Or maybe three times. I have a feeling that I have resolved the hard problem of consciousness before. Perhaps more than once.
Here's today's theory. OK, so imagine a really complex device made of taut wires that hum at different frequencies. If you prod this intricate network in different places you will get different sounds and combinations of sounds.
I need to go a step back. Isn't it bizarre enough that flicking a taut wire makes a sound? I mean, why should it? Why should the energy come out in frequencies that we have become adapted to hear? Why should the energy go anywhere at all? Why not just stay in the darn wire? And why is there energy in the first place? And why do big masses attract? I mean, yeah, I bet the physicists can give me some algorithms but you keep going back and the why questions eventually lead to I don't know. Why is there anything rather than nothing?
So, forge ahead. There's energy. Some is experienced as sounds, some as light, and some as consciousness. That's it. Twiddle the intricate device and you get a different frequency of consciousness. And, obviously, unlike light and sound, it isn't only in one dimension (from low to high frequency) or maybe two (frequency and intensity). It's in millions of dimensions. And maybe we only pick up a certain bandwidth. Oh, silly me, of course we do. Most of the stuff goes on without us knowing. Like infra-red light. Or bat squeaks. But maybe with the right receptors we could be sensitised to more of it. Not just feelings and thoughts and sensations but other things entirely.
Why not? And maybe trees and plants are sensitive to different wavelengths or dimensions of it. They don't have neurons. They have... something else.
I read this piece on Aeon about how plants seem to have memories. Why not? Memories stored in silicon as well as meat so why couldn't it be stored in cellulose?
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