Defining consciousness

This essay is true to title. It is not an essay on business rather an essay on fundamental issues related to us understanding ourselves.

There is significant discussion on the nature of consciousness. In a recent talk on TED, David Chalmers summarised current popular views, namely there seemed no adequate explanation, and while it was possible to understand how things like feelings and behaviour emerged, the insight into consciousness was elusive and beyond explanation.

The typical global current position is based on two fundamental propositions.

1. That there are easy and hard problems of consciousness. The easy problems are theory to explain behavior, feelings, personality, etc. The hard problem is to define what consciousness is, summed in the phrase ...what it is like to be...
2. The problem of consciousness emerges because of the inability to adequately link the brain with our sense of our existence. As stated by Chalmers, in the TED talk, physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology and brain can explain most of why we do what we do, but none of it explains consciousness.

Chalmers went on and proposed that we need a new fundamental variable in sciences, namely consciousness itself. And this variable needs be added to ontology, the list of fundamental ‘things’ in the universe, like atoms, photons, energy, etc.

In this essay I show how consciousness is very easily understood, how it is fully explicable using current notions and that the complications surrounding consciousness arise because it is being considered and discussed from inappropriate points of view.

The arguments in this essay are fully developed in the book The Origin of Consciousness.

Consciousness can only be explained from within a general theory of psychology

Imagine a person. Now imagine we know nothing whatsoever about that person. For us they are just an input output set of relationships. So some input occurs from their environment, and they respond. For the purpose of this argument it does not matter the input or output. Merely that they exist. We include in the output facial expressions, although we may not necessarily know what they mean. Again, for the purposes of this argument it does not matter. Also, some responses may be fully internalised, in which case we do not know a response occurred. We can ask the person, and gather their view of the input and their response. The person is fully functioning and fully ‘conscious’.

Now, imagine the person as a ‘box’ which simply represents the person, and represents that we do not know the inside of the box, that is we do not know how the responses are created. What we can say is that if we did know how the responses are created then we would have a general theory of psychology.

We can symbolise the situation as follows.

Input from environment → person → response by the person (1)

Currently the global view seems to be that a general theory of psychology will/can account for the responses, effectively account for the outputs from the box, but does not account for the internalised experience of the person who ‘is’ the box. These are the so-called easy and hard problems of consciousness.

Now, we can attempt to add consciousness to our diagram (1). There are only four alternatives.

1. Consciousness sits before the box. This would mean we experience an input from the environment prior to any processing of it within the box. We know this does not occur, for example, photons must pass through our eyes and the energy then processed within our brain elsewise we do not see. Similar circumstances exist for smell, sound, taste and even touch requires we process an input from fingers, for example. We can reject this option.
2. Consciousness sits after the box. That is we process any input, and respond, and after that we become conscious of it. Unquestioned there are times we act in haste, and after, when we think about it, we see it as acting with insufficient thought, awareness, we were not sufficiently conscious of the issues at the time. But fair to say that is not what is implied in placing consciousness behind the box. Conscious is not something that occurs after the event, it is part of the event. We can reject this option.
3. Consciousness is a variable in the explanation of what happens in the box. Imagine we had a general theory of psychology. Imagine some of the variables that it would necessarily entail, for example, attention, emotion, thought, and attitude. If consciousness is a variable alongside these this would mean we could experience an emotion such as pain, or a thought, or a visual perception such as it is raining, all independent of consciousness. It is not that we fail to be conscious of these events, if consciousness is a variable alongside them then they can each be active within us independently. As an aside it could be argued the meditation is without consciousness of everything else, but that is not true, the one thing we are fully conscious of in meditation is that there is no thought or emotion, other perhaps than the mantra. In ‘Origin’ I also discuss the nature of meditation, and how it is due limited brain functioning and that has nothing to do with consciousness. We know we are always conscious of something and that ‘something’ is an aspect of our psychology. We can reject this option.
4. Consciousness as an internal experience of the operation of the ‘box’. Consciousness can only exist within the box. It is not part of the operation of the box. This can only mean it is a product of the operation of the box.

Conclusion: Consciousness is the result of the internal mechanisms of the person whereby the elements within the person are integrated into a functioning ‘whole’.

Given psychological variables underlie consciousness, and it is unlikely any two people have the same values of the underlying variables, it follows that every consciousness is unique. There is nothing common to any experience of consciousness other than it is called ‘consciousness’.

The easy and hard problems of consciousness

The so-called easy problem of consciousness is the creation of a general theory of psychology, the theory of what happens within the person, which is within the box in diagram (1), such that the input is processed to create the output.

Imagine we had such a theory, and imagine we input into the theory all possible data on the person, including brain states etc...Currently that is not possible, but imagine it was. The result of the theory would be the accumulated consequence of the variables, attitude, thought, attention, brain functioning, etc. resulting in the response, and our experience of building the response and the response itself. There is a ‘singularity’ to our experience by that I mean we typically do not experience brain states, emotions, thought separately, it sort of accumulates to a singular event. But often we can sift it apart, and examine what we think, how we feel, and our habits and historical responses. This is exactly delving into the variables underlying our response and identifying various components. And while doing this, we are conscious of our doing it, one part of our brain delving into the operation of another part, examining what happened and the underlying details. We do this with ease and as matter of course. It is readily explained as our psychology existing as separate but linked units, called mental sets, but further discussion goes beyond this essay (refer ‘Origin’).

The hard problem of consciousness is then the exact description relative to some circumstance of the internal experience of the accumulated processing of the variables that form the general theory of psychology.

What do we know of this? Actually, we know a great deal.

Literature deals with what people did and how they felt in specific situations. A novel describes circumstance and how people felt and acted within those circumstance. In short a novel proposes the nature of the outputs both external and internal, from a person (the ‘box’ in equation 1), in some usually well specified circumstance. In a good novel, we get to ‘see’ and ‘know’ very clearly what it is like to be those people in that situation.

There is no ‘hard problem’ of consciousness... or there is only to the extent some writer has not yet described what it is like to be some types of people in some specific circumstance. Literature, art, poetry, etc. all relate/describe people in some circumstance, and as such all offer different answers to the question...what is it like to be (that person) in that circumstance.

It is not the role of the scientists to analyse the experience of life which must inevitably implicate value judgements, but only to analyse how that experience is formed. In short, identifying easy and hard problems of consciousness is to confuse variables and their relationships, the science, with values of those variables (the empirical circumstance).

Consciousness is understood exactly as we understand pressure

Consciousness is then the accumulated typically singular sum of the interaction of the underlying variables. It is not an emergent property, not an epiphenomena, it is the end result of the mechanisms within us. It is the core of mind.

I discuss elsewhere how our nature is our ability to create ideas and apply them in survival. The immediate psychological consequence of our nature is choice, since often and especially today, we have a range of ideas we can allow to shape us.

The mechanism within us enable choice, and consciousness is the place of awareness from which we choose. The issue however is to understand the relationship of consciousness to the systems within us.

Imagine a sealed jar full of gas, and imagine we measure the gas pressure through the walls. Now, first, imagine no molecules of gas strike the walls of the jar, we would register no pressure. Now imagine it as it would be, and we register pressure in the jar. But we know that the measure of the pressure is a sum, it is the accumulation of hundreds of events where individual molecules of gas strike the wall of the jar.

We can discuss pressure, use it, apply it in equations, etc. but all the while we understand exactly what it is. At one time of course it was not understood. It was some mystical property, and perhaps some active mind suggested we need to make ‘pressure’ a fundamental of the universe. But that proved unnecessary as we came to properly understand the underlying mechanisms and could place pressure in the proper perspective.

Consciousness is to the underlying mechanisms of our psychology as pressure is to the movement of gas molecules.

Reductionism and body-mind duality

Elsewhere (refer ‘Origin’ and LinkedIn essays) I have argued for body-mind duality and offered theory accounting for that duality. I will not reproduce the argument here.

On careful analysis of the exact nature of the link between body and mind, specifically between body and ideas, one immediately encounters the problem of reductionism. Imagine a New Yorker and an Mbuti Pygmy. Imagine neither had ever left the confines of their immediate environment or culture. To what extent will their ideas overlap? It is difficult to imagine any overlap at all. Both minds honed in relation to survival in their respective environments.

Now imagine both were actively thinking ideas, and both were using the exact same neurons. Imagine we could monitor such brain activity, we cannot, but imagine we could.

We now have the problem of two people thinking different thoughts, yet using the same brain neurons. How can this be?

Reductionism is the idea that physics explains chemistry which explains biochemistry which explains psychology. So if we begin with psychology, then reductionism proposes the underlying mechanism is the brain. But the thought experiment above states that is not so. So either the thought experiment is wrong or the current ideas on reductionism are wrong.

Ideas in human affairs

The theory in ‘Origin’ places ideas as the centre of human development and dominance. Ideas the primary driver of survival, with a primary thrust of evolution being to develop the species most able to create ideas and then apply them in survival. That species is us. We have the capacity to create and apply ideas to a degree unmatched by any other known species.

If ideas are at the centre of our survival, then they are at the centre of our psychology. Our survival and dominance is the result of our psychology, perhaps more accurately, one emerged as the other developed.

These arguments mean that current view of reductionism is wrong.

A general theory of knowledge

People create knowledge. A general theory of psychology must account for all that people do, if not then it cannot be a general theory.

It follows that a general theory of psychology must account for the creation of knowledge, in short a general theory of psychology must have within it a general theory of knowledge. It then follows that all science must be a detail within the general theory of knowledge integrated within a general theory of psychology. As an aside, it is more complex in that if any theory is to be meaningful, it must be causal. What we know of cause is knowledge, it follows there is a relationship between knowledge and cause, and any general theory of knowledge must have integrated within it a general theory of cause.

As discussed in ‘Origin’, cause, knowledge and psychology are interlinked, and it is not possible to create a solution to one without having a solution to all three.

The general theory of knowledge that emerges from the analysis is grounded on variables as abstractions from the perceived environment. The nature of the variables determines the type of knowledge. A specific form of variable called coherent variable, defines a domain of knowledge.

In summary, as discussed in full in ‘Origin’, knowledge is not continuous, but exists in domains with each domain defined by the core coherent variable. Further, some domains have other domains as the ‘underlying mechanism’. The most complete example is the relationship between ideas (mind) and the body. The brain is the mechanism of mind, but the two descriptions are not aspects of complementarity (the reference to Bohr is intended). Ideas exist, they forge our psychology, but knowing the ideas does not specify neural functioning, conversely knowing the neural functioning does not specify the ideas. Neurology is brain functioning, ideas are psychology. There is a relationship, but not congruence. Understanding the brain will not lead to understanding the person.

Brain is mechanism of mind, but mind is not reducible to the brain

The brain is the mechanism of mind, but the mind is not reducible to the operation of the brain. Hence reductionism as currently typically conceived is wrong, and consequently all analyses of consciousness based on reductionist principles are wrong.

The line between humans and all other known species

All animals are conscious. The difference between human capacities and animal lies in the details of our ability to create ideas and apply them in survival. This should not be surprising, it is inevitable that any difference between us and animals must relate to the manner evolution differentiated humans from other known species.

In ‘Origin’ I discuss levels of conceptualisation, and I show that only humans have third level conceptualisation capacities. That is only humans have conceptualised systems of thinking that can lead the conceptualisation process and produce links between abstractions from an environment (variables) before such links are experienced in practice (E=mc2, the perfect example). There are only two such systems of thinking, one mathematics, the other I refer to as Ashby tools developed by the founder of cybernetics, W Ross Ashby (the equations above with the arrows are Ashby equations).

This difference between us and animals has a practical expression. University libraries are devoted to the conceptualisation of the human environment. The difference is then noted in that only humans have university libraries that express for example, quantum theory. This line between us and all other known species is absolute fully expressing the vast, unbridgeable gulf between the conceptualisation capacities of humans relative to all known species.

Summary

Consciousness is not extraordinary, is readily understood, and readily explained. But to do so demands a significant shift in current thinking. Embracing a new line of thinking about ourselves such as to consolidate a new cornerstone for social science, with implications for all of science.

Consciousness does not need added to the lexicon of ontology. Ideas do. Today amid the myriad of options, we need reflect and choose with greater care those ideas we will allow shape us and so shape the future.