Consciousness re-explained

Consciousness looking back at itself

The illusionist theory of consciousness is that phenomenal properties/qualia do not exist but seem to exist, and this is an illusion (Shabasson, 2018). My aim in this essay is to explore how the philosophical theory of Illusionism is flawed and incomplete in its nature, as it misinterprets qualia and the meaning of the term “Illusion” itself. Furthermore, I will also attempt to define illusion and answer the question: Is consciousness an illusion? I argue that the illusionist theory is a very “lethargic” way of looking at consciousness, because it does little to answer the question of what it truly is. What I mean by that is that it does not do anything more than misinterpret this feature and define it as an illusion. 

James Clerk Maxwell discovered the laws of electromagnetism in the nineteenth century, special relativity was discovered by Albert Einstein in 1905, what I am trying to prove is how these major scientific breakthroughs were made just centuries before, a timespan which could be compared to the blink of an eye if looked at through a universal lens. Modern Science is far from explaining certain phenomena with the tools it is currently equipped with. Phenomenon like Consciousness for example.

In “Consciousness Explained”(Dennett, 1991) , Dr. Daniel Dennett used an analogy in which he compared the user-interface of a computer with the role of consciousness in our minds, calling the UI a “user illusion”. I would agree that this is a great analogy for consciousness, however, his terminology is faulty.

The UI is not the “illusion” of the user that is interacting with the computer, it is in fact a functional part of the computational system whose job is to provide a platform for the user’s convenience.

Dennett could further argue by pointing out how the UI just represents the programming, and the hardware, it is not actually a part of it. I would counter that by saying yes it represents the said programming and the hardware of the computer, however, it is still a part of it. The UI arose from the programming to make it easier for the general people to interact with computers. Similarly, our conscious mind arose to help us access parts of the universe and have an actual experience of them, calling this function an “Illusion” would be miswording it. 

Our eyes enable us to see the world around us, who/what is it that truly has the experience of witnessing the world?

Qualia are experienced by all of us, through our bodies which have receivers (like photosensitive receivers in the eye "retina", ears, etc.) that receive signals coming from the outside world and send it to the brain using electro-chemical signals. Regarding this, Dennett argued 

“There is no central arena or depot where these spike trains become recipes for a second transduction that restores the properties transduced at the periphery, or translates them into some sort of counterpart properties of a privileged medium” (Dennett, 2018)

-this is where I would disagree. When we deal with electro-chemical signals, we are dealing with elementary particles, in this instance electrons, thus entering the world of quantum physics (Which is barely understood right now). We know for a fact by the laws of electromagnetism by Maxwell, that every electric current carries a magnetic current along with it. This itself proves Dennett’s argument of “a second transduction” false. The transduction occurs as electro-chemical signals create electro-magnetic waves. This brings us back to the point of modern science not being equipped with the tools to explain such phenomena satisfactorily. It is arguable that we don’t know whether these EM waves do play a role in consciousness or not. I agree, but that is the point, we don’t know yet ; Dennett’s argument however still remains flawed.

The word “illusion” is defined as -

“a misrepresentation of a 'real' sensory stimulus—that is, an interpretation that contradicts objective 'reality' as defined by general agreement",  (West & Jolyon, 1998)

the question “Is consciousness an illusion” could be answered with help of the definition of the word illusion. We all experience consciousness (or more appropriately: qualia), it is an undeniable factor in our daily lives, hence there is a general agreement of it being “real”. Illusionists could be argue that “consciousness” is the misrepresentation of our sensory stimulus that everyone has agreed upon to be the objective “reality”. Then, however, the argument then turns to the question of “What is reality?”. Anil Seth calls reality a “Controlled hallucination”. He also states,

“The brain forms a sort of virtual reality simulation of what is most likely to be going on in the world. The process of building such an inner simulation is not wild and chaotic as it is in full-blown hallucination or psychosis. The brain must construct an inner simulation that makes the best overall sense of the available sensory evidence given what is already known about the world. It must settle upon a hypothesis based on priors that do the best job of minimising prediction error in the long-term. The contribution of the world to perceptual experience is however simply to “reign in” and control the brain’s predictions so that the agent, at least for the most part, avoids surprising sensory encounters with the world.”  (Seth A., 2017)

The rubber hand illusion experiment (Costantini & Haggard, 2007), demonstrates how the mind takes in information from the outside world and at the same time creates the world as well. As explained by Seth, our mind doesn’t just take in objective reality as “input” information provided by the world through our senses, but also constructs the objective reality simultaneously. This demonstrates how little we know about the workings of our neurological system, and how it is too soon to even decide what basic terms like “Illusion” and “reality” truly mean.

An illusionist could argue, however, that this is the perfect example to demonstrate how our consciousness is an illusion created by the mind, and the experience of the fake rubber arm feeling real, proves how our brain creates the illusion of “experiencing” that real feeling. This argument is partially true; I agree with the point of the experience being an “Illusion”, but it still doesn’t tackle the point of actually having an “experience” of it being real i.e., the qualia aspect of it. For the subject in the experiment, the rubber arm felt as real as it could to them. Qualia, as I pointed out in the argument against Dennett, is still not explainable in the terms of it just being an “illusion”.

Consciousness as a whole is understood and looked at by people using different perspectives, and one such interpretation is by Susan Blackmore. In her article “Delusions of consciousness” (Blackmore, S. ,2016), she talked about instead of asking “Am I conscious now?” or “What is consciousness?”, we should rather ask “What is it like when I am not asking what it is like?”. She argues that the delusion is in believing that consciousness exists as a continuous stream. She believes that only the act/choice of looking into consciousness reveals itself, and otherwise it isn’t present.

This argument seems to ignore the fact that there exists “something” that chooses to act and peer inside to look at the “supposed” consciousness. It could be compared to the argument of a person denying the presence of blood running through their veins, and only acknowledging it after piercing their skin and saying, “The blood only came out once I pierced my skin and looked at it, otherwise it was a delusion to believe it ran through my body if I didn’t pierce my skin.”

Blackmore’s argument if closely analyzed contradicts itself, because the mere act of introspection is caused by consciousness itself. If there wasn’t any consciousness before the act of introspection, how was the person able to introspect at all?

Blackmore might argue that the act of introspection itself is an illusion. When talking about the delusion she argues that “Neuroscience and disciplined introspection give the same answer: there are multiple processes with no clear distinction between conscious and unconscious.” What seems to be the case here is that she is using the term “consciousness” synonymously with “awareness”. Rather than talking about consciousness as a whole, which includes the conscious and sub-conscious mind.

While analyzing Dennett’s analogy of the computer user-interface, I argued how he misinterprets the interface as a “user-illusion”, instead of looking at it as an integral part of the system, whose function is to enable the user to use the computer with ease. I also put forth an argument stating how we don’t yet have the tools of science - to understand consciousness and how it arises - in the argument against Dennett’s point on double transduction.

What we consider “real” and an “Illusion” has a thin blurry line differentiating the two, and as science progresses and discovers new avenues of research, these lines seem to get even thinner. We currently question our Consciousness being an illusion, soon we might start questioning whether this “illusion” might, in itself, be our reality.

Bibliography

1. Shabasson, D. S. (2018). Explaining the illusion of phenomenal consciousness. CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/434/

2. Dennett, Daniel C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Penguin Books.

3. Dennett, D. C. (2018). Facing up to the hard question of consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 373(1755), 20170342. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0342

4. West, & Jolyon, L. (1998, August 12). Illusion | Definition, Examples, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/illusion

5. TED. (2017, July 18). Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth | TED [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo.

6. Costantini, M., & Haggard, P. (2007). The rubber hand illusion: Sensitivity and reference frame for body ownership. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(2), 229–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2007.01.001.

7. Blackmore, S. (2016). Delusions of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(11-12), 52-64.