The Universal Mind Hypothesis

By Kar Lee

Who am I?

No, this is not a religious question that a priest will ask his followers. This is a scientific question. Is the bionic arm of the Bionic Woman part of her? Can she legally pitch for the major league with her bionic arm? How about the new heart of a heart transplant patient? Things just get more interesting when it comes to the brain. If part of your brain needs a transplant, is that new transplant part of you or not? How will you feel after the operation? Have "you" survived the operation even though your body has? What if that transplant is an artificial one? Hello? Anyone still inside the brain?

Who am I?

You may think that there is a little Self sitting somewhere inside your brain to receive those signals that get into your brain. When the Self gets it, you get it. But brain studies reveal that the brain is really a distributed system and there is really no "Self" in it. A signal entering the brain always causes some group of neurons to change their firing patterns, and that's it! No one is inside watching the mind's TV screen. No one, not according to science. So, who is getting the signal? Who am I? Who is that feeler within?

What is consciousness? What is a mind? Why aren't we mindless? Why aren't we unconscious?

Ultimately, the question is: Will we survive our physical death? My answer is yes.

But we need to know who we are before we can talk about our survival and afterlife. If we don't know who we are, we will just be left wondering "who" actually survive.
(Readers can go to Smashwords.com to read 50% of the book for free before deciding to purchase a copy.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: KL Books
• Release date: Aug 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452496788

Kar Lee

Kar Lee received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington. After a two-year post-doctoral research appointment in a national accelerator laboratory in Virginia, he left the world of fundamental physics research for industry. Since then, he has been in various technical, managerial, and consulting positions in technology and product development. Science and philosophy, particularly that of the mind, are his life long passions.

Book preview

The Universal Mind Hypothesis

By Kar Y. Lee, Ph.D.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Kar Y. Lee

All rights reserved.

Last major update in Oct 2011

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Preface

This book was originally released under the title Where Are The Zombies? The zombies here refers to a concept in philosophy known as philosopher’s zombies, or phenomenal zombies, or simply p-zombies. Because of the original title of the book, some readers downloaded it for the wrong reason: Some thought that this was about those zombies in the horror movies.

Nothing illustrates this better than a comment from a reader who wrote, I could not understand what the author was driving at. I looked and looked and could not locate a single zombie. Was the author also so confused?

So, to avoid future confusions, this book’s title is now changed to The Universal Mind Hypothesis, which is really the conclusion of this book.

Original Preface

This is not your typical zombie book.

Zombies depicted in popular movies like Day Of The Living Dead, Night Of The Living Dead, and other similarly titled ones are all dumb-looking creatures, all having these partially deformed faces and mindless gazes. These slow walking flesh eaters are supposed to be unconscious killing machines capable of doing great damages to anyone in their path, turning ordinary people into their kind.

However, this book is not about them.

This book is about another type of zombies.

Think about a medical doctor who, during one of his sleepwalking episodes, performed an accurate diagnosis on his patient, with normal doctor-patient conversation carried out, and then had no memory whatsoever of what had happened afterward. He would later look at the notes he had jolted down during the diagnostic session and wondered what he had done. One can argue that the mind of the doctor was not even there when he performed the diagnosis. He was in autopilot mode. He was doing his work without the involvement of his consciousness. When a person is functioning without the involvement of his or her own consciousness, we have an example of a phenomenal zombie (or philosopher’s zombie).

This is the type of zombies that we are going to talk about.

Here is the question: Can anyone with a perfectly functioning brain be actually mindless?

According to modern science, specifically neuroscience, anyone with a normal brain and a properly functioning body will behave normally, normal in the sense that another human being cannot detect any abnormalities in this individual. So, for all purposes, this person is a normal human being. But in this description, the mind and consciousness never enter the picture. The physical brain, and only the physical brain, is what is important. If this is the case, why aren’t we sleepwalking through our lives – sleepwalking in the sense of being in autopilot mode without knowing it? Why are we conscious? What do we need consciousness and the mind for?

What is a mind anyway? What is consciousness anyway?

Many people who have thought about this question often come up with an image of a little green self sitting in the middle of the brain feeling all those brain signals. The self will be watching those visual signals the eyes project onto the brain; hearing those audio signals the ears transmit to the brain; feeling those itchy signals the skin nerve cells relay to the brain. The danger of this mental picture is of course when it is found to be no such self inside the brain, one has to wonder who exactly is feeling those signals when the signals get into the brain? The TV is playing, but there is no watcher.

The mystery of existence

Indeed, this world is full of mysteries. And the biggest of all is our own existence. This existence is made even more mysterious by its being temporary. Everyone alive today was born at some point in time in the past, and everyone alive today is going to die some day in the future. However, a case can be made that this does not seem logical.

If you had never existed before, why was that when some brain was forming in some womb in some universe, you started to gain consciousness, and identified yourself as that brain? What did that piece of meat that was forming in a womb in a distant galaxy far far away have anything to do with you, a you that had not yet existed up to that point in time? The transition from non-existence to existence is never an easily understandable concept, especially when the existence involved is the kind of intrinsic existence rather than form existence.

What is form existence? The existence of a knife is form existence. A knife is a knife because of the way it is being used. During Stone Age, a knife was a simple piece of sharp rock that could cut things. Nowadays, a knife typically has a wooden handle and a sharp metal blade. But when a knife is being used as a screwdriver, it is a screwdriver. When a Stone Age man turned a piece of sharp rock (which he made himself) to widen a hole, was it a knife or a drill? When a creator creates a knife out of a piece of wood and a piece of sharp metal, he does not create a knife. He puts together something that he will use to cut objects. The existence of this knife only exists in the user’s mind. When the mind changes, the knife can turn into a screwdriver, just like that piece of sharp rock could turn into a drill, or even a hammer, in the hand of a Stone Age person. This kind of existence is form existence. A chair is a form existence because it is only a chair if it is intended to be sat on. Otherwise it may well be just a doorstop to hold a door open.

We label objects by their default usages, and often, we confuse about their identities with the labels we give them. We often say, A knife is created. But in fact, no knifes have been created. Some materials are molded into a form composition that can be used to cut things. This is form existence.

Even as intrinsic as a water molecule is a kind of form existence. A water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, just like a knife is composed of a handle and a blade. A water molecule is water only when we use it to do watery things, such as watering flowers, drinking by a thirsty individual etc, as part of a group of other water molecules in liquid form. However, if a beam of water molecules is being accelerated to extreme high velocity and ejected out of a particle accelerator, it is a kind of radiation that can burn skin. To us, water, just like a knife, is a form. We recognize it as a single object because of its form and how it is being used as one object.

In fact, everything in this universe, except the self, exists only in form – form existence.

It may be surprising to note that it applies to people as well – third party people – anyone who is not yourself.

Imagine the identical twin brother of a good friend of yours meets with you one day and pretends to be your good friend. Can you tell? Maybe. Or maybe not. It all depends on how alike they are. Now, instead of being substituted by his identical twin brother, your good friend is replaced by his identical clone (same form). I bet you will not be able to tell. No, you cannot tell. You may protest. You may claim you can detect infinitely minute differences in your friend’s appearance and behavior. But let me tell you, there is no difference. There is no difference because the clone is identical to the original, both in structure and in the kinds of materials he is made of. They are identical even down to the atomic level (this is the assumption and definition of an identical clone). Their brains are structurally identical, so they have the same memories and they act the same. Their bodies are identical (same composition of same elements) so they even have the same body odor. So you will not be able to detect any difference. If you hug him, it feels the same way. If you talk to him, he responds in the way he usually would because his brain is identical to the one your good friend would have at that moment if he were not replaced. So, as far as you are concerned, your good friend’s existence is a mere form existence.

The same can even be applied to you from your parents’ points of view. If an identical clone suddenly replaces you in this world, no one will ever know. They will never know. In fact, they can never know. To them, you are only a physical being who they can interact with. Yes, they may assume you have a soul. Yes, they may believe your consciousness is unique and irreplaceable. However, as long as your characteristics have not changed, they cannot tell it is a replica. They will believe the clone is you, and there is your soul inside, if they believe in soul at all. However, if you are replaced by your clone in this world, you will be the first one to know. In fact you will be the only one who can know because your existence just gets terminated. You get replaced. Your existence is an intrinsic existence to you, and it is not a mere form existence like any other objects.

Intrinsic existence is fundamentally different from form existence.

Can you imagine someone other than you being born into your family, with your exact same body, same DNA, and is actually not you? This is not a meaningless question. This is a question that is ultimately related to one’s life and death, existence and non-existence. In fact, some people are incapable of imagining this scenario all together. Some people are of the opinion that if someone was born with the body that you were born with, it had to be you. To them, the third party onlookers, you are indeed your physical body. Anyone born with your physical body would be identified as you and they would interact with that body the way they interacted with you if you were really that person. But is that same physical body necessarily be you from your own point of view? Does it tax your imagination to the extreme?

We feel our existence by feeling something. In order to feel something, our brains need to process sensory signals, scientifically speaking. But how do the brains actually translate those neural signals into something that we can feel? This is the classic mind-body interaction problem. The brain, by being a mere physical object, will only convert one physical thing into other physical things. It will generate more signals from any input signals (signals are physical things, energy fields are physical things, that’s why they cannot travel faster than the speed of light – a fact well established in physics). If there is not a little green self sitting somewhere inside the brain, how do those signals get finally converted into feelings for us to get it? What exactly makes one particular piece of gray matter your brain, whatever it processes, you feel?

Is the world real?

Can anyone be sure that he or she is not inside some kind of dreams, and the brain is really a concept he or she cooked up inside the dream?

Can you be sure that you are not inside a simulated virtual environment, and there is a higher reality outside of this virtual environment that you are completely unaware of, because you keep getting the proper nerve signals telling you that you are where you perceive you are? Could you be misidentifying your virtual body or your avatar in this life as yourself, and that the brain is really part of the narrative of the virtual body, and your consciousness is entirely something else. Is reality really real? Welcome to the Matrix!

This book is about all these big questions: What is real? What is life? Why do I exist? What makes one piece of ordinary meat my brain, and another piece of meat yours? Is there afterlife?

The mind-body problem is sometimes called the final frontier in human knowledge, and appropriately so. One day, we may arrive at the so-called Theory Of Everything (TOE) in fundamental physics research, figuring out the governing laws of the relationships between the most fundamental stuff there is in the universe and the nature of space time fabric, we may still fail to understand the human mind and the nature of consciousness. With TOE firmly established, giving physics the real foundation to understand everything else, and therefore conceptually, laws in chemistry can be derived from physics, laws in biology and neuroscience can be derived from chemistry and physics, and social science (human behavior as a group) and economics can be derived from biology and neuroscience…..

What a reductionist’s paradise!

However, the mind-body problem is most likely still unexplained. Every other branch of science deals with how the external world works. But the mind-body problem is intrinsically internal. It is about the mystery of our existence, not as a biological species whose characteristics science can study, but as individual conscious beings who have these first-person experiences and points of views, whose existence seem mysterious and at times, pointless.

Why do we exist to look at this world at all? The world had existed without us for millions of years before we were born. Why are we involved out of a sudden? Even if some physical body (the form) did get born some point in time which people refer to as you, why isn’t it working automatically without you watching over it? After all, it has a functioning brain! Your intestine does not get you involved when it is digesting food!

You know you are conscious. However, this cannot be said of other people. Other people could all be just automata. Other people could all be zombies. Yes, zombies! Having brains but no feelings inside, like biological robots, like your automatically functioning and sleepwalking body without you watching over it; like your physical body taking care of itself by going to work everyday while you are having a dreamless sleep inside. The brain is all it takes for a biological body to behave normally after all.

The concept of philosopher’s zombies is an interesting one, and the plausibility intriguing. However, we firmly believe that everybody is just like us, having a brain, as well as having feelings inside. That is why the title of this book: Where are the Zombies?

What I am trying to accomplish in this book is to challenge you on your views about life, reality, personal identity (who you are), and on the nature of the mind itself. At the end, we will be facing a problem some philosophers refer to as The hard problem of consciousness. To resolve this hard problem, I am coming out in support of the Universal Mind hypothesis which says, We are all one and the same consciousness. This hypothesis even has a metaphorical analogy in modern day computer systems. And yes, the virtual world does look more and more like the real world.

Table of content

Prologue - Life as it is

Section I The Physical Body

A case for everything is physical…

Are you who you think you are? …

Even if the transporter does not work, we still have a good case for a thought experiment…

Where is the boundary between you and the outside world? …

Maybe there IS a boundary…

The brain as a quantum mechanical system…

Section II The Soul

The concept of a soul…

The concept of the soul is useless unless the soul is forever…

The problem with the mind as a separate non-physical entity independent of the body: The dualistic view…

Section III Meaning of life

The mystery of one’s own existence…

The curse of eternal existence…

But it is all psychology! …

Is life meaningful for the mortals…

Section IV Qualia, the Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Many Phenomena Leading to It

The mystery of our own