Interlude 7: Qualia

Is the Universe sentient?   “Sentient.”  The word comes from the Latin verb – sentiere, which means to feel.  And is related to the noun – sesus – meaning sense or feeling.  The First-Born posed this question: can the Cosmos perceive sensory input?  Something akin to what lesser beings feel, like seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting?  Or, more broadly, is that great entity we live in conscious of these kinds of sensory impressions?  And if one puts forth the aforesaid question, the follow-up would naturally be – are these inputs processed, organized in some manner for a purpose, for a reason?  In other words, does the Universe think, does it undergo the mental mechanism of reasoning?  After broaching these weighty questions, the First-Born asked the larger, more salient question: How?

Reason is associated with cognition, i.e., thinking.  And what is thought?  In humans, thoughts are patterns of chemo-electric pathways, which cycle and repeat in the brain.  And like any pattern or code, whether it be magnetic blips on a tape or waves in the air, it can be translated into information.  In general, thinking is that process whereby information is deduced from patterns of sensory data.  In our discussion, we shall omit things like instinct, reproductive imperatives, etc.  One need not be Socrates to engage in that.

Please permit me an illustration.  Take our amoeba, for example.  It senses some light, thinks about it, then decides to move towards the light.  Why?  It processes information – there is light – and deduces that there will be benefits to be had from said light.  Maybe warmth, perhaps more food.  It had a subjective, perceptual experience in perceiving the light.  And to have this kind of involvement, a being must possess a consciousness.  It must be aware of self and environs.  Another question was asked by Those Who Sought Answers: “Is the Universe capable of introspection?”  And they had the wealth and the luxury of time to pursue an answer.

Now suppose our friend the amoeba was blocked from perambulating towards the light.  Its desires were thwarted.  Would our little buddy suffer? 

The answer is yes if it can feel sensory input and process those sensory impressions, which we know it does.  And those sensory impressions could be categorized into two groups – pleasurable or offensive.  There is a word for this distinction, and it too comes from the Romans, who stole everything from the Greeks, but I digress.  The word is qualia, and it refers to an individual’s instances of subjective conscious experience – the way things seem to that individual, whether offensive or pleasurable.  Over the past two thousand years, the philosophers, as you would expect, went wild over this concept.  The claim is made that it is impossible to verbally denote qualia.  To accurately describe what one person feels to another.  A classic example is – describing the color red to a blind person.  The sightless person may learn everything about the color, its frequency, how the retina processes it, adjectives, everything.  But he will not know red until he sees it.  Until he experiences its qualia.  The debate raged over ‘what’s it like’ to feel another’s qualia, to sense their mental and physical state.  Is it even possible?  Can one person assume that another person feels and senses the same as he does?  The question may be asked – what is it like to be an amoeba?  Frankly, I do not have a strong desire to know this.  Though to some, I am one.

But the aforesaid is not entirely true.  It is possible to partially know another’s qualia.  Maybe not the sum-total of another being’s state of mind, but a portion thereof.  An observer can translate and experience some of the subject’s sensory impressions.  And it’s really no big deal.  It’s done all the time.  For instance – take dogs.  Dogs see fewer colors than humans.  Their color field consists of yellows, blues, and violets.  Humans see all the colors, including reds, greens, and oranges.  The reason for this lies in the rods and cones – the mechanisms of the eye.  Humans have better cones; dogs have more rods.  But, by simply adjusting the color on a video, the viewer can closely approximate the sight of a dog.  Experience the visual qualia of man’s best friend.

The First-Born built instruments to detect all in their home Universe.  All the various electromagnetic radiation, all the fluctuations of time, and any and all vibrations in the matrix of space-time, everything.  And many were instantaneous, involving the filaments of gravity, which are not subject to the same limitations as matter.  And they sought out patterns and found them in many places, even in the bursts of gamma-rays emitted by massive, dying stars.  Regrettably, for the indigenous galactic life forms, they were extinction events, but again I digress.  Impressions were detected and then interpreted in that chaos of radiation.  Or more specifically – qualia.  And the sum-total of that qualia communicated — pain.  Lamentations and suffering on a grand scale by the Progenitor.

In the more advanced civilizations, it is a general precept that sentient awareness confers rights, both legally and otherwise.  In particular, the right to have one’s suffering minimized.  Many would ask, and have asked: Why should entity X care if entity Y is suffering?  The reasons are manifold.  First, empathy; most beings can sense the qualia of others, though not entirely, like seeing how a dog sees.   And then they feel compassion.  Second, selfishness.  If entity Y is happy, and he feels some of X’s pain, then entity Y is less happy.  And who wants to be less happy?  The third reason is philosophy.  More specifically, The Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  It just makes for a more pleasant existence for everyone if all agree to this.  And most do.  So, the First-Born felt the pain of their Progenitor and consequently felt compelled to alleviate it.  At least they discussed this.

How?  Were these giant blasts the cause or just a symptom?  There are 1 x 10²⁵ stars in the Universe, and 300 or so are massive enough to explode in this manner every year.  Should the effort be made to minimize this?  The debate raged for many eons, from even before the technology existed to rectify these events.  Like forest fires on Earth, should we let them burn, or should the effort be made to curtail them?  Eventually, it was decided to let them be.  To let things play out “in the natural way.”  To let the forests burn, so to speak.  They divined this and made a philosophical exception in this one instance.  They chose not to enforce the basic natural rights inherent to this sentient being, the Progenitor.  To have its suffering relieved.  And it almost proved to be their undoing.

“We cannot let the Progenitor die!”  This thought simultaneously emanated from most of the Presences.  It resounded with overwhelming authority.