The intangibility of consciousness…
As a thought experiment, let’s say science ends up answering all the mysteries of how the brain functions and works. Through rigorous studies, tests, observations, etc., neuroscience is able to explain and demonstrate the brain’s mechanics and all of its inner workings. Does this give us an answer as to why there should be consciousness at all? Even with complete knowledge and understanding of how the brain operates, there still seems to be this explanatory gap (Levine, 1983) as to why there should be any subjective/self/individualistic experience of consciousness. Since this is a thought experiment, let us explore some possible theories:
First, think about what the answer ‘yes’ might look like…
If we are suggesting that by solving all physical mysteries there are about the brain, we will eventually find consciousness, then we are also suggesting that consciousness is a physically findable part of the brain. If that is the case, then hypothetically we are done; there is no explanatory gap thus no hard problem to solve. By this school of thought, if we look deep enough and continue to break down and reduce the brain into its smaller and smaller parts, then we should eventually find those pieces that explain consciousness. This branch of philosophy is known as reductionism and subscribes to the idea that wholes are a sum of their parts. The more we understand about the parts, the more we understand about the whole and this applies to consciousness and the brain.
Under this umbrella of reductionism, there are several different camps. One of the leading arguments comes from philosopher Daniel Dennett who defends the functional neural Darwinism approach of reductionism. Dennett believes, in summary, consciousness is a product of natural selection.
“The design of our conscious mind is the result of three successive evolutionary processes, piled on top of each other, each one vastly swifter and more powerful than its predecessor.” p. 173
In his book, Consciousness Explained (1991) he spends the entirety of chapter 7 arguing his case for the evolution of consciousness. Beginning with claiming, “The design of our conscious mind is the result of three successive evolutionary processes, piled on top of each other, each one vastly swifter and more powerful than its predecessor.” (Dennett, 1991) Dennett elaborates in detailed discussions each of these processes, touching on topics from auto-stimulation to cultural evolutionary influences, concluding that consciousness is ‘nothing more than a functional process’. More support for this theory comes from not just the field of philosophy but also from the scientific community. Neuroscientist Anil Seth’s paper, Neural Darwinism and consciousness (2005) presents another defense of neural darwinism detailing what questions scientific research has been able to answer, what questions are currently being researched and what questions warrant future consideration, some hypothesizing promising results. “Qualia are entailed by this distinctive form of neural activity in the same way that the structure of hemoglobin entails a certain spectroscopic response: One is not caused by the other, rather, one is an inevitable property of the other. This concept implies that neural systems underlying consciousness were selected in evolution to carry out discriminations in a high dimensional space of possible inputs, yielding adaptive advantage.” (Seth, 2005). But can qualia (the instances of individual, subjective experiences) really be ‘nothing more’ than an objective function of neural activity? How does this answer why consciousness is a subjective experience? Why does the physical brain possess a ‘selfhood’ at all? Physicist Sir Roger Penrose suggests with his Orch OR theory, hypothesized in his 1996 book Shadow of the Mind, that consciousness and the subjective experience could be a product of the wave collapse function taking place within the microtubule structures in the brain’s neurons at the quantum level. While a brave attempt at connecting the bridge between consciousness and physical laws, Penrose’s detailed exploration of quantum mechanics and its possible link to consciousness still begs the question.
Even with reductionisms diverse thinkers and theories, there are those who believe we are focused on the wrong questions altogether; it is not reductionism itself that is at question, but to what extent that reduction can occur and our understanding of it. Philosopher Joseph Levine claims the explanatory gap argument doesn't demonstrate a gap in nature, but a gap in our understanding of nature. This suggests that consciousness is not a conflict of properties (the physical and the mind), but an epistemic conflict of the concepts of the physical and the mental. At some point in reducing a whole, there will eventually be a piece or pieces that just ‘is what it is/ are what they are’; that it/they cannot be reduced anymore. This would include consciousness. Why should consciousness be any different than any other property of the whole and why should we assume mind is separate from body? Because it ‘feels’ like it is? The first-person experience of consciousness is just another piece of the whole, the only reason it ‘feels different’ to us than other parts is because that is its nature. It is what it is. It causes the subjective experience because that’s what it does.
While these and other reductionist arguments can seem appealing, there are those who argue consciousness may not be a physical property of the body at all but something else. That the subjective experience of consciousness cannot be reduced out of the physical brain. If we return to our initial question of does neuroscience tell us ‘why there should be consciousness at all’, let us instead see where the answer ‘no’ would lead.
If we are stating the belief that even if neuroscience solves all the inner workings of the brain, there still doesn’t seem to be an answer or understanding as to why any subjective experience should happen at all, then we also have to be admitting that the subjective experience is ontologically separate from the physical body. One argument in favor for this non-reductionist view comes from philosophers like David Chalmers who believe consciousness is irreducible in the sense that it seems to be more of an emergent property (although he himself admittedly is not a fan of the blanket term emergent since there are varying degrees) that arises, rather than a physical part. This would suggest the whole has observable properties that its parts cannot account for on their own.
“We have seen that strong emergence, if it exists, has radical consequences. The question that immediately arises, then, is: are there strongly emergent phenomena? My own view is that the answer to this question is yes. I think there is exactly one clear case of a strongly emergent phenomenon, and that is the phenomenon of consciousness. We can say that a system is conscious when there is something it is like to be that system; that is, when there is something it feels like from the system’s own perspective. It is a key fact about nature that it contains conscious systems; I am one such. And there is reason to believe that the facts about consciousness are not deducible from any number of physical facts.” - David Chalmers (Philip, 2006).
Instead of looking for consciousness as a physical piece of what makes the brain, we should examine consciousness as more of a ‘by-product’ or ‘emergent property’ of brain mechanics and processes. Take the example of music. The melodic sound of a song emerges by the inter-operations of the physical guitar and its player, yet neither could achieve it independently on their own. For thinkers like Chalmers, “A reductive explanation of a phenomenon need not require a reduction of that phenomenon, at least in some senses of that ambiguous term. In a certain sense, phenomena that can be realized in many different physical substrates- learning, for example- might not be reducible in that we cannot identify learning with any specific lower-level phenomenon.” (Chalmers, 1996) This argues that like learning, consciousness and subjective experience arise out of other processes. This is just one of many dualistic (a theory that the mind and body in some sense differ from one another) approaches to the hard problem. Another example called substance dualism holds that consciousness makes up a distinct fundamental “stuff” which can exist independently of any physical substance. Property dualism on the other hand holds that the conscious mind is not a separate substance from the physical brain, but rather phenomenal properties are non-physical properties of the brain. Regardless of where they land, dualist still agree upon consciousness being ontologically distinct from anything physical (Weisberg). But if this duality is correct, then how does this camp explain how or why a physical entity of body and a non-physical entity of mind communicate/interact or influence each other?
I feel at this point we have reached that ever so familiar philosophical hamster wheel. So, I would like to break off and share some of my thoughts I’ve had along the way…
*Chalmers, David J. (1996). The conscious mind : in search of a theory of conscious experience. Oxford University Press.
*Dennett, Daniel C., & Weiner, P. (1991). Consciousness explained. Little, Brown And Company, [Post ], Cop.
*Levine, J. (1983). MATERIALISM AND QUALIA: THE EXPLANATORY GAP. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64(4), 354–361. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0114.1983.tb00207.x
*Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the mind : a search for the missing science of consciousness. Oxford University Press.
*Philip, C. (Ed.). (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence (1st ed., pp. 244–256). Oxford University Press.
*Seth, A. K., & Baars, B. J. (2005). Neural Darwinism and consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 14(1), 140–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2004.08.008
*Weisberg, J. (n.d.). Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Www.Iep.Utm.Edu. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/#SH3d
My Thoughts…
Since my journey started with wanting to know more about and seeking answers to what made me ‘me’, that is what I am keeping at the forefront of my thoughts when finding my own stance on the subjective or self-experience. If reductionism, in some form, were to be true, then I can’t help but see this as a huge advancement for the mental health field. If we are able to reduce the brain and its processes down to its fundamental parts and learn what is happening, then perhaps we can begin to establish some sort of ‘law(s) of consciousness’ if you will. That should then allow the medical field to better understand and treat patients with mental illnesses. If we can help alleviate or resolve those suffering every day then we should. And for this reason, in some sense, I feel like this may be the most important fundamental need in my requirement for defining consciousness and the self. It matters what can be altered and what cannot…