Introduction

About 20 years ago some events happened that made me acutely aware of my own mortality. I began to be really grateful for my life and I put some thought into what my existence actually meant. I have a strong bias towards science and logic from working on computers so I looked for some scientific or at least logical views. I then became interested in writings about “consciousness”, once I knew what the word signified. Why am I aware of my thoughts and internal imaginings? And how did it come about? What is my relationship with the physical world?

The World Wide Web makes investigating anything relatively easy and I quickly discovered that “consciousness” was a subject just full of disagreements. However I thought I ought to be able to find a way through this controversy to something that makes sense. This view would of course have to be in accordance with how I felt personally.

I came across Susan Blackwell’s “Consciousness: An Introduction” (1) which was very helpful. It introduced me a large number of ideas about consciousness that are around and prompted further reading. It also made it clear that the definition of consciousness is not easy.

All the neuroscientists that I have read seem to accept Descartes’ view of Dualism. (I will take about this later.) They seem to take it as simple fact that the brain creates the experience of “consciousness” and that we will know how this happens just as soon as we know more about how the brain works. I will also talk about some of these ideas later.

Another common idea is that the brain works in a similar way to the computer. There has been much talk about being able to upload our whole personality and “consciousness” into a computer as long as it is powerful enough and we know enough about how the brain works. Linked to this is the idea of Technological Singularity, where we have the ability to create artificial intelligence and super intelligence which will mean the downfall of human civilisation. A lot of ideas there, many of them quite fanciful.

There is also reality and the connection to “consciousness” when one considers quantum theory. One theoretical physicist, John Wheeler, said “There is no out there, out there”, which a wonderful thing to think about.

And of course there is the question about how “consciousness” actually arrived in humans. A product of evolution? But when and why?

This is the plan so far. Of course I am sure it will change as I go along.

I hope you will the following interesting.

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Ref 1 -  Blackmore, S.J. (2003) Consciousness: An Introduction. Hodder & Stoughton.