THE INK AND THE SHAKESPEARE
The hidden assumption that doomed a century of consciousness research.
By Aamir Butt
Blog 3/12 of #QuantumSurvivalTheory series
Here it is. The assumption hiding in plain sight.
Nearly every theory of consciousness assumes consciousness is fundamentally about electricity and chemistry.
Action potentials. Neurotransmitters crossing synapses. Voltage changes rippling across neural membranes. The specific theory changes — some focus on broadcasting, some on integration, some on prediction — but the vocabulary is always the same: neurons firing, chemicals docking, circuits activating.
This is the electrochemical assumption. It’s so deeply embedded in neuroscience that questioning it feels almost heretical. It’s the water the fish doesn’t notice.
💬 Studying neurons to explain consciousness is like studying ink to explain Shakespeare. The ink matters. The meaning is somewhere else entirely. #QuantumSurvivalTheory
Why It Matters
If consciousness is fundamentally about electrical signals and chemical reactions, we’re saying that the specific physics of sodium-potassium pumps, ion channels, and neurotransmitter release is constitutive of experience. We’re confining consciousness to an absurdly narrow band of physics — one particular chemistry, at one particular scale, in one particular temperature range.
That would make consciousness the weirdest thing in the universe. Not the most profound — the most arbitrary.
What if the electrochemical level is simply the wrong level of description?
The Ink Analogy
Consider a novel. The meaning of the novel — the love, the betrayal, the redemption — exists at a completely different level than the ink molecules on the page. You need the ink (or pixels, or sound waves for an audiobook) to instantiate the meaning. But the meaning isn’t in the ink. Studying ink chemistry, no matter how precisely, will never yield literary criticism.
The electrochemical signals of the brain may be like the ink. They’re the medium that carries consciousness, not the level at which consciousness operates. Every theory has been studying the carrier and wondering why they can’t find the message.
The Evidence
Three observations support this:
Anaesthesia: We can switch consciousness off with certain chemicals and switch it back on when they wear off. But the electrochemical activity of the brain doesn’t stop under anaesthesia — neurons keep firing, signals keep travelling. Something specific is being disrupted, something more targeted than “brain electricity.”
Sleep: During deep sleep, your brain is electrically active — sometimes extraordinarily so during REM. Yet consciousness fades and returns. The electrochemical activity is present but insufficient.
Complexity: The cerebellum has more neurons than the cerebral cortex. Yet damage to the cerebellum doesn’t diminish consciousness, while damage to certain cortical areas obliterates it. More neurons ≠ more consciousness. Something else is the variable.
The Question
If consciousness isn’t at the electrochemical level, where is it? What’s the deeper level of description?
The answer might be inside the neuron itself, in structures we’ve been dismissing as scaffolding for decades.
What If Neuroscience Studied the Wrong Level? If neurons are the ink, what writes the meaning? Follow the argument into the structures inside the neuron.