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The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates

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The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates INTRODUCTION The Many Faces of Consciousness: A Field Guide Guven Gfizeldere There is perhaps no other phenomenon besides This testimonial was one of the many unsettling consciousness that is so familiar to each of us and personal accounts of "becoming conscious" under yet has been so elusive to any systematic study, general anesthesia, gathered in response to the philosophical or scientific. In thinking about con- following advertisement, which appeared in four sciousness, the puzzlement one often finds oneself national newspapers in Great Britain in 1984: in is rather like St. Augustine's riddle in his con- templations about the nature of time: When no SURGERY: Have you ever been conscious dur- one asked him, he knew what it was; being asked, ing a surgical operation when you were supposed however, he no longer did. (Augustine of Hippo to be anaesthesized? A medical research team 1961: Book 11.) would like an account of your experiences. What is at the heart of this puzzlement? Is there Write in confidence. a genuine difficulty that underlies it? What are the The goal of this advertisement was to gather specific issues that comprise the problem of con- firsthand accounts of gaining consciousness under sciousness? (Is there really a "the problem of general anesthesia, in order to investigate the consciousness"?) And are we facing a phenom- truth of a number of patients' discomforting post- enon the understanding of which lies forever be- surgery reports and to provide legal guidance for yond our intellectual capacities? These are the the accumulating court cases.2 questions that I will pursue below. Whatever philosophical problems may be as- The overarching goal of this introduction is to sociated with the term consciousness, it might be provide a field guide (with a particular perspec- thought that it would be a straightforward matter tive) for anyone interested in the history and to specify an operational definition of being con- present status of philosophical issues in the study scious for anesthesiologists to work with. Can of consciousness. Part One is a preliminary over- consciousness simply not be detected on the basis view of the current philosophical positions in the of the patient's being alert and responsive? What literature, as well as a discussion of the unique is in question, after all, is neither the notoriously difficulties inherent in the concept and nature elusive problem of phenomenal experience nor of consciousness. Part Two is an account of the the concept of the evanescent Humean self. study of consciousness in the history of modern A brief look at the anesthesiology literature, psychology. Finally, Part Three is an exposition brimming with terms like real awareness and in- of the mosaic of philosophical puzzles of con- cipient consciousness, quickly proves otherwise. sciousness, as well as an exploration of their in- 1 (Cf. Rosen and Lunn 1987.) If anything, the con- terrelations. sensus is that "with the spectral edge of the EEG [electroencephalogram] or median frequency, or any other processed EEG signal, there does PART ONE not seem to be a clear cut-off, without overlap, CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS between consciousness and unconsciousness" (Vickers 1987, p. 182). The phenomenon of con- The feeling of helplessness was terrifying. I tried to let the sciousness does not have clear-cut boundaries, staff know I was conscious but I couldn't move even a finger or eyelid It was like being held in a vice and grad- and its complex structure does not admit any ually I realized that I was in a situation from which there easy formulations. (See, for instance, the Roche was no way out. I began to feel that breathing was im- Handbook of Differential Diagnosis on "Coma" possible, and I just resigned myself to dying. [1979] and on "Transient Loss of Consciousness" —Patient: Male, aged fifty-four, bronchoscopy, 1978. [1989].) Even if it is in principle possible to invent Giiven Giizeldere Approaching Consciousness a "consciousness monitor," a device that would in nature, the mysteries of time, space, and gravity— the soul in the same breath, nor does anyone refer I The Puzzle of Consciousness detect the physical signs of the presence of con- We do not yet have the final answers to any of the to language as "that evanescent thing." So it sciousness in a patient, no such technology is questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular seems obvious that consciousness is perceived anywhere in sight, because it is not even known These questions do not have any easy, obvious genetics, and evolutionary theory, but we do know how as special, possibly unique, and not readily ame- to think about them. The mysteries haven't vanished, what exactly is to be measured. answers. Nor is there at present anything that nable to ordinary scientific or philosophical ex- could be regarded as a received view on problems but they have been tamed With consciousness, The root of the problem lies deeper than the planation. of consciousness in the scientific and philosoph- however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness inadequacy of the technology or the lack of suffi- Some take this sense of mystery even further, ical community. Furthermore, it is common to stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the cient data, however. What seems to be critically and this attitude is not at all restricted to the find serious doubts expressed in the literature most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused, lacking is a solid theoretical framework to ground popular press. It is in fact possible to find the about whether there can ever be a complete un- (pp. 21-22) and facilitate the experimental research. For ex- same sentiments expressed in philosophical and derstanding of the phenomenon of consciousness. ample, there is no established consensus, even in Dennett should not be taken as promoting the scientific circles, by those whom Owen Flanagan The gloomy opening lines of Thomas Nagel's the medical field, as to what should count as the sense of mystery, however. After all, his book is (1991) calls the "New Mysterians." For instance, famous essay, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" criteria of consciousness, so AS to demarcate the entitled Consciousness Explained. Of course, it is Colin McGinn (1989) finds it humanly impossible have become formative for many in thinking domain of the conscious from that of the uncon- hard to say that everyone (or even many) agrees ever to understand "how technicolor phenomen- about consciousness: "Consciousness is what scious or the nonconscious. The problem with with Dennett's conviction. In fact, the general ology can arise from grey soggy matter," and ap- makes the mind-body problem really intract- building a consciousness monitor is not confined sentiment among those who work on conscious- provingly quotes the English biologist Huxley able Without consciousness the mind-body to a lack of sufficiently fine-grained measuring ness (including philosophers, psychologists, and who famously stated: "How it is that anything so instruments; it ultimately has to do with not problem would be much less interesting. With neuroscientists) seems to be on the "puzzled" side. remarkable as a state of consciousness comes knowing where to begin measuring and where to consciousness, it seems hopeless" (Nagel 1974, Moreover, in the wake of a recent rise in inter- about as a result of irritating nervous tissue is just end up with the measured quantities.3 pp. 165-166). est in the study of consciousness, almost each ap- as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when The puzzle of consciousness can be regarded Aladdin rubbed bis lamp" (p. 349).6 Worse, it is not clear whether everyone pearance of consciousness as a subject matter in in various ways, all the way from a supernatural means the same thing by the term consciousness, the popular press has been tagged with some ele- The expression of this sort of puzzlement is mystery that will forever elude naturalist expla- even within the bounds of a single discipline. ment of mystery. For instance, Francis Crick and hardly new. Similar perplexity has been expressed nations, to a natural but extremely complicated There is considerable variation in people's pre- Christof Koch called consciousness the "most by a number of people over the years, especially phenomenon about which we know very little. theoretic intuitions, for instance, regarding the mysterious aspect of the mind-body problem" in since the mid-nineteenth century, with the ad- And some of the time, the blue line that lies in kinds of creatures to which consciousness can be their article that appeared in a special issue of vancement of neurology and neuropsychology 4 between becomes very thin. There are also those attributed. Scientific American titled Mind and Brain (Sep- and the consequently well-grounded conviction who express skepticism about the existence of tember 1992). Discover magazine enlisted con- And in the absence of well-grounded theories, that facts about consciousness must have some consciousness as a real phenomenon or about the sciousness as one of the "ten great unanswered the lack of robust pretheoretical intuitions be- explanatory basis in the facts about the brain. For coherence of its conceptual grounding, as well as questions of science" (November 1992), and comes even more importunate. Consider again instance, in 1874, physicist John Tyndall made others with a much more positive outlook, busily Omni published a special issue on consciousness the case of anesthesia. A person who is totally the following remark: "We can trace the devel- constructing their own accounts of consciousness but titled it "Science and the Soul" (October unresponsive to stimuli can, in one very impor- opment of a nervous system, and correlate with it to solve the puzzle.
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