What is Consciousness?
Consciousness is the most familiar and yet the most mysterious thing in the universe. It is the “what-it-is-like-ness” of experience. When you see the color red, hear a violin, or feel a sharp pain, there is a subjective, internal “movie” going on in your head.
Philosophers distinguish between:
- The Easy Problems: Understanding how the brain processes information, reacts to stimuli, or controls behavior. These are “easy” (for science) because we can see the mechanisms involved.
- The Hard Problem (David Chalmers): Why and how do physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience? Why doesn’t the brain just process data “in the dark” like a computer?
Dualism: The Ghost in the Machine
The most intuitive view is Substance Dualism, championed by Rene Descartes. He argued that the mind and the body are two completely different substances:
- Res Extensa: Extended matter (the brain, the body).
- Res Cogitans: Thinking stuff (the soul, the mind).
The problem for Descartes was Interactionism: How does an immaterial soul “push” a material brain? If they are different substances, how do they communicate? This is the “Mind-Body Problem.”
Physicalism: It’s All Just Atoms
Most modern scientists and philosophers are Physicalists. They believe that the mind is nothing more than the brain. There are several versions of this:
1. Identity Theory
This theory holds that “mental states” are identical to “brain states.” Thinking about a lemon is just neurons firing in a specific pattern (let’s call it “Pattern L”).
- Problem: If my “Pattern L” is different from yours, are we not both thinking of a lemon? This is the problem of “Multiple Realizability.”
2. Behaviorism
Early 20th-century behaviorists (like Gilbert Ryle) argued that talking about “internal states” is a mistake. “Mind” is just a shorthand for “behavioral dispositions.” To be “happy” is just to smile, laugh, and walk with a spring in your step.
- Problem: You can be in pain without showing it, and you can show pain without being in it (acting). Experience is more than just behavior.
3. Functionalism
Functionalism is the view that a mental state is defined not by what it is made of, but by what it does. A “pain” is anything that is caused by damage, causes you to say “ouch,” and makes you want to move away. This means a robot or an alien could “have a mind” if they have the same functional organization as us.
The Qualia Problem
The biggest challenge to physicalism is the existence of Qualia—the subjective “feel” of things.
Thomas Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?
Nagel argued that even if we knew everything about a bat’s biology and sonar system, we would still have no idea what it feels like to be a bat. Science describes things from the “third-person” (objective), but consciousness is inherently “first-person” (subjective).
Frank Jackson: Mary’s Room
Imagine Mary, a brilliant scientist who knows everything there is to know about the physics and biology of color, but she has lived her whole life in a black-and-white room. When she leaves the room and sees a red rose for the first time, does she learn something new?
- If she does, then physicalism is false, because she knew all the “physical facts” but didn’t know the “feel” of red.
Challenging the Hard Problem
Some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, argue that the “Hard Problem” is an illusion. He believes that consciousness is a “user-illusion” created by the brain to help it organize its many parallel processing tasks. He thinks we are “biological machines,” and once we explain all the “easy” problems, there will be nothing left to explain.
Others, like the Panpsychists, suggest that consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe, like mass or charge, and that even electrons have a tiny “smidgen” of consciousness.
Conclusion
Is the mind a soul, a machine, or a fundamental force of nature? Despite massive advances in neuroscience, we are still no closer to a “consensus” answer. Consciousness remains the ultimate frontier—the place where the objective world of science meets the subjective world of the self.