Although no one knows exactly what consciousness is, there are many different theories. Some of them are thousands of years old, while some are new ideas conceived by explorations at the frontier of philosophy and neuroscience.
Consciousness is a puzzle. For a start, we all use the words ‘ consciousness’ and ‘conscious’ to mean many different things. For example, we may say that we are conscious of someone or something, meaning that we are aware of that person, idea, or object, but this is not the same as simply being conscious. This variety of meanings and the difficulty of pinning down what we are referring to when we use the word ‘conscious’ is part of the reason why it is so hard to say exactly what consciousness is.
Even trying to separate the states in which we are conscious from those in which we are not is not straightforward. If you are in a deep, dreamless sleep, you are unconscious – and if you are wide awake and enjoying your experience of the world, you are conscious. This seems clear, but there are borderline cases.
During the process of falling asleep, you may be neither fully conscious nor unconscious. And when you are dreaming, you seem to be having experiences of some sort, but are you conscious in quite the same way as when you are awake?
Among philosophers and psychologists who study consciousness, there are also many different opinions in answer to the question, ‘What is consciousness?’ One reason why consciousness is so puzzling is that while it certainly depends on the brain, it seems to be a very different sort of thing from what is actually going on in the brain in terms of brain cell activity. For example, when a flower is present in your consciousness, there is nothing remotely like a flower actually in your brain. The links that your mind makes from one conscious thought or image to another seem. to follow a logic that does not correspond to the physical laws that govern brain processes.
Mental and physical realms
This kind of reasoning has led some philosophers to think of consciousness as a non-physical thing – a sort of spiritual container in which your thoughts, emotions, experiences, and so on take place. They have argued that you have unique access to your consciousness container: only you can look inside it, and your knowledge of its contents is infallible. There is no part of the physical world to which you have this special access. For example, a neuroscientist may have much better knowledge of what is going on inside your brain from a physical point of view than you do – but he or she would still have no access to your conscious experiences. It seems to follow, therefore, that your consciousness is not part of the physical world.
Rene Descartes (1596- 1650) was one philosopher who thought of consciousness in this way. The philosophical theory named after him, Cartesian dualism, separates the world into two distinct realms – the physical realm, inhabited by atoms, molecules, tables, chairs, and human bodies, and the mental realm, which souls inhabit and where conscious thoughts and experiences take place.
One major problem with this view is that the two realms cannot be regarded as entirely separate from one another since, as we all know, the body affects the mind, and the mind affects the body. When we perceive things, our conscious experiences are affected by events in our sense organs, and when we decide to act, our conscious thoughts affect our muscles and limbs. If the mental realm were totally separate from the physical world and did not even exist in space, how could it interact with and affect the body? And what would happen at the inter section between mind and body, between the non-physical and physical realms? Any process that crosses this intersection – and thus provides the causal link between mind and body that we all experience – would have to be a material process on one side and a non-material process on the other, which seems impossible. Most philosophers today no longer regard Cartesian dualism. as a possible solution to the relationship between the mental realm of consciousness and the physical world.
Emerging powers
So what is the alternative? Most thinkers now agree that there is no need to believe that consciousness is, in fact, something distinct from the activity of the physical brain. Rather, consciousness can be regarded as an ’emergent property’ of the brain. This characteristic arises out of the combined action of its highly complex parts and occurs only when these parts are functioning together. It is not a feature of the brain that can be observed with a microscope, nor is it in a realm of its own. As an analogy, consider a painting of a landscape. The fact that it is a painting of a landscape cannot be observed by studying the microscopic make-up of the painting. We might be able to describe it in detail as a complex array of differently colored pigments – but we would fail to capture the power of the painting to depict a landscape. This power is a property of the painting as a whole, not of the individual brushstrokes. It is not a separate physical thing but emerges from the arrangement of the pigments as a distinct quality. Similarly, although consciousness cannot be fully understood by examining the brain and its parts, it does not exist as something over and above the brain – just as a separate quality.
Perspective and allegory
So, has the riddle of consciousness now been solved? Not quite. Funda mentally, we understand consciousness through being conscious of ourselves by looking at it from the inside. But when we consider the brain, we must consider that from the outside. The difficulty of understanding consciousness in terms of brain science is in reconciling these two perspectives. Many philosophers think that, while these two perspectives describe the same thing – a physical person, they do so in such different ways and using such different language that it would be impossible ever to express one perspective in terms of the other completely. So, while most thinkers throughout contemporary philosophy and psychology agree on a ‘ materialist’ understanding of the fund – that is, that there is no separate mind or soul substance – they also agreed that we would have to continue talking as if there were a separate mental realm inhabited with motives, suspicions, desires and all The other facets of our own mental experience, as these will not be found directly in the brain.
Finally, where does this leave the soul? Now that the science of the brain has made it more difficult to accept Cartesian dualism, many religious people think the idea of the soul has a mainly symbolic value. The soul may be thought of as a metaphor for what is significant in your life – what makes you special. The idea that the soul lives on after death has largely been superseded by the idea that what is unique about you will not end when you die, even though your conscious mind no longer exists. You will go on living, in a sense, in other people’s lives and in what you have done while living and knowing others.
Brain and mind
Smelling and seeing a flower may lead us to think of buying a bouquet for a friend or remind us of a happy memory. But how do our brain states – which are governed by physical laws – link to our train of thought, which seems to have its logic? It is not clear that even detailed brain scans could answer this question.
Some Meanings Of ‘Conscious’
- Being in a state of general awareness: When you are awake and aware of your surroundings, you are said to be conscious. This is perhaps the most standard meaning of being ‘conscious.’
- Perceiving something via the senses: If you say that you are conscious of a fly buzzing around the room, this means _ that you believe it is there because you can hear and perhaps see it.
- Having experiences that we can reflect on: This normally happens when we are awake, although we can also reflect on our dream experiences.
- Being aware of something intellectually: If you say that you are conscious of someone else’s opinions, this means that you have understood them and are bearing them in mind.
- Doing something deliberately: Saying ‘I made a conscious effort’ means to make a deliberate effort.
- Being self-aware: As humans, we naturally think of being conscious as being _ conscious of ourselves – that is, being aware of the thoughts that we are thinking and the actions that we are making.
Modern Theories Of Consciousness
- Idealism: ‘Mind’ or ‘spirit’ is the only thing that really exists – the material universe is an illusion produced by it. Consciousness, therefore, does not need to be explained in physical terms.
- Functionalism: Consciousness is not a separate thing but a way of ordering the physical world. A brain is conscious because it is processing information in a certain way, and consciousness is wholly material.
- Identity: The physical brain activity associated with consciousness is consciousness. There is no need to explain the link between mind and brain because there is no link – they are the same.
- Eliminativism: Consciousness does not exist as a ‘thing ‘. We think we are conscious, but it is an illusion. Scrutiny of what we take to be experienced from the senses reveals that it is essentially no different from the knowledge we hold unconsciously.
- Quantum approaches: Consciousness is the manifestation of quantum effects in the brain and differs from any other observable part of the natural world because the same physical laws do not bind it.
