Science and Spirit Weekly Post: More on Consciousness and the Brain, Body and Mind
I appreciate the discussion that has been going on about consciousness following last week's post. Several good points have been made and I plan on chiming in soon! This week's post continues the ideas on this great subject. I figure it's time to 'show my hand' and give you all a little more of my own thoughts on the subject instead of posting just what others think. Here is something I have been working on. May you all stay warm and cozy, have pleasant thoughts and good company! Cheers! Julia Bystrova
Ideas about the Mind, Body, Emotions and Consciousness
by J. Bystrova I will now give a brief look at some issues within this exploding subject: studies in neuroscience and the 'brain-mind-body' system. I write these together this way because it has been compellingly clear that they are inextricably linked and to really understand one you run into ideas in the other. In a nutshell, I believe it is ongoing relationality that makes us what we are.
Studies in the last two decades have verified the presence of neuron activity in the body itself, previously thought to exist in the brain alone. Neurochemist Candace Pert describes these peptides as "informational substances" distributed throughout the organism. (Pert 1997, 71) And now many involved in this research are subscribing to the idea that mind and emotions are known through relations of the system, that subjective awareness and feelings are the result of experiencing the constant differential flux of this neuronal activity. This effort to understand the nature of subjective awareness, mind, emotions and the like has been bringing together the subjective and objective realms within science, or as neuroscientist Susan Greenfield has predicted, there will be more interest in the interface between the subjective and the objective . . . I believe that’s the direction were going. (Floyd 2000, 26)
According to the Scientific American Special Report on Mind and Brain, the brain is considered to be the most complex object in the universe. This report tells us that it is comprised of a trillion cells, 100 billion of them linked in networks that give rise to intelligence, creativity, emotion, consciousness and memory. We are also informed that most thought and perception takes place as nerve impulses, or action potentials, that move through the cortex. The mind is considered to rise from the collective activity of all the brains regions. However, this idea of mind is being expanded to include the body by many prominent researchers.
More than ever, this has led us to understand things in terms of relations because the brain system itself is signaling through constant change and connection, registering input and generating output as a result of the interactions of different information. One simple example of this in terms of the body's senses is that of flavor which is experienced as the relational product of smell and taste. So, generally speaking, the working of the brain-body is a system that continuously utilizes relations in order to produce action and intelligence. The ongoing synapses between neurons, a chemical-electrical transfer, is another example that can lead us to see this bio-substrate as a relational field or fabric. Consider the following quote from Huberto Maturana, whose work in the biology of cognition (with a focus on the neurological, ontological and evolutionary basis of emotioning and languaging) is considered seminal:
The nervous system operates as a closed network of active neuronal elements that interact with each other in such a way that any change in the relations of activity between the neuronal elements in one part of the network gives rise to changes in the relations of activities of the neuronal elements in other parts of it.(Maturana 2001)
Our experiences then, are the ongoing relational products of the whole system. Maturana also defines emotions as relational behaviors that correspond to different bodily dynamics. His explanation of the nature of the living system, of autopoeisis, has provided a profound and systemic definition of the dynamics of living.[1] Maturana offers a view about emotions as relational behaviors:
As such our emotions guide moment after moment our doings by specifying the relational domain in which we operate at any instant, and give to our doings their character as actions. It is the configuration of emotioning that we live as Homo sapiens what specifies our human identity, not our rational behavior or our use of one kind of technology or another. Rational behavior begun as a feature of the living of our ancestors with language in the use that they made of the abstractions of the coherences of their daily living as they operated as languaging beings. But it was then as it is now emotions what specified the domain of rational behavior in which they operated at any instant (Maturana 2001).
This converges with the ideas put forth by biologist Charles Birch, who asserts that feelings are the substrate of existence itself. (Birch 1995) In addition, Antonio Damasio maintains that all emotions have some kind of regulatory role to play, and that emotions are about the life of an organism and assist the organism in maintaining life. (Damasio 1999, 51) Emotions can be seen then as the relational media for all conscious entities, and which lie at the doorway to an experiential awareness more basic than cognition. In fact, Damasio even ventures to say that its possible that feelings are poised at the very threshold that separates being from knowing and thus have a privileged connection to consciousness. (Damasio 1999, 43) Damasio explores the aspect of the emotional state of a body as that which we experience when there are changes within this brain-body system, or as the title of his book says, the feeling of what happens.
If emotions are the borderland of consciousness, as argued by Birch and Damasio, and if this constitutes the foundation of the whole brain-body system, then what is the difference between this and the mind? The mind, it seems, has no tangible borders (as distinct from brain), We are affected by ideas from the past or halfway across the world, or we can travel in our minds to distant galaxies. The way we think, what we choose to focus on, affects how and what we perceive. Mind, in this sense, can be thought of as kind of a continuum. Our brains and bodies, which contain the substrate for the mind, are discrete objects clearly defined by physical boundaries. It seems that what constitutes the mind is very much similar to the software of a computer. We can see and measure hardware, but the information of the software is intangible, it needs the physical circuitry to be accessed. Where does it go when the 'circuit' is off? It is only latent and physically unavailable. Perhaps, then, the mind is actually an awareness that selects or directs a general intelligence, the hardware of a whole body activity. Maturana argues that intelligence is a basic phenomenon that has to do with the plasticity for participation in changing relations. He tells us: Intelligence is something very basic, it happens in all living systems. Intelligence has to do with the ability to participate appropriately in changing behavior and changing relations. Intelligence is pertinent to us when this plasticity in behavior has to do with us. For example when we say that an animal is intelligent we are saying that it has entered into a flow of consensuality, a flow of plastic behavior, with us. When we say a person is intelligent, we refer to the plastic flow in whatever relationship the person is participating in, including relationships in various conceptual domains. (Maturana et al 2001 ) And carrying this over to the idea of human relations, we find Maturana offers a compelling idea of how intelligence emerges in general:
Since we exist in relationship, and our intelligence arises in relationship, the nature of the relationship affects the emergence of intelligent behavior. It is not just a matter of unpleasant or stressful emotions masking our real intelligence in an interaction, an interaction that does not encourage and evoke the plastic flow of our behavior actually limits our intelligence. That is why good teachers may be accused oh, you just happened to get all the intelligent students--when what is happening is that the students become intelligent in the interaction with the teacher. The same is true of parenting.(Maturana et al. 2001 )
In this sense, intelligence, like emotions, is a brain-body phenomenon that then is experienced. This experience is always a result of changing relations, external and internal to the body environment. So intelligence could be seen as a relational continuum as well. Thus we have mind together with the experience of emotions, which brings us to the subject of consciousness, which Damasio describes as an entirely private first-person phenomenon which occurs as part of the private, first-person process we call mind. (Damasio 1999, 12) Could consciousness, as the arena where mind and experience meet, be the abstract whole that brings together the philosophical ideas of continuity and discreteness, knowing and being? William Hurlbut of Stanford University Medical Department offers:
The mind is irreducibly transactional, defined in a 'conversation' that is grounded in empathy and experienced in community. The categories of thought based on our shared biology are placed in a web of meaning as our consciousness is constructed through the inter-communion of our minds. Our ideas of self, society, and the significance of life, are all formed within the language of a shared cultural narrative. As the philosopher Charles Taylor writes, "the genesis of the human mind is ... not 'monological,' not something each accomplishes on his or her own, but dialogical (Hurlbut 2000)
I support this view. However, I suggest that perhaps consciousness is not "constructed" so much as found greater expression through increasing connections. In summary, I now offer definitions of the following terms, based on the combined thoughts of those here cited, as well as general reading in the subject.
Intelligence: The degree of plasticity an entity has in relating to its environment, and the degree of ability in adjusting internal relationships as a result of or in response to these external relationships.
Mind or mental realm: The entire state of the organism plus its environment, most notably including the coupling between these two structures. Mind is a relational entity, a phenomenon that consists of an ability to relate. It could be argued even that mind is relationality itself. This ability is what enables it to be outside the realm of space/time causality. We can relate with an idea about a distant galaxy, for example.
Brain: The hardware that exhibits deeply complex systems of neural connections which, facilitate the information from which the brain-body system can select.
Body: The physical substrate for the events of ongoing complex relating that connects us with other external systems. The experience of the body is known through the intelligence of emotions, which includes the response to messages in the nervous system. This emotional substrate conveys the expression of a primal, physical consciousness. If this is true, then the argument for artificial intelligence developing consciousness would have to address it’s ability to generate/process emotions.
Consciousness: Consciousness is the vast informational field in which we are embedded and of which we are intrinsically a part. All information about all things exists latent (in potentia) and can be accessed through the hardware of the brain/body system. Mind is what accesses this information and that which does the relating; this bridges the potential into actual.
Considering the fact that there are innumerable relations affecting any one individual and that even slight differences multiply to allow for the great diversity we see in the things of the world, this idea can be appropriated by a materialistic philosophy, explaining uniqueness of volition without drawing on nonphysical causes as Damasio or (even more so) Steven Pinker (1997) attempt to do. However, it has also been argued by philosopher David Chalmers, that no explanation given wholly in physical terms can ever account for the emergence of conscious experience, (Chalmers 1996, 77) or by Susan Greenfield, who believes the subjectivity of consciousness is inviolate to science, (Floyd 2000, 29) and cannot be reduced, so too can life not be reduced to objective views on matter. Likewise, Philip Clayton has also defended what has been called the insufficiency thesis, which, he tells us, predicts that neuroscience will not be sufficient to explain all we come to know about the human person. (Clayton, 2000). Clayton argues for an "emergentist" account of mind[2] which is one argument for keeping an irreducible mystery within the whole subject. However, I would argue that this is due to the fundamentally mysterious nature of existence which is at the ground of being. This only displays emergent properties, in its manifestations. I ask us to consider that it is the evolution of consciousness into self-consciousness[3]for example, our ability to reflect on this subject that is an emergent "property".
There is a fundamental mystery as to the origin of consciousness, because, as Birch writes, this perception does not reveal to us the intrinsic nature of things, but only the way in which they act, and are acted upon by other things." (Birch, 1977) Our perceptions and knowledge cannot logically 'think the whole'. To have a closer understanding of such things, we must augment our reason with an ability to settle into a greater, more abstract transcendent knowing that accesses this foundation of being, this conscious whole. This brings us to the threshold of of what I call spirituality...but I'll save that for next time!
[2] Recall ideas on complexity and also on the origins of life: Autopoeisis is the self-organizing process that allows life to emerge and regulate.
[3] We are not isolated systems. The reference to a subjective, holographic whole is even more accurate, I believe. The individuals gain in intelligence through association and the whole collective then becomes more intelligent.
