Does Consciousness Extend Beyond Brains?

The idea of the ‘extended mind’ has become increasingly popular within philosophical discussion. We can see this view presented in the work of British philosopher Andy Clark, who has written a book called Supersizing the Mind. In addition, Alva Noë has written a book called Out of Our Heads, subtitled ‘Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the Biology of Consciousness’. Their argument suggests that the mind is in fact an interaction between the brain and its environment, also known as the ‘inactive theory of the mind’.

Today, we are seeing more people who are drawn to this way of understanding consciousness and the mind. When we turn to individual and collective experiences, our conscious awareness of the world certainly extends beyond the confines of our head. Instead, our mind is something we experience in direct symbiosis with our surroundings. What stands out about this view is its emphasis on consciousness as a playing field which extends out into the world beyond our body, or head, and into the world of nature. This opens up further possibilities regarding the existence of consciousness independent of brains and nervous systems. We know from recent scientific studies that trees can communicate and support one another in intricate and complex networks — could this indicate the presence of cognition and even felt experience among plant life? For scientific discourse, this allows us to envision beyond the boundaries of our brains and into the potential consciousness of the world around us.

From here, we can then ask, how far does the mind extend? Sheldrake argues it can extend out into the universe itself: “if we look at a star, which is maybe say four light years away, I think our minds actually touch that star and in a sense go back in time as well. And it’s possible that if there were other planetary systems and a human looked at them, they might even be able to feel it or detect it…so there could be cosmic, literally cosmic, implications of this phenomenon.”

Sheldrake’s argument broadens our conception of how we understand consciousness and the philosophy of mind. What is possible if our minds are not just limited to being inside our head, or located within our brains? The materialist view has taken precedence in science, but it does not necessarily allow us to explore the nuances of awareness or what it means to be capable of subjective experience. Sheldrake’s argument opens the door to a more expansive understanding, offering unexplored insights into our understanding of consciousness itself.

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