Consciousness, to my way of thinking for the past couple years, displays all the characteristics that the SFI calls a Complex Adaptive System.

1] It is complex [no shit, Sherlock]

2] It is System: it exhibits characteristics of stand-alone systems in its apparent independence and its apparent interaction with an environment; this is the so-called mind-body problem. The mind-body problem also clues us in that a CAS exists, or at minimum is on the verge on existing.

2a] It is, like so many, a system within a system w/in a system interacting with a environment within an environment, etc., where systems act as environments & vice vs., determined by context. [Also see, Pribram re: context.]

3] It adapts and co-evolves with the environment from which it has emerged, i.e., the brain-body, changing in response to the brain and altering the brain.

4] It appears to have sub-components, in particular, sub-consciousness, unconsciousness, and the like.

5] Its structure appears to have fundamental sub-components equivalent to any CAS’s agents, i.e., quantum events derived of wave-front interference events pre-suppose independent waves as agents.

6] The rules that the wave-agents follow appear to be consistent, universal, and simple.

7] Wave-events as agents derive "benefit" from the system as a whole, and vice vs., which obeys [or suggests] the generalized nature of CAS’s.

8] It gives many indications of being a Langton phase transition as it wavers between physical-matter system [brain-body] to supra-physical system [holoworld dynamic wave interference system], or, at least, "something" in a transistional state. [What is that "something"?]

Consciousness as CAS presents a perpetual problem for at least one simple reason: It is still in the process of emerging, thus it fails to [or eludes] consistently display CAS characteristics. It is something of a jellyfish: so advanced in its organization that it appears whole, intact, and a thing unto itself; yet remaining so completely integrated with its environment and composed so much of its environment that separated / removed from the sea it all but disappears. The bulk of a jellyfish, like the bulk of consciousness, consists of proportionately huge percentages of the environment itself: it is mostly seawater, as consciousness is mostly physical events [sensory-motor content.] Again, the earliness of the stage of emergence makes study of it unwieldy.

Regarding CAS’s and emergence: the obvious famous unpredictabilty of emergence — whether as property or system — requires me to ask: does emergence prohibit predictability in all cases? If not, what property, rule, or __?__ enables predictability? Does replicability [i.e., repeated emergence of similar properties and systems] suggest predictability? How do the same or similar systems / properties emerge, with nominal variability, given similar agents at the "beginning?" Shouldn’t "emergence" instead preclude similarity and replication? Or does the simple fact of inherent replication (at the agent level) guarantee replicability of what emerges?

The system itself utilizes evolutionarily valuable "tricks" to Become. In the grand environment of the world, and probably the universe at large, a schema involving self-reward [equivalent to pleasure and the like] facilitates survival. [ref. to ____ Consc. J., Missouri guys] Yet, the scheme or tactic is an illusion, even though the delusion encourages survival. The implication is, of course, that survival is assured even without the delusionary scheme. Their text, in fact, implies we are the environment [corresponding to the fact of bodies composed of environmental components.]

note: Einsteinian space-time: As ___ said, if space does not flow, why should we presume time flows, much less presume it flows one-way? Thus every time-where is "now," thus challenging the linguistic development of toddlerhood that allows reward based learning of cause-effect-over-time.

MYSTICISM & Consciousness Studies & CAS’s

Buddha: all light / flames [=Bohm]

Heb.: in beginning, the WORD; I AM

Jesus/iesus/Isis: "my father" & Holland’s paybacks