The conscious electron!

Some physicists and philosophers want to ascribe consciousness to elementary particles, most of the time they do this to make light of a situation where these particles behave bizarrely. But we seriously do not believe electrons have consciousness, at least in the way we understand consciousness in our daily life. But if you take a whole bunch of particles, hadrons and leptons, mesh them up and create some organic cells you would get some thinking gel. It's almost like saying if I take some electrons in my clasp and shake them up and down, they will radiate. They would not only radiate, they would also start to think, but they would not know that they are electrons. We are made of electrons among other things, but we do not know we are made of electrons. What is that thing that comes out of inorganic senseless and consciousnessless matter? It's not tangible, it almost seems to hover over the material that gives rise to it. Some people call it a epiphenomenon. This phenomenon seems to have a separate quality from the matter it was created, but if you take the matter away the phenemenon itself disappears.

Without this phenemenon we would not be able to perceive the world. The world would essentially be an unknown realm, dark and without any real meaning: stars would be born and stars would be dead through spectacular fireworks, there would be firworks, but there would be nothing spectacular about it, because without any color and illumination interpreted through a conscious mind the entire universe would work in a regime that can be expressed in physical equations, but would remain totally intangible otherwise.

Our senses determine what kind of world we choose to live in. We see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The visible wavelengths are longer than the interatomic distances, hence our bodies seem to be solid in appearance. The electromagnetic force provides a barrier against penetration, hence we can sit on a chair and cannot go through walls. The colors of the world are entirely a function of our brain's interpretation. But that's how evolution works. If it did not work we wouldn't be sitting here and trying to write a blog that really does not serve anybody's purpose. If we know nothing makes sense and we simply robots with will, free or otherwise, what keeps us, humans, going. The answer must be in biology. Our cognitive process, made entirely out of electric signals, tries to make sense of the world. The electrons have risen and together they contemplate their fate, their purpose. When they cannot make sense, they rationalize. The collective electronic signals have to make sense of all our adaptations, however accidental they might be (over which the electrons have no say) and they would come up with philosophy, art and religion, and sports!