There are trillions and trillions of cells inside us that build us into who we are.
All made up of the same building blocks of matter that comprise everything else in the universe.
And yet, there appears to be something very different in us;
something unfathomably distinct from the countless other arrangements of matter. This seemingly
singular thing is the only thing that lets us know that there are any other things or an in or an out
or an us at all. And without it, all things seem to disappear. This is, of course, consciousness.
Despite consciousness being so unavoidably essential to everything that we know
and experience, and despite it feeling so intuitive and obvious,
consciousness remains one of humanity’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
Unlike most, if not all other mysteries, though, consciousness is the only mystery that is
in us. Or perhaps more accurately, is us. Or at least what feels like us. It is the closest,
most obvious thing to us all, and yet, one of the furthest from our understanding.
Ever since the concept of consciousness entered the vernacular of consciousness itself,
and surely beyond that, individuals of all sorts have attempted to put explanations to the strange
feeling of being something that knows that it knows what being something feels like.
Religious figures, scientists, philosophers, and everyone in between. And although there have been
substantial improvements in knowledge of the brain and various theories of mind, we still
have yet to really get much closer to knowing what is truly behind the magic show of consciousness.
If anything, the only thing that’s been revealed is that we have mostly been
looking in the wrong places, misdirected by the illusionist that is our own mind.
What we can say we know about consciousness is sort of what we all already know intuitively.
Consciousness is this right now. It is what allows us to be aware of some portion of our
external surroundings and internal states. And in our complex, human case, it is what gives us
our likely illusory but no less strong sense of an inner eye; a director of rational reflection,
focus, and comprehension. This might seem obvious, but that really just speaks to the point of how
little we actually know. Put slightly more eloquently, philosopher Thomas Nagel says
that something is conscious if it can be said that it is like something to be that something. As in,
there is an experience had. In slightly different, more specific terms, philosopher Daniel Dennett
once said that consciousness is like how the user interface on the screen of a smartphone works.
Like the phone screen is just displaying the results of a massive, complex layering of
electrical components working in the background, consciousness is the display screen or user
interface of the brain, which results from the complex system of neural subfunctions happening
in the background. Although this seems simple enough, there still remains a deeply mysterious
problem here. In the same way, let’s say, the YouTube app cannot be pinpointed in the electrical
firings of the computer chips of a smartphone, and essentially does not exist without the screen,
the experience of the events in consciousness cannot seem to be pinpointed in their relevant,
specific form anywhere else in the brain other than one’s personal, conscious experience of them.
In other words, to understand the hardware, or brain activity, serves only slight purpose to
understanding consciousness, since only when the screen of consciousness is on and lit,
does anything in the hardware equate to anything experiential. Thus, the perception of the screen
has to be accounted for in order to define or understand conscious phenomena, but yet,
this component seems exclusively subjective and hidden from anything outside the experiencer.
As a result, there are many scientists and philosophers who believe that the nature of
consciousness simply cannot and will not ever be understood. At least not in any complete sense,
or at least not by us. That, at best, it is a puzzle that even if fully put together,
will only reveal an image that doesn’t really look like anything. To go to the opposite direction of
the spectrum, religious types might suggest that the source of consciousness is already known,
be it that of some sort of soul. Or, along a similar train of thought, some argue for a theory
of mind known as dualism, most commonly attributed to 17th century philosopher René Descartes,
which argues that the mind (or consciousness) and the brain are two distinctly separate things,
in which the brain doesn’t create consciousness but acts as a sort of connection point between
the physical body and some other worldly, non-physical, supernatural-like mental substance
that interacts with it. However, for the most part, and for good reasons, dualism along with all
other supernatural explanations of consciousness are mostly discounted and not taken seriously by
many of today’s leading thinkers. As a means of simply illustrating why this sort of non-physical,
supernatural explanation doesn’t work, consider the following question:
can something with no physical attributes affect something that does have physical attributes?
In simpler terms, can nothing make something move? Can a ghost both walk through walls and
pick something physical up? Logically, it cannot do both. As an example in the case of the mind,
let’s say, odorous molecules from fresh cut grass enter into a person’s nose and, since these
molecules have physical properties, they bind with a specific set of olfactory receptors located in
the upper part of the nasal cavity. This binding then generates and sends an electrical signal to
the brain, also with physical properties, causing the person to experience the smell of grass,
inciting an associated state of mind. Perhaps a pleasurable nostalgia for spring.
This then might cause them to physically react in a certain way, like smile or inhale deeply. This,
however, would require another physical signal to be sent from the mind to the
parts of the brain and body that move the nose and mouth. But if consciousness is immaterial,
with no physical attributes, how does it send this signal? How does the conscious
experience of pleasure and nostalgia cause the physical brain and body to move and smile?
This simply would not agree with what we know to be true. As a result, it is now most commonly
believed in science that consciousness is like all other phenomena; something
that is to be considered from a naturalistic and physicalist view, which argues that all things,
including the brain and mind (or consciousness), are made of matter with physical properties,
all of which are a part of the natural world and thus restricted to the same laws of physics that
govern everything else. The remaining problem here, though, and why it’s not that simple,
returns to the smartphone analogy. In the same way that knowing how the inside mechanics of a
smartphone work would still leave someone with mostly nothing as a measure of understanding
what a smartphone is actually like to use if they had never used one with a screen on it,
so too does the use of objective, physical terms to define consciousness leave out the essential
subjective experience of it. To say, for example, X physical interaction in the brain is happiness,
neglects the fact that it isn’t. Happiness is the feeling of happiness. Not the objective, physical
representation. And so, even if specific physical events could be pinpointed sufficiently to
specific conscious experiences, it still wouldn’t seem to make any sense as to how. How does the
same, basic, non-sentient stuff that makes rocks and water and trees and worms–the same building
blocks of everything else that isn’t aware of itself–somehow come together in such a way inside
you and, suddenly, out of what seems like almost nothing, become your entire ornate awareness and
experience of self and life? How does it become the feeling of happiness and wonder and romance
and melancholy; and the experience of colors and imagined intricate scenes that only exist
inside your head, with nor corelating source? This overwhelming, perplexing sticking point is
known as the hard problem of consciousness, a term coined by the philosopher David Chalmers in 1995.
In the words of Thomas Nagel, “If we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind
must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently
available conception gives us a clue how this could be done. The problem is unique.”
One other alternative theory worth mentioning is the idea that consciousness could be a fundamental
property of all reality. This is argued for by the philosophy known as panpsychism,
which generally suggests that all things in the universe have a mind-like quality to them,
and all physical systems, in a very loose sense, feel like something to be
that system. It then follows in this theory that there must be a potential
conscious quality in everything. Although counterintuitive and rather absurd sounding,
this could still exist coherently within the bounds of scientific and rational understanding,
and not throw out any of the current frameworks of physics. However, even if this is true,
it still doesn’t necessarily answer the question of how to define or understand consciousness
outside of the individually subjective experience, which returns to the same relative problem.
Ultimately, there really only seems to be two options: either the paste in our
head creates this whole thing, or some ethereal transmission from some otherworldly dimension.
And both can only be described as unfathomably insane. A miracle in its truest sense.
To be a thing that knows it’s a thing. And furthermore, knows that it knows it’s a thing.
Matter that knows what matter is; matter that can look out at all sorts of other arrangements of
matter that have no idea what they are or aren’t and give names and attribute feelings to these
things. To feel pain and pleasure and love and happiness and all the rest. To experience,
even if just for a time, this immense kaleidoscope of physical reality from the distinct and
temporary home that is your head. If the rest of the universe’s matter could look back at us,
one can only assume it would cry with jealousy. Like the concepts of infinity or true nothingness.
Like the cosmic questions: why is there something instead of nothing? Or, how did everything start
out of nothing? Consciousness finds itself in the arena of humanity’s tightest sealed
remaining mysteries. Only this particular mystery, this particular miracle of impossible dissonance,
is you. And because of this, you are the only one who will ever know what it is actually like.
Nothing will ever reveal your consciousness–your experience of blue, and love, and pain,
and so on–to anyone else for all eternity. And it is arguably the one thing that cannot be doubted.
Nothing else can be known for sure with certainty. But because you think, you are.
And because you understand, you are some form of consciousness. It is the one thing you can always
know to be true and forever, exclusively your own. Your one, single experience of everything.