On Consciousness

Throughout history people have tried to explain the physical process of a conscious mind. Most popular theories include the idea of a “soul” or some unknown, possibly incomprehensible, part of the mind that we could never understand. However it seems to me that the idea of the conscious mind and the idea of consciousness could be described in physiological terms.

I) The first step to answering this question is to look at the other minds around us. Animal minds, and how those minds react to their environment differently or similarly than our own. Since we ourselves are animals we can study more primitive animal minds to understand where the root of consciousness may lie. If one were to observe a bird one might notice a few interesting traits, the first of which is a rudimentary emotional intelligence. Birds seem to have the ability to have their feelings hurt (as do some other animals, such as dogs). A great personal example of this comes from a trip I took once, in which I had to leave my pet parakeet home with a sitter. Upon returning I noticed two significant responses to my absence: Primarily he was excited for my return. Whether that is because he wanted out of his cage to stretch or because he wanted to be around me personally is unknown, however he had another very interesting response that makes me lean toward the latter. He was angry at me for leaving him for so long! Normally he would sit on my shoulder, allow me to pet him, and want to play with me. But upon my return he wanted nothing to do with me and even snapped his beak at me when I tried touching him! What we can gather from this small experience is that animals, birds in this case, seem to have a very rudimentary form of emotional response to their environment. This response seems to give the impression of a personality, a trait that we commonly associate with consciousness/the human mind.

>>8579129
Another interesting tidbit about birds, they also seem to have moderately strong communicative abilities. That is, they possess the ability to share their thoughts or feelings with others. This has again been proven to me through interactions with my pet bird. I noticed some time ago that when my bird’s food dish was out he would become increasingly persistent in staying in my line of sight. Upon noticing I had seen him or that I was giving him some sort of attention, he would open his beak wide and stare at me. This was/is his signal to me that he is hungry and wants to eat. This sequence of events made me aware of two facts: 1) Birds, to a limited extent, understand that other animals think and use that understanding to their advantage. They can share what they are feeling to other creatures and get a result, and they understand that in a primitive way. 2) The language center of the brain must have some connection to the idea of consciousness as we know it. That is, because I can empathize with the bird and he with me there has to be some sort of forethought taking place on either or both sides. This forethought must be something along the lines of “I am hungry, how can I let the one who feeds me know I am hungry?”. I believe that two significant parts of the brain relating to consciousness are the emotional and language areas of the brain.

>>8579132
II) Now we delve into the human mind. We can basically break consciousness into two categories, things felt and things thought. Or rather emotional and analytical. Things that are thought in terms of words come from the conscious stimulation of different areas of the language centers. Things thoughts in terms of empathy and feelings come from the emotional areas of the brain. The ability to think, I believe, can be boiled down (as said before) mostly to the language and emotional centers of the brain. Since consciousness is simply the stitching together of many different thought tangents, I have concluded the following: Consciousness is the brain’s ability to orderly stimulate different parts of the brain through emotions, language, or both. When an individual is asleep he is considered “unconscious” because the brain stimulates itself seemingly randomly (no order, not conscious). Consciousness may mean different things for different species, for us it primarily relies on emotion and language. Your “internal monologue” is the activation of the language parts of the brain. Basically, you talk to yourself when you think. Your empathy and feelings come from emotional parts of the brain, which can then be stitched together to either include the words your internal monologue are saying, or allow you to just feel things, that is, to not have specific words in mind but to just have general ideas of what you want. Typically though both of these areas have a very large role in piecing together the person you consider you. Other areas of the brain that do not deal with sensory input (such as the prefrontal cortex and other decision making parts of the brain) may play some role in increased cognition, but it is unlikely that they are quite as significant when discussing human consciousness as many animals possess some sort of basic problem solving ability (dolphins, octopi, ravens).

>>8579134
A lot of these ideas can be proven through psychology. For instance an individual with global aphasia, a phenomenon where the language centers of an individual are severely damaged, still seems to have the ability to think and react to the world, albeit without the ability to communicate or understand spoken/written language. This seems to point to the idea that emotional areas of the brain play a very critical role in human cognition because the only way these individuals can truly think is in terms of feeling things about the world around them. We now turn, hopefully not too abruptly, to the phenomenon of feral children. Feral children are children who have, either by neglect or chance, not been raised by human beings. These children can give some remarkable insight into the idea of consciousness. Because these children are human, we can safely say that they have some form of consciousness. They can think similarly to how we think. In fact many feral children eventually end up learning how to speak at one point of their lives. The difference is probably that the language centers of these children’s brain are more adapted to the animals that raised them rather than humans or that the language centers of their brains are severely underdeveloped (probably both). This does NOT mean however that they are not conscious, indeed they can make many decisions. What it does mean is that consciousness is not as simple as your internal monologue. Consciousness therefore is the phenomenon of the brain being stimulated in different, ordered ways. What this means is that all living animals are essentially conscious. As long as there is a working brain there is a conscious being. How advanced this consciousness is depends on the complexity of the brain and the environment that the brain was raised around/in.

>>8579139
III) In order to further our understanding of the brain and the phenomenon of consciousness it is sometimes helpful to turn to unconventional methods. In this case we will be discussing psychedelic drugs and how they affect how an individual thinks. One strange aspect of psychedelics are so called “thought-loops”. When experiencing a thought loop an individual will think basically the same word/sentence over and over again in a seemingly infinite loop. One could hypothesize that the reason these thought loops occur is because the drug that was taken interferes with your conscious ability to continue moving forward and stimulate a different part of the brain. When stuck in a thought loop you literally cannot think of anything else. Your consciousness seems to be stimulating the same part of your mind so strongly and repeatedly that no other thought can enter your mind. We can then infer that taking psychedelic drugs actually changes your consciousness. It changes the way your brain stimulates different parts of the brain, as normally you can move past a thought that while on drugs may send you into a loop.

>>8579143
This also explains the supposed “healing effects” of these sorts of drugs, as on psychedelics the consciousness is stimulating the mind in new, different ways.They may help (or worsen) depression or other mental disorders by creating new pathways in your thought patterns. Imagine your consciousness as water. This water flows through a very complex system of pipes. When different pipes are open or closed and water runs through them, those are your “thoughts”. Psychedelics help or hinder by creating different pipes for the water to flow through. It is also possible that these substances allow us to observe how our minds create consciousness. One individual described his experience with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD): “It felt as though every muscle in my body, starting from the tip of my lips to my toes were being ‘tested’ or ‘initialized’. First I twitched my lips, then moved my nose. I then tested my swallowing reflex followed by the opening of the eyes and movement of the limbs. I felt as though some other consciousness was taking control of my body. Then as I came to realize it I felt a great fear come over me and suddenly it was gone. I then realized that the consciousness I thought had taken over me was actually me. However because I was still experiencing the effects of LSD, the new point of view felt very strange. It was as if some parasite had gone from controlling my limbs to melding completely with my mind.” Perhaps what this individual experienced was the “switching of the guard” so to speak. Maybe throughout the day we create new threads of consciousness that take over without us noticing, and because of the effects of the Lysergic Acid Diethylamide this individual got to experience two streams of consciousness running at the same time before combining together (or more likely, until the more recent one took over the mind).

>>8579151
IV) A final point to discuss when it comes to consciousness is the definition of you. When you wake up every morning, is the consciousness that flows through your mind and innervates your limbs the same one that did so the morning before? Most people would answer “yes of course, because I remember yesterday”. However can we truly be sure that the person we are one day is not a new thread of consciousness that simply takes in the experiences stored in our mind and thinks of them as our own? After all our minds become so exhausted after being conscious for an entire day that we have to effectively shut ourselves off for 8-10 hours a night for our minds to recover. To expand on this idea, how would you know if the version of you an hour ago is the same as you right now? For all we know consciousness is an illusion of the mind that can store and access short-term memories very rapidly to seem like it’s all connected and held together by a singular entity. In fact I would argue that this is the actual case, and that the idea of a “soul” is just our observation of this phenomenon.

>>8579155
To elaborate, imagine yourself two years ago. Think of where you were in life, what you were doing, who you were. You can probably get a good idea of yourself from that time period but you cannot access all of the information that was present in your mind at that time, you probably only have vague memories. You cannot for instance remember what you had to eat for lunch 2 years ago today. It is pretty safe to say that at this time you were a different person. You did not know the things you know today, you did not experience what you have experienced in that 2 year period, and you were inherently different in many ways than you are now. Now think back to a year ago, a month ago, last week. The same argument can be made for that timeframe, you were a different person a week ago then you are today because in the last week you have experienced more things and your brain has changed in that time, new connections have been formed and old connections have been pruned. The same can be said about increasingly small timeframes. A day, an hour, 30 minutes, you are different each time because your brain’s neuroplasticity allows and encourages you to create and prune connections. Because the structure of your brain is changing constantly, you are constantly changing. Your mind is constantly becoming a new structure. Is it possible that every new connection and every pruned connection is the creation of a new being? Maybe this rapid creation of new structures and the interactions between these structures betrays the fact that you are not anything but the current structure of your neurons reacting to your environment based on external stimuli, common thought patterns that have been established, and your memories.

>>8579158
Some closing thoughts:

I had written this nearly a year ago now, but I was rereading it today and have decided I want to revise some of my arguments and add some more ideas I've had since writing. Some of the ideas I mentioned here I don't 100% agree with anymore but I'd like to see what you guys thought about them.

This is not meant to be a single theory of consciousness by the way, but rather a few different theories put together in a single writing. I'd also like to eventually source some of my ideas but that will take a lot of time (of which I have little at the moment). If you managed to read it all thanks so much, and let me know what you think! I'm super interested to hear any input!

>>8579127
Sometimes I feel like I snap into a new mode of consciousness. Like I pick up where a different me left off. Its an odd feeling. Almost like im new or whole.again. Could be a normal thing though, people dont usually tell people about weird mental thoughts.

Try to condense this though.

>>8579207
Yeah totally agreed. I wonder if that "snapping into new mode" is similar to what I mentioned from the LSD experience. That is, to literally be a new consciousness in each moment that you make a decision or react to things. How would you even know the difference between that and a cohesive, continuing consciousness, ya know? If the point of the mind is store and retrieve memories, what happens in between? You don't necessarily think all the time either, what is going on during those states? Are you conscious or just waiting for a stimuli to give rise to a new consciousness?

I read the whole thing. You raise a lot of "maybe"s and "what if"s in this but there's nothing here that hasn't been thought of before. If you want this to be related to science you need to put forth falsifiable hypothesis. Ask what the consequences of a given theory would be if it were false and what the consequences would be if it were true and see which version of events is most accurately reflected in reality. Right now it's just a lot of navel gazing.

You might find it interesting if you haven't already listened to it.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/