Cold Consciousness
So I’ve been reading wider than the sky rather slowly, but it’s probably best that I do so—it’s not actually that long of a book. The first couple of chapters are explaining how exactly consciousness will be defined and reviewing the structures of the brain and neurons.
The first thing that strikes me about this book is how incredibly cold, calculating, and scientific it is. I guess I’ve wandered too far away from the plains of strict engineering/science roots into the pseudo-religious (sometimes) forests of psychology and never really realized it. Especially when I go from reading several of the more scientific and direct works of Timothy Ferris to his The Mind’s Sky: Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context—which, again, is almost breaching onto the religious. I guess “mystic” is a good term for it. There’s just this general feeling that there are aspects of intelligence which even if they can be explained by science should almost be held in higher regard than that.
Even in Dr. Edelman’s book (wider than the sky), he quotes the great William James—one of the first major American psychologists and the person who has, to this point, shed the most light upon consciousness—as saying:
Something definite happens when to a certain brain-state a certain “sciousness” corresponds. A genuine glimpse into what it is would be the scientific achievement, before which all past achievements would pale. But at the present, psychology is in the condition of physics before Galileo and the laws of motion, of chemistry before Lavoisier and the notion that mass is preserved in all reactions. The Galileo and the Lavoisier of psychology will be men indeed when they come, as come they some day surely will, or past successes are no index to the future. When they do come, however, the necessities of the case will make them “metaphysical.”
But then Dr. Edelman goes on to admit that he has spent time puzzling over what James had in mind when he said that a successful description of consciousness would be necessarily metaphysical. So that right there clued me in to where Dr. Edelman was coming from.
Yes, the book has shed quite a bit of light on consciousness to me, and yes, Dr. Edelman certainly portrays a sense of awe about the complexity of the structure which has arisen to create consciousness, but at the same time there’s something very definitely missing from all his musings and explanations of consciousness—there’s no awe for the “sciousness” of consciousness. That, apparently, is left as an exercise for the reader. Granted, I’m still far from finishing the book, but the tone is quite different than what I’m used to from those who see something a bit “greater” about consciousness.
I’m not saying the purely 100% scientific approach is incorrect, but by Dr. Edelman’s own admission, it is not a complete picture yet. But in a book which so intricately describes such a phenomenal piece of humanity, it lacks a certain “something” by being so cold.
One of the more interesting things I’ve learned thusfar is actually something rather simple that I had never fully thought through or realized. “Consciousness” is divided into two types: primary consciousness—the kind experienced by highly-evolved mammals and probably other creatures—and high order consciousness, which is the sort of “meta” consciousness we humans experience—not only being conscious, but being aware of being conscious, aware of a sense of “self” and capable of directing all kinds of inner dialog and everything else that entails.
Before knowing the formal definitions, I always sort of understood that there was these distinct kinds of consciousness—but I always wondered what it would possibly be like to be conscious, yet not conscious of being conscious. The solution is so simple as to seem obvious, yet it escaped me for all this time. Primary consciousness is very similar to what is often experienced in dreams when you’re not aware of dreaming!
It all makes sense… and certainly makes things more interesting.