I'm willing to bet money that in a few years science will accept this as fact. The full explanation will be a little more complicated, but the statement won't be false. To be more specific, in order to create consciousness, the choices that appear have to relate to each other. What follows is my riffing on a much more mathematical approach by the neuroscientist Guilio Tononi called Integrated Information Theory. (It's riffing, so please do not consider my words an explanation of his theory.)
Imagine that 1000 little choices appear this second. 1: bat left eye, 2: photograph a crane, 3: walk out of screening, 4: lift jacket to put on bannister, 5: shift prototype car to neutral, 6: book tour... etc. If no choice depends on any other choice, and the choosers are not related to each other, then this set of options isn't actually conscious! An automatic, non-sentient robot could deliberate and choose any option or set of options, for example randomly. Even a die roll could do that. On the other hand, what if 1000 options appear this second and they're all closely interrelated? Let's suppose they all occur to the same person: you. Perhaps physically you can only pick one. 1: bat left eye, 2: bat right eye, 3: bat both eyes, 4: lift left pinky a little bit, 4: lift left pinky, but a millimeter more... etc. Or maybe you can even pick ten and hold them in short-term memory, but only if they go in a particular coherent sequence—a known set of muscle movements, with adjustments for this particular situation—reciting the ten digits in order, for example. Perhaps 499 options will result in net profit or happiness while another 501 will result in net loss or unhappiness to the same individual (ie, you again), and it's important to at least guess what will lead to the most profit/happiness and away from the most loss/unhappiness. This starts to seem more like our subjective experience of awareness.
Note: don't get caught up on the numbers. You wouldn't exactly count these options, you would feel some of them.
Imagine that 1000 little choices appear this second. 1: bat left eye, 2: photograph a crane, 3: walk out of screening, 4: lift jacket to put on bannister, 5: shift prototype car to neutral, 6: book tour... etc. If no choice depends on any other choice, and the choosers are not related to each other, then this set of options isn't actually conscious! An automatic, non-sentient robot could deliberate and choose any option or set of options, for example randomly. Even a die roll could do that. On the other hand, what if 1000 options appear this second and they're all closely interrelated? Let's suppose they all occur to the same person: you. Perhaps physically you can only pick one. 1: bat left eye, 2: bat right eye, 3: bat both eyes, 4: lift left pinky a little bit, 4: lift left pinky, but a millimeter more... etc. Or maybe you can even pick ten and hold them in short-term memory, but only if they go in a particular coherent sequence—a known set of muscle movements, with adjustments for this particular situation—reciting the ten digits in order, for example. Perhaps 499 options will result in net profit or happiness while another 501 will result in net loss or unhappiness to the same individual (ie, you again), and it's important to at least guess what will lead to the most profit/happiness and away from the most loss/unhappiness. This starts to seem more like our subjective experience of awareness.
Note: don't get caught up on the numbers. You wouldn't exactly count these options, you would feel some of them.
The appearance of new options seems to be ordained by the law of physics that says entropy always tends to increase—that is, the second law of thermodynamics. With entropy increasing, the number of different physical states in the universe is increasing. Doesn't that mean a huge number of previously non-existent options are constantly flowing into the universe? In all science, this seems the most likely candidate for a source of consciousness. When we learn about entropy in school, we usually learn the apocalyptic view that "disorder always increases." This is inaccurate, though. When you pour raspberry juice into club soda, the color eventually mixes in evenly: the final pink hint-o-juice (my friend's expression) is a more entropic state, not a less entropic state, even though it seems more orderly to us. Chaos as we understand it has not erupted in the fizzy drink. It looks smoother, more even than before. The second law of thermodynamics may actually say "intelligence increases."
Much of everyday consciousness is choosing about choosing: deciding which options to promote in our thoughts and which to ignore. But that's still choosing! And the choices are interrelated!
Nature is not wasteful. I do not personally believe it is possible to experience a single thing without the ability to act in some small way. Without any hard science on this yet, that's obviously debatable, yet it's my considered belief. Even if the mystery act is a movement of thought or a shift of mental attention, there is always an act implicit in every feeling.
Let's suppose the idea is starting to make sense. Can we break it?
What about color? What does red tell me to do, or suggest? On the surface, red is not an option but a phenomenon. We know what it feels like, but we have no idea what it would suggest that we do.
Here's an idea about colors that reaches deep into evolutionary history: Approach or retreat? Freeze? Eat!? Pure sensory information is always cresting into a worldview, a conscious bubble that creates us, lets us know some of what we can do, provokes desires, desires that lead to shoulds. No choice has any meaning out of context. Your sensorium embodies (or disembodies?) all the context you can possibly know, imparting all the meaning you can experience before a choice; yet as soon as the choice is made, it has new meaning for observers you never imagined. Context, collected and represented by our senses, gives meaning to choice, which gives meaning to observers. If there were no "what we can do," I believe we would be unable to see red.
What about color? What does red tell me to do, or suggest? On the surface, red is not an option but a phenomenon. We know what it feels like, but we have no idea what it would suggest that we do.
Here's an idea about colors that reaches deep into evolutionary history: Approach or retreat? Freeze? Eat!? Pure sensory information is always cresting into a worldview, a conscious bubble that creates us, lets us know some of what we can do, provokes desires, desires that lead to shoulds. No choice has any meaning out of context. Your sensorium embodies (or disembodies?) all the context you can possibly know, imparting all the meaning you can experience before a choice; yet as soon as the choice is made, it has new meaning for observers you never imagined. Context, collected and represented by our senses, gives meaning to choice, which gives meaning to observers. If there were no "what we can do," I believe we would be unable to see red.
Case in point: when you are deep in a dreamless sleep, you do not see red, even if your eyes open. You still have some very minimal level of consciousness, but you're not using it to make many choices at all. A spot of red in your visual field probably doesn't have any weight in the thin trickle of choices your brain is still making, so you don't experience it.
All consciousness is choice.
The words do not mean we choose what we experience; I am not sure the words mean we deserve what we get; but if correct, they do mean there is no choiceless situation.
Maybe everything you feel is a latent choice. Here's a slightly more fanciful way to put it:
Consciousness is a heavy influx of interrelating choices. It happens at a kind of thermodynamic vortex, almost in a seesaw moment of enemy forces. Brains, as learners, look as if they are organizing, not dispersing and randomizing. Yet entropy increases even in a developing fetal brain. Options bud and accumulate. In a not-unlike way, civilization appears to reverse entropy, draw things together, build clear patterns from noise. Meanwhile, even by the wisest, most advanced civilization on the upswing, much random heat is produced: options bud and accumulate. Those two directions occurring at once, increasing options and drawing together, might produce consciousness.
The universal principle of least action says that in every real physical movement, the least energy possible is radiated. The universe follows the most intelligent line of motion. The cosmic bank account is debited more carefully than you'd ever dream: boundlessly more carefully than that. This rule, this "careful" sparing of any excess of motion, is—or so I've read—equivalent to the second law of thermodynamics.
The rule is reminiscent of two motives that drive every economic actor and together give rise to the theory that economies mirror the laws of thermodynamics, with money behaving just the same as energy. The first incentive—analogous to the efficiency of the principle of least action—is to buy low. Spend frugally: your thrift will allow you to make more transactions in all, and your greater number of transactions will necessarily end up dispersing money all the more widely over space and time, satisfying the entropic goal of dissolving every concentrated source of energy by diffusion. The other side of the second law of thermodynamics, as it could be understood in an economic sense, is a deep desire to seek the richest source of energy—sometimes called "negative entropy" or "negentropy" when concentrated like this and highly apt to do work—or to put it another way, the biggest pile of gold.
To mythologize this for the sake of visualization, the god of ever-increasing entropy wants us thriftily disbursing gold to all corners of the world (by buying low, thus allowing us to make more transactions overall), while fishing for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow under the surface of that lake (by selling high, thus acquiring more for less work and allowing us to make more transactions overall in a second, opposite way).
The rule is reminiscent of two motives that drive every economic actor and together give rise to the theory that economies mirror the laws of thermodynamics, with money behaving just the same as energy. The first incentive—analogous to the efficiency of the principle of least action—is to buy low. Spend frugally: your thrift will allow you to make more transactions in all, and your greater number of transactions will necessarily end up dispersing money all the more widely over space and time, satisfying the entropic goal of dissolving every concentrated source of energy by diffusion. The other side of the second law of thermodynamics, as it could be understood in an economic sense, is a deep desire to seek the richest source of energy—sometimes called "negative entropy" or "negentropy" when concentrated like this and highly apt to do work—or to put it another way, the biggest pile of gold.
To mythologize this for the sake of visualization, the god of ever-increasing entropy wants us thriftily disbursing gold to all corners of the world (by buying low, thus allowing us to make more transactions overall), while fishing for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow under the surface of that lake (by selling high, thus acquiring more for less work and allowing us to make more transactions overall in a second, opposite way).
Perhaps we can explain a mysterious force with thrift and the pot of gold. What is the richest source of negentropy you will ever find? A singularity. The only known manifestations, and these are only supposed manifestations or near-manifestations, are black holes and the Big Bang.
Gravity may be a simple and direct consequence of the universe's desire to form singularities. Think of it this way. The principle of least action suggests some wisdom in spending savings. Where do the savings come from? There are no savings. How do we make savings? Gravity. It is certainly the simplest way I know of to pile things together, to make a pot of gold. Without it, the principle of least action would indeed be the principle of no action. There would be no fuel for anything, let alone for a Big Bang.
In this synthesis, gravity is the battery charger of the universe, even universes. By the law of gravitation, the multicosmos seeks singularities, and wherever they form, it seeks to express pent-up potential as sparingly and deeply and expansively as ever, in long-lived universes full of sentience.
