Beyond wondering why there is anything at all, it seems the most pertinent question one can ask is, to borrow from Thomas Nagel’s famous phrase, Why is it like something to be here? How is it that we experience our own existence? When considered carefully, consciousness is the only thing we can ever actually know. It is very hard to confidently posit the existence of anything else. However, this fact alone makes it easy to overlook, causing many people to struggle to grasp the issue at hand. Throughout this post I will attempt to elucidate exactly what it is that makes consciousness so mysterious, before briefly outlining where that leaves my view on the subject.

The problem, as it appears to me, is that the elements of consciousness (or qualia), the experience of sounds, smells, colours etc, seem to be of a drastically different sort to matter. I have had several discussions where somebody will assert that music, or colour, doesn’t exist in external reality, it only exists in the brain. However, this misses the point entirely. One could spend a lifetime using cutting edge technology to search for music and colour ‘in the brain’, only to meet certain failure – the brain is the same stuff as external reality. To some this may seem like an infantile argument, reminiscent of Hansel’s assumption that ‘the files are in the computer’ in Zoolander. But seriously, it is not analogous. Hansel’s confusion between file formats does not bring with it any discernible metaphysical complications, the files are not sentient; rather it is a confusion between storage mediums that are determined simply by arrangements of matter. Why the complexity of any material arrangement should give rise to an experience, however, is a very different question.

Furthermore, common intuition tells us that consciousness resides in the brain, but this also seems wrong – we experience ourselves as occupying our heads because it is the locus of our dominant sense organs; if these sense organs were located in our stomachs, then we would experience this as the seat of consciousness. So if these qualia don’t exist in the external world, or in the brain, it seems to imply that they are either somewhere else, or that our very conception of the physical world is inadequate.

Now, this is not to deny the brain’s clear involvement in shaping experience – psychosurgeries and brain damage cases make it abundantly clear that the brain is inextricably linked to the form consciousness takes. Rather, my assertion is an attempt to illustrate that intuitive explanations often falter before hitting the crux of the issue: that no amount of information about the physical world can tell you anything about what it’s like to have an experience.

Here lies a potential source of confusion, between mind and consciousness. Mind, while realised partly alongside consciousness, is certainly not strictly limited to experience itself. For example, the unconscious mind is a widely accepted phenomenon. Mind seems more closely linked to cognition: perception, memory, attention, language, and reasoning. However, if one could give a final explanation of the brain’s cognitive functions, there would still be nothing to suggest that it should feel like something. Consciousness, then, is like a backdrop to cognition, a qualitative texture of sorts.

At this point it may seem that I am pitching my tent in the dualist camp, claiming that consciousness is separate to the physical world. However, this is not necessarily where the argument leads. So let me clarify a couple of things. Firstly, Cartesian dualism does not apply here. “I think, therefore I am” appears to be a comment about cognition. Even though Descartes clearly is alluding to consciousness, he did not delineate between it and cognition and has thereby lumped the lot into a non-physical realm. While the existence of consciousness cannot be doubted (by any conscious entity at least), it takes an extra step to assert that consciousness requires a mind, or that a mind requires consciousness. Cognitive functions can be explained perfectly well by physical processes, it is the experience of them that cannot. So by postulating his res cogitans (or non-physical mind stuff), Descartes digs an unnecessary hole for himself which is all but impossible to climb out of. Secondly, while I certainly do not feel that I can dismiss all forms of dualism, there are still multiple monist options available. Whether idealism, disputing the physical world altogether and positing that consciousness is all that actually exists, or forms of panpsychism, in which the very properties of matter are radically reappraised to make experience a salient feature; the depth of the mystery, to me, warrants drastic rethinking. All of this I will expand on in a later post.

Ultimately, the real corollary of these thoughts seems to be that the intractability of the problem requires a theory of consciousness which, at the very least, treats experience as a fundamental feature of reality – it is just there, a necessary part of existence rather than merely an emergent biological phenomenon. All that can be done is to figure out what role it plays.

I have attempted here to outline my general position on consciousness: why it seems so mysterious, and what that means in terms of trying to understand it. It is an indubitably complex subject and so trying to squeeze it onto one side of A4 is never going to do it justice. However, in the effort to make this blog readable, and thus to gain readers who may be able to offer critiques and help me develop my perspective, I think that this space is best used to propound general ideas, rather than attempt to build watertight theses. On that note, if any readers can highlight problems with the thoughts put forwards, your input will be highly appreciated!