Consciousness: behind the scenes of survival
In the last post, the question “what is consciousness” was debated and a direction for further investigation proposed, a proposal which I myself wish to pursue.
This post looks at another idea bound within the “what” of consciousness, that is, the “why”, rather than the “how”.
So, why do we have the feeling of consciousness? With consciousness, one must at least assume that we experience consciousness, whatever it is: we assign the term consciousness to a particular feeling (”conscious comes from the Latin, conscius, which means “knowing” or “aware”).
It might prove most fruitful to ask what it would be like if someone proved that we are not conscious but are, instead, a product of deterministic responses to an array of integrated stimuli (it is a bit non-sensical to ask what it will feel like as to have any feeling would imply that we were indeed conscious: so bare with me!). If we knew that our lives were dictated by something other than our own free will, I would expect that most people, if not everybody, would feel the most intense apathy. What would be the point in trying to do anything? What is our purpose in life? Is there a purpose? Why should you bother procreating? Why do we have laws - if you are sinner, you were destined to be a sinner. I guarantee that if everybody had this notion of life then there would be a major shift in the dynamics of society! Clearly, we must have some form of conscious experience as we have formed a highly structured society and, as claimed in the last post, it at least feels as if we are conscious.
Without consciousness, an apathetic species would die out very quickly! We appear to most definitely have conscious experiences. But why? Do they simply arise out of complexity - the integration of many forms of memory of many different experiences?It seems so. Then, why are we of such a complexity? Why are chimps of another complexity? One easily explains this by invoking the idea of evolution. It seems that the physical, emotional and social complexity of any organism scales with that organism’s distance down the line of evolution.
Is consciousness simply an evolutionary emotion? Well, it seems that if we somehow “knew” we weren’t conscious then we would surely die out as a species. So perhaps consciousness is an emotion that evolved along with the complexity of the organism to induce survival instincts, thus maintaining the survival of the species as a whole. We feel that we are making choices and have responsibilities, that we want to go travelling, see the world, find a partner who understands us, whom we love, who loves us, that we want to be happy and free, that we want children and that we want to bring them up with our ideals. Why?! Well, with regards to procreation, it is the only way to maintain species survival. But what about the other feelings?
The more we experience, the more we feel we are conscious. Within this complicated emotion of consciousness, we seek new experiences such that our notion of being conscious is compounded, thus increasing our drive for survival. This works for individual members of a species as well as for the species itself. If we strive to live longer, we will gain more experiences and have a stronger sense of being conscious, thus driving to strive to live longer!
Now for the confusing bit! I am not claiming that our consciousness isn’t determined. Evidence seems to strongly point towards our conscious experiences depending on the functionality of our brains. The integration of memories, themselves wired into the structure and activity of the brain, then conscious arises from very mechanistic behaviour. However, it takes form in such a way as to give the feeling of free will such that we feel like we are seeking new experiences to enrich our lives and the lives of others.
From the preceding discussion, we have seen that consciousness is something we feel. It could therefore be classed as an emotion. It seems to be a very sophisticated, self maintaining, mechanistic property of all organisms, with varying degrees of complexity suited to the behavioural complexity and needs of the organism. Its complexity has interspecies and even intraspecies variation - not surprising if it varies in complexity and affective power with the variation in experience between individual organisms.
What should we do with this idea of consciousness? It would be very easy to say that, despite its purpose in eluding us to a feeling of self and purpose so as to maintain our survival, it is mechanistic nonetheless and, as such, why should we bother? This would be the apathetic catastrophe resulting in nullification of our species. I would imagine that this would be an impossible way to live, on the whole, as this emotion of consciousness is ingrained into our very being. We would, bizarrely, be “choosing” to live deterministically!
Should we, therefore, humour ourselves with the feeling of consciousness and go about our lives as if blissfully unaware of the nature of our being? In fact, my answer would be yes…..in part! I am a great believer in evolution finding the most successful means for life. Although it seems that some species have gone wrong somewhere along the evolutionary line, this is usually advantageous to a greater or lesser degree to other species in its vicinity. Looking at the world’s ecosystem as a whole, it seems that mother nature has got it spot on! I would therefore say that it would probably be a very good idea to take this idea of consciousness, if you “choose” to accept it, and seek as many experiences as you can so as to compound your feeling consciousness. It will make your life feel better because that is how it is intended - that is how we evolved.