What does it mean for us to “translate” something? Usually we mean this by taking an information and then turning it into a form that we can understand, in our own terms. The basis of my consciousness model lies in the idea that the brain’s somewhat unique structure and composition can allow it to essentially “translate” its own physical self (by using its physical self!) into its own terms, which I believe is what consciousness might be.

Simply put, it is “how the brain sees itself as” or “how the brain experiences itself as”, which may or may not be equal to the said brain, though the line between the two is very thin and sometimes even fades away depending on certain perspectives, as I will write about in some other post.

But first let’s take two neurons, presynaptic and postsynaptic. In the most simple sense, what happens is that the presynaptic neuron sends out a specific form of chemical signal which can either make the postsynaptic neuron closer to or further away from firing its own signal.

I want to make a point that when the presynaptic neuron fires a signal towards the postsynaptic neuron, the postsynaptic neuron essentially has to “translate” that signal for it to react to it accordingly. 

To the postsynaptic neuron alone, the presynaptic neuron’s incoming chemical signal equates to the physical reaction it causes to itself, whether it be the changes in its resting potential or the firing of an action potential. In that sense, the postsynaptic neuron translates the presynaptic neuron’s signal into its new altered physical state. 

But it does not experience the signal as the physical state it has been altered by (Because the altered physical state is the consequence of the translation rather than the product), and so it rather experiences and sees the presynaptic neuron / its signal as “what made the signal alter its physical state”, which is separate from the signal or the physical state of the postsynaptic neuron.

So what exactly does the postsynaptic neuron “experience” the presynaptic neuron “as”? First, it should be local and subjective to the postsynaptic neuron, as it is what made the signal alter ITS physical state, and not the physical state of any other object, but at the same time, it has to be something that underlies this whole process.

Whatever may this be, we can see that it has caused a specific change in the physical state of the postsynaptic neuron which depends on the kind of experience it had of the presynaptic neuron, and so its experience will continue to ripple across the other neurons in the form of that physical change which affects those said other neurons.

Now to move on to the bigger picture—the brain as a whole. If the aforementioned translation process between one neuron and the other happens across the entire brain, and if the brain’s neurons are all interconnected with each other akin to a “net-like structure”, then whatever a single neuron translates from its presynaptic neuron will pass on to affect the other rest of the neurons, which applies for every neuron in the brain, where each of their translated “experiences” of their own presynaptic neurons will pass on and physically affect the way the other neurons “translate” or “experience” each other, essentially binding all translated information into one net-like structure within the brain.

In this process, a cluster of neurons can perhaps get signals from another cluster of neurons, and while this translation process will be much much more complicated than a neuron-to-neuron translation, it will translate those signals in their own terms, as consequence of their “subjective experiencing of the another cluster of neurons”. 

Because the cluster’s physical states will have been altered in this process of taking information from another cluster of neurons, we can deduce it has “experienced” this another cluster of neurons, though its subjective nature may prevent us from observing it with a microscope—all we can do is look at the physical results of those experiences (i.e. the firing of action potentials, neurotransmitters, etc as a consequence of receiving signals).

But if we can apply this logic to neurons and clusters of neurons, what if the entire brain happens to “translate” or “experience” its own self as well in doing all of this?

As aforementioned in the previous paragraphs, a neuron is able to translate another neuron in terms of its own subjective experiences, which then produces a change in their physical state after receiving the signal. If each and every single neuron within the brain undergoes this process with its neighboring neurons, and given that we define the brain as this huge cluster of interconnected neurons, one can say that the entire brain itself constantly undergoes this process due to its building blocks (the individual neurons) doing so all at the same time, in simplified terms.

So if a neuron-to-neuron translation produces a “subjective experience of a presynaptic neuron” within the postsynaptic neuron, then this so-called brain-to-brain translation would produce a “subjective experience of the brain” within the brain itself. This is subject to further definition and needs more fleshing out, but I believe this is the essence of our brain’s consciousness: What the brain experiences itself as.