SPIRIT
What is Consciousness?
Grant Morrison
What is Consciousness?
Bound up in a definition of the mind is the question of Consciousness, our state of awareness and perception. There are many views and interpretations to the question: “What is Consciousnes?”.
- One definition suggests that what we are aware of is purely the product of our brain filtered from physical sensory information.
- Another suggests that hormones and emotions play their part in our experience of reality.
- Buddist perspective suggests that all life is an illusion created by our Mind.
- Other believe that Mind is a part of a much bigger whole – our Universal Consciousness.
We can establish a great comparison of Human experience with the functioning of a computer. Technological advancements in recent years offered us the option to connect some of the basic functionalities of human to the computer. One of such is Vision – connecting a camera with computer through which computer can “sense” the world around him. But if Computer can sense the surrounding objects, can it have an experience of these objects like we have?
This question leads to the road of The Hard Problem of Consciousness – explaining why we have phenomenal experiences. This mans that our sensations aquire characteristics such as colors, tastes and also forms associative experiences with our memories.
In Facing Up to the Problem (1995) Chalmers established the Hard problem:
David Chalmers
Facing Up to the Hard Problem (1995)
Consciousness is the answer to the Hard problem, which enables us to have an Experience of the outside and inside world. Can it be that Evolution of the brain enabled us to start percieving the world around us through our consciousness and that ability was there the whole time, we just weren’t able to reach it?
If we look at some animals we can see that only some higher primates and animals are able to be aware of themselves. This was measured for a long time with Rugge test (looking yourself in the mirror). To be consciouss of the world you first need to be consciouss and aware of yourself. Psychology entered in the thinking process with the Theory of Mind and through a developmental viewpoint of a Human. They discovered that even in children this capability of perceiving the world around them through a different perspective arises somewhere around a third year of their development.
In the video What is consciousness? Lucid thinking offers us a great introduction to the Hard problem:
Interestingly, recent discoveries of Quantum physics and Neuroscience brought us some amazing discoveries connected to Consciousness.
Neuroscience found the area in the brain, which surves as a kind of On-off switch fro the brain – called Claustrum. When exposed to a mild electroshock, the patient becomes unconscious instantly. But looking for the neural correlates of consciousnes is just not enaugh. It is a deeply subjective and phenomenological experience.
One other promising theory suggests that consciousness works similar to computer memory, which can recall experience even after it has passed.
Daniel Dennett gives us another interesting viewpoint on the question of Consciousness. He enterprets its existance through the eyes of Evolution and sees it as a Cognitive illusion – a user friendly system of things in the World that we deal with, which helps us to live and co-exist in this reality.
If you want to get a deep understanding into some recent discoveries connected to Consciousness, this amazing video published by The Economist offers you a lot of great and very recent content:
If we really want to dive into a subjective experiences through the eyes of Science, we will have to change this regorous purely objective approach. Consciousness is a problem which should be addressed through both – the internal and external observation.
What are your thoughts on Consciousness?
We would love to hear some of your experiences, thoughts and opinions.
Write in the comment below!
Lao Tzu
Author
I was always curios. The waves of euphoric exploration on the newly-discovered topics carry me deeper into the ocean of knowledge. And then i start to write. As a psychologist and enterpreneur i developed a critical view of the world which offers unlimited possibilities for improvement. Because there is too much "false" teachings and personal growth guides out there, i decided to build my own knowledge base with science proven information and recent discoveries. I invite you to create it with me. Only with helping each other and spreading love through the Universe, we will all grow and raise our frequency of existence.
