Observations about, and questions posed by phenomenal consciousness
Our observations and experience of consciousness raise hard questions which stretch the imagination. For many of these, it is not known even how to go about solving them, these are the “hard problems” of consciousness [] [i] as opposed to the, relatively, easy problems of understanding the workings of the brain. It is fair to say that, although much has been published and debated, none of these questions have been answered in anything like a complete or satisfactory manner. Indeed, it can be argued that these are no closer to being answered than they were in the time of Plato.
Some such questions are the following:
Why is it there?
Most authors presuppose that most, if not all, of what is around us arose through a process of evolution and selection. That includes consciousness but consciousness appears to have no evolutionary driver. Evolutionary theory predicts that systems develop because they give a survival advantage over those creatures who do not possess it. However, it appears that there is nothing a conscious creature can do to aid survival which a non-conscious automaton could not also do. Attempts to argue that is does, often instead describe the survival advantage of intelligence, or of computational power, which can exist equally well in the absence of phenomenal consciousness. If it has no survival advantage, which Searle [] and others would dispute, then that raises the question of why it exists at all. If it is simply an accident then it is a very strange and unlikely one given its complexity. Does it have a purpose other than to aid survival?
In [], Searle argues that a conscious creature is better equipped than a non-conscious one. However, his comparison is with someone in a coma rather than a philosophical zombie and is therefore not a valid comparison. (The phrase “straw man” comes to mind). In [ii] [iii], Koch seems to argue that consciousness must have a survival benefit because it has, purportedly, evolved by natural selection which he takes as axiomatic. However no purpose is identified although he “surmises” that conscious creatures can plan more flexibly. Finally he dismisses the question by pointing out that acience can only answer “how” questions and not “why [ page 31].
Connected with this is that the behaviour of creatures, including humans, can seemingly be explained completely in physical terms without involving phenomenal consciousness. “There is nothing for consciousness to do”. [iv, page 40]. An alien observer could model all that they saw of human action, behaviour and brain states without involving or needing the concept of consciousness. So, again, what is it there for? The only reason for supposing that phenomenal consciousness exists at all is that we have first-person experience of it.
It has been argued that, regardless of the improbability of consciousness having arisen, the fact that we are here and have this experience, indicates that the improbable has already happened. By this argument it can be concluded that, in an infinite Universe, consciousness is inevitable and does not require there to be any evolutionary survival advantage at all. This is referred to as the Weak Anthropic Principle which states that if consciousness had not arisen then we would not be here and now as conscious beings.
How does it arise?
It is widely accepted that “brains cause minds”[][v] and that consciousness is caused by, or at least is correlated with, brain activity. Nobody, however, knows how brain activity can achieve this. There is, what Levine, [vi], calls, an explanatory gap which some believe, for good reasons, can never be bridged. The characteristics of phenomenal thoughts are so different from the physical workings of the brain that it seems hard to know how they are linked.
Are brains necessary for the existence of conscious minds? Is a biological substrate, or “meat machine” somehow special in it’s ability to support consciousness or would other substrates do? Wherever humans have observed, or inferred, consciousness it has always been associated with a biological system, such as a brain. However, it is not known whether consciousness can exist on a different substrate such as a sufficiently powerful, silicon based, computer system. Can a computer be designed which is conscious? If such a computer was built, how would we know?
Why does consciousness appear to be quantised into discrete units?
Consciousness, in our everyday experience, always comes in discrete units. Usually a unit of consciousness is associated with a single brain and vice versa. Exceptions to this, such as Multiple Personality Disorder, more recently called Dissociative Identity Disorder, [vii] or instances where the two halves of the brain have been disconnected[viii], are considered pathological. It is also conceivable that one conscious entity could share more than one brain, such as a hypothetical community mind. From analogies with other systems, such a thing may be possible given sufficient linking.
There still remains the problem of why a particular brain is associated with a particular unit of consciousness. Why is the brain inside my skull “me”?
Suppose a clone was made of a person, down the finest detail, would that person be conscious? If so would this be a new centre of consciousness or some sort of shared consciousness? Would it be the same person or an independent individual? (some clues might be found in people whose brain hemispheres have been separated by a corpus callosotomy[i].) What is the origin and nature of an individual subjective conscious entity?
Does consciousness have causative effects?
Consciousness is often associated with “free-will” or “agency” although they are not the same thing. Our intuition tells us that much of what we do is the result of conscious choice and that, in any particular situation, we could have chosen differently. However, some people believe that freedom of choice is an illusion and that, in reality, we are powerless to affect our actions. Our apparent choices are actually the inevitable result of our past experience, genes, persuasion etc. Although it seems certain that we have a lot less freedom of choice than we think we have, the actual extent of our ability to choose is disputed.
At one extreme is “epiphenominalism” [ii] which is the view that although we are conscious of events in the world, we are merely observers like someone watching a football match on TV. We are spectators but we are powerless to influence proceedings even though we may believe we can. If we cheer on our favourite team, sometimes that might be followed by their scoring a goal. Although this can give the impression of causation, that impression is false. Epiphenomenalism has severe difficulties but, on the other hand, if consciousness does affect behaviour, as it appears to, nobody knows how.
If everything, including our brains, is completely governed by the laws of physics then everything is deterministic and there is no place left for free will even if there is any place for consciousness. This means that either free-will is an illusion or that the laws of physics as we know them are incomplete. Attempts to invoke the indeterminacy of Quantum Mechanics have not been convincing. (See Section )
How do our conscious experiences relate to the “real world”?
How does our conscious experience relate to the external world? Could we be in a “Matrix” type of simulation? Is there any experiment we could do which would enable us to find out? A huge conceptual difficulty is that any attempt to find out what consciousness is can only be done “from the inside”. We need to use consciousness in order to find out what consciousness is and there are reasons to think that this places severe limitations on what can be known. This problem is well described in a quote attributed to Chalmers [iii] [iv]: ‘Consider a computer simulation in which the bodies of the creatures are controlled by their minds and the minds remain strictly external to the simulation. The creatures can do all the science they want in the world, but they will never be able to figure out where their minds are, for they do not exist in their observable universe.’ If we were in a “matrix” type simulation there is no experiment we could do which would demonstrate this. We can never know.
It is well known that what we perceive and experience as phenomenal consciousness is the output of much computational processing and that, despite appearances, we do not have direct access to the real world. Scientific experiments show that the gap between what we perceive and the external world is wider than we think. What we perceive is the output of a large amount of sophisticated signal processing based on our sensory inputs and a mental model of the world which has been built up throughout our lives. In many cases, the information we receive through our senses is very incomplete but our mental models can fill in the gaps, usually accurately enough to allow smooth interaction with the world. If we consider illusions, we can see cases where our mental model gets it wrong and what we perceive is not how things really are. The amount and sophistication of computation and pre-processing involved can be seen in illusions such as the McGurk effect [v] where what we hear is demonstratively dependent not only on the sounds reaching our ears but also visual information reaching our eyes. Also lip reading where use is made of visual cues to clarify what we subjectively hear. This is an example of “data fusion” which gives rise to the “binding problem”.
Often we can believe that we have consciously chosen to do something when we have not, or vice versa. For example, the computation referred to above takes time and the events we perceive are ones which have happened about 300ms previously [vi]. Fast responses, such as withdrawing one’s hand from a hot surface or returning a tennis serve, happen before we are consciously aware of them. Although it is widely believed that the withdrawal of the hand is a response to the pain of touching the hot surface eg. [vii] [viii], it is actually automatic and non-conscious. The pain of the hot surface is only felt after the hand has been withdrawn. This raises questions about what the feeling of pain is for. Even descriptions involving the use of pain to learn what situations to avoid in the future do not explain why the pain has to be felt rather than it simply adjusting the internal controls.