This Is Consciousness

We experience life through our physical senses and through our cognitive activity.  Our brains are at the epicenter of both of these.  Our physical senses are the way in which we take in the world around us.  I would categorize these into two general groups: the senses which require immediate contact with the environment and the senses which do not require immediate contact and diminish with distance.  One could argue that both sets of senses require some sort of contact with the environment either through interaction with photons (vision) or with airborne particles (smell).  This argument is true, but I believe the idea is what matters: our senses represent our perception of the world around us.  They are mechanical in that they obey the laws of physics and are themselves manifestations of these laws.  They occur without thought.  They are automatic.  

Conversely, cognitive activity is entirely voluntary.  It requires energy above and beyond the mere physical.  Cognitive activity is what knits sensory input together.  It creates stories about the surrounding environment based on things like past experiences, layered sensory data (like the smell and sound of an approaching bear), and behaviors that can be taught.  In humans, creativity, imagination, emotions, and desires are all cognitive activities.  They can occur regardless of sensory input.  The paradox is that there can be no cognitive thought with all of these senses.

Of course, we know this isn’t entirely true.  Loss of or absence of one or more of these senses does not mean that cognitive activity cannot occur.  It just means that we, the average person, cannot perceive that cognitive activity as easily.  I know this young woman who has been living with Rhetts Syndrome (http://www.rettsyndrome.org/) for most of her life, and it is not easy for the casual observer to understand her cognitive activity.  But she is there, as surely as I am, and her brain is functioning, her cognitive processes are active.  They are just a little different than yours or mine.  I’ve seen her laugh.  I’ve seen her be frustrated.  I’ve seen her in pain.  Like I’ve said before, we all share the same basic needs, the same range of emotions.  She is no different.

All of our sense are connected to our brains.  Neurons link the whole hardware infrastructure together.  Synapses and neurotransmitters govern electrical activity in our brains.  Scientists can use machines to peer into our heads and watch pictures of our brains light up when we think, use language, watch a sad movie.  They can pinpoint the areas of our brains that produce language, that process speech, that infer the emotions of others based on photographs.  They can send an electromagnetic pulse through your brain and cause you to misattribute someone’s motivation.  In short, scientists can show us how our brains are connected to our senses physically and operationally.  

But none of them can show us why.  Why we cry.  Why we laugh.  Why we love.  They cannot show us why we assume the worst in someone who has offended us.  They cannot show us why we feel all aflutter when that special someone walks in the room.  They cannot tell us why our hearts feel a tug when we remember old friends fondly.  They cannot tell us why our cheeks flush when we remember old passions.  None of them can tell us why our consciousness works the way it does.

And none of them, not a single one, can point to a part on your body and say, “Here…here is where your soul lives.”

The soul, no matter how you define it, is just above and just outside the reach of science.  And even if someone could say, “This is the part of the brain that we call the soul,” they wouldn’t be able to tell you what it connect to…what lies just beyond it, just behind it.

This is consciousness.