Consciousness is a huge topic in which a whole lot of the discussions can be had about “the hard problem” that extends to “qualia” (e.g. the experience of “redness”), how it happens, why it happens (a faulty question in my opinion), how it relates to the brain, and so on. These discussions about consciousness can be had without addressing the “free will” question.
One of the questions are about the nature of conscious experience itself. The so called mind-body problem. And though “free will” is logically incoherent regardless of dualism (the idea that mind and brain/body are in some way separate) or monism (the idea that the mind is simply an extension of the brain/body – an output of it), there are some people who assert some sort of dualism, and often they suggest such dualism can allow for some type of free will.
Such can be combated by a number of ways. The first way is to give such the benefit of the doubt. It’s to, for the sake of argument, agree with some type of dualism, and then show how free will is equally as impossible. Another way is to address what the scientific evidence points to. That’s what this article will be concerned with.
It’s easy to give consciousness some sort of special status outside of “physical reality”, since it appears so different from anything else in the universe due to the way we perceive, the way information feeds into our minds, the way such info is thought about and parsed, the way we can imagine and in a sense create, how we sense (see, smell, feel, hear, taste), and so on. It’s such a bizarre occurrence that each of us can only experience individually (at least currently).
But this “special status” goes against literally mounds of scientific evidence that a functioning brain and mind (conscious experience) are one in the same and that consciousness is actually what an active brain state produces when it’s doing what it does. In some way, it’s similar to “roundness” and “rolling” of a ball down a hill. That’s what certain “round” things do when they are on a “slope” in a gravitational field. No one considers “roundness” or “rolling” the object itself, but rather properties of the object and it’s behavior due to those properties. Likewise, the output of conscious experience is just what “brains do” when very specific electro-chemical reactions occur.
Some mistakenly place the cart before the horse (mind proceeds brain), or they suggest a partial or complete separation, or they place the mind in some more “magical” realm. Some use their misunderstandings of quantum mechanics to give some special-ness to consciousness. One needs to look no further than documentaries like “What the Bleep Do We Know!” or “The Secret” or to the absurdities of the likes of Deepak Chopra, to see examples of such.
But what do we know? What types of evidence can we touch upon?
Here is a small list from the mounds of evidence out there:
BRAIN SCANS
- Scientists can determine a button a person will decide to press 7 to 10 seconds before they are aware of their decision to press a specific one – with an accuracy that is above chance. How do they do this? Through the use of a fMRI scan – brain scan (Nature Neuroscience). The fact that we can read a brain scan to figure out what a person will press before they are even aware of the button they will press is great evidence that such awareness stems from the play-out of brain states.
- Scientists are getting better at reconstructing images, even video, of what people are seeing, using fMRI’s. They can recreate on a computer screen an approximate image or a video clip based on the brain scan alone. It’s predicted that once these technologies have improved they could be used to communicate with coma patients, stroke patients, see dreams, and so on.
- Brain to brain interfaces (B2B) are starting to become a reality, showing how B2B is possible from person to person (and also person to rat – making a rats tail move with our mind). This is new technology that will only get better and better, allowing communication between two people without speaking or typing. This is done by translating the signals in the brain.
ELECTRICAL IMPULSES / BRAIN STIMULATION
- Studies show that hooking a charge up to a person’s brain (transcranial direct current stimulation) in a certain way can increase the rate in which they learn certain tasks.
- Stimulating a certain side of the brain spurred the usage of the left hand in people who were right-handed according to UC Berkeley researchers.
CHEMICALS / DRUGS
- We can turn off consciousness entirely and have it restore later with anesthesia (drugs that have an effect on the brains functioning). In other words, we can make a person become “unconscious”, do a surgery on some organ inside of that person, and when their consciousness is restored they have “lost time”. The last thing they remember is being administered anesthesia, and for them they wake up what appears to be a moment later when in actuality such was hours (or in some cases days). Not to mention there may be other ways to turn consciousness off and on.
- We can administer drugs that have a profound affect on a person’s conscious state. And depending on the drug and what it does to the brain, those experiences can be quite different. One can produce hallucinations, while another can simply give a person a feeling of deep relaxation, while yet another can bring someone to an extremely paranoid state. These work by blocking or increasing various chemicals in the brain.
- Various chemicals in the brain have been associated with various feeling we experience. For example, the experience of love has a tendency to align with increased levels of nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin.
BRAIN DAMAGE AND DISEASE
- Split brain patients where the brain is cut in half leads to separate personalities. There are cases in which one half is an atheist and the other a theist, and each half has different preferences.
- Brain damage can cause any number of changes in a person, from amnesia, to severe intellectual disability.
- Diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and other types of Dementia are due to problems in the physical brain. For Alzheimer’s, as an example, the brain shrinks and everything reduces – the numbers of nerve fibers, the amount of neurotransmitters, and so on. Also a plaque forms on the brain. This causes forgetfulness, loss of mental ability, change in mood, and so on. It truly can change who a person once was to someone entirely different. Brain diseases only show just how much our conscious experience is affected directly by the state of a brain at any given time.
These things should, at the very least, give those who think that the mind is something separate than the brain pause. And keep in mind this is but a tiny fraction of literally thousands of experiments and assessments in neuroscience, biochemistry, and medicine. All in their own way supporting evidence that the mind isn’t something other than what the brain produces. This may seem shocking to those who may hold views about having some sort of “spirit” or some “ghost in the machine”, but we truly need to move into a more enlightened era of human thought. We truly need to go where the preponderance of evidence points to, rather than what makes us feel good or in some way “special”. Look at all of the evidence and think about what it really means that we can turn off conscious experience and that we will definitely be able to record it, and potentially play such a recording back in another persons head (and that this will all be done through physical interaction).
Is some sort of mind/body dualism possible? Certainly, there are a whole lot of things that are “technically possible”. Is there any real evidence for such (dualism) being the case? None at all.
On the other hand, is there any real evidence that the brain produces conscious experience? You bet – mounds!
'Trick Slattery
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