Symmetry of Consciousness
Where to start with the hard problem of consciousness?
I think the best place to start is to identify any symmetries.
Symmetry is the building block of everything. Not atoms or quarks.
Whereever they can be found in the physical world, a physical conservation law will follow. And vice-versa.
Whereever they can be found in the mental world, will a mental conservation law follow?
Can we identify any nonphysical conservation laws or symmetries?
Possible Nonphysical Conservation Laws
Is identity conserved?
In the sense that you always identify with something. Not that it is unchanging. Or that you are necessarily conscious of the fact. Does a being need to be conscious of identification to identify?
Ego-death may not a valid counter-example. It can feel like a loss of personal identity, but only as a side effect of removing the barrier between self and other. Identity is not lost, it becomes unbounded. The so called feeling of non-duality; being one with the universe.
Possible Nonphysical Symmetries
Pre-birth and post-death seem to likely be the same state of (non-)consciousness. That would make the two ends of every lifetime symmetric.
Such an unchanging null state seems in ways similar to an identity element.
Are all conscious experiences symmetric? Like how you may consider different permutations of a Rubik’s cube to be symmetric despite the labels not matching?
Would this mean Lie Theory, the study of continuous symmetries, can be applied to our continuous experience from birth to death?
At any instant, are we are moving infinitesimally in a direction tangent to the manifold of phenomenal experiences?
What would the tangent space of the manifold of experiences represent?
Will sure feels like it directs experience. Is our will the tangent space?
Is any of this testable?