What is Consciousness?
By: Brenden Weber
Tags: Ideas, Philosophy, Consciousness, Education, Science

Let’s consider the question, what is consciousness?

I’m fascinated by this question because it’s mostly still a mystery. As in we don’t really know what consciousness is, why it happens, or why it exists!

This might be the most difficult and complex question facing philosophy. To examine this question, I’ll provide a language distinction for two important variables — the mind and the brain. The brain refers to our three-pound walnut-shaped organ placed on top of our spinal cord, the organs that routinely fires off one hundred billion neurons.

Now, the juicy part for today, the mind, the mind that is the mental state produced by the brain such as visual sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs. It’s the you experiencing this right now that has created mental state experiencing this right now.

Materialism Science

In order to understand how the brain produces the mind, we must turn to a scientific understanding of the objective study of the brain. This is where we can identify the material mechanisms that produce the mind — or we think might produce the mind.

The idea that consciousness is an extension of the material brain is what makes up the materialist worldview. However, this is where the mystery of consciousness comes into play, although science has made significant progress for brain research in understanding the neural correlations between consciousness and the connection with certain functions of the brain, we still understand very little about our mental states — those visual sensations, emotions, memories, thoughts, attitudes, and formation of stories and beliefs. Consciousness is still mostly the same mystery it always has been even though science has made progress in pretty much everything around us in the material world.

It then raises the question for us, could something be missing?

If neuroscience achieves a full understanding of how the brain produces the mind or how the brain creates a state of consciousness? But should we even assume this given how little progress we’ve made in understanding the brain to consciousness connection?

Some materialist scientists around the study of mind put forward we would understand how the “switch” of consciousness would turn on if we fully understood the brain. But I think a full understanding of the mind will not fully explain the concept of human consciousness; neuroscience examines brain dynamics that connect with particular states of consciousness. Essentially, scientific research of the brain is looking to identify brain function (state) x that correlates with the brain doing y.

However, when we self-examine the state of consciousness — with personal experience — the personal state of mind is a much more subjective experience; a subjective state that cannot be fully explained, expressed or understood through the objective proclamations of science.

Think of it this way, science is studying what is an atom, but not what it is to be an atom. This distinction matters, because when those same atoms come together they form a human that is a conscious being that creates story, experiences joy, suffering, and the subjective experiences around life. We can identify a connection with what it is to be human.

Now, I’m not saying atoms are out experiencing the world, but instead of assuming there’s a mysterious consciousness switch turning on when those atoms come together, it becomes less of a magical occurrence to just assume atoms have a level of “consciousness” intrinsic to them in itself. These ideas I just expressed is essentially the philosophical ideas behind panpsychism.

Consciousness is Everywhere

And the reason I find the idea of panpsychism so interesting is it points out this problem of conciseness I’ve discussed. It’s pointing out we have something missing in the study of the mind, we are not looking at what it is to be an atom. So, to help more fully express this idea, it’s saying that maybe there’s a level of energy, whether it’s particles or atoms, or whatever more accurate scientific word I could insert into their that makes something into ‘what it feels’ to be like that thing described.

It’s this idea that we might find some psychophysical laws around those mental states we experience. Psychophysical laws that might help explain our subjective experience of consciousness.

Allow me to dissect this further. Think of our brain as an information processing device; If we can understand how information is processed from inputs into output brain functions — we can better understand intelligence, cognition, and perception. At the very least this can help us understand an objective state of consciousness even though it is not enough to fully understand the subjective state of mind.

For clarification, philosophy itself will not provide a definitive answer to the question of consciousness, but it can help ask the right questions to bring us to a better understanding.

To express the problem of a purely scientific state of consciousness, imagine you have Person A and Person B staring at a red apple. Based on the scientific understanding of the brain we know that neurons send electrical signals to one another which produces a mental event that is the experience of seeing a red apple (I’m oversimplifying this process but the general understanding is all that is necessary for this essay). When you stare at the red apple you have an experience of red within your visual field from one neuron sending another neuron a signal and so on — you can visualize a group of people continually sending messages to one another.

Now, imagine placing a green apple next to the red apple, another neuron process is taking place that produces the experience of green. The brain itself isn’t changing to green — we don’t have a little being up in our heads changing the filter every time a new object of color is placed in front of us. We only have our brain producing states of mind. The point is a brain function produces a mental event of experiencing red and green apples which means we have the mental experience of red and green but red and green are not found in the brain — it is an experience of the mind, a mental state.

To further express this problem, imagine your friend looking at a red apple. Neurons A, B, and C fire off to produce the mental experience of red for your friend. We could identify this brain mechanism in a brain scan, but we cannot know if she’s experiencing red. Even if she claims to be experiencing the mental image of red, she is only saying that because that’s the mental experience she has learned to identify with red. But, for all we know that brain mechanism of A, B, and C neurons firing off could be producing what we call green. Meaning, we have only identified the brain function for producing the experience of that mental state but we cannot identify what that mental state is.

This explanation of the problem of consciousness is essentially what Philosopher David Chalmers coined in 1995, The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Explaining that even a complete understanding of the physical structures of a creature thinking mechanisms (not limited to humans) leaves open the question of whether or not the said creature is conscious. The Hard Problem demonstrates that even a full physical explanation is incomplete because it is devoid of what it is like to be the subject regarding the subject.

Finding the Missing Link

Before I progress further, I must acknowledge my underlying assumption in the denial of Descartes's substance dualism. Descartes remains the holder of the most famous argument for the soul with his famously credited phrase, ‘I think therefore I am.’ His arguments suggest that the mind and body must be separable entities because of our ability to doubt the existence of our brains but not our minds.

He claims that it is not possible to doubt we have a mind because doubting itself is a mental exercise. His arguments boil down to this: body and mind must be separable because you can doubt one but not the other. However, a distinction between the brain and mind does not mean it must be separated. Additionally, merely doubting your body is not a strong enough property for making proclamations for its nonexistence.

Descartes can doubt the existence of his brain and not the mind, but that doesn’t provide evidence of their distinct separation. It is merely describing how he thinks about it. We can also conceptualize our limited understanding of our mind and brains full nature — in that, we do not know all there is to know. But we know enough to know that the dependence between the brain and mind is inescapably interwoven he just might begin fully doubting the objective nature of himself.

Descartes understood the body merely as a vessel for the soul, however, we have a better understanding of the interconnectedness between the mind, brain, and even further we have an understanding of other areas of the body (your gut) to then affect your brain that then affects your mind. The Hard Problem of Consciousness arises because of our understanding of the mind and body to be interconnected. In that, the mind is produced by the brain. But what is that subjective experience?

In large part, Descartes's argument for dualism, although not proving dualism, helps express the problem with calling consciousness an illusion. Once you understand that you need consciousness in order to experience an illusion you realize the position that it’s an illusion is incoherent.

As humans, consciousness is the only thing we can be certain that exists, yet it’s the biggest riddle and mystery of our world. Being that science has done very little for the inquiry into sensory qualities that we subjectively experience, maybe it’s time we go back to the drawing board for our understanding of consciousness. And maybe when science begins seeing the importance of asking, what it is to be x, they can become open to ideas that were once seen as absurd. I think—only then—will we begin seeing some more reliable understandings of the conscious experience.

So what is consciousness? Well, I still don’t really know, but it is the thing that gives us the emotions, perceptions, and sensory feelings that gives life meaning, so it’s time we examine this vital question with a more open mind.