound. It just pushes the air.
If there is no observer with an ear, and a brain to record the puffs of air vibrating in the ear, then a tree just makes air move when it falls.
The trick to understanding this is to be able to remove yourself from the equation. This is hard for people to do, because we immediately imagine ourselves being there as the tree falls.
Everything in the visible universe only exist if there is consciousness to perceive it.
Not all creatures perceive that sound the same way, or even the light of a candle the same way. Some animals will perceive the colour of a yellow flame to be a grey Flickr.
The universe, to each sentient of consciousness, is a subjective experience. And it only becomes a shared reality when two or more people agree on something; and then the quantum wave collapses, and becomes a quantum system.
Now Biocentrism goes much deeper into this bizarre reality on a quantum level, but that is for a different article.