Consciousness

Psychologists and neuro-scientists have for decades endeavoured to locate consciousness in the brain or to define consciousness in terms of brain activities – but to no avail (Papineau & Selina, 2005).

Consciousness is such a fundamental concept that it defies definition. Ratey informs us: “Attention and consciousness are inexorably intertwined, and some scientists now believe that they are actually the same thing. Despite the volumes that have been written on consciousness, we still don’t know how to define it, or what brain activity gives rise to it” (Ratey, 2003: 111).

Kolb & Wishaw declare: “Conscious experience is probably the most familiar mental process that we know, yet its workings remain mysterious. Everyone has a vague idea of what is meant by being conscious, but consciousness is easier to identify that to define.” They nevertheless venture this definition: “[T]he level of responsiveness of the mind to impressions made by the senses…” (Kolb & Wishaw, 2009: 645-646). This definition also tells us nothing – it uses the concept “mind”, which is simply a synonym for consciousness.

Russel reminds us: “This is the paradox of consciousness. Its existence is undeniable, yet it remains totally inexplicable (Russel, 2005: 27). The only definition he can provide is to call it “inner experience” (Russel, 2005: 32) – which isn’t very illuminating, either. Horgan (1998: 161) finds: “A theory of consciousness would represent the apogee – the culmination – of neuroscience.”

Neurosurgeon Steven Novella (2018: 74) agrees that “we don’t understand how the brain creates the phenomenon of consciousness…” He adds (20128: 289): “We can know with a high degree of certainty… that the brain causes the mind, without fully understanding exactly how it does so.”
The best Novella can do is to give a description of the process of perception from seeing or hearing something until becoming aware of it and recognizing it. “That endless chain of activity (which pauses when you sleep but is actually replaced by other types of brain activity that just don’t produce wakefulness) is your stream of consciousness” (Novella, 2018: 295).

Neuroscience can do no more than to state that consciousness must be produced, somehow, by the frontal lobes of the brain. If these lobes get injured consciousness may disappear.

Consciousness and time

It must be emphasized: human (self-)consciousness, the "ego", simply cannot be observed and captured since it is not fixed in the past as are all other objects, including the body of the person, but it resides in the present, in the moment of “now”.

This can be explained as follows (and in this explanation I follow the thoughts of Karl Heim, a German philosopher of the thirties to the fifties of the previous century – Heim, 1957: passim; Heim 1975: passim): Our sense organs can only observe or register things that are in the past. The light that strikes the eye so that it can see something needs time to travel from the observed object to the eye. In the case of stars in space these light waves take years to travel to us – at the speed of light, which is +300 000 km/s. Astronomers can see with their telescopes galaxies of which the light took millions of years to reach us. The light from the sun takes seven minutes to reach the earth. The light from an object a meter away from somebody's eye – such as the computer screen in front of me – takes a tiny fraction of a second to travel, but it is still a certain length of time.
In the same way sound takes a certain period of time to reach somebody's ear from the source of the sound.

After a sense organ, such as the eye or the ear, has picked up or registered certain signals, these signals have to be processed by the brain before that person can see something or hear a sound – and this process also takes some time, albeit a tiny fraction of a second. Impulses that are being carried along neurons have a speed of anything between 100 and 300 km/s and that also takes time.

The "ego" or self-consciousness of a human being cannot be observed, however, since it is the "ego" that experiences and observes time and moves along with the moment of “now”. In the same way no eye can see itself and no hand can grasp itself. The "ego" can, therefore, never be in the past, only in the present. The "ego" cannot experience itself; all that the "ego" can experience is the contents of consciousness such as memories, thoughts and sensations. However, the physical and psychological aspects of an individual can be observed, since they are fixed in the past. These aspects are projections of the "ego" that are fixed in the past and are, therefore, observable.

Encounter of persons

It may also be helpful to approach this problem of the nature of consciousness from the following point of view: When two people encounter each other, they recognise each other as fellow human beings, as persons – not as objects in the world, such as furniture, machines, rocks, plants or animals. Each one experiences the other as another “ego”, another “I” or “me”, which is not “I” or “me”, the observer. Each one of us has the capacity of self-consciousness and we perceive that the person we encounter also has a self-consciousness, an “ego”.

Peter Russel puts it aptly:

“But what exactly is this sense of ‘I-ness’? I use the word “I” hundreds of times a day without hesitation. I say that I am thinking or seeing something, that I have a feeling or desire, that I know or remember something. It is the most familiar, most intimate, most obvious aspect of myself. I know exactly what I mean by ‘I’ – until I try to describe it or define it. Then I run into trouble” (Russel, 2005: 80).

It may therefore be accepted as self-evident that normal human beings, who are not sleeping or in a coma, are conscious of the world, but that they are also conscious of themselves and conscious of the fact that they are conscious. One may also accept that animals are conscious of the world, but that they usually lack self-awareness.

For instance: a cat or a dog that sees itself in a mirror, often tries to find the other cat or dog behind the mirror without realizing that they saw a reflection of themselves. Chimpanzees and other apes, on the other hand, do have the capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror (Kolb & Whishaw, 2009: 684).

Neuroscientists and psychologists make use of the concept of “theory of mind” to explain why human beings can infer that other humans have thoughts, feelings, perceptions, motives and a self-consciousness. This seems to be connected to the fact that humans have mirror neurons in their brains, which enable them to have empathy with others, that is, to put themselves in the shoes of other people.

Mirror neurons are also seen as the explanation for the fact that emotions are contagious. Even babies show this phenomenon. When one, for instance, starts to cry it will not take long for others in the vicinity to pick up that baby’s distress and start crying as well.

A manual of neuropsychology gives this description of the role of mirror neurons:

“The ability of mirror neurons to have a role in self-action as well as in the perception of action of others, suggests that they provide the substrate for self-awareness, social awareness, and awareness of the intentions and actions of others and that they are likely important for gestural and verbal language.” (Kolb & Whishaw, 2009: 233).

In other words: mirror neurons make self-awareness possible, although the “I”, the “ego”, who is aware or conscious of itself, cannot be so localised.

The soul or the spirit

What is this “ego”? Where is this self-consciousness situated within the visible body? The traditional instinctive and religious view was always that a human being consists of a physical body and a nonphysical soul or spirit, his self-consciousness, his “ego”. The soul must be spiritual in nature, it is argued, because it is invisible, ungraspable.

This instinctive view, however, has no basis in science. No proof for the existence of a spirit or a soul that exists separate from the body has ever been found. The only explanation is that given above, namely that that the “ego”, self-consciousness, cannot be investigated because it is itself the investigating agent of the person. It is not an object in the world that is fixated in the past; it is the experience of the present, the fleeting moment of “now” that cannot be grasped.

Neuroscientists predict that it will become possible to “download” the memories and thoughts of people from their brains and that it will be possible for that particular person to live on as an extremely complex system of electronic traces inside a supercomputer, even after having died. The problem is, however, that these stored memories and thoughts will be dead and lifeless – just as a recording of a music concert, for instance, is only a simulation of something alive, but is not the concert itself. The person, the ego with self-consciousness, who produced these thoughts and memories, will be gone and the recorded ideas and memories will be nothing but recordings – not the person himself.

Human knowledge

Human knowledge does not consist of images or copies of objects found in the world outside the human being's consciousness. How will he ever know whether the “images” or “copies” in his consciousness correspond with the objects in the “outside world”, which they are supposed to represent? After all, we cannot exit our own minds and we only have access to the images in our consciousness or memories. However, human beings also do not have knowledge of a world constructed by themselves – otherwise they would only know illusions and hallucinations.

A human being knows the real world – as the world appears to him. He never gets a complete picture, since he only has a certain perspective on the world. His sense organs are not only receptors but also filters that do not register certain signals. Those aspects of the world that do appear to him are also interpreted against the backdrop of his memories, emotions, expectations, goals, interests, values, preferences and dislikes. It is, therefore, clear that the world does not appear the same to any two people. However, since it is always the same world that appears to both of them, communication between them is possible. This is the basis of psychotherapy and counselling: two people communicating and understanding each other, although each one has a different and unique perspective on the world.

Human knowledge consists of the contents of consciousness and it can be described as the correspondence between the contents of a (human) consciousness or information that has been fixed by means of a code (for instance, letters on paper or in a computer's memory) on the one hand, and the information embedded in all phenomena and events in the world.

Because it is always the "ego" that observes, interprets and knows we will never understand the nature of knowledge fully. This "ego" is never available for observation or analysis – as has been explained. Similarly, human freedom will always remain a riddle since the "ego", which is free and takes certain decisions, stays hidden.

Human free will

There are those who argue that human free will is an illusion and that humans are totally ruled by their instincts, drives, needs and habits.
If it were true that human freedom of will is only an illusion then the whole system of criminal justice would not make sense anymore. Judges and magistrates all take it for granted that a criminal who is found guilty of breaking the law, did so on purpose, knowing quite well that what he did was wrong. If human behaviour were only the product of instincts, innate drives and automatic impulsive acts, them there cannot be any place for responsibility either, and then no person can be held accountable for his deeds and omissions.

If people really had no freedom will, then the whole notion of ethics and morals would also make no sense. Behaviour can be deemed to be either good or bad, and either right or wrong. People can choose to do the right thing or to be good in their interactions with others and they can choose to desist from bad or wrong behaviour. They do not avoid committing wrongs or behaving badly out of fear for punishment, but because these actions are wrong or bad in themselves and because their consciences dictate to them to consciously choose goodness and rightness above badness and wrongness.

The late Viktor Frankl told the following story during a lecture of his, which I attended in 1962: A man was charged with some or other crime and as a mitigating circumstance he pleaded that he had no choice in performing the crime, since he was compelled to act in a certain manner by his drives and needs. The judge elaborated on this argument by declaring that he, also, had absolutely no choice in the matter and was, therefore, totally compelled to find the accused guilty and to sentence him to imprisonment.

Sources

HEIM, K. 1957. Christian faith and natural science (tr N.H. Smith). New York : Harper & Row.

HEIM, K., 1975. Glaube und Denken : Philosophische Grundlegung einer christlichen Lebensanschauung. Wuppertal : Aussaat Verlag.

HORGAN, J. 1998. The end of science : facing the limits of knowledge in the twilight of the scientific age. London : Abacus.

KOLB, B. & WISHAW, I.Q. 2009. Fundamentals of human neuropsychology. New York : Worth Publishers.

NOVELLA, S. et al. 2018. The skeptic’s guide to the universe : how to know what’s really real in a world of increasingly full of fake. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

PAPINEAU, D. & SELINA, H. 2006. Introducing consciousness. Cambridge : Icon Books.

RATEY, J.J. 2003. A user’s guide to the brain : perception, attention, and the four theaters of the brain. London : Abacus.

RUSSEL, P. 2005. From science to God : a physicist’s journey into the mystery of consciousness. Novato, Cal : New World Library.

Dr Adelbert Scholtz is a counselling psychologist and pastoral counsellor who practices in Somerset West