"....consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way"- said Sir. Kingesly Amis, an english novelist. In the previous article we had an introduction about the series, how complex our brains are, how far we have gone developing -mostly subconsciously- our cognitive skills. Now it's the time to get one further step deep in the dazzling nature of our brains. I'm working to make this series more regular, so from now on, I will start posting weekly.
Consciousness, awareness, and perception, many of you might miss the difference between these three terms, we're going to use these terms a lot, so let's spend some time trying to define them. It's too hard to recognize the difference but it's worthy to try. Let's start with perception, you perceive something when you start detecting it with one or more of your senses; perceiving something is seeing, smelling, touching, or hearing it. Your perception of anything around you is developed in two stages, it happens too fast in your brain so you don't feel it. It starts with forming what philosophers call "Sense-datum" or sense data, which is the raw data received by your senses without judging or interpolation. One popular example for that is when you look at an object partially immersed in water, refraction occurs, and you see as if the object was broken. Without any judgments or processing, what your eye actually receive is the image of two not aligned parts of an object, not any more, and here's comes the second stage. Your brain automatically interpolate other data like color, shape, and smell, all along with your scientific-based judgments and then you understand that the object is appeared broken only because of light refraction, and then you are able to say "aha that's is just a pen in a cup of water". The objective raw sense data all along with your mind cognitive abilities are forming your perception, and that perception may be altered by external or internal factors, like missing the science class in grade four, your mind know nothing about light refraction and maybe will not be able to understand what's happening. Certain lightening conditions casting some shadows on that part of the pen outside the water, so your brain starts to think as if it was two different objects with two different colors. YouTube are full of these visual illusions.
Awareness on the other side is knowing that those perceptions was formed inside your own brain, like when you look at your hand and you know that it's your hand, you're self-aware with your physical body. Michio Kaku, the american theoretical physicist, defines self-awareness as putting yourself inside the model, model of space, time, relations with people, memory, and etc. Self-awareness is primarily constructed inside our brains, your perception of things around you and the feedback of those perceptions are forming your awareness with the universe around you. For example, when you move your hand to the light switch, and switch-it on, then perceiving the light from the exact bulb you turned on right after when you turned the switch on, makes you aware that particular action was made by you, you're aware that you caused it, that's self-awareness. When you have a silent conversation with yourself, inside your brain, like rehearsing for a speech or thinking of what would happen when your parents find out about your grades, you're aware that you have generated those sounds, you're self-aware that you are talking to you. Patients of brain injuries or malfunctions are not able to stitch things this way, and they start to experience weird awareness deficits like Schizophrenia. David Eagleman an american neuroscientist, worked for years on discovering how our awareness is formed, we will discuss Eagleman's work later on.
With that on mind, now let's define consciousness, or at least try. You may think of consciousness as a higher level of awareness, you're self-conscious when you know that your perception of things around you, and the state of awareness that you have developed upon, is all unique, no one can be exactly in the same state as you, because it requires them to become you. So being conscious is knowing for sure that you are a human being, with unique state of awareness of the universe around you, you know that you're alive, you have your own thoughts, beliefs, even conspiracies. When you look at something, you feel like being inside that body of yours looking through your eye balls, and no one else is capable of seeing things exactly from your perspective. It's too hard to explain, you just know that you are conscious. In the previous article, I've mentioned that no one else can prove that he's also conscious, actually not even me can prove that to you. Skeptics think about others as philosophical zombies, things that can respond or react just like humans do, but are not really humans. Being conscious is knowing that you're the same person waking up everyday, you know that you can see even before opening your eyes. If someone asked you "hey pal, can you speak?" you will respond by "yes, idiot" or whine in agony as you can't, but you'll never stay awkwardly in silence confused if you can speak or not. A group of researchers working on NAO robots did an experiment to illustrate the difference, they asked the robot a simple question "Can you speak?" the robot stood silently for moments then replied "I don't know", then he responded "Oh now I know, I can speak". Did you get the difference? Furthermore, your consciousness is not all based on the physical you, that's why sex and gender are too different words. Your sex is all about your sex organs, the biological components of your body that describe you as male or female. But gender is your own feeling of your own self, what you are conscious of. Some people are born with male genitals but thinking, feeling, and acting as females, most of them either have a surgery to transform or try some hormonal medications.
That's enough for now, in the next two or three articles we will discuss how exactly our awareness is formed, how our brain deceive us, and we will discuss some awareness deficits and it's causes. Later on, we will talk about consciousness, can we really get to a higher state of being conscious? Is singularity real? will be able to transcend our consciousness into computers and machines. Before I go, I will leave you with a question that we will discuss later. How can we tell that objects around us, like the laptop I'm using right now, or the chair you are sitting on, are not conscious?
