Considering Things Science Can Explain About Consciousness.

"Without deeply, personally appreciating the Pageant of Evolution, trying to ask, and answer, these deep existential questions is like playing basketball in zero gravity."

"Dr. Mark Solms makes it clear: … Modern science shows us that our mind is best understood as “a reflection of your body communicating with itself.” "

"Consider that momentous invention some four billion years ago of the Krebs cycle. Here on Earth, when geology and chemistry learned how to harness electricity, thereby giving birth to this Krebs cycle, which in turn gave birth to biology. There you’ll find the difference between a rock and living creature." 

Introduction

Considering Steven Gambardella's, "Spinoza, God, and You"

 

I read Steven Gambardella’s interesting article Spinoza, God, and You and found it very engaging. I made a few comments and figured it was enough. But thinking on it all day, I still want to write about a key element that I feel keeps getting left out of such discussions about God and consciousness.

Spinoza, God, and You

Steven Gambardella - Oct 14, 2025

Gambardella's article begins with:

(SG)  The morning is a symphony of small things — the rumble of the kettle, the diminuendo of a passing car, a shard of sunlight across the worktop. Outside the breeze catches a dewy web, the spider tremors. An odd thought occurs — what if none of these things are really separate?

What if the kettle and the car, the spider and the heart beating in your chest aren’t items laid out on the counter of the world, but kinks in a single fabric? Spinoza the most ambitious claim a philosopher can make — there is only one thing. And that one thing is everything.

Wow, talk about getting smacked across the face. Good morning, wake up and smell the coffee!

But, but, I believe in Evolution! I understand a good deal about the astounding pageant that has brought us to this point in history. The one-ness of my existence with the All out there - it is a reality, once appreciated, it can't be escaped.  So give me a moment to clear my head before continuing with what promises to be a fascinating article.

First, to clarify - I am an individual evolved biological animal (an Earthling), with some 600 million years of successfully evolving generations under my belt. One thing that means, is that I appreciate that my biological body has layers of insights and agendas well beyond my awareness.  {It sets up an odd sort of partnership situation between my mind and my body.  Difficult to convey, but oh so real.}

My thoughts & mind ( the "conscious" part of me) are an internal reflection of my biological body (the physical part of me) dealing with the rush of physical reality coming at me, interior and exterior.  (Physical science, [as opposed to philosophy/theology], supports this supposition. For details see, Solms, Damasio, Sapolsky, Sloan-Wilson, etc),

I'm not unique, one of billions. 

Yet my mind and my life's journey is unique. 

And it is mine, same as it ever was. 

And that's about all I can know with certainty, 

based on a life time of absorbing the developing scientific evidence and understanding.  It's fractals all the way down.

Okay now that I have that out of my system, on to the rest of Gambardella’s story . . .

(¶10)  (SG)  “Here we meet Spinoza’s definition of God: “By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite.” (Ethics 1.6)

Not a bearded man in the sky, nor a hidden engineer — “absolutely infinite” means nothing stands outside or alongside God. God is — surely — all powerful, all knowing, so therefore must be all present.

If there were a second thing, God would not be all. Spinoza argues that outside God “no substance can be or be conceived” — that is, there cannot be two ultimate stuffs. There is only one — and “whatever exists is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God.”

In Spinoza’s phrase, Deus sive Natura — “God or Nature” — are not two names for two things but two names for one. You can say “Nature” if “God” gets stuck in your throat, or say “God” if “Nature” feels thin. (Or, the Universe)”  

That works for me.  God permeating everything and beyond our understanding.  With us humans as the most spectacular, if oh so flawed and destructive, manifestation of Time and Earth's evolutionary drive.

Airing-out David Chalmers Problem.

I also published this at medium.com, July 2, 2025

I come at these deep questions about human consciousness and origins from a biological bottom-up, evolutionary perspective.

One that, I believe, receives way too little attention. Especially in light of the past couple decades of amazing biological breakthroughs in understanding further layers of detail within our body/brain’s folds within folds of harmonic, cumulative, complexity.

From my Earth Centrist perspective Chalmers’ words personify human hubris and a curious tendency to expect Nature to prove itself to us.  Evolution has plenty to teach us about consciousness, why turn the philosophical cold shoulder to it?

As for me, my goal has been a graspable down to Earth understanding of mind, along with who I am, based on solid biology, evolutionary, scientific understanding along with a healthy appreciation for my animal nature and the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide.

Here I share representative quotes from David Chalmers and reflect on the blindspots. Then I invite critique and discussion. This is about a learning.

From: The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory ― David J. Chalmers

Chalmers: “There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is far from clear how to reconcile it with everything else we know.

Why does (consciousness) exist?"

From within a biological bottom-up, evolutionary perspective, levels of consciousness exist because creatures had to differentiate between inside and outside; Creatures needed to develop ways to find and absorb good things; then to lock out bad things; and also to excrete bad things; while keeping good things within.

Learning how to recognize and maintain dynamic balance has been a life or death challenge since the beginnings of life itself.

Some form of internal awareness~consciousness has been a prerequisite for survival since the dawn of complex single cells — even more, as complex organisms evolved.