Seat Of Consciousness

Brain Wave, 4.

"'...the most highly organized tissue in the world is, of course, the human cerebrum, the gray matter or seat of consciousness if you like.'" (p. 46)

Here again is the mind-body question: the relationship between observable gray matter and an observing consciousness. Organismic responsiveness to environmental alterations has quantitatively increased until it has been qualitatively transformed from unconscious sensitivity into conscious sensation. Pleasure and pain have survival value but require consciousness. Therefore, if consciousness is possible - and we know, by direct experience, that it is - then it will be naturally selected. Sensation became perception, thought and every other mental process. But all that we can detect inside brains is electrically firing and electrochemically interacting neurons which can be fully described without ascribing any consciousness to them. 

In any case, the firings have intensified and the interactions have accelerated. An electrochemical change too small to affect other bodily functions noticeably has a big effect on the sensitive cerebral tissue. Drugs and alcohol can have big effects and this change is bigger than them because it affects:

"'...the very basis of the cell's existence.'" (ibid.)

But can such sensitive cells survive such a big change? There are sf novels in which everyone dies but Brain Wave is not one of them.

Possible neuronic interactions outnumber atoms by a factor of ten to the power of several million.