Implications Of Science

In "Fantasy in the Age of Science," Poul Anderson lists implications of science:

Earth is not at the centre of the universe;

mankind is not unique among living things (I think that we are but not in the way that used to be thought);

life is a physical phenomenon;

emotions are functions of chemistry;

brains are analogous to computers;

"...one entire school of psychology even denies that the word 'consciousness' has any meaning." (p. 282)

Brains compute but computation alone does not generate consciousness. Behaviourists thought (still think?) that scientists could study only empirically observable phenomena which do not include consciousness. But we still have to be conscious in order to study. We know consciousness by being conscious and by recognizing conscious behaviour, not by observing an entity or substance called "consciousness." Consciousness is indefinable. That second last sentence translates as: "We are conscious of consciousness by being conscious and by being conscious of conscious behaviour, not by being conscious of an entity or substance called 'consciousness.'"

We cannot describe whiteness to a permanently blind man but need not describe consciousness to a permanently unconscious man.

The nature of consciousness and its relationship to being are the central questions of philosophy and I think that it is wrong to quote behaviourism without responding to it. We have discussed consciousness here before but maybe it will help to subdivide some propositions:

(i) Naturally selected organismic sensitivity to environmental alterations. (Self-explanatory, I think.)

(ii) Quantitative increase. (In this case, of organismic sensitivity.)

(iii) Quantitative change becomes qualitative change. (Solid becomes liquid becomes gas; quantitatively different wavelengths generate qualitatively different colours; cool becomes warm becomes hot becomes uncomfortable becomes painful becomes lethal.)

(iv) The transition from unconsciousness to consciousness is a qualitative change. (This is why we do not understand the transition and need to explain it.)

(v) Sensation is conscious sensitivity. (Thus, quantitatively increasing sensitivity has changed qualitatively.)

(vi) There is unconscious data processing in brains and in computers.

(vii) However, some organisms that have become conscious of their environments also process data consciously, i.e., they consciously think.

Neurons fire electrically and interact electrochemically. How does that generate consciousness? In itself, it does not. But a brain coordinates a central nervous system in a complex, sensitive, psychophysical organism and it is the organism that is conscious. We feel with our skins, not just with our brains.

Consciousness is a property of some organisms. It is not an independent or pre-existent substance. 

We are unique on Earth in being able to think about this.