Consciousness - or is there anybody there?

    

This is Dave Chalmers  (much better without the barnet I think but would hate to trivialise this serious debate).

How do we explain consciousness?

Here is a link to a lively TED lecture that was the catalyst that brought this blog post together: 

How do you explain consciousness?

It's all about Consciousness in poetry, prose and philosophy.

First some poetry - this intricate little poem by American poet Joanie Mackowski gives an artist's view of human consciousness.

Consciousness

JOANIE MACKOWSKI

How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander

the halls of the skull with the fluorescents

softly flickering. It rests on the head

like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel

and awkward as soon as one stops to look.

That pile of fallen leaves drifting from

the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,

to the grooves in that man’s voice

as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves

of books with moonlit opossums

and Chevrolets easing down the roads

of one’s bones. And now it plucks a single

tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet

itself is a swarm, a pulse with no

indigenous form, the brain’s lunar halo.

Our compacted galaxy, its constellations

trembling like flies caught in a spider web,

until we die, and then the flies

buzz away—while another accidental

coherence counts to three to pass the time

or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine

strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped

in the brain’s gray pool. How it folds itself

like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds

a fraying map from the pocket of the day.

Source: Poetry (February 2012).

That's just how my brain seems some days - like a crazy birdsnest in my head, full of all sorts of bits and pieces, that sometimes manages to cradle my creativity.

And of course there was Wordsworth - 

Here's a short extract from his famous ode on immortality:

Ode On Intimations of Immortality

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;–
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where’er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

.............................

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

For many of us a couple of centuries later, immortality is not a belief that we can accept. 

Consciousness is still a great mystery of course but I have to concede that it probably relies on the brain in order to exist. I don't think that it can outlive death - but it's a fascinating idea to pursue.

I'd like to offer some quotations from recent books. The first by Denise Inge  is called "A Tour of Bones - Facing Fear and Looking for Life.  

" Contemplating mortality is not about being prepared to die, it is about being prepared to live."

The second from neurosurgeon Henry Marsh whose book "Do No Harm" has become a best-seller:

"I think most people realise that thought and consciousness are somehow produces by the brain, and that therefore they are in some way physical processes. This is completely at odds with our experience of our own consciousness which feels completely non-physical and quite different from the outside world. It is an extraordinary thought.

All human beings have a deep capacity for wonder, an awareness of how large the universe is and how small we are.  Religions are full of this sense of wonder and science is as well, even if it is constrained by the need to collect and analyse data scientifically as well as to dream and invent. I think many people share my amazement that our own brain, our own consciousness, is as wonderful and mysterious as the sky at night."

So back to the beginning and the inspirational Dave Chalmers

He says that we haven't really begun to explain consciousness or why we have it. Is it a fundamental building block ? Is it universal or "panpsychic"? I look forward to hearing some of the answers to these challenging questions.

In my consciousness today - February 19th

is the awareness that it is the Chinese New Year of the sheep.

February 19th also happens to be the date that my parents were married way back in 1944, 

The date that I moved from Warwickshire to Herefordshire in 1985

AND the date that I moved from England to Scotland in 2013 - so this is my second anniversary in beautiful Gamrie.

This seemingly significant date (for me) is probably just random chance - but my consciousness can't help but see patterns and attach meanings to such things.  Without consciousness there would be no sense of self; no capacity for creativity. It can make life seem wonderful if we stay awake to it.

The last word from Stephen Hawking:

"What puts the fire into the equations?"