Consciousness-1

Let me ask you a question. Suppose a universe was made and nobody was there to see it? Behind this question which may seem like a pointless debate lie some very profound enigmas. Scientists have lately warmed up to an idea they once considered unscientific.

The idea goes by the esoteric name of weak anthropic cosmological principle. The essence of this principle is that the initial conditions and the natural constants of our universe were not exactly what they are; there would be no one here to observe it, much less to esquire into its origin.

Examining the details of the universe eminent physicist Freeman Dyson also finds that “the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.” The anthropic principle seems to offer a unique solution for the particular way our universe came to be. The Big Bang theory provides that at its inception the universe was infinitesimally small, much smaller than an atom, and therefore, subject to the laws of quantum physics. This means the universe could have begun in many possible ways. Thus if the anthropic principle is factored in it turns out that the eventual evolution of intelligent beings was a necessary condition why this universe came into being.

To quote John Wheeler “It is incontrovertible that the observer is a participator in genesis.” The observer, that’s consciousness and we are conscious agents, vehicles for manifestation of potentiality that was there from the start. Now the question arises what is the nature of this observer ship?  John Wheeler strongly believes that “in defining any useful concept of reality” we have to take into account the indispensable place of the participating observer as evidenced in quantum mechanics.” The foregoing cannot really be true unless consciousness is as essential an aspect of nature as are the fields that give rise force and matter and the primary field that give rise to them.

But what is this consciousness that I have been referring to? Understanding consciousness it seems is the next big leap in our understanding of this universe.

For something most of us are we possess, consciousness has proved amazingly hard to pin down. As early as the 5^th century AD the philosopher and catholic Saint Augustine of Hippo identified self-awareness as a key aspect of consciousness when he declared: “I understand that I understand”. It took another 1200 years before the first working definition of consciousness emerged, with the English philosopher John Locke claiming it to be “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind”. As for how this perception emerged, the 17^th - century French philosopher Rene Descartes used what he regarded as unimpeachable logic to conclude that the conscious mind must surely be made of different stuff from brains and bodies- a distinction now known as Cartesian Dualism. He summed this up in the famous saying “Cogito, ergo sum”-I think therefore I am. The advent of anesthetics- in which physical exposure to chemicals like ether triggered unconsciousness- had revealed an intimate connection between the body and mind, flatly contradicting Descartes’ claim.

It seems clear that what we call “mind” is, in part, a process that enfolds a multitude of functions at ascending levels of complexity and refinement.  The vast majority of these functions take place below the threshold level of consciousness and account for what keeps us alive (the most basic is the regulation of heart-beat). Furthermore these functions are firmly rooted in the brain’s oldest structures, structures we share with the animal world. This is demonstrated in the laboratory as we observe various regions of the brain respond to stimuli. So far the mind appears to be a bottom up construction, an electrochemical computer programmed by the brain’s evolution over millions of years.

Eminent neuroscientist John Searles’ asserts that “all the stimuli we receive from the world are converted by the nervous system into various rates of neuron firings at the synapses.”  But he, despite being a bottom up theorist states that “Nothing is intrinsically computational.” As we ascend to the next level of brain functions, something happens that cannot be easily explained by brain chemistry or algorithms. We become conscious agents. We no longer simply sense and behave, like automatons  we experience, and we affect experience. No computer exists that can form a thought expression like; “You won’t believe what happened to me today!” Roger Penrose argues that no computer ever can, because “consciousness, in its particular manifestation in the human quality of understanding is doing something that mere computations cannot.”

Penrose further insists that “a scientific world view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problems of conscious minds can have no serious pretension of completeness. Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a genuine description of the world.” Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner states: “The principal argument is that thought process and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore cannot be denied.”...

to be continued.....