It may strike you as odd that someone who is a devout atheist, and a firm believer in the Sciences, would propose that the Universe as a whole is sentient.
But, bear with me.
If you were to ask someone to define consciousness, they would probably say something more or less equivalent to "Something capable of thinking". Those who would go for more specificity might come up with "Ability to form ideas", or "Awareness of stimuli".
Dictionary.com defines it as "noun
1.
the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
2.
the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people: the moral consciousness of a nation.
3.
full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life: to regain consciousness after fainting.
4.
awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge: consciousness of wrongdoing.
5.
concern, interest, or acute awareness: class consciousness."
The general gist of this is some kind of awareness.
Many would go on to say that in terms of classifying thought, there is a condition that is more difficult to achieve than consciousness, which is sentience.
In addition to being able to think, sentience requires the ability to have a concept of self.
It is generally agreed than most animals have consciousness, but not sentience.
Only a few animals have been generally agreed by the scientific community to be sentient (by tests such as the mirror test).
A few months ago, my good friend Michael said something to me that elegantly stated something I had mused about for some time. He said
"I find it quite wonderful that the laws of physics have caused clusters of neurons to think about the laws of physics"
It really seems to me that the Universe meets the criteria for being considered sentient.
As you are reading this post, you undoubtedly have thought about the Universe, and whether or not it is sentient. Isn't that alone proof that it is? You have personally witnessed proof that a part of the Universe has a concept of the Universe, and has such an acute awareness of self, that this part of the Universe was even thinking about the Sentience of the universe!
As several people have quipped, "If you are wondering if you are Sentient, you are" (or various rephrasings thereof)
Now, I can understand that some of you have rejected this because it just feels wrong.
It is likely that some of you are thinking something along the lines of, "Yes, well, that is all well and nice, but really that is something within the Universe thinking about the Universe, not the Universe thinking about itself! That shouldn't count. That's cheating. "
or, to be more concise: Just because something [a clustering of neurons] *in* the universe is thinking about the universe doesn't mean the whole universe is sentient.
To people of that opinion I say this:
If that is your argument, then you should also argue that you are not sentient. A vast majority of you is not directly involved in the thinking process. In fact, the only part of you that is capable of thinking about you is... a clustering of neurons inside you.
However, this wouldn't be a question if I only accepted the possibility of one answer.
I would love to know what you think, whether you agree, or think that I am a raving lunatic, or something inbetween.
