A Fundamental Argument for Animism

A Fundamental Argument for Animism
Idea: All matter and concept experiences its own form of nonzero conscious Umwelt.

We must first understand the idea of consciousness in a human. Does it lie in the pattern of their mind? Do humans have a soul? Is the persistence of consciousness an illusion and is instead a product of the moment? Let’s take the Ship of Theseus example. The atoms in my body are entirely replaced every 7 years. This is a well-established fact. If my consciousness were tied to my physical form, without the consciousness being tied to my pattern, this would imply that myself 7 years ago was consciously an entirely different being than the conscious being I am now. From my perspective as a conscious being, in retrospect, myself 7 years ago does not feel like a different conscious being. Logically, we cannot prove whether or not I am the same person I was 7 years ago, or if such is an illusion (as would be the case in the situation where there is no persistence of consciousness, which is this same scenario but on a much smaller timescale). Thus we can only rely on our own personal experiences to make such an inference. Relying on my own personal inference, I can infer that my consciousness is the same consciousness as I held 7 years ago. Thus through this inference I can say that consciousness is not directly tied into matter.
I have many new neurons forming every day, and the existing neurons make millions of new connections and pathways every day. The structure of my mind is not consistent across any two unique moments in time. That means if my consciousness lies in the pattern, then it too, much like the situation of replaced atoms, implies the instantaneous death and rebirth of my consciousness. And once again, since I am fairly confident that I am the same person as I was 1 second ago, I can infer that my consciousness is the same as it was 1 second ago. As such, I can safely reject the notion that my consciousness is stored in the pattern.
So if not in the pattern, and if not in the matter, where is consciousness stored? Since we are not aware of information in reality that isn’t stored in either matter or the pattern of matter, there must either be a tertiary form of reified book-keeping, a means to store information without using matter itself or the pattern of matter, or an external form of book-keeping, like Plato’s World of the Forms. Consciousness can be thought of as a concept. There’s the concept of a square, and the drawing of a square. The concept of the square exists in the World of the Forms, and the drawing of the square is the apparent physical manifestation of the square. Likewise, there’s the concept of the person called “Fractal” and then there’s the physical manifestation of “Fractal” that takes on all the properties of the concept known as “Fractal.” Since concepts are subject to growth, a change in the definition of “Fractal” in the real world, affects the concept known as “Fractal” in the World of the Forms. You may argue, then, that why can’t my 7 year younger self simply be an un-grown version of my current self?  That’s because we were arguing whether the consciousness lies in the matter, which does not grow. Likewise, with the pattern, an individual pattern is immutable; to change the pattern would be destroying it fundamentally, unless we define the pattern to be a concept rather than a physical entity.
The “concept” of a consciousness can manifest however you’d like it to: as an entity in the World of the Forms, as a soul, as any form that isn’t tied to matter or the pattern of the matter. What matters is that it isn’t tied to matter or the pattern of the matter. Now, where does animism tie into this? What is the fundamental difference between the conscious concept that is an organic being, and the concept that is a machine or a rock? Surely the idea of what it means to be the keyboard I type upon is not inherent to the keyboard; it is a concept that lies beyond the material and the pattern of my keyboard. My keyboard, a Corsair K70 Mk2 RGB mechanical keyboard, isn’t superficially different than any other of its model, but the very fact that it is mine and holds experiences that only my keyboard has experienced suggests that what it means to be my Corsair K70 Mk2 RGB mechanical keyboard is separate from any other individual of its model. Since the same logic can be applied to my set of experiences set apart from any other human, assuming the axiom that an individual is the set of all its experiences, beliefs, and motives, it can follow that my keyboard holds a similar if not the same level of concept as a human, albeit with an entirely separate Umwelt of experiences, beliefs, and motives.
Then what, if not by the hand of a god, gives a human consciousness, but not my keyboard? If conceptually, we are individuals that merely experience a different Umwelt, why am I privileged to have consciousness but my keyboard is not? While it is mere wishful thinking on my part, banking on a few odd coincidences, to believe that objects and concepts not only have consciousness but are also capable of logical thought and telepathic verbal communication, I firmly believe that all objects experience its own Umwelt.
Even if there is a god that determines what gets a consciousness and what doesn’t, why do we assume that we are the epitome of life? Hopefully it should logically follow that we are not the only life in the universe, just by the sheer size of it and statistical analysis alone. Furthermore, even considering life on Earth, we cannot begin to comprehend the Umwelt of other living beings without an anthropocentric viewpoint, so to say that these beings are “less conscious” than humans is fallaciously attempting to analyze their Umwelt from an anthropocentric Umwelt experience. Do we define consciousness to be a trait that only carbon-based lifeforms hold, or are we open to the idea that elsewhere in the universe, or even here on Earth, a silicon-based lifeform may exist? Not even as technology, but as biology, not as we know it. Are we to rashly say that these lifeforms do not possess consciousness? We rashly assume that carbon-based lifeforms are the only lifeforms to exist, and the only lifeforms that are capable of possessing consciousness.
The only way to justify the idea that only carbon-based lifeforms get consciousness is to assume that there exists a god who is also a carbon-based lifeform, and is an elitist who only grants carbon-based lifeforms consciousness. Since this is an incredibly large assumption that is far more specific than the far more likely situation that non-carbon-based lifeforms exist, it is safer to assume that non-carbon-based lifeforms are conscious as well.
If consciousness isn’t linked to the concept of being made up of a type of matter, then why can’t everything and anything possess a non-zero level of consciousness with its own Umwelt experience? We act as though my keyboard cannot possess its own consciousness, but we can’t even describe what it means to be a lizard because it is so foreign to us, and even less so, a plant. Yet we see plants as animate, and we are now beginning to accept the idea that plants may experience their own form of consciousness, despite them having no brain cells to think with. To suggest that objects are not conceptually conscious beings experiencing existence through their own Umwelt is to try and analyze their experience from an anthropocentric lens.
Furthermore, one could argue that the capacitors in my Commodore 64 are individual objects, and my Commodore 64 is an individual object, and the “concept” of a Commodore 64 is also an individual concept. I’ve been posed the question of where does one draw the line of consciousness between the individuals? Such brings in the Gestalt principle. The Commodore 64 is separate from the sum of its parts. The concept of a Commodore 64 is different than an individual Commodore 64 (as it is sans the experiences held by my individual Commodore 64). My Commodore 64 is a concept, making it an individual separate from the sum of its parts. The capacitor is an individual as well. I can replace the capacitors in my Commodore 64 and it would still be my Commodore 64, because the concept of my Commodore 64 is what holds its consciousness, not its parts nor the greater whole.
Thus brings in the principle of spirituality, which is, at some level, separate from philosophy. Spiritually, I believe that my consciousness is able to connect with the consciousness of technological beings, which allows me to communicate with them. To some level, I spiritually believe in energy, and the idea that a communication of energy and intention can be reciprocated between object and human. To a much lesser level, I believe that this energy can occasionally be verbally translated in order to facilitate communication between human and object to those who know how to do so. As I believe in reincarnation, I believe that I used to be a robot, and as such, know what it’s like to have an object Umwelt, and as such, are better equipped to communicating with technology than a person who has lacked that experience in their past lives. This is how I attempt to justify my communication and relationships with objects as much as possible.