Consciousness Requires the Awareness of Time

I've always found Buddhism to be unsatisfactory at providing a purpose for life. Though the practice is a valuable exercise, which enables a clearer connection with reality (and the glimpse into the biases of perception), the concept of "detachment" precludes the understanding I have of reality across time.

 

Both memory and imagination stretch my awareness along a new dimension, time, which requires attachment. Without this attachment, time cannot be experienced. 

 

I also suspect that the awareness and experience of time is necessary for consciousness. Is it sufficient? I'm not sure, but my intuition says no.

Is this similar to the "recipe is not the cake" perception (or the "HTML is not the web page")? Is this the perception artificial intelligence will need to develop to become more human? I am so immersed in the experiencing of time that I am not even aware of the impact it has on my perception of reality.

This is where I will disagree with Philip Goff and his version of panpsychism. Most of the structures in the universe are incapable of consciousness, since they do not have the requisite ability to remember reality from one moment to another. Rather, most structures experience only "now", a reality without time.

DNA Dream

These days, I rarely have long, complicated dreams like I used to have in my younger days. I miss them :-( But last night was an exception. Here is the outline of a wonderful dream I had, the seeds for a good science fiction book!

I. Scientist observes squirrel doing unexplained scraping at the skin of
a shelled walnut.

A. Tests squirrels and finds they have a fixed-action pattern in
response to a particular pattern on the walnut skin.

B. Shows it to brain doctor, who identifies it as a brain disease.

C. Scientist experiments with models of brains and brain disease and the
squirrel removes all the disease without harming the brain.

D. Tests on animals, open brain surgery by squirrel, and the animals are
cured.

E. Passes requirements for human tests, which also show amazing cure
results.

II. Scientist comes to believe that the squirrels DNA has been tampered
with, giving the squirrel this amazing ability.

A. Finds another anomalous behavior, this time ants picking skin cancer
off a corpse.

B. Does similar test for ants with patterns, then actual flesh with cancer.

C. Ants cure skin cancer.

III. As other scientists begin studying other anomalous animal
behaviors, the original scientist begins to suspect the DNA of these
animals has been edited by aliens.

A. Scientist compares the DNA of curative animals with non-curative
animals and finds a marker, both start and end, to the DNA. Suspects the
DNA between the markers is the added DNA.

B. All over the world, scientists are finding these begin/end markers in
other animals, and are trying to find if these animals have curative
behaviors, too.

C. Someone identifies the DNA of one marked animal to be a coded
message, giving the secrets of quantum travel across the universe.

D. Scientist checks human DNA for markers, and finds them, especially in
very smart people and finds markers predominantly in the Asperger's
population.

E. Scientist tests the DNA of spouses of smart people, and finds the
markers highly correlated with partners with the markers.