One of the hardest tasks for researchers of consciousness, aside from providing a suitable definitive explanation for the term itself, is to try and explain how it might be constructed. Philosophers of mind have generally had a very difficult time in categorising the component parts of consciousness and have struggled for centuries to agree on even the kind of language that should be used. We might talk about emotions, feelings and thoughts but who could possibly say where one ends and the next begins? Thinkers from Plato onwards have grappled with the implications of qualia but have never managed to fully tie this expression down.
The problem is that consciousness is intangible and invisible and we are beings who rely our senses and memories to explain configurations of the matter around us whereby we can settle on a common, albeit subjective, understanding. You can not imagine a thought... although trying to do so depends entirely on thought itself; but you can think about other things. Not being able to imagine or visualise thoughts as distinct units of the mental process means that we can not visualise how they might link and merge to form part of the spectrum of consciousness; at least not in the same way that we can visualise how bricks can be combined in certain configurations to construct buildings.
Added to this is the problem that it quickly becomes redundant even trying to understand mental events as distinct linear phenomena given that we can all attest to having had several things on our minds at any given time, not to mention the constant onslaught of sensory and nervous information and even the subconscious processes that are continually contributing to the ever changing mesh of experience we call the self.
Do you look at a river and see individual droplets of water? Could you decipher how each one of these droplets is influencing the movement of those around it? No, but that doesn't mean that any section of that body of water couldn't be broken down to its component parts and measured.
The problem is that consciousness is intangible and invisible and we are beings who rely our senses and memories to explain configurations of the matter around us whereby we can settle on a common, albeit subjective, understanding. You can not imagine a thought... although trying to do so depends entirely on thought itself; but you can think about other things. Not being able to imagine or visualise thoughts as distinct units of the mental process means that we can not visualise how they might link and merge to form part of the spectrum of consciousness; at least not in the same way that we can visualise how bricks can be combined in certain configurations to construct buildings.
Added to this is the problem that it quickly becomes redundant even trying to understand mental events as distinct linear phenomena given that we can all attest to having had several things on our minds at any given time, not to mention the constant onslaught of sensory and nervous information and even the subconscious processes that are continually contributing to the ever changing mesh of experience we call the self.
Do you look at a river and see individual droplets of water? Could you decipher how each one of these droplets is influencing the movement of those around it? No, but that doesn't mean that any section of that body of water couldn't be broken down to its component parts and measured.
Even if thoughts could be looked at as unique pieces or blocks, are they entirely individual? We might often think of the same thing at different times but does that mean that we are experiencing the same thought again?
Surely a truly deterministic theory would have to allow for the fact that a mental event that seems to have been repeated or experienced before is actually unique in that it comes at the end of a chain of events concerning bother matter and consciousness. You might think of an object one day, and that thought will be coloured by feeling, emotion, recall and sensory input but thinking of that same object two days later will very possibly result in an entirely different experience given that the conditions will have changed. Thus, the same thought can never be thought of twice.
It might take the kind of systematic process of analysis that only a supercomputer could apply before we are able to discuss this subject in a less ambiguous and speculative way. The kinds of causal chains, interlinked events and variable looping configurations we would like to quantify are beyond our current understanding of quantum and chaotic engineering. The problems of decoding consciousness seem to echo those that still frustrate scientists looking at finding a harmonic resolution in the macro and micro aspects of the physical universe. It seems as if we are not yet intelligent enough to understand our own intelligence.
Surely a truly deterministic theory would have to allow for the fact that a mental event that seems to have been repeated or experienced before is actually unique in that it comes at the end of a chain of events concerning bother matter and consciousness. You might think of an object one day, and that thought will be coloured by feeling, emotion, recall and sensory input but thinking of that same object two days later will very possibly result in an entirely different experience given that the conditions will have changed. Thus, the same thought can never be thought of twice.
It might take the kind of systematic process of analysis that only a supercomputer could apply before we are able to discuss this subject in a less ambiguous and speculative way. The kinds of causal chains, interlinked events and variable looping configurations we would like to quantify are beyond our current understanding of quantum and chaotic engineering. The problems of decoding consciousness seem to echo those that still frustrate scientists looking at finding a harmonic resolution in the macro and micro aspects of the physical universe. It seems as if we are not yet intelligent enough to understand our own intelligence.
However, as technological progress accelerates, so too do our chances of finally facilitating the framework of tools and conditions needed to turn theory into fact on one of the greatest enigmas of existence... the conscious self.
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