Neurons, Consciousness, Qualia
The relationship between neurons, consciousness and qualia is a central theme in the philosophy of mind and neuroscience. The discussion revolves around the question of how physical processes in the brain, i.e. the activity of neurons, can lead to subjective experiences called qualia.
Neurons are the basic building blocks of the nervous system and are responsible for transmitting information through electrical and chemical signals. Consciousness refers to the experience of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings — what it means to “experience something.” Qualia are the subjective qualities of experience, i.e. how it feels to experience something, such as the redness of a rose or the sweetness of sugar.
The current discussion encompasses different perspectives: Some philosophers and scientists argue for a physicalism that states that mental states can be fully explained by neural states. Others argue that there is an explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experiences that cannot be completely filled by the natural sciences. There are also models that try to explain consciousness and qualia through non-classical phenomena such as quantum processes, although these ideas are controversial and often outside mainstream thinking.
The debate is lively and far from resolved. It touches on fundamental questions about the nature of the mind and the relationship between the spiritual and the physical. It is a field where philosophy and science come together to explore some of the deepest mysteries of our existence.
Physicalism holds that everything that exists is physical, or at least can be explained by physical laws. Proponents such as Ansgar Beckermann argue that mental states are nothing more than brain states and thus can be fully explained by neuroscience. The Churchlands and Daniel Dennett are also well-known proponents of this view, often using reductionist approaches to explain mental phenomena.
The explanation gap refers to the difficulty of explaining subjective experiences — so-called qualia — such as seeing red or feeling pain, purely physically. Joseph Levine and David Chalmers are prominent thinkers who highlight this gap. Chalmers coined the term “hard problem” of consciousness to point out the particular difficulty of explaining subjective experiences in an objective framework.
Some theories suggest that quantum mechanics may play a role in consciousness. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have developed the Orch-OR model, which suggests that quantum processes in the microtubules of neurons may be responsible for consciousness. However, these ideas are speculative and controversial in the scientific community.
These approaches are part of a larger debate about mind-body dualism and the nature of consciousness. While physicalism offers a unified view, the other approaches emphasize the complexity and possibly non-physical aspects of consciousness.
Now we can look at it from a physiological point of view, then we use terms like neuron or brain area, etc. We can look at it from a behavioral point of view, as psychology does, then we use terms like conscious or unconscious, etc.
We can look at it from the outside and call it the 3rd person perspective, or we speak of the 1st person perspective, then we speak of the qualia, for example.
No matter from which perspective we look at humans, it is always the same person, the same brain and the same neurons. The only difference is the perspective.
And if you confuse these perspectives, or ascribe substance to them when they are only perspectives, or propagate a causality between them, then the very well-known philosophical problems that have been puzzling over them for two and a half thousand years come out.
One might think that people are naïve when they substantiate thinking and make ‘spirit’ out of it just because it cannot be touched. It then buzzes through the world on its own.
What we can’t do is objectify personal experience. Experience is reserved for the individual, namely the one who experiences it. I can’t experience your pain, because it’s your pain. In other words, there is no explanatory gap in this regard, nor is there a ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.
Newer approaches, such as expanded consciousness or its embodiment, make glaring mistakes. It would be like expanding the car to include the entire road network. No one would come up with such an idea, even if a car is on the road network and communicates and interacts with it in a variety of ways. Nor would you extend an engine to the entire car, even if the front wheels drive the car. The car and the engine are sufficiently describable as such. If you expand it, you mix different levels and perspectives of description. In other words, embodiment, embeddedness, enactivism, and extended mind suffer from a scientific-theoretical imbalance that does not lead to the elucidation of the problem of consciousness, but to its confusion. Gilbert Ryle, in his book “The Concept of Mind” (1949), questioned the dualistic view. He argued that it was committing a “category of mistakes.” This applies to all concepts that swap perspectives. Extending consciousness to the whole body — or even to the whole environment — yields two mistakes:
1. The extension of the psychological concept of the mental to the physiological concept of the corporeal results in an inaccurate categorization, one associates apples with oranges.
2. All sensors converge in the brain and the data is ‘processed’ there. It is only there that reality is transformed. ‘Physicality’ comes into play through the fact that thoughts and feelings constantly experience feedback with one’s own body and the environment. These are highly complex processes that cannot be captured with the 4 E’s.
Embeddedness, enactivism and extended mind do not in fact address consciousness, but the subject from a sociological perspective.
From this perspective, the subject appears as part of a system.
But neuroscience has a completely different perspective than sociology. It focuses on the subject, and specifically on the brain, i.e. the organ that is responsible for orientation (in contrast, the heart is responsible for pumping blood).
Another argument against expansion as a fundamental explanation is that higher cognitive functions in the cerebrum require a longer processing time and are less directly influenced by external environmental stimuli, as well as that in highly specialized core areas such as the thalamus or the basal ganglia, information is integrated over longer periods of time and is therefore less directly connected to the environment. The categorical inclusion of the environment in the concept of consciousness therefore makes no sense.
The same applies to embodiment as to the three E’s mentioned. In fact, the subject is not consciousness, but the entire organism, i.e. the actual object of the medicine. In the term embodiment, dualism is already included. Body and mind in one term, more dualism is not possible. Appled pears, so to speak. Same speech impediment as in the mind-body problem. Descartes would be amused.
Practical neuroscientists do this right on their own in their daily practice by establishing correlations between neuronal processes and the behavior (in the broadest sense) of the subjects.
Here, too, however, a meta-theoretical ‘control program’ should be constantly run so that methodological errors do not creep in. The rules for this are: always separate observational perspectives, create only correlations between the perspectives and not causalities, and separate the first and third person perspectives as a matter of principle.
