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Me and My Consciousness
I have no standing to write about the phenomenon of human consciousness. It used to be that you qualified as a contributor to the topic based on religious or philosophical credentials. I did major in philosophy as an undergraduate almost fifty years ago, but that’s not only inadequate — it’s irrelevant. Now consciousness commentators are neuroscientists and while I read a lot, I have no stature.
It’s probably my lack of sophistication, but I’m uncomfortable with the current tone of the discussion. I’m easy to dismiss, but I can’t help but think that consciousness has been getting a bad rap by a lot of smart people. Most of the scientists being published on the matter are saying we just think our own little personal consciousness is in charge of us because it feels that way. That’s just a story we tell, the research-based thinkers say.
Consciousness is not the driver of our bus. It is a passenger looking out a window that produces its uniquely distorted view. The view out our consciousness window has to be a teeny bit behind the Moment — Now, which is always just up ahead. That’s becoming the consensus perspective, as I understand it.
One frequently cited proof of this view is the demonstrable fact that our behaviors have neurological predecessors to related activity in the cortical areas currently seen as the seat of consciousness. We start doing stuff way before we are aware of the need or desire to do them.
If that’s what consciousness is — the clear and articulate awareness of a situation and a resulting plan of action — then it is probably true that consciousness is not an actor Now, in the moment. At least certainly not most of the time.
But maybe there’s more to consciousness than that internally verbalized presence, maybe that’s just a millisecond-delayed artifact of consciousness. Maybe consciousness is involved in the first nanosecond of neuromuscular stimulation in a way we have not yet noticed that enables us to avoid that snake or return that tennis ball. It wouldn’t be the first time we didn’t know it all when we thought we did.
What did produce that initial neuromuscular stimulation? In-coming data –shape in the path. Top-down inference based on preliminary input — could be snake. Invoking snake in any way yields multiple stimulation effects…
