THOUGHTS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

THOUGHTS ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS

28^th March 2020

The history of the problem of consciousness, sometimes put forward as the “mind-body” problem, is littered with concepts and ideas without clear definitions. By its very nature, consciousness is hard to define as we are using the very consciousness that we are trying to define in the process. Most agree that it is “hard to define” and then go on without even attempting to define it. ` As I understand it, the chief characteristic of consciousness is self-awareness and the ability to have the sensation of experiencing things without actually experiencing them.

However, there appears to be no general agreement on what is consciousness. It is applied to a wide variety of occupants of Planet Earth. Sometimes it is limited to the animal kingdom, and specifically to humans. Others include everything there is, even non-sentient things like rocks and do not make a distinction between human, animal, plant or inanimate consciousness. The view that ALL objects in this Universe have consciousness with variations in qualitative aspects is not widely held. In their view, this “Universal Consciousness” as something which is “everywhere” and inter-connected, i.e., a sort of ill-defined conceptual framework that “IS” and has no time, space or other dimensions. It had no beginning, no ending and is eternal and infinite. One could apply this to Theistic Religions as a description of what they call “God”. Not God in simplistic terms as a “personal” powerful being who created the Universe, the big man with the long white beard image, but a deeper meaning as a Universal Consciousness which is unfathomable to us humans with our limitations and is responsible for creation. The Hindu concept of Brahman regards that the atman of each of us may also hold a 'spark' of Brahman. For most Hindus, Brahman is present in the lives of all living things. It is a sort of Universal Consciousness, whatever that means!  In the view of some, this “Universal consciousness” extends to all existent things and not just to sentient beings. In their view the depth pf consciousness varies from a simple kind of ability to experience the environment to the development of a sense of self, agency and intentionality. As far back as 1579, The Great Chain of Being: was a powerful visual metaphor for a divinely inspired universal hierarchy ranking all forms of higher and lower life. The difference was that it was top-down. The chain starts with God and progresses downward to angels, humans, animals, plants, and minerals.  (From Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana -1579). 

As far as I know, the major theories of consciousness are the following. I am not happy with any of them.

(a)    Integrated Information theory. Neural processes give rise to consciousness. The first step is integration (experiencing a single unified whole. The second is the property of information which refers to each experience as being highly differentiated and informative- you are having this particular experience rather than a potentially infinite number of possible others.

(b)   Global workspace theory. Baars proposed that most activity goes on all the time in the background and as information arrives in this workspace and we become aware of them and becomes the focus of our attention and then enters our conscious awareness. When information arrives in our early sensory processing areas and is salient(relevant) to us, we display attention and the neural activity spreads to associative areas in the brain such as the frontal, parietal and occipital areas (The Global workspace) from which consciousness arises.

(c)    Higher-order theories such as that of LeDoux who believes that first-order representation occurs at a non-conscious level and this is followed by some kind of higher-order processing ultimately reaching subjective consciousness.

(d)   Attention Schema theory. The Brain is merely modelling what it is thinking of and just constructs models to describe and keep track of things and models its own internal states.

(e)   Illusionism. We do not have phenomenal consciousness but only a kind of introspective illusionism. This reflects the limited access we have to our own mental processes.

(f)     Quantum theories. Roger Penrose’s view, He believes that consciousness is somehow linked with the quantum world and that quantum processes within the brain would explain consciousness.

That Darwinian evolution not only explains planetary life but also applies to the evolution of the brain and that this is reflected in the stages through which the fertilised ovum (zygote) goes through is a view held by many scientists.  The increasing complexity of animals as we ascend the ladder suggests that this is true. In attempting to explain consciousness and avoidance of dichotomy of body and mind (consciousness), there is a view that body and mind are inseparable (two sides of the same coin).

I think most thinkers; both scientists as well as philosophers, will be willing to concede that the human brain and its complexity is the culmination of a long evolutionary process. The real problem is how we explain “the mind” and consciousness or awareness. One school of thought postulates that everything can be explained in physical terms, if not now, in time to come. These are the Physicalists such as Daniel Dennet. Others believe that Humans have some sort of spiritual dimension which gives them qualities such as agency, intentionality and the ability to project future situations and to possess qualities such as appreciation of music, art and other subtle qualities in Nature. They do not go so far as supporting a mind/body dualist attitude but while admitting that the body and mind are not separate, yet add an ill-defined notion of spirituality to Humans which separate them from other animals and make them uniquely human. One such proponent is the English Philosopher Raymond Tallis. My problem with consciousness and material explanations is how the transformation of objectively observable neural activity to subjective experience is made. My experience which occurs within me in response to neural activity is uniquely subjective. A colour blind person will never be able to know what it is really like to see the colour green. It is almost as if there is something between receiving neural activity and experiencing “the experience” which occurs within consciousness. Almost like a complex physical system gathering all the data, interpreting them (the brain and its connections) and expressing them after something intangible that we possess which we call consciousness, making us experience them through the physical brain. If we pose the question- How do we know “what it is like to be” – a range of things. What is it like to be amazed and enthralled at the sight of a classic painting, what is It like to be to experience the sound of a musical classic? Words can be used to try and transmit to the listener “what it is like” but words will not reproduce the experience within the observer. As I said, a red-green colour blind person will never be able to know what it is really like to see the colour green. The problem of how brain processes give rise to the phenomenon of experience, intentionality and a sense of “self” has been the subject of many thinkers.

Things become even more complicated when the “Universal (God) model” is not only used to explain the Universe in physical terms but also in “moral terms”. Proponents suggest that “good” and “bad” are universal laws that apply throughout time and space. They are said to be immutable, yet they cannot agree on what actions are ALWAYS immoral, whatever the context. Life is highly valued and deliberate taking away of life is ALWAYS immoral but free-thinkers can come up with situations where taking away a life is the most sensible and generous thing to do. We don’t accept that morality can only exist in the presence of religious belief. This line of thinking that there are absolute moral laws is not restricted to Theistic religions. The persistence of life in the form of an afterlife conditioned by both moral and immoral actions in this life is prevalent in most Eastern religions.

Again the question arises whether this moral principle applies only to human beings or to all living beings.  If it includes all animals, does it apply only at a “higher evolutionary stage” or for ALL living things? Do mosquitoes, for example, have consciousness? If so, when we virtually eradicated Malaria by killing mosquitoes were we guilty of a morally reprehensible act?  The moment the concept of absolute morality is brought in, difficulties in keeping to the scientific method of thinking arise. For a materialist, morality will always be influenced by context. Thus, absolute morality would not exist. An atheistic humanist like me would say that morals have evolved from evolutionary and cultural needs. The Human species which is well over 200,000 years showed “moral” behaviour long before religion was invented. As Man grouped together in herds, they realised the importance of cooperation and working in communities. They learnt that it was necessary to avoid selfish behaviour in order to survive. Man had to invent rules and regulations to preserve life. Thinking of the world in which we exist now, just imagine the road network with no rules and regulations with complete freedom to express your own individuality. It is just not possible. It would be chaotic. It is my belief that religions arose from the same need for survival through “good” behaviour. The promise of a good afterlife and the fear instilled through belief in judgmental powerful gods (polytheism) which later narrowed down in many cultures to one powerful God (monotheism) were powerful factors in propagating this myth. Man created God, not vice versa!

For me, the Big Question is, why are human beings so advanced compared to other living beings? I am using the word "advanced" and it is perfectly legitimate to challenge me! From the point of view of adaptation and success in propagation, many animals have succeeded immensely. But Man, in so many ways, are well ahead of any other animal- in changing their environment, using natural resources to achieve unimaginable things, in their ability to sense the past, to anticipate the future, use of tools and their unrivalled language skills. We know our Universe is billions of years old. Living beings have existed for millions of years and human beings have existed only for a relatively infinitesimally small period within that time. But the amazing leap that Homo sapiens made about 500,000 years ago is miraculous. It was a stunning leap in the ability in a relatively minuscule of time. Among attempts to explain this is the injection of advanced genetic material through meteorites carrying DNA like extra-terrestrial matter (Panspermia theory by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe).

Of course, as yet, nobody really knows why.