Rival Accounts of Consciousness
Charles E. Early
Roanoke College
October 23, 2007
Ever since the Big Bang, things have never been the same. Literally. The unfolding of the
universe has been a process infinitely complex, mysterious, and in at least some ways, probably
incomprehensible. It was Albert Einstein who said that “The eternally incomprehensible thing
about the world is its comprehensibility” (as cited in Isaacson, 2007, p. 628). And this points to
the heart of the issue I now wish to discuss: How is it that a portion of the universe—namely
us—can be endowed with the capacity to comprehend; or, how is it that matter, in the form of
our bodies, can be conscious? As philosopher Colin McGinn (1999) puts it, the phenomenon of
consciousness seems to defy what he describes as the “uniformity of nature,” which is to say that
matter is generally not consciousness. So how can apparently soulless atoms and molecules, no
matter how rich and complex their combination, be aware? Obviously theologians have grappled
with this and related issues over the centuries and have offered enormously powerful and
influential explanations; however, since most of us already have exposure to these explanations
through our various religious backgrounds, I’m going to take another approach and look at the
issue from a psychological and philosophical perspective.
So, to continue, and begin at the beginning, how did the Big Bang, which gave birth to
matter, space, and time, also eventually give birth to consciousness—which, in contrast to the
Big Bang, McGinn has dubbed “the soft shudder”? It is a very strange mystery, and a mystery
that contains a curious paradox. Following Descartes and more recent philosophers such as John
Searle (1997), one notes that, while the world is full of uncertainty and illusion, possibly the one
thing we are most certain of is that we are conscious. But at the same time, consciousness
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itself—the very core of our being—is something that defies objective understanding. As Searle
has pointed out, with sufficient persuasion you might eventually convince me that what I am now
experiencing is an illusion, or that perhaps I’m hallucinating, or that it’s even conceivable that I
have no body—that my entire life is a simulation in the matrix—but one thing you cannot make
me believe is that I’m not conscious. I am as certain of that as I can be of anything. As Descartes
realized nearly four centuries ago, the most definitive proof of our existence is that we are
conscious, thinking entities: Cogito Ergo Sum; Je pense, donc, je suis, I think, therefore I am.
Before going any further I want to note that there has been something of an explosion of
interest in the subject of consciousness. A simple look at the largest computer database in
Psychology (The American Psychological Association’s PsychInfo), and using the word
“consciousness” as a search term, reveals about 5700 cumulative “hits” from the earliest records
in the data base until 1970. From 1970 to 1990 this grew to about 13,000, and then to nearly
28,000 so far into 2007 (the term “mind” has seen a comparable growth). Numerous books are
appearing, regular conferences on consciousness are being held, and the website of David
Chalmers, one of the leading contemporary philosophers of consciousness, contains links to a
vast and growing number of resources—including well over 2,000 online papers.
In view of all this rapid expansion of studies and comment on consciousness, one might
ask, why all the recent interest? Part of the reason is probably to be found in the technological
advances in brain imaging and the ever-growing power of the computer and its role as a
metaphor for the brain. Such tools have made it possible to examine the brain and think about its
functions in ways never before imagined. However, another intriguing speculation on my part
sees an interesting similarity between today’s interest in consciousness studies and the 19th
century American interest in spiritualism. (I could add the concept of “vitalism,” which
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biologists wrestled with during the 19th century, but that would require another presentation).
Then, as now, sincere people wrestled with issues of reconciliation between heart and mind,
between spirit and matter; and spiritualism, which was widely practiced then, offered a
“scientific” approach to questions about the soul and the belief in an afterlife (Coon, 1992).
One of the first issues we face when confronted with questions about consciousness is
how to go about defining it. Consciousness is one of those concepts that is so fundamental to our
nature that we take it for granted, but most definitions would probably center around the idea of
subjective experience, and include some notion of awareness or the ability to respond to
sensations coming from both outside ourselves and within. I think it would also help to clarify
matters at this point by making a distinction among three ways of approaching the notion of
consciousness.
First, we often think of consciousness as including not only the basic subjective
experience, but also the object or sensation which gives rise to the experience. Secondly, we can
talk about the neurological substratum of consciousness and the correlation between brain
processes and subjective experience. These first two approaches make up what Australian
philosopher David Chalmers (2002) calls the “easy” problems we face when thinking about
consciousness—however, the term “easy” is something of a misnomer. The issues are easy only
in the sense that the problems they present seem amenable to scientific scrutiny and are
potentially solvable. As psychologist Stephen Pinker puts it: “…it is easy in the sense that curing
cancer or sending someone to Mars is easy” (2007, p. 60).
The final or third way of looking at consciousness is to address the most difficult
question or what Chalmers calls the “hard” problem, and that is the question I posed at the
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beginning of my presentation: How does matter in the form of materialistic brain processes give
rise to subjective experience?
Permit me now to elaborate on each of these three ways of thinking about consciousness.
First, there is the relationship between consciousness and the object of our consciousness, which
sometimes includes ourselves—what we call self-consciousness. When we commonly refer to
our conscious awareness, we usually mean to include what we are aware of—for example, when
we “raise our consciousness” we think of ourselves as becoming more aware of various issues.
When we think about ourselves, we are the object of our own attention. So this sense of the term
“consciousness” includes not only the fundamental subjective awareness itself, but also the
object of that consciousness, that is, the stimulus which gives rise to the subjective experience.
Actually, it was looking at the relationship between external stimuli and our inner experience
that created the field of psychology as a scientific discipline. In 1879 the first laboratory created
to study conscious experience under controlled conditions was established under the direction of
Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, Germany (Thorne & Henley, 2005). The expressed purpose was to
create a psychology which would be the science of consciousness.
Even before Wundt’s pioneering efforts, however, research was under way by a number
of researchers who were seeking to “demystify” the nervous system by applying the empirical
methods of science to what had previously been understood largely in philosophical and
theological terms such as “animal spirits” and vitalism. These efforts to understand how the
nervous system operates represent the second of the approaches I’ve summarized—
understanding the neurological substratum of consciousness. It is widely accepted today among
neuroscientists that every thought and experience we have—our entire phenomenal world—has
its corresponding neurological correlates; and there are those (e.g., philosopher Daniel Dennett)
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who would even define consciousness by reducing it entirely to the activity of nerve cells in the
brain. According to this materialist view, consciousness is merely what the brain does.
Philosopher John Searle (1997), while not quite as reductionistic, nevertheless argues against a
gap between mind and body—with reference to the “mind-body” problem, he says no one ever
thinks about a “stomach-digestion” problem. According to Searle, consciousness is a genuine
phenomenon, but is generated by brain processes.
A further look at the history of this physiological approach may be helpful in
understanding some of the disagreements we find in the field today; which over the last couple of
decades has risen to the level of a heated debate sometimes referred to as the “consciousness
wars” (The battle includes monists and dualists of various sorts, but the dualists seem to be
relatively small in number in philosophy, and even rarer in science).
Up until the Renaissance the dominant beliefs about the workings of the nervous system
were based on the ideas of Galen and Aristotle, which later became part of church dogma. The
view was that natural spirits, vital spirits, and finally animal spirits flowed through the nervous
system causing sensations and movement (Thorne & Henley, 2005). Descartes changed the idea
a bit with a model based on hydraulics, but which nevertheless retained the notion of animal
spirits. Then, with growing knowledge of electricity, scientists such as Luigi Galvani, Alessandro
Volta, and Emil du Bois-Reymond in the 18th & 19th centuries applied this knowledge to nerve
conduction. This ushered in a wave of discoveries that inspired even greater confidence in the
power of science and its capacity to address issues related to the living organism. And so, the
“demystification” of the nervous system had begun. While some, such as physiologist Johannes
Müller still retained a belief in vitalistic forces, some of his students, including the great
physicist Hermann von Helmholtz took a decided turn toward materialistic explanation. A group
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of young scientists including Helmholtz actually drew up an oath stating that the only processes
operating in the body were natural, mechanistic, and chemical processes—and they signed the
oath in their own blood (Wertheimer, 1979). The passion of youth!
Müller had summarized three estimates of the speed of nervous conduction. These varied
“from 9000 feet per minute . . . to 57,600 million feet per second, which is almost 60 times the
speed of light!” (Thorne & Henley, 2005, p. 150). Helmholtz was the first to actually get a
reasonable measure of 165 to 330 feet per second. This success at applying scientific methods to
the mysterious nervous system was especially important because it fueled the drive for ever more
materialistic explanation. E.G. Boring, a historian of psychology, wrote (with perhaps a bit of “
irrational exuberance”) that by measuring the speed of nerve conduction, Helmholtz’s research
“brought the soul to time” (as cited in Thorne & Henley, 2005, p. 150). Today, with increasing
computer horsepower and medical imaging technology, this legacy continues to grow, and there
are many who feel the mysteries of consciousness will eventually be understood entirely in terms
of materialistic and mechanistic principles.
Of course, not everyone agrees with the optimism expressed by the materialists. Here we
see those who focus on the third approach to the subject of consciousness; the so-called “hard
problem” of what consciousness really is. The goal is to focus on the raw, subjective, core
experience of conscious awareness itself—the qualia, (the singular is “quale”) as it is sometimes
called (see Blackmore, 2004). Instead of including the object of our awareness, as described
above, or the neurological brain functions involved, these thinkers focus on the phenomenon of
the pure subjective experience itself. Those following this approach seek to understand the very
nature of consciousness experience and ask how it is manifested in matter—in this case, matter
in the form of our bodies. There are those, such as philosopher Colin McGinn (1999), who think
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the problem is beyond human understanding. Psychologist Owen Flanagan has called those in
McGinn’s camp the “Mysterians.” The Mysterians see our minds as very good at solving
problems that are important for survival in a natural, spatial, temporal world. But they also see
the nature of consciousness as something that partakes of an aspect or dimension of reality that
transcends ordinary time and space (e.g., Does a thought have any extension in space? Does it
weigh anything? Are thoughts timeless?). It is important to note that the Mysterians do not
necessarily resort to supernatural explanation; it’s just that they argue that our minds are not
equipped to understand any possible aspect of reality that extends beyond space-time as we
understand it. This latter point warrants particular emphasis because it should not be
misunderstood as conferring even tacit support to any sort of “New Age” thinking, nor is it
meant to be a back door invitation to notions of “intelligent design,” although one could probably
make those connections if so inclined.
But it is here that McGinn does offer a rather bold speculation: What if consciousness,
instead of being a recent development on the evolutionary scene, is really very, very ancient. It is
claimed that the Big Bang was the origin of space and time, but it is not unreasonable to wonder
about what existed before the Big Bang—before space and time. How do we wrap our minds
around the idea of time before time, and space before space? And then, after stewing about this
for a while, we might ask what consciousness is most like—something spatial or nonspatial,
something temporal or nontemporal? (Plato asks a parallel question in Phaedo—what is the soul
most like, the visible or the invisible?). So, the suggestion is that perhaps consciousness, which
seems to have nonspatial and nontemporal qualities, resembles the conditions before time and
space as we know it, came into existence. In other words, perhaps consciousness is older than the
universe, and it has taken evolution thirteen and a half billion years to get matter up to the point
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that it could finally manifest this ancient phenomenon. In fairness, McGinn himself calls this
idea a wild speculation, but it is intriguing and thought provoking nevertheless.
So even if we can come up with a solid working definition of consciousness, the issue
becomes can we really ever understand this primal thing called consciousness which lies at the
core of our being? Is consciousness pure “being”? Can consciousness understand consciousness?
Can the mind understand itself? Common metaphors express the dilemma: Can we pull ourselves
up by our bootstraps? Can a flashlight turn itself around quickly enough to catch itself in its own
beam? Most materialists say yes, but the Mysterians say no. Either way (and I’ll finish with this
thought) I find myself speculating and asking the question: Does this renewed interest in a
scientific understanding of consciousness reflect a contemporary search for the soul (however
defined) in a way that can somehow harmonize the reality of our deep-seated sense of being with
the empirical facts of scientific reality? I think our answers to this question will have a profound
impact on the way we define ourselves.
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References
Blackmore, S. (2004). Consciousness: An introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. (2002). Facing up to consciousness. In R. Carter (Ed.), Exploring consciousness
(pp. 50-54). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Coon, D. (1992). Testing the limits of sense and science: American experimental psychologists
combat spiritualism, 1880-1920. American Psychologist, 43, 143-151.
Isaacson, W. (2007). Einstein: His life and universe. New York: Simon & Schuster.
McGinn, C. (1999). The mysterious flame: Conscious minds in a material world. New York:
Basic Books.
Pinker, S. (2007, January 29). The mystery of consciousness. Time, 169, 59-70.
Searle, J. R. (1997). The mystery of consciousness. New York: The New York Review of Books.
Thorne, B. M., & Henley, T. B. (2005). Connections in the history of systems of psychology (3rd
ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Wertheimer, J. (1979). A brief history of psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.