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There’s an interesting write-up and video at Edge on the nature of consciousness. From the introduction:

On October 17, Edge organized a Reality Club meeting at The Hotel Ritz in Paris to allow neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene to present his new theory on how consciousness arises in the brain to a group of Parisian scientists and thinkers. The theory, based on Dehaene’s past twelve years of brain-imaging research is called the global neuronal workspace. It promises to offer new tools for diagnosing consciousness disorders in patients.

“For the past twelve years”, says Dehaene, “my research team has been using every available brain research tool, from functional MRI to electro- and magneto-encephalography and even electrodes inserted deep in the human brain, to shed light on the brain mechanisms of consciousness. I am now happy to report that we have acquired a good working hypothesis. In experiment after experiment, we have seen the same signatures of consciousness: physiological markers that all, simultaneously, show a massive change when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information (say a word, a digit or a sound).

“Furthermore, when we render the same information non-conscious or “subliminal”, all the signatures disappear. We have a theory about why these signatures occur, called the global neuronal workspace theory. Realistic computer simulations of neurons reproduce our main experimental findings: when the information processed exceeds a threshold for large-scale communication across many brain areas, the network ignites into a large-scale synchronous state, and all our signatures suddenly appear.

But this is already more than a theory. We are now applying our ideas to non-communicating patients in coma, vegetative state, or locked-in syndromes. The test that we have designed with Tristan Bekinschtein, Lionel Naccache, and Laurent Cohen, based on our past experiments and theory, seems to reliably sort out which patients retain some residual conscious life and which do not.

“My laboratory is now pursuing this research intensively on patients, animals, human adults and young children, with the hope of turning our brain-imaging measurements into a real-time monitor of conscious experience. The time thus seems ripe to share this work with a broader audience of readers interested in cutting-edge science and technology, but also those concerned with the philosophical, personal and ethical implications of these findings.”

The questions regarding what consciousness is and how it impacts our lives are numerous and fascinating. Investigating consciousness is essentially our brains attempting to understand themselves. Some speculate we’ll never fully understand consciousness because we’ll never be able to make objective observations using the very organ we’re trying to understand. Yet in the last decade or so we’ve developed new tools that allow us to explore our consciousness better than before, and may allow us to draw conclusions we couldn’t using only our minds in the effort to understand our minds.

(Tip o’the hat to Josh Ellis on Friendfeed)

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♦Lane Wallace, writing for The Atlantic, gives us two articles on the process of thinking that deserve further consideration:

In my experience, there are two factors that seem to make the biggest difference as to whether or not two people can have a meaningful and productive discussion from different points of view (assuming both are fairly self-assured and reasonable beings):

1. The first factor is whether the people involved see the world in black-and-white terms, or in more complex shades of gray. For those who see the world in absolute terms of black and white (on the left or the right), the only choice of movement is all the way to the other side. Which is an awfully long distance to move an opinion. People who are more inclined to see the world in nuanced shades of gray, on the other hand, can consider a slightly different shade without feeling their basic values threatened. The options for movement, and therefore their potential willingness to consider another perspective, are far greater.

2. The second factor is how skilled, practiced, and comfortable both participants are in the art of critical thinking. The website criticalthinking.org offers more definitions of what critical thinking consists of than anyone probably needs. But at its most exemplary, the site says, critical thinking is based on “clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” Critical thinkers “avoid thinking simplisitcally about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.” And “they realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers … they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.”

Which is to say, people skilled in the art of critical thinking make a practice of questioning everything. Even their own opinions. They don’t necessarily sit in the middle ground of any debate, but they understand the potential fallibility of sources, and acknowledge the legitimate existence of other points of view … subject to examination, along with their own. Meaningful exploration and discussion of issues, therefore, becomes possible. Even productive. (The Importance of Critical Thinking)

And

How is it that people can cling to an opinion or view of a person, event, issue of the world, despite being presented with clear or mounting data that contradicts that position? The easy answer, of course, is simply that people are irrational. But a closer look at some of the particular ways and reasons we’re irrational offers some interesting food for thought.

In a recently published study, a group of researchers from Northwestern University, UNC Chapel HIll, SUNY Buffalo and Millsaps College found that people often employ an approach the researchers called “motivated reasoning” when sorting through new information or arguments, especially on controversial issues. Motivated reasoning is, as UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman put it, the equivalent of policy-driven data, instead of data-driven policy.

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create “cognitive dissonance”–discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence–selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

That’s not a news flash to anyone who’s paid attention to any recent national debate–although the researchers pointed out that this finding, itself, runs counter to the idea that the reason people continue to hold positions counter to all evidence is because of misinformation or lack of access to the correct data. Even when presented with compelling, factual data from sources they trusted, many of the subjects still found ways to dismiss it. But the most interesting (or disturbing) aspect of the Northwestern study was the finding that providing additional counter-evidence, facts, or arguments actually intensified this reaction. Additional countering data, it seems, increases the cognitive dissonance, and therefore the need for subjects to alleviate that discomfort by retreating into more rigidly selective hearing and entrenched positions.

Needless to say, these findings do not bode well for anyone with hopes of changing anyone else’s mind with facts or rational discussion, especially on “hot button” issues. But why do we cling so fiercely to positions when they don’t even involve us directly? Why do we care who got to the North Pole first? Or whether a particular bill has provision X versus provision Y in it? Why don’t we care more about simply finding out the truth–especially in cases where one “right” answer actually exists?

Part of the reason, according to Kleiman, is “the brute fact that people identify their opinions with themselves; to admit having been wrong is to have lost the argument, and (as Vince Lombardi said), every time you lose, you die a little.” And, he adds, “there is no more destructive force in human affairs–not greed, not hatred–than the desire to have been right.” (All Evidence to the Contrary)

The brain is an organ of thought. Its primary purpose is to be the body’s command and control center. It has to remember, to decide, to direct other organs and limbs in the performance of their duties. It “thinks” on a number of levels at once, some conscious, others subconscious. Consciousness is the brain considering itself.

We presume to understand what we are doing when we’re “thinking”, “contemplating”, “pondering” something. We generally agree on what constitutes the practice of thinking. Yet we really know next to nothing about the process of thinking. How are thoughts formed, how are they stored, what influences the process? Is thinking simply a byproduct like waste heat from an engine? Can non-living objects think?

Though we can’t answer all the questions raised when we try to think about thinking, we do know that every person thinks slightly differently about everything. No two people think exactly the same. We are first and foremost responsible for the thoughts in our own heads. I believe we are more than just the compilation of our opinions, we are a compilation of all our thoughts. The rest of us is just meat. The brain is meat.

To practice thinking is to exercise our whole person. Thinking is a mental gym membership.

If we make a practice of thinking as consciously as possible, if we are willing to admit that what we think may be in error to some degree or another, if we remain dissatisfied with the extent of our current knowledge both individually and as a society, we should want to think. We should reject the thought that says, “Now you know all there is to know about…”

Certainty is, in many cases, not possible. There aren’t all that many absolutely true statements, especially in philosophy.

We should embrace uncertainty. It doesn’t hurt to examine new thoughts and concepts. We are under no obligation to accept all of them as valid. An open mind, like an open heart, while vulnerable, can produce benefits beyond belief. Beyond belief is knowledge.

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