Consciousness is natural. It is linking information to identity. It compares to a mirror. The mirror out in the strong sun reflects it back and will be affected by it. Maybe heat. Maybe damage.
• “Consciousness is natural” — suggests that consciousness isn’t something supernatural or outside the physical world; it’s an emergent property of natural processes, perhaps arising from the organization of matter and information.
• “It is linking information to identity” — that’s a deep insight. You’re implying that consciousness happens when information (sensory data, thoughts, memories) becomes personalized — when it is integrated in a way that relates to a self-model, an identity. In other words, raw information becomes experience when it is owned or referenced by an “I.”
• “A mirror” — beautiful metaphor. A mirror reflects, but it doesn’t create; it shows what already exists. Similarly, consciousness may not generate reality or information, but rather reflect it back to itself — allowing awareness of awareness, a recursive loop.
Consciousness arises naturally when information reflects upon itself through an identity — when reality becomes its own mirror.
PARALLEL LOOPS?
The Feedback Loop / Self-Referential Loop
Main idea:
In physics and systems theory, a feedback loop occurs when a system’s output feeds back into its own input — influencing its future behavior. This happens in control systems, thermodynamic equilibrium, and even in biological and cognitive systems.
Metaphorical use for consciousness:
Consciousness can be seen as a feedback loop of information: perception (input) is processed, compared to identity (internal state), and the result changes that very identity — much like a physical system that adjusts itself through feedback.
This helps with the argument that consciousness is a loop - awareness of awareness and awareness of information.
Physical examples:
Thermostat systems (cybernetics origin): measure → compare → act → measure again.
Laser physics: light bounces between mirrors; the feedback amplifies coherence — like awareness reflecting upon itself.
Quantum observer effect: the act of measurement changes the system — observation participates in the outcome.
General relativity’s spacetime curvature: matter tells space how to curve; curved space tells matter how to move — a cosmic feedback loop.
SCHOLARLY SUPPORT
Consciousness arises from linking information to identity; when we perceive or absorb information—especially of a moral kind—it becomes integrated into the self. Thus, in seeing good that good by merely being seen changes us and makes us good. The every act of seeing or thinking one sees evil, makes evil part of one.
Giulio Tononi – Integrated Information Theory (IIT): consciousness is integrated information; awareness arises when information is unified in a self-system.
Thomas Metzinger – The Ego Tunnel: the self is a model built from information; experience is what happens when information is processed as “mine.”
Mark H. Bickhard – Interactivist Model: consciousness arises through recursive self-interaction — information reflecting upon itself.
Evan Thompson – Mind in Life: consciousness is a natural process of sense-making that ties information to a living identity (the organism).
Francisco Varela – Autopoiesis and Enactivism: cognition is embodied; the self arises through interaction and incorporation of information from the world.
David Chalmers – Information and the Mind-Body Problem: suggests that information may have intrinsic phenomenal qualities — bridging consciousness and information.
Abhinavagupta (Kashmir Shaivism) – taught that consciousness reflects the world within itself; perceiving something integrates it into awareness.
Advaita Vedānta (Śaṅkara) – uses the mirror metaphor: consciousness reflects the mind; the reflected content shapes empirical identity (jīva).
Albert Bandura – Social Learning Theory: observing actions and their outcomes shapes moral behavior; “seeing” influences becoming.
George Gerbner – Cultivation Theory: long-term exposure to images and narratives subtly shapes one’s worldview and moral identity.
BIAS
Research is reluctant and not funded to support those concepts. Nobody wants to think that reading the bad stories in the Bible or suspecting that God has poor morals corrupts them. God himself would be corrupted by observing our "sin". As human nature projects God to at least partly suit itself, that could be a trick to normalise, validate or encourage its own self-corrupting power.
More people suspect that the absorption idea could be true than who actually believe it is probably true.
Many report a strange pull towards doing good or evil after seeing good or evil. They report a shift or change in themselves that is more than just emotional or psychological..
INHERENT PROBLEM?
If consciousness detects information by turning it into part of you, and that explains how you connect to data, that has to be accepted. Nothing can change that. It is inherent.
But it does not mean that there is no other power out there that would tie corruption to seeing evil and improvement to seeing good. The supernatural or some unknown natural law could do it.
So if you debunk the inherence, you still have not debunked the connecting.