What is Consciousness? | Unveiled

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What Is Consciousness?</h4>

You are a conscious being, but what does that actually mean? Consciousness is something that’s difficult to define, but it is universally understood and experienced. It’s been described as the most familiar and yet most mysterious aspect of our lives. But where does it come from and what is it exactly?

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: What Is Consciousness? 

Consciousness is such a strange phenomenon that no one really knows how to explain it. Despite debating for thousands of years, philosophers haven’t been able to reach a consensus on its nature, and neither have scientists in the modern era. Some argue that it cannot be studied, or that it’s nothing more than an illusion. Even a definition is hard to agree on. But one that academics tend to use is that a conscious being is aware of its environment, itself, and its perception. 

Deciding which beings fulfill these criteria is another story. Testing for consciousness in other animals is challenging, as while it's relatively easy to test for environmental awareness, determining self-awareness is much harder. One way to do so might be to communicate with an animal directly - but even then, there’s still room for doubt. Koko the gorilla, for example, was able to learn sign language, use personal pronouns, and discuss her emotions. However, there’s debate over whether this indicated consciousness, or whether Koko was simply following unconscious cues and prompts from her trainers. 

Throughout history, many have viewed consciousness as a special attribute that separates humans from other animals - a gift from the gods. It’s been seen as something that we all have, but which can never be explained and doesn’t have a physical basis. However, that perspective began to change in the 17th century, as thinkers like René Descartes began to struggle with the relationship between the mind and the brain. In the 18th century, physicians and physiologists started to uncover the importance of the brain in how we think. One of the most famous cases during this time was that of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker whose accidental frontal lobotomy in 1848 dramatically changed his personality. 

Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we now understand that thoughts have a basis in neural networks, and emotions in certain neurotransmitters. Is there a physical basis for consciousness too? This idea also raises questions about the evolution of consciousness and when it first emerged. While some point back millions of years to the first great apes, or hundreds of thousands to the first archaic humans, others look to a much later date. One particularly surprising view comes from psychologist Julian Jaynes, who argued that consciousness emerged between 1230 and 850 BC, based on his interpretation of Homer’s Greek epics “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”.

Jaynes presented his theory of consciousness in his 1976 book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”, which provides a fascinating view on the nature of consciousness and its possible role in human history. His hypothesis was that for much of human history, we lived in a state of 'bicameral mentality’, in which the right hemisphere of the brain spoke and issued commands, while the left listened and followed habits and routines. The commands of the right hemisphere were experienced as auditory hallucinations - as the voice of an outsider. For this reason, people may have mistaken their inner voices as those of gods. In an increasingly complex world that required more problem solving however, this split mentality eventually broke down, allowing a deeper connection and leading to consciousness. 

As evidence, Jaynes cited the aforementioned Greek epics, as well as the Bible. He claimed that “The Iliad”, and the earliest biblical books, indicate a mental world without introspection, where the gods seem to speak to us directly. We allegedly see the first signs of introspection in the Odyssey and later biblical writings. The theory has been used to try to explain imaginary friends, religion, hypnosis, and schizophrenia. However, it remains controversial among scholars. Some critics have pointed to signs of introspection in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to around 2100 BC, as counter-examples. In response, Jaynes insisted that these signs must date to revisions in post-bicameral times. 

A further problem is that Jaynes’ theory sees humans as the only animals with consciousness, an idea that not everyone shares. Many experts argue that the neural substrates of mammals, birds, and some cephalopods are complex enough to potentially support consciousness, and that their behavior suggests a level of self-awareness. 

All the way at the end of the spectrum is panpsychism, the idea that mind is fundamental to reality, present in all natural bodies. Proponents argue that consciousness is something like an omnipresent force in the universe, and is not specific to any kind of organism or object. This was a popular viewpoint in Western thought during the 19th century, and is also found in some Buddhist traditions, which teach that even non-sentient objects are part of a larger, interconnected “Buddha-nature”. 

Panpsychism began to fall off with the emergence of the verification principle of logical positivism, as it could not be empirically verified. But it's experienced a resurgence with advancements in neuroscience, quantum physics, and psychology. Some modern thinkers have even returned to panpsychism, such as German-American neuroscientist Christof Koch, president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Koch believes that any complex system “has the basic attributes of mind and has a minimal amount of consciousness in the sense that it feels like something to be that system”. In this view, consciousness is not a hard line but a gradient, and many animals possess conscious traits. For example, bees showcase the ability to communicate information and remember faces from photographs. Elephants can remember people and hold grudges against individuals who have harmed them. Even earthworms are smarter than people assume. Charles Darwin, after dedicating decades of his life to studying them, came away with the impression that earthworms acted consciously and displayed remarkable mental power.

These theories are all possible answers to the hard problem of consciousness, which asks why and how we have conscious experiences. In the philosophy of mind, these conscious, subjective experiences are known as “qualia”. Explaining what they are is thought to be more difficult to explain than simply specifying the physical mechanisms in the brain that make consciousness possible. Neuroscientists have made remarkable progress in solving this “easier” problem, uncovering what are known as the ‘neural correlates of consciousness’. Research into patients who have had parts of their brains damaged or removed has allowed scientists to narrow down where consciousness lies physically. For example, those who have lost parts of their prefrontal cortex or cerebellum may lose certain abilities, but are still as conscious as they were before. Research suggests that consciousness may live instead in the posterior cortex - the back part of the cerebral cortex. 

Scientists have even developed a detector for consciousness called the zap-and-zip. By applying magnetic energy to the brain, scientists can record how active the brain is, based on how many connections light up. Having developed a scale, researchers have been able to test this on people who have been injured and those in vegetative states, showing reliability in predicting whether someone was still conscious inside of their bodies. 

Eventually, scientists will be able to create a detailed map of the parts of the brain that create consciousness. However, there are some who argue that even that will still leave the hard problem unanswered. If we recreate a human brain in a computer, for example, will it truly be conscious? There are many different theories for explaining what consciousness is and how it emerges. One popular theory today is the Global Neuronal Workspace, which posits that consciousness arises from many areas of the brain having access to the same information. Instead of data being localized, it is broadcast to the entire brain, which creates conscious experience. 

When we come closer to instilling true conscious thought into machines, maybe we’ll learn even more about it. But, for now, that’s what consciousness is.