Arc, I realize in our last exchange that I’m leaving out a vital part of my views: By “universal consciousness,” I mean that everything in the universe is conscious–and by that, I mean that everything experiences. So when I talk about “human consciounsess,” I’m talking about the experience that are specifically associated with the human brain. But I don’t think that experience stops at the boundaries of the brain. I thinks rocks experience. I think tree and rivers experience. I think galaxies experience. I think atoms experience. Universal consciousness is the sum total of all experiences going on in the universe, which include human consciousness, but so much more. ← That I hope adds some perspective that might help you understand where I’m coming from.
An incorporeal spirit halucinating brains?
But seriously, I didn’t say the brain plays no part in consciousness, just that it’s job isn’t to produce consciousness. The brain is a representation of our consciousness. Think of it this way: we only know the brain from our sensory experiences of it–we see this grey, mushy, foldy, slimy block of matter–but this means that we only know the brain from the qualities given to us through sensory experience. A different animal, who evolved to have totally different kinds of sensory experiences, might experience the brain to be an entirely different kind of entity. What is the brain really? What is it apart from how we sense it? My answer is: it is just the subjective experience we have from a first person point of view. It is our thoughts, our emotions, our sensory experiences, and everything else we experience from our own minds. These experience get translated from one mind to another (via the universe) in the form of sensory information. So when I look at another person’s brain, I’m really seeing their mind except that it has been translated into the form of a sensory experience, which happens to take the form of a grey, mushy, foldy, slimy block of matter. In other words, the brain isn’t really there as such, but the mind is there and it spawns a physical representation of itself that takes the form of a brain in someone else’s sensory experience. The brain is produced by the mind, not the other way around.
Well, given what I said above–that all things experience–what do you think? Yes, I think rocks experience, though I don’t think there’s much to their experience–a steady buzz, I predict.
No I’m not. Material reality is an instance of consciousness, not a separate category.
You are a tree that has sprouted out from the ground, but you are still rooted in the Earth.
Do you need me to help you with your self-esteem? You know I’m teasing, right Arc? No, I would never talk to my children like this (don’t know why you made that association).
The forms of consciousness we know of came into existence from evolution, but given what I said above about universal consciousness, you should be able to surmise my answer to this question.
And some animals which don’t have it at all.
Yes, and very economical.
It’s not a direct quote. James is just a good source to learn more about this perspective. It doesn’t mean that consciousness cannot grow or evolve, just that our genes place limits on what consciousness can experience. We are genetically predisposed to experience color vision, for example, but we will never learn to perceive colors beyond the roygbiv spectrum. But evolution continues to occur even within a certain “fixed” genetic configuration. We evolve as indivuals, even as societies, and certainly we can expand our consciousness to become more aware of the details of our reality and many of the things in our reality far off in the distance.
This makes sense for human consciousness, the specific configuration of experience that we have. But if you buy my theory that everything experiences, then consciousness must have been there since the beginning. Before human consciousness, it simply took a different form. In general, material existence itself is based on this ubiquitous eternal consciousness, even the so-called ‘beginning’ of time.
Understood, but that doesn’t really make a difference–whether consciousness “POPPED!!!” into existence or slowly evolved, there was a point when consciousness didn’t exist, and the question remains: how did it come to be? For me, who thinks consciousness is the foundation of existence, this question doesn’t really have a place.
You’re on the right track in recognizing time as a human construct. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s as simple as saying: time doesn’t really exist. Just as matter and physics is a sensory representation of other minds outside our own (not always those of other human beings), time as we experience it is also a representation of something outside our minds. What time as we experience it represents is the order of experience that the universe is having, an order that is necessary for one experience to lead to the next. Take logical thinking for example. When I say: there are two chickens in this coup, and there are three chickens in that coup, then there are five chickens all together, you see that there is an order to these thoughts (thoughts are a brand of experience). I must first recognize that there are two chickens in one coup and that there are three chickens in the other coup before I can conclude that there are five chickens all together. But also, you’ll notice that this order is a temporal one. The reocgnize that there are two chickens and three chickens must come first in time before the conclusion, which came after in time, can be reached. Time, as we experience it, is a representation of this order–the order, that is, of which experiences (in this case, thoughts) must come first before other experience can be had. But as you see, these experience are just facts–it happens to be a fact that there are two chickens in one coup and three chickens in another coup, and that there are five chickens all together. These are facts all at the same time–it’s not like one becomes fact first, and only afterwards in time the other becomes a fact–facts are facts in a timeless sense. Just the same, there is a certain order to the experiences the universe is having which is not temporal–they do not depend on the passage of time in order to be had–but this order can be represented as a temporal sequence, and is represented as such to human consciousness.
In short, universal consciousness is full to the brim with a diversity of qualitative experiences, most of which are atemporal–it’s all being experienced at once–but among these experience is that of time, in within that experience, other experiences can fit in and be separated out.
The ‘I’ doesn’t cease to exist with universal consciousness–it’s still there among the fray–but I’m saying that in order to understand how consciousness relates to existence–that is, Existence–we really have to talk about universe consciousness (which, as you now know based on my theory, means the sum of all experience being had by the universe, which includes the ‘I’ of human consciousness but also trascends it). At the level of universal consciousness–i.e. what the universe is experience–there isn’t necessarily an ‘I’ (but what do I know about what the universe experiences) but there is certainly (at least according to my theory) the experience of “there is existence”. If you break down this experience into its variegated parts, you will find many, many 'I’s–you and me and everyone else–but there are so many other instances of consciousness that don’t feature an ‘I’–and I’m not sure the universe itself experiences itself as an ‘I’ per se.
This isn’t some kind of imperative. There’s no reason we need to or should want to. I just bring the topic onto universal consciousness because it’s easier from that vantage point to understanding the link between consciousness and existence.
I have many, many moments like that. It’s very rare that I have a “better” ones. 
But seriously, you told me that “the other day I casually implied consciousness with reference to something that was mentioned.” ← Gee, that really narrows it down. That describes half the post I make here at ILP.
But no bother. It doesn’t surprise me that I might have talked about consciousness in a way that’s inconsistent with other things I’ve said about consciousness. Guilty as charge (even though I’m sure what I’m being charged with). If you can find the quote, you can bask in the satisfaction that you will have truly embarassed me. ← Is that motivation enough? 
Yes Arc, I need your help. Seems my memory isn’t that of an elephant after all. pffft!
Oh, my book! Well, that adds context! ← Thanks Arc! In this thread, I am speaking in the context of my book. Maybe elsewhere I spoke of consciousness in some other context (I will do that). In my book, I clearly lay out the nature of consciousness in such a way that it is not “caused” per se, though the specific forms of consciousness found in this or that being are caused by the forms of consciousness that come prior to it. This has to do with the order of experiences I describe above (the chicken coup example). Some form of consciousness prior to human consciousness gives way to the experiences we have in human consciousness.
Not exactly. Scientists have have come to the conclusion that the brain causes consciousness. They’re wrong. At least according to my oh-so-humble opinion.
Keep in mind, however, that when scientists say that the brain causes consciousness, they’re speaking as philosophers, not scientists. There are no scientific experiments on record which conclusively determine that the brain causes consciousness. It’s just that we take it for granted that: 1) consciousness is a phenomenon that exists in reality, and that 2) its existence is limited to human beings and other animals. It makes sense, based on this, that something within human beings and other animals is responsible for producing consciousness. ← This is the assumption that scientists run with, and when they go about trying to identify the source of consciousness, they naturally focus on the brain. But that the brain is in fact producing consciousness is not one of the discoveries of science, but merely how this preconceived assumption gets narrowed down in light of the discoveries scientists have made about the workings of the brain. But strictly speaking, we can only ever know that subjective experience is correlated with brain activity, but we don’t know in which direction, if any, the correlation works in a causal sense. If scientists want to say that causally, the correlation works from the brain to consciousness, that’s a philosophical leap (and we’d call these scientists “materialists”), but when you step beyond science into philosophy, all bets are off as far as scientific proof goes. It’s fair game for other philosophers with different persuasions (like myself) to suggest competing theories.
Of course!
Neither can I, but I surmise it would have had a sense of timelessness.