Credit: Getty/Gaetan Charbonne
SO NEUROSCIENTISTS ARE WELL on the way to identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, a part of the Easy Problem. But what about explaining how these events actually cause consciousness in the sense of inner experience — the Hard Problem?
To appreciate the hardness of the Hard Problem, consider how you could ever know whether you see colours the same way that I do. Sure, you and I both call grass 'green'; but perhaps you see grass as having the colour that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as 'purple'. Or ponder whether there could be a true zombie — a being who acts just like you or me, but in whom there is no self actually feeling anything. This was the crux of a Star Trek plot in which officials wanted to reverse-engineer the android Lieutenant Commander Data, and a furious debate erupted as to whether this was merely dismantling a machine or snuffing out a sentient life.
No one knows what to do with the Hard Problem. Some people may see it is an opening to sneak the soul back in; but this just re-labels the mystery of 'consciousness' as the mystery of 'the soul' — a word game that provides no additional insight.
Many philosophers, like Dan Dennett of Tufts University in Boston, deny that the Hard Problem exists. Speculating about zombies and inverted colours is a waste of time, they say, because nothing could ever settle the issue one way or another. Anything you could actually do to understand consciousness — like finding out what wavelengths makes people see green, or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it — boil down to information processing in the brain, and thus get sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain.
Most people react to this argument with incredulity, because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience.
The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now, but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are sceptical about this cheery optimism, because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer. Identifying awareness with brain physiology is a kind of 'meat chauvinism' that would dogmatically deny consciousness to androids like Lt Commander Data or computers — no matter how clever or seemingly aware they might be. Identifying it with information processing would go too far in the other direction, and grant a simple consciousness to thermostats and calculators, which most people find hard to stomach.
Some mavericks, like the British physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.
And then there is Colin McGinn of the University of Miami in Florida; he theorises that our vertigo when pondering the Hard Problem is itself a quirk of our brains. The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualise seven-dimensional space, and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information-processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside.
This is where I place my bet. Though I readily admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that makes it all clear to us — a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness.
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WHATEVER THE SOLUTIONS to the Easy and Hard problems turn out to be, few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many non-scientists this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices not just in this lifetime, but in a life to come. In his millennial essay "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died", the American novelist Tom Wolfe worried that when science has killed the soul, "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame".
My own view is that this is backwards: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. It can also force us to recognise the interests of other beings, the core of morality.
As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone but myself is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise, but an
all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty. Yet once we realise that our own consciousness is a product of our brains, and that other people have brains like ours, a denial of other people's sentience becomes ludicrous. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" asked Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Today the question is more pointed: hath not a Jew — or an Arab, or an African, or a baby, or a dog — a cerebral cortex and a thalamus? The undeniable fact that we are all made of the same neural flesh makes it impossible to deny our common capacity to suffer.
And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life to come is not such an uplifting idea after all, because it necessarily devalues live on Earth. Just remember the most famous person who recently acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: Mohammad Atta, the lead suicide pilot of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001.
Think, too, about why we sometimes remind ourselves that "Life is short". It is an impetus to extend a gesture of affection to a loved one; to bury the hatchet in a pointless dispute; to use time productively rather than squandering it. I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realisation that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
***
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the psychology department at Harvard University in Massachusetts, USA. His books include How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate.
Consciousness research
Your article here seems to ignore the current research on near death experiences. In these studies evidence comes forward to show consciousness does live after the death of the brain and body. Such research has produced non-material neuroscientists. Read the book "The Spiritual Brain."
The article ignores several areas of research
The article assumes the reductionist paradigm to be the only option to understand the mind-brain relationship (or consciousness-brain) and ignores several important areas of research, like transplanted memories and other physiological phenomena, that cast serious doubts on the reductionist paradigm. The article also ignores the research on psychic or anomalous phenomena, like reincarnation (see the works of Dr. Ian Stevenson et al.), mental mediumship (see the works of Dr. Gary Schwartz et al.), ESP (see the works of Dean Radin et al.), NDE, etc.
Consciousness and Special Relativity
This reminds me of an issue never really resolved after the advent of Einstein's relativity theory. There were two possible implications of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum: 1) The universe is a dynamic 3-dimensional system, operating in a manner incapable of rational explanation (other than a purely mathematical representation via Lorentz and Riemann), or 2) The universe is truely 4-dimensional, that is it exists as a true four-dimensional structure.
Physicists have largely put this discussion on the back burner, either intentionally or perhaps just because its pursuit would not be fruitful: Too many other urgent problems in physics that have promise of progress (you would never get a PhD with a subject such as this, or as a researcher would you ever obtain a grant).
However, should the second possibility be correct, it implies that all matter in the universe is fixed in place as part of the 4-dimensional universe--the universe, including neurons would be static 4-D entities. There would be no material motion. All particles would be 4-D fibers wandering along the 4th dimension (called world lines).
What then would be moving? The only thing left to do the moving would be consciousness. By the Special Relativity description, the consciousness would move along a given bundle of neuron fibers at the speed of light. It would just be conscious of the "movie" offered by the neuron bundle--exactly analagous to one watching a movie. The movie film itself is established-once-and-for-all-time as material structure. As is the 4-D world.
The implications are obvious.
4D - and more
Exellent! i am glad this forum is still taking replies, for this is the perfect point to explain some nice mind-blowing ideas.
One fine day when i was wondering about this, i took a sheet of paper and draw on it a box. A 3D box in persective, a little hint of shading, but clear and open. Along the bottom i labelled "x" and "y" and along a vertical side i put "t".
Inside the box i drew a thick line, starting near one side of the bottom face, heading up with a few tiny wiggles, suddenly slanting over a distance (but staying well inside the box) and then as suddenly turning straight to the top face. A world line: a philosopher doing his morning routine at home, driving to the philosophy factory, then sitting at his desk. Or working a Philosomatic 4001X Industrial Philosophotator(tm), i don't know. Whatever.
So, there's a typical morning for the philospher. Had i drawn in more detail, i should have drawn the box much bigger to include the whole town, the whole universe, and maybe if i drew with fine enough detail - quantum details, Planck-scale, maybe - perhaps somehow the philospher would be conscious and wonder about the nature of space time. Of course, i totally left out a 3rd space dimension, but that won't matter for this thought experiment.
Then i decided to change something. I erased part of the philospher's world line - the slanted part, which i replaced with two segments and a little upward jog. The philospher now stops off at the coffee shop for a latte. (If a philosopher isn't puffing on a pipe, then he'd at least better be sipping coffee.)
Now ponder what the philospher's experience has been. He was going straight to work; now he stops at the cafe. But i am using the words "was" and "now" in _my_ time - my changing of the drawing. These aren't in the philospher's time, the "t" dimension of my sketchy box. How would the philospher even think about this? How could he describe _my_ time dimension? This isn't merely a "second time dimension" whatever that would mean, but what we could call "meta-time".
So, jumping up a level to _our_ reality, we describe our physics experiments, the motions of planets and galaxies with our "t" dimension - but could it be our history, at a detailed or cosmic level, changes according to some meta-time? Could history change retroactively as the "now" time proceeds? How would we know?
Another idea followed after that: the sketch universe is constructed only up to a certain point - i did not have an infinitely large sheet of paper! (As a grad student, i couldn't afford it.) With my pencil I could extend the box upward (and downward, for that matter) and extend the world lines, making philosophers and elves and whatever i imagine go where i like. Like a novelist trying to make a clever plot work out by going back to change details in Chapter One, i might revise some of the earlier-drawn world lines. Now, as a sketch on paper, this activity didn't go far, but thinking about our 4D reality, where we know the past by memory and evidence, but the future remains mysterious, perhaps 4D existance is incomplete up to "now" (never mind that being a fuzzy concept in relativity) where creation plows on. Perhaps each new step of creation, like a blanket thrown on a pile of previous blankets, in some sense presses on the past, changing what reality "was" in the meta-time sense. This idea connects the meta-time and physical time dimensions - activity intersecting at some kind of "now" or "creation surface" of 4D reality.
Dynamic 3D or static 4D structure? I hope to have conveyed some idea of dynamic 4D.
Okay, my latte is all sipped up! So that'll be enough metaphysics for now.
Consiouness and special relativity?
I came up with a theory on these lines too in 1992. It also explains free will. Yes the universe is not just 4D but also expanding. Consciouness is at the edge of this expansion as is able to change its course (Free will) by controlling the boundry conditions. That is Free will not only changes the future but also the past.
Here is an interesting fact:
The brain is an area of neurophysiology activity. Neurophysiology activity consists of electrochemical reaction. Thus at any given time, the brain state is defined by a subset of electrochemical reactions, derived from a large set of possible reactions.
Consider the phenomenon of a conscious thought. As at any given time the brain physical state consists of a collection of electrochemical reactions (events), it can be inferred that they are collectively responsible for the conscious thought. This means that at least in part, simultaneous events are responsible for thought. In other words, thought creates a connection between simultaneous events.
This is in contradiction to the consequences of special relativity, which states that the fastest connection between events is the speed of light and thus excludes the possibility of connection between simultaneous events.
Consider the memorizing of, say, the value 5. This would necessarily involve more than I point in space as, say, if it is assumed a single electron records 5 by taking a particular potential. Then it by itself cannot define (or know) 5, as its magnitude would be defined only with respect to another datum or event defined as a unit potential, thus involving at least 2 simultaneous events.
Consider the experience of vision. While we focus our attention on an object of vision, we are still aware of a background and, thus, a whole collection of events. This would mean at least an equal collection of physical events in the brain are involved.
Take the experience of listening to music. It would mean being aware of what went before. Like vision, it would probably mean that while our attention at any given time is focused at that point in time, it is aware of what went before and what is to follow. In other words, it spans the time axis.
Many great composers have stated that they are able to hear
their whole composition. Thus their acoustic experience is probably like the average person's visual experience. While focusing at a particular point in time of their composition, they are nevertheless aware of what went before and what is to come. The rest of the composition is like the background of a visual experience.
Experiencing the composition in this way, they are able to
traverse it in a similar fashion to which a painting is observed. In this sense, an average person in comparison can be seen as having tunnel hearing (like tunnel vision) when it comes to music, thus making it very difficult for him or her to reproduce or create new music.
It can be seen that consciousness is a 4-D phenomenon. If it is a physically explainable phenomenon, such an explanation would involve EPR type effects and as such physical explanations at a quantum level will be involved.
Binding problem & subtrate issue
Chief issue of consciousness materialism is why separate neuronal events should give rise to a seemingly singular conscious experience in a brain/body complex. How and why do the individual molecular and electrical events 'fuse' into a single 'gestalt'?
Equally problematic for non-physical minds is why those same neuronal events equally give rise to a singular consciousness, though on occasions to anomalous perceptions. Why a singular experience anchored to a single living skull when non-physical minds could be experiencing things anywhere as anything? Why is this particular physical structure so necessary for a mind?
Seems physicalism needs that unifying process we call consciousness, while non-physicalism needs an account of why some physical structures are experienced as conscious and others are not. If non-physicalism, such as the Jain religion, then claims all living, moving things are conscious and inhabited by minds (jiva), then why living, moving things versus non-living or non-moving things? Why is one particular configuration of matter experienced and another is not?
'Solving' the problem by calling everything 'alive' or conscious is evasive, or solving it by calling singular consciousness an illusion is equally an evasion. Consciousness seems to require a particular configuration of information processing instantiated in neurons in one instance or instantiated in 'non-physical stuff' on the other hand. And that information processing is somehow felt and experienced. I would suggest that the Other World is experienced via some sort of 'duplicate body' formed via conscious or unconscious processes of the experiencer - just as many who experience OBEs claim to do before 'leaving' their physical body. That duplicate maps to our physical brains very closely, perhaps less so to our bodies as the physics of the Other World seems different to the world of Standard Model physics.
But 'explaining' anomalous perceptions via embodiment in another World doesn't explain consciousness as a unifying process - that requires a different phenomena. In our Standard Model world that 'binding' might occur through the electromagnetic field generated by the neurons - all the separate events at neuronal level become changes in the whole that is the brain's em-field. Thus consciousness - in this world at least - could be said to be 'composed' of light.
Many Voices
Adam:
I think there are many, many voices and the conscious is just an illusion. I see this in poker all the time. The noob player has pocket aces and even though his conscious brain is saying nothing, his unconscious brain is telling the world he's got a good hand.
As I stated in the comment below yours, I have MS and this condtion really divides your parts out. I can testify that there are at least four independent brains. There's a left brain and a right brain, there's an autonomic brain and there is a concious brain. I know this because when there are problems communicating between these parts, it become very obvious. OBE is the same halucination as deja vu. I think it has something to do with a fracture between the concious brain and the body map. Sometimes I feel like I'm standing inside a robot body, this usually happens when I've overheated..
I know what it felt like before MS and now I don't think it can be properly explained to someone who has not gone through it. The phrase, "I think, therefore I am" is incorrect. It's more like "We cooperate therefore I am"
anyway - Kmuzu
The Ghost with the Most
Recently I was diagnosed with MS. This has given me a different perspective on how the brain functions. I used think the brain was a type of computer, but now I think of it as more of a holographic image. With a computer any little error and the computer crashes, but the brain can withstand quite a lot of damage and still function and can still maintain the whole image of self.
Having said that; through my own experience, even a small injury to the brain causes painful and horrific results. For instance one small lesion on my spine, has caused my right leg to feel like it's on fire. I can't imagine what someone like Terri Schiavo went through. She could very well have been conscious but in what kind of state? My thinking is more likely her reality is filled with void and pain. Also, the many identities could be so fractured that there is not one overriding voice.
I don't think that I would like to persist in that way. Many good meaning people think that if a person persists that it is God's will, but I think that God is very mysterious and His will may be to tell a loved one, to let the patient die with peace.
Kmuzu
Thinking
Kmuzu, Could you share with us some of how your thought processes have been affected by your MS condition? Stephen Hawking (ALS) evidently developed unusual analytical abilities--he could manipulate equations in his mind that would be the equivalent of what most physicists would replicate using a full page or more of handwritten manipulations. Have you become more of a thinker, I'm not sure how to say it, but maybe more analytical? And how have your priorities in life adjusted? I hope you condition is not too far advanced. If I'm being too personal please just ignore this post.
Thanks for asking
Some of the more funny stuff with MS is: For about a week everything smelled like cheese. I kept asking my wife why she was putting cheese in the oatmeal (this was before I was diagnosed). While playing poker, I will usually get hand tremors and it throws off the whole table. Is he nervous, excited, has to use the bathroom? I have a distinct right side me and a distinct left side me. I have one conscious voice, but the only way to describe it is .. it is like a chariot being pulled by two different horses. Everything is going in the same direction, but I can tell there are two sided.
Rational thought is a very subjective thing for me. MS'ers have terrible times with depression. Montel Williams almost killed himself. I use cognitive and behavioral thearapy to control mine.
MS is like having a super slow stroke. The auto-immune system attackes the sheathing around the neurons and those neurons start misfiring. Almost like short circuiting a computer. So, like right now my foot feels exactly like it is about ten inches above a barbeque. If the slightest bit of water hits my leg, it feels like a bee stings. This is not in my leg or foot but brain. So, I could be loaded on morphine and still feel the exact same pain - I guess in that case, I really wouldn't care about the pain. My body map is screwed up. On my right side, when I crossover to the left side, everything is fifteen degrees off. So, my ballroom and tap dancing days are over.
My "thinking" abilities have not improved since MS. I have some short-term memory problems. I've always had a creative job and my artistic abilities have not changed .. other than hand tremors.
They say that 99 percent of all mutations are bad. Well, I think the same is true with brain damage. The brain is a very tough but yet sensitive organ. A small chemical change or damage can cause major affects. My lesions are so small they cannot be seen on a normal MRI. It takes a TESLA 3 to seem them. Major brain damage scares the hell out of me.
In physical therapy, they put MS'ers with the stroke guys. Some of those guys have lost themselves or worse, there is no central voice and all the parts are not communicating with each other. There is a guy who thinks everyone is an imposter, another guy can read with one eye, but can't recognize pictures and it is the revese with the other eye.
When I think of Terri Schiavo, I cannot imagine a greater hell than to be lost within yourself. You are your reality and that reality for her was most likely complete disembodiedment, darkness and pain. There would be no sense of time or place. I have experienced these things on a small scale and it is absolutely no fun.
As far as my life changing. Yes - and mostly for the better. Before MS I was working my way to a director position, now I spend much more time with my family, I enjoy the work I do and I have swept away many of the demons that plagued me for so long. So, there is always good with the bad.
Kmuzu