Problem of Consciousness (stub)

So I only skimmed Dennett's Consciousness Explained and that was to get to the root of what he thought. It seemed on that examination he was of the type who thought consciousness was an illusion that arose from self-reference. In other words its the "self" of awareness that makes consciousness. I may be wrong here, cos that was my own thought and I was just confirming he had the same thought.

But to get here he notes that the activity that we wake up for is very much sequential rational processing. We wake up to Know. When a loud noise wakes us from sleep we need to ask what use is the consciousness that gets switched on? Its clearly not "epiphenomenal" because it has a very particular place in the world. We switch it on in particular circumstances. (This is my own thinking but meets with Dennett I'm pretty sure).

So the brain obviously does a huge amount of processing that we are not aware if. We are saved all the minutiae of processing and just get a world present to us. At some point in this chain of processing things enter consciousness. Dennett notes the mess that is involved here and that consciousness is not a discrete level or time with conscious events not really matching experimental reality very well. It all points to consciousness being a "virtual reality" as many have noted. Matrix films work because a simulation of the world is sensorial indistinguishable from the real thing. Dennett goes further to suggest this virtual reality is the product of a Turing Machine that is hosted on the parallel neurons of the brain. Computers he notes are based upon the Turing Machine we simulate in the our own brains that gives us all the sequential thinking that we are so consciously aware of.

That's a precis of what I understood from his book.

Buddhism would agree. All things are caused, and so consciousness (apart from what it actually is) obeys this same law. Consciousness is created and it ceases. We see this again most clearly when we sleep and wake. But throughout the day it ebbs and flows. Sometimes we are alert other times sluggish and virtually unaware. Meditation is an important practice. It focuses the mind and raises consciousness so that the world can be seen more clearly. But importantly meditation is a practice that takes us ultimately far beyond consciousness.

And that is the crux of what I wanted to note here. Don't we habitually think about consciousness the wrong way around. I think even Dennett does not completely undo the Cartesian Theatre. True there is no one "in" the theatre for Dennett but does he go the whole way to say there is no one at all. No one is actually conscious. I will need reread to see that.

But if no one is conscious then what is this "self" awareness that seems so critical? When we are conscious we are not just a candle shining light into the world, that light shines on itself so that it knows itself in that very shining. This seems to be the essence of consciousness. It is this which ultimately points to the intrigue of SRH and why "self" seems to be a more important thing that "other." We are well aware of candles shining their light on other things, but when that light shines on themselves we are attracted to the possibility of "magic." Consciousness seems like magic.

So the reason for the stub here is to note that this is quite possibly a mistake left over from the days we believed in Cartesian Theatre. It is true that within visual consciousness we see the world from the perspective of a set of eyes, but this does not mean that there is someone on top of that seeing through those eyes. That is like painting a picture of a room from the perspective of someone on the other side of the room, and then thinking that there is really someone actually over there. Our brain can paint a picture with all the data without anyone or anything else being added to the situation. Seeing the world is already everything. As noted many times in this blog we seem to want to see the world, and then have a model of "someone" on top seeing the world a second time. A tiger enters the room, we think we are looking at the tiger, but the tiger must have already been seen for us to know it is there. The "looking at the tiger" that we think is secondary and has nothing to do with seeing the tiger which is already there! What is possibly confusing is realising that our brain has done the work "over there!!" not over here where we think we reside. This is Dennett's Turing Machine modelling on top of the world with all the data that has already been gathered.

Consciousness therefore appears to occur at a level below "ourselves." When we turn around and see the tiger in the room chances are we will jump up and get to safety without bothering to "know" what we are doing. Only afterwards do we think back over it and go "wow that was a close thing." But the original present moment action when we first see it is never-the-less consciousness of a type, just without the "putting ourselves in the picture." We ignore that secondary modelling, and just do raw data, and get out of the room.

Anyway the question of a "self" being conscious now seems less important. The candle indeed does shine on other things, and the shining on itself is a secondary add on. It is not the magic bit.

So if consciousness is not about the self, then who is consciousness?

Buddha actually warns against the two extremes here. Its interesting that 2500 years ago there were Hippies around who thought of a great cosmic consciousness. If conscious is greater than myself, its tempting to go the whole way and say the Universe is consciousness and mine is just a part of that consciousness. Indeed this is often said in Hinduism. But we need be careful. This is just swapping myself out for a Great Self. we are still putting a solid personality at the root and so nothing has changed.

The real change is when we realise "no one." In purely logical SRH terms, if we wish to understand ourselves we need go beyond the idea of self and personality. If the Universe is to be really Great it needs be more profound than selves. Not dismissing the Atman and Brahman they have their place, but to really understand we need uproot Atman and Brahman from being core entities. They exist in mutual balance. Some conceptions of God get stuck on the "person in the sky" image, just as some conceptions of self get stuck on "person in the body" image. If we really want to deeply ground ourselves we should look to go beyond this "person in" explanation of things.

So the Problem of Consciousness is mostly a problem of who is conscious and where to place ourselves in consciousness. Once this is resolved Consciousness becomes just the activity of senses and the world. Still remarkable, but then life and the universe in its entirely is all remarkable.