The Consciousness Continuum: An Unsolvable Riddle?

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harari. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What do psychologists mean when they talk about the consciousness continuum? How many states of consciousness can a being experience? Do you think non-organic material can possess consciousness?

The continuum of consciousness refers to the spectrum of mental, emotional, and perceptive states a being can experience. Although we have studied a variety of human and animal states of consciousness, we will likely never know all possible states since consciousness likely extends well beyond the experiences of organic beings.

Keep reading to learn about the consciousness continuum.

The Continuum of Consciousness 

We have only just begun to understand the most basic elements of the human mind. While scientists have started to develop the ability to directly manipulate the brain, no one really knows how vast the continuum of consciousness is. The continuum of consciousness consists of every mental state a being can experience, and humanity likely only exists within a small portion of it. 

Compare the continuum of consciousness to the electromagnetic spectrum. Human beings can only see and experience a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum through visible color and light, but scientists have discovered parts of the spectrum that can’t be interacted with without technology such as radio waves, x-rays, and microwaves. Mental states may exist on a similar spectrum, with the organic human brain only experiencing a small fraction of the full spectrum. 

Neuroscientists want to better understand the spectrum of consciousness. However, at this time, most studies have only focused on the region of the spectrum experienced by the WEIRD.

The WEIRD

Most studies into human psychology have relied on the experiences of the WEIRD, or Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic subjects. A study conducted in 2010 found that 96% of the subjects tested for papers published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology were WEIRD.

The issue with this model of testing is that it doesn’t take the conscious experiences of other kinds of people into account. While WEIRD subjects may exist on one part of the natural spectrum of consciousness, other subjects may exist on another region of the spectrum entirely. However, WEIRD subjects are more accessible to researchers and more likely to participate in studies.

The Consciousness Continuum: An Unsolvable Riddle?

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  • Why technology is replacing humanist ideals
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Darya Sinusoid

Darya’s love for reading started with fantasy novels (The LOTR trilogy is still her all-time-favorite). Growing up, however, she found herself transitioning to non-fiction, psychological, and self-help books. She has a degree in Psychology and a deep passion for the subject. She likes reading research-informed books that distill the workings of the human brain/mind/consciousness and thinking of ways to apply the insights to her own life. Some of her favorites include Thinking, Fast and Slow, How We Decide, and The Wisdom of the Enneagram.

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