Consciousness. It's the one thing everyone on the planet is (for the most part) pretty familiar with, yet after thousands upon thousands of years, we haven't gotten much closer to
truly explaining and understanding what this phenomenon is.
DISCLAIMER: I do not claim any authority in this subject, so of course, take what I say with a grain of salt and please correct me if I get anything wrong. I'm an astrophysics student, not a neurologist. I'm merely fascinated with this topic of discussion and ask for your own thoughts and opinions and look forward to seeing what you all have to add. Beliefs on this topic will differ from person to person and belief system to belief system. Please remain civil and let's discuss this like humans. :)
Before we begin, I'd like to talk about the nature of this subject and its current social and cultural significance. Nobody here should doubt the existence of consciousness. If you're reading this right now, I'm willing to bet you're conscious and fully awake. You're forming your own personal opinion of both me and this thread as you process what I've written down. However, while we may all agree that consciousness is very real and can be easily tested among any awake individual, the origins and nature of this ability will be debated wherever it's brought up. Dismissing consciousness as simply "a part of the brain" and "that's just the way it is" is no longer a good enough explanation by the scientific community.
Unfortunately, things like "consciousness" and "intuition" are not always viewed in the same light as terms such as "synapses" or "neurons" in our society. This is largely because (especially in the case of intuition) we threw away most of these ideas as simple superstition when our society made the tremendous leap from explaining the world through religion and philosophy to modern science. This may have been an erroneous move: we are still unsure how consciousness and other mental phenomena work and where they come from. For a long time, we have simply grouped this under the assumption that consciousness and therefore our own personal subjective experiences (such as thoughts, imagination, feelings, et cetera) are the result of different hormones and chemicals that trigger specific impulses in our brain.
This model worked for a while, but we're learning more about our brains now than we ever have before. One of my personal favorite findings touches the field of quantum mechanics. Researchers were actually troubled to find
how prevalent the mind and consciousness made itself when working with quantum physics. Check out the "double-slit experiment" for an example of what I'm talking about.
Some physicists are suggesting we humans may have quantum brains. That's a pretty bittersweet revelation. On one hand, quantum physics is
the new up-and-coming science fiction field of science, but on the other hand, it's confusing as all hell and we still have no idea how the forget it works.
The "problems" of consciousnessWhen discussing consciousness and where it arises from, there are two kinds of "problems" scientists face: the "easy" problems and the "hard" problem of consciousness. The easy problems are certain behaviors we exhibit and can be answered with our current understanding of how the brain works. These include topics such as mental discrimination and categorization, the focus of attention, deliberate control of behavior, the difference between wakefulness and sleep, and so on. All that is needed to explain these are simple mechanisms that act to process these functions.
The hard problem of consciousness is a bit more... well, hard. This describes how sensations we experience can take on certain characteristics, such as smell and taste, and how these qualia differ from individual to individual. These aspects of consciousness are what build our entire perception of reality-- I'm not talking about sight and sound, but rather
how your brain processes sight and sound. Have you ever actually stopped and thought about how weird it was that you could see light? What if you had another way of sensing light that didn't utilize eyes? What would that
feel like? Can you imagine a color that you've never seen before? What if you could see radio waves, how would your brain process that information? Why aren't we just
philosophical zombies? forget, can you even describe what the color red looks like? Is my red the same as yours?
When we think and feel, our brain processes a stuffload of information. However, at the same time, you are leading a truly subjective and personal experience.
The entire idea of a "hard problem" of consciousness is hotly debated. What do you think? Do you think we have it all figured out, or is there still a lot we have left to learn?
Intuition and panpsychismOkay... this might be where some of your bullstuff detectors will start going off, but that's fine--I'm not expecting you to believe in anything I am talking about, nor am I discounting your own personal beliefs. Because of this, I'll spend less time on these topics.
Intuition, shamelessly ripping off the Wikipedia description, is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reading, or without understanding how the knowledge was required. Ever see someone and there's nothing about them that would give you a
reason to not like them, but you can't help but mistrust them? Or have you ever had a gut feeling to move out of the way only for something to fly by right where you were standing? Some people call that "intuition," and they believe it's real. Some scientists rely on it to help them understand what they're studying, but it's never been scientifically proven as a real, tangible phenomenon.
There's also the idea of panpsychism. I'm sure plenty of you have heard this one before. There's reason to believe that humanity has some sort of "collective unconsciousness" that connects us as a species-- but again, this idea was tossed out of the "makes sense in the materialistic sense" bin into the "superstitious hoopla" bin. Even so, some people are beginning to think even
the universe itself is conscious, and it's been hinted at throughout human history.
Anyway, here's some food for thought and some fuel for discussion. I've been interested in different existentialistic topics such as these and love hearing what other people have to say. So, what do you think of consciousness? It's only everything you've known and will know, after all.
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