Tam,

An idea I've been mulling lately, is that organisms are all about synchronization, getting all their various internal clocks working in unision, while ecosystems are about harmonization, all the various organisms/metabolic units finding niches and filling out the larger space. Like musicians fill out a song and play off each other, not just all on the same note.

This might seem tangential to consciousness, but I think it ties in at a conceptual level.

One idea I've been raising for some time is that as these mobile organisms, we experience reality as a sequence of perceptions, as a necessary function and consequence of navigation. Then, as humanity, we built cultures and civilization out of narrative.

So our experience of time is of the point of the present, moving past to future, while the logical basis is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, not some dimensionless point. It creates time. As well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns it generates go future to past.

The energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.

Also, consciousness goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts go future to past.

Which suggests consciousness functions like an energy, manifesting all these effects.

Now consider how this would explain consciousness and why we have trouble putting our finger on it.

For one thing, science has the same problem with energy, in that it can only be detected, measured, observed, in terms of the form it expresses. Just like consciousness.

It is always seeking ways to push out against whatever form it has to deal with, even its own thoughts and emotions. Like trying to go to sleep at night.

Then, as these organisms, we have this sense of single identity, but myriad emotions and impulses. Such as if the same light is shining through multiple different lenses.

Yet it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, so we identify the gut and heart with emotion and intuition.

Really, the mind/brain is more referee to the emotions, than their source.

Which gets back to synchronization, as you were discussing it. That individual organisms seem most conscious when all their clocks are synchronized, which does manifest as focused and clear, as opposed to all the different clocks kind of doing their own thing, leaving us in a muddle.

I could go on, but find these concepts are in conflict with certain authoritive models, from which most people are loathe to step out of line.