Some English words are very fascinating like the longest word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis". It is a lung disease. "Obsession" is also one of my favorite words. Some words seem simple but anxious everyone. There is a word that has made anxious psychologists, philosophers, and scientists for years. It seems simple but in fact, it is deeper than the oceans. This is the word "Consciousness". The word "Consciousness" irritated scholars a lot in the field of philosophy, religion, or human relationship with this universe. Some bizarre and remarkable ideas were also proposed in the fight with this word. For instance, some philosophers say that the consciousness with which we visualize this world is logical. This consciousness is an illusion or deception. When we see the world with this deceptive lens, it seems to us that the physical world exists but in fact, it is the fallacy of our eyes. This world is an illusion. This world does not exist in reality. This is the creation of our mind and consciousness only.
Let's try to understand this strange phenomenon of consciousness. In this regard, Philosopher Rene Descartes will be our first companion. He says that the human mind and body are two separate entities. They work separately and this is called Dualism but we never feel this in our real life. Then how do mind and body connect? Descartes has answered it. According to him, Pineal Gland present in our brain connects our mind with our body. Therefore, the seat of consciousness is this Pineal Gland. But as time passed and Neuroscience improved, scientists and psychologists realized that the idea of Pineal Gland was wrong. It became clear that our consciousness is not imprisoned in one gland but is scattered in our brain. When we see, feel, listen, or remember something, the brain uses its different parts for each process. Therefore, there is no single center of consciousness. This was also not correct scientifically and that's why the scientists, philosophers, and psychologists made more models of our mind. Among these, one is the outrageous model called Cartesian Theater.
Cartesian Theater is a modern myth that gives a different understanding of our consciousness. This term was popularized by a famous philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett in his book "Consciousness Explained". According to the concept of Cartesian Theater, a theater of reality is running in one of the corners of your mind. There is a screen and a stage where everything you listen to, see, or feel in this world appears but a small man is sitting on a small chair in the theater watching all these things to process the data for making decisions. Do you know who that man is? That man is you and from here the concept of Cartesian Materialism arises. According to it, there is such a boundary line in our mind where all the data arrives, and at that point, the data is presented which becomes our experience or consciousness. This idea of Cartesian Theater looks very attractive and one becomes very intimidated by it. However, according to Daniel Dennett, the idea of Cartesian Theater is not right for the comprehension of consciousness. According to him, no single organ in our brain exists where consciousness converges. Our experience of consciousness is scattered in our brains. Daniel Dennett opened new doors of consciousness by discarding the concept of Cartesian Theater. He constrained us to think that our brain is not a single entity but complex parallel processes are running in it and from here another concept of consciousness emerged which is called the Multiple Drafts Model.
According to this model, our consciousness comes into existence after the interpretation of complex, chaotic, and competing realities. Imagine a chios in the newsroom. Reporters are running here and there. Editors are working on different stories and no story has an authoritative version until it is printed. Our brain is also like a newsroom. It processes a huge amount of data. It runs different information parallel and creates multiple drafts of a single experience. These are present in our minds in a discarded way. These experiences fight with each other and the experience that wins at the end becomes our consciousness. It looks like an intense and detailed process but it happens at lightning speed. That's why whatever we see, smell, listen to, or feel in our practical life is unified and seamless.
A significant amount of research has been conducted on the concept of consciousness during the 19th and 20th centuries. Scientists aimed to understand the process of consciousness creation. They succeeded in finding the areas of the brain responsible for movement, speech, or memory but failed to understand the concept of consciousness. This puzzle is called the Hard Problem of Consciousness raises some questions. For instance, how does our physical brain create subjective experience? Why does an inner life exist in our brains? If you close your eyes, imagine cutting a yellow lemon with all your focus, and putting it on your tongue. You will feel the tangy taste of the lemon in your mind.
.jpg "Lemon in consciousness")
How does our brain create these subjective experiences? This is the essence of the Hard Problem. When this problem started making the scientists overly anxious, people started turning to religion for support. They said that consciousness was metaphysical. This is beyond human understanding which is created by God.
Once science and philosophy begin pursuing something, they never leave it incomplete. According to Daniel Bennett, the argument of the Hard Problem is misguided and flawed. He said, "Once you explain all aspects of consciousness, you're essentially detailing how your brain processes information, makes decisions, and reports experiences." Understanding the functions of the brain is key to understanding consciousness. Bennett associated consciousness with a magic trick, where a magician creates such a clear illusion that we believe the trick was performed in reality. Our brain also creates illusions through experiences. It seems magic, but there is a proper method behind it.
Daniel Bennett encouraged the researchers with his arguments to understand the functional aspects of the mind rather than focusing on the subjective experience. Here, he also discussed the connection between language and consciousness. Amazingly, our language is deeply connected to our consciousness. We need to conduct a thought experiment to understand this. Imagine you live in a world without words or language. Without language, we won't be able to comprehend complex ideas. How will we plan and improve our lives without words? How can we make our lives better by learning from past experiences?
Language helps us in higher-order thinking. What is the connection of our language with our consciousness? We can understand it with the concept called Joycen Machine. It's not a physical machine, but a natural software in our brain connected to our language. It originated from the name of the brilliant writer James Joyce. He was famous for his unique style of writing called Stream of Consciousness Style. It is a brilliant style of writing in which a writer describes all his thoughts and feelings present in the character's brain and you feel that you have reached inside the brain of the character and reading his thoughts. That's why the stream-of-consciousness style seems disconnected. You don't feel coherence and things look confusing. We can understand it with the help of an instance. Imagine it is raining outside in the background. In the Stream of Consciousness Style, it will be explained as:
I had to leave home earlier, but it was raining. I don't like heavy rain or getting wet, and I'm sure nobody does. Why didn't I bring my red umbrella? I think I lost it or maybe it's broken. I can't believe I'm so exhausted. The meeting was about to start soon, and I didn't even finish my coffee. I might need to go to the store later. Did I finish the milk, or did I have porridge instead? No, it was bread. I forgot to buy bread, and now I'm running late again. Why does this always happen to me? Every time I try, something always goes wrong.
It seems that the character is suffering from Schizophrenia disorder, but it is a brilliant style of writing that helps you to understand the real feelings of a character. The purpose of all this was to show you the power of a language.
According to Daniel Bennett, our internal narrative is our consciousness and this internal narrative creates our sense of self. Therefore, our consciousness is a product of our linguistics and culture. This is the reason animals lack such a level of consciousness. It was a great contribution of Daniel Bennett who made language the center of consciousness to bridge neuroscience and cultural studies. He proved that our consciousness is not the only product of neurofiring in our brain but it is a complex interplay of our biology, language, and culture.
We have now reached the final segment of our long journey to understand consciousness. "Perhaps now we are delving deep. Think about the last time you made a major decision in your life. Did you feel like you were in control, or did you feel like you had free will? If it was your own decision, it means you acted with free will."
According to Daniel Bennett, we think that we are free but in reality, it is not so. Whatever decision we make is the result of those complex competing drafts that fight in the brain and the draft that wins becomes our decision. It doesn't mean that choices are not real. It means that the process of decision-making in our mind is very intricate and complex. We feel that we have made a unified decision but there are millions and millions of permutations and combinations behind it that may be unknown to us. Bennett also gives a strange idea about our identity and selfhood. He says that our self is a fiction created by our brain. Our brain creates our identity as it collects our memories and experiences. Therefore, our identity evolves across our lives. It seems that our identity is static but it is in continuous evolution. It is a fluid and it comes into existence all life.
These ideas have significant ethical and social implications. If all the activities we engage in throughout our lives are the result of complex processes in our brains, then who holds the moral responsibility, humans or their uncontrollable brains?