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A review by freddiebennet
The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread But Can't Be Computed by Christof Koch
4.0
How does matter produce mind?
The problem of linking these two utterly distinct worlds has stumped academics since Plato's time. Neuroscientists, physicists and psychologists alike have failed to make any fundamental progress in answering the question, while philosophers have termed the issue of consciousness "the hard problem", illustrating the extent of the mystery.
With the birth of tools like the MRI brain scanner and the EEG, it has become possible to monitor the neural activity which underpins all forms of conscious experience, allowing neuroscientists to track the footprints of consciousness in the brain. Every possible conscious experience, whether it be the perception of a friend's face, the admiration of a sunset, a spike of anger, the surfacing of an old memory or a chain of reasoning, no matter how subtle or explicit, is always underpinned by specific neural mechanisms. The minimum neuronal activity required for any one conscious experience is referred to by neuroscientists as a "neural correlate of consciousness". In recent decades, it has been a major venture of neuroscience to uncover some of these minimal circuits for the myriad variations of conscious experience. Over are the days of the proverbial ghost in the machine as philosophers like Descartes once postulated; we now know that consciousness is inextricably tied up with the brain.
The richness of an organism's conscious experience is determined by the number of neural correlates of consciousness facilitated by that organism's brain. Consciousness does not require the most complex of these mechanisms, such as holding an interior perspective, higher forms of reasoning, broad emotional ranges and metacognition. To be conscious simply means to be capable of having any form of experience. More than just a yes-no binary, consciousness is a spectrum. I used to believe that what was mysterious about consciousness was its higher forms, but without doubt, what is truly mysterious is experience at its most basic and fundamental form. How is it, that a structure of atoms, molecules, proteins and cells suddenly becomes able to feel something, and to have any flavour of experience at all? How is the world of the subjective suddenly birthed by the world of the objective? The true mystery of consciousness lies in the tiny gap between nothingness and something.
An implication is the notion that all animals with brains have forms of conscious experience, proportional to the complexity of the organism's brain. You would be hard pressed to convince me that a dog, for a example, does not have some form of consciousness. We see that dogs (and other animals) have their own distinct personality traits and emotional ranges. Animals show curiosity for life, they experience excitement, affection, happiness. Animals are shown to mourn friends and family, they can sulk and become irritated. The findings of neuroscience increase our accountability for animal rights, learning that even without the most complex forms of consciousness, they still undeniably experience this world, and this experience entitles them to basic ethical rights.
Understanding these minimal correlates of experience will also help us detect consciousness in comatose, vegetative, mute and incapacitated patients, allowing us to identify "stranded minds in damaged brains." The neurological research into consciousness undoubtedly has a number of positive fuctions, and with time we are likely to learn the neural correlates responsible for every facet of consciousness. However, even if we develop a complete understanding of what mechanisms cause which subjective experiences, we will still be at a loss for why. Just why, does a particular coalition of neuron firings result in our subjective experience of the colour red, a powerful surge of emotion, or the feeling of life itself? In line with the past 2,500 years of consideration, abstraction and research, the "hard problem" of why experience is possible will remain.
The problem of linking these two utterly distinct worlds has stumped academics since Plato's time. Neuroscientists, physicists and psychologists alike have failed to make any fundamental progress in answering the question, while philosophers have termed the issue of consciousness "the hard problem", illustrating the extent of the mystery.
With the birth of tools like the MRI brain scanner and the EEG, it has become possible to monitor the neural activity which underpins all forms of conscious experience, allowing neuroscientists to track the footprints of consciousness in the brain. Every possible conscious experience, whether it be the perception of a friend's face, the admiration of a sunset, a spike of anger, the surfacing of an old memory or a chain of reasoning, no matter how subtle or explicit, is always underpinned by specific neural mechanisms. The minimum neuronal activity required for any one conscious experience is referred to by neuroscientists as a "neural correlate of consciousness". In recent decades, it has been a major venture of neuroscience to uncover some of these minimal circuits for the myriad variations of conscious experience. Over are the days of the proverbial ghost in the machine as philosophers like Descartes once postulated; we now know that consciousness is inextricably tied up with the brain.
The richness of an organism's conscious experience is determined by the number of neural correlates of consciousness facilitated by that organism's brain. Consciousness does not require the most complex of these mechanisms, such as holding an interior perspective, higher forms of reasoning, broad emotional ranges and metacognition. To be conscious simply means to be capable of having any form of experience. More than just a yes-no binary, consciousness is a spectrum. I used to believe that what was mysterious about consciousness was its higher forms, but without doubt, what is truly mysterious is experience at its most basic and fundamental form. How is it, that a structure of atoms, molecules, proteins and cells suddenly becomes able to feel something, and to have any flavour of experience at all? How is the world of the subjective suddenly birthed by the world of the objective? The true mystery of consciousness lies in the tiny gap between nothingness and something.
An implication is the notion that all animals with brains have forms of conscious experience, proportional to the complexity of the organism's brain. You would be hard pressed to convince me that a dog, for a example, does not have some form of consciousness. We see that dogs (and other animals) have their own distinct personality traits and emotional ranges. Animals show curiosity for life, they experience excitement, affection, happiness. Animals are shown to mourn friends and family, they can sulk and become irritated. The findings of neuroscience increase our accountability for animal rights, learning that even without the most complex forms of consciousness, they still undeniably experience this world, and this experience entitles them to basic ethical rights.
Understanding these minimal correlates of experience will also help us detect consciousness in comatose, vegetative, mute and incapacitated patients, allowing us to identify "stranded minds in damaged brains." The neurological research into consciousness undoubtedly has a number of positive fuctions, and with time we are likely to learn the neural correlates responsible for every facet of consciousness. However, even if we develop a complete understanding of what mechanisms cause which subjective experiences, we will still be at a loss for why. Just why, does a particular coalition of neuron firings result in our subjective experience of the colour red, a powerful surge of emotion, or the feeling of life itself? In line with the past 2,500 years of consideration, abstraction and research, the "hard problem" of why experience is possible will remain.