The Mystery of Consciousness
| January 24, 2007 | Posted by leebowman under Intelligent Design, Science |
The 1/29/07 issue of Time Magazine is captioned “Mind & Body Special Issue”, and starts out with a discussion of the brain’s geography, an endeavor well studied and categorized by now, but which is far overshadowed by the mystery of ‘consciousness’, often tagged as the ‘ghost within the neural machine’. Steven Pinker writes the centerpiece article, “The mystery of consciousness”, and indeed, consciousness is the centerpiece of the mystery regarding life itself.
In a cited case of a woman involved in an accident who had severe brain damage, and using a new and improved MRI technique, she nonetheless showed unexpected neural activity when certain words were spoken, and in the areas where that activity would normally occur. She displayed no outward cognizance, however, raising new questions concerning the Terry Schiavo case.
Within the emerging field of ‘cognitive neuroscience’ the study of brain functions have been characterized by Pinker as easy areas, like defining areas that do this or that, to the intrinsically hard problem of trying to figure out what consciousness is. The article cites a major precept that prevails today as well as in years past, the materialist view that:
“Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.” (emphasis mine)
The article cites Swiss neuroscientists reporting that they were able to turn out-of-body experiences on and off through stimulation. A Google search using ‘out-of-body’, ‘neuroscience’ and ‘swiss’ produces conflicting reports, the scientists claiming that the effects were illusionary, but others feeling that the OBE experiences were genuine. Time will tell.
The article goes on to posit that much of what we perceive cognitively is illusional, and gives examples. One they cite, but that I take exception to, is that visual perception is faulted by seeing cognitively only a small central part of the visual field, and how by flitting from place to place, the brain thinks it’s seeing the whole field of vision, while it’s really only seeing parts of it. Although stated as a dilemma, the article later actually answers its own question by stating:
” … decision circuits inside the brain would be swamped if every curlicue and muscle twitch that was registered somewhere in the brain were constantly being delivered to them …”
Exactly, and in my view, this kind of data handling points to a kind of ‘specified’ or ‘engineered’ data handling, although scientists will state that it was merely due to beneficial mutations that improved survival.
Pinker also gets into philosophical areas like “How you could ever know whether you see colors the same way that I do”, and “What if I’m the only entity, and everyone else is only an illusion”. But the real question as to whether consciousness is external to the body, the brain being more of an interface device to body functions, and perhaps a shaper of earthly personality and a filter to earthly perceptions remains unanswered for now. Most researchers believe that consciousness is merely a function of neural activity. Sorry, but I have to disagree.
48 Responses to The Mystery of Consciousness
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Shaner74; please refer to the article Lurker linked, as all my comments on the rate of NDE’s and fear are in relation to that.
As for my personal views, seperate from the article, dying and returning regardless of NDE I would expect to have a profound effect on most people. For myself that doesn’t prove the existence of God or an afterlife, it indicates people change their outlook on the world when faced with their own mortality.
What people do with their 2nd lease of life is up to them, but most would see it as a positive experience and try to make the most of their remaining life.
A high or low rate of NDE’s I don’t think says anything about materialistic explanations, as it could be based on any number of factors we just don’t know yet.
But most religions will say everyone has a soul (or atleast their believers), so you would expect if people had a soul that everyone would experience NDE’s. especially if as Lurker and the study have implied that the soul is what experiences the NDE and not the brain. Maybe I am alone in that line of thought though…
And in regards to fear, the article specifically mentions no reported fear in their cases. Iwould actually expect some fear (we are talking about one of peoples greatest fears afterall), but they categorically state there is none.
To me that stands out and is why I mentioned it.
Even with “no soul” NDE’s, I would expect some people to experience fear as their brain would potentially feel it had lost control, weird sensations, etc and would translate into a feeling of fear. But, as you can read the study reported none.
IDist:
Not exactly… there are several forms of damage to the regions of the brain responsible for memory.
Please read: http://www.brainconnection.com...../hm-memory
This person cannot form any new memories… does his soul also suffer this fate? This clearly prevents him from growing as a person.
The condition you refer to is a form of Aphrasia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia), please have a read as there are many forms and not all progress as you have indicated – and which form people have is strongly implied by the regions of the brain effected, which would be odd if the soul was responsible for those functions.
MarkC:
“As for my personal views, seperate from the article, dying and returning regardless of NDE I would expect to have a profound effect on most people. For myself that doesn’t prove the existence of God or an afterlife, it indicates people change their outlook on the world when faced with their own mortality.”
The facts are different. It is not so much “facing one’s mortality” which affects the change: that would be common also to anyone who is dying but is saved, without experiencing any NDE. Besides, facing one’s mortality has usually some depressing effect, or the effect of tying the person more to life, and increasing fear of death. On the contrary, for those who experience the NDE, it is rather “facing one’s immortality” which effects the change, which is usually positive, in the sense of giving a new, higher perspective of life, and of reducing fear of death, but it can also be troublesome, in the sense of making more difficult the relationship with one’s usual life, after having experienced such a different and more fulfilling dimension of experience. In any case, it is not the “death” experience which affects the individual, but rather the specific and very strong “after death” experiences.
That’s also the explanation for the absence of fera. Fear is certainly experienced by most in the process of approaching death, when consciousness is still tied to the body and brain, but during the process of detachment of consciousness, which is what the NDE is about, a great peace and reassurance is felt by almost everybody: the state of consciousness dramatically changes, and the usual ego-consciousness is tranformes, even if it is not lost. The NDE experiences (OBE, review of one’s lifetime, tunnel of light, meeting known dead people or a being of light, and even deeper experiences) are lived in a state of deep peace, which is always described as “higher” than usual waking consciousness, and completely different from dream or sleep consciousness. It’s a very vivid, deeply gratifying experience, with universal connotations which are astonishingly consistent, even in different cultures or personal attitudes. One of the most beautiful characteristics of the NDE, in my opinion, is that its occurence does not seem to depend in any way on the individual’s beliefs or expectations about after-life. It is, indeed, “no regarder of persons”, at least as we conceive them, but it seems to follow different, deeper rules which we don’t fully understand.
About brain problems, again it is obvious that the brain is the vehicle of the ordinary waking consciousness, and that brain deficiencies can cause any kind of disturbances to the ego consciousness. But they can never destroy consciousness. We are much, much more than our egos and waking consciousness. The waking consciousness, which expresses itself as our usual ego and faculties, is only the tip of the iceberg. But the iceberg is very big, deep and precious.
“How you could ever know whether you see colors the same way that I doâ€Â
You mix a color using paints and I match it best as possible. We agree they are identical, problem solved.
This doesn’t work for color-blind people within parts of the spectrum, you can verify they see color differently by watching them reproduce problem-area colors.
I believe there is a link between soul, consciousness and emotions.
For the first we are not sure IF IT EXISTS, for the second, we are not sure about WHAT IS IT, but for the emotions we are sure they exist and we know pretty well how do they “work”.
But, IMHO, the emergence of the emotions has no evolutionary value, and probably no valid explanation. All organisms can function very well without emotions. But we see emotions at some animals…
So, WHY emotions ? Why consciousness ? Why souls ? From the darwinian point of view…
“A high or low rate of NDE’s I don’t think says anything about materialistic explanations,â€Â
If it’s just a materialistic phenomenon, it should be easily repeatable and predictable. Interestingly enough, it seems Pim van Lommel reached the same conclusion:
“Several theories have been proposed to explain NDE. However, in our prospective study we did not show that psychological, physiological or pharmacological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. With a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia, most patients who had been clinically dead should report an NDE. All 344 patients had been unconscious because of anoxia of the brain resulting from their cardiac arrest. Why should only 18% of the survivors of cardiac arrest report an NDE?â€Â
“And in regards to fear, the article specifically mentions no reported fear in their cases.â€Â
As I’m sure you are aware, NDE’s have been investigated for some time now. Many of them do report fear *after* dying. Van Lommel speaks about fear before death here:
“The psychological explanation: NDE is caused by fear of death. But in our study only a very small percentage of patients said they had been afraid the seconds preceding the cardiac arrest, it happened too suddenly to realize what occurred to them. However, 18 % of the patients reported NDE. And also the given medication made no difference.â€Â
In any event, I think it’s an odd evolutionary adaptation to cause a dying(dead) person to believe without doubt there is a supernatural realm…
My only qualm with accepting that consciousness is not a physical process is the affect brain damage has on people. I recently read an article where researchers were alleviating depression by placing something like a pacemaker in a particular area of patient’s brains. If depression can be cured by manipulating the brain, that says to me that consciousness does exist in, and is generated by, the brain.
By the way, physicalism need not be inconsistent with Christian theism (or any other sort of theism). There is a school of thinking that sees property dualism and orthodox/conservative Christian doctrine as compatible. The idea is that the “soul” is what we today refer to as “consciousness” and is in fact a property emergent from the brain. Where the Christian ideas of the afterlife are concerned, this is specifically in reference to the Resurrection in which we would be given new bodies which, presumably, would include something like our original brain, complete with its emergent consciousness (or “soul”).
I suppose one could make a case for something even more fundamental to the Self than just the soul which does not necessarily include self-conciousness or memory; this more fundamental component you could call “Spirit.” Admittedly, this idea of “Spirit” is not a very well defined concept. Perhaps something like a life-force with a sense of Self. One could say that the “Spirit” lives on after physical death, while the Soul (i.e., the “Consciousness”) dies with the body. Then the body is resurrected (i.e., reconstructed in a perfected form) some day and reunited with the spirit. This new body would then include a brain, from which the soul would again emerge as an “Emergent Property.”
To the atheists in the audience, this will, of course sound like a bunch of “religious nonsense.” Understood. To the Christians (and perhaps those of other religions, in particular Judaism) there might be some coherence to this, and I think it could be supported by scripture. Though not all would agree. Admittedly, though it is something like idle speculation (but no more speculative than multiple universes). So be it. For myself, I have suspended judgement on the question for the time being. The bottom line is that I have somewhat resolved my uneasiness about the apparent physicality of consciousness or the “soul” by reasoning that things MIGHT be SOMETHING LIKE what I have described. Thus neuroscience need not conflict with my beliefs.
Oh, and gpuccio, thank you for your response to my comments above. Those are very interesting insights.
How is it logically possible to abolish “I” in the equations which result in “Me”?
Hey Shaner74
“If depression can be cured by manipulating the brain, that says to me that consciousness does exist in, and is generated by, the brain.”
If my girlfreind breaks up with me, it generates depression. You can cure the depression by manipulating our relationship to make her give me a second chance. If depression can be cured by manipulating the relationship, that says to me that consciousness does exist in, and is generated by, the relationship.
Perhaps it isn’t that the brain causes the conciousness but rather that the brain (as an interface device) causes the depression.
“Perhaps it isn’t that the brain causes the consciousness but rather that the brain (as an interface device) causes the depression.â€Â
Atom, that’s an excellent point. In re-reviewing the piece (in my mind) I recall the patients describing their depression differently than what I’ve come to understand depression as. For me, depression is just being really bummed out, not wanting to do anything, and in extreme instances (such as when a family member has died) just having no hope at all. That is, depression is the effect; the cause is the subjective experience of loss/pain. To the patients in this program, they described depression as a “fog†in front of them or around them. That certainly does sound more like a “hardware†or interface problem. I think NDE’s are compelling evidence for an independent-of-brain consciousness. All material explanations for NDE’s are absurd, IMHO. Also, some interpretations of quantum physics seem to require an immaterial consciousness to explain certain material phenomenon. But I guess I remain on the fence with this.
Yeah, I don’t blame you. At this point to be dogmatic either way is a little pre-mature, since there is so much about the brain that we don’t know. (I lean strongly towards conciousness independent of hardware, but I could be wrong.)
I’m hoping Denyse OLeary’s new book will help me make a decision either way.
“The article goes on to posit that much of what we perceive cognitively is illusional, and gives examples. One they cite, but that I take exception to, is that visual perception is faulted by seeing cognitively only a small central part of the visual field, and how by flitting from place to place, the brain thinks it’s seeing the whole field of vision, while it’s really only seeing parts of it.
This piece of data is enough to convinvince me that the human visual system is beautifully designed. What we have is the perception of unifomity in our visual field and the detection of changes in the peripheral visual field. We also have the ability to instantly move our high resolution (fovea) reception field to any area of interest to our conscious (and even unconscious) mind. Is it not also strange that our mind is able to keep the “real world” still while our video camera moves around in a myriad of directions flitting here and there. Any amateur video maker knows how important a steady hand is to making a “watchable” end product.
Why this very efficient visual system is consitered “illusional” and “faulted” rather than inexplicably optimally tuned for maximal function at minimum cost is beyond me.
The human visual system is one of the greatest pieces of hardware and software engineering in the universe. It is one of the seven wondere of the universe. Ask someone with macular degeneration if you don’t believe me.
Hello, this is my first post and I find the topic intriguing. Thank you Lee for making me aware of the Time magazine article.
In my opinion, Dr. Pinker is engaging more in “rhetoric” than what I would describe as employing the empirical method to evaluate tech validity of a hypothesis.
The link to the NDE article provided me with an intriguing quotation:
That to me appears an empirical argument on its face.
Therefore, I recommend that the readers of this thread view the work of Dr. Berkovitz here:
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~berkov/Theory.htm
In a rush so I don’t have time to read the whole thing…but I wonder what estimate for storage capacity they’re using? Processing estimates seem to be between 100 TeraFLOPS to 100 PetaFLOPS (the Japanese are supposedly building a 10 PetaFLOPS supercomputer now).
In any case, I’ve heard of people capable of remembering every single little detail they’ve seen or heard. Even with compression I’m curious what a lifetime of data would amount to.
Hello, Patrick.
Dr. Berkovich writes the following:
He has also said, and this I find intriguing:
If I learn any more, I shall let you know, but Dr. Berkovich effectively refutes the materialistic and dogmatic assumptions of Dr. Pinker, I think.
If Bill Dembski is reading, I’d appreciate his input, since ‘computer science’ and ‘information theory’ appear to present a better framework to understand ‘consciousness’ than Dr. Pinker’s background as a psychologist!
Oh, I did additional research, and Dr. Berkovich discussed Karl Pribram.
Here is an interview on the ‘holographic model’ of the brain/mind:
http://twm.co.nz/pribram.htm
http://www.acsa2000.net/bcngroup/jponkp/
I think, from reading the footnotes, Pribram’s work has influenced Dr. Berkovich, whose biography is here:
http://cs.seas.gwu.edu/people/.....personID=3
I think consciousness is a huge problem for materialism yet I’ve been thinking about exactly why it’s a huge problem. So far, this is what I came up with.
Consciousness is something that exists, that we (everyone) know exists, yet we can’t observe it. We can’t measure it, we can’t quantify it, we can’t test it, we can’t run experiments in it, we can’t explain it, we don’t even know what it is or how to define it. Yet all of us know it exists because we are conscious. Consciousness is beyond the scope of science. Because we know consciousness exists and can’t be observed or measured we know that something exists that can’t be observed or measured. Something exists that’s beyond the scope of science. Since we know that something does exist that’s beyond the scope of science, it is reasonable to conclude that things (phenomena, entities, etc…) can exist that are beyond the scope of science. An existence beyond the scope of science (that is, observation, measurements, quantification, etc..) is possible. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s perfectly possible for something to exist beyond what we can observe. Since we know that things can exist that are beyond the scope of science, it stands to reason that there could be other existences (besides our own consciousness) that are beyond the scope of science. Therefore it’s reasonable to conclude that there could be some other existence (beyond the scope of science) that may have had an influence (or caused) on the origin of the universe, life, man, etc…
So the problem with consciousness from a materialistic perspective is not the rhetoric, “we can’t explain it, therefore, God did it.” It’s that there does exist something that we can’t explain, therefore there could be other existences that we can’t explain, and God could be one of them.