Consciousness?
Are you conscious? Of course you are. Or so you think. You are reading this and in order to do that you need to be conscious. Is that what consciousness means?
Is your dog, or cat, conscious? They do not read.
Sure they are. Otherwise it would not respond to the world about it. It would not respond to your call when you were offering some tasty treat
But, we are now treading on dangerous ground. Some people would stoutly say that a dog is not at all conscious. Maybe we had best go to the Dictionary and see what it has to say about this word.
In the New College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, on page 283 they give the first definition as: ‘Having an awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, and thoughts.’
Here is the first problem. How do I know that my dog is aware of his own existence? I don’t know that and I don’t see any way to get inside his brain to find that out. I can see that he is aware of his environment. I presume he is aware of his hunger. But, I am stuck. Lets go to the second definition listed as b. ‘Capable of complex response to environment.’
There, that is better. I can see that the dog’s behavior is a response to the environment. But, is it complex? Is it complex enough? How complex is sufficient to be included in this definition? What I am certain is complex for me is pretty simple for some people, like astrophysicists. We had better junk that definition as I see no way to limit the term, complex. How about the next definition labeled as c. ‘Not asleep. Awake.’
This one sounds pretty good but the definition of asleep is tricky. Awake is also a problem. How so? Well, one situation comes to mind. People who sleep walk. Walking is a probable sign of being conscious. That probably might qualify as a complex response. But, sleep walking? Sleep and walking appear to contradict each other.
Most of us have experienced a condition that happens when driving a familiar route. We are not fully aware of our behavior connected to driving the car. Try to remember the number of times you braked. Were we awake? Sure we were, we say. But, how come we do not remember our own actions? Oh, we can say, they were automatic. OK that is fine. But, it would then mean that a complex behavior such as driving can happen in an ‘automatic’ state without our being fully aware of what we are doing.
Sure. We do that all the time. It’s like breathing. We breathe and if we think about it we can alter our breathing, within limits. I have never heard of anyone killing themselves by holding their breath. The lower brain centers will override our so called ‘will power’.
This situation is starting to get entangled. Back to the dictionary. It goes into the psychoanalytic definition which says, ‘The component of waking awareness perceptible by an individual at any given instant.’
OK. But how is an outside observer going to know? They cannot know unless the individual tells them so. That excludes my dog and everything else except verbally communicative humans. That doesn’t seem fair to the dog. After all he does come when called, most of the time. He does chase a ball and he sure likes to be fed. At least I assume he is conscious as he does those things.
I like “b” definition the best with the exception of the word, complex. Eliminating that word we have, ‘Capable of response to the environment.’
That is pretty clear. We are able to observe a response. Now we can proceed to see what is conscious.
It would appear that all animal forms, the fauna, are conscious. How about the plants? Although the response is slower there certainly is a response. Not enough water and they wither and die. Deprived of proper nutrients they do not grow well. Their response is not as rapid as the animals but we cannot deny that they respond. The studies that show that plants react to things like classical music sure keep this question open. Even more telling, and confusing, are the experiments that show that seeds that are prayed for grow better than those not prayed for.
Our quest for some limitations on what is conscious leads us to the microscopic world. Under a microscope the behavior of a paramecium appears to be very conscious. It moves towards those bits of material in its world that it ingests and we label as its food. It avoids chemical and electrical currents that could break it down. We see the response. Is it complex?
I thought we had discarded that word. But, I bring it in here to demonstrate that this one celled animal’s behavior is far from simple. Ask any microbiologist and they will launch into a discussion of DNA, peptides, cell membranes and highly complex chemistries.
It would seem that the closer we look into any response we will find that it is far from simple.
Native American tribes in the Northeastern part of what is now the United Sates were described as having a complex ritual of burial. As an example imagine “Uncle John” dies.
Uncle John is then properly prepared for the next stage in his existence. Prayers are said, rituals are performed, and then he is wrapped in a blanket and propped up against the side of the house. He is left there and as he decomposes the members of the household comment on the changes in Uncle John.
Is he responding to his environment? He sure is. Just smell him.
Well, the messing about with Uncle John goes on with further ceremonial acts but the point is made. Uncle John is still responding. Uncle John is being observed responding. He dissolves.
This is getting a bit strange. Aren’t things that are dead not conscious? Isn’t Uncle John dead? We certainly don’t think he is alive sitting there decomposing. And, we don’t see the usual way he responds to the environment. We can call out his name and Uncle John just does not answer the way he used to answer. Don’t we believe in things being dead? Back to the Dictionary to get a clue. The word, dead, on page 338. There are 15 references.
Some are not relevant such as being, ‘Dead wrong.’ Or ‘The dead of night.’
But, let’s review where we are before we get into the world of what might not be conscious. So far we can say that when we see a thing respond to its environment it is conscious. One of the references to the word, dead, indicates that the thing is not responsive. Using Uncle John as an example, once again, we can say that Uncle John is still responding to his environment but he sure is doing it in a different way. If we wish we can say that the previous organization of the stuff of Uncle John is ‘dead’.
We can look at virtually everything in that way. For example the sun is not dead. Some day it will be dead. The stuff it was made of will change over billions of years. When the sun dies it will either turn into a black hole or a dead hunk of rock. But, once again, it really isn’t dead in either sense. It has just changed its organizational state. The new condition is as alive as the previous one.
Sticking with this definition we can see that everything, even subatomic particles are alive. Everything responds to its environment. Even rocks on a mountain respond. They may take a long time to respond but over many years they do respond and change.
There is a problem, however. We can see that many animals have an awareness, or consciousness like ours. But, we probably have a unique form of consciousness that is just ours, and ours, alone.
I said, probably. The reason why is just the same as before. We are not able to get inside the dog’s brain to see if it thinks the way we do.
But, we can check out observed behavior of dogs, apes and other creatures. They do not bury their dead. That is one major observed behavior. Some do appear to mourn their dead, at least for a short period of time. That has been observed in apes, elephants and dogs.
Humans are the only species that we know of that is aware that it is aware. We are conscious of being conscious. We see that people die. They die like Uncle John. We presume that our organized state will become disturbed enough to say that the person we know is no longer ‘there’ when they die.
In Genesis, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree that God said would cause them to die. And, so they did and immediately they became self aware. They knew they were naked. Prior to that event they did not understand they were naked. The awareness they now had differed from all the rest of creation.
Aware of being aware they now knew they were going to die.
My dog lives in the Garden of Eden. There is no death for him as we know it.
Our being aware of being aware, our being conscious of being conscious is a form, an organization. This state of consciousness is not held all the time by any one person. We may realize such a state of consciousness as we think about it, but our attention may soon be on other matters and it is no longer present.
You may have noticed that we are now in another area of observation of behavior. We are not longer able to observe the response to the environment from outside the individual. We are now only able to accept the verbal statements of those people who have experienced this unique form of consciousness. It is this situation that leads many to dismiss these statements and deny the existence of an unique form of consciousness held by humans. But, not necessarily held by all people. Very young children do not grasp this form of awareness. One example is the response of young children to the death of a loved one. Often they seem to be unmoved. They are not able to comprehend the meaning of death,. Such a state is similar to that of our dogs. They are still in the Garden of Eden, or as they grow in understanding as their brain develops, they may gradually step out of that Garden into the awareness of being aware.
It is common for adult dreams to be similar to watching oneself. This type of self observing reports are also found in situations where the person has been in a life threatening situation. They often ‘see’ themselves in the setting such as watching from above in a hospital room, or in an automobile as another auto is about to strike them, or in a battlefield, where their life is in danger. During these periods time is slowed down and action takes place in slow motion.
Who is the one who watches, who is it that observes?
It did happen to me. I was very sick with a blood infection. It was Klebsiella Septicemia with gram negative shock. This condition can be lethal. It was lethal for many patients on the ward. I was 26 years old and in Medical School at the University of Virginia and I was hospitalized in the University Hospital. It was the summer of 1957.
I was alone in my room when suddenly I was looking down at myself in the bed below. I could see myself in the bed and the details of the room were quite clear.
If I was asked ,’Where were you?’ I would have answered, “Up above, right below the ceiling.’
‘But, who was that you were looking at?’
‘Why it was me, of course.’
‘But, where were you? I mean the you that is the, if I may use the term, the real you?’
‘The one down there on the bed.’
‘Really? How do you know that?’
‘Because I knew that I had a choice to stay or to go.’
‘You mean a voice?’
‘No, not at all. It was just a clear sense that I knew I had that choice.’
‘That sounds odd.’
‘I know it does. But, odder still was the clear knowledge I had that it made no difference at all if I stayed or went.’
‘Went? Went where?’
‘It was somewhere to the side away from the room.’
‘No lights or glowing or anything like that?’
‘Nope. Just the idle choice. Meaning it made no difference if I stayed or went.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I thought. Stay. And, I was promptly back down in my body.’
‘Did that experience have any effect on you?’
‘Yes. It scared me. I was afraid to tell anybody about it fearing they would think that the bubble in my level was off center.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because this was before there were the reports of near death experiences and I had never heard of it.’
‘When did you tell someone about it?’
‘Ten years later.’
‘What do you make of it now?’
‘Well, I really want to deny it happened. Or, I want to say that it was some sort of defense mechanism that allows us to die in peace. But, to do either I would have to deny what I experienced. It is similar to denying any other real event in my life such as a lethal accident I was in when I was 7 years old. Two people died in the car that hit our car. My parents were injured. The memory of that event is still vivid now when I am 76. If there was some sort of biologic brain mechanism that would be comforting then
I think it would be really comforting such as visualizing heaven or something similar. This was just plain bland. No emotion attached at all.’
‘Well, that in itself seems to mean something to you.’
‘Yes, it does. It opens the door to the possibility that there is an entity that is me, that is what I really am as an identity, which is distinctly separate from my body.’
‘Do you mean the soul?’
‘Maybe. umm, yes. It sure seems to indicate something that I might just as well call my soul.’