Throughout this book we have spoken remarkably little about consciousness.
This has been deliberate.
Consciousness is one of those concepts that seems immediately familiar while remaining extraordinarily difficult to describe. The temptation is therefore to begin with consciousness itself.
We have done the opposite.
We have begun with participation.
Now we can finally ask why.
Suppose we had started by asking whether consciousness exists.
Almost immediately we would have found ourselves searching for a thing.
Where is consciousness?
What possesses it?
How much of it is present?
Can it be measured?
These questions appear natural.
They are also shaped by a particular way of thinking.
They assume that consciousness is something an organism—or perhaps a machine—contains.
Our journey suggests another possibility.
Participation has taught us to look first for organisation rather than substance.
A river is not a thing added to flowing water.
It is an organised pattern of participation.
A language is not an object stored somewhere beyond its speakers.
It is a continuing history of organised participation.
An ecosystem is not a collection of independent organisms.
It is the organisation of their continuing participation.
Perhaps consciousness should be approached in the same way.
This requires an important shift in language.
Instead of asking whether something has consciousness, we might ask whether it participates in conscious activity.
The difference appears slight.
Philosophically, it is profound.
The first question searches for possession.
The second searches for organisation.
The expression conscious activity immediately changes our attention.
Activities occur.
They unfold.
They develop.
They depend upon histories.
They possess organisation.
They may be interrupted.
They may resume.
They may become richer or poorer.
Activities belong naturally within a relational ontology because they are already understood as processes rather than objects.
Perhaps consciousness has always been easier to understand as something that happens than as something that exists.
This way of speaking also avoids a familiar philosophical trap.
Discussions of consciousness often become debates about definitions.
What exactly counts as consciousness?
Where does it begin?
Where does it end?
These questions are important.
Yet they frequently assume that consciousness must possess sharp boundaries.
Participation encourages greater caution.
Processes need not possess precise edges in order to be real.
A storm gradually forms.
A conversation slowly gathers momentum.
An ecosystem changes continuously while remaining recognisable.
Perhaps conscious activity also admits degrees, transitions and local organisation without becoming mysterious or ill-defined.
Notice how naturally this follows from our earlier discussions.
Organisation preserves histories.
Histories preserve possibilities.
Possibilities create readiness.
Readiness enables increasingly sophisticated forms of participation.
Nothing in this sequence suddenly requires an entirely new kind of reality.
The question becomes whether some organisations participate in the world in ways that deserve the description conscious.
That is a different question from asking where consciousness is hidden.
This shift also transforms the relationship between biology and philosophy.
If consciousness is treated as a mysterious substance, biology appears merely to accompany it.
Brains become containers within which consciousness somehow appears.
But if conscious activity is itself an organised participation, biology assumes a different role.
The nervous system is no longer simply associated with consciousness.
It becomes part of the organisation through which conscious activity is continually achieved.
The emphasis moves from possession to participation.
An equally important consequence follows.
Nothing in this account requires conscious activity to be restricted to a single kind of organisation.
That does not imply that every organised system is conscious.
Nor does it imply that biological and artificial systems participate consciously in the same way.
It merely removes an assumption that has often remained unquestioned.
If conscious activity depends upon organisation, history and participation, then different kinds of organised systems may require comparison before conclusions become possible.
The question remains open.
For the first time, however, we possess a vocabulary capable of asking it.
This is why the debate surrounding artificial intelligence has proved so philosophically revealing.
Much of the discussion has proceeded as though consciousness were a property waiting to be detected.
Does the machine possess it?
Can we find evidence for it?
Has it appeared yet?
Participation invites a different investigation.
Instead of searching for an invisible possession, we examine organised activity.
How does the system participate in its environment?
What histories organise its present behaviour?
What forms of memory shape its future participation?
What capacities for reorganisation does it possess?
Only after exploring these questions does the language of conscious activity become meaningful.
This does not solve the problem of consciousness.
It does something more modest.
It changes the direction from which the problem is approached.
Rather than beginning with an unexplained phenomenon and searching for its causes, we begin with organised participation and ask whether certain forms of participation become sufficiently rich to deserve new descriptions.
Conscious activity may prove to be one such description.
If so, consciousness has not been reduced.
It has been relocated.
Not outside the world as an inexplicable addition.
But within the unfolding organisation of participation itself.
The remaining question is therefore no longer whether consciousness exists.
It almost certainly does.
The more interesting question is this:
What kinds of organised participation give rise to conscious activity?
Only now, after our journey through participation, are we finally prepared to begin answering it.
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