The Seed, The Tree & The Bridge: Information, Form, & the bridge between Space-Time & Consciousness

The following is a blog detailing the aftereffects of the thoughts engendered after posting the blog "On Consciousness Existing Outside of Space-Time" in the philosophy subreddit of Reddit.

I recently posted the "On Consciousness Existing Outside of Space-Time" blog onto Reddit and have been receiving lots of views and feedback from users. All praise is due to God. Some of the feedback was people's attempts to poke holes in the idea of consciousness not being bound by space-time. In these attempts, I was able to expound further on the idea. I am going to post the arguments that further elaborated on this idea here and my subsequent responses:

A user on Reddit asked "Are computers also out of spacetime?"

The reason for this question, from my understanding, is that he was trying to imply that because a computer contains information of many different programs, software, code, books, videos, etc. in every present moment, that this proves that consciousness could also be like this computer existing within space-time with all of the different languages, ideas, images, knowledge, etc. ready to call the information forward. In other words, that because a computer is physical, and is obviously not outside of space-time, that somehow the computer and consciousness could be interchangeable, thus proving that consciousness could be physical like the computer.

My reply to him in a summarized form was that, just because a computer contains all of the information required to call up various different programs, software, code, books, videos, etc. the information contained by the computer still requires space-time in order to process the information and exhibit it to us in the present moment. In other words, my argument was that information could exist abstractly as a whole like a code in a computer in the present moment, but that even these abstract wholes that exist presently in the computer, are still only pieces that do not become exhibited until they are processed by the computer, moment by moment, bound by space-time.

The following is exactly what I wrote back to them (another user was also commenting about the same time) in response:

"Information exists abstractly but has to be processed bit by bit through successive present moments. You just proved my argument.

Your computer can exist in different states physically, successively moment by moment, but your computer cannot exist in every state that it has ever been in all at once. Or exhibit all of the videos all at once on your screen in a way that you can understand. The information has to be processed successively bit by bit.

Why? Because your computer is bound, just as you are, by space-time. I do not think that you understood the ideas completely. You use the term a week later, to be able to watch a Beyonce video, but I just explained to you that we take in bits of information in the present moment bit by bit. A week ago you were in a different present moment so you were able to watch the Joe Rogan video. A week later you are in a different present moment. You cannot be in both moments in one moment of time. The whole information of the Joe Rogan video resides in your hard drive as a whole of information abstractly as numbers but has to be processed so you can understand it. You cannot view that whole of information all at once in the present moment. All the information in your computer exists in a certain state, but you cannot view all of the videos or take in all of the information from your computer all at once.

I never argued that information can not exist abstractly as symbols or titles in every present moment. The seed of the tree has all the information it needs (you do not see the information, to you it exists abstractly just like the videos on your computer) in order to grow into a tree with the triggers of sunlight and water and air and good earth. However, the tree goes through a successive moment by moment process of growth in order to exhibit all of the information of the seed growing into a tree. And the seed also requires outside information in each successive moment, in the form of water, earth, sunlight, and air. The information in the seed requires the outside information from the water, earth, sunlight, and air in various successive moments in order for it to eventually become a tree. When it grows into a tree it exists once again confined in that moment, but only in one of it's forms, from the information of the seed's interaction with the sunlight, the water, the air and the earth. The information of the seed is not displayed to you all at once. The whole history of the tree exists abstractly, and exists potentially in the seed presently, until it is given more information (sunlight, water, earth, and air) and processed moment by moment in successive stages.

Also, I did not argue that you can not have 5,000 videos on your computer, existing at once, I argued that you can't view them all at once, and that they only exist abstractly until you view them. All the information on your computer exists abstractly until it is processed. Just as all the information for the process of the seed turning into the tree exists abstractly and potentially until it is given more information (sunlight, earth, air, water) and processed. The videos exist in an abstract sense as bits of information and titles to videos until they are processed and viewed by you. Your consciousness is that which can view this process of unfolding information, and create a coherent whole from all of that information known as the history of the video, and then also understand the meaning of the video.

If you were to tell me, that you can view all videos at one time, on some, crazy 5,000 screen mechanism. Your mind would not be able to digest all of that information properly at once. You wouldn't be able to tell me what any of the movies were about because you would be confused. In the same way, you cannot be in 5,000 moments at one time.

Also, I never said that consciousness is information. I said that consciousness is that which takes in the information, processes it, into a coherent whole from successive pieces and then views that coherent whole in order to understand it's meaning.

I think there was a disconnect in your understanding of my blog, because I go into detail explaining that consciousness itself cannot be these abstract wholes of information, because it has to stand outside the wholes of information to understand them."

One of the users then commented that Matter is not information (since I used the seed turning into a tree metaphor, to explain the computer's ability of processing abstract information that exists abstractly and potentially in the seed). To this I did not get to respond, but would like to do so here:

Information in the thermal dynamic interpretation is an ordered state that is not chaotic and can be quantized and measured. In other words, matter that has some kind of order, can be viewed as information. Since atoms of different elements are structured by the number of protons, electrons, and neutrons etc. matter can be viewed as information. That is why I stated that the information in the seed has to be triggered by the information of the sunlight, air, earth, and water, and then it has to be processed within space-time.

In the final sentence of the comment, one of the users decided to state that consciousness is bound by space-time but we cannot understand how, because it's laws are not contained presently in our physical scientific theories (Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity). In response to this, I ended with the following:

"As to what you said in your final sentence stating that it isn't that consciousness is not outside of space-time, but that it's laws are not describable within the theoretical framework of general relativity or quantum theory, I would have to state, that consciousness can not be described by these physical theories, because they are physical theories, proving my point again. If everything physical is supposed to be described by these theories, and you are stating that consciousness is physical, then consciousness should be explained by these theories. The very fact that consciousness cannot be explained by physical theory, is a proof in my favor that consciousness is not bound by space-time."

In other words, that it is precisely because Consciousness is not bound by space-time that it cannot be explained by the current physical theories.