What is consciousness?
It is my awareness, of what is going on, not just around me as I see it, but also what i experience in my body and mind. I can see a three dimensional projection of the world outside of my head. This is generated by my brain and is in my brain. It gives me a good sense of which way I can move so I do not trip or get hurt.
I also have a good awareness of my body. This is consciousness too. I can feel the wind blowing over the hairs on my skin and I can fell pain and touch. This is another three dimensional representation that my brain makes of my body.
I have previously speculated that these “holographic” images of the world and my body are generated by the left and right hemispheres of my brain. I have also previously noted that most animals have left and right hemispheres of their brains and so I would suggest that they all have consciousness too. It is thought that tiny animals like ants have consciousness, maybe even self-consciousness too.
The question of who is the observer is the next hurdle to overcome. I would suggest that the homunculus (or observer) is also generated by our left and right hemispheres and is an emergent property of our brains.
What do we know about this mysterious observer. For a start, it seems to be serial in nature, in that I can direct my focus of attention to one thing at a time. I can only focus on an object the size of a five cent coin held at arms length from me. I can switch to another part of my vision serially. I can only clearly hear one voice in a ground amongst all the others. I can only do one task at a time. I need to be focused on what I am doing. Some people, especially the female human species, think they can multi-task but I suggest this is them simply swapping from one thing to another.
Consciousness seems to be able to scan the outer cortex of our brains to “see” what is going on, as well as some inner structures like in the hippocampus and amygdala, where emotions are stored and processed. Consciousness is like a searchlight looking over the neocortex. It is like an emergent agent on top of the brain (in different dimension) that foresees what is going on and even has an illusion of control, which we will talk about below.
So in many aspects, consciousness is just a software model that is an emergent property of our brains that looks back onto itself. That software is encoded deep within our brains, most of it, I would suggest is in the Corpus Callosum, which is the huge bundle of nerve fibres that connect the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left-right hemisphere theory of consciousness I am proposing is questioned by the boy “Nico”, who had the right-side of his brain removed at the age of 3 to control epilepsy. It seems that his brain has adapted to still have some level of consciousness. The left and right sides of the brain do not just process information from the right and left sides respectively (note the reversal) of what we experience. Information is also partly processed by the other same side of the brain.
If is also worth noting that we are only conscious of a fraction of what the brain is doing. Mainly just stuff that is current or is processed in the neocortex. We are not directly conscious of most of what the brain is doing. The unconscious or subconscious mind is so much bigger than the conscious mind. The body’s organs like the heart, lungs, etc., run without us knowing or thinking about them. The brain also processes information in the subconscious, for example, we may be trying to recall someone’s name and one hour later, without us explicitly thinking about it, that name pops up into our head.
We also have a subconscious mind we access during dream sleep. See one of my other blogs on dreaming.
When I saw consciousness is an illusion, what I mean is that we do not understand what it is in the sense that cannot pinpoint it in the brain. There is no organ that overlooks the brain. for many years everyone thought the pineal gland was special because it was the only brain organ that was not doubled up, but that has been ruled out. At best it may be a software thing, that also eludes us. If it is software it is also distributed and deep inside the brain, making it impossible for us to isolate. Based on the fact that out 3D sensations of the visual and somatosensory worlds may be related to the bilateralification of the brain into left and right hemispheres. I feel is somehow related to this as well. Maybe it is hidden deep within the Corpus Callosum.
What is self-consciousness?
When I saw self-consciousness is an illusion, what I mean is that we do not understand what it is in the sense that cannot pinpoint it in the brain. There is no organ that overlooks the brain. For many years everyone thought the pineal gland was special because it was the only brain organ that was not doubled up, but that has been ruled out. There is no homunculus. No special organ. At best it may be is a software thing, that also eludes us. If it is software it is also distributed and deep inside the brain, making it impossible for us to isolate. Based on the fact that out 3D sensations of the visual and somatosensory worlds may be related to the bilateralification of the brain into left and right hemispheres, I feel consciousness and made self-consciousness are somehow related to this as well. Maybe they are hidden deep within the Corpus Callosum.
The simplest definition is that self-consciousness is the awareness that we are aware, which I suggest most animals have too. If we have a model of the world, there is no reason why we cannot also have a model of ourselves in relation to that world using the sense that are available to us. This applies to all animals. I believe ants have self-consciousness, or the awareness of their awareness, to some extent. Some experiments actually confirm ants are self-aware. The typical experiment done to test if an animal has self-consciousness is to see it they recognise themselves in a mirror. Researchers typically put a coloured marking on their face and see if the animals realises it is them in the mirror and it tries to remove the mark. Dolphins, orangutans, and many other mammals clearly have self-consciousness. Monkeys were thought not to have self-consciousness, but that opinion has now changed and as I have noted ants are even thought to have self-consciousness. I assert that almost all mammals are conscious and self-conscious to some degree. It is even true that some humans do not have a high level of self-consciousness as they do not understand what it is like to be someone else, because it they did they would not do some of the criminal and evil things they do to other humans and animals. They lack empathy and understanding of what it is like to be someone else.
Many humans also have an even higher level of consciousness, in that they can think about their thinking process. Some can manipulate very thought process. This extreme level of conscious intelligence is what truly separates us from the rest of the animals, but by the same token, I do that think all humans have this ability. We have been able to refine our thinking process to understand complex things like mathematics, the universe, and the laws of nature. We can even predict outcomes.
I have argued that consciousness at various levels are just neural networks or brains making sense of what is going on around them, using whatever senses and software they have developed that make sense of the environment around them.
If self-consciousness is just an illusion, in the sense that we cannot pinpoint its exact position in the brain or means of operation, why then, did the brain develop this software? The answer is simple. With the illusion of ‘self’, the biological being tries to protect itself so as to survive, saving its genes. A self is also important to save oneself in the memetic world. We are all just a collection of memes stored inside our brains and we want to spread those memes to others.
The illusion of ‘self’ is further perpetrated by people, our families, friends etc. We are assigned a name and we are referred to as a person. “What are YOU doing today, Johnny?” We all suffer from the same delusion and so spread it to others. There is no real self, just a model of oneself made up in the brain to fit in with the world around us. “Free will” is also one big lie, or delusion. Action requires force, which requires pre-action to generate that ‘force’.
What is free will?
Do we truly have the ability to decide what to do and do it? From a physics point of view it does not make sense to even ask that question, as the action of thinking to do something is a neural process in itself must have already been instigated in our brains before we became aware of that thought. The experiment by Libet et al confirms this, as the researchers were able to detect a readiness potential in the forebrain of their subject some 0.5 seconds before the subject (a girl) even knew herself.
If this is correct we are nothing more than ‘robots’, but there is a bit more to this in retrospect. We are a collection of memories of our life’s experiences and consequences. We will have thoughts governed by our previous experiences of memories, but before we act, there is a quick check of the consequences of our actions, which can halt us carrying out a thought into action. As Bob Dylan puts it “If my thought dreams could be seen they will probably put my head in a guillotine”. So even though, we are essentially robotic we do have a checking mechanism just before we carry out an action. That checking mechanism to controlled by out associated memories or the consequences of our actions. This is intertwined into out self-conscious awareness as we associate those actions with ourselves. People with low self-awareness, or reflection, are the ones who are most likely to carry out criminal actions that harm others. Also animals with lesser self-awareness, are more likely to act animalistically without thought or reflection.
Can we read what the thoughts of a person are before they enact them? The answer is yes. Some recent recipients of brain monitoring equipment and hardware implants have shown that their thoughts are already developed before they are themselves aware much like the Libet et al experiments. One such patient wanted to be able to write music again after an accident. It turned out the music in her head was already being output before she was even aware.