Consciousness Is Not a Binary Thing
The article argues that consciousness is not a binary trait but a more complex and gradual phenomenon, challenging the common view that entities are either conscious or not. It examines two theories that support the binary view—one positing consciousness as an immaterial entity and the other as an emergent property of the brain—and critiques their limitations. The author advocates for a more nuanced understanding of consciousness informed by neuroscience and deterministic principles.
- ▪Consciousness is often viewed as binary, meaning an entity either has it or does not, but this view leads to confusion and oversimplification.
- ▪Dualism, the idea that the mind is an immaterial entity separate from the body, was formalized by René Descartes but lacks scientific evidence and fails to explain mind-body interaction.
- ▪Cognitive neuroscience shows that thoughts and emotions are brain activities, not functions of an immaterial mind, undermining the dualist perspective.
- ▪The belief in an immaterial mind persists culturally and religiously, even though there is no scientific basis for it.
- ▪The article suggests consciousness should be understood as a gradual, non-binary phenomenon shaped by neural processes rather than a sudden, all-or-nothing state.
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| Original publisher | Medium |
| Canonical URL | https://medium.com/@chuliangyu/consciousness-is-not-a-binary-thing-7a020f93ba99 |
| Publication time | Sat, 16 May 2026 15:37:31 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-16T15:40:18.968Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-16T15:40:18.968Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | WMnI5Fah8Dcp |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Consciousness Is Not a Binary ThingChuliang Yu18 min read·Just now--ListenShareThis article is an adaption of parts of my book A Determintic World as a standalone article about consciousness.There is a lot of confusion surrounding the discussion of consciousness. One key issue that leads to this confusion is the view that consciousness is binary. An entity — whether a human being, an animal, or an AI agent — either possesses consciousness or does not. For an entity that lacks it, acquiring consciousness or becoming conscious, if it is capable of doing so, is seen as a sudden, timeless process.There are two main theories that lead to the view of consciousness as binary.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Medium.
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