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Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of consciousness, and their discovery is disturbing

2024-03-07 21:21:03Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of consciousness, and their
Scientists may have finally solved the mystery of consciousness

By Julian Baggini – Daily Telegraph

Throughout history, attempts by ordinary people to trace the inner recesses of the soul have been seen as arrogant actions. Shakespeare made Hamlet express this forcefully at the moment when he is angry with those who "intend to destroy the essence of my mystery".

He accuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of trying to play with him as some kind of instrument instead of treating him as a human being.

"How unworthy is what you do to me", he criticizes. Today there are no such taboos. Hamlet refers to himself metaphorically as "this little organ".

But today we separate ourselves by studying a literal organ: the brain. Neuroscientists are disproving the long-held view that what lies deep within us can only be seen from within. A new exhibition at the Francis Crick Institute, entitled "Hello Brain!", promotes this approach by revealing the many ways in which the institute's researchers have begun to uncover some of the secrets of the human mind.

Thus, Crick researchers have discovered that the rat brain changes during pregnancy, suggesting that the maternal instinct is not just a spiritual call, but a neurochemical imperative. Another laboratory's study of mice supports the emerging scientific consensus that we see more hallucinations than we think.

Other scientists have studied how birds learn new songs in their sleep, suggesting that the unconscious mind is more important to learning and memory consolidation than we tend to believe.

Such discoveries threaten to destroy traditional beliefs about who and what we are. The more we understand the brain, the more our comforting views of ourselves fall apart.

Our age-old (and some might rightly say naive) conception of human nature has long been based on 3 dogmas. The first is that we are the creators of our own choices and actions. That we are not puppets, but responsible, free agents capable of making our own way in the world.

The second dogma is that human beings are special, different from other animals. Third, we assume that at least most of the time, our perceptions accurately represent the world as it is. Recent scientific research on consciousness has cast doubt on all three of these beliefs.

First we analyze our free will. No one should be surprised to learn that mothers' brains change during pregnancy. It has become very common to explain our changing moods and behaviors due to hormone levels.

However, the idea that our thoughts and actions are a direct result of brain activity can also be disturbing. If "my brain urged me to do it", in what sense do I manage to control myself? Much of Crick's research seems to suggest that the brain is a kind of machine and that we simply do what it tells us to do.

Another lab is creating models of brain circuits, cell by cell, like in a Lego game. Another team has built a complete map of the brain of a fruit fly, a proof of concept that we might one day do the same for our complex circuitry.

Crick's research on Alzheimer's disease reminds us that our cognitive capacities depend entirely on healthy, functioning brains, and that when they are distracted, so are we. The fact that much of the research cited above is based on studies of birds, mice, and flies suggests that we no longer accept the idea that humans are fundamentally different from other animals.

We study animal brains because they tell us things about the human brain. But if the gap between humans and animals is closing, doesn't that mean we should place less value on human life, or respect that of other creatures much more?

Either way, the hierarchy of species upon which we have built our moral universe has been disturbed. Perhaps most disturbing, is the idea that we don't even perceive the world as it is. For centuries, we have known that the precise way the world appears to us is determined by our senses, not by the things themselves.

For example, the green of the grass is created by our visual system. But the latest research goes even further. Our brains do not color our perceptions, but actually construct them. The brain is not a passive receptor of perception, but rather a "prediction machine" that sees what it expects to see, and hears what it expects to hear.

Think of it more or less like this: We tend to think of our minds as cameras recording the world. In fact, they are more like projectors, creating our reality. Of course there is data coming our way. But they are used to help train the projector to improve, and to signal when the projection fails to include something important.

For this reason, we often fail to place things that do not have a direct impact on our survival, such as the features of buildings that pass before our eyes every day. Such research gives us a better understanding of psychosis, and leads us to the convincing conclusion that people who hear voices are not so different from everyone else.

We all have voices inside our heads. A developing theory says that the only difference is that some people think these voices are coming from someone outside of them. This error is very understandable. If we perceive the brain's projections, all that has to happen is for the brain to project the wrong thing and we perceive things that simply aren't there.

Such findings weaken the concept of consciousness in its importance. Consciousness is often thought of as the highest state of being, that which elevates us above mere animals. For thinkers such as the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, our consciousness meant that we were immortal, indivisible, immaterial souls.

We are not our bodies, but our minds, with a single, unified perspective on the world. The image of the mind – and with it the self – that science gives us today is much messier. We are not immaterial souls, but physical animals whose brains do most of the thinking work.

Furthermore, the brain is not just a simple, unified center of experience. It runs all kinds of processes in parallel. So it's not that the left side doesn't know what the right side is doing. There are many things about human consciousness that remain mysterious and yet to be discovered. But the time has come to let go of Hamlet's fear that the revelation of his secrets threatens humanity.


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