That’s exactly it, Itchy.
@futureone Jupiter is not contributing much; I’m pretty sure you can skip him (her?). You really only need to read the first two posts to get the core of my theory. That’s not a huge ask, now is it?
The crucial component of why I believe consciousness is everywhere is that my theory has consciousness (or more precisely, subjective experience) associated with any physical action or change whatsoever, not just brains and neurons. Anywhere where there is being, there is something being felt.
The consciousness that we know of is localized to our bodies. But I don’t believe that it starts and stops at the brain. I believe even the blood coursing through our veins experiences something. I believe the planets orbiting our Sun have consciousness. I believe every atom and molecule feels some quality of subjective experience. The question then becomes: why do we feel only our experiences (the ones associated with our brains) and not those of every other physical system to which we are connected? I explain that by distinguishing between what I call experiential consciousness (feeling things) and epistemic consciousness (knowing things). I maintain that we actually do experience everything that every other physical system to which we are connected experiences. That is, we are conscious of it experientially. But we are not epistemically conscious of them. We feel them but we don’t know it. We can’t know it. We feel them unconsciously (this obviously could use some unpacking, and I’ll be happy to do so, or you could read my theory–remember, only the first two posts, and I explain my theory of epistemic consciousness at the end).
As for evidence, we had this conversation before. I’m not approaching this from the position of having evidence or proof. I’m proposing a model of consciousness, matter, and the relation between perception and reality that I believe explains the mind/matter connection. I maintain not that I have irrefutable evidence that my theory must be true but that if my theory is true, it explains everything.