Part I: PRELUDES OF CHANGE
BY LYNARD – OCTOBER 2020
A year or so ago I set out to write a series of posts as a follow up to my 2012 book A SHORT HISTORY OF MEMORY. I slowly and methodically went through the tedious process of reading and collecting reference material.
The book prompting this latest venture into the world of neuroscience was Michael S. A. Graziano’s1. Unlike some denser neuroscience works, Graziano explains the basics, lays out the foundation for what, he contends, may eventually be a full explanation of consciousness. He also raises some really, really important questions. One of those questions, the most important question he raises in fact is the central idea I presented as foundational to any explanation of consciousness. RETHINKING CONSCIOUSNESS makes an enormous contribution to setting the parameters around any valid definition of consciousness. Unfortunately, Graziano’s approach to a possible definition of consciousness is wrapped around the idea of humans as biochemical machines that can be emulated by a computer. The idea is quaint.
In what I can only regard as a serendipitous interruption of my plan for a series of posts following up on my book, I read Douglas Phillips’ science fiction adventure, PHENOMENA: A NEUROSCIENCE THRILLER2. Phillips is not a neuroscientist. His forte is physics, quantum physics specifically, and computer science. A prolific author with an entire series of novels centered around quantum physics, in PHENOMENA, Phillips approaches the question of consciousness in the only way it can be approached if we are ever to arrive at an understanding. However, antithetical to every “serious” discussion of consciousness, Phillips’ deus ex machina is an alien intelligence of shared consciousness, which sort of begs the question–what is consciousness of an alien intelligence. Stripped of the alien intelligence aspect of the novel, Phillips zeros in on both the confining constraints of any real definition of consciousness and how it can really be defined.
Since A SHORT HISTORY OF MEMORY neuroscience has continued progress on mapping the biochemical intricacies of the brain. The proliferation of theories on how the brain and mind work has also continued. What has remained consistent however is the analogy of the brain as a computer. From memory as computer-like random access memory to perception and reaction as a complex neural network of inputs and outputs. Of course using computer structure as an analogy for the way the brain works greatly simplifies explanations of how the brain works. It does nothing to explain consciousness despite the relevancy of complex neural networks or topography of Graziano’s “attention schema” theories.
© Lynard Barnes, 2020
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