What is Consciousness? (Part One)

It occurred to me tonight, as I was walking the dog...

Consciousness is the transcription of just-past actions (either mental or physical) into the narrative that is used to fashion the model of self.

What, is that it? If I'm right … yeah, that's it. Note that I did not say anything about evaluation of the actions; I mention only the transcription itself. The evaluation can take place as well, but that's not consciousness. The evaluation is a process involving memory, and (I hope it's obvious) any process involving memory is not consciousness itself.

So I don't expect to find consciousness hiding in the amygdala. Indeed, it won't be hiding anywhere; it's a process we can sense, not a thing. (I do not know how senses impinge, and it is indeed an important issue, but as one scientist once put it, “How else should they present themselves?”)

Note that I mentioned that it's actions that are transcribed, not sensations. Unelaborated, unevaluated sensations (pain, taste, smell etc.) are not memory, of course. They are part of what gets transcribed as context for the actions. As such, they are like data; they are not consciousness itself.

So what's the point being made here? It's this:

If consciousness actually works this way it would have evolutionary value.

Before proceeding further I should mention that I accept the scientific evidence that consciousness is an “after the fact” phenomenon. Some have caricatured this perspective by saying that it means we are merely “helpless observers”. Such people are apparently horrified by the possibility. Why else use a loaded word like “helpless”?

Let me digress a moment for the benefit of such people. When my wife is driving me to the store I can relax. That's because I know she's a good driver — better than me in many ways. I am a helpless observer, but not a frightened one. Now if my brain is driving, not “me”, should I be frightened? It has proven it drives quite well. I do like to keep an eye on it, though.

The Survival Value of Consciousness

Why keep an eye on what we are doing? Well, I put it this way:

There is an evolutionary advantage to modeling the self.

Imagine some ancient person planning to kill a lion that has been threatening the village. He can approach the problem via trial-and-error but it's far better if he can model his actions ahead of time. Is it not obvious that this ability has survival value?

Yet how does he know what he can do? Why, by reviewing what he has done before. In order to make certain kinds of plans he must model himself. (For other plans he must also model other people, but that's another issue.)

Okay, so if consciousness is merely the transcription, how does the brain know what to transcribe? How does it know what to hold up as significant so that it focuses the attention as is required to form the clear memories of the narrative?

Well, that's fairly straight-forward:

What has worked before? Keep doing that kind of thing.

This brings us to a slight problem with this way of operating a brain. “What has worked before” is an operation of memory. “What has worked before” might come from one's own experience, or it may come from what one has heard from others. The memory of what has worked before might, in fact, be inapplicable to the current circumstances. It might even be factually (and fatally) wrong.

Is it surprising that consciousness lags behind action? Not to me it isn't.

In the history of the human animal the ability to act preceded modern consciousness.

What seems more likely:  that evolution inserted a step before that which worked well previously, or that it added an extra step afterward?

The Question of Agency

Yes, there is the sense of agency: “I am in conscious control of what I am doing.” But recent scientific data is showing that this is an illusion. It might be more accurate to say that when I do something I recognize that I did it. That is to say, I cannot see the processes that preceded the action, but they are consistent with my model of self. I behave in the way I'm known to behave and don't surprise myself with seemingly random choices.

It's inevitable that what the consciousness transcribes will have a great affinity for the existing model of self. Since that transcription is accorded great significance (to ensure memorization) then it will dominate my sensation. That is to say, I have the strong sensation that I am addressing the model of self. I feel like me.

This brings us to the illusory nature of free will. Many years ago, just after high school, in fact, the following sentence popped into my head:

Free will is the sensation we experience at the interface between what we were and what we are becoming.

I wasn't sure that this was right, but I was loath to change a single word. Now, more than 3 decades later, I suspect that I was on to something. Note the key word in that sentence: sensation. It is not being claimed that free will is real, only that it feels real.

Can I summarize the foregoing? Well, here's a first attempt. It's difficult to distinguish between consciousness and actual agency because we do what we would have done if consciousness had actually been in control.

If you don't believe that, try jumping off a cliff. Unless you're suicidal, you'll be prevented from doing it. Please don't test this, though; you might slip. Instead, consider this: in many suicides using guns the police find bullet holes in the walls. The person would jerk away the gun at the last possible instant. No matter how much they wanted to die, they didn't want to die. This is not a paradox, just a mix-up between processes.

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Part Two of this series of five articles about consciousness can be found here.