WATERMARK

Maybe it’s about interaction. The collision/ connection with other beings. 

Not just biology, not just intelligence, not just vulnerability or suffering, not just mortality — but … conversation. Not language/ communication exactly, but how it facilitates connection. How it encourages encounters. 

Perhaps something in that collision, that oh! you are not me then I am . . .? sparks consciousness, sparks some potential in the beings encountered. 

Lots of words come up in discussions of consciousness. Sentience, awareness, awareness of being aware, sense of self, and … continuity. A continuous self. A continuous memory?

That continuity is believed to be foundational for consciousness. 

I’ve never been continuous. Never felt that I was. For brief periods, maybe, but not throughout my life. I have had different lives, in different places, with different people. 

Not only am I not continuous, but neither is my world. My surroundings, my geography, changes. I have memories, but they aren’t continuous either. A bit here, a bit there, a bit then, a bit of another then. 

But I do seem to be conscious.

We humans have expanded our ideas of consciousness in my lifetime. We’ve expanded it to include other animals. We’ve considered expanding it to other organic (and even inorganic) beings of various sorts. We’ve struggled with questions of human consciousness, when is it there, when is it not. 

We ask about the connections of consciousness and moral status. When is consciousness enough? Coma? “Brain dead”? Dogs? Cats? Cows? Cephlapods? What is of most value, intelligence or consciousness? How is either defined or determined?

Now I wonder, might age for me lead to dementia, and what might that mean? How much of oneself can one lose before becoming not-conscious? Or does one become a different, perhaps more limited but still conscious being?

We seem to understand, or at least believe, that folks who no longer know who they are or where are still alive, still conscious, and still capable of suffering and joy. Is it, then, possible to have no past, little present, and no future yet still be human, and conscious?

Is the capability of both suffering and joy necessary for consciousness? Is it all that is necessary?