Consciousness & Endeavour

The «Hard» Question

Q: Why do we possess consciousness?

A:Closed It is necessary for any complex or simple but creative (i.e. new) endeavour. These endeavours were the basis of our evolutionary competitive advantage and currently drive social change.

Consciousness is the current focus of much scientific debate and research—while endeavour, our biological competitive advantage, is not. Human consciousness, in the sense of our reflective awareness, is viewed here as an essential component of endeavour. So studying consciousness in isolation is to take it out of its natural setting.
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Isolated study leads to a focus on redness (the favourite of philosophers) or on trivial judgements (like calculations) or simple feelings (like anger)—all taken utterly out of context.

The neglect of a human context shows up painfully in brain MRI studies of subjects asked to consider a moral dilemma: e.g. in what is known as «trolleyology»you face something like the following issue:ClosedFive people are tied up on a railway track, with a runaway trolley heading for them. You are in the train yard next to a lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley will switch to another track—where just one person is tied up. You have only two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills five people. (2) Pull the lever, and it kills one person. Which is the correct choice?

The simple fact is that if you are inside that MRI machine, you are not subject to any moral dilemma at all. Your endeavour is about helping a researcher do a study. Making an artificial moral dilemma the content of the study gives superficial plausibility at the price of deep falsity—even if "everyone in cognitive neuroscience does it."

Many or most psychological lab studies have this failing. They define a situation but not an endeavour. Yet, if the brain has evolved for endeavours as I believe it has, then to study it out of its natural habitat is liable to lead to wrong conclusions.

In the Taxonomy, alertness (rather than sleep or coma) is assumed, so the degree of consciousness is not relevant. All attention is given to the contents of the mind that can come into awareness, and their classification. The Taxonomy does not examine the «how» aspects of consciousness (i.e. how represented in the brain), but the «what» i.e. mental experiences.

This is viewed as the 'hard' question of neuroscience and philosophy. By answering it, I have gone on to generate reasonable conjectures that lend themselves to neuro-scientific study. To benefit from this website, these conjectures are far less important than the Taxonomy itself.

The Role of Consciousness

Q: If consciousness is needed for endeavour, what role does it play?

A:Closed Our minds bring elements of endeavour into awareness in order to evaluate it (i.e. our purpose, our willingness, what is involved &c) and to check and guide its progress in practice over time (i.e. with information, through decisions &c.)

Achievement itself does not require conscious awareness. If you drive often to work, you can safely arrive there unconscious of your activities. But try driving to a place that you have never visited before: you pore over maps, use a GPS, peer at road signs. You are fully aware during your trip because you must consciously sense and think to arrive safely.

So purpose (a taxonomic element) itself is not part of consciousness, but it can be brought into consciousness (as an idea) if it is part of an endeavour. An action is not necessarily in consciousness either, but it can be experienced in advance (as an image) and while it is occurring (as sensations). There are other forms of experience, each with their own contribution to endeavour. The central element of conscious experience generated by the mind is an inner continuity and coherence that we call «the self». The «sense of self» is what makes any endeavour feel that it is mine (or yours).

ClosedWhat about Pure Experience?

Only through our mental experience can we be aware of elements of endeavour so as to share and evaluate them. The Taxonomy was initially envisaged as covering the human elements of endeavour (hence: THEE). But it could have been referred to as a Taxonomy of Endeavour Elements in Awareness (TEEA), or a Taxonomy of Experienced Personal Functioning (TEPF).

Research Strategy

This research project started by identifying elements in endeavour to help people who were confused about what they were doing. Once the taxonomic architecture was determined, it became possible to trace these elements back to biological properties of the organism—which must be neural circuits or brain states that provide the mechanism for consciousness, endeavours and the use of the mind in endeavour.

The taxonomy elements are observable. Observations can be replicated and errors corrected. Its regularities and principles are checkable. By contrast, the biological infrastructure is currently conjectural. These conjectures need testing, which is a more complex process involving methods of neurophysiology or comparative biology.

Originally posted: 14-Jan-2014. Last Updated: 7-Oct-2016.