Page 66 - BBC Focus - August 2017

IN FOCUS | CONSCIOUSNESS

CONSCIOUS MYSTERY
In HG Wells’s short story The Country Of The Blind, a
mountaineer called Nuñez arrives at a hidden valley
that is cut off from the rest of the world. The valley is
occupied by a population consisting entirely of blind
people. Nuñez tells them that he has the fifth sense
called ‘sight’ but no one believes him. After living
there for some time he falls in love with a local
woman. The elders, however, object to their marriage
because Nuñez is obsessed with the ‘non-existent’
fifth sense. His doctor suggests Nuñez’s eyes, which
are causing his ‘delusions’, be removed. Is it really
impossible, even in principle, for Nuñez to make the
people in the country comprehend what it is like to
see things?
Wells’s story is reminiscent of a philosophical
thought experiment introduced in 1982 by the
philosopher Frank Jackson at the Australian National
University, which vividly illustrates the mystery of
BELOW:
Conscious consciousness. Imagine Mary, a brilliant future
toys? The idea scientist who has always lived in a black-and-white
may not be as
fictional as it room. Although she has never been outside her room
first appears in her entire life, she has learned everything there is
to know about reality by studying physics, chemistry
and neuroscience from black-and-white textbooks and
lectures on a black-and-white television. She knows
exactly how the brain works and what kind of neural
process takes place in any given situation. Suppose
now that Mary leaves her room for the first time in her
life and looks at, say, a ripe tomato. It seems
reasonable to think that she will say, ‘Wow, this is
what it is like to see red!’ She will learn something
new. This seems to suggest that some knowledge can
only be captured by conscious experience.
The brain is a highly complex system with the
capacity to process information, but it is a mere organ,
a material substance. There seems nothing more
spiritual or supernatural about it than there is about
the stomach or the lung. So how could the brain yield
conscious experiences that are so dissimilar to
processes like digestion and respiration? How could
processes in the brain give rise to vivid sensations and
raw feelings, such as the shooting pain of a leg cramp
or the sublime pleasure one takes from listening to
musical masterpieces? It seems difficult, if not
impossible, for science to explain it.
THE PANPSYCHIST SOLUTION
One might claim that the mystery of consciousness
arises because we do not know enough about the brain
yet. The mystery should be resolved, one might
contend, when neuroscience makes sufficient
progress. Yet critics find such a projection too
optimistic. Physical sciences, such as physics,
chemistry and brain science, are adept at explaining
natural phenomena in terms of the structure, function PHOTOS: GETTY, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
and dynamics of material objects and properties. But
consciousness does not seem to be a matter of
structure, function or dynamics. Why do neural
processes have to be accompanied by specific
conscious experience? And why does consciousness 2

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