Consciousness

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“What is it we all have, but don’t know what it is?”

Descartes declared the study of consciousness off-limits to science, and it is only in recent years that scientists have had the courage to return to this subject and look for explanations. We shall begin to review the current thinking on consciousness and how this might impinge on nursing practice.

Attempts at definition

• “A comprehensive state of awareness of the mind of stimuli from the outside world, and of feelings, emotions, and thoughts from within the individual.” Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary

• “Consciousness is a metaperception, the vindication of perception, the perception of perception.” W. Pankow

• “Consciousness is spatially multiple yet effectively single at any one time. It is an emergent property of non-specialized and divergent groups of neurons (gestalts) that is continuously variable with respect to, and always entailing, a stimulus epicentre. The size of the gestalt, and hence the depth of prevailing consciousness, is a product of the interaction between the recruiting strength of the epicentre and the degree of arousal.” S. Greenfield

• “The outside world going through the inside framework of the brain.” J.M.R. Delgado

• “A vital part of living that defies definition.” W.R. Russell

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Questions:

• is consciousness and the mind a direct result of neuronal activity in the brain?

• what gives matter organised in a particular way the capacity for consciousness, self-awareness, and emotions?

• how can we explain the ‘feeling’ aspect of consciousness – the way we experience different colours, smells, sounds etc?

• is there a ‘cartesian theatre’ somewhere in the brain where everything comes together to be presented to our consciousness?

• is there a single ‘stream of consciousness’ or ‘multiple drafts’ of reality across which our attention roams?

• how is it that our experience of ‘self’ has continuity even when punctuated by sleep and developmental changes during our lifespan?

• how can I tell whether someone else is conscious?

• are other animals conscious?

• is there survival value in possessing consciousness?

• should we think of the brain as ‘hardware’ and the mind as a product of the ‘software’ that it runs?

• can a computer or other machine be conscious?

• can consciousness understand itself?

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Hypotheses

either:

consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and the activity of its neurons – monism

or:

the mind is different from the brain, although interacting with it in some unexplained way – dualism

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