Science writer Annaka Harris, author of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019) offers an interesting theory of consciousness at IAI.TV: The universe itself is conscious and its consciousness is, perhaps, the only reality:

But if felt experience is the intrinsic nature of everything in the universe (what matter is at bottom), then conscious experiences are the only things that are “real”— that exist. And everything we perceive “out there” is a representation of other conscious experiences arising in the universe—which are, in turn, shaping our own experiences. If felt experience underlies everything, then obtaining a truly outside, or objective, view of anything in the universe should be impossible. The only thing that can exist in its own right—that can be known in and of itself, from the inside—is a felt experience. Is consciousness. And rather than being a confusing sticking point for all our current attempts to understand quantum mechanics, this intrinsically relational quality of everything would be the natural outcome of a universe in which consciousness goes all the way down.

“Consciousness is fundamental,” April 11, 2025

From that perspective, the “self” is an illusion, but not because it doesn’t really exist. Rather, it is part of the larger universe of consciousness:

Insofar as each of us is a phenomenon in nature that can be labeled—in the same way that we can label a cat, a tree, or an ocean wave—we can happily refer to the complex processes that generate a human mind as a “self.” In other words, what is not an illusion is the phenomenon of human minds, or the healthy development and maintaining of what can be referred to as a “self,” along with each person’s autobiographical story. But the truth is that the activity of the brain and its related experience is much more analogous to an ocean wave than to a static object. When we look out at the ocean, we can perceive the waves—and agree to call them “waves”—while understanding that there is no static thing that is a wave. “Consciousness is fundamental”

Interesting connections

Harris is the wife of well-known New Atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris, at one time one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheist apocalypse. He seems to have added mindfulness to an overall materialist perspective (under her influence perhaps?)

The Harrises may be trying to escape the snake that eats its own tail, eliminative materialism. Eliminative materialists argue that the human mind is a useful evolved illusion. That has been a surprisingly popular stance for many decades, despite its fatal flaw: If we hold that it is true, we cut the ground out from under any conclusions we may arrive at by using our minds. Of course, a totalitarian regime, wielding total surveillance, can simply impose its will on all of us as The Truth. But the regime’s Truth is neither science nor philosophy.

At any rate, the death of Daniel Dennett (1942–2024), who mused for decades along these lines, seems to coincide with a search for alternatives.

The gift of the quantum universe

Defending her approach, Annaka Harris cites the physics of Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin and quantum mechanics in general. Unquestionably, the quantum world does nothing to support a mechanistic, materialist, determinist view of the universe. But that is a gift to non-materialist perspectives in general. The idea that the universe is itself a vast consciousness does not follow directly from the observations.

Consciousness and complex brains

Does consciousness depend on complex brains? Harris offers an interesting objection to the idea:

One central problem the science of consciousness faces is that we can only locate conscious processes in nature through high levels of report and communication. This is one of the reasons we have assumed consciousness only arises in complex systems, rather than being something much more basic in nature, as it’s only in systems that are similar to us that we can find evidence (reports) of consciousness. “Consciousness is fundamental”

That’s true as far as it goes. If a sand dollar is conscious, we might have no way to know. The trouble is, when we did find an invertebrate with significantly greater intelligence than average, it turned out to be the octopus. The octopus is a life form with a central brain governing eight separate, semi-independent brains, not a life form like the sand dollar, which has no brain.

Image Credit: toricheks - Adobe Stock

This topic is worthy of much further discussion. But, essentially, it isn’t unreasonable in principle to associate conscious processes with complex brain structures. A life form that doesn’t by nature have a brain may not need consciousness either.

Is Annaka Harris a panpsychist?

As philosophers and scientists flee, in growing numbers, the snake that eats its own tail, panpsychism — the view that all living things or the whole universe are conscious — has been growing in popularity. But Harris says that neither panpsychism nor idealism captures her view:

The view I’m attempting to construct has significant crossover with panpsychism and idealism, but it doesn’t fit squarely into either of those schools of thought. The most notable difference is that my view does not include “subjects,” which I take to be a manifestation of the “illusion of self” and which causes much confusion when attempting to imagine a universe where consciousness is Fundamental. If consciousness is Fundamental, we can explain the phenomenon of human minds and of “self” even more deeply—as different moments of conscious experience in the universe that are woven together through the structure of memory. “Consciousness is fundamental”

That said, we can safely place her view, along with panpsychism, in the spectrum of philosophical perspectives of scientists and science writers fleeing the snake.