Consciousness Chapter 3

In chapter three of Consciousness by Susan Blackmore, she starts off with the explanation of, or rather the problem with, the timing of experience. in the 1960s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet began studies on the human brain during surgery. With patient consent, during a surgical procedure while the brain was exposed, Libet stimulated different parts of the brain. His findings? “With short trains of electrical pulses the patients felt nothing, but with longer bursts they said they could feel something like a touch on their arms.” (p. 34). This meant there was a delay between what was happening in real world/real time and when the brain became conscious of it. In fact, “it seemed as though the conscious experience came a full half second after the stimulation began.” (p.34) This brings about two questions. 1) Why is there a lag between real world events and conscious awareness of it? and 2) What is the consciousness NOT aware of it if takes longer bursts to trigger the awareness? 

There seems to be many different theories behind each question. For example, if consciousness is just a firing of neurons and chemicals in the brain, then it would make sense there needs to be some delay between the event and the brain registering the event. It takes time for the event to get to the brain and process it. But this suggests consciousness resides somewhere in the brain, and this ‘location’ has yet to be discovered.

As to what are we not aware of vs. what we are aware of. Consider the example Blackmore gives on page 38. If you are in a crowded room, most of the conversations sound like gibberish. But what if you hear your name mentioned? Suddenly you are acutely aware that the conversation is about you and you are able to hear it. If you were not consciously listening to it before, how did your brain know to pick out your name in the mass of gibberish and focus your attention to that specific conversation? Were you actually aware of the conversation on some level the entire time?