What is life

Existence

Like everyone else, my mind tends to focus on common day-to-day issues: work, family, and problems that need attention. Once in a while, however, I snap out of my everyday thoughts. A curious feeling overtakes me and I'm struck by the strangeness of my existence and everything around me. If philosophy begins with wonder, then the biggest wonder is that anything exists at all.

How strange, for instance, that we stick to the surface of a sphere so big that it appears flat to us. How strange, too, there should be such inaccessible vastness in space. How strange, besides, that this world should be full of so many different creatures, that so many have existed before us, and that so many have already disappeared.

Why, I wonder, do I find myself in this particular universe, on this particular planet, at this particular time, in this particular body? Even more mysterious: Why do I have this particular set of experiences I recognize as "mine" and not someone else's?

In rare moments of clarity—when I pay especially close attention—everything strikes me as bizarre. All my life I've had a particular, unique, perspective on the world: when I look down I see a chest, waist, and legs. Why don't I ever see the body of a giant moose when I look down? What creates this astonishing and profoundly mysterious feeling that somewhere between my eyes, somewhere in the middle of my head, I exist?

Could it be that nothing exists at all? I don't mean empty space or blackness, for that would still be something. I mean truly nothing. No black, no space, no numbers. No empty vacuum, no mathematics. No truth, no laws of nature. True nothingness is impossible to imagine.

It still seems logically possible that nothing at all ever existed, yet something does exist. And not only something, but a very particular and unique something—me. Why should I exist at this particular time, in this particular body? I had nothing to do with any of this, yet here I am.

The Stuff of the Universe

This problem of existence bothers me. I'm sure it bothers a lot of other people, too. But there is a further problem to consider. We who have grown up in the modern era have absorbed its teachings so thoroughly that we don't even notice how they color our views of reality.

The modern scientific understanding of things assumes a very particular state of affairs, one that we generally accept without ever realizing it, much less questioning it. This view is typically called "materialism" or "physicalism." This mechanical view of nature tells us that what "really" exists is nothing but physical reality.

According to physicalism, for something to exist it must be measurable in some way. Physicalism has been remarkably successful in describing the world around us. It has enabled all of the modern scientific progress that has improved our quality of life so much.

But physical reductionism has some rather big blind spots. Despite all these astounding successes, physicalism remains completely silent when it comes to mental events such as thoughts or emotions. And, of course, this is its biggest weakness. The fact that consciousness exists is undeniable to each of us. Yet the assumption that matter has no consciousness leads to an intractable problem: how can a thinking thing arise from non-thinking things?

If we assume that fundamental particles have absolutely no qualities of mind, then explaining our emotional experiences becomes impossible. If one particle has no mind, what difference does it make how many particles you add together? We are made from many supposedly non-conscious atoms, yet we are conscious. Where do our minds come from then?

Given this view, as we follow along this path from mindless cells to a fully sentient brain, you would be forced to believe that at some point in the history of evolution and in the personal history of each creature the addition of one extra brain cell suddenly initiated the "miraculous" transition from absolutely no mind to the smallest glimmer of mind. Yet this leap from absolutely nothing to the minutest trace of experience would involve a leap across the infinite. It would require conjuring something out of nothing. Is this not equivalent to believing in magic?

The leap from nothing, from absolutely no mind whatsoever, to even the smallest trace of a mental event would be the most radical break in all of the natural world. Nowhere else do we see breaks like this, everywhere else in nature and in evolution things happen gradually.

Minds developed—not from a state of zero mind, but from a state of primitive mentality—slowly, step by step with no hard-edged border between mind and lack of mind—because there is no such thing as something having no mind. There are just different combinations of matter interacting in increasingly complex ways and therefore developing increasingly complex mental abilities.

Process is Fundamental

When I think about the nature of the fundamental stuff of the universe, I tend to think of it as a "thing," like clay. But this isn't precisely accurate. Physical existence at its most fundamental level is a process, not a thing. Quantum physics tells us that the world consists of events, not static objects. Processes form temporary things, but the activity of the process never ceases.

The fundamental nature of reality, then, is not any kind of "stuff"; rather it is universal process, ceaseless activity. Everything is made of this endless creativity, and this unstoppable action is reflected in my constantly shifting thoughts. It is reflected in the constant change I see all around, in the never-ending movement of all things. This is why the difference between life and non-life defies detection. Everything is action, everything flows. Everything is full of gods.

I am a vortex of matter, a temporary form created out of the stuff of my surrounding environment. I'm a knot in the fabric of the universe, made of the same stuff as everything else. When I was in my mother's womb, the atoms that would eventually make up my body as a child were spread hundreds of miles away, waiting to make it into the food my mother would eventually eat, and which her body would break down and pass on to me.

It is more accurate to say that the form of my body and mind is like a wave on the surface of an ocean. The wave is not separate and apart from the ocean, nor does the ocean flow through the wave, for the wave is not a thing through which ocean water passes. Rather, wave and ocean are one thing seen from different perspectives.

Elemental Commonsense Notions

It's difficult to construct a purely rational argument against certain beliefs. But it's also difficult, and actually impossible, to construct purely rational arguments for other ideas that we all believe and presuppose in our day-to-day activities.

There are elemental commonsense notions that I cannot reject, no matter how amazing the argument against them. These irrefutable commonsense notions form the invisible background of my daily life. For example:

That the external world is real. It could all be a figment of my imagination, but it would be absurd for me to believe that the only thing that exists is my disembodied mind.

That there is such a thing as cause and effect, and the things I see happening around me aren't just due to coincidence.

That the past and future are real.

That my emotions are real.

That my body influences my mind, and my mind influences my body.

That I'm free and I make choices between genuine alternatives. When I do something, it's the case that I could've done otherwise.

The Universe

What we are, is the universe looking at itself, experiencing itself. For reality to feel happiness, it must feel it through us because happiness requires a mortal existence. Happiness requires a life that knows it can experience true loss and death.

It is the finite nature of our existence that gives each moment infinite value. In order to experience that, the universe must form itself into temporary, finite beings. In order to feel happiness, the universe must form itself into small beings that sometimes are sad. In order for the universe to experience morality, it must create the freedom to do immoral things.

And so our lives are not meaningless or cosmic accidents. We are the cosmos itself, living through itself to experience beautiful moments that can only be experienced by frail, flawed, mortal beings.