The
neurobiologist Antonio Damasio defines consciousness something like ‘not
asleep, the opposite of being asleep or dead’. He opposes consciousness to
being unconscious. This is pretty much how consciousness is generally
understood, but I think this definition is too broad and that it leads to
ambiguity: there is an ample range of degrees of mental states, and only some of
them are conscious.
Qualia
may be defined
as ‘the subjective quality of mental experiences such as the redness of red or
the painfulness of pain’. They are universal, abstract concepts covering
subsets of individual concepts. Some examples are goodness, religiousness,
heroism, immortality, wickedness, and the concept of beauty. During the
Scholasticism (from about the middle of the 11th to about the middle
of the15th century) it was bitterly discussed whether qualia had
independent existence (realism) as opposed to being a human invention
(nominalism). The latter is the prevailing theory today.
I
venture the assertion that consciousness is a qualium and as such has no
neurophysical, let alone physical existence per se. It is perhaps even a
misleading concept: it implies something durable and permanent, almost material,
at least something measurable. But so far no research has revealed the
neurological location of consciousness and it may well be that it will never be
found.
I
prefer the concept ‘Mind’ to ‘Consciousness’: ‘Mind’ does not convey
the ambiguity of ‘consciousness’ and would encompass all mental
states.
Conscious
states are characterized by independent meditative brain activity with a high
degree of awareness. They include being self conscious (conscious of who you
are, of your identity), conscious of visual, audible or other sense stimuli,
being in states of observation, musing, being in the conscious state that
triggers action and, in particular, the state of reflection and of using
language consciously.
Sleep
belongs to the unconscious states. Sleep is many things, but physiologically,
sleep can roughly be divided into two distinct classes. The first is the S-
(synchronized) sleep, also known as NREM (non-rapid-eye-movement) sleep. The
second is the dreaming sleep or the D- (desynchronized or dreaming) sleep, also
known as REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep. During the 1950s it was established
that dreaming had fairly reliable physiological correlates. The electrical
activity of the brain during dreaming, it appears, resembles that of the waking
state, and it is accompanied by rapid eye movements, REM. It seems that everybody
dreams, and not only in one but in at least 4-5 periods, increasing in
duration throughout the night. Not only humans dream; mammals and birds show
periods of REM sleep and physiological changes of a character so similar to
those of humans that it is permissible to suggest that they are also dreaming.
Dream researchers speculate that as animals and humans in sleep are most
vulnerable and helpless, an easy prey to predators, the nearly awake REM state
would produce a condition close to vigilance, affording the possibility of
defense or flight.
The
majority of persons awakened during periods of REM sleep report that they were
dreaming, whereas persons awakened during S-sleep do not report of having
dreamed. It is the REM sleep that has our interest here.
In
their book ‘Dream Telepathy’, Ullman and Krippner write: “Of all the
altered states of consciousness investigated by parapsychologists as being
favorable to ESP, dreaming is the only one which happens to each of us every
day, in a regular physiological rhythm, occurring about every ninety minutes
throughout the night’s sleep.” If many of our dreams, and those of animals,
have a both telepathic and precognitive content, it seems likely that this has
indeed functioned as an archaic defense and communication system which – as I
have touched upon before – in humans has lost some, but not all of its
survival value in our modern protected environments.
Montague
Ullman et al. write: ”Our main surmise is that the psyche of man possesses a
latent ESP capacity that is most likely to be deployed during sleep, in the
dreaming phase. Psi is no longer the exclusive gift of rare beings known as “psychic
sensitives”, but is a normal part of human existence, capable of being
experienced by nearly everyone under the right conditions.” If this is
correct, why would this faculty be limited to humans? Maybe all forms of life
not only possess it in one or another manner but are interrelated in this way.
We
are probably only conscious a short time of our waking state. The rest of the
time our mental state is for instance ‘attentive’, ‘alert’, ‘aware’,
‘anxious’, ‘listening’, ‘watching’, ‘meditating’, ‘void’ (of
thoughts), ‘idling’, ‘in trance’, ‘being in pain or agony’, ‘being
bored’ or a mixture of two or more of them. Neither of which presupposes being
simultaneously conscious: one can be vaguely aware of something without being
conscious of it, and ’in trance’ is definitely opposed to being conscious.
We
all drift in and out of these unconscious states and from them into conscious
states and back. In light sleep, just before waking or falling into real sleep,
images, words and sentences without sense pop up and dissolve again as if the
brain were idling. Possibly, this teeming is a prerequisite for sleep, forcing
consciousness to relinquish its grip, a state which allegedly encourages waking
precognition. The condition usually ends with one’s falling asleep ‘for
real’ or waking up: one becomes conscious.
We
can even perform highly complex actions without being conscious more than part
of the time: we may drive our car along a well known route while being void of
thoughts but at the same time in a state of high alertness. Several sports do
not require conscious action, at least only part of the time. For
athletes, performing artists, as well as combatants in action, most conscious
states would be even counterproductive because in action it is imperative to
maintain an ultimate state of concentration, of alertness, which precludes being
in most of the conscious states.
I
have now mentioned a series of mental states among which only a couple have
involved cognitive conscience. Apart from sleep, in most cases the subject has
been in a state of consciousness without being conscious. It is unfortunate to
oppose ‘unconscious’ to ‘conscious’ when one can be awake without being
conscious. Many authors use the term ‘conscious’ without indicating if they
mean ‘the state of being awake’ or ‘the state of being conscious of
something’.
To
each of the non-conscious as well as conscious states corresponds in all
likelihood a neurological, measurable correlate. Recent research indicates that
several of the conscious states are initiated from the thalamus.
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