The riddle of the connection between Consciousness and Brain

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the scientific community, debate continues about what consciousness is. Neuroscientists often identify it with the processes taking place in the human brain. Philosopher Anton Kuznetsov explains why this is a weak position. About "blind sight", illusions and the "zombie argument" - in the summary of his lecture.

Abnormal phenomenon

The problem of the relationship between body and mind has not yet been resolved. There are different theories of consciousness - the theory of the global neural workspace (Global workspace theory, or GWT.), The quantum theory of Hameroff-Penrose, the theory of the attendable mid-level realization of Prince's consciousness, or the theory of integrated information. But all these are only hypotheses, in which the conceptual apparatus is not sufficiently developed. And besides, we do not have enough experimental tools for studying the brain and human behavior - for example, the application of the postulates of the theory of integrated information on living organisms is not yet possible due to computational and hardware limitations.

Consciousness is an anomalous phenomenon, unlike other phenomena in the natural world. While the latter are intersubjective, that is, available to everyone, we always have only internal access to consciousness and cannot directly observe it. At the same time, we know that consciousness is a natural phenomenon. However, if we start thinking about the structure of the Universe as about fundamental physical interactions, then this will work exactly as long as we do not remember about consciousness: it is not clear how a phenomenon with characteristics so different from everything else is squeezed into such a representation of the world.

One of the best definitions of consciousness is ostensive (the definition of an object by direct display. - Approx. T&P): we all feel mental images and sensations - this is consciousness. When I look at an object, there is an image of it in my head, and this image is also my consciousness. It is important that the ostensive definition of consciousness correlates with the final explanation: when in the study of consciousness we get definitions like "Consciousness is a quantum effect in microtubules of neurons", it is difficult to understand how this effect can become mental images.

There are functions, but there is no consciousness

There is a cognitive concept of consciousness. Examples of cognitive tasks that we perform as conscious subjects can be speech, thinking, integration of information in the brain, etc. But this definition is too broad: it turns out that if there is thinking, speech, memorization, then there is also consciousness; and vice versa: if there is no possibility to speak, then there is no consciousness either. Often this definition doesn't work. For example, patients in a vegetative state (which usually occurs after a stroke) have sleep phases, they open their eyes, they have a wandering gaze, and relatives often mistake this for a manifestation of consciousness, which is actually not the case. And it happens that there are no cognitive operations, but there is consciousness.

If an ordinary person is placed in an MRI machine and asked to imagine how he plays tennis, he will experience excitement in the premotor cortex. The same task was given to a patient who did not respond to anything at all - and they saw the same excitement in the cortex on the MRI. Then the woman was asked to imagine that she is in the house and navigates inside it. Then they began to ask her: “Is your husband's name Charlie? If not, imagine that you are guided in the house, if yes - that you are playing tennis. There was indeed a response to questions, but it could only be traced by the internal activity of the brain. In this way,

a behavioral test does not allow us to verify the presence of consciousness. There is no rigid connection between behavior and consciousness.

There is also no direct connection between consciousness and cognitive functions. In 1987, a terrible tragedy occurred in Canada: the sleepwalker Kenneth Parks fell asleep in front of the TV, and then "woke up", started the car, drove several miles to his wife's parents' house, took a tire iron and went to kill. Then he left and only on the way back found that all his hands were covered in blood. He called the police and said: "I think I killed someone." And although many suspected that he was a genius liar, in fact, Kenneth Parks is an amazing hereditary sleepwalker. He had no motive to kill, and he also squeezed the knife by the blade, which caused deep wounds on his hand, but he did not feel anything. The investigation showed that Parks was not conscious at the time of the murder.

I saw Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Pollen in someone's hands today. In the 1970s, Nicholas Humphrey, while a graduate student and working in the laboratory of Lawrence Weiskrantz, discovered "blind vision." He watched a monkey named Helen, who had cortical blindness - the visual cortex was not functioning. The monkey always behaved like a blind man, but in response to some tests, it suddenly began to demonstrate "seeing" behavior - somehow recognizing simple objects.

Usually, it seems to us that sight is a conscious function: if I see, then I am aware. In the case of “blind vision,” the patient denies seeing anything, however, if asked to guess what is in front of him, he guesses. The thing is that we have two visual pathways: one - "conscious" - leads to the occipital zones of the cerebral cortex, the other - shorter - to the upper part of the cortex. If a boxer has only a conscious visual path working, he is unlikely to be able to dodge punches - he does not miss punches precisely because of this short, ancient path.

Visual perception is when you can say “what” and “where”, and visual perception is when you still have a mental picture. Approximately the same cognitive function of object recognition is performed, but in one case this recognition is conscious, and in the other it is not. Blind vision is visual perception without consciousness.

For some function in the brain to be conscious, it is necessary that the performance of a specific cognitive task be accompanied by an internal subjective experience.

It is the presence of private experience that is the key component that allows you to say whether there is consciousness or not. This narrower concept is called phenomenal consciousness.

Difficult problem

If I had a wisdom tooth pulled out without anesthesia, most likely I would have screamed and tried to move my limbs - but from this description it is difficult to say what is happening to me if I do not know that I am in terrible pain. That is, when I am conscious and something happens to my body, it is important to emphasize: in order to say that I am conscious, I add some internal private characteristics to the history of my body.

This brings us to the so-called hard problem of consciousness (coined by David Chalmers). It is as follows:

why is the functioning of the brain accompanied by subjective and private states? Why doesn't it happen "in the dark"?

The neuroscientist does not care whether conscious states have a subjective, private side: he is looking for a neurological expression of these processes. However, even if this neurological expression is found, it is still somehow experienced. Thus, the neurological description or description of consciousness through brain, behavioral processes and cognitive functioning will always be incomplete. We cannot explain consciousness using standard natural science methods.

The infallibility of illusion

Some characteristics of phenomenal consciousness or consciousness in general can be distinguished: quality, intentionality, subjectivity, privacy, lack of spatial extension, inexpressibility, simplicity, infallibility, direct acquaintance and inner nature. This is the working definition of consciousness.

Qualitativeness (quality) is how you experience your inner subjective experience. Usually these are sensory characteristics: colors, tactile, taste sensations, etc., as well as emotions.

The privacy of conscious experience means that you do not see the way I see you. Even if in the future a means is invented to see what another person observes in his brain, it will still be impossible to see his consciousness, because what he saw will be your own consciousness. The neurons in the brain can be seen surgically, but it won't work with consciousness, because it's absolute privacy.

The lack of spatial attraction indicates that when I look at a white column, my head does not expand by the volume of that column. The mental white column has no physical parameters.

Inexpressibility leads to the concept of simplicity and indivisibility into other characteristics. Some concepts cannot be explained through simpler ones. For example, how do you explain what red means? No way. Explanation in terms of wavelength does not count, because if you start substituting it for the word "red", the meaning of the statements will change. Some concepts can be expressed through others, but at first approximation they all seem ineffable.

Faultlessness means you cannot be wrong about being conscious. You may be delusional in judgments about things and phenomena, you may not know what is behind the mental image, but if you come across this image, then it exists, even if it is a hallucination.

And while not all researchers agree with this working definition, anyone involved with consciousness interprets these characteristics in one way or another. After all, it is impossible to empirically answer the question of what consciousness is due to the fact that we do not have the same access to it as to all the phenomena of the natural world. And it depends on the empirical theory built by us how we will work with patients in serious condition.

There is no consciousness, but the word is

The problem of consciousness appeared in modern times through the efforts of Rene Descartes, who divided the body and soul on ethical grounds: the body darkens us, and the soul, as a rational principle, fights against bodily affects. Since then, the juxtaposition of the soul and the body, as it were, splits the world into two independent areas.

But they interact: when I speak, my muscles contract, my tongue moves, etc. All these are physical events, each of my movements has a physical reason. The problem is that we do not understand how something that is not in space affects physical processes. Thus, there is a fundamental rift in our understanding of the world that needs to be bridged. The best way is to “destroy” consciousness: to show that it exists, but is a derivative of physical processes.

The problem of body consciousness is connected with other big problems. This is a question of personality identity: what makes a person the same throughout life, despite physiological and psychological changes in the body and psyche? Free will problem: are our mental and conscious states the causes of physical events or behavior? Bioethical issues and the problem of artificial intelligence: people dream of immortality and the ability to transfer consciousness to another medium.

The problem of consciousness has to do with how we understand causation. In the natural world, all causal interactions are physical in nature. But there is one candidate for a nonphysical type of causality - this is causality from mental to physical, and from physical to behavior. It is necessary to understand whether there is such a kind of processes.

We are also interested in the question of the criteria for existence. When I want to understand whether an object exists, I can verify it: pick it up, for example. But in relation to consciousness, the criterion of existence does not work. Does this mean that consciousness does not exist?

Imagine seeing a lightning strike, and you know that the physical cause of a lightning strike is the collision of cold and warm weather fronts. But then you suddenly add that another cause of lightning may be the family troubles of a bearded gray-haired man of athletic build, his name is Zeus. Or, for example, I can assert that there is a blue dragon behind my back, you just do not see it. Neither Zeus nor the blue dragon exist for natural ontology, since their assumption or absence changes nothing in natural history. Our consciousness is very similar to such a blue dragon or Zeus, so we must declare it non-existent.

Why don't we do this? The human language is full of mental terms, we have an incredibly developed apparatus for expressing internal states. And suddenly it turns out that there are no internal states, although their expression is. Strange situation. You can easily abandon the statement about the existence of Zeus (which was done), but Zeus and the blue dragon are so different from the consciousness that the latter plays an important role in our life. If you go back to the example when my teeth are pulled out, then no matter how much you convince me that I do not experience pain, I will still experience it. It is a state of consciousness and it is valid. It turns out

there is no place for consciousness in the natural world, but we cannot renounce its existence. This is a key drama in the problem of body consciousness.

However, since from the point of view of natural ontology we must declare consciousness as non-existent, many researchers prefer to assert that consciousness is a physical process in the brain. Can we then say that consciousness is the brain? No. Because, firstly, for this it is necessary to demonstrate the ideal substitution of mental terms for neurological ones. And secondly, neural processes cannot be verified.

The zombie argument

How to prove that consciousness is not the brain? Examples of out-of-body experience are often used for this. The problem is that all such cases did not pass the test. Attempts to verify the phenomenon of reincarnation have also failed. So, only a thought experiment can be an argument in favor of the immaterial nature of consciousness. One of them is the so-called philosophical zombie argument. If everything that exists is explained only by physical manifestations, then any world that is identical to ours in all physical respects is identical to it in all the rest. Imagine a world identical to ours, but in which there is no consciousness and zombies live - creatures that function only according to physical laws. If such creatures are possible, then the human body can exist without consciousness.

One of the main theorists of materialism, Daniel Dennett, believes that we are zombies. And the defenders of the zombie argument consider as David Chalmers: in order to locate consciousness within the physical world and not declare it physical, it is necessary to change the very concept of such a world, expand its boundaries and show that along with fundamental physical properties, there are also protoconscious properties. Then consciousness will be incorporated into physical reality, but still it will not be completely physical.