Ontology

The Enigma of Consciousness

For a long time, consciousness and the mind appeared to be self-evident phenomena. It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that the issue of the self as the bearer of consciousness and rationality was fully articulated. A significant impetus for this exploration was the question of whether it is possible to create an artificial bearer of the mind—a machine endowed with the psychological characteristics of humans.

However, answering the question, "Is it possible to create such a machine?" requires a clear criterion for the presence of consciousness; otherwise, how can we ascertain whether the machine possesses it or not? For each of us, the existence of consciousness within ourselves is obvious and does not require proof. Moreover, doubting whether I am conscious seems absurd. Yet, why do I believe that others are as conscious as I am? Thus, the criteria for consciousness may apply equally to the consciousness of others and to that of machines: if I know who possesses consciousness, I can similarly verify its presence in something that has been created. But what is consciousness? What is the mind? And what is the ontological status of the bearer of consciousness and the mind?

To begin, we will attempt to answer the first question by conceptually delineating the relevant characteristics. The structure of the term "consciousness" literally points to shared knowledge, that is, what is known by at least two individuals. If I know something and convey that information to you, when you receive it from me and perceive me as a person, you know (1) something that I have communicated; (2) that I know it. In response, when I receive confirmation from you about the message you received from me, I now know that (3) I know that you know that I know the information I provided. When I confirm that I received your confirmation, (4) I know that you know that I know that you know this and that. In such an act of mutual reporting, the information becomes distributed among individuals, and in addition to the content of the message itself, there is an awareness that this information is known by both parties: I know that you know, and you know that I am aware of what you know. It is noteworthy that subsequent reflections do not yield new qualities. In this final reflection, the situation is fixed as if from the outside in the concept of consciousness. Where I address the information to myself, consciousness is expressed in the formula "I know that I know that I am aware of what I know." My self in the conscious act seems to double as the self-object (that which is given to me in perception and with which I identify) and the self-subject. However, the act of consciousness as an event requires an initial initiation by "knowing," a certain message generated either by someone else or, primarily, by myself. But who is this "myself," and what is this "not-self" in the ontological scheme?

The primary givenness of the content of awareness is reduced to the experience of sensory states, which are already referred to as qualities: these are the sensations of something warm, salty, red, astringent, as well as nausea, dizziness, pain, itching, joy, orgasm, and so forth.

Such qualities can only be comprehended through personal experience; they cannot be reduced to a description of the situation from the perspective of an external observer. Yet an external observer, who does not attribute a certain sensory quality to themselves—such as when describing a watermelon as something dark green in color, with a red core, sweet, and juicy—reduces this description precisely to qualities that are experienced. In other words, the perceived entity, such as a watermelon, is simultaneously something that is a state within me, a state that I experience sensorially, and something independent of me that is not generated by me. Only secondarily can I recall it from memory (but memory belongs to me!) and thirdly through verbal (or any other mediated sign, image, or symbol) communication. Accordingly, the act of awareness presents sensibility, which should be distinguished from consciousness as such.

At the same time, our experience indicates that the states of sensory experiences, their connectivity, and the perception of oneself within them undergo changes. It seems we intermittently disconnect and reconnect within the flow of events. When this reconnection occurs, it encompasses a broad spectrum of states: alertness and "normal" perception; reveries, dreams, immersions in fantasies that can vary in degree from detachment from "normal" perception to the sharpness and obsessiveness of experiences, and the capacity to involuntarily intervene in their flow, redirect attention, and so on. This process of engagement can be termed presence. Our observational experience as external observers suggests that individuals' ability to report their experiences is directly linked to their bodily states. Today, these observations have been expanded into specialized studies that increasingly gather data about the connection between brain activity, the nervous system, and psychological states. Hence arises the conclusion that materialists readily draw: consciousness emerges in the present state of a living being whose nervous system integrates sensory data into coherent images that are somehow consciously apprehended, meaning the image of the self is distinguished, and a model is generated in which the reflexive self is compared to the data from sensory channels in secondary reflection. In other words, such a being seems to report to itself the content of what it experiences sensorially. This ability is likely connected to social interactions and language as a sign system used in social communications. Indeed, such social communications, mediated by language, are also utilized for problem-solving in the mind and the accumulation of data and methods for resolution in social memory. This particular quality can be called the mind. Thus, this secondary generation of linguistic signals is initially directed outward. Through its distribution within the community, as described above, it forms what is termed consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is primarily a collective process in which, however, an individual "mirror" emerges—personal self-awareness as the self-subject perceiving the messages it generates as well. The concretized other (a specific individual) becomes diluted, and the message is generated not for anyone specific but for some depersonalized subject—an abstracted subject that simultaneously closes in on itself. Hence arises the effect of perceiving oneself in each act of the manifested givenness of the world.

The materialistic picture allows for the principled possibility of constructing alternative modes of mental operation, other schemas of connectivity among sensory channels, transferring information from one bearer to another, and ultimately creating a psychological doppelgänger of a human endowed with all human characteristics. This is because all mental states, including consciousness, are reduced to the processing of signals within a physical communication channel. (Let us recall that there is nothing else in the brain.) Thus, if mental states are generated by the brain, then if we create its cybernetic analogue, it must necessarily generate the same mental states. However, the problem arises in generating qualities—sensory givens and their connection to objective reality. (This was already mentioned earlier in the discussion of the problem of reality itself.) Today, this problem remains unresolved. Several proposed versions are hotly debated in contemporary philosophical literature; however, none have yet proven convincing enough to become a universally accepted solution that aligns with all data. Nonetheless, a comprehensive discussion of this problem exceeds the scope of an overview lecture.