Mindfulness is today’s buzzword. Apparently, mindful people live “better” lives than “unmindful” people. It makes sense. “Think before you act” is good advice. “Consider the ramifications of your actions,” also. And just plain, “Think (be mindful) of others,” helps to avoid pain and strain in the mindful and others. Those mindful lives are manifestations of the second of my favorite expressions: What you anticipate is rarely a problem. Like those other expressions, the “anticipate” one arises from a fundamental assumption: Self-awareness is not only possible, but is also practical. It has a function. Self-awareness! Isn’t that a form of consciousness?
“But,” you argue, “there are different kinds of anticipation. Don’t dogs anticipate the return of their owners? Why else sit and stare at the door? Don’t they anticipate getting food once it’s proffered? Surely, anticipation isn’t the culmination of all forms of consciousness? Wait! Are there different forms of consciousness? Is the problem-solving ability of animals an indication of consciousness? Does a dog’s figuring how to get to food on the other side of a fence imply self-consciousness? The dog does "anticipate" getting to the food. Is problem-solving unrelated to consciousness in general? Many animals problem-solve. What of a raccoon’s ability to take off a garbage can lid? This consciousness problem is the proverbial can of worms, but in this instance the problem is the problem: Are worms conscious? And to go back to the word anticipation, I am now thinking that if it determines our relationship with the future, then don’t grizzly bears anticipate when they stand facing downstream to catch salmon swimming upstream? Isn’t that evidence of anticipation, of consciousness in non-human species? Shoot! You have me going off in so many different directions on this. Why did you bring it up?”
I saw something in Walmart today, and that got me to thinking, but I’ll mention that at the end. To address your complaint about “so many different directions,” I’ll point out that if you read through the many articles devoted to understanding the origin, purpose, and effect of consciousness, you will probably say, “I’m more confused now than I was before I began to read about the subject.” You won’t be alone. I am as confused as anyone by my self-awareness, by consciousness, and by corollary ideas, such as mindfulness. I know there are people who can direct others to be more mindful, people who can impart skills necessary for mindfulness, but practicing mindfulness isn’t necessarily a key to understanding its nature, especially when understanding means defining in absolute terms. Is mindfulness “total awareness”?
Is “total awareness” possible? If not, then how much awareness makes one mindful? And if I can ask, “How much?” am I indicating that there are degrees of, kinds of, and levels of awareness. “Much” means a quantification, and that opens another can.
Last spring a couple of cardinals kept attacking their reflections in my windows every morning for a month. Annoying as the process was—they didn’t return to do it this year, fortunately—it was also a point of departure for thinking about consciousness. Obviously, cardinals aren’t self-conscious as we are; otherwise, they would recognize themselves in their reflections. However, because cardinals have little trouble surviving in the wild and can adopt relationships with other cardinals they recognize, I assume that they have “awareness” of some sort. On that point, I’ll note that great apes recognize reflections for what they are, but other life-forms, even some other primates, don’t.
When I think of physicists’ explanations for the origin and nature of the Cosmos, I spiral into a vortex that I suppose will lead me to a moment that separates an unconscious universe from a conscious one, just as the singularity of the Big Bang led to the separation of the four fundamental forces. I know, as you know, that the stuff of the universe is “physical,” but my “knowing that it is physical” isn’t purely physical. Neurons might work by electromagnetism, biochemistry, and quantum processes, but thoughts and awareness aren’t physical. As many have noted, each of us is the Universe conscious of Itself.
If, as the physicists tell us, quantum effects produced the Cosmos and if they still produce virtual particles that fill the apparent void, how is it possible that those “effects” resulted in consciousness? What properties of virtual particles coming into and going out of existence demands a universe that is conscious of itself? When I ask that last question, I find myself in danger of circular thinking, of falling into the trap of saying that the universe is as it is because we are who we are. I can’t fault myself for this circularity because it seems to have been a problem for many philosophers who were far smarter than I; instead, I blame myself for not getting off the carousel. No one has as yet definitively explained consciousness and its origin, so I should look for other, more linear rides in the amusement park of life. We can explain the advantages of consciousness, but we can’t explain its origin or exact nature.
But darn! Just in saying I am getting nowhere in my understanding of my understanding, I find myself back on the merry-go-round—though it is more “frustration-go-round” than “merry.” For example, why are those cardinals capable of surviving without the self-awareness that I show in recognizing my reflection. What goes through their brains when they dip to drink from a pond and see their reflection? I haven’t noticed whether or not cardinals “attack” the water as they “attack” my windows. If they were to attack it, would they ever drink to survive?
As the experts tell us, self-consciousness is a slow process; we act before we know we act, as experiments have demonstrated: My brain seems to decide to move a muscle before I know I decided to move a muscle. Or, take the common experience of many drivers who have driven a few miles only to ask themselves how they drove those miles apparently unconsciously. Did the right side of the brain go off in dreamland while the left side took the wheel? Of course, I can “consciously” decide to perform some actions, but look how slow that process is. Whenever we ponder, we act consciously, but pondering is too long-term for ducking a foul ball sent into the stands at a baseball game; it’s too slow for swerving a car, too slow for typing, and too slow for responding to the wave of another in a chance meeting on a busy sidewalk. Even in your reading this, you center your consciousness not on understanding itself, but on understanding something consciousness can deal with. It seems that consciousness is a problem for consciousness.
So, how do I go about thinking about human thinking. In the context of evolution? Okay, then for a very long time, at least back into our cousin Neanderthal pre-us time, hominins have shown a high level of “awareness” as evidenced by burial rites. That pre-us time might extend to all the Homo species. Surely, we can argue that any religious interpretation of life is a mark of consciousness because such an activity bespeaks of belief that there is more to life than biology and that after death some form of the person continues “consciously.” But then, should I ascribe the same kind of analysis to a herd of elephants seeming to show grief or puzzlement over a fallen member of their family? Leave that for another post because I’m back to my circular thinking.
Remember Descartes’ circular argument for God? It’s something like this: I am finite; God is infinite. A finite being can’t have an infinite thought unless and Infinite Being gives it. Therefore, God exists. Well, I have a feeling that almost all explanations of consciousness are similar; either they involve some circularity or they make distinctions that don’t show much of a difference. For example, Leibnitz noted a difference between cardinals and humans—not exactly in those terms, but in the sense that perceiving is different from self-perceiving. Cardinals (he never wrote about them) perceive. Humans perceive and self-perceive. Wonderful. Where’s that get us? (Knowing that gets you a venti café mocha at Starbucks for about $5.60. Try it: Tell the barista that you are self-aware and ask for the drink—then hand him $5.60)
If we already know that some organisms seem to be aware without being self-aware, is there something else we can learn to expand our knowledge on the subject? If, for example, we read articles in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Consciousness and Cognition, will we discover something new? Or, will we read through pages and pages of erudite writing only to find out that different assumptions, approaches, and conclusions still leave us with one question: Can we define consciousness as precisely as we can define an equilateral triangle in plane geometry? But if we can’t define exactly what it is, can we at least say how it entered the universe?
Does the very nature of the universe require a rise of consciousness? Now I’m almost at the reverse of Descartes’ thinking and definitely at the boundary of an anthropic principle for the origin of the universe: Consciousness is a fundamental component of the universe because it was created by a Consciousness. And that argument gets me nowhere, except to say that all explanations that ascribe the rise of consciousness to natural “physical” processes are just as woefully inadequate as explanations that rely on an Infinite Consciousness imparting some special favor on a favored few and very special favor on the genus Homo. But as for the rest of the Cosmos? Obviously, self-awareness isn’t a requirement for existence. Planets aren’t self-aware. Viruses, bacteria, and most members of all phyla seem to lack self-awareness. And not all consciousness appears to be equal. The stuff apparently comes in degrees even among the self-aware, apparently. Just ask yourself at this moment: “Am I self-aware right now?” No? Why? Were you too busy thinking to be self-aware? What? Now you are self-aware? And now the self-awareness is gone again because you just have to get through this essay; you’ve already committed too much time to it not to see where it’s going.
Have you ever attempted to “enhance” self-awareness with hallucinogens or extreme risk-taking? Have you enhanced your self-awareness through a whisker-close escape from accident or death? Have you expanded consciousness in a scenic spot? With a guru? In total solitude? Think of what I just asked. Does consciousness lend itself to enhancement and expansion? If so, what does that tell us about consciousness? Is it elastic? Is it variable, and if it is, are its apparent variations really all part of the same “thing”?
Not everyone is concerned with self-awareness, of course, and even those who are so concerned are only temporarily so. Too many cares get in the way. Too many phenomena to be conscious of to think of consciousness itself. Got to run to Walmart, pick up some stuff for supper, the car, the clogged drain, and the beach. We find ourselves on the carousel of life, and when we think about thinking, we ride carousels constructed by physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. Even trying to be mindful doesn’t fully explain why we are capable of being mindful or how mindfulness might take many forms. Does self-awareness, I ask, also occur in the form of wallowing in self-pity? Surely, the self-pitying concentrate on the Self.
No, I agree with you. if I may presume: You’re thinking that I’ve offered you nothing concrete here, only questions. Don’t worry; I’m not offended. My musings show two things: There’s not enough space here to fully examine the topic, and even if I were to devote both time and cyberspace to it, I probably don’t have the wisdom to satisfy your curiosity. Even Socrates could only offer this: “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” He wasn’t talking about cardinals, of course; those birds seem to live successfully without thinking about living, but who’s to fault them—or the viruses, bacteria, and alligators? Socrates wasn’t addressing those whose consciousness isn’t self-consciousness. Instead, he was addressing humans because they can be mindful, can be self-aware. His statement left much for debate over the past couple of millennia.
As I walked through Walmart today, I saw a magazine on “mindfulness.” I didn’t stop to pick it up because I was fulfilling a mundane mission. I didn’t even look to see whether or not it was one of those special issue publications by some established periodical like National Geographic, Scientific American, or Psychology Today or was an issue of a magazine called Mindfulness. But there I was hurriedly pushing my cart toward a distant checkout counter when the title made me think of myself and draw a quick conclusion: If that magazine finds an audience in Walmart, then humans truly are more self-aware than other organisms. For those who advocate “mindfulness” or “self-awareness” for a better world, there’s hope for the Cosmos and the future of self-consciousness on a shelf in Walmart.
“But,” you argue, “there are different kinds of anticipation. Don’t dogs anticipate the return of their owners? Why else sit and stare at the door? Don’t they anticipate getting food once it’s proffered? Surely, anticipation isn’t the culmination of all forms of consciousness? Wait! Are there different forms of consciousness? Is the problem-solving ability of animals an indication of consciousness? Does a dog’s figuring how to get to food on the other side of a fence imply self-consciousness? The dog does "anticipate" getting to the food. Is problem-solving unrelated to consciousness in general? Many animals problem-solve. What of a raccoon’s ability to take off a garbage can lid? This consciousness problem is the proverbial can of worms, but in this instance the problem is the problem: Are worms conscious? And to go back to the word anticipation, I am now thinking that if it determines our relationship with the future, then don’t grizzly bears anticipate when they stand facing downstream to catch salmon swimming upstream? Isn’t that evidence of anticipation, of consciousness in non-human species? Shoot! You have me going off in so many different directions on this. Why did you bring it up?”
I saw something in Walmart today, and that got me to thinking, but I’ll mention that at the end. To address your complaint about “so many different directions,” I’ll point out that if you read through the many articles devoted to understanding the origin, purpose, and effect of consciousness, you will probably say, “I’m more confused now than I was before I began to read about the subject.” You won’t be alone. I am as confused as anyone by my self-awareness, by consciousness, and by corollary ideas, such as mindfulness. I know there are people who can direct others to be more mindful, people who can impart skills necessary for mindfulness, but practicing mindfulness isn’t necessarily a key to understanding its nature, especially when understanding means defining in absolute terms. Is mindfulness “total awareness”?
Is “total awareness” possible? If not, then how much awareness makes one mindful? And if I can ask, “How much?” am I indicating that there are degrees of, kinds of, and levels of awareness. “Much” means a quantification, and that opens another can.
Last spring a couple of cardinals kept attacking their reflections in my windows every morning for a month. Annoying as the process was—they didn’t return to do it this year, fortunately—it was also a point of departure for thinking about consciousness. Obviously, cardinals aren’t self-conscious as we are; otherwise, they would recognize themselves in their reflections. However, because cardinals have little trouble surviving in the wild and can adopt relationships with other cardinals they recognize, I assume that they have “awareness” of some sort. On that point, I’ll note that great apes recognize reflections for what they are, but other life-forms, even some other primates, don’t.
When I think of physicists’ explanations for the origin and nature of the Cosmos, I spiral into a vortex that I suppose will lead me to a moment that separates an unconscious universe from a conscious one, just as the singularity of the Big Bang led to the separation of the four fundamental forces. I know, as you know, that the stuff of the universe is “physical,” but my “knowing that it is physical” isn’t purely physical. Neurons might work by electromagnetism, biochemistry, and quantum processes, but thoughts and awareness aren’t physical. As many have noted, each of us is the Universe conscious of Itself.
If, as the physicists tell us, quantum effects produced the Cosmos and if they still produce virtual particles that fill the apparent void, how is it possible that those “effects” resulted in consciousness? What properties of virtual particles coming into and going out of existence demands a universe that is conscious of itself? When I ask that last question, I find myself in danger of circular thinking, of falling into the trap of saying that the universe is as it is because we are who we are. I can’t fault myself for this circularity because it seems to have been a problem for many philosophers who were far smarter than I; instead, I blame myself for not getting off the carousel. No one has as yet definitively explained consciousness and its origin, so I should look for other, more linear rides in the amusement park of life. We can explain the advantages of consciousness, but we can’t explain its origin or exact nature.
But darn! Just in saying I am getting nowhere in my understanding of my understanding, I find myself back on the merry-go-round—though it is more “frustration-go-round” than “merry.” For example, why are those cardinals capable of surviving without the self-awareness that I show in recognizing my reflection. What goes through their brains when they dip to drink from a pond and see their reflection? I haven’t noticed whether or not cardinals “attack” the water as they “attack” my windows. If they were to attack it, would they ever drink to survive?
As the experts tell us, self-consciousness is a slow process; we act before we know we act, as experiments have demonstrated: My brain seems to decide to move a muscle before I know I decided to move a muscle. Or, take the common experience of many drivers who have driven a few miles only to ask themselves how they drove those miles apparently unconsciously. Did the right side of the brain go off in dreamland while the left side took the wheel? Of course, I can “consciously” decide to perform some actions, but look how slow that process is. Whenever we ponder, we act consciously, but pondering is too long-term for ducking a foul ball sent into the stands at a baseball game; it’s too slow for swerving a car, too slow for typing, and too slow for responding to the wave of another in a chance meeting on a busy sidewalk. Even in your reading this, you center your consciousness not on understanding itself, but on understanding something consciousness can deal with. It seems that consciousness is a problem for consciousness.
So, how do I go about thinking about human thinking. In the context of evolution? Okay, then for a very long time, at least back into our cousin Neanderthal pre-us time, hominins have shown a high level of “awareness” as evidenced by burial rites. That pre-us time might extend to all the Homo species. Surely, we can argue that any religious interpretation of life is a mark of consciousness because such an activity bespeaks of belief that there is more to life than biology and that after death some form of the person continues “consciously.” But then, should I ascribe the same kind of analysis to a herd of elephants seeming to show grief or puzzlement over a fallen member of their family? Leave that for another post because I’m back to my circular thinking.
Remember Descartes’ circular argument for God? It’s something like this: I am finite; God is infinite. A finite being can’t have an infinite thought unless and Infinite Being gives it. Therefore, God exists. Well, I have a feeling that almost all explanations of consciousness are similar; either they involve some circularity or they make distinctions that don’t show much of a difference. For example, Leibnitz noted a difference between cardinals and humans—not exactly in those terms, but in the sense that perceiving is different from self-perceiving. Cardinals (he never wrote about them) perceive. Humans perceive and self-perceive. Wonderful. Where’s that get us? (Knowing that gets you a venti café mocha at Starbucks for about $5.60. Try it: Tell the barista that you are self-aware and ask for the drink—then hand him $5.60)
If we already know that some organisms seem to be aware without being self-aware, is there something else we can learn to expand our knowledge on the subject? If, for example, we read articles in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Consciousness and Cognition, will we discover something new? Or, will we read through pages and pages of erudite writing only to find out that different assumptions, approaches, and conclusions still leave us with one question: Can we define consciousness as precisely as we can define an equilateral triangle in plane geometry? But if we can’t define exactly what it is, can we at least say how it entered the universe?
Does the very nature of the universe require a rise of consciousness? Now I’m almost at the reverse of Descartes’ thinking and definitely at the boundary of an anthropic principle for the origin of the universe: Consciousness is a fundamental component of the universe because it was created by a Consciousness. And that argument gets me nowhere, except to say that all explanations that ascribe the rise of consciousness to natural “physical” processes are just as woefully inadequate as explanations that rely on an Infinite Consciousness imparting some special favor on a favored few and very special favor on the genus Homo. But as for the rest of the Cosmos? Obviously, self-awareness isn’t a requirement for existence. Planets aren’t self-aware. Viruses, bacteria, and most members of all phyla seem to lack self-awareness. And not all consciousness appears to be equal. The stuff apparently comes in degrees even among the self-aware, apparently. Just ask yourself at this moment: “Am I self-aware right now?” No? Why? Were you too busy thinking to be self-aware? What? Now you are self-aware? And now the self-awareness is gone again because you just have to get through this essay; you’ve already committed too much time to it not to see where it’s going.
Have you ever attempted to “enhance” self-awareness with hallucinogens or extreme risk-taking? Have you enhanced your self-awareness through a whisker-close escape from accident or death? Have you expanded consciousness in a scenic spot? With a guru? In total solitude? Think of what I just asked. Does consciousness lend itself to enhancement and expansion? If so, what does that tell us about consciousness? Is it elastic? Is it variable, and if it is, are its apparent variations really all part of the same “thing”?
Not everyone is concerned with self-awareness, of course, and even those who are so concerned are only temporarily so. Too many cares get in the way. Too many phenomena to be conscious of to think of consciousness itself. Got to run to Walmart, pick up some stuff for supper, the car, the clogged drain, and the beach. We find ourselves on the carousel of life, and when we think about thinking, we ride carousels constructed by physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. Even trying to be mindful doesn’t fully explain why we are capable of being mindful or how mindfulness might take many forms. Does self-awareness, I ask, also occur in the form of wallowing in self-pity? Surely, the self-pitying concentrate on the Self.
No, I agree with you. if I may presume: You’re thinking that I’ve offered you nothing concrete here, only questions. Don’t worry; I’m not offended. My musings show two things: There’s not enough space here to fully examine the topic, and even if I were to devote both time and cyberspace to it, I probably don’t have the wisdom to satisfy your curiosity. Even Socrates could only offer this: “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” He wasn’t talking about cardinals, of course; those birds seem to live successfully without thinking about living, but who’s to fault them—or the viruses, bacteria, and alligators? Socrates wasn’t addressing those whose consciousness isn’t self-consciousness. Instead, he was addressing humans because they can be mindful, can be self-aware. His statement left much for debate over the past couple of millennia.
As I walked through Walmart today, I saw a magazine on “mindfulness.” I didn’t stop to pick it up because I was fulfilling a mundane mission. I didn’t even look to see whether or not it was one of those special issue publications by some established periodical like National Geographic, Scientific American, or Psychology Today or was an issue of a magazine called Mindfulness. But there I was hurriedly pushing my cart toward a distant checkout counter when the title made me think of myself and draw a quick conclusion: If that magazine finds an audience in Walmart, then humans truly are more self-aware than other organisms. For those who advocate “mindfulness” or “self-awareness” for a better world, there’s hope for the Cosmos and the future of self-consciousness on a shelf in Walmart.
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