Is consciousness not an outcome of material existence but the initial enabler for it?

That’s the premise of a really cool paper I just read: space-time is an emergent phenomenon from some deeper underlying order. The author is a serious scientist who suggests actual equations that could be used to describe it.

Of course, they’re really just a bunch of undefined variables, so the math is less predictive than representative of what said equations could yield. But it evidences a novel way of thinking about questions that normally lurk beyond the purview of science.

For starters, the most advanced physics can’t explain the fundamental functions of matter and energy…they can only describe them. Light moves and gravity attracts because, well, they just do. The strong nuclear force binds atoms together without any evidence of its mechanism, only its purpose.

Science accepts these functions as defined, though it’s as if the dictionary entries listed headlines without any supporting text.

Things get even weirder when you consider the quantum effects of indeterminacy and entanglement (among many others), which not only defy explanation but challenge the entries in that physics dictionary.

What if awareness or presence is itself definitional to existence and action?

It’s a fun read…and it might blow your mind.