How Western Science Views, Tackles and Constrains Consciousness Studies
It is perhaps appropriate that Consciousness appears in the Controversies in Science series since every debate through which Antony Freeman (Journal of Consciousness Studies managing Editor) guides us is controversial, often to a bewildering degree. The book, unlike any other I've read on the subject, is an extremely thorough and clear, historical exposition on what might be described as contemporary, western, brain-centered consciousness studies, mostly published in the last century or so. Freeman's admirable conscientiousness extends to useful and well-organised appendices, including bibliography, glossary, chronology and extracts from various classic documents (e.g., Descartes' Meditations). In these, and a few other places, Freeman includes a smattering of key opinions to extend the contemporary focus back to the western philosophical tradition in which it is rooted. Thus, the subject of 'consciousness studies' is treated as a western phenomenon with virtually no reference to any eastern traditions. So, one asks, does this approach deliver satisfying results?

In ploughing through these debates, which often get turgid, ridiculously speculative, and ultra abstract I had two reactions. The first was admiration for Freeman's tenacious ability to tackle such complex and often pedantic subject matter, and explain so much minutia with even-handed, simple language (though original sources often make this an uphill battle). The second reaction was to wonder how much of the debate is really substantive and how much has devolved into speculations about angels dancing on pin heads. In short how much of this is science? Studying small brain regions to extract data and show patterns and correlations may be science in a fairly narrow and technical sense, but does the speculation that follows qualify as scientific? If it does, then so does an untold volume of other literature dealing with everything from language, culture and media (Steiner, Barfield, Gebser, Thompson) to human development (Piaget, Maslow, Verhulst), eastern philosophy and spiritual/consciousness traditions (Aurobindo, Suzuki, Watts, Wilber, Austin and others). Are we better off with Augustine and Aquinus opinions and so little mention of mystical traditions? Freeman does include brief discussion of shamanism and the affects of meditation on brain chemistry, the latter studied by Newberg and dÕAquili (see Newtork 76), but the bookÕs focus is all on those who build a bottom up understanding of consciousness from the physical structure and function of brain bits. Alternatives, such as how language, cultural institutions (science and art) reflect evolving consciousness are not debated.

The book's 12 chapters systematically tease apart the intricacies of The Impossible Science of consciousness (Chapter 1), beginning with a brief historical review from Plato to the 1994 founding of the Journal of Consciousness Studies and the inaugural international conference 'Towards a Science of Consciousness' in the same year. Chapter 2, The Biological Brain, gives us anatomy, neurons and the first barrage of acronyms (AAG, PET, NMR, MRI, fMRI and NCC). The latter - Neural Correlates of Consciousness - leads us into chapters 3 and 4 ('From Light to Sight' and 'The Conscious Brain'). Debating visual perception can reduce to the one-neuron-for-one-purpose extreme of 'grandmother recognition cells' - though, admittedly, most take a broader view. (Interestingly Gebser's argument that modern mental-rational consciousness is brain-and vision-centered seems supported by the present obsession with brains, the primacy of vision, and all our references to 'seeing,' 'viewing' and gaining 'perspective' and 'insight' by 'looking into' scientific problems). Chapter 5, The Mind-Body Problem, Chapter 6, The Unconscious Computer, and Chapter 7, Embodied Consciousness, represent the more philosophical and somewhat more holistic core of the book. These three acronym-free chapters tackle perennial big picture problems such as subject-object dualism, panpsychism, the pitfalls of the computer-brain metaphor and the necessity of seeing the mind embodied in the whole organism, its environment and its evolutionary history. Here Darwin's observations on the expression of emotions in apes and humans are cited to good advantage. Chapter 8, The Once and Future Self, deals with memory and revives the acronym festival. Don't blame Freeman for ANN, VSSP, WISARD or MAGNUS he's only the messenger. Nevertheless, in a rare moment of personal expression he describes the evidence, that LTM (Long Term Memory) can be dramatically improved by injecting fetal septal cells into Alzheimers-damaged regions of the brain (hippocampus and basal ganglia), as 'the most encouraging piece of research that I have come across in ten years.'

Chapter 9, on Quantum Physics and Consciousness, takes us 'out there' into Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' (spukhafte Fernwirkungen) world of wave function collapse, non-locality and Roger Penrose's speculative claim that consciousness 'is connected with quantum gravity exact nature unknown.' More helpful, for me at least is the nice mind-body unifying statement that 'being physical no longer means being material but being a structure in space and time that somehow holds ('encodes') knowledge or information created by earlier events.' (This strikes me as a paraphrase of pop psychology's 'the issues are in the tissues' - or more precisely 'the issues are the tissues' - herein christened TIATT)!

Chapter 10, Decision Time, explores such problems as how the definition of free will is compromised by our apparent ability to initiate physical activity before we've consciously decided to act. Chapter 11, Dreams, Visions and Art, focuses on chemical explanations or correlates of dreaming and the aforementioned comments on shamanism, meditation experiments and attempts to locate brain regions associated with religious and aesthetic experience. Concluding Chapter 12, What is it like to be Conscious,?' pits reductionists (Dennett) and non-reductionsts (Chalmers) in the so called Easy v. Hard problem debate. The latter, which asks why there is such a thing as conscious experience in a physical universe, highlights the mental consciousness assumption that science can find 'explanations.' An alternative view (McGinn) says we need a new conception of space. (In short, if we change our consciousness, our view of consciousness will change. This point already made by Wilber and others highlights the limitations of the assumption that one scientific, materialistic approach will solve anything more than its inherent methodological constraints allow). In a last minute nod to the late Francisco Varela's call to explore alternative 'subjective' meditative (Buddhist & Vedic) paradigms, Freeman leaves the door open to all the traditions his book avoids 'debating.'

So the punch line, as I see it, is that while consciousness is mysterious, intriguing, subjective and largely 'impossible' to fully rationalise or westernise objectively, a shift in consciousness can shed new light on how we understand this very human attribute. Mystics would surely agree, (having to various degrees already experienced the shift from mental to integral), and willingly recognise 'scientific' consciousness quests as a further manifestation of intrinsic evolutionary impulses. It seems obvious, rather as Teilhard de Chardin noted, that present Consciousness Studies impulses represent an interiorisation of consciousness, contracting in on itself to compliment, integrate and synthesise all it has so recently explored in its expansive, analytical adventures in the external world.