The Origin of Consciousness – How Unaware Things Became Aware

Consciousness is perhaps the biggest riddle in nature.

Stripped to its core meaning,

consciousness is what allows us to be aware both of our surroundings and of our own inner state.

But thinking about consciousness has this habit of taking us round in circles.

We all intuitively know what consciousness is.

It's this...

It's what you're experiencing here, right now.

But once we try to pinpoint just what exactly it is, it leaves us grasping at thin air.

And not just us, philosophers and scientists struggle to define consciousness.

Different schools and ideas compete with one another, but no one has come close to figuring it out.

It's unsettling to realise that we don't understand what makes us aware of ourselves and the world.

In this fuzzy area, consciousness and intelligence are also related, although they are not the same.

We'll talk in greater depth about theories of consciousness and intelligence in other videos.

Like much of what makes us human,

our consciousness is likely to have evolved from less complex forms,

as a product of evolution by natural selection.

It has probably emerged from an immense several 100 million years sequence of countless micro steps,

that together make up a sort of gradient of consciousness.

What was the first step on this path from the non-conscious

to the basic consciousness that ultimately led to the convoluted consciousness we humans enjoy today?

[Intro]

Take a stone.

The consensus is that a stone is not conscious. Though, not everyone agrees even on this.

Some panpsychists claim that a lump of rock may have an inner life.