Thoughts on Consciousness

Reductionist approach

Reductionism has improved our understanding of many phenomenon and so trying to reduce the essential elements of consciousness should produce some interesting thought experiments.

Try to imagine a simple neural network, like holding a twig from a branch with several areas branching. This tiny network is lit up like a Christmas tree. Activity going back and forth. Fiber optical cables come to mind. What is this network doing? Is it having conscious experiences?

Further Imagine that I am a neuroscientist and I am studying brain activity during a painful experience. I am able to record and reproduce the activity of the painful experience in another medium. Does this “replaying” of the neural activity recreate a conscious experience? What type of universe would we be in if I managed to replay this activity a billion times over for all eternity?

Ask the same question but with a pleasurable experience rather than a painful one. A neuroscientist records the activity in a brain while it is smelling and tasting strawberries, and he proceeds to replay this activity in a device over and over again. Is the universe better off if it has conscious networks that are experiencing pleasure over and over?

Body and Mind

If I have a pain in my neck and I immediately clone myself I am aware of the pain in this neck but I am not aware of any pain in my clone’s neck. My consciousness is dependent on the information my brain has access to. I do not have any neural connections that feed information from my clone’s neck to my brain. The only way I can know that my clone feels any pain is by him telling me. And that is an indirect knowledge of his experience rather than an experience of my own. I am actually experiencing him speak, I am not experiencing his pain.

If I were to remove the body from the neck down (assuming a continuous supply of nutrients to the head) my awareness is not severely restricted. I still have access to most of the experiences that I value: memories, emotions, sight, smell, hearing, reason, taste, and this pain in my neck. I would be lacking the sensation of feeling full after a large meal, or the exhilaration after a long run, but I would say that my consciousness is fully intact. If however, I continue to remove sections such as my eyes and ears then my conscious experience will be severally hindered. If I remove all things to become a brain in a vat am I still conscious? I am conscious of my emotions and several processes that are happening in the brain: thoughts, memories.. but I could argue that my consciousness is not fully intact at this point. In order to be fully conscious I must be conscious of something. Trying to reduce consciousness down to some basic network is a task in futility. Consciousness cannot be reduced because one must be conscious of other thing. Instead of trying to reduce consciousness to a single mechanism I can observe that I can be more or less consciousness as I add or take away the organs that provide the sensations and awareness of the environment. The external world is a key component of consciousness. Since one cannot be conscious without being conscious of something we see that this separation of me and the environment is a false dichotomy. I am dependent on the external world to define my self. And so my true self is the sum of my brain, body and all of the external world I have access to. If I were to increase my awareness by adding new senses then I would increase my consciousness. Or if I decreased my senses through blindness or loss of hearing then I would decrease my consciousness. As I remove senses my consciousness will approach zero. In every day life we do not slowly remove senses but all senses are removed at once at the time of death and so consciousnesses abruptly bottoms to zero.

This shows that I am dependent on my environment and my senses to construct a conscious self.

Necessity of the Body

I can be divided into conscious and non-conscious processes. If I were to ask why I eat it would be to change the state of my conscious experience. I experience hunger which brings displeasure so I am motivated to eliminate this pain. Or I am drawn to food for the pleasure it brings. In either case I am altering states of consciousness and I am not trying to keep my body alive. There is a disconnect between our conscious experience and the reality of our body. In the same way, I do not have sex in order to reproduce. I have sex because it produces an experience that I enjoy. People do have sex to deliberately reproduce but the reason they are choosing to reproduce is the hope that the children will provide some kind of pleasurable or fulfilling experience.

We see that our conscious experiences exist to serve the body. My hunger and motivation toward pleasurable foods provides my body with nourishment. But in this disconnected paradigm problems can easily arise. If I find myself in an environment with a surplus of sugar then by acting to maximize my pleasurable experience I am doing harm to my body. Drug users also experience this disconnect as they hijack the brain’s reward system and avoid food altogether and prefer the “high” produced by substance abuse.

Can I fully disconnect the body from the mind? If I do should I produce a world in which only bodies exist at maximum efficiency or should I produce a world in which only conscious agents exist without bodies for a maximum pleasurable experience?

“I” would not be motivated to produce a world of unconscious bodies, because the “I” prefers pleasurable conscious experiences. A world of only consciousness does sound appealing. A heavenly type of existence produced in some controlled medium such as a giant green house full of branching flesh and blood neurons, or an artificial world where silicon neural networks can flourish.

But why separate and perfect the conscious experience? If we built the Matrix and fed brains a lot of misinformation what would be its purpose? Would the universe be better off?

I notice that during stressful work days I long for time to myself. Maybe I will watch a movie alone which as an introvert brings a lot of pleasure. If I enjoy too much recreation however I fell the urge to be productive. These drives make perfect sense in the world I live in. While my desires do not perfectly match reality they do offer a very good framework for surviving.

So again we see that the mind exists to serve the body. We are in a situation where the mind feels like it could be separated from the body but upon closer inspected we see that the mind exists to serve the needs of the body. And so to lift conscious experience from the body in order to maximize pleasurable experiences is a task in futility.

Instead of creating an array of separate consciousness that are stimulated with pleasure without purpose, what we should, and will likely do is create a global awareness which continues to monitor and provide support to the environment. In this scenario a global awareness would supply the intelligence needed to manage all of the earth’s resources.

I don’t see any reason to separate conscious experience from the tasks that lead to survival. And seeing how intermingled the two are it is difficult to imagine any mind without a body. A mind must be conscious of something, else it is not a consciousness. And to be conscious of something is to lend that something aid and support.