Post
Consciousness
Consciousness is simply an alert state where there exists an active self-awareness and recognition of the surrounding environment. However, explaining consciousness is a much more difficult event, partly due to the fact that its existence allows for its own questioning.
One problem that arises when attempting to accurately explain consciousness is its hierarchal existence among living organisms. A primate has a much higher level of consciousness than a unicellular bacterium. The bacterium is – by definition – conscious because it can recognize and respond to environmental stimuli, and is clearly aware of its own existence because it navigates towards or away from the stimulation. Clearly, basic consciousness does not require a brain, but the question now becomes about the point at which an organism gains true phenomenal consciousness. What factor is required for an organism to move from the basic, almost mechanical, consciousness of a prokaryote to the advanced consciousness of humans?
Another interesting area of consciousness is its development within a single human. Understanding this growth may be important, as individual conscious progression could mirror its evolutionary counterpart. What is interesting in this case is that early human development (i.e. embryonic stages) is remarkably similar to other, less advanced mammals who’s level of consciousness is questionable. What seems to be most likely is that the basic consciousness is fully developed in a late fetal stage (20-36 weeks-old) where kicking and other motions indicate self-awareness.
However, it seems that conscious development is not directly tied or limited to brain development. At birth, almost all of the neurons the brain will ever have are already present. As a result, it seems likely that advanced consciousness develops after birth and is a result of the senses being opened to a much larger environment. Since this is a criterion of consciousness itself, it is logical that being exposed – and responding – to a larger environment can trigger an adaptive conscious expansion. This assumption, in turn, suggests that it is the surroundings that influence our level of consciousness (perhaps other organisms are limited due to territorial restrictions, whereas humans have relatively open borders).
Finally, attempting to accurately describe consciousness in terms of its biological basis would not be complete without discussing the binding problem. Although not exclusive to the problem of consciousness, the binding problem concerns the interesting manner in which independently acting neurons combine to form a unified experience. For example, to gain a unified representation of the room you are in, a large number of sensory features must be individually discerned then bound to create the integrated experience. It is this problem that gives consciousness its mysterious (and enticing) properties, and although there are some fascinating ideas about the binding problem, I don’t see a convincing resolution anywhere in the near future.
Hopefully, I will discuss other aspects of consciousness in future articles, but in the meantime tell me what you think about consciousness and the biological problems it presents.
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Comments
“The bacterium is – by definition – conscious because it can recognize and respond to environmental stimuli, and is clearly aware of its own existence because it navigates towards or away from the stimulation.”
-By implying that it is aware of its own existence you seem to think that a bacterium has self-consciousness.
-Some thins seem to navigate towards a stimulation and are clearly not conscious (eg magnets, water in a river)
-What is ‘recognizing’ meaning here?
Doesn’t that word already imply consciousness?
“Consciousness is simply an alert state where there exists an active self-awareness and recognition of the surrounding environment.”
-’simply’ simply doesn’t exist in philosophy
-what is an alert state?
-explain self-awareness?looks like self-consciousness, or am I wrong?
-the surrounding environment: the stimuli in the brain? the physical interaction with the subject?
And where do your levels of consciousness come from? How do you determine a bacteria (if conscious at all) is more or less conscious that a fly?
I know, I’m being a retard here. I even don’t think self-consciousness is material. If it is tied to biological evolution, there must have been a moment where self-consciousness arose. But we do a lot of things very well without being conscious of it (breathing eg). Actually, there is no need for us to be conscious of anything: we could as well do all the things we do now without our being aware of it. Or do we really think every time we pick up a pen? We can make decisions without being conscious about it (we do it all the time, we don’t think about all those tiny muscle movements we do every moment but could have don’t otherwise). In short, this all means something must haver arisen in evolution that isn’t really functional. And nothing occurs in evolution that is costly without either having benefit or is selected out. So, if it is not arisen through evolution, what else?
Unfortunately, I’m still a ontological materialist so these still clash. :(
koen
Oct 4, 11:29 PM #
http://plato.stanford.edu/
koen
Oct 4, 11:33 PM #
Perhaps “conciousness” could be measured in terms of cells or cell organelles working together to respond to the environment.
In animals with nervous systems it is not the number of neurons that is important (enfants actually have many more neurons than adults) but the number of synapses. Perhaps more important is the number of synapses working together, which is the result of experiance and developement. Teenagers are still in a massive state of nervous system developement. In fact it never ceases as we continue to learn and remember. Untill of course either death or neurodegenerative disease put stop to learning and memory.
David
Oct 5, 09:55 AM #
"-’simply’ simply doesn’t exist in philosophy”
That’s very true...it simply glares out of the page doesn’t it...
"-Some thins seem to navigate towards a stimulation and are clearly not conscious (eg magnets, water in a river)”
Both the examples you cited are caused by physical forces (magnetic and gravitational, respectively), not “conscious” navigation.
You also bring up some interesting points about subconsciousness...I’ll have to look into that.
David:
“Perhaps more important is the number of synapses working together, which is the result of experiance and developement. Teenagers are still in a massive state of nervous system developement. In fact it never ceases as we continue to learn and remember.”
Hmm... I didn’t know that. It’s especially interesting that experiences themselves can have biological consequences (in terms of neural developement).
Thame
Oct 6, 04:58 AM #
You imply that consciousness isn’t caused by physical forces. So by what forces then? How do you know that bacteria aren’t entirely driven by physical forces? And… is being conscious of a process always enough to be able to change change it behavior (implying that consciousness and steering behavior may not be directly related as you presume)?
koen
Oct 6, 11:14 AM #
When I said “physical” forces, I was referring to physics-based attractive forces. Sorry for the ambigious term…
Thame
Oct 6, 03:47 PM #
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