Well I was absolutely moping due to a bad cold, and was watching Varsity Blues on the telly (old fashioned word for the Idiot box is it not?). I loved that fat defender having a CAT scan to check whether he has any brains at all. The check proved conclusive, he had a fully functional brain. The lucky bastard!
Well I am not so sure about mine anyway, lately there seems to be nothing in it. I did a sort of Consciousness Affirmation Scan myself and the results are not very satisfactory. You can derive your own conclusions from the following I hope.
The fact is, I have always wondered what consciousness is( we usually wonder only at those things we do not have, or so the wise say!), no one seems to agree on it anyway, my own belief in it stems from personal experiences of a certain sort that is very subjective and not at all scientific. So it is not very “logical” and “realistic” as some of my esteemed friends would say. Hence I have to discard it altogether and look for the modern(!) and scientific (!) explanation on the thing.
I have to warn you about two things at the outset of the effort itself. The onset of the cold and an infernal sneezing has reduced the effectiveness of my otherwise wonderful one finger technique of typing (What has the cold to do with typing, you may wonder. Well there are many such incomprehensible things in the world). As to the cerebral faculties I doubt whether they are oozing out of me through the nose at the moment. Would some sweet medicine man/woman help me?
Anyway, I began looking into what I knew about consciousness (I knew Einstein remember!). Sadly I had to think of the Sophists as starters. That was sad because the word Sofia means Wisdom and as everyone might know that is what I lack at present. (What would I not give to be wise?) Well that is not here or there. I am going to launch myself into the subject, if it becomes complex from here onwards, you may have to rely on your intellect, a thing which I can’t give you any advice on. Well here we go!
A brief history of the problem of consciousness
The Greek sophists were the first to discern the uniqueness of acts of consciousness in comparison with the material existence of things (A good start, considering everything). Mostly in ancient philosophy consciousness is associated with reason, it seems. We will rely only on the western interpretation here as it is more familiar.
The ancients considered reason to be a cosmic principle, a generalization of the real world. The word reason was also used as a synonym for universal law. By the Middle Ages consciousness was interpreted as a transcendental principle (God). This principle existed before nature and created nature out of nothing. Reason or consciousness was considered to be an attribute of god and the human beings were only given a tiny spark of it. Around the same period St Augustine is said to have remarked that “all knowledge resides in the soul which lives and moves in god”. So to know consciousness one had to look inwards.
This led to the ‘introspective conception’ of consciousness, in Thomas Aquinas it was a means of obtaining deeper knowledge of oneself in communication with god through conscious reason. Man has a conscious soul while plants and animals had unconscious souls.
It is curious to note that the materialist tradition was evident in the Arab thinkers like Ibn Sina at the time. Also in Europe Duns Scouts seems to have proposed a theory that matter could think( some matter can’t as you may probably know).
When we come to Rene Descartes we discover the greatest influence on the problem of consciousness in the modern times. He gave importance to self-consciousness. His definition states that consciousness is the individual’s contemplation of his own inner world. It is a substance revealed only to the subject contemplating it and contrasted with the out side world. To him the soul only thought and the body only moved.
Leibnitz is also worthy of note. He may have been the first to say anything on unconscious mental activity. But the French seems to be the most advanced of all materialists, Le Metterie and Cabanis thought that consciousness is wholly cerebral. This was in the 18th century.
The German philosophers on the other hand appear to be the most thorough of all the Europeans in studying consciousness. Their classical idealism is drab but puts forth compelling ideas on introspective psychology. The German approach took all the aspects of the personality into consideration such as emotional and perceptual faculties and forms and structures of cognition in their definition of consciousness.
They thought that these did not depend entirely on man.( Kant’s theory of transcendental appreciation). Hegel seems to have brought in the historical context of consciousness into thought. But his interpretation remained basically idealistic even then.
Neurophysiology played its part too in defining consciousness. (especially the theory of the Reflectory activity of the brain).Another main stream of thought is that of the Marxists who believe that consciousness arises, functions and develops in the process of people’s interaction with reality.
As in everything else there are two different streams of thought on this one too- The unavoidable idealistic and materialistic positions. While the idealist interprets it on the basis of human soul which is primordial and not subject to anything material, the materialists consider it as an activity of human brain. In fact the later position is more “logical “and appealing. Let us follow them exclusively.
They say that consciousness can not be considered outside of its historical context and in isolation from social life and that it could not have arisen without language and memory. Let us take it as a basic supposition and skip the details for comforts sake.
The Brain and Consciousness in the eyes of a materialist
Human consciousness develops as brain develops. An undeveloped brain (such as mine for instance) results in various forms of mental deficiency, weakness of will etc. The pathological disturbances of the sub cortex causes hysterical fits of anger, fear, and the like accompanied by cries and shrieks (Don’t expect me to comment on this!). Structural damage to the frontal lobes of the brain makes the victim incapable of having or retaining complex ideas or sometimes any stable intentions at all (Hmm). Social, psychological, biochemical, biofield and other such factors might also play an important role in mental disorders
Such deadly branches of medicine like the electrophysiology, neurology, neurosurgery, and neuropsychology have all shown the complex and sophisticated nature of the thing we carry on our heads. The logical and imaginal activity of the brain occurs in the cortex and its folds are supposed to have some connection with the efficiency of the brain. The more the folds the more the complexity (I might have on or two of them at the most I think). Every organ of sense is connected to the brain with a lace work of nerve fibers. When these feelers are exited they cause nervous energy to be transmitted to the cortex. It causes all sorts of reaction in the brain, some of them are Bio chemical, electrical, electromagnetic and neurodynamic (don’t blame me if this is not as thorough as a medico’s treatise. )
The human activity is supposed to be based on several information systems. The genetic system is one, external sensory information- signal system is another. There is said to be also a system which consists of transferring subconscious information between individuals. Some also consider intuition as a cerebral process which might bring in information on future events to us.
Normal mental activity is possible only when the brain is awake and active. This is managed through something called afference (brain’s reception of countless nervous impulses from sense organs). A very cute term “”. If this activity is lacking brain can’t produce any mental phenomena.
Reflectory activity of the brain
We come to Pavlov and the reflectionists now. He showed that conditioned reflexes are formed on the basis of unconditioned reflexes( nutritive, sexual, defensive etc). You ring a bell and serve food to a dog at the same time. Both get associated in its brain. After several repetitions the ringing of the bell is enough to produce the thought of food in the head of the dog (we teach school children on the basis of this principle! No wonder they learn so much in the process).
Refectory activity is said to contain the principle of reinforcement. Reflexes are reinforced by means of feedback. It informs the brain of the function of a certain organs and also its results. The feedback is intended to keep the brain informed of what is going on in system controls.
Where the meterialists and the idealists differ
Plato elevated the soul to the stature of the absolute. As was said earlier too the Christian theology followed this up further and in Descartes the soul achieved independent essence.
Well the materialists on the other hand believes that all mental phenomena is primarily reflective, and that their idealness is only derivative.
Let us see what a surgeon does. He sees the brain as grey matter and not as a spiritual flame. He is confronted with morphological structures and physiological processes. His vision tends to exclude the ideal altogether. But this does not mean that there is no perceptual activity in the brain. The ideal phenomena are the objective content of the nuerophysiological, material process of the brain, reproduced as images or ideas( indeed!). This allows the being to make use of them for the purpose of thought.
There have been attempts to get rid of the ‘ideal’ altogether from the discussion (good idea friend, a very good idea). But this is in error (there it goes!). Consciousness is a realty, but it is not objective reality as some suppose. Can one tell from studying the physiological process of the brain what a person is thinking about, what intentions arise in his mind and whom he loves and hates?( I love you like hell, do you love me at all, my dear?)
Consciousness is always connected with neurophysiological processes and does not exist outside these processes ( a sad thing it is, one can’t even reach out you see, and touch someone near to our heart). But they are not what constitute its essence (viola!). Science might try to reduce mental phenomena to the bio chemical and energy-informational processes of the brain (On a serious note, if reports are to be believed this has already been done, thoughts and even future actions of the individuals can be read and predicted by super computers through scanning brain wave patterns and its electro- magnetic and chemical activities).
But such discoveries will not explain the essence of consciousness. Consciousness is not a super refined motion of matter, but a subjective image of the world. Every perception is colored by the subjective experience of the individual who is having it.( we all carry brush and paint at all times!)
Consciousness and language
Consciousness pre supposes speech as its material reality in the form of gesture, sound, symbols and so on (Utter confusion your honor!). Speech is the material expression of thought. It is done by using words (Oh really? Did not know that, thanks for telling us!).
But we do not convey thoughts by means of words; we evoke similar thoughts in the mind of the listener (that’s what we call interesting!). A word is a unity of meaning and symbol and symbols are the primary instruments of thought. These symbols express a certain meaning indirectly or in a formalized manner (we certainly know about those symbols don’t we?).
Consciousness is always a verbally expressed reflection. If there is no language there can be no consciousness and if there is a thought in our mind it is always contained in a word (You see!), though it may not be the appropriate one (how true!). On the reverse a word can also conjure up thoughts in our minds. In reality language is the element in which thought actually lives.
But is thought possible without speech? Einstein was able to think in more or less in clear images of physical reality: the sea in motion symbolizing electromagnetic waves that can not be visually perceived, physical forces operating in a manner similar to the work of muscles. But this seems to be an exception. Speech is intimately linked with consciousness. (It has been clinically proven that mental disorders have an effect on speech.)
So we can conclude that speech is essential for conscious experience of the world. There is a close connection between the way of thinking and the way of expressing thought. Everything well thought out is expressed clearly and a fine thought is devalued by being poorly expressed (my poor posts!).
Well as you can see, consciousness is all brainy and all else is very grainy.
And finally
There are two kinds of nonsense: One comes from a lack of thought and feeling concealed by words ( me of course!), the other, from an overabundance of thought and feeling lacking the necessary words to express them(me?).
I do not know what you have learned from the post, as for myself, I am still working on it.
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