What Is Consciousness?

To ask this question philosophically is to distinguish between brain activity and thoughts and, when we realize the emphasize is on the latter, to venture into the unknown. When I say "brain activity," it's clear I refer to a tangible thing. When I say "thoughts" and distinguish them from concrete things, it becomes apparent that my focus is on something so different that even a good reference point eludes us. We have very little understanding (as one understands an actual object) what a thought truly is. Therefore, a philosopher who wants to frame the question, and contend with what science has contributed, needs to wonder if scientists are equipped for this journey.

Please note, when I say "know what a thought is," I don't mean it has to be material in the sense of our commonly understood materials. I mean we understand it in that way. We understand of what it is composed. If I could hold a thought in my hand, in what way would I describe its object-ness?

I suppose what I'm saying is that to form the question we need to think of defining a thought in the way we define an object, though we know it is not one materially. In a Psychology Today article on this subject it was simply said that "A thought is a representation of something." There is nothing wrong with this answer in another context, but for our purposes I want to show how this is an answer, like so many others, that doesn't really intend to understand "thoughts." This is true of so many attempts at discovery. For example, What am I? I am a person. This is correct, but what I am, for our purposes, means What is the material cause of me? and perhaps What is the effcient cause? This latter only to better understand what would certainly be a new kind of material.

What we are really asking philosophically is what is bare consciousness, or bare thoughts? Not what it does, or how it appears, or what we think about it. What actually is it? Atoms? Wood? I am not the first of course to put the question this way. In some sense, the business of phenomenology had this goal.

What is consciousness if not the scaffolding of language? Think of scaffolding as the framework beneath language. To think is to speak, figuratively. When one "thinks" this "thinking" is expressed through signifiers as if we are talking to ourselves. And then in true social fashion (from inside) we often speak to others. From consciousness comes expression - the individuated become social. The relevant modern ideas regarding language, however, come from science and not from philosophy. Perhaps thoughts are not composed of things that resemble anything we know of physical objects and, in this sense, cannot be understood by science.

I have asked the question What am I? But in this sense we are referring to a thing that is, for our purposes, physical. When we ask about thoughts (even though they are in fact a part of me) we don't have that certainty. Asking whether thoughts are physical is perhaps the wrong question.

Neuroscience knows nothing about consciousness in this realm and attempts to understand consciousness, a seemingly non-physical thing, physically. When neuroscientists talk they seem to confused brain and mind. In truth, we don't even know what question to ask to start "understanding" consciousness in a fundamental way. Man's hubris is astounding here when he speaks of consciousness scientifically - that is to say, through science, and blurs the difference between observing and knowing, between the physical brain and mind. At best (like gravity) we are describing it roughly, which is a far cry from understanding it truly.

It is philosophy's job to show that consciousness is, in the beginning, a thing "beneath" language. But to say it is a mere description (to say knowing consciousness is the same as describing our experience of language) misses the point. We all have the experience of thoughts- but what is the thing causing the experience and where did it come from? It is philosophy's job to ask the right question in the first place. In order to actually know what "thoughts" are, to understand perhaps something material about them, this can only be achieved by asking philosophy questions.

"What are thoughts made of?

They’re really just electro-chemical reactions—but the number and complexity of these reactions make them hard to fully understand…" MIT School of Engineering

In the above definition we can see the "scientist" already having trouble with the idea of a definition. The first sentence is asking for a material composition. The second supplies an answer (a "reaction") that in no way supplies a single, tangible, possible thing, but instead supplies an event. Then the "definition" continues to undercut its own goal ("hard to fully understand") and then becomes more confusing: How can it be harder because there are more of them? I would contend that this question/answer failure results from science attempting to explain non-scientific "things." It results from not differentiating science and philosophy. Hume is famous for making this mistake when he asked us to "see" cause.

Does the reaction between electricity and chemicals seem at all like the pictures you "see" in your head? If I could hold a thought in my hand would I merely hold an electrical or chemical reaction? When I see my own thoughts, to be honest, I see memories. Sometimes they are also imaginative and predict future events. Sam Harris is known for saying that no thought is willful and that thoughts all intrude, which is to say come in to being without us. They are automatic in some sense. This is the beginning of his, and many other scientist's (pretending to be philosophers) attempt at disproving free will. I don't know what to really make of this other than to say that scientists should stick to science (even though Reid did not do that).

When I see my own thoughts, I see experiences and I see art within the underlying will that propels these thoughts, whether I ask for them or not. I don't know of what they are made and I don't think I ever will know this. Man has enough trouble agreeing on what subatomic particles, and thus matter, are. I am not trying to approach that, I am only cautioning others in that area.