Ethan Freedman
Topics: Consciousness
Prof. Richard Braaten
October 30, 2023
Consciousness is a silly game we started playing when we first began exploring our minds, the bodies in which we occupy, and the environment that is shared around us. Millions of years ago, whether humans and primates were aware of it or not, we began the journey of exploring consciousness. While David Chalmers’ piece titled “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” alludes to some of the prevalent, pervasive, and frustrating conversations in academia surrounding consciousness today, a piece by Antoni Damasio (1999) titled “How the Brain Creates the Mind” offers insight into how consciousness as a disciplinary study can be expanded upon without a tangible foundation. While there are many realms and domains of consciousness academia and research, the field can expand into affective and visceral understandings of the body, mind, and environment that can instill awareness in an agent as well as the methodologies and frameworks capable of enabling awareness. While Domhoff et al (2018) positions how understandings of consciousness can be expanded into awareness during sleeping states, Presti (2017) unravels how consciousness can become available to our psyche via inducing altered states of consciousness. Despite drugs being a real tangible way of seeing consciousness come to fruition via inhibition, mindfulness is a much healthier and self induced altered state of consciousness highlighted by Peter Malinowski chapter “mindfulness”. In the end, consciousness is revealed to be as nuanced of a field as it was when we first began to question our awareness.
David Chalmers kicks us off with the understanding that “there is not just one problem of consciousness,” but “Consciousness is an ambiguous term referring to many different phenomena” suggests from the very beginning that discourse on the topic dives deep. To distinguish easily digestible binary understandings, there is an easy problem and a hard problem within consciousness explorers. The easy problem is “associated with the notion of consciousness” and takes on seven different behaviors, attitudes, and thought patterns. They consist of the 1) ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli; 2) the integration of information by a cognitive system; 3) the reportability of mental states; 4) the ability of a system to access its own internal states; 5) the focus of attention; 6) deliberate control of behavior; 7) the difference between wakefulness and sleep (Chalmers, 2017 pp. 32). While the easy problem might concern the “explanation of cognitive ability and functions,” there are more empirical questions we can ask about the mechanisms that perform a function (Chalmers, 2017 pp. 32). Moreover, “the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience” and how mechanisms in the brain and body interact with the environment to create a “subjective experience” (Chalmers, 2017 pp. 33). Moreover, the hard problem is increasingly becoming more frustrated and curious in its own exploration as it always asks “why” subjective experiences come to fruition. (Chalmers, 2017 pp. 34).
While Chalmers concludes that consciousness must be acknowledged as an “irreducible feature in this world,” Antonio Damasio’s , (1999) piece titled “How the Brain Creates the Mind” unravels how we can expand research with the understanding to which David Chalmers alludes. Damasio breaks down what could be deemed the most simple, and yet appropriate question to follow: “How do the processes we call mind emerge from activity of the organ we call the brain” (Damasio, 1999; pp. 58). One of the most terrific and debated questions anyone can ask in the field relates to “when consciousness becomes the focus of the inquiry,” why might this state “induce timidity in the contemplator” (Damasio, 1999; pp. 58). With a tangible example as to how the question of why is explored in the pursuit of understanding awareness of conscious experiences, Damasio explores the brain's structures and how they create the “movie-in-the-brain.” As a metaphor for the “integrated and unified composite of diverse sensory images – visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and others – that constitutes the multimedia we call the mind(Damasio, 1999; pp. 62). While the easy problem of consciousness struggles with nuanced and abstract explanations of awareness, Damasio (1999) succeeding Chalmers (2017) in this argument highlights the foundation that the hard problem lays for the exploration of consciousness.
Many people might believe that the subjective experiences perceived as consciousness can never be understood under a unitary and solidified theory; however, I believe that the broader question of why does not render researchers immobilized in our explorations of consciousness. If we forget about whether or not the question of experience can be solved, acknowledging that affective and visceral subjective experience will not cease allows us to ask innumerable questions about the hard problem of consciousness with a predetermined conclusion. While some might argue it is unsolvable, others might support the notion that many different states of subjective conscious experiences exist. Subjective experiences are capable of being felt in every moment whether the agent finds themselves aware or not. When we consider what questions can be asked, it is not that things are unsolvable as much as numerous explanations for one subjective moment might be applicable.
From Domhoff and Schneider’s piece (2018) “Are Dreams Social Simulations? ,” subjective moments can be entrenched in waking states, but states of consciousness expand deep into dream states. For the question of why in tandem with the domain of dream states, this piece asks whether or not dreaming is a “rehearsal” state for waking social perceptions and interactions” – leading to an adaptive value for humans. While there are plenty of theories for dreaming, The social simulation theory suggests that “dreaming is first and foremost a rehearsal for waking social interactions that conserved in human evolutionary history” for adaptive value (Domhoff ad Schneider, 2018; pp. 2). Moreover, Neurocognitive theory delves into dreaming as an “intensified form of mind wandering which makes use of embodied simulation to enact the dreamers major conceptions and personal concerns” (Domhoff ad Schneider, 2018; pp. 2). These are incredible hypotheses that truly come out of an unanswerable question – but it is unanswerable due to the fact that there are many answers within this one subjective state of consciousness. While empirical research assists in the conclusion that neurocognitive theory might envelope embodied simulations, social simulation theory highlights a desire to attribute adaptive value to conscious states of awareness. In the end, sleep is a natural state that serves many functions outside of consciousness and centering around biological and mechanical systems of the body and mind.
With sleep being a state of awareness controlled within circadian rhythms or individual routines, it is often lost as one of many conscious states that can be induced. However, other induced states of consciousness discussed in David Presti’s “Altered States of Consciousness: Drug-induced States” provides deeper understandings for how induced states of consciousness can be achieved. With the knowledge that drugs are “chemicals that in small amounts have significant impact on body function,” psyche is often explored from perspectives within consciousness (Presti, 2017; pp. 171) “Effects of drugs on consciousness are currently understood to occur via there interactions with cellular and molecular processes within the nervous system;” however, Presti argues this is not the whole story (Presti, 2017; pp. 172). To sum the chapter, there are many drugs which induce altered states of consciousness and there have been many moments in history where drugs have been utilized to address an agent's concerns with the help of shamans, guides, and professionals in facilitating journeys using drugs. While drugs can be incredibly harmful to the agent system, there are many that are non toxic to our body.
While our body might be safe from harm, drug related fields of consciousness are concerned with why our psyche is still put in harm's way when we indulge in drugs and what environmental and biological factors are prominent in these processes. With self induced altered states of consciousness being explicitly and emphatically discussed using altered states of awareness via the addition of substances to the body, Peter Malinowski’s chapter on “Mindfulness” illustrates how induced states require the agent to practice attention focusing and affective understandings of their body using breathwork. Stemming from Buddhist thought, mindfulness as its own subdomain of consciousness research stems from the observance that “body awareness brings body sensations” and that “intentionally attending” without judgment to one's affective and visceral bodily feelings can be beneficial to an agent (Malinowski; 2017). Whether it is achieving states of mindfulness for splits seconds in order to assess the self or indulging in meditation and other practices that lead to self induced mindfulness for longer periods of time, the notion that we can induce altered states of consciousness in ourslees naturally is solidified within the realm of mindfulness research.
As I close, the notion that consciousness is an umbrella term for subdomains of consciousness relating to affective and visceral understandings of the body and mind induced by the self via additions to the body or implemented forms of praxis like meditation can be understood. While dream states, drug induced states, and mindfulness are only a few examples of the variations of discourse generated out of questions related to the field, the reality is that consciousness being a truly unsolvable problem is only seemingly immobilizing. While the hard problem of consciousness seems terrifying to some when situated in juxtaposition to the easy problem, agents are never lost in asking the question of Why? In fact, the question of why certain conscious states occur will always enable us in our exploration while simultaneously leaving us with the possibility of more questions when we are done with our pursuit.
Word Count 1580:
Note: I know that the word count was 1250 however I found myself desiring to keep it at a little bit of a larger number because of the role that it plays in teaching me about the field. I think this is a good length to explain my understanding of the narrative of consciousness exploration.
Citations
Damasio, A. R. (1999). How the Brain Creates the Mind. Scientific American, 281(6), 112–117. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1299-112
Domhoff, G. W., & Schneider, A. (2018). Are dreams social simulations? Or are they enactments of conceptions and personal concerns? An empirical and theoretical comparison of two dream theories. Dreaming, 28(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000080
The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (1st ed.). (2017). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119132363
BCC Ch. 3, The Hard Problem of Consciousness, D. Chalmers.
Presti, David. (2017). Altered States of Consciousness: Drug-Induced States. 10.1002/9781119132363.ch12.
BCC Ch. 14, Mindfulness, P. Malinowski