What is Consciousness? Where is it?

Dualism:

It is customary (at least in my experience) to start with an explanation of dualism. One very influential version of this theory was put forward by René Descartes. In it he described consciousness (the mind) to be separate from the body. In such a way that the mind was not extended in space, and was in fact no part of the material world, or its laws; meanwhile the body was indeed extended in space and was most assuredly part of the material world and bound by its laws. Through this thesis he was describing two separate existences: a material existence and a mental one, which only the mind inhabited. Problems with this conception of the mind/body interaction were so inextricable that it became apparent a new approach to the issue was necessary.

Materialism:

Dualism has been all but expunged from philosophy of mind discourse (not to downplay its importance in illuminating all sides of the discussion). This has become the case for many reasons, but most significantly, it is due to science’s tremendous successes at penetrating the mysteries of the universe. Materialistic (physicalist) accounts of reality have become the basis for our understanding of all but theological questions, and events beyond the grasp of scientific understanding. Some would argue that consciousness has been one of the phenomenons that existed outside of scientific inquiry. It is my opinion that there has been scientific inquiry into consciousness since we acquired self-awareness in some form. But I digress. With the advent of modern imaging technologies we have gained experimental evidence that brain activity changes in a predictable manor when the appropriate behaviour is elicited.

These experiments are without a doubt scientific and add to our understanding of the brain, increasing our abilities to perform medical operations and control disorders. More importantly, they are part of a scientific framework that draws from multiple disciplines, allowing us to understand consciousness without requiring supernatural forces. In the past fifty years many physicalist theories have been proposed: the mind-body identity thesis, functionalism, eliminative materialism, and non-reductive physicalism.

Considering:

As many of the most modern theories concerning consciousness attempt to explain it in great detail, they all draw upon multiple disciplines. Even with the huge boom in interest surrounding the scientific community about consciousness, there is still a plethora of opinions as to where consciousness falls metaphysically (what role it plays in the natural order of physical laws), and epistemologically (whether or not we can even know certain things about consciousness, such as qualia). We have reached a point where our scientific paradigm is broad enough to encompass a concept as complex as consciousness (for another example of a problem as expansive: The Theory of Everything). There are those that would disagree and say consciousness can be broken into basic functions and with those build artificial entities. Of course this is possible, but it would not be human type consciousness. It would be but a close approximation. It would take a fraction of all the elements necessary to create our phenomenal experience. Consciousness seems to be a problem ripe with discoveries just waiting to be enjoyed and I plan on nibbling on it a bit myself.

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Consciousness is a favorite subject of mine. It tickles my brain and I can’t help but be aware of how important it is to understand what consciousness is. The more we know how it is involved in our phenomenal experience, the more we are able to control our environment (including the environment we are encased in, eg. bodies). Most people are, to some degree, both intent on their survival and aware that their continued survival requires an assortment of things: other individuals, a reliable food supply, reliable water, a safe environment, and many other basics that too many go without. Our list gets updated as new information is added to our awareness and not everyone shares the same things on their lists. For instance, global warming is beginning to become a concern for a large number of people. It’s an agreement of disparate positions, but the general consensus seems to be that it is indeed happening and whomever is to blame, it needs our global attention. Carl Jung started to talk of a Collective Consciousness near the end of his life, many years after writing about the Collective Unconscious. As information starts to move globally we are beginning to witness a pattern that could be considered a collective consciousness. Not only will understanding our private phenomenal conscious experiences help us control ourselves, it will also give us explanatory tools to probe complex information systems such as social networks. This is reciprocal, as theories on information systems and related fields help us understand consciousness.

Besides the common sense understanding of consciousness as self-awareness, there are many other theories that diverge drastically from one another and more that differ only slightly. Since I want to start talking about how to define consciousness I will refer to other theories and draw from various sources to piece together a coherent, and theoretically useful description of consciousness. In my readings I have come across many who have helped refine my description of consciousness, whether my concept of consciousness was congruent or not. I’ll begin by describing some of the contemporary theories while introducing some consciousness jargon here and there in this series.

The view of consciousness that I wish to propose cannot be summed up in a single sentence, but there is, what I consider, a totipotent form of consciousness. I’ll try and explain how information is a fundamental property for any form of consciousness to be able to exist. This idea of consciousness I’m describing is strongly panpsychist with elements of neutral monism. Most don’t lay out their basic metaphysics right off the bat, as both these terms have a wide range of views within and overlap in various ways, while often leading to confusion in the long run. Also, by so defining my metaphysics there are expectations and assumptions that can be made with regards to how consciousness should be described. But it’s my experience that a great many views have something important to say about how to describe consciousness. Some idea’s I will cover are:

• Functionalism
• Identity Theory
• Quantum Theories concerning consciousness
• Panpsychism
• Property Dualism
• and Neutral Monism to list a few.

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