Day of the Fronds

One of the very few shortcomings of modern science is an almost complete misunderstanding of consciousness, and that is causing our society problems on so many levels.

The greatest insights into consciousness tend to come from philosophy, Eastern theology, and to a much lesser degree, psychology (but not psychiatry).

The first problem, of course, before we even get to the "hard problem," is what we mean by "consciousness." Is it just a relative state of awareness - being awake and aware versus asleep or otherwise  "unconscious"? Or is it the luminous and subjective experience of our selves, a combination of sensory awareness, memory, and emotion? Is it limited to humans or is it shared by some of the other sentient animals? Is there a consciousness of trees and grasses, or forests and jungles?  Is the Earth conscious, or the cosmos? Is God conscious or, since consciousness implies the possibility of unconsciousness, does God's power transcend "consciousness"? 

The problem with the science of consciousness is that while science is objective, the experience of consciousness is subjective by definition.  I know what it's like for myself to be conscious, and while I might have some pretty strong opinions, I don't know how you experience consciousness. I don't believe I'm the only conscious being in the universe, but I can't prove anything else is conscious or know what their consciousness looks and feels like to them.

Scientists can and do study consciousness, but the whole premise of modern science since at least the Renaissance has been objectivity - I perform an experiment, make observations, and record the results, then someone else repeats the experiment, makes their own observations, and records the results. How scientists "feel" about an experiment - whether it makes them happy or sad, scared or comforted, lonely or not - has no room in the scientific process (nor should it). Science is objective.  But consciousness is subjective - it exactly is how you feel. And that messy, hard-to-quantify subjectivity has no place in science.

To study consciousness is to study the experience of your own mind, not some macaque monkey's or your colleague's. To study consciousness is the introspective observation of your mind, and that doesn't really fit into the scientific process.  As a result, scientific study of consciousness becomes neurology, pharmacology, anesthesiology, and ultimately behaviorism. There are merits to all of these studies, but those merits don't include an understanding of consciousness.

As you know, the State of Alabama recently declared the frozen embryos are "children," and deserve the same rights of personhood as a fully-formed human. Naturally, legislators and the courts have gotten involved, and this morning I heard a news commenter bemoan the fact that now lawyers and politicians are the ones deciding "when life begins."

This makes me sad. I'm not talking about the Alabama decision -  sure, that makes me sad, as well as angry - but there is so much subconscious bias to the way the issue is defined - "when life begins." Yes, the embryos are living tissue. The ovum was alive before it was fertilized, and the sperm calls were alive before the fertilization occurred. It's all a part of a great continuum of life that goes all the way back to near the formation of the planet. Life doesn't "begin" before or after embryonic existence. 

What really vexes news commenters and the good people of Alabama is when "personhood," not life, begins - when does a living ovum cell become a human being? A fertilized embryo has the potential to become human, but it's hard to imagine something that can be deep-frozen for years and then be thawed and revived as a "person." 

Abortion opponents have claimed "personhood" begins when a fetus has a heartbeat, although a heart develops in utero long before a working brain. Others have claimed arbitrary times - 16 weeks after conception, 12 weeks, 20 weeks, which shows they're really only just guessing.

Descartes said "I think, therefore I am," and I take that to imply that one is a person when they think they're a person. It's when consciousness arises, not a heartbeat or incipient genitalia.  And we don't know when that is because we don't even know what the fuck consciousness is, or what the term even means.