Can we think of consciousness as a force of nature?

A precarious belief, too, but one that for the moment works for me. I AM looking for better beliefs.
"A world ontologically independent of any consciousness seems problematical" only if that world is primarily a pattern of meaningful ideas, such as Darwin's description of changes in birds beaks. But the subatomic and atomic configurations forming the basis for that description are independent of human conscioiusness (some would use the term objective). What you call the "unfolding of reality" is far deeper ontologically than the notion of "evolution" since the former refers to everything, even the events at levels deeper than those that can be used to describe evolutionary changes in biological patterns.

Evolution can also be applied to Chemistry and Physics...mind matter anti-matter confrontation in the early Universe, or the process of production of heavy elements in Supernovas...

I am a little unsure what you mean. The human perception of a rock and the sub-atomic configurations it can be explained as with quantum physics are both explanations of the same substance. And the human perception isn't the only level human consciousness operates on. Some of it is diverted to controlling respiration and other bodily functions, operations that are taking place on levels of reality far smaller than my perception can detect.

If consciousness and matter are two mutualy implicit phenomenon, is it objectivity to seek to eliminate the observer, or is it merely an attempt to legitimize a belief that we have no facts to support? Indeed, the whole idea of objectivity in relation to existence and reality consists of removing conscious presence from an equation that may be meaningless without it. All because we think consciousness cannot exist without there first being physical form. But do we really have any justification for that belief?

There are areas of physical reality that are not understood by means of an evolutionary model, unless the latter is defined in a very broad sense. Keep in mind, guys, that I accept evolutionary theory as very useful and I am not a naive realist. What I refer to by "conscious-independent reality" is all that has occured before the emergence of human consciousness and that at present is beyond observation. But "meaningful reality" does not exist, I agree, until we observe and cognize it.

I grant that my use of consciousness is too narrow; it has excluded for the moment levels of awareness that are below perception, even though some yogis have claimed to be very much aware of bodily functions "on levels of reality far smaller than [our] perception can detect".
What I'm trying to do is include BOTH subjective and objective dimensions of life in order to transcend objectivist and subjectivist extremes. Attempts to rise above dualism are an awkward tasks.
I do not want to eliminate "the observer", only to include dimensions where he may not be essential for "some kind of reality" to exist.
He is only essential for conceptualizations of realities that existed independent of his existence. These I've called the independent or non-meaningful dimensions of reality. Remember, what I mean by "meaningful reality" is purely human reality, human constructions of reality.

I think we need to get back to the op question which gives a picture of "consciousness as a force of nature". This is a meaningful question provided "force" and "nature" are axiomatic. But the problem is that these are either "products of consciousness" itself, or they are negotiated social tokens which allow for social action in certain contexts (e.g. technological construction or ecological concerns).

So we can certainly think of "consciousness" in the sense of having such pictures, but we need to be aware of the contextual constraints which operate on all discourse on the matter.

I think there is a difference. For example if I am looking at my desk that is one thing and if there is say some optical implant feeding me a image of a desk that is another. There is a difference even if that difference is not in my experience at the time. When we have to choose between interpretations like that we use Ocham's razor no?

So you believe in the back side of the moon and you believe that in order to be a physical object someone needs to experience it so who is experiencing that rock right now?

I am a little pressed for time, so I wish to get back to this later. For now I just want to share the consideration that has me trying to think of consciousness as a natural phenomenon.

Our common view on conscousness seems to be rooted in a naive realistic notion of physical matter being a neccesary condition for the emergence of observers.
There is no direct fact to support this, only our bias.
There are, however, facts to support that consciousness is a neccesary condition for the emergence of physical matter.

You are ! ....in your mind's eye. Forget about "physical object"....think instead about your potential relationship with aspects of "the world" . It is the relationship which incorporates the expectation of "physicality" NOT the "object". Such expectations are what are pictured.

I have never figured you for a naive realist JL. I don't consider myself one either, but I keep uncovering naive realistic notions in my own thinking.
Our assumption tends to be that consciousness is something that emerged from physical reality. But if we divide reality into physical and conscious phenomenon, how can we know that one phenomenon is more fundamental than the other?
Isn't it possible that our way of thinking is motivated by a naive realistic notion of linear progression in which physical reality preceds consciousness?
It reminds me of the christian genesis, where the world was created and man (consciousness) put in it after. That thorougly inbred way of thinking can perhaps make us more inclined to model our "newer" theories in the same fashion.



This seems like a reasonable motive. But why is this more reasonable than to try to envision a scenario in which "physical" may not be essential for "some kind of reality" to exist.

Precicely what is it that makes us assume that the physical is the origin of the conscious? "Recent" indications point to the reverse being the case, that the conscious is the origin of the physical...

Good points: I agree that naive realism may subtly intrude itself whenever we use language (perhaps that's an advantage of mathematics and mysticism) as built-in tacit presuppositions of culture.
I wonder to what extent "physical" may mean for us "substantive". This would be a bias of another implicit paradigm: physicalism as opposed to mentalism. I don't think either one denotes Reality accurately.

These problems blow my mind. That's why I feel secure only when meditating with the only permited thought "I don't know" and even better "I don't need to know." But actually philosophical speculation is fun.

Agreed, these problems are difficult to deal with, and confusion is a likely event, at least on my own part. They seem share an aspect with mental illnesses, in fact, and that is the consideration that the thing we seek to understand is also the thing we seek to understand with.

Yes, our true Self.
It's comforting to know that my existential situation is shared by others, especially competent others.

Methinks you dont understand what 'observe' means in the context of physics.

And since your very first sentence is wrong, the rest does not follow.

I suspect that all isms are to be suspect: determinism, mechanism, materialism, physicalism, supernaturalism, naturalism, dualism, positivism, mentalism, idealism, nihilism, pluralism, monism, naive realism, reductionism, solipsism, perhaps even skepticism. Please add others to this list.
Most of these isms are useful UP TO A POINT. Beyond that they devolve into absurdities, describing half-worlds. We are philosophically caught in between them. The best place to be is in a state of silence. But this, too, carried to an extreme becomes the cop-out of "passivism".

Kielicious,
I would be very interested in an explanation of what "observe" means in physics.

And the rest is a consideration that doesn't only follow from that single sentence, and an attempt to capture ideas shared by many particle physicists in a way that I can relate to them. In the OP it follows the inital sentence as a way of presenting a coherent issue. I may not have succeeded.
But a good description of what "observe" means in the context of physics would be very helpful to me, if you think I have it wrong. I haven't really been able to find any definition of "observe" that offers a specific meaning for any specific branch of science.

In your view conscience comes first...if such is true one might well wonder conscious of what eh ???

I like that you added skepticism to your list.
In this context, though, I would say materialism is central to the issue. Our worldview is fundamentally materialistic, and anything that doesn't have material form is subject to doubts about its reality or existence.

But I wonder if it would have occured to Descartes to seek the most basic assumption he could find if his fundamental way of seeing the world (as taught from childhood) was that the thoughts in his head were just as natural and real phenomena as the materialistic world he percieved.