What does it mean to be conscious? How did consciousness arise? These are not easy questions; they spark intense debate in both scientific and philosophical communities. Our understanding of consciousness has profound implications. From our concept of free will to personal responsibility, the way we see consciousness fundamentally shapes how we understand ourselves and our place in the world, influencing our interactions with all other beings, human and non-human alike.

For many contemporary scientists and philosophers, physicalism is the dominant framework for understanding the universe. Physicalism asserts that everything can be explained by and reduced to physical processes and properties. This presents a challenge: how does consciousness emerge from purely physical interactions within the brain? This is the “hard problem” of consciousness, made famous by David Chalmers. Brilliant minds have tackled this issue and proposed various theories, including panpsychism (the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter); emergentism (the view that consciousness arises from complex interactions of simpler physical components); and integrated information theory (which attempts to quantify consciousness based on the interconnectedness of a system). While each of these is intriguing to think about, none delivers a satisfying explanation for the fundamental leap from physical interactions to what we refer to as consciousness.

Before we get stuck in the complexities of its origins, it is important to define consciousness. Ask ten people and you will likely get ten different definitions. Some define consciousness as a deeply personal, first-person perspective that each of us possesses. From this definition, consciousness is the culmination of our sensory inputs and the vibrant spectrum of our emotions all woven together into the fundamental awareness that “I am.”

Thomas Nagel offers a particularly insightful definition: consciousness is “what it is like to be a thing.” Consider a bat. We can study its anatomy, its behavior, its ecological role, and perhaps even imagine its sensory world. Yet we can never truly know what it is like to be a bat. That subjective experience remains locked within the bat itself. Similarly, we can have a complete scientific understanding of the color red, detailing its wavelength and its impact on our photoreceptor cells, but if we were born colorblind we would forever lack the qualitative experience of redness. This highlights a crucial point: consciousness, in its raw, experiential form, seems to lie beyond the reach of objective scientific description.

Consciousness can also be described as the “directedness of mind.” Intentionality, as an inherent quality of consciousness, is our ability to direct our attention towards something. We can visualize this through the metaphor of light. Laser beams are focused and directed, while lighthouses broadly illuminate their surroundings; both light up the world in different ways. These contrasting images represent different “ways of seeing” or “modes of thinking”. Perhaps consciousness is not a singular entity that “exists” in a concrete sense, but is rather a particular way of seeing the world. Consciousness may be like the frameworks of scientific inquiry, psychological analysis, or artistic expression which each offer different lenses through which we can interpret reality.

From an evolutionary standpoint, purely logical arguments can be made that free will and consciousness are illusions. The practical implications of believing and acting on this would be disastrous, however. Without a sense of self and a feeling of agency, how can one live a meaningful life or even bring themselves to act upon their needs? It may be that consciousness evolved as a crucial mechanism to protect intelligent beings from self-sabotage. Those with this sense of awareness might have been more likely to survive.

Defining consciousness precisely remains a challenge, prompting further questions. Is self-consciousness a separate entity from basic consciousness? Is a child, with their unfiltered engagement with the world, more conscious in some ways than an adult? Is consciousness tied to intelligence or is it independent? Interestingly, when we deeply focus our attention on something external, we begin to take on properties of the thing we are focusing on, and in the process lose a sense of our own selves. In this way, an unfocused mental state may allow us to be more receptive to conscious experiences.

Back to the hard problem. How does awareness arise from the seemingly inert interactions of purely physical components? This question becomes even more perplexing when we consider the following. Many people report feeling more conscious after having a drink, yet this subjective feeling of consciousness coincides with an inhibition of awareness and impaired cognitive function. Furthermore, anecdotal accounts from psychedelic and near-death experiences often describe a feeling of expanded consciousness. Paradoxically, and as confirmed in multiple neuroscientific studies, this heightened sense of consciousness occurs alongside reduced brain activity. Some neuroscientists believe that our everyday waking consciousness functions in part as a filter, as a mechanism our brains employ to prevent us from being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that would otherwise paralyze us into inaction. When brain activity slows, this filtering effect weakens and allows different kinds of experiences to emerge, including what we refer to as consciousness.

Let’s develop a related idea further. What if consciousness isn’t a concrete entity that either exists or doesn’t exist? What if consciousness is simply a specific mode of processing information, a way of seeing the world? As an example, consider logical proofs. Logic is a structured way of reasoning, a framework we use to establish truth within a given system. Logical proofs are useful, but they don’t “exist” in the same way as a physical object does. Similarly, consciousness may be a framework that our brains have developed, a way of interpreting and interacting with the world around us. Recall the studies on impairment: are we really aware of everything around us, or does it just feel as if we are?

Beyond the lens of consciousness, there are many other modes of understanding; here are several examples. We may see the world through the lens of science, focusing on objective measurement and empirical evidence. We may use psychology as a further lens, exploring the inner workings of the mind and human behavior. Still yet, we may view the world through the lens of art, bypassing rational thought and focusing on emotional and aesthetic responses. If consciousness is a specific mode of engagement, a particular filter through which we experience reality, then why do we question how consciousness came to be in a different way than we discuss the origins of science, psychology, or art?

The following thought experiment may further illuminate issues with the current discourse on consciousness. Imagine two mirrors facing each other, creating an infinite series of reflections, a seemingly endless loop. Thinking about consciousness may be something similar, a self-referential process of the brain reflecting upon its own activity. How can a person objectively view a lens through which they view the world without distortion and recursion? This “mirror to mirror” analogy offers a way to approach the hard problem, not as a gap between physical and mental substances, but as a specific kind of complex, self-referential processing. Further yet, our understanding of consciousness may be illusory. Is the feeling of consciousness a direct experience of reality itself, or is consciousness simply a mental construction, one which differs from individual to individual and is inherently distorted by our own biases? It may be that consciousness is not some magical, mystical ability, but rather one of many modes of thinking that we possess.

The quest to understand consciousness might not lead to a single, definitive answer, but rather to a deeper appreciation for the diverse and intricate ways in which we experience being. If consciousness is a way of seeing, we must consider the origins of other ways of seeing with equal rigor, for the study of other ways may enlighten more broadly how we engage with the world. Think lighthouse instead of laser beam. It is also in our best interest to mindfully alternate between our ways of seeing to adapt to problems which we have been looking at from limited perspectives. Our ways of seeing shape our experiences in the world, and we should expand them and apply them thoughtfully to our circumstances.

Consciousness is not an ephemeral plane that exists in a world beyond forms, nor is it a physical entity that exists concretely; it may be much simpler than that. I believe that consciousness is a way of seeing. Just as works of architecture are brought into the world by humans, so too is consciousness a complex creation that gains its strength through its situatedness. Architecture is a wonder, as is consciousness, but neither should be mysterious to us. Both are built out of physical elements that ultimately transcend their parts. Just as a work of architecture gets built and becomes an experienced thing, consciousness as a way of seeing induces experiences in our minds that are built directly out of things in the world. Neither consciousness nor architecture is the reality beyond humanity, but yet both shape our experience in the world and are essential aspects of what it is to be human. Perhaps most importantly, both architecture and consciousness are only as good as the elements they are built out of, and are only useful when applied in the right ways.

Consciousness has the power to make us self-reflective, to cooperate better with others, to know ourselves more truly, to engage with the world more ethically, and to experience our lives in ways which give us direct feeling of the situatedness that makes up our human condition. As a way of seeing, consciousness has the ability to elevate us to a higher way of existence, if only we open our minds and our eyes to the beauty that is our ability to experience sensations, to direct our thoughts and our attention towards things, and to step outside ourselves and question our underlying assumptions. Consciousness, in its most embodied conceptualization, can change the way we see the world, and thus the way that we engage and act within it. True consciousness brings with it free will and the power to decide. Consciousness is a way of seeing that frees us beyond the constraints of self and situation, allowing us to step more fully out into existence, if only we discard the impulse to point it back upon itself, and instead point consciousness and with it all philosophy out into the boundless space of future and possibility.