Problem(s) of Consciousness

In their 1992 seminal paper, "The Problem of Consciousness" (image provided), Crick and Koch call upon the father of American psychology, Willam James: "Consciousness is not a thing but a process." In this manner, they herald the "new" field of consciousness studies and introduce the reader to their theory that consciousness results from an array of firing neurons. Neurons form networks, and the resultant "coalitions" across the brain produce consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent something. What is that something? Is it an epiphenomenon, or does it have a lasting substrate? Does it hold on to particular identity features and dispositional factors that then orient the individual? Does that emergent something appear and disappear? And when it reappears, is it the same or similar, perhaps only having made some adjustments? 

During the 1990s, the neurocognitive philosopher David Chalmers famously described the consciousness mystery as having two questions: the soft and hard problems of consciousness. The soft problem was the so-called hard wiring of the brain and physiology. Meanwhile, solving the hard problem, Chalmers claimed, was virtually impossible. The hard problem is understanding why our feelings, senses, and experiences are imbued with certain phenomenological flavors, a concept known as qualia. My subjectivity and your subjectivity are distinct. Chalmers famously refers to Nagel's 1974 essay "What is it Like to be a Bat?"  One's inner experience consists of an amalgamation of filters, sensory tools, cognitive frameworks, physiology, etc. They interplay and form ways of processing extrinsic and intrinsic experiences that cohere into a stream of subjective experience. I can't know what a bat is subjectively experiencing, let alone what you, the reader, are experiencing. To be honest, it's difficult to comprehend what it is that I am experiencing. Even more enigmatic (or problematic) is that I often forget that I am experiencing and rotely move through life. This subjective inner-felt experience is qualia. Does that emergent, something Crick and Koch define as consciousness, have qualia and coherent personhood? 

When I search for answers to these most obvious questions, things become evanescent and nebulous. Perhaps we should back up and try understanding what these two science priests are heralding. Let's look at Crick and Koch's paper to define some terms and extract key points. Crick and Koch argue that consciousness, although not necessarily a solvable problem, can be studied empirically through neurons firing, the networks they establish, and the cross-network coalitions that are formed. Thus, they salvifically recover consciousness questions from the abstract, quasi-scientific, and ultra-religious domains of mind, psyche, and soul and provide empirical scaffolding through neuronal mechanisms neuroscientists study.

Crick and Koch utilize the visual system to illustrate how neural processes become conscious processes. Three salient points are made: Firstly, data (inputs) received by the visual system are insufficient in building a visual picture (output) to the mind. At any given moment, we rely on past experiences (previous inputs) or biological information systems that are genetically embedded. Secondly, awareness, as we know it (or think we know it - to fuzzy matters further), is actually much more fleeting than we realize. From such brief instances of attention, the mind builds an image from the perceiver's perspective. These data inputs are two-dimensional and are then reconstructed into three-dimensional representations, again primarily adapting the representations to the cognizer-perceiver's frame of reference. The authors argue that the construction process of consciousness is an "interpolated" "filling in." In narrative terms, it makes the story richer, thicker, textured, and believably coherent. The brain is a constructing apparatus; it flickers awareness on and off, groups data inputs, filters out unnecessary cues, collates this with previously processed data, and then generally computes a coherent picture of the world based on two-dimensional inputs. 

Now, I would like to introduce Dali. Last weekend, I experienced the compelling Dali exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. As I entered the gallery, I was immediately drawn to the immediacy of Dali's work and his incredible technical proficiency. Dali's visual lexicon resonated. While the configuration of elements - not so much the individual elements themselves - was enigmatic. There was both a familiarity regarding the imagery elements -subjects and objects painted -which then guided one to experience the unfamiliar, a misperception experience. Dali's well-trained visual storytelling proceeded from the empirical - observable mundane content - to the subconscious, where impressions, phenomenology, and the qualia that constitute experience overflow with ambiguity, unresolved cognitions, and dream-like suspension of time and place onto the objective playing field of the outer world. 

Dali's 1940 oil painting, Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, is one of many examples (image provided). In the foreground, a woman observes a dream-like marketplace. She rests her head on her hand, abstractedly looking into the marketplace. She is nude from the waist up, perhaps unaware. In the distance, the market is identified as a slave marketplace. However, the conglomeration of figures in the center, their configuration as a unified whole, and architectural arches create the optical illusion or parallel reality of a bust of Voltaire. Which, to my in-person viewing, also seemed to be a bust of the foreground viewer's future elder self.

Although the work seemingly reinforces Crick and Koch's notion of an emergent or constructive consciousness, it opens further mysteries. In the case of Dali's painting, when one suddenly experiences that there are two equally plausible pathways to cognition construction, a rupture occurs. From the crossroads of choice, one experiences an aesthetic experiential arrest. Does the central background image of the market consist of people and architecture? Or is it the bust of the Voltaire? Perhaps the foreground viewer's future self? The psychic ambiguity and all the elements of sensation, feeling, and cognition that comprise it are the qualia. Our subjective experience leads to further questions, including the malleability of perception and consciousness and the porousness of our collective reality. In the deconstructive moment, one is led deeper into the preconscious and subconscious, not by experiment or neuronal observation as the science priests wished to base their new field, but by subjective experience. Dali's exquisite surrealistic lexicon, rather than being empirical - as personified in the image of empiricist Voltaire - leads one to the mystery of experience. Perhaps Crick and Koch really do have a Problem of Consciousness? Problems, as we see and experience, are entryways.