From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Consciousness Assayed
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 18:15:23 EDT
I wrote:
"I hope I haven't said that consciousness exists independently of the
brain.
I believe that "awareness" and a physical neural disposition are always
critically connected. It's the nature of that connection that remains
unclear. Thus
I stop short of saying the neural tissue "produces" the consciousness. We
certainly see concomitance -- they seem both to obtain at the same time.
But the
>"causation" at work here is at the heart of the "mind-body" problem."
Geoff responded:
"I would demur regarding the apparent assertion that consciousness REQUIRES
a
neuronal basis. In the somewhat unusual situation of someone who has had a
limb amputated, consciousness may register rather strong experience (pain)
which
appears to be located in the amputated limb. This observation suggests that
there is not an absolute association between neuronal events and
consciousness
(as I'm defining it) i.e events in the amputated limb. I accept that the
registering of pain in consciousness is a neuronal event, but in the brain
not the
limb."
What I was trying to convey was an unproven belief of mine: Every time
there
is awareness of a feeling, thought etc -- i.e. for every bit of
consciousness
-- there is a "connected" material, neural event. I wouldn't want to say
the
neural event is the 'basis' because the connotations of 'basis' are vague
to
me, and they hint of 'causal'. Neural events MAY cause all conscious bits,
but I
don't know that they do. Mixed in with this lack of surety is an unshakable
sense -- but merely a sense -- that notions seem to cause notions, which
then
leads to the merely stubborn suspicion that notions just may cause neural
events also (as well as vice versa).
About notional causing neural. With no idea what the nuts and bolts
etiology
may be, I am still seized by moments of "realization", of seeing
implications,
of surprise, of exasperation, of grasping funny, that seem so utterly the
stuff of "consciousness" it's hard to imagine their being possible in a
piece of
organic tissue. I hasten to concede I am not making an argument; I'm simply
trying to describe the "thinking" of one who can believe there are entities
that
are notional as well as entities and that material. I'm aware that a
physicalist (one who believes only in the existence of material entities)
might scorn
such a position the way a "logical fellow" scorns the belief in angels,
good
luck, tree-spirits and the like.
Or are neural events and notional events maybe parallel entities, each
sometimes being a "cause" and sometimes an "epiphenomenon"?
Despite almost twenty-five hundred years of worrying these questions like
puppies at a ragdoll, philosophers have managed to be conclusive about none
of
them. It has taken what is effectively neurologist's work to prove one part
of
the puzzle: Mess with neural tissue and you can affect notion. Alas, this
isn't
new, and it credits guys like Torquemada with neurologist's work. "Hey -- I
got this nifty new way to cause one of those pain-notions!" Or to the
Laurence
Olivier character in MARATHON MAN who, as a dentist, has learned an
effective
way to cause notion he wants in Dustin Hoffman -- drill through a tooth to
the
nerve.
I'll pass over a part of Geoff's query where I think I must be
misunderstanding him, because I read it as suggesting Geoff may not accept
the nerves in our
hands and feet as "neural". I'll go instead to the part where he is
questioning the "location" of pain.
Dualists -- those who believe in two distinct kinds of entities, material
and
notional, generally maintain notion is non-spatial. Material things,
including all neural events, are accepted by almost everyone as "taking
place" "in"
what we think of as "space", but many fewer can accept the suggestion an
"idea"
has "location". They may talk of ideas and feelings being "in the mind",
but
they don't equate the mind with the material brain, and they're not ready
to
say the "mind" -- i.e. consciousness -- is "in" the brain.
Because in a Kantian way we seem to think of objects and events as all
necessarily "taking place" in a time-space continuum, for some dualists
there's an
element of discomfort in claiming that notions -- though they occur in time
--
don't occur in any "place". But it's not much discomfort, just as theists
usually have no trouble in settling for a notion that God exists outside of
BOTH
time and space even though he is credited with making one thing AFTER
another
occur.
But, to get to Geoff's specific point: If I feel pain "IN my foot", do I
Cheerskep believe the pain is actually down there, more than five feet from
my
head? The fact that an amputee feels pain "in" the now-non-existent foot,
persuades me that the feeling, the bit of consciousness, is in fact not
"down there".
So, pushed by that ingrained conviction that everything takes place in time
and space, most people will say that the pain is in their head. (I used
'ingrained' as a dodge. Should I say "in-born", or should I say "learned"
instead?)
There is a curious kind of wavering on this that some people will assert
they
take seriously. "Yeah, I know, I know, it seems very unlikely Paul stole
the
ring, but something in my gut tells me he did." And they will admit it
actually
feels to them as though the conviction is indeed down there. ("Hey --
there's
neural tissue in my gut, no?" I won't address that notion here.
This tendency to think of thoughts as being IN our heads is supported by
the
fuzzy feeling that that's where "I" am. "I" am behind my eyes looking out.
And
most of us tend with equal fuzziness to identify our "self" with a
combination of our body and our consciousness. (Remember, however, that
Hume said, "Look
hard, you never see a self. All there is, is the stream of consciousness."
So, then who/what is it that is claiming such things as "That is MY hand!")
In sum, the dualists, of which I am one, are stuck with the discomforting
inclination to say all notion -- including pain -- is in the head, but we
know we
should resist it. How can we say notion is "in" some particular place while
at the same time maintaining a notion does not have spatial length or
breadth?
Ah, well, we say, the question of a pain's location is not a core one.
(It's bemusing to see how easily we can suppress many inconvenient
questions that
