Up@dawn 2.0

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Consciousness: A Very Brief Intro by Susan Blackmore- Chapter 2 thoughts


     In chapter two of Consciousness by Susan Blackmore, the brain is covered. I know what you are thinking because I thought it too. This very textbook-ish chapter had my eyes crossed and having flashbacks to junior year sitting in Ms. Curran’s AP bio class thinking, I’m never going to remember all of this. But to my surprise, I did manage to obtain a few take away thoughts to add to my quest in understanding the theories behind consciousness and what it IS exactly.

     Basically, the brain is an incredibly complex system of… things and stuff. We, meaning humans, have yet to fully understand most of these ‘things and stuff’. However, we have been able to identify certain parts of the brain and some of its basic functions. For example, the cerebellum, or little brain, is primarily concerned with fine movement control. The somatosensory cortex deals with touch, the motor cortex with movement of body parts, the occipital lobe processes visual information, and so on. But what does this have to do with consciousness? Well, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out where consciousness lives or resides in the brain (or does it? I mean, it has to right?). “We cannot deny the brain is intimately involved in consciousness because drugs that affect brain function affect subjective experience;…” but “…(t)he brain does no seem designed to produce the kind of consciousness we have. Most characteristically the brain is a massively parallel and distributed system with no central organization, no inner sanctum where the really important bits happen.” (p. 18-19). 

     So, how do we unify the two?

    The unity of consciousness, according to Bayne and Chlamers from the University of Arizona, asks, “What does it mean to say that different states of consciousness are unified with each other, or that they are part of a single encompassing state? The idea of unity is multifaceted, and has been understood in many different ways by different thinkers. In some senses of "unity", the claim that consciousness is unified may be obvious or trivial; in other senses, the claim may be obviously false. So the first project in this area is to distinguish between varieties of unity, and to isolate those varieties that pose the most important questions.” (http://consc.net/papers/unity.html) . I will admit I honesty had never thought about this nor which case made more sense to me in order to pick a ‘side’. Since my studies have taken me into a deep curiosity for Descartes (hence the pursuit of this degree), I almost expected I would side with his beliefs, that consciousness is a given, an absolute. However, there are those theorists out there who contest unified consciousness is an illusion and give a valid point of view that made me initially pause and hesitate when deciding where I stood.

     After struggling with each side, and getting frustrated for not being able to find a firm stance on either, I read this line in Bayne and Chalmers paper, “If consciousness really is unified, and especially if it is necessarily unified, then it is natural to look for an explanation of this fact.” What is it? What is the explanation to back up this belief? In order to prove consciousness is in fact unified and necessarily so, there must being something to solidify this claim. And this is what I am setting out to discover. By taking Descartes “I think therefore I am” theory as an absolute truth, this would also imply that consciousness is unified, necessarily so. Which then poses the question, why? The late Carl Sagan once posed, “We are a way for the universe to know itself”. Could this be the answer to the conscious question. If everything that exist is made of the same building blocks at the tiniest levels possible, then everything is connected. Everything is the same. So it would only makes sense that consciousness is unified out of necessity, would it not? Is this the catapult to launch us into understanding the unity of universal consciousness? I sincerely hope so.

3 comments:

  1. "where consciousness lives or resides in the brain (or does it? I mean, it has to right?" - well, there is the theory that the brain is just some sort of receiver, and consciousness a transmission that it intercepts and interprets. Not sure how we'd ever verify that.
    ==
    "taking Descartes “I think therefore I am” theory as an absolute truth" - a truth about the fact that I cannot doubt my existence, you mean? I'm not sure that it establishes any more interesting truths about consciousness, than just that I AM conscious, that I exist as a thinking thing.
    ==
    "If everything that exist is made of the same building blocks at the tiniest levels possible, then everything is connected. Everything is the same." Shouldn't we say, not that everything is the same, but that everything is-in just this specific sense, of consisting of the same kinds of "building blocks"-UNIFIED? If everything is unified (again, in just this sense), then what we call consciousness is our way of grasping this unity.

    But... what is a unified consciousness?

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  2. Sarah,

    The brain is truly remarkable especially if you consider the evolutionary development from a single cell. At what point in the brain's developmental process did certain brain cells become aware of feelings? Are organisms other than humans conscious of emotions? What is the earliest precursor of primates to experience positive or negative feelings and how do we research this. As you described the many areas of the brain with its corresponding brain cells, it would be enlightening to know what area of the brain not only is conscious of love or hate, but why those particular brain cells exhibit those attributes. With that knowledge, we might understand racism and hostility among other things. We might even understand why people in 1925 hated Charles Darwin without knowing anything about the man or anything about evolution.

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    Replies
    1. Don, I like your pragmatic emphasis on what a deeper understanding of consciousness might DO for us, in terms of improving our civility and mutual respect. Consciousness studies doesn't usually go there, I think, but it should.

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