The Conscious Brain - Professor Damasio (II)

Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Neurology, and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. From one of the most significant neuroscientists at work today, a pathbreaking investigation of a question that has confounded philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists for centuries: how is consciousness created?

Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In Self Comes to Mind, he goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told. He also advances a radical hypothesis regarding the origins and varieties of feelings, which is central to his framework for the biological construction of consciousness: feelings are grounded in a near fusion of body and brain networks, and first emerge from the historically old and humble brain stem rather than from the modern cerebral cortex.

Damasio suggests that the brain's development of a human self becomes a challenge to nature's indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution and the source of a new level of life regulation—sociocultural homeostasis. He leaves no doubt that the blueprint for the work-in-progress he calls sociocultural homeostasis is the genetically well-established basic homeostasis, the curator of value that has been present in simple life-forms for billions of years. Self Comes to Mind is a groundbreaking journey into the neurobiological foundations of mind and self.

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[GCthegreat1ify]

@1simonmatthews

why would you ever consider Dan Dennet being right in the first place?

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning I'll take a look at it later. Well, if the experiencer is an emergent property of the brain, then cloning yourself would lead to you being born again. If it doesn't lead to you being born again, then there's more to it than just the physical brain. I think that's your answer isn't it. By golly I think I've just solved the age-old question! Dan Dennett is wrong!

[dewinthemorning]

@1simonmatthews In my latest video but one I talk exactly about those things - is there a self, an experiencer, and so on. Have a look: watch?v=DDoM6C0xHKo

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning You have to admit, I have a good point here. I'm glad I thought of it. I don't know what the truth is myself, I'm only trying to find things out for myself. I thought that maybe people like Dan Dennett were right, and that we are nothing but a bag of tricks in the brain, but if that was right then an exact copy of me would mean that I would live again, which I don't think would be the case. I hope you can be honest here and admit that I do have a good point.

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning Yes, the clone would grow up in different circumstances and have different memories, but it's not that that makes them separate from us. If we had our memories wiped, we'd still be the same experiencer of life, we just wouldn't remember the past. We could start again with a new life and make new memories. It would be a bit like being born for the first time, only as an adult. The clone would be a totally separate, new experiencer of life. So, where's the experiencer come from?

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning That's just it, identical twins don't have the same consciousness, and neither would a clone. This shows that there is more to you, the experiencer of your life, than just your physical self. If we, the experiencer of our lives, are nothing more than the emergent properties of our brains, then surely an exact copy would mean that we would be able to experience from the perspective of the copy also, like being reborn. If not, then our consciousness doesn't emerge from the brain.

[dewinthemorning]

@1simonmatthews If I was cloned, that would mean that a new baby would be born who has exactly my DNA. It's not that a new, adult Dew would appear suddenly. So, yes, this baby will have my DNA, but she would grow up in different circumstances, would have different memories - you draw your own conclusions about her consciousness. You have this example in real life - Identical twins. Do you think they have the same consciousness?

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning Something for you to think about: If a clone is an exact copy, would you be able to see through a second pair of eyes if they cloned you? If consciousness is a product of the brain, and the brains were identical, then you should be able to see through the two pairs of eyes simultaneously. You would be in two places at once. Is this what happened when they cloned Dolly The Sheep? Or did a new, separate consciousness emerge? We don't have to be scientists to think of these things.

[1simonmatthews]

@dewinthemorning No, consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. The qualities that you describe are just hightened aspects of the same thing, perhaps more accurately described as self-awareness. We are self-aware because of the complexity of our hardware. If a dog's hardware were to become more complex, then it too would become self-aware. At present, dogs possess consciousness, as do all living things, in differing degrees, right down to the first life forms.

[dewinthemorning]

@1simonmatthews "All living things possess it" Possess what? If you say consciousness, this is not the concept I have in mind. I think consciousness is the human ability to make a symbolic representation of the world. to make generalizations and abstractions and from them to make concepts in order to communicate quickly and easily with other people and to think, make plans for the future, have memories, etc.

What you have in mind, is a lot simpler, but necessary, senses of other animals.