Being conscious is having feelings.
We control our civilisation, as much as our selves, using our feelings. Our repertoire of biogical feelings have evolved from ancient features of homeostatis. But what feels good for us, in our excess, is not good for the biosphere.
I have come across two very thoughtful and revealing books, which are complements. The author of each is a respected expert in their chosen field. The first is the very handy pocket-sized book, called “What is Life? : Understand Biology in Five Steps” by Paul Nurse, who is a geneticist and cell biologist, and has worked on how reproduction of cells is controlled.
I mention this one first, because without those “five steps”, the assumed life sciences grounding for taking the second book seriously, might be missing. I feel in general that much of contributions to Medium and other publication places of writings about almost anything and everything, sometimes lack a clear biological grounding about just who the hell do we think we are? We are evolved biological creatures. How much more does that really determine our thoughts and actions, much more than we are aware or are capable of saying?
Since we are biological creatures, all our problems will be pushed back down into our inescapable biology, and the biology of all the rest of our related world creatures. Climate and soil, atmosphere and ocean chemistry are ultimately biological properties. We are burning up the global reserves of once buried fossil fuels, which actually means that most of our civilisation is being run by the combustion of dead biology. William R Catton (Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change) called us “detritivores”. Yes we share a feature with various critters that also get most of their energy from decomposing plant and animal parts as well as faeces. Our problem is that nature needed fossil fuels to stay buried for a very much longer time.
How much we are conscious of this, depends on the biological mechanisms of human conciousness. Conciousness comes from our biology. There is no other place for it. There have some well described breakthroughs in understanding how just recently, because I have only just come across a new book.
We have had a lack of progress in figuring out conciousness for nearly a century since Freud. This seems to have been due to going about it the wrong way, by looking in all the wrong places in our brains. There has been a long standing bias that only humans have true conciousness, and only humans have a big cerebral cortex in relation to our body size. Therefore somehow the cerebral cortex must explain our sense of being concious. The cortex has the “higher” functions. It is where we have maps for our sensory and motor worlds. The brainstem looks after all those automated visceral “lower” animal functions. Essential for life yes, but surely not for our higher feelings and consciousness?
There has also been a long period of research in neuro-sciences of trying to eliminate the “subjective” from its methods and terminology. How far can you get by with study of conciousness while trying to exclude interior reports of it, especially feelings, from consideration?
The puzzle of the neuro-physiology of conciousness has revealed hints and clues, even while attention was on the cerebral cortex. These I think have been very well narrated in the book “The Hidden Spring : A Journey to the Source of Consciousness”, by Mark Solms. I don’t think I will able to describe more than a few of the first concepts here, because you need you need the whole book for that, and I haven’t yet finished it. After the book is mastered, another step is to come to grips with all of the published evidence and concept details, which will be too much for most of us. Hopefully I won’t need that.
There is sufficient pains taken in the writing for Dr Solms, as he gives his personal journey of interest and discovery, to demonstrate that his main concepts make sense, and have been arrived at by hard research, study and collaborations. Reading this book about them is enjoyable and enlightning. There are details to find, and more to absorb, but important culprits and paradoxes of consciousness have been nailed down for the rest of us. The work of Dr Solms and other pioneers on this trail of investigation are backed up by their technical publications and conference work.
This is just a blog from me, I am going to note what has been put in this book and has boggled my conciousness so far. Read the book. Neuro-science has let us get away with our preconcieved ideas for too long. Animal rights activists will like this book.
In gross anatomical injuries causing unwanted losses of major bits of cerebral cortex, humans have reported that they still feel fully aware, and human, despite missing sensory, motor or co-ordination abilities.
Children who by developmental accident or genetic susceptability have their entire cerebral cortex missing, but are managed and cared for, are noted to have expressive behaviorial evidence of appropriate emotions, appear to recognize their favourite care givers, and seem to have some awareness of themselves.
“As you might have gathered, I don’t believe that the cortical theory of consciousness is valid. In fact, I would go so far as to say that animals and human beings can be conscious even if they lack a cortex entirely. I think there is ‘something it is like’ to be a hydra-nencephalic child.”
Chapter 5 looks into the generation of feelings — “affect”. Feelings are how our animal brainstems tell us what it has comptuted our current survival priorities are. Feelings have both quality, and valance. In order of discussion are Lust, Seeking (exploratory, foraging, related to joy), Rage, Fear, Panic/Grief, Care, Play. These are meaningful to most of us, having experienced these at some time. Play is very important for social development. Seeking allows us reduce uncertainty by exploration.
I am now breaking up on this now to go for an early, preliminary conclusion, with a few direct quotations shown in book sequence order, regarding the anatomical area of deep interest, which is the Peri-Acqueductal-Gray matter, (PAG) which has prime real-estate position in the brainstem region, close to everything, the central canal of the human brainstem for about 14 mm. It is anatomically below the cerebral cortex.
“Any scientific account of consciousness that ignores the fundamental role of feelings misses the main event”.
“researchers have confirmed in all manner of species that relatively small lesions in this core (of the brainstem)— known technically as the reticular activating system — cause coma.”
“Activating feeling states, during positron emission tomagraphy, shows the highest metabolic activity occurs in the brainstem. . . . The cortex becomes conscious only to the extent that it is aroused by the brainstem.”
“Putting it as baldly as I can: all affective circuits converge on the PAG, which is the main output centre for feelings and emotional behaviours.”
I preview the next consideration, in this mind-opener, which is that all of our perception, what we imagine to be the external world, is a model generated by our brains of what we expect to detect in the external world. What appears to match our sensory expectaions gets progressively filtered out, so we can pay attention to uncertainties, new or missed features. Best of all is to reduce uncertainty.
“To understand the regular conjunctions between the physiological and psychological aspects of consciousness, therefore, we need to go deeper. We must go beyond the disciplinary constraints of psychology and physiology. We scientists typically do so by turning not to metaphysics but to physics. In this case, the answers we require are to be found in the physics of entropy.”
Strangely enough I could not find the word “entropy” in Paul Nurses Book “What is Life”. Even though it uses the word “homeostatis” and feed back.. I see how Paul has avoided the tricky entropy term, choosing instead to present these concepts in ordinary language. Life as chemistry, cells as creating chemical organisation and order, from chaos, and life being controlled by information (DNA sequences, and the construction sequence of amino acids to make proteins. Meaning is related to chemical states and feedback.
The importance of feelings and conciousness in survival of living organisms is to be able to predict and reduce departures from internal chemical disorders. They are important in our social interactions for survival, and our notions of self-importance, and relational importance. Our feelings, perceptions, world view are all internal to us. Their relationship to reality can be tenous, and priorities become maladapted to long term survival. In this set of conciousness states, I don’t see any thing about feedback changes to the behaviour of governing human socities by the rich and powerful. If anything, they are all trying to bail out themselves.
Different disorders , from detection of internal uncertainty, which has to be resolved, produce different qualities and feeling induced actions. Conciousness is awareness for figuring out how to satisfy feelings by reducing them. Now we know we creating gross disorder in our external global chemistry and in the turbulent social relations of states and peoples, what states of human conciousness might be suited to bringing back our world into the range of external conditions best suited to life as we know it? Migration isn’t going to work for us. Who dares internalize our external predicaments into unresolvable feelings? There is no “Planet B”.